Rex Stout - Help Wanted, Male

He held out his hand for the gun. I gave it to him and went.

If the situation in the front room had been unjovial, the one in the office was absolutely grim. One glance at Wolfe was enough to see that he was in a state of uncontrollable fury, because his forefinger was making the same circle, over and over, on the surface of his desk. Sergeant Purley Stebbins was standing by the wall, looking official. Inspector Cramer was in the red leather chair, with his face about the color of the chair. Nobody bothered to glance at me.

Wolfe snapped, “Your notebook.”

I crossed to my desk and got book and pencil and sat down. “This,” I observed, “Is what comes of my not attending to the doorbell. If we didn’t want company—”

“Pfui.” Wolfe tapped a piece of paper on his desk. “Look at this.”

I arose and looked. It was a search warrant. “The premises... owned and inhabited by said Nero Wolfe... situate...”

Wowie. I was surprised that Cramer was still alive, or Wolfe either.

Cramer growled, holding himself in, “I’ll try to forget what you just said, Wolfe. It was totally uncalled for. Goddam it, you have given me a runaround too many times. There I was, with that gun. A bullet fired from it matched the bullet you sent me and also the two that killed Jensen and Doyle. That’s the gun, and you sent it to me. All right, then you’ve got a client, and when you’ve got a client you keep him right in your pocket. I would have been a goddam fool to come here and start begging you. I’ve begged you before.”

Wolfe had stalled making the circle again. “I repeat, sir,” he murmured, “that your acceptance of your salary constitutes a fraud on the people of New York and you are a disgrace to an honorable profession.”

Cramer’s face had reached the red of the chair and was going on from there. “Then,” he said, “I won’t try to forget it. We’re going to search this house.” He started to leave the chair.

“If you do you’ll never catch the murderer of Mr. Jensen and Mr. Doyle.”

Cramer dropped back in the chair. “I won’t?”

“No, sir.”

“You’ll prevent me?”

“Bah.” Wolfe was disgusted. “Next you’ll be warning me formally that obstruction of justice is a crime. I didn’t say that the murderer wouldn’t be caught, I said you wouldn’t catch him. Because I already have.”

A grunt came from Purley Stebbins, but no one noticed it but me. I grinned at him.

Cramer said, “The hell you have.”

“Yes, sir. Your report on the gun and bullets settles it. But I confess the matter is a little complicated, and I do give you a formal warning: you are not equipped to handle it. I am.” Wolfe shoved the warrant across the desk. “Tear that thing up.”

Cramer slowly shook his head. “You see, Wolfe, I know you. God, don’t I know you! But I’m willing to have a talk before I execute it.”

“No, sir.” Wolfe was murmuring again. “I will not submit to duress. I would even prefer to deal with District Attorney Skinner. Tear it up, or proceed to execute it.”

That was a dirty threat. Cramer’s opinion of Skinner was one of the defects of our democratic system of government. Cramer looked at the warrant, at Wolfe, at me, and back at the warrant. Then he picked it up and tore. I reached for the pieces and dropped them in the wastebasket.

Wolfe didn’t look gratified because he was still too sore to let any other emotion in, but he did quit murmuring and allowed himself to talk. “Confound it,” he said. “Don’t ever waste your time like that again. Or mine. Can the gun be traced?”

“No. The number’s gone. It dates from about nineteen-ten. And there are no prints on it that are worth a damn. Nothing but smudges.”

Wolfe nodded. “Naturally. A much simpler technique than wiping it clean or going around in gloves.” He glanced at Stebbins. “Please sit down, sir. Your standing there annoys me.” Back to Cramer. “The murderer is in this house.”

“I suspected he was. Is he your client?”

Wolfe let that one go by without even waving at it. Leaning back in his chair, adjusting himself with accompanying grunts, and interlacing his fingers at the Greenwich meridian on his equator, he was ready to forget the search warrant and get down to business. I winked at Purley, but he pretended not to see it. He had his notebook too, but hadn’t put anything in it yet.

“The main complication,” Wolfe said in his purring tone, “is this. There are a man and a woman in the front room. Granting that one of them is the murderer, which one?”

Cramer frowned at him. “You didn’t say anything about granting. You said that you had caught the murderer.”

“So I have. He or she is in there, under guard. I suppose I’ll have to tell you what happened, if I expect you to start your army of men digging, and it looks as though that’s the only way to go about it. I have no army. To begin with, when I received that threat I hired a man who resembles me — superficially — in physical characteristics to be visible, both in this house and on the street, and I kept to my room. Nothing occurred—”

“Not involved, not inter—”

“Please don’t interrupt,” Wolfe snapped. “I’m telling you what happened.”

He did so. I have a high opinion of myself as a reporter of a series of events, but, listening to Wolfe as an expert, I had to admit I couldn’t have done much better. He didn’t waste any words, but he got it all in.

Purley nearly bit the end of his tongue off, trying to get it all in his notebook, but I didn’t bother.

Wolfe finished. Cramer sat scowling. Wolfe purred, “Well, sir, there’s the problem. I doubt if it can be solved with what we have, or what is available on the premises. You’ll have to get your men started on the indicated lines. I’ll be available for consultation.”

“I wish,” Cramer growled, gazing at him as if he were looking at a puzzle he had seen and worked at many times but had never got solved, “I wish I knew how much dressing you put on that.”

“Not any. I have only one concern in this. I have no client. I withheld nothing and added nothing.”

“Maybe.” Cramer straightened up like a man of action. “Okay, we’ll proceed on that basis and find out. First of all, I want to ask them some questions.”

“I suppose you do.” Wolfe detested sitting and listening to someone else ask questions, especially in his own office. “And Miss Geer is going to be difficult. She wants a lawyer. You are handicapped, of course, by your official status. Which one do you want first?”

Cramer stood up. “I’ve got to see that room before I talk to either of them. I want to see where things are. Especially that vase.”

I was amazed to see that Wolfe was leaving his chair too, knowing his attitude toward all non-essential movement, but as I went to open the door to the front room for them I reflected that while he hated hearing Cramer ask questions, under the circumstances he would hate even more not hearing him, in case conversation got started in the front room. Stebbins tagged in after them, and I brought up the rear.

Jane was seated on the piano bench. Jensen was on the sofa, but arose as we entered. Fritz was standing by a window, his hand with the gun coming up as Jensen moved.

Wolfe said, “This is Inspector Cramer, Miss Geer.”

She didn’t make a sound or move a muscle.

Wolfe said, “I believe you’ve met the inspector, Mr. Jensen.”

“Yes, I have.” Jensen’s voice had gone unused so long it squeaked, and he cleared his throat. “So the agreement not to call in the police was a farce too.” He was bitter.

“There was no such agreement. I said that Mr. Cramer couldn’t be kept out of it indefinitely. The bullet that was fired at me — at Mr. Hackett — came from the gun that was found in that vase” — Wolfe pointed at it — “and so did those that killed your father and Mr. Doyle. So the field has become— ah, restricted.”