Rex Stout - Triple Jeopardy

They looked at one another and back at Wolfe. Philip said in his thin tenor, "Maybe it was the newspaper itself."

"Possibly. I doubt it. Where is it, Mr. Cramer?"

"At the laboratory. There's nothing on it or in it that could have brought Wallen here."

"What else has been taken from here to the laboratory?"

"Nothing but the scissors and the bottle that was used on Miss Stahl."

"Then it's here. All right, jimmie, finish."

Jimmie moved to the left of him and carried on.

"It looks to me," Purley objected in his bass rumble, "like a turkey. Even with your assumptions. Say we find something like what you want, how do we know it's it? Even if we think it's it, where does that get us?"

"We'll see when we find it." Wolfe was curt. "For one thing, fingerprints."

"Nuts. If it belongs here of course it will have their prints."

"Not their prints, Mr. Stebbins. Wallen's prints. If he picked it up in the car he touched it. If he touched it he left prints. As I understand it, he didn't go around touching things here. He entered, spoke to Mr. Fickler, was taken to the booth, and never left it alive. If we find anything with his prints on it we've got it. Have you equipment here? If not, I advise you to send for it at once, and also for Wallen's prints from your file. Will you do that?"

Purley grunted. He didn't move.

"Go ahead," Cramer told him. "Phone. Give him what he wants. Get it over. Then he'll give us what we want, what he's here for, or else."

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Purley descended from the chair and headed for the phone at the cashier's counter.

"The search," Wolfe said, "must be thorough and will take time. First I ask all of you to search your minds. What object is here, belongs here, that meets the specifications as I have described them? Surely you can tell us. Mr. Fickler?"

"I've been thinking." Fickler shook his head. "I've been thinking hard. I don't know unless it's a towel, and why would he carry a towel like that?"

"He wouldn't. Anyway a towel wouldn't help us any, so I reject it. Philip?"

"No, sir. I don't know what."

"Tom?"

Tom just shook his head gloomily.

"Ed?"

"You've got me. Pass."

"Miss Stahl?"

"I think he might have been keeping the paper because there was something in it he wanted to read. I know I often do that, say it's in an evening paper and I don't have time�"

"Yes. We'll consider that. Jimmie?"

"I don't know a thing like that in the shop, Mr. Wolfe. Not a thing."

"Pfui." Wolfe was disgusted. "Either you have no brains at all, or they're temporarily paralyzed, or you're all in a conspiracy. I'm looking straight at such an object right now."

From behind I couldn't see where his gaze was directed, but I didn't have to. The others could, and I saw them. Eleven pairs of eyes, including Purley's�he had finished at the phone and rejoined us�were aimed at the magazine table next to Janet's chair from eleven different angles. Up to that moment my brain may have been as paralyzed as the others', but it could still react to a stimulus. I left the stool and stood right behind Wolfe, ready if and when needed.

"You mean the magazines?" Cramer demanded.

"Yes. You subscribe to them, Mr. Fickler? They come through the mail? Then the name and address is on them."

"Not on this one," said the dick on the other side of 118

slftagazine table, picking up the New Yorker on top. iJDfop it!" Cramer barked. "Don't touch it!" io," Wolfe conceded, "that comes in a wrapper. But don't. For instance that Time, there on the shelf belie addressee is on the cover. Surely it deserves examinaand others too. What if he took it from here and had it jlfcis pocket when he stole the car and drove up Broadway? in the excitement of his misadventure he failed to notice at it had dropped from his pocket and was on the seat of i car? And Wallen found it there, took it, and saw the name ad address on it? You have sent for the equipment and Walt's prints, Mr. Stebbins? Then we--"

i "Oh! I remember!" Janet cried. She was pointing a finger. ifou remember, Jimmie? This morning I was standing here, , you came by with a hot towel and you had that magazine find you tossed it under there, and I asked if you had been jtiteaming it, and you said--"

Jimmie leaped. I thought his prey was Janet and in spite of �Everything I was willing to save her life, but Wolfe and the chair were in my way and cost me a fifth of a second. And it wasn't Janet he was after, it was the magazine. He went for it in a hurtling dive and got his hands on it, but then the three dicks, not to mention Cramer and Purley, were on his neck and various other parts of him. It was a handsome pile-up. Janet, except for pulling her feet back under her chair out of harm's way, did not move, nor did she make a sound. I suppose she was considering what to say to the reporters. "Confound it," Wolfe grumbled savagely behind me. "My barber." Anyhow that haircut was practically done.

jj\s stubborn as Cramer was, he never did learn why Wolfe uU went to get a haircut that day. Eventually he stopped trying.

He learned plenty about Jimmie Kirk. Kirk was wanted

119

as a bail-jumper, under another name, in Wheeling, West Virginia, on an old charge as a car stealer, with various fancy complications such as slugging a respected citizen who had surprised him in the act. Apparently he had gone straight in New York for a couple of years and had then resumed his former avocation. Unquestionably he had been fortified with liquids that Monday evening. Driving a stolen car while drunk is a risky operation, especially with a stolen magazine in your pocket.

As for Carl and Tina, I took a strong position on them Tuesday evening in the office after they had been sent up to the south room to bed.

"You know damn well what will happen," I told Wolfe. "They won't go to Ohio or anywhere else, they'll stay here. Some day, maybe next week, maybe next year, they'll be confronted and they'll be in trouble. Being in trouble, they will come to me, because Carl likes me and because I rescued them this time--" Wolfe snorted. 'You did!"

"Yes, sir. I had already noticed that magazine there several times, and it just happened to catch your eye. Anyhow, I am secretly infatuated with Tina so I'll try to help them and will get my finger caught, and you'll have to butt in again because you can't get along without me. It will go on like that year after year. Why not take care of it now and live in peace? There are people in Washington who owe you something, for instance Carpenter. Start him working on it. Do you want them hanging in the air on a thread over your head the rest of your life? I don't. It will cost a measly buck for a phone call, and I can get that from the fifty they have earmarked for us. I have Carpenter's home number, and I might as well get him right now."

No comment.

I put my hand on the phone. "Person to person, huh?"

Wolfe grunted. "I got my naturalization papers twenty four years ago."

"I wasn't discussing you. You've caught it from Janet," I said coldly and lifted the phone and dialed.

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a was doing two things at once. With my hands I was getting my armpit holster and the Marley .32 from a drawer of my desk, and with my tongue I was giving Nero Wolfe a lecture on economics.

"The most you can hope to soak him," I stated, "is five hundred bucks. Deduct a C for twenty per cent for overhead and another C for expenses incurred, that leaves three hundred. Eighty-five per cent for income tax will leave you with forty-five bucks clear for the wear and tear on your brain and my legs, not to mention the risk. That wouldn't buy--"

"Risk of what?" He muttered that only to be courteous, to show that he had heard what I said, though actually he wasn't listening. Seated behind his desk, he was scowling, not at me but at the crossword puzzle in the London Times.