Rex Stout - Instead of Evidence

“That’s interesting,” Helen said. “Some customers say that the person won’t be standing in the right place, but you were, exactly. A person not as tall as you would get it right in the eye.”

“You are,” I told her grimly.

“I am what?”

“Not as tall as me.”

“Oh, I have better sense.”

Only a female idiot would have put it on a basis of sense. Joe, who had put the door back up and was lying on the floor again with his head stuck under a desk, called to me, “Maybe you hadn’t better touch things.”

“Thanks for the suggestion.” I went to a chair at the end of the desk he was under and asked, “What happens if I sit on this?”

“Nothing. That one’s okay.”

I sat and became strictly a spectator, after wiping my face and neck and inspecting my shin. Joe continued his tour of the abditories, which were practically everywhere, in desk lamps, chair legs, water cooler, ash trays, even one in the metal base of a desk calendar that was on a big desk in the corner. It was while he had that one open, jiggling things out of it, that I heard him mutter, “This is a new one on me.” He walked over and put something on the desk in front of Helen and asked her, “What is that thing, do you know?”

She picked it up, inspected it, and shook her head. “Haven’t the faintest idea.”

“Let me see.” I got up and went over, and Helen handed it to me. The second I saw it I stopped being casual inside, but I tried to keep the outside as before. It was a thin metal capsule, about three-quarters of an inch long and not over an eighth of an inch in diameter, smooth all over, with no seam or opening, except at one end where a thread came through, a dark brown medium-sized thread as long as my index finger.

I grunted. “Where did you find it?”

“You saw me find it.” Joe sounded either irritated or something else. “In that calendar on Blaney’s desk.”

“Oh, that’s Blaney’s desk. How many, just this one?”

“No, several.” Joe went to Blaney’s desk and then came back to us. “Three more. Four altogether.”

I took them from him and compared. They were all the same. I regarded Helen’s attractive face. She looked interested. I regarded Joe’s handsome face if you didn’t count the ears. He looked more interested.

“I think,” I said, “that it was one of these things that was in the cigar that Poor never smoked. What do you think?”

Joe said, “I think we can damn soon find out. Give me one.” He had a gleam in his eye.

I shook my head. “The idea doesn’t appeal to me.” I looked at my wrist. “Quarter to nine. Mr. Wolfe is in the middle of dinner. The proper thing is for you to take these objects to the police, but they’re likely to feel hurt because you didn’t tell them about the abditories when they were here. We can’t interrupt Mr. Wolfe’s dinner, even with a phone call, so I suggest that I buy you a meal somewhere, modest but nutritious, and then we all three go and deliver these gadgets, calendar included, to him. He may want to ask some questions.”

“You take them to him,” Joe said. “I think I’ll go home.”

“I think I’ll go home too,” Helen said.

“No. Nothing doing. You’ll just follow each other and get all confused again. If I take these things to Wolfe without taking you he’ll fly into a temper and phone the police to go get you. Not to flatter myself, wouldn’t you prefer to come with me?”

Helen said in the nastiest possible tone, “I don’t have to eat at the same table with him.”

Joe said, trying to match her tone but failing because he wasn’t a female, “If you did I wouldn’t eat.”

Which was a lot of organic fertilizer. I took them to Gallagher’s, where they not only ate at the same table but devoured hunks of steak served from the same platter. It was a little after ten when we got to Nero Wolfe’s place on Thirty-fifth Street.

Wolfe was seated behind his desk, with the evening beer — one empty bottle and two full ones — on a tray in front of him. Joe Groll, in the red leather chair, also had a bottle and glass on the check-writing table beside him. Helen Vardis would have made a good cheesecake shot over by the big globe in an upholstered number that Wolfe himself sometimes used. I was at my own desk, as usual, with my oral report all finished, watching Wolfe inspect the workmanship of the removable bottom of the desk calendar.

He put it down, picked up one of the metal capsules with its dangling thread and gave it another look, put that down too, and turned his half-closed eyes on Joe.

“Mr. Groll.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I don’t know how much sense you have. If you have slightly more than your share, you must realize that if I hand these things to the police with Mr. Goodwin’s story, they will conclude that you are a liar. They will ask, why did you wait until witnesses were present to explore those hiding places? Why did you think they were worth exploring at all? Is it even remotely credible that Mr. Blaney, after preparing that murderous box of cigars, would leave these things there on his desk in a hiding place that a dozen people knew about? They will have other questions, but that’s enough to show that they will end by concluding that you put the capsules in the calendar yourself. Where did you get them?”

“But listen,” Helen Vardis spoke up, “those abditor—”

“Miss Vardis! Please. I don’t want to hear that word again! Mr. Goodwin used it repeatedly because he knew it would annoy me, but I don’t have to stand it from strangers and I won’t. I’m speaking to Mr. Groll. Well, sir?”

Joe said firmly, “I wouldn’t know about how much sense I’ve got, but it happened exactly the way you’ve heard it. As for my waiting for witnesses, I didn’t. I only waited until I was sure Blaney was out of range, up at his Westchester place, and then Goodwin was there and I asked him to come along on the spur of the moment. As for its being remotely credible what you said, there’s nothing Blaney wouldn’t do because he’s crazy. He’s a maniac. You don’t know him, so you don’t know that.”

Wolfe grunted. “The devil I don’t. I do know that. How long have those hiding places been in existence?”

“Some of them for years. Some are more recent.”

Wolfe tapped the desk calendar with a finger. “How long has this been there?”

“Oh—” Joe considered. “Four or five years. It was there before I got in the Army. Look here, Mr. Wolfe, you seem to forget that when I saw those things tonight I had no idea what they were, and I still haven’t. You seem to know they’re the same as the loads in those cigars, and if you do okay, but I don’t.”

“Neither do I.”

“Then what the hell? Maybe they’re full of Chanel Number Five or just fresh air.”

Wolfe nodded. “I was coming to that. If I show them to Mr. Cramer he’ll take them away from me, and also he’ll arrest you as a material witness, and I may possibly need you. We’ll have to find out for ourselves.”

He pushed a button, and in a moment Fritz entered. Wolfe asked him, “Do you remember that metal percolator that someone sent us and we were fools enough to try?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you throw it out?”

“No, sir, it’s in the basement.”

“Bring it here, please.”

Fritz went. Wolfe picked up a capsule and frowned at it and then turned to me. “Archie. Get me a piece of newspaper, the can of household oil, and a piece of string.”

Under the circumstances I would have preferred to go out for a walk, but there was a lady present who might need protection, so I did as I was told. When I got back Fritz was there with the percolator, which was two-quart size, made of thick metal. We three men collected at Wolfe’s desk to watch the preparations, but Helen stayed in her chair. With my scissors Wolfe cut a strip of newspaper about two by eight inches, dropped oil on it and rubbed it in with his finger, and rolled it tight into a long, thin, oiled wick. Then he held one end of it against the end of the capsule thread, overlapping a little, and Joe Groll, ready with the piece of string, tied them together. Wolfe opened the lid of the percolator.