Rex Stout - Trouble in Triplicate

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.”

I snorted-“With me right there to tell her when to cease firing?”

“I admit it is unlikely. Also, it will convince her that Mr. Hackett is me.”

“Which will not shorten his life or lengthen yours.”

“Possibly not. Also, it will give me an opportunity to see her and hear her. I shall be at the hole.” So that was really the idea. He would be in the passage, a sort of an alcove, at the kitchen end of the downstairs hall, looking through into the office by means of the square hole in the wall. The hole was camouflaged on the office side by a picture that was transparent one way. He loved to have an excuse to use it, and it actually had been a help now and then.

“That’s different,” I told him. “If you see her and hear her you’ll know she has a heart of platinum.”

Major Jensen had phoned once and been told that Wolfe was engaged; apparently he wasn’t as persistent as Jane. He had told Cramer that he had come to see Wolfe on Wednesday because on Tuesday morning his father had shown him the threat he had received in the mail and had announced that he was going to consult Nero Wolfe about it; and the major, wishing his father’s murderer to be caught and punished, had wanted to talk with Wolfe. It was Wolfe’s veto of my suggestion that Major Jensen be invited to call, not on Hackett but on Wolfe himself, that showed me the state he was in. Ordinarily it would have needed no suggestion from me, since the major, in his present situation, was a natural for a fat fee.

When I got down to the office Hackett was there in Wolfe’s chair, eating cookies and getting crumbs on the desk. I had told him good morning previously, and having nothing else to tell him, ignored him. From the phone on my desk I got Jane Geer at her office. “Archie,” I told her.

She snapped, “Archie who?”

“Oh, come, come. We haven’t sicked the police onto you, have we? Let’s gossip a while.”

“I am ringing off.”

“Then I am too. In a moment. Nero Wolfe wants to see you.”

“He does? Ha, ha. He doesn’t act like it.”

“He has reformed. I showed him a lock of your hair. I showed him a picture of Elsa Maxwell and told him it was you. This time he won’t let me come after you.”

“Neither will I.”

“Okay. Be here at six o’clock and you will be received. Six o’clock today, P.M. Will you?”

She admitted that she would. I made a couple of other calls and did some miscellaneous chores. But I found that my jaw was getting clamped tighter and tighter on account of an irritating noise. Finally I spoke to the occupant of Wolfe’s chair. “What kind of cookies are those?”

“Ginger snaps.” Evidently the husky croak was his normal voice.

“I didn’t know we had any.”

“We didn’t. I asked Fritz. He doesn’t seem to know about ginger snaps, so I walked over to Ninth Avenue and got some.”

“When? This morning?”

“Just a little while ago.”

I turned to my phone, buzzed the plant rooms, got Wolfe, and told him, “Mr. Hackett is sitting in your chair eating ginger snaps. Just a little while ago he walked to Ninth Avenue and bought them. If he pops in and out of the house whenever he sees fit, what are we getting for our hundred bucks?”

Wolfe spoke to the point. I hung up and turned to Hackett and spoke to the point. He was not to leave the house except as instructed by Wolfe or me. He seemed unimpressed and unconcerned, but nodded good-naturedly. “All right,” he said, “if that’s the bargain I’ll keep it. But there’s two sides to a bargain. I was to be paid daily in advance, and I haven’t been paid for today. A hundred dollars net.”

Wolfe had told me the same, so I took five twenties from the expense wallet and forked it over. “I must say,” he commented, folding the bills neatly and stuffing them in his waistband pocket, “this is a large return for a small effort. I am aware that I may earn it-ah, suddenly and unexpectedly.” He leaned toward me. “Though I may tell you confidentially, Archie, that I expect nothing to happen. I am sanguine by nature.”

“Yeah,” I told him, “me too.” I opened the drawer of my desk, the middle one on the right, where I kept armament, got out the shoulder holster and put it on, and selected the gun that was my property-the other two belonged to Wolfe. There were only three cartridges in it, so I pulled the drawer open farther to get to the ammunition compartment and filled the cylinder. As I shoved the gun into the holster I happened to glance at Hackett and saw that he had a new face. The line of his lips was tight, and his eyes looked startled, wary, and concentrated.