Rex Stout - Not Quite Dead Enough (The Rex Stout Library)

I resumed. “I didn’t know whether Lawson was there as a cavalier or a porter or what. The conversation didn’t light that up, except that she called him ‘Ken darling.’ So I left him and brought her and it. On the way here she made me a cash offer for the carton and contents-ten thousand dollars by tomorrow afternoon-and me erasing it from my mind. I think she’ll pay more if you press her, but I didn’t want to haggle because she had her hand on my arm. If you don’t close with her, I’ll give you a dime for it.”

Wolfe grunted. “Her offer was for the carton and contents? What else is in it?”

“I haven’t looked.”

“Do so.”

I picked it up and fished out the papers and miscellany, piling them on my desk. It was a thin crop-tennis racket, empty handbag, pair of stockings, a copy of Is Germany Incurable? , a jar of cream, other similar items. There was nothing among the papers to quicken my pulse-a copy of Army Regulations, four issues of Yank , a dozen or so G.I. postcards. I flipped the pages of the Regulations, and when a folded sheet of paper fluttered out I picked it up and unfolded it. It had typewriting on one side:

THE LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;

Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

There was more of it. “This may be something,” I told Wolfe. “Where’s Innisfree?”

He was scowling at me. “What?”

“She writes poetry.” I placed the sheet on the desk before him, stepping around so I could finish reading it. “She’s going to Innisfree and build a cabin and start a victory garden and keep bees. Maybe there’s more clues in it.” I read on:

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,

I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

“Defeatist,” I declare. “Peace propaganda. Stop the war. And you notice-”

Wolfe cut me off. “Pfui. It was written fifty years ago, by Yeats.” He wiggled a finger at the stack of junk on my desk. “Nothing in that?”

But I had perceived something which apparently he had missed. “Nevertheless,” I insisted, “it reminds me of something.” With my back to Sergeant Bruce, to obstruct her view I took from my pocket the piece of paper I had retrieved from the debris in Ryder’s office, the anonymous letter Shattuck had got, unfolded it, and placed it on the desk beside the poem.

“And this wasn’t written by Yeats, at least I don’t think it was.” As I talked I pointed to similarities of detail on the two sheets-the c below the line, the a off to the left, and others. “Of course it may be only an interesting coincidence, but it certainly stares you in the face.”

“It is interesting,” Wolfe conceded grudgingly. He was jealous because I had spotted it first. He got a magnifying glass from a drawer and examined the two sheets alternately. I shrugged and circled around to my chair and sat down. If he thought Bruce was too dumb to grasp the significance of a comparison of typescripts, time would teach him. But in a moment it became evident that he was doing it deliberately. He put the glass away and nodded at me approvingly.

“Your eye is still good, Archie. Unquestionably the same.”

“Much obliged.” I took the hint and fired another round. “If you’re going to sic the dogs on it, a good place to start might be a portable Underwood I saw in her apartment.”

He nodded again. “An excellent idea. This raises the point, regarding the generous offer she made you, what was she after, primarily? The suitcase, or this piece of typing, or both?”

“Or neither?” Sergeant Bruce suggested.

We both looked at her. She appeared, and sounded, totally unruffled and slightly amused.

“Neither?” Wolfe demanded.

She smiled at him. “Primarily, neither, Mr. Wolfe. Primarily, I was after you. The offer to Major Goodwin was just a little experiment, to test his loyalty to you. He mentioned a million as a joke, but you know quite well a million dollars is only a fraction of the total sum involved-or that will be involved. And certainly the services you are in a position to render will be well worth a fraction of the whole. Or, possibly, two fractions.”

Chapter 5

About ten years ago a guy named Hallowell showed up at the office one evening with a canvas zipper bag containing a hundred and fifty thousand simoleons in fifties and centuries, with which he intended to short-circuit an electric current of two thousand volts which Wolfe was arranging for him to take sitting down, but that was only chicken feed compared to this. And, considering the secluded nature of the transaction, no income tax. A million dollars would buy four million bottles of the best beer.

Wolfe was leaning back in his chair, his eyes closed, his lips pushing out and in, out and in again. I was gazing straight at Bruce’s face, impersonally, pondering the soundness of her assumption that Wolfe was worth a hundred times as much as me.

“I shouldn’t think,” the lovely innocent creature said in a matter-of-fact tone, “you would want to waste time on trivialities. Major Goodwin’s guess happens to be correct-I typed that poem on my portable, from a book I had borrowed, because I liked it. And I suppose- Would you care to tell me what you were comparing it with?”

Wolfe muttered, without opening his eyes, “A letter Mr. Shattuck received.”

She nodded. “Yes, that was typed on the same machine. And over thirty letters just like it, to different people in key positions. As you have doubtless already discovered, this affair is extremely complicated. It goes high, and it spreads wide. It really isn’t worthy of you, Mr. Wolfe, to be wasting your talents on little details like that letter and Colonel Ryder’s suitcase. We have been intending for some time to have a talk with you, awaiting the proper moment-and now of course you’ve forced us, with this suitcase business. We realize it will be very difficult to arrange. There will have to be mutual guarantees. Commitments of a kind that will make reconsideration impossible on either side. We’re ready to discuss it whenever you are.”

Wolfe’s eyelids raised enough to show slits. “I like your dismissing the suitcase as a triviality, Miss Bruce. But if that’s your whim- I suppose it would be futile for me to question you about it, or about this letter?”

“Such a waste of time,” she protested.

“I presume it would be,” he agreed. “But the suitcase is in my possession, and you admit that’s what forced your hand. As for your offer to hire me, the difficulties seem almost insurmountable. For instance, you speak of ‘we.’ Much too vague, that is. I could discuss such a matter only with the principals, and how can they be disclosed to me, with the risk that as soon as I learn their identity I’ll betray them?”