Rex Stout - Trouble in Triplicate

“Yeah,” I growled. “He has fits. He’s having one now. Instead of taking you two apart and turning you inside out, which is what he should have done, he didn’t even tell you where to head in. Do you tell the police about tonight or not? I would say, for the present, not. Come on. Taxis are hard to find around here, and I’ve got to put the car away anyhow. I’ll drop you somewhere.” We went. When I got back, some time later, I made a little discovery. Opening the safe to follow my custom of checking the cash last thing at night, I found two hundred bucks gone and an entry in the book for that amount in Wolfe’s handwriting which said, “Saul Panzer, advance on expenses.”

So anyhow Saul was working.

IX

Friday morning, having nothing else to do, I solved the case. I did it with cold logic. Everything fitted perfectly, and all I needed was enough evidence for a jury. Presumably that was what Saul Panzer was getting. I do not intend to put it all down here, the way I worked it out, because first it would take three full pages, and second I was wrong. Anyway I had it solved when, a little before nine o’clock, I was summoned to Wolfe’s room and given an errand to perform with detailed instructions. It sent me to Twentieth Street, so I went to the garage for the car and headed south. I would just as soon have dealt with one of the underlings, but Cramer himself was in his office and said to bring me in. As I sat down he whirled his chair a quarter turn, folded his arms, and asked conversationally, “What have you two liars got cooked up now?” I grinned at him.

“Why don’t you call Wolfe a liar to his face someday? Do it while I’m there.” I took two of the capsules, with threads attached, from my vest pocket, put them on his desk, and inquired, “Do you need any more of these?”

He picked one of them up and gave it a good look, then the other one, put them in a drawer of his desk, folded his arms again, and looked me in the eye to shrivel me.

“All right,” he said quietly. “Go on. They came in the mail, in a package addressed to Wolfe with letters cut out of a magazine.”

“No, sir, not at all. Where I spent the night last night I was idly running my fingers through her lovely hair and felt something, and there they were.” Cramer was strictly a family man and had stern ideas. Seeing I had him blushing, I went on, “Actually it was like this.”

I told him the whole story, straight and complete. He had questions, both during the recital and at the end, and I answered what I could. The one I had expected him to put first, he saved till the last.

“Well,” he said, “for the present we’ll assume that I believe you. You know what that amounts to, but we’ll assume it. Even so, how are you on figures? How much are two and one?”

“I’m pretty good. Two plus one plus one equals four.”

“Yes? Where do you get that second plus one?”

“So you can add,” I conceded. “Mr. Wolfe thought maybe you couldn’t. However, so can we. Four capsules were found. Two are there in your drawer. One, as I told you, was used in a scientific experiment in Wolfe’s office and damn near killed him. He’s keeping the other one for the Fourth of July.”

“Like hell he is. I want it.”

“Try and get it.” I stood up. “Search warrant, subpoena, replevin, riot squad, tear gas, shoot the works. Standing in with G-2 as he does, he could get a carload of those things if he wanted them, but apparently he has taken a liking to this one nice bright little capsule. My God, you’re hard to please. Your men search Blaney and Poor’s without finding a single abditory, and I had to go and do it for you, and we’re splitting fifty-fifty on the capsules. And you beef. May I go now?”

“Beat it. I’ll get it.”

I turned with dignity and went.

When I got back to Wolfe’s Fritz met me in the hall to tell me there was a woman in the office, and when I entered I found it was Martha Poor.

I sat down at my desk and told her, “Mr. Wolfe will be engaged until eleven o’clock.” I glanced at my wrist. “He’ll be down in forty minutes.”

She nodded. “I know. I’ll wait.”

She didn’t look exactly bedraggled, nor would I say pathetic, but there was certainly nothing of the man-eater about her. She seemed older than she had on Tuesday. Anyone could have told at a glance that she was having trouble, but whether it was bereavement or bankruptcy was indicated neither by her clothes nor her expression. She merely made you feel like going up to her, maybe putting your hand on her shoulder or patting her on the arm, and asking, “Anything I can do?” It occurred to me that if she had been old enough to be my mother there would have been no question about how I felt, but she positively was not. If I had wanted to pass the time by deciding what I might want her for when she stopped being in trouble, it would not have been for a mother.

Of course, since at that time I still had the case solved, and all I needed was evidence, there were about a dozen things I would have liked to ask her, but it seemed advisable to wait and let Wolfe do it. I reached that conclusion while I was sitting with my back to her, entering plant germination records, and that reminded me of a minor point I hadn’t covered. I went to the kitchen and asked Fritz if he had told Wolfe who had come to see him, and Fritz said he hadn’t, he had left that to me. So I returned to the office, buzzed the plant rooms, got Wolfe, and told him, “Returned from mission. I gave them to Cramer himself, and he says he’ll get the other one. Mrs. Poor is down here waiting to see you.”

“Confound that woman. Send her away.”

“But she-”

“No. I know what she wants. I studied her. She wants to know what I’m doing to earn that money. Tell her to go home and read that receipt.”

The line died. I swung my chair around and told Martha, “Mr. Wolfe says for you to go home and read the receipt.”

She stared. “What?”

“He thinks you came to complain because he isn’t earning the money your husband paid him, and the idea of having to earn money offends him. It always has.”

“But-that’s ridiculous. Isn’t it?”

“Certainly it is.” I fought back the impulse to step over and pat her on the shoulder. “But my advice is to humor him, much as I enjoy having you here. Nobody alive can handle him but me. If he came down and found you here he would turn around and walk out. If you have anything special to say, tell me and I’ll tell him. He’ll listen to me because he has to, or fire me, and he can’t fire me because then he would never do any work at all and would eventually starve to death.”

“I shouldn’t think-” She stopped and stood up. She took a step toward the door, then turned and said, “I shouldn’t think a cold-blooded murder is something to joke about.”

I had to fight back the impulse again. “I’m not joking,” I declared. “Plain facts. What did you want to say to him?”

“I just wanted to talk with him. He hasn’t come see me. Neither have you.” She tried to smile, but all she accomplished was to start her lip quivering. She stopped it. “You haven’t even phoned me. I don’t know what’s happening. The police asked me about two of my hairs being in that box of cigars, and I suppose they have told Mr. Wolfe about it, and I don’t even know what he thinks or what he told the police…”