Rex Stout - Not Quite Dead Enough

It had cost me two bucks to get it smuggled in to me, but it was worth it. Wednesday noon I sat on the edge of my cot in my cell gazing admiringly at it, a front page headline in the early edition of the Courier :

As the schoolboy said to the teacher, good — hell, it’s perfect. The “Army Major” was plenty disgraceful, and the “Nero Wolfe’s Former Assistant” was superb. Absolutely degrading. As added attractions, there were pictures of both Wolfe and me on the second page. The article was good too. Bill Pratt hadn’t failed me. It gave me a good appetite, so I relinquished another two bucks to send out for a meal that would fit the occasion. After that was disposed of, I stretched out on the cot for a nap, having got behind on my sleep the last two nights.

The opening of the cell door woke me up. I blinked at a guard as he gave me a sign to emerge, rubbed my eyes, stood up, shook myself, enjoyed a yawn, and followed the guard. He led me to an elevator, and, when we got downstairs, through the barrier out of the prison section, then along corridors and into an anteroom, and through that into an office. I had been there before. Except for one object it was familiar: Inspector Cramer at the big desk, Sergeant Stebbins standing near by ready for anything that didn’t require mental activity, and a guy with a notebook at a little table at one side. The unfamiliar object, in those surroundings, was Nero Wolfe. He was in a chair by a corner of Cramer’s desk, and I had to compress my lips to keep from grinning with satisfaction when I saw that he was no longer dressed for training. He was wearing the dark blue cheviot with a pin stripe, with a yellow shirt and a dark blue tie. Really snappy. The suit didn’t fit him any more, but that didn’t bother me now.

He looked at me and didn’t say a word. But he looked.

Cramer said, “Sit down.”

I sat, crossed my legs, and looked surly.

Wolfe took his eyes from me and snapped, “Repeat briefly what you’ve told me, Mr. Cramer.”

“He knows it all,” Cramer growled. He had fists on his desk. “At 7:10 last evening Mrs. Chack returned to her apartment at 316 Barnum Street and found her granddaughter, Ann Amory, there on the floor dead, strangled, with a scarf around her neck. A radio car arrived at 7:21, the squad at 7:27, the medical examiner at 7:42. The girl had been dead from one to three hours. The body was removed—”

Wolfe wiggled a finger. “Please. The main points. About Mr. Goodwin.”

“He knows them too. Found on the body, underneath the dress, was the note I have shown you, in Goodwin’s handwriting, signed ARCHIE. The paper had been torn from a notebook which was found on his person, now in my possession. Three sets of Goodwin’s fingerprints, fresh and recent, were on objects in the apartment. A strand of hair, eleven hairs, found behind the scarf which was around the body’s throat, with which she was strangled, has been compared with Goodwin’s hair and they match precisely. Goodwin was at that address Monday evening and had an altercation with Mrs. Chack, and took Ann Amory to the Flamingo Club, and left with her hastily on account of a scene with a woman whose name is — not an element in the case. He went to 316 Barnum Street again yesterday and made inquiries of a man named Furey, Leon Furey, and apparently he spent most of the afternoon snooping around the neighborhood. We’re still checking that. So the neighborhood is acquainted with him, and two people saw him walking east on Barnum Street, not far from Number 316, between six-thirty and seven o’clock, in company with a man named Roy Douglas, who lives at—”

“That will do,” Wolfe snapped. His eyes moved. “Archie. Explain this at once.”

“Confronted with this evidence,” Cramer rumbled, “Goodwin refuses to talk. He submitted to a search without protest, with that notebook in his pocket. He permitted us to make a microscopic comparison of the strand of hair with his. But he won’t talk. And by God,” he hit the desk with one of the fists, “you have the gall to come down here, the first time you have ever honored us with a visit, and threaten to have the police department abolished!”

“I merely—” Wolfe began.

“Just a minute!” Cramer roared. “I’ve been taking your guff for fifteen years, and Goodwin has been riding for a fall for at least ten. Here it is. He is not now charged with murder. He is detained as a material witness. But it’s going to take a lot of comedy to laugh off that strand of hair. It’s exactly the kind of thing that could have happened without him knowing it, the girl grabbing at him and seizing his hair, and then when he got the scarf around her, trying to get her fingers behind it to pull it away and leaving the hair there. You’re smart, Wolfe, as smart a man as I ever knew. All right, try to figure out any other conceivable way how Goodwin’s hair got behind that scarf. That’s why we’re prepared to oppose any application for release on bail.”

Cramer pulled a cigar from his pocket, conveyed it to his mouth, and sank his teeth in it.

“It’s all right, boss,” I told Wolfe, trying to smile as if I were trying to smile bravely. “I don’t think they’ll ever convict me. I’m pretty sure they can’t. I’ve got a lawyer coming to see me. You go on home and forget about it. I don’t want you to break training.”

Wolfe’s lips moved faintly but no sound came out. He was speechless with rage.

He took a deep breath.

“Archie,” he said, “you have the advantage over me. There is nothing I can do to you. I can’t dismiss you, since you are no longer in my employ.” His eyes moved. “Mr. Cramer, you are an ass. Leave Mr. Goodwin alone with me for an hour, and I’ll get you all the information you want.”

“Alone with you?” Cramer grunted derisively. “Not that big an ass I’m not.”

Wolfe grimaced. He was having all he could do to control himself.

I said in a manly tone, “It’s like this, boss. I’m in a bad hole. I admit it. I am innocent, but my honor is involved. A good lawyer may pull me through. I had to grit my teeth last night to keep from waking you up to tell you about it. I knew you didn’t want—”

“Apparently, Archie,” he said grimly, “you forget how well I know you. Enough of this flummery. What are your terms?”

He had me flustered for a second. I stammered, “My what? Terms?”

“Yes. For the information I’ll have to have to clean up this mess. First to get you out of here. Do you realize, when Fritz brought me that paper and I saw that headline—”

“Yes, sir, I realize. As for terms, it’s not me, it’s the Army. I’m in it, and I’m on duty. We ask your assistance—”

“You’re going to get it. I am preparing for it—”

“Sure you are. You’re preparing to dry up and die. We respectfully request an appointment for Colonel Ryder to call on you at the earliest opportunity. We request you to remove your brain from the cedar chest and give me back my sweater, which is stretched out of shape, and go to work.”

“Confound you—”

“What the hell,” Cramer barked, “is all this?”

“Please be quiet,” Wolfe snapped. He folded his arms and shut his eyes, and his lips pushed out and then in again, and out and in. Cramer and I had both seen that before, on various occasions. This time it went on for quite a while. Finally Wolfe heaved a deep sigh and his eyes opened.

“Very well,” he muttered at me. “Talk.”

I grinned at him. “May I phone Colonel Ryder to come tomorrow at eleven?”