Rex Stout: The Final Deduction

Sitting, he picked up The Lotus and the Robot . His current book is always on his desk, at the right edge of the pad, in front of the vase of orchids. That day’s orchids were a raceme of Miltonia vexillaria, brought by him as usual when he had come down from the plant rooms at eleven o’clock. “Ummmp,” he said. “I was merely testing a conjecture.”

“Any good?”

“Yes.” He opened the book to his place and swiveled, giving me his acre or so of back. If I wanted to test a conjecture I would have to use one of my own. A visitor was due in ten minutes, and since according to him the best digestive is a book because it occupies the mind and leaves the stomach in privacy, he darned well was going to get a few pages in. And when, a quarter of an hour later, I having spent most of it inspecting the note from Mr Knapp with occasional glances at my typewriter keyboard, the doorbell rang, and I went to the hall and returned with the visitor, and pronounced her name, and put her in the red leather chair, Wolfe stuck with his book until I had gone to my desk and sat. Then he marked his place and put it down, looked at her, and said, “Are you an efficient secretary, Miss Utley?”

Her eyes widened a little, and she smiled. If she had been doing any crying along with her employer it had certainly left no traces. At sight I had guessed her age at thirty, but that might have been a couple of years short.

“I earn my salary, Mr Wolfe,” she said.

She was cool-cool eyes, cool smile, cool voice. With some cool ones the reaction is that it would be interesting to apply a little heat and see what happens, and you wouldn’t mind trying, but with others you feel that they are cool clear through, and she was one of them, though there was nothing wrong with her features or figure. You could even call her a looker.

Wolfe was taking her in. “No doubt,” he said. “As you know, Mrs Vail phoned you from here. I heard her tell you not to tell me what Mr Knapp said to her on the phone yesterday, but you may feel that she is under great strain and your judgment on that point is better than hers. Do you?”

“No.” Very cool. “I’m in her employ.”

“Then I won’t try to cajole you. Do you always open Mrs Vail’s mail?”

“Yes.”

“Everything that comes?”

“Yes.”

“How many items were there in yesterday morning’s mail?”

“I didn’t count them. Perhaps twenty.”

“The envelope with that note in it, did you open it first or further along in the process?”

Of course that tactic is three thousand years old, maybe more, asking for a detail of a reported action, looking for hesitation or confusion. Dinah Utley smiled. “I always sort it out first, leaving circulars and other obvious stuff until later. Yesterday there were four-no, five-that I opened at once. The envelope with that note was the third one I opened.”

“Did you show it to Mrs Vail at once?”

“Certainly. I took it to her room.”

“Were you present Sunday night when she phoned to the country to ask about her husband?”

“No. I was in the house, but I was in bed.”

“What time yesterday did the call come from Mr Knapp?”

“Eight minutes after four. I knew that might be important somehow, and I made a note of it.”

“You listened to that conversation?”

“Yes. Mrs Vail had told me to take it down, and I did.”

“Then you know shorthand?”

“Of course.”

“Are you a college graduate?”

“Yes.”

“Do you type with two fingers, or four?”

She smiled. “All of them. By touch.” She turned a hand over. “Really, Mr Wolfe. Isn’t this rather silly? Is it going to get Mr Vail back alive?”

“No. But it may conceivably serve a purpose. Naturally you want to be with Mrs Vail, and she wants you; I won’t keep you much longer. There’s no point now in asking you about that man’s voice and diction; even if I got a hint that suggested another wording for the notice it’s too late. But you will please let Mr Goodwin take samples of your fingerprints. Archie?”

That roused her a little. “ My fingerprints? Why?”

“Not to get Mr Vail back alive. But they may be useful later on. It’s barely possible that Mr Knapp or an accomplice inadvertently left a print on that note. To your knowledge, has anyone handled it besides Mrs Vail and you?”

“No.”

“And Mr Goodwin and me. We shall get Mrs Vail’s. Mr Goodwin is an expert on prints, and even if Mr Vail returns safely, as I hope he will, we’ll want to know if there are any unidentifiable prints on that note. Do you object to having your prints taken?”

“Of course not. Why should I?”

“Then Archie?”

I had opened a desk drawer and was getting out the equipment-ink with dauber and surfaced paper. I prefer a dauber to a pad. Knowing now, as I did, what the conjecture was that Wolfe had been testing when he inspected my typewriter keyboard with the note from Mr Knapp in his hand, and therefore also knowing why I was to take Dinah Utley’s prints, it wasn’t necessary to write her name on the paper, but I did anyway. She got up and came to my desk and I did her right hand first. She had good hands, firm, smooth, well kept, with long slender fingers. No rings. With her left hand, when I had done the thumb, index, and middle, and started to daub the ring finger, I asked casually, “What’s this? Scald it?”

“No. Shut a drawer on it.”

“The pinkie too. I’ll go easy.”

“It’s not very tender now. I did it several days ago.”

But I went easy, there being no point in making her suffer, since we had no use for the prints. As she cleaned her fingers with solvent and tissues she asked Wolfe, “You don’t really think a kidnaper would be fool enough to leave his fingerprint on that note, do you?”

“No,” Wolfe said, “not fool enough. But possibly distraught enough. One thing more, Miss Utley. I would like you to know that I’m aware that the primary concern is the safety of Mr Vail. I have done all I can. Archie, show her a copy of the notice.”

I got it from my desk and handed it to her. Wolfe waited until she had finished reading it to say, “That will appear, prominently, in today’s Gazette and the morning papers. If the kidnaper sees it, it may have an effect; it certainly will if he has some knowledge of me. For I will have publicly committed myself, and if he kills Mr Vail he will be doomed inevitably. A month, a year, ten years; no matter. It’s regrettable that you or I can’t reach him, to make that clear to him.”

“Yes, it is.” Still perfectly cool. She handed me the notice. “Of course he may not have as high an opinion of your abilities as you have.” She turned to go, after three steps stopped and turned her head to say, “He might even think the police are more dangerous than you are,” and went. There ahead of her, and preceding her to the hall and the front door, I let her out; and, expecting no thanks or good day, got none.