Rex Stout - Before Midnight

“They’re not here.”

“You must know where they are. Phone them.”

“I’m going to, and you’re going to stay away from these cabinets until I do.”

“No, sir.” Wolfe was firm but unruffled. “I make allowances for your state of mind, Mr. Falk, after what happened last night, but you must know I’m not a bandit and these men are working for me. It shouldn’t take long to get Mr. Buff or Mr. O’Garro. Do so by all means.”

One test of a good executive is how long it takes him to realize he has lost an argument, and Falk passed it. He turned on his heel and left, striding across the carpet to the door leading to the inside corridor. Wolfe and I resumed, finishing with the shelf of packages and going on to the next one — buckets and cans of paint, electric irons, and so forth.

During the next half hour the elevators delivered eight or nine people, not more than that, and took most of them away again, but nobody bothered us. On the whole it was a nice quiet place to work. Once Wolfe and I thought we might be getting hot, when we came to the display of Jonas Hibben & Co., Pharmaceuticals, but it seemed to be intact, with no vacant spot, and there was no box or bottle from which someone could have removed a dose of cyanide. We gave it up finally, and moved on, and were at the last cabinet on that wall when Saul called to us to come and look at something, and we crossed the room to him, where he and Fred were focusing on the second shelf of the last cabinet in their battery.

The dignified little card — they were all dignified and little — identified it as the exhibit of the Allcoran Laboratories, Inc. There were a couple of dozen boxes, small and large, with the small ones in front and the large ones in the rear, and three rows of brown bottles, all the same size, I would say about a pint.

Saul said, “Middle row, fourth bottle from the left. You have to tip the one in front to see the label.”

Wolfe stepped closer. Instead of tipping the one in front he lifted it with a thumb and forefinger, to get a clear view, and I got one too over his shoulder. No squinting was required. At the top of the label was printed in black, in large type, KCN. At the bottom was printed in red, also in large type, POISON. In between, and below the POISON there was some stuff in smaller type, but I didn’t strain to get it. The bottle was so dark it would have to be lifted out and held up to the light for a look at the contents, and that wouldn’t do, but you could see there was something white in it, almost up to the neck.

“Today’s daily double,” I said. “It was here, and we found it.”

Wolfe returned the bottle he had lifted, gently and carefully. “Did you touch it?” he asked Saul. He knew darned well he hadn’t, since our orders had been not to touch anything until we knew what it was, or at least that it wasn’t what we were looking for. Saul said no, and Wolfe called to Bill and Orrie to come and bring chairs along, and Saul and Fred also went and got chairs. They lined the four chairs up in a row in front of the cabinet, their backs to it, and the quartet sat, facing the room and the elevators. They looked pretty impressive that way, the four of them, and no bottle of poison was ever better guarded.

That was the sight that met four pairs of eyes when Oliver Buff, Patrick O’Garro, Rudolph Hansen, and Talbot Heery stepped from an elevator into the reception room.

“Good morning, gentlemen!” Wolfe sang out, in about as nasty a tone as I had ever known him to use.

They headed for us.

It rarely gets you anywhere, practically never, but you always do it. When four men enter a room and one of them sees six men grouped in front of a cabinet which has in it a bottle of poison out of which he has recently shaken a spoonful onto a piece of toilet paper, to be used for killing a man, you try to watch all their faces like a hawk for some sign of which one it is. That time it was more useless than usual. They had all had a hard and probably sleepless night, and maybe hadn’t been to bed at all. They looked it, and certainly none of them liked what he saw. Three of them — Buff, O’Garro, and Hansen — all spoke at once. They wanted to know who and what and why and when, oblivious of the presence of a customer who was seated across the room.

Wolfe was incisive. “It would be better, I think, to retire somewhere. This is rather public.”

“Who are these men?” Buff demanded.

“They are working for the firm of Lippert, Buff and Assa, through me. They are now—”

“Get them out of here!”

“No. They’re guarding an object in that cabinet. I intend shortly to tell the police to come and get the object, and meanwhile these four men will stay. They’re all armed, so I—”

“Why, goddam you—” O’Garro blurted, but Hansen gripped his arm and said, “Let’s go inside,” and turned him around. Buff seemed about to choke, but controlled it, and led the way, with his partner and lawyer following, then Heery, then Wolfe, and then me. As I passed through the door to the corridor I turned for a glance at the four sentries, and Orrie winked at me.

The executive committee room was much more presentable than it had been before, with everything in order. The second the door was shut O’Garro started yapping, but Hansen got his arm again and steered him around to a chair at the far side of the big table, and took one there himself, so they had the windows back of them. Wolfe and I took the near side, with Heery at one end, on Wolfe’s left, and Buff at the other, on my right.

“What’s this object in a cabinet?” O’Garro demanded as Wolfe sat. “What are you trying to pull?”

“It will be better,” Wolfe said, “if you let me describe the situation. Then we can—”

“We know the situation,” Hansen put in. “We want to know what you think you’re doing.”

“That’s simple. I’m preparing to learn which of you four men killed Louis Dahlmann, and took the wallet, and killed Vernon Assa.”

Three of them stared. Heery said, “Jesus. Is that simple?”

Hansen said, “I advise you, Mr. Wolfe, to choose your words — and also your acts. With more care. This could cost you your license and much of your reputation, and possibly more. Let’s have the facts. What is the object in the cabinet?”

“A bottle of cyanide of potassium, in the display of Allcoran Laboratories, with the cap seal broken and almost certainly some of the contents removed. That can be determined.”

“There in that cabinet?” Hansen couldn’t believe it.

“Yes, sir.”

“A deadly poison there on public display?”

“Oh, come, Mr. Hansen. Don’t feign an ignorance you can’t possibly own. Dozens of deadly poisons are available to the public at thousands of counters, including cyanide with its many uses. You must know that, but if you want it on the record that you were astonished by my announcement you have witnesses. Shall I ask the others if they were astonished too?”

“No. — I advise you, Oliver, and you too, Pat, to say nothing whatever and answer no questions. This man is treacherous.”

Wolfe skipped the tribute. “That will expedite matters,” he said approvingly. His eyes moved. “I must tell the police about that bottle of poison reasonably soon, so the less I’m interrupted the better, but if you all refuse to say anything whatever I’ll be wasting my time and might as well phone them now. There are one or two things I should know — for example, can I narrow it down? Of course Mr. Buff and Mr. O’Garro were on these premises yesterday afternoon. Were you, Mr. Hansen?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Roughly, from four o’clock until after six.”

“Were you, Mr. Heery?”