Rex Stout: Help Wanted, Male

I offered a contribution, deadpan. “I know a young lady, an actress, who would do a swell job of make-up on him if—”

“Archie.” His tone was sharp. “Do you think I enjoy this idiotic horseplay?”

“No, sir. But why couldn’t you just stay in the house? You do anyway. I’ve known you to not stick your nose out for a month. And be careful who gets in. Until...”

“Until what?”

“Until the bird that killed Jensen is caught.”

“Bah.” He glared at me. “By whom? By Mr. Cramer? What do you suppose he is doing now? Pfui. Major Jensen, Mr. Jensen’s son, arriving home on leave from Europe five days ago, learned that during his absence his father had sued his mother for divorce. The father and son quarreled, which was not unique. But Mr. Cramer has a hundred men trying to collect evidence that will convict Major Jensen of killing his father! Utterly intolerable asininity. For what motive could Major Jensen have for killing me, or threatening to?”

“Well, now.” My eyebrows were up. “I wouldn’t just toss it in the wastebasket. What if the major figured that sending you the same kind of message he sent his father would make everybody react the way you are?”

Wolfe shook his head. “He didn’t. Unless he’s a born fool. He would have known that merely sending me that thing would be inadequate, that he would have to follow it up by making good on the threat; and he hasn’t killed me and I doubt if he intends to. General Fife has looked up his record for me. Mr. Cramer is wasting his time, his men’s energy, and the money of the people of New York. I am handicapped. The men I have used and can trust have gone to war. You bounce around thinking only of yourself, deserting me. I am confined to this room, left to my own devices, with a vindictive bloodthirsty maniac waiting for an opportunity to murder me. I have no hint of his identity and no sniff of his scent.”

He sure was piling it on. But I knew better than to contribute a note of skepticism when he was in one of his romantic moods, having been fired for that once, and besides, I wouldn’t have signed an affidavit that he was exaggerating the situation. So I only asked him, “What about Captain Peter Root? Did they bring him?”

“Yes. He was here today and I talked with him. He has been in that prison for over a month and asserts that this cannot possibly be connected with him or his. He says Miss Geer has not communicated with him for six weeks or more. His mother is teaching school at Danforth, Ohio; that has been verified by Mr. Cramer; she is there. His father, who formerly ran a filling station at Danforth, abandoned wife and son ten years ago, and is said to be working in a war plant in Oklahoma. Wife and son prefer not to discuss him. No brother or sister. According to Captain Root, no one on earth who would conceivably undertake a ride on the subway, let alone multiple murder, to avenge him.”

“He might just possibly be right.”

“Nonsense. There was no other slightest connection between Mr. Jensen and me. I’ve asked General Fife to keep Captain Root in New York and to request the prison authorities to look over his effects there if he has any.”

“When you get an idea in your head—”

“I never do. As you mean it. I react to stimuli. In this instance I am reacting in the only way open to me. The person who shot Mr. Jensen and Mr. Doyle is bold to the point of rashness. He can probably be tempted to proceed with his program. I am aware that if you drive Mr. Hackett around, and accompany him into the car and out of it, crossing sidewalks at all hours of the day and night, you may get killed. That sort of thing was understood when I employed you and paid you. Now the government pays you. Perhaps Mr. Cramer has a man who resembles you and could be assigned to this. He would have to be a good man, alert and resourceful, for there’s no point to this if an attempt on Mr. Hackett’s life leaves us as empty-handed as we are now. You can give me your decision in the morning.”

I’m surprised that I was able to speak at all. He had of course insulted me a million times, as I had him, but this was worse than an insult, there was no word for it. Coming on top of the turndown I had got in Washington, which had reduced my buoyancy to a record low, it made me so mad that I knew I’d better get out of there. But I did not intend to let him go to bed feeling noble, so I grinned at him and controlled my voice.

“Okay,” I told him. “I’ll think it over. Sure, Cramer has a lot of good men. Let you know in the morning. I’ll remember to turn the gong on.”

I went up to my room.

The gong was a dingus under my bed. The custom was that when I retired at night I turned a switch, and if anyone put his foot down in the hall within ten feet of Wolfe’s door the gong gonged. It had been installed on account of a certain occurrence some years previously, when Wolfe had got a knife stuck in him. The thing had never gone off except when we tested it, and in my opinion never would, but I never failed to switch it on because if Wolfe had stepped into the hall some night and the gong hadn’t sounded it would have caused discussion.

This night, with a stranger in the house, I was glad it was there. I learned from Fritz that H. H. Hackett was sleeping in the south room, on the same floor as me, and on the basis of my brief acquaintance and my one look at him it wouldn’t have surprised me if he had undertaken to sneak into Wolfe’s room during the night and kill him, dispose of the body down in the furnace, and expect Fritz and me to take him for Wolfe and never catch on. Women and girls of appropriate age and configuration may call me Archie and welcome. With the rest of my fellow beings I am particular. The Hackett person would have had to know me seven years to get the privilege, and I neither desired nor intended that he should know me seven weeks.

In the morning, breakfast was all over the place, with Wolfe in his room, Hackett in the dining-room, and me in the kitchen with Fritz. Afterwards I spent an hour up in the plant rooms with Wolfe, on the matters we usually attended to in the office, together with consideration of the current problem. Wolfe asked if I had decided whether we should get a chauffeur for Hackett from the Homicide Squad.

I looked judicious. “I have,” I told him, “thought it over from all angles. Unquestionably Cramer could give us a man who would be my superior in courage, wit, integrity, reflex time, and purity of morals. But here’s the trouble — not one anything like as handsome as me. Not a chance. So I’ll do it myself.”

Wolfe cocked an eye at me. “I meant no offense. My intentions—”

“Forget it. You’re under a strain. Mr. Hackett’s life is in jeopardy and it makes you nervous.”

We got to details. Jane Geer was making a nuisance of herself. I understood now, of course, why Wolfe had refused to see her Wednesday evening. After sending me to get her he had conceived the strategy of hiring a double, and he didn’t want her to get a look at the real Nero Wolfe because if she did she would be less likely to be deceived by the counterfeit and go to work on him. That meant she was seriously on his list, but I didn’t take the trouble to inform him that in my opinion he could cross her off, since he would only have grunted. She had phoned several times, insisting on seeing him, and had come to the house Friday morning and argued for five minutes with Fritz through the three-inch crack which the chain bolt permitted the door to open to. Now Wolfe had an idea for one of his elaborate charades. I was to phone her to come to see Wolfe at six o’clock that afternoon. When she came I was to take her in to Hackett. Wolfe would coach Hackett for the interview.

I looked skeptical. Wolfe said, “It will give her a chance to kill Mr. Hackett.”