Rex Stout - Trouble in Triplicate

Wolfe nodded. “A uniform makes a difference. I suggest that he was in uniform.”

“Uniform?” Purley scowled. “Army?”

Wolfe shook his head. “Mr. Cramer told me Wednesday morning that the doorman on duty at the apartment house at the time Mr. Jensen and Mr. Doyle were killed was a fat nitwit who had been hired two weeks ago and didn’t know the tenants by name, and also that he claimed to have been in the basement stoking the water heater at the moment the murders were committed. A phone call would tell us whether he is still working there.”

“He isn’t,” Cramer growled. “He left Wednesday afternoon because he didn’t like a place where people got murdered. I never saw him. Some of my men did.”

“Yeah,” Purley said, gazing at Hackett’s face. “By God, it’s him. I thought he didn’t have brains enough to know which end to pick up a shovel.”

“He is,” Wolfe declared, “a remarkable combination of fool and genius. He came to New York determined to kill Mr. Jensen and me. By the way, Mr. Hackett, you look a little dazed. Can you hear what I’m saying?” Hackett made no sound and didn’t flutter an eyelid. “I guess you can,” Wolfe went on. “This will interest you. I requested Military Intelligence to have an examination made of the effects of Captain Peter Root at the prison in Maryland. A few minutes ago I phoned for a report, and got it. Captain Root was lying when he stated that he was not in communication with his father and had not been for years. There are several letters from his father among his belongings, dated in the past two months, and they make it evident that his father, whose name is Thomas Root, regards him as a scion to be proud of. To the point of mania.” Wolfe wiggled a finger at Hackett. “I offer the conjecture that you are in a position to know whether that is correct or not. Is it?”

“One more day,” Hackett said in his husky croak. His hands were twitching. “One more day,” he repeated.

Wolfe nodded. “I know. One more day and you would have killed me, with the suspicion centered on Miss Geer or Mr. Jensen, or both, on account of your flummery here this afternoon. And you would have disappeared, probably after again complaining that you don’t like a place where people get murdered.”

Jensen popped up, “You haven’t explained the flummery.”

“I shall, Mr. Jensen.” Wolfe got more comfortable in his chair. “But first that performance Tuesday evening.” He was keeping his eyes on Hackett. “That was a masterpiece. You decided to kill Mr. Jensen first, which was lucky for me, and, since all apartment-house service staffs are short-handed, got a job there as doorman with no difficulty. All you had to do was await an opportunity, with no passers-by or other onlookers. It came the day after you mailed the threat, an ideal situation in every respect except the presence of the man he had hired to guard him. Arriving at the entrance to the apartment house, naturally they would have no suspicion of the doorman in uniform. Mr. Jensen probably nodded and spoke to you. With no one else in sight, and the elevator man ascending with a passenger, it was too good an opportunity to lose. Muffling the revolver with some piece of cloth, you shot Mr. Doyle in the back, and when Mr. Jensen whirled at the sound you shot him in the front and skedaddled for the stairs to the basement and started stoking the water heater. I imagine the first thing you fed it was the cloth with which you had muffled the gun.”

Wolfe moved his eyes. “Does that rattle anywhere, Mr. Cramer?”

“It sounds tight from here,” Cramer conceded.

“That’s good. Because it is for those murders that Mr. Hackett-or Mr. Root, I suppose I should say-must be convicted. He can’t be electrocuted for hacking a little gash in his own ear.”

Wolfe’s eyes moved again, to me. “Archie, did you find any tools in his pockets?”

“Only a Boy Scout’s dream,” I told him. “One of those knives with scissors, awl, nail file…”

“Let the police have it to look for traces of blood. Just the sort of thing Mr. Cramer does best.”

“The comedy can wait,” Cramer growled. “I’ll take it as is for Tuesday night and go on from there. What about today?”

Wolfe heaved a sigh. “You’re rushing past the most interesting point of all: Mr. Hackett’s answering my advertisement for a man. Was he sufficiently acute to realize that its specifications were roughly a description of me, suspect that I was the advertiser, and proceed to take advantage of it to approach me? Or was it merely that he was short of funds and attracted by the money offered? I lean to the latter, but I confess I am curious. I don’t suppose, Mr. Root, you would care to clear that up for me?”

Mr. Root was not clearing up today.

“Very well. I can offer no inducement. In any event, having answered the advertisement and received a message from me, you were of course delighted, and doubly delighted when you were hired.” Wolfe’s eyes described an arc, including everybody in the roundup. “I invite comment, anything from irony to derision, on the fact that I paid a hundred dollars a day, to get him to live in my house, eat my food, and sit in my chair, to a man who had resolved to kill me. I can afford the invitation only because, in spite of that overwhelming handicap, I shall go on living and he will not.”

Nobody seemed to have any irony or derision ready, but Jensen chipped in, “You still haven’t explained the flummery.”

Wolfe nodded at him. “I’m getting to it, sir. Naturally, from the moment he got in here, Mr. Root was concocting schemes, rejecting, considering, revising; and no doubt relishing the situation enormously. The device of the handkerchief to protect a hand firing a gun was no doubt a part of one of those schemes, but it served admirably for the one he finally used. This morning he learned that Miss Geer was to call on me at six o’clock, and he was to impersonate me. After lunch, in here alone, he got a cushion from the sofa in there, wrapped his revolver in it, and fired a bullet through the back of this chair into the wall. He could, if he wished, have held the thing right against the back of the chair, and probably did. He stuffed the cushion into the rear compartment of the bottom right-hand drawer of this desk, having observed that the contents of the front of the drawer indicated that it was rarely opened. He put the gun in his pocket. He kept the chair pushed back to the wall to cover the hole in the plaster. The hole in the leather was not conspicuous and he took the risk of its being seen; when he was in the chair he covered the hole with his head.”

“If the hole had been seen the bullet would have been found,” Cramer muttered.

“I have already pronounced him,” Wolfe said testily, “an unsurpassable fool. Even so, he knew that Archie would be out with him the rest of the afternoon, and I would be in my room. I had made a remark which informed him that I would not sit in that chair again until he was permanently out of it. At six o’clock Miss Geer arrived, unexpectedly accompanied by Mr. Jensen. They were shown into the front room, and that door was open. Mr. Root’s brain moved swiftly, and so did the rest of him. He got one of my guns from Archie’s desk, returned to this chair, opened the drawer where he had put the cushion, fired a shot into the cushion, dropped the gun in, and shut the drawer.”