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

“I think I can make it,” Shattuck said, also standing. “I will make it. I have a reservation on the three o’clock plane for Washington.”

“Good. Then I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I escorted the visitor to the front and let him out, closed the door and shot the night bolt, and returned to the office. I had supposed Wolfe was prepared to call it a day and go up to bed, but to my surprise he was back in his chair, and apparently, from the arrangement of his face, his mind was working.

I remarked rudely, “So you’re going to use Shattuck too. For what? Is he it?”

“Archie. Be quiet.”

“Yes, sir. Or is he Miss Bruce’s principal and you’re going to close the deal?”

No reply.

I went to the shelf and got the grenade, tossed it in the air, and caught it. I saw him shudder. That was something. “This,” I said, “is Army property. So am I, as you remind me every hour on the hour. I don’t ask where you got it, since you told me to be quiet. But I’ll keep it in my room and return it to the Army in the morning.”

“Confound you! Give me that thing.”

“No, sir. I mean it. If I’ve got allegiances, as you say I have, I take this grenade to General Fife first thing in the morning, and I tell him-”

“Shut up!”

I stood and glared at him.

He glared back, as if something was almost more than he could bear, and he would leave it to me what.

Finally he said, “Archie. I submit to circumstances. So should you. And I’ll make a concession to you. For instance, about that suitcase. Its metal frame is bent outward, in all directions. How could an explosion from anywhere on the outside of the suitcase, at whatever distance, near or far, bend its frame outward? It couldn’t. Therefore the grenade was inside the suitcase when it exploded. The innumerable holes and tears in the leather made by the fragments confirm that. They are from the inside out.”

I put the grenade on his desk.

“Therefore,” he went on, “Colonel Ryder was murdered. The grenade couldn’t possibly have exploded inside the suitcase by accident. Suicide, no. The man was not an idiot. He did not take the grenade from the desk drawer to kill himself with it, put it in the suitcase, and hold the lid open just enough to permit him to insert his hand to pull out the safety pin. That’s the only way he could have done it, because the frame of the lid was bent outward too. Not suicide. Only one conclusion is tenable. It was a booby trap.”

He picked up the grenade and indicated the thick end of the pin. “You see that notch. I put the grenade in the suitcase, attach one end of a piece of string-even a narrow strip torn from a handkerchief would do-under that notch on the pin, pull the lid nearly shut, giving myself just room enough to work, attach the other end of the string to the lining of the lid at a front corner-probably with an office pin right there on the desk, a handy place to work-and close the lid. Two minutes would do it-not more than three. Whenever and wherever Colonel Ryder opened the suitcase, he would die. Since the lid was closed when the grenade exploded, probably he jerked the lid open to put something in and immediately snapped it shut again, without noticing the string. Of course, even if he had noticed it, that wouldn’t have helped matters any.”

I was considering the matter. When he stopped I nodded. “Okay,” I agreed. “I’m right behind you. Next. Did Sergeant Bruce take it because she-”

“No,” he said positively. He put the grenade in a drawer of his desk. “That’s all.”

“It’s not even a start,” I snorted.

“It’s all for tonight.” He stood up. “Come to my room at eight in the morning, when Fritz brings my breakfast. With your notebook. I’ll have some instructions for you. It will be a busy day. We’re going to set a booby trap-somewhat more complicated than that one.”

Chapter 6

At 10:55 Tuesday morning I sat on a corner of my desk in Nero Wolfe’s office, surveying the scene and the props. I had done the arranging myself, following instructions, but I had about as much idea what was going on as if I had been blindfolded at the bottom of a well.

Wolfe had been correct in one respect. At least so far it had been a busy day-for me. After an early breakfast I had gone to his room and been told what to do-not why or what for, just what. Then I had gone to Duncan Street and followed the program, without much time to spare, for General Fife didn’t show up at his office until nearly ten o’clock. Returning home after I got through with him, I had arranged the props.

Not that they were elaborate or required much arranging; only three items, one on my desk and two on Wolfe’s. One of the latter was a large envelope that had arrived in the morning mail. The address, to Nero Wolfe, was typed, and also typed was a line at the lower left-hand corner To be opened at six p.m. Tuesday, August 10th, if no word has been received from me.

In the upper left-hand corner was the return:

Colonel Harold Ryder

633 Candlewood Street

New York City

The envelope, which, from the feel of it, contained several sheets of paper, was firmly sealed; hadn’t been opened. It was on top of Wolfe’s desk, a little to the right of the center, under a paperweight. The paperweight was the second item. It was the grenade, the twin of the one that killed Ryder.

And in the typing on the envelope the c was below the line, and the a was off to the left. It had been typed on the same machine as the poem Sergeant Bruce liked and the anonymous letter to Shattuck.

The item on my desk was a suitcase which belonged to me, my smallest one, a tan cowhide number that I used for short trips. The instructions had been to pack something in it-shirts, a few books, anything-and park it on my desk, and there it was.

Apparently that was the booby trap: the envelope, the grenade, and the suitcase. Whom it was supposed to catch, or how or when or why, I hadn’t the faintest idea. In view of the further instructions I had received, it struck me as about the feeblest and foolishest effort to bait a murderer that the mind of man had ever conceived. I relieved my emotions by making a few audible remarks that I could have picked up in barracks if I had ever been in barracks, left the scene and went up three flights to the roof, found Wolfe in the potting-room arranging sphagnum, and told him, “All set.”

He inquired without interrupting his labors, “The articles in the office?”

“Yep.”

“You asked them to be punctual?”

“I did. Lawson at 11:15, Tinkham at 11:30, Fife at 11:45. You invited Shattuck and Bruce yourself.”

“Fritz? The panel?”

“I said,” I told him icily, “all set. For what, God knows.”

“Now Archie,” he murmured, pulling moss apart. “It’s barely possible that I’m nervous. This thing is ticklish. If it doesn’t work we may never get him. By the way-get Mr. Cramer on the phone.”

When I did so, using the phone there on the bench, Wolfe put on a show. After telling me he was nervous because it was so ticklish, he bulled it like this with Cramer: