Rex Stout - Trouble in Triplicate

He insisted he had something to say. I told him to spill it. “It seems incredible,” he asserted, meeting my eye and choosing his words, “that one of them could have shot at me from in here, through the open door, without me seeing anything.”

“You said that before, in the bathroom. You also said you didn’t remember whether your eyes were open or shut, or where you were looking, when you heard that shot.” I moved my face to within fourteen inches of his. “See here. If you are suspecting that I shot at you, or that Wolfe did, you have got fleas or other insects playing tag in your brain and should have it attended to. One thing alone: the way the bullet went, straight past your ear and into the chair back, it had to come from in front, the general direction of that door and this room. It couldn’t have come from the door in the hall or anywhere else, because we haven’t got a gun that shoots a curve. I can’t help it if your eyes were focused somewhere else or were closed or you went temporarily blind. You will please sit in that chair against the wall and not move or talk.”

He grumbled but obeyed. I surveyed the field. On the assumption that the gun had been fired in that room, I adopted the theory that either it was still there or it had been transported or propelled without. As for transportation, I had got there not more than five seconds after the shot and found them there staring at each other. As for propulsion, the windows were closed and the Venetian blinds down. I preferred the first alternative and began to search.

Obviously it couldn’t be anything abstruse, since five seconds wasn’t long enough to pry up a floor board or make a hole in a table leg, so I tried easier places, like under furniture and behind cushions. It might be thought that under the circumstances I would have been dead sure of finding it, but I had the curious feeling that I probably wouldn’t no matter how thoroughly I looked; I have never understood why. If it was a hunch it was a bad day for hunches, because when I came to the big vase on the table between the windows and peeked into it and saw something white and stuck my hand in, I felt the gun. Getting it by the trigger guard, I lifted it out. Judging by smell, it had been fired recently, but of course it had had time to cool off. It was an old Granville thirty-eight, next door to rusty. The white object I had seen was an ordinary cotton handkerchief, man’s size, with a tear in it through which the butt of the gun protruded. With proper care about touching, I opened the cylinder and found there were five loaded cartridges and one shell.

Hackett was there beside me, trying to say things. I got brusque with him.

“Yes, it’s a gun, recently fired, and not mine or Wolfe’s. Is it yours? No? Good. Okay, keep your shirt on. We’re going back in there, and there will be sufficient employment for my brain without interference from you. Do not try to help me. See how long you can go without speaking a word. Just look wise as if you knew it all. If this ends as it ought to, you’ll get an extra hundred. Agreed?”

I’ll be damned if he didn’t say, “Two hundred. I was shot at. I came within an inch of getting killed.” I told him he’d have to talk the second hundred out of Wolfe and opened the door to the office and followed him through. He detoured around Jane Geer and went and sat in the chair he had just escaped being a corpse in. I swiveled my own chair to face it out and sat down too.

Jensen demanded sharply, “What have you got there?”

“This,” I said cheerfully, “is a veteran revolver, a Granville thirty-eight, which has been fired not too long ago.” I lowered it gently 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 cabled 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 Peter Root. I let that skunk Goodwin talk me out of it!” She was out of her chair, spitting fire. It was spectacular. “You won’t get away with it this time! You incredible louse!”

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 Peter Root and I have never heard of Peter 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.”

VII

He did it well, at top form, and it was quite an effect. Nobody made a chirp. He moved forward, and Jane retreated again, moving backwards without looking around and nearly tripping on Jensen’s feet. 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, which I had chiseled to a diameter of four inches, 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 adrenaline spurting in torrents. If he had come close enough to make it necessary to slap him with my free hand he might have got blood on his ear too, because I had my gun in that hand.

“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. Mr. Goodwin has a gun and is probably in a temper, and might hurt you. 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. If I had known the worst to be expected was a gash in the ear I could have saved some money and spared myself a vast amount of irritation.”

Jane spat at him, “You fat coward!”