Rex Stout - Trio for Blunt Instruments

Cramer had come forward in his chair. “Did you and the state man climb down together?” he demanded.

Saul smiled. His smile is as tender as he is tough, and it helps to make him the best poker player I know. “That would have been dumb, Inspector. With blood four days old? How could I? Jab myself in the leg and use some of mine, nice and fresh? And it might not match.”

“I want the names and addresses of those three people.” Cramer stood up. “And I want to use the phone.”

“No,” Wolfe snapped. “Not until you have taken Mr. Mercer into custody. Look at him. If he is allowed to walk out of here, he might do anything. Besides, I haven’t finished. After getting a report from Mr. Durkin this afternoon, I phoned Mrs. Ashby.” He looked at her. “Will you tell Mr. Cramer what you told me, madam?”

I didn’t turn to see her, back of me on the couch, because that would have taken my eyes away from Mercer. But I heard her. “I told you that my husband hadn’t decided whether to leave Mercer’s Bobbins or not. He had told Mr. Mercer that he would stay if he got fifty-one per cent of the stock of the corporation, and if he didn’t get it he would go to another firm. Just last week he told him he had to know by the end of the month.”

“He told me the same thing,” Frances Cox said, loud. “He said if he left he wanted to take me with him. I’ve thought all along that probably Mr. Mercer killed him.” She was a real prize, that Cox girl. She was going on. “But I didn’t say so because I had no real-”

Mercer stopped her. His idea was to stop her by getting his fingers around her throat, but he didn’t quite make it because Saul was there. But he was fast enough and strong enough, in spite of his age, to make a stir. Cramer came on the bound, Joan Ashby let out a scream, Horan scrambled up, knocking his chair over, and of course I was there. And for the first time in my life I saw a man frothing at the mouth, and I wouldn’t care to see it again. The line of foam seeping through Mercer’s lips, as Saul pinned him from behind, was exactly the color of his hair.

“All right, Panzer,” Cramer said. “I’ll take him.”

I looked away and became aware that we were shy a guest. Andrew Busch had disappeared. He didn’t know which room was Elma’s, and he would probably barge into Wolfe’s room, so I went out to the stairs and on up, two steps at a time. At the first landing a glance showed me that the door of Wolfe’s room was closed, so I kept going. At the second landing the door of the South Room was standing open, and I went to it. Elma, over by a window, saw me, but Busch’s back was to me. He was talking.

“… so it’s all right, everything’s all right, and that Nero Wolfe is the greatest man in the world. I’ve already asked you if you’ll marry me, so I won’t ask you again right now, but I just want to say…”

I turned and headed for the stairs. He may have been a good office manager, but as a promoter he had a lot to learn. The darned fool was standing ten feet away from her. That is not the way to do it.

Murder Is Corny

1

WHEN THE DOORBELL RANG that Tuesday evening in September and I stepped to the hall for a look and through the one-way glass saw Inspector Cramer on the stoop, bearing a fair-sized carton, I proceeded to the door, intending to open it a couple of inches and say through the crack, “Deliveries in the rear.” He was uninvited and unexpected, we had no case and no client, and we owed him nothing, so why pretend he was welcome?

But by the time I had reached the door I had changed my mind. Not because of him. He looked perfectly normal-big and burly, round red face with bushy gray eyebrows, broad heavy shoulders straining the sleeve seams of his coat. It was the carton. It was a used one, the right size, the cord around it was the kind McLeod used, and the NERO WOLFE on it in blue crayon was McLeod’s style of printing. Having switched the stoop light on, I could observe those details as I approached, so I swung the door open and asked politely, “Where did you get the corn?”

I suppose I should explain a little. Usually Wolfe comes closest to being human after dinner, when we leave the dining room to cross the hall to the office, and he gets his bulk deposited in his favorite chair behind his desk, and Fritz brings coffee; and either Wolfe opens his current book or, if I have no date and am staying in, he starts a conversation. The topic may be anything from women’s shoes to the importance of the new moon in Babylonian astrology. But that evening he had taken his cup and crossed to the big globe over by the bookshelves and stood twirling the globe, scowling at it, probably picking a place he would rather be.

For the corn hadn’t come. By an arrangement with a farmer named Duncan McLeod up in Putman County, every Tuesday from July 20 to October 5, sixteen ears of just-picked corn were delivered. They were roasted in the husk, and we did our own shucking as we ate-four ears for me, eight for Wolfe, and four in the kitchen for Fritz. The corn had to arrive no earlier than five-thirty and no later than six-thirty. That day it hadn’t arrived at all, and Fritz had had to do some stuffed eggplant, so Wolfe was standing scowling at the globe when the doorbell rang.

And now here was Inspector Cramer with the carton. Could it possibly be it? It was. Handing me his hat to put on the shelf, he tramped down the hall to the office, and when I entered he had put the carton on Wolfe’s desk and had his knife out to cut the cord, and Wolfe, cup in hand, was crossing to him. Cramer opened the flaps, took out an ear of corn, held it up, and said, “If you were going to have this for dinner, I guess it’s too late.”

Wolfe moved to his elbow, turned the flap to see the inscription, his name, grunted, circled around the desk to his chair, and sat. “You have your effect,” he said. “I am impressed. Where did you get it?”

“If you don’t know, maybe Goodwin does.” Cramer shot a glance at me, went to the red leather chair facing the end of Wolfe’s desk, and sat. “I’ve got some questions for you and for him, but of course you want grounds. You would. At a quarter past five, four hours ago, the dead body of a man was found in the alley back of Rusterman’s restaurant. He had been hit in the back of the head with a piece of iron pipe which was there on the ground by the body. The station wagon he had come in was alongside the receiving platform of the restaurant, and in the station wagon were nine cartons containing ears of corn.” Cramer pointed. “That’s one of them, your name on it. You get one like it every Tuesday. Right?”

Wolfe nodded. “I do. In season. Has the body been identified?”

“Yes. Driver’s license and other items in his pockets, including cash, eighty-some dollars. Kenneth Faber, twenty-eight years old. Also men at the restaurant identified him. He had been delivering the corn there the past five weeks, and then he had been coming on here with yours. Right?”

“I don’t know.”

“The hell you don’t. If you’re going to start that kind-”

I cut in. “Hold it. Stay in the buggy. As you know, Mr. Wolfe is up in the plant rooms from four to six every day except Sunday. The corn usually comes before six, and either Fritz or I receive it. So Mr. Wolfe doesn’t know, but I do. Kenneth Faber has been bringing it the past five weeks. If you want-”