Rex Stout - Trouble in Triplicate

“Not sound at all. Mere conjecture.”

“I like it. Another thing. I now think you did have a program. I think you invited Schwartz to come at two o’clock because you wanted a witness, not me who works for you, to what you said to Fabian. You intended to tell Fabian a good deal, maybe everything, about Schane, but do it in such a way that you couldn’t be charged with incitement to crime. You could be doing it just to put us in the clear. You didn’t have a thing on Schane for the murders. You didn’t know then that he was fool enough to go on carrying the gun he had killed them with. You knew Fabian would get Schane, and so your ward wouldn’t marry him, which you didn’t approve of. You thought Beulah was so hipped on him that she would take him in spite of his past-since the killings couldn’t be pinned on him-whereas the fact was that after she had seen me he was just a vague spot to her.”

“Shut up. I want to read.”

“Yes, sir. In an hour or so. Then Schane came here with her and insisted on joining us in the office, and right away you began to ad lib. You figured that with Fabian and Saul and me all here, one of us was bound to plug him before he plugged you. By the way, in the excitement I didn’t see Saul shoot at all, but it was his bullet that went through the middle of Schane’s pump and lodged in his spine. When Meeker showed up too I suppose you thought there was nothing to it, which speaks louder for your optimism than it does for your mathematics. If I had known how you had it sketched I would have offered twelve for five that he would get you, at least some part of you, before he was stopped. I had seen him in action, shooting out of car windows in dim street light.”

Wolfe sighed. “I suppose you have to get it out of your system.”

“I do, and this is the day for it. With meat controls taken off last night, what is there to fear? But I am willing to be rode too, because on one count I have it coming. I told you that just before Violet quit for good, while I was kneeling there by her, she said, ‘It’s a shame. Shame!’ Of course she didn’t. What she said was, ‘It’s Schane. Schane!’ I fumbled that one, and hereafter I’ll wash my ears better. Now I suppose you’ll tell me that you knew-”

The phone rang. I got it, used the customary formula, and a voice came.

“May I speak to Mr. Harold Stevens?”

“He’s not in,” I said courteously. “Gone to Central Park for his health. Will anyone else do?”

“You might if you weren’t so busy. When I was down there Friday signing those papers you were too busy to offer to drive me home. Harold Stevens always drove me home.”

“Naturally. Harold was on the make. He was after money. I shy off from rich women because I am not a dough-hound. Was there any particular problem?”

“No, nothing, except that I started to decide where to go for dinner, and I’m sick of all the restaurants around here, and-”

“Not another word. I know just how you feel. You were wishing you didn’t have to eat alone, and I was wishing I didn’t have to eat with the person I was going to eat with. Meet me at seven o’clock at Ribeiro’s, Fifty-second Street east of Lexington, downtown side. Got it?”

“Yes, but I didn’t-”

“Certainly you did. So did I. I’ll be at the bar. I don’t suppose you can properly go dancing for two or three years, but we’re resourceful. We can sit somewhere and talk about health-oh, no, that’s Harold. Seven o’clock?”

“Sure.”

I hung up and told Wolfe, “Okay, go on and read. I’m going up and change my shirt. I’m dining with your new ward, but don’t jump to the conclusion that I’m thinking of marrying her. I don’t want you dragging Fabian and Thumbs Meeker down here again on my account.”

2. Help Wanted, Male

I

He paid us a visit the day he stopped the bullet. Ben Jensen was a publisher, a politician, and in my opinion a poop. I had had a sneaking idea that he would have gone ahead and bought the inside Army dope that Captain Peter Root had offered to sell him if he had been able to figure out a way of using it without any risk of losing a hunk of hide. But he had played it safe and had cooperated with Nero Wolfe like a good little boy. That had been a couple of months before.

Now, early on a Tuesday morning, he phoned to say he wanted to see Wolfe. When I told him that Wolfe would be occupied with the orchids, as usual, until eleven o’clock, he fussed a little and made a date for eleven sharp. He arrived five minutes ahead of time, and I escorted him into the office and invited him to deposit his big bony frame in the red leather chair. After he sat down he asked me, “Don’t I remember you? Aren’t you Major Goodwin?”

“Yep.”

“You’re not in uniform.”

“I was just noticing,” I said, “that you need a haircut. At your age, with your gray hair, it looks better trimmed. More distinguished. Shall we continue with the personal remarks?”

There was the clang of Wolfe’s personal elevator out in the hall, and a moment later Wolfe entered, exchanged greetings with the caller, and got himself, all of his two hundred and sixty-some pounds, lowered into his personal chair behind his desk.

Ben Jensen said, “Something I wanted to show you-got it in the mail this morning,” and took an envelope from his pocket and stood up to hand it across.

Wolfe glanced at the envelope, removed a piece of paper from it and glanced at that, and passed them along to me. The envelope was addressed to Ben Jensen, neatly hand-printed in ink. The piece of paper had been clipped from something, all four edges, with scissors or a sharp knife, and it had printed on it, not by hand, in large black script:

YOU ARE ABOUT TO DIE-

AND I WILL WATCH YOU DIE!

Wolfe murmured, “Well, sir?”

“I can tell you,” I put in, “free for nothing, where this came from.”

Jensen snapped at me. “You mean who sent it?”

“Oh, no. For that I would charge. It was clipped from an ad for a movie called Meeting at Dawn. The movie of the century. I saw the ad last week in the American Magazine . I suppose it’s in all the magazines. If you could find-”

Wolfe made a noise at me and murmured again at Jensen, “Well, sir?”

“What am I going to do?” Jensen demanded.

“I’m sure I don’t know. Have you any notion who sent it?”

“No. None at all.” Jensen sounded grieved. “Damn it, I don’t like it. It’s not just the usual junk from an anonymous crank. Look at it! It’s direct and to the point. I think someone’s going to try to kill me, and I don’t know who or why or when or how. I suppose tracing it is out of the question, but I want some protection. I want to buy it from you.”

I put up a hand to cover a yawn. I knew there would be nothing doing-no case, no fee, no excitement. In the years I had been living in Nero Wolfe’s house on West Thirty-fifth Street, acting as a goad, prod, lever, irritant, and chief assistant in the detective business, I had heard him tell at least fifty scared people, of all conditions and ages, that if someone had determined to kill them and was going to be stubborn about it he would probably succeed. On occasion, when the bank balance was doing a dive, he had furnished Gather or Durkin or Panzer or Keems as a bodyguard at a hundred percent mark-up, but now they were all fighting Germans or Japs, and anyhow, we had just deposited a five-figure check from a certain client.