Rex Stout - Help Wanted, Male

As I reappeared in the office, Jane shot at me, “Did you search him?” I ignored her and circled around Wolfe’s desk for a look at the back of the chair. The head-rest was upholstered in brown leather; and about eight inches from the top and a foot from the side edge, a spot that would naturally have been on a line behind Hackett’s left ear as he sat, there was a hole in the leather. I looked behind, and there was another hole on the rear side. I looked at the wall back of the chair and found still another hole, torn into the plaster. From the bottom draw of my desk I got a screwdriver and hammer, started chiseling, ran against a stud, and went to work with the point of my knife. When I finally turned around I held a small object between my thumb and finger. As I did so Hackett emerged from the bathroom, apparently more composed.

“Bullet,” I said informatively. “Thirty-eight. Passed through Mr. Wolfe’s ear and the back of his chair and ruined the wall. Patched plaster is an eyesore.”

Jane sputtered. Jensen sat and gazed at me with narrowed eyes. Hackett said, in what he probably thought was a detached and superior tone, “I’ll search them again.” I tried not to glare at him.

“No, sir,” I said deferentially, “I made sure of that. But I suggest—”

“It could be,” Jensen put in, “that Wolfe fired that bullet himself.”

“Yeah?” I returned his gaze. “Mr. Wolfe would be glad to let you inspect his face for powder marks.”

“He washed them off in the bathroom,” Jane snapped.

“They don’t wash off.” I continued to Jensen, “I’ll lend you a magnifying glass. You can examine the leather on the chair too.”

By gum, he took me up. He nodded and arose, and I got the glass from Wolfe’s desk, the big one. First he went over the chair, the portion in the neighborhood of the bullet hole, and then crossed to Hackett and gave his face and ear a look. Hackett stood still, with his lips compressed and his eyes straight ahead. Jensen gave me back the glass and returned to his seat.

I asked him, “Did Mr. Wolfe shoot himself in the ear?”

“No,” he admitted. “Not unless he had the gun wrapped.”

“Sure.” My tone cut slices off of them. “He tied a pillow around it, held it at arm’s length, pointing it at his ear, and pulled the trigger. How would you like to try demonstrating it? Keeping the bullet within an inch of your frontal lobe?”

He never stopped gazing at me. “I am,” he declared, “being completely objective. With some difficulty. I agree it is highly improbable.”

“If I understand what happened—” Hackett began, but I doubted if he was going to offer anything useful, so I cut him off.

“Excuse me, sir. The bullet helps, but the gun would help still more. Let’s be objective too. We might possibly find the object in the front room.” I moved, touching his elbow to take him along. “Fritz, see that they stay put.”

“I,” said Jensen, getting up, “would like to be present—”

“The hell you would.” I wheeled to him. My voice may have gone up a notch. “Sit down, brother. I am trying not to fly off the handle. I am trying not to be rude. Whose house is this, with bullets zipping around? I swear to God Fritz will shoot you in the knee.”

He had another remark to contribute, and so did Jane, but I disregarded them and wrangled Hackett ahead of me into the front room and shut the soundproof door. Hackett began to talk, but I shut him off. He insisted he had something to say. I told him to spill it.

“It seems incredible,” he asserted, meeting my eye and choosing his words, “that one of them could have shot at me from in here, through the open door, without me seeing anything.”

“You said that before, in the bathroom. You also said you didn’t remember whether your eyes were open or shut, or where you were looking, when you heard that shot.” I moved my face to within fourteen inches of his. “See here. If you are suspecting that I shot at you, or that Wolfe did, you have got fleas or other insects playing tag in your brain and should have it attended to. One thing alone: the way the bullet went, straight past your ear and into the chair back, it had to come from in front, the general direction of that door and this room. It couldn’t have come from the door in the hall or anywhere else, because we haven’t got a gun that shoots a curve. I can’t help it if your eyes were focused somewhere else or were closed or you went temporarily blind. You will please sit in that chair against the wall and not move or talk.”

He grumbled but obeyed. I surveyed the field. On the assumption that the gun had been fired in that room, I adopted the theory that either it was still there or it had been transported or propelled without. As for transportation, I had got there not more than five seconds after the shot and found them there staring at each other. As for propulsion, the windows were closed and the venetian blinds down. I preferred the first alternative and began to search.

Obviously it couldn’t be anything abstruse, since five seconds wasn’t long enough to pry up a floor board or make a hole in a table leg, so I tried easier places, like under furniture and behind cushions. It might be thought that under the circumstances I would have been dead sure of finding it, but I had the curious feeling that I probably wouldn’t no matter how thoroughly I looked; I have never understood why. If it was a hunch it was a bad day for hunches, because when I came to the big vase on the table between the windows and peeked into it and saw something white and stuck my hand in, I felt the gun. Getting it by the trigger guard, I lifted it out. Judging by smell, it had been fired recently, but of course it had had time to cool off. It was an old Granville thirty-eight, next door to rusty. The white object I had seen was an ordinary cotton handkerchief, man’s size, with a tear in it through which the butt of the gun protruded. With proper care about touching, I opened the cylinder and found there were five loaded cartridges and one shell.

Hackett was there beside me, trying to say things. I got brusque with him.

“Yes, it’s a gun, recently fired, and not mine or Wolfe’s. Is it yours? No? Good. Okay, keep your shirt on. We’re going back in there, and there will be sufficient employment for my brain without interference from you. Do not try to help me. See how long you can go without speaking a word. Just look wise as if you knew it all. If this ends as it ought to, you’ll get an extra hundred. Agreed?”

I’ll be damned if he didn’t say, “Two hundred. I was shot at. I came within an inch of getting killed.”

I told him he’d have to talk the second hundred out of Wolfe and opened the door to the office and followed him through. He detoured around Jane Geer and went and sat in the chair he had just escaped being a corpse in. I swiveled my own chair to face it out and sat down too.

Jensen demanded sharply, “What have you got there?”

“This,” I said cheerfully, “is a veteran revolver, a Granville thirty-eight, which has been fired not too long ago.” I lowered it gently onto my desk. “Fritz, give me back my gun.” He brought it. I kept it in my hand. “Thank you. I found this other affair in the vase on the table in there, dressed in a handkerchief. Five unused cartridges and one used. It’s a stranger here. Never saw it before. It appears to put the finishing touch on a critical situation.”

Jane exploded. She called me an unspeakable rat. She said she wanted a lawyer and intended to go to one immediately. She called Hackett three or four things. She said it was the dirtiest frame-up in history. “Now,” she told Hackett, “I know damned well you framed Peter Root. I let that skunk Goodwin talk me out of it!” She was out of her chair, spitting fire. It was spectacular. “You won’t get away with it this time! You incredible louse!”