by Rex Stout
I batted an eye. “I’d be simply dumbfounded.”
“But you’d soon recover. And then what would you say?”
“Well, gosh.” I patted her hand, which was still on my arm. “That would depend. If it was just conversation, I’d think of something appropriate to keep my end going, and start up the car and proceed. If you actually confronted me with the engravings, I’d have to see how I reacted.”
She smiled. “It isn’t likely I’d carry around a wad like that.”
“Certainly not. So forget it.” I started my hand for the dash.
But her hand held my arm. “Wait. You’re too impulsive. It’s a bona fide offer. Ten thousand.”
“Cash?”
“Yes.”
“When and where?”
“I think-” she hesitated. “I can have it in twenty-four hours. A little sooner. Tomorrow afternoon.”
“And meanwhile, the carton?”
“The Day and Night Bank. In safekeeping for joint withdrawal only. We shake hands to pledge good faith.”
I admired her visibly. It showed in my tone too. “Didn’t I see you once walking the high wire at the circus? Maybe it was your sister. Looky. I suppose I could be had, but it isn’t practical. Nero Wolfe would be sure to find out-he finds out everything in the long run-and he’d be sure to tell my poor old mother. If it wasn’t for my mother I’d snap at it. I promised her once I’d never sell out for less than a million. The mortgage on the old farm happens to be a million even.”
I started the engine and eased away from the curb into the traffic. She made no attempt to dangle the bait or put on another worm, and if she had I probably wouldn’t have heard her. Several things had me guessing, and the one at the top of the list was the suitcase. Wolfe had said it was important, and here was this lovely innocent creature offering ten thousand bucks for it, when as far as I could see a reasonable OPA ceiling on it would have been twenty cents at the outside. It irritated me to be $9,999.80 out in my calculations, and since when I’m irritated I have a tendency to feed more gas, the remainder of the trip to Wolfe’s place on 35th Street was a mere step.
It was only half an hour to dinner time, and I expected to find Wolfe in the kitchen supervising experiments, but he was hard at work at his desk in the office, rearranging field commanders probably, on his battle map of Russia. When we entered he kept right on.
Bruce said, “So this is Nero Wolfe’s office,” and looked around, at the leather chairs, the big globe, the shelves of books, the old-fashioned two-ton safe, the little bracket where he always had one orchid in bloom. I removed the cord from the carton, opened the flaps, got a grip on a section of the frame of the suitcase, pulled gently but firmly, got it out, and put it on a chair because the map was covering his desk. There were other items in the carton-papers and miscellany-but I stowed it over by the wall without disturbing them.
“Ah, you got it.” Wolfe said, finally looking up. “Satisfactory. But evidently not unobserved. Did Miss Bruce come along to help you carry it?”
“No. She came because she can’t bear to have it out of her sight. I went for it and it wasn’t there. Gone. The corporal said nobody had taken anything. So since nobody had taken it, but it was gone, I figured that nobody couldn’t be anybody but Sergeant Bruce. I had seen her in the anteroom packing things in a carton, and with the suitcase there on the floor only two steps from the door to the anteroom, and the corporal’s back turned, it would have been a cinch for her and impossible for anyone else. Getting the address of her apartment and going there-two rooms, kitchenette and bath-I found the suitcase in the carton in the bedroom closet. Also in the closet was Lieutenant Lawson. Alive and well.”
“The deuce he was.” Wolfe leaned back and let his eyelids down a little. “Won’t you be seated, Miss Bruce? No, that chair, if you don’t mind.”
The lovely innocent creature sat.
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?”
She shook her head, frowning at him. “You don’t understand, Mr. Wolfe. The principals, as you call them, are above any risk of betrayal. As I said, this goes high. But even so, we have to use discretion, because we don’t want-”
The phone ringing interrupted her. I got it at my desk, and was informed that Washington was calling Nero Wolfe. I asked who was calling, and after a wait was told General Carpenter. I said to hold the wire, scribbled Gen. Carp. on my pad, and got up to hand it to Wolfe.
After a glance he turned it face down on his desk, and said politely to Bruce, “Mr. Goodwin will take you up and show you the orchids.”
“If it’s Lieutenant Lawson-” she began.
“Come on,” I told her, “maybe you can worm it out of me.”
It was hot in the plant rooms. I was sweating and she was a little flushed from the climb. Horstmann came trotting out, and I explained I was showing a guest around. I told her it was a little cooler in the potting-room, but she said no, she wanted to look at the plants, so I decided the best way to keep my mind off of the pleasing possibility of wringing her neck was to tell her the Latin names of the orchids. I did state that I would personally prefer to go to the potting-room, but couldn’t, because if I left her alone she would swipe some of the plants to bribe people with. She flashed an appreciative glance at me and made her little noise, half gurgle and half chuckle, as if she did so enjoy my amusing remarks.
We were in the third room, where the germinating flasks were, when I heard the phone ringing in the potting-room, and went there to get it. I told it, “Goodwin speaking.”
Wolfe’s voice said, “Send Miss Bruce down here.”
“You mean bring her down?”
“No. You are under the handicap of having sworn your oath as an officer in the Army. I am not. This may turn out to be a little delicate. I’d better talk with her privately.”
Something more for me not to know. I sure was on the inside. I went and passed the word to Bruce and opened the doors for her through to the stairs. She descended. Going down one flight to my room, I couldn’t see anything to interfere with rinsing the figure, so I stripped and stepped into the shower. Ordinarily I find that a good environment for sorting out my mind and fitting pieces together, but since in this case I was being stiff-armed clear off the field into the bleachers, I left the brain at ease and had a good time admiring my muscles and the hair on my chest. I was tying my good shoe laces when Fritz called up to say dinner was ready.
When I got downstairs, Wolfe was standing in the hall just outside the dining-room door. He waited till I approached, then turned and entered. We sat at the table.
“No company?” I inquired courteously. “Our new employer?”
“Miss Bruce went,” he said.
Fritz came in with an earthenware pot on a serving platter, deposited it on the table in front of Wolfe, and lifted the lid. Steam and smell emerged and floated with the currents of air. Wolfe sniffed, leaned forward and sniffed again.
“Creole tripe,” he said, “without the salt pork and pigs’ feet. I’m anxious to see what you think.” He inserted a serving spoon, releasing a fresh spurt of steam.
We had got started late, so it was along toward ten o’clock when we finished with coffee and went to the office. The stuff from the carton that I had piled on my desk was gone, and so was the carton. The map of Russia had been put away. The suitcase was still there on the chair. Instructed by Wolfe to put it in a safe place, I locked it in the closet, since it was too big for the safe. Wolfe was in his chair behind his desk, leaning back with his finger tips meeting at the spot where the ends of no one-yard tape measure would ever meet again. A book he was reading, Under Cover, by John Roy Carlson, was there on his desk, but he hadn’t picked it up. I took a seat at my own desk and spoke.
“I’d hate to spoil anybody’s fun,” I said, “and I don’t like to intrude a personal note, but it occurred to me some time ago that if Lawson is on the square and reports to his superiors that I called on Sergeant Bruce and kidnapped that carton, there’ll be hell to pay.”
Wolfe sighed. “You caught him hiding in a closet.”
“Even so,” I persisted.
“And surely he wouldn’t do anything that might get Miss Bruce into trouble.”
“No? What if he’s on the square, and onto her, and playing her? Under orders from Ryder, or from Fife himself? Or Tinkham? You know how that outfit works. No matter who’s behind you, always keep an eye over your shoulder.”
Wolfe shook his head. “You know better than that, Archie. You have met Miss Bruce. Lieutenant Lawson lead that woman by the nose? Nonsense.”
“I suppose,” I said pointedly, “she must have explained to you where Lawson fits in. Naturally you wouldn’t overlook a detail like that. Lawson Senior is one of the principals maybe?”
Wolfe frowned and sighed again. “Archie. Don’t badger me. Confound it, I’m going to have to sit
here and work, and I don’t like to work after dinner. You’re an Army officer, with the allegiances that involves, and this affair is too hot for you. I tell you, for instance, that Colonel Ryder was murdered, and I’m going to get the murderer. See where that puts you? What if one of your superior officers asks you a leading question? What if he orders you to make a report? As for Miss Bruce, I’m going to use her. I’m going to use Lawson. I’m going to use you. But right now, let me alone. Read a book. Look at pictures. Go to a movie.”
His saying he was going to work meant he was going to sit with his eyes shut and heave a sigh three times an hour, and since if he got any bright ideas he was going to keep them to himself anyhow, I decided to make myself scarce. Also I had an outdoor errand, putting the car in the garage. I departed, performed the errand, and went for a walk. In the dim-out a late evening walk wasn’t what it used to be, but since I was in no mood for pleasure, that was unimportant. Somewhere in the Fifties I resolved to make another stab at getting an overseas assignment. At home here, working in a uniform for Army G2 would have been okay, and working in my own clothes for Nero Wolfe would have been tolerable, but it seemed likely that trying to combine the two would sooner or later deprive me of the right to vote and then I could never run for President.
When I got back to the house on 35th Street, some time after eleven, because I was preoccupied with the future instead of the immediate present I wasn’t aware of the presence of a taxicab discharging a passenger until the passenger crossed the sidewalk and mounted the stoop that was my own destination. By the time I had mounted the eight steps to his level he had his finger on the bell button. He heard me, and his head pivoted, and I recognized John Bell Shattuck.
“Allow me,” I said, getting between him and the door. I inserted the key and turned it.
“Oh.” He was peering at me in the dim light. “Major Goodwin. I’m seeing Mr. Wolfe.”