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

Wolfe’s bellow came rolling through the open door to the office. “Archie! Bring him in!”

“Follow the sound waves,” I told Shattuck. Which he did. I entered after him and crossed to my desk.

“You made a quick trip, sir,” Wolfe rumbled. “Sit down. That chair’s the best.”

Shattuck, in dinner clothes with his tie off center and a spot of something on his shirt front, looked a little blowsy. He opened his mouth, then glanced at me and shut it, looked at Wolfe and opened it again.

“General Fife phoned me about Colonel Ryder. I was at that dinner and had to make a speech. I got away as soon as I could and phoned you.” He glanced at me again. “If you’ll excuse me, Major Goodwin, I think it would be better-”

I had crossed to my desk promptly and sat down because I was fully expecting Wolfe to shoo me out, and I wanted to register my opinion of his attitude in advance. But Shattuck put another face on it. He didn’t merely suggest chasing me out, which Wolfe would have resented on principle, he tried to chase me himself without consulting Wolfe at all, which was intolerable.

“Major Goodwin,” Wolfe told him, “is assigned here officially, serving me in a confidential capacity. Why, are you going to tell me something you don’t want the Army to know?”

“Certainly not.” Shattuck bristled. “I don’t know anything I wouldn’t want the Army to know.”

“You don’t?” Wolfe’s brows went up. “Good heavens, I do. There are hundreds of things I wouldn’t want anyone to know. You can’t have as clean a slate as that, Mr. Shattuck, surely. But you want to tell me something about Colonel Ryder?”

“Not tell you. Ask you. Fife told me you were investigating and would report to him tomorrow. Have you got anywhere?”

“Well-some facts appear to be established. You remember that grenade, that pink thing, Colonel Ryder put in his desk drawer this morning-delivered to him by Major Goodwin. It exploded and killed Colonel Ryder. He must have removed it from the drawer, because there is evidence that it was on the desk top, or above it when it exploded. Also there are fragments of it all over the room.”

I report what Wolfe said because I heard it and it registered somewhere in my mind but certainly not in the front of it. The front was occupied by something being registered not by hearing but by sight. My eye had just caught it. Behind Wolfe and off to the right-my right as I sat-was a picture on the wall, a painting on glass of the Washington Monument. (The picture, incidentally, was camouflage; it was actually a specially constructed cover for a panel through which you could view the office, practically all of it, from an alcove at the end of the hall next to the kitchen.) Just beyond the picture was a tier of shallow shelves holding various odds and ends, including mementos of cases we had worked on.

What had caught my eye was an object on the fourth shelf from the top that hadn’t been there before, and to call it odd would have been putting it mildly, since it was a memento of the case then in progress and still unresolved. It was the grenade that had exploded and killed Ryder, standing there on its base, just as it had formerly stood on my chest of drawers upstairs.

Of course that was merely the first startling idea that popped into my mind when my eye hit it. But the idea that instantly took its place was startling enough-the realization that it was another grenade exactly like the one Wolfe had ordered me to remove from the premises. I was positive it hadn’t been there when I left two hours previously.

I may have been shocked into staring at it for two seconds, but no longer, knowing as I did that staring at other people’s property wasn’t polite. Apparently neither Wolfe nor Shattuck was aware that I was experiencing a major sensation, for they went right on talking. As I say, I heard them.

Shattuck was saying, “How and why did it explode? Have you reached any conclusions?”

“No,” Wolfe said shortly. “It will be reported in the press as an accident, with no conjecture as to how it happened. General Fife says the safety pin on that grenade is jolt-proof, but expert opinions are by no means infallible. As for suicide, no mechanical difficulties certainly; he could simply have held the thing in his hand and pulled out the pin; but he would have had to want to. Did he? You might know about that; you were his son’s godfather; you called him Harold; did he want to die?”

Shattuck’s face twitched. After a moment he gulped. But his voice was clear and firm: “If he did I certainly didn’t know it. The only thing is, his son had been killed. But a well man with a healthy mind can take a thing like that without committing suicide, and Harold Ryder was well and his mind was healthy. I hadn’t seen a great deal of him lately, but I can say that.”

Wolfe nodded. “Then the other alternative-that someone killed him. Since the grenade was used, it had to be procured from the desk drawer, presumably by one of us who saw Colonel Ryder put it there this morning. Six of us. That makes it a bit touchy.”

“It sure does,” Shattuck said grimly. “That’s one reason I’m here. Got it from the drawer and then what?”

“I don’t know. At that point the minutiae enter-entrances and exits, presences and absences. Opened the door, possibly, either door, pulled the pin, and tossed it in.” Wolfe regarded him a moment inquiringly. “I take it, Mr. Shattuck, that this conversation is in confidence?”

“Of course it is. Entirely.”

“Then I may say, tentatively, that a seventh person seems to be involved. Miss Bruce. Colonel Ryder’s secretary.”

“You mean that WAC in his anteroom?”

“Yes. I’m not prepared to give details, but it appears that Colonel Ryder had acquired certain information and had either drawn up a report or was getting ready to, and the result would have been disastrous for her.”

Shattuck was frowning. “I don’t like that.”

“Indeed. You don’t like it?”

“I mean I don’t-” Shattuck stopped. The frown deepened. “I mean this,” he said, in a harsh determined tone. “Since this is in confidence. I suspected, rightly or wrongly, that details regarding Captain Cross’s death were being deliberately concealed and no real investigation was being made. I was satisfied on that score when I learned that you were handling it. You may ask then why am I not satisfied if you are in charge of the inquiry into Ryder’s death? I am. But you may yourself be-misled. With all your talents, you may be off on a false scent. That’s why I say I don’t like that girl being dragged into it. I don’t know her, know nothing about her, but it looks like a trick.”

“Possibly,” Wolfe conceded. “Have you any evidence that it is?”

“No.”

“About those six people? Eliminate those here present, by courtesy. Those three people? Can you tell me anything about them?”

“No.”

“Then I’m afraid we won’t make any progress tonight.” Wolfe glanced at the clock on the wall. He put his hands on the edge of the desk and pushed his chair back. “It’s midnight. I assure you, sir, if tricks are being played on me I’m apt to find it out and return the compliment.” He got to his feet. “I may have something more concrete for you by tomorrow. Say by tomorrow noon. Would it be convenient for you to drop in here at twelve noon? If I do have anything, I wouldn’t care to announce it on the telephone.”