Frederick Anderson - Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Vol. 11, No. 51, February 1948

“This,” I said cheerfully, “is a veteran revolver, a Granville thirty-eight, which has been fired not too long ago.” I lowered it 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 Captain Root! I let that skunk Goodwin talk me out of it! But you won’t get away with it this time!”

Hackett was trying to talk back to her, making his voice louder and louder, and when she stopped for breath he could be heard:

“... will not tolerate it! You come here and try to kill me! You nearly do kill me! Then you abuse me about a Captain Root, and I have never heard of Captain Root!” He was putting real feeling into it; apparently he had either forgotten that he was supposed to be Nero Wolfe, or had got the notion, in all the excitement, that he really was Nero Wolfe. He was proceeding, “Young lady, listen to me! I will not—”

She turned and made for the door. I was immediately on my feet and after her, but halfway across the room I put on the brake, because the doorway had suddenly filled up with a self-propelled massive substance and she couldn’t get through. She stopped, goggle-eyed, and then fell back a couple of paces.

The massive substance advanced, halted, and used its mouth: “How do you do? I am Nero Wolfe.”

He did it well, at top form, and it was quite an effect. Nobody made a chirp. He moved forward, and Jane retreated again.

Wolfe stopped at the corner of his desk and wiggled a finger at Hackett. “Take another chair, sir, if you please?”

Hackett sidled out, without a word, and went to the red leather chair. Wolfe leaned over to peer at the hole in the back of his own chair, and then at the hole in the plaster, grunted, and got himself seated.

“This,” Jensen said, “makes it a farce.”

Jane snapped, “I’m going,” and headed for the door, but I had been expecting that, and with only two steps had her by the arm with a good grip and was prepared to give her the twist if she went thorny on me. Jensen sprang to his feet with both of his hands fists. Evidently in the brief space of forty-eight hours it had developed to the point where the sight of another man laying hands on his Jane started his adrenalin spurting in torrents.

“Stop it!” Wolfe’s voice was a whip. It turned us into a group of statuary. “Miss Geer, you may leave shortly, if you still want to, after I have said something. Mr. Jensen, sit down. Archie, go to your desk, but be ready to use the gun. One of them is a murderer.”

“That’s a lie!” Jensen was visibly breathing. “And who the hell are you?”

“I introduced myself, sir. That gentleman is my temporary employee. When my life was threatened I hired him to impersonate me.”

Jane spat at him, “You fat coward!”

He shook his head. “No, Miss Geer, It is no great distinction not to be a coward, but I can claim it. Not cowardice. Conceit convinced me that only I could catch the person daring and witty enough to kill me. I wished to be alive to do so.”

He turned abruptly to me: “Archie, get Inspector Cramer on the phone.”

Jane and Jensen both started talking at once, with vehemence.

Wolfe cut them off: “If you please! In a moment I shall offer you an alternative: the police or me. Meanwhile, Mr. Cramer can help.” He glanced at Hackett. “If you want to get away from this uproar, there is your room upstairs...”

“I think I’ll stay here,” Hackett declared. “I’m a little interested in this myself, since I nearly got killed.”

“Cramer on,” I told Wolfe.

He lifted his phone from the cradle. “How do you do, sir?... No... No, I have a request to make. If you’ll send a man here right away, HI give him a revolver and a bullet. First, examine the revolver for fingerprints and send me copies. Second, trace the revolver if possible. Third, fire a bullet from it and compare it both with the bullet I am sending you and with the bullets that killed Mr. Jensen and Mr. Doyle. Let me know the results. That’s all... No... Confound it, no! If you come yourself you will be handed the package at the door and not admitted. I’m busy.”

As he hung up I said, “Does Cramer get the handkerchief, too?”

“Let me see it.”

I handed the gun to him, with its butt still protruding through the tear in the handkerchief. Wolfe frowned as he saw that the handkerchief had no laundry mark or any other mark and was of a species that could be bought in almost any dry-goods store.

“We’ll keep the handkerchief,” Wolfe said.

Jensen demanded, “What the devil was it doing there?”

Wolfe’s eyes went shut. He was, of course, tasting Jensen’s expression, tone of voice, and mental longitude and latitude, to try to decide whether innocent curiosity was indicated or a camouflage for guilt. He always shut his eyes when he tasted. In a moment they opened again halfway.

“If a man has recently shot a gun,” he said, “and has had no opportunity to wash, an examination of his hand will furnish incontestable proof. You probably know that. One of you, the one who fired that shot, certainly docs. The handkerchief protected the hand. Under a microscope it would be found to contain many minute particles of explosive and other residue. The fact that it is a man’s handkerchief doesn’t help. Major Jensen would naturally possess a man’s handkerchief. Miss Geer could buy or borrow one.”

“You asked me to stay while you said something,” Jane snapped. She and Jensen were back in their chairs. “You haven’t said anything yet. Where were you when the shot was fired?”

“Pfui.” Wolfe sighed. “Fritz, pack the gun and bullet in a carton, carefully with tissue paper, and give it to the man when he comes. First, bring me beer. Do any of you want beer?”

Evidently no one did.

“Very well, Miss Geer. To assume, or pretend to assume, some elaborate hocus-pocus by the inmates of this house is inane. At the moment the shot was fired I was standing near the kitchen talking with Mr. Goodwin. Since then I have been at a spot from which part of this room can be seen and voices heard.”

His eyes went to Jensen and back to Jane. “One of you two people is apt to make a mistake, and I want to prevent it if possible. I have not yet asked you where you were and what you were doing at the instant the shot was fired. Before I do so I want to say this, that even with the information at hand it is demonstrable that the shot came from the direction of that door to the front room, which was standing open. Mr. Hackett could not have fired it; you, Mr. Jensen, satisfied yourself of that. Mr. Brenner was in the kitchen. Mr. Goodwin and I were together. I warn you one of you — that this is sufficiently provable to satisfy a jury in a murder trial.

“Now, what if you both assert that at the instant you heard the shot you were together, close together perhaps, looking at each other? For the one who fired the gun that would be a blessing, indeed. For the other it might be disastrous in the end, for when the truth is disclosed, as it will be, the question of complicity will arise... How long have you two known each other?”

Jane’s teeth were holding her lower lip. She removed them. “I met him day before yesterday. Here.”

“Indeed. Is that correct, Mr. Jensen?”