Booby Trap

Chapter 1

On our way out of the house — his house, which was also his office, on West 35th Street over near the North River — Nero Wolfe, who was ahead of me, stopped so abruptly that I nearly bumped into him. He wheeled and confronted me, glancing at my briefcase.

“Have you got that thing?”

I looked innocent. “What thing?”

“You know very well. That confounded grenade. I want that infernal machine out of this house. Have you got it?”

I held my ground. “Colonel Ryder,” I said in a crisp military tone, “who is my superior officer, said I could keep it for a souvenir in view of my valor and devotion to duty in recovering—”

“You can’t keep it in my house. I tolerate pistols as a tool of the business, but not that contraption. If by accident the pin got removed it would blow off the top of the building, not to mention the noise it would make. I thought you understood this is out of discussion. Get it, please.”

Formerly I might have argued that my room on the third floor was my castle, tenanted by me as part of my pay for suffering his society as his assistant and guardian, but that was out now, since Congress was taking care of me by appropriating around ten billion bucks a month. So I merely shrugged to show I was humoring him, and, knowing how it annoyed him to be kept waiting standing up, moseyed over to the stair and took my time mounting the two flights to my room. It was there where I kept it on top of the chest of drawers — about seven inches long and three in diameter, painted a pale pink, looking nothing like as deadly as it was supposed to be. Reaching for it, I glanced at the safety pin to make sure it was snug, put it in the briefcase, went back downstairs at my leisure, ignored a remark he saw fit to make, and accompanied him out to the curb where the sedan was parked.

One thing Wolfe demanded from the Army, and got, was enough gas for his car. Not that he was trying to bypass the war. He really was making sacrifices for victory. As one, most of his accustomed income from the detective business. Two, his daily sessions with his orchids in the plant rooms on the roof, whenever Army work interfered. Three, his fixed rule to avoid the hazards of unessential movements, especially outdoors. Four, food. I kept an eye on that, looking for a chance to insert remarks, and drew a blank. He and Fritz accomplished wonders within the limitations of coupon fodder, and right there in the middle of New York, with black markets tipping the wink like floozies out for a breath of air on a summer evening, Wolfe’s kitchen was as pure as cottage cheese.

After burning up not more than half a gallon of the precious gas, even counting traffic stops and starts, I let him out in front of 17 Duncan Street, found a place to park, and walked back and joined him in the lobby. Leaving the elevator at the tenth floor, Wolfe had a chance to suppress some more irritation. In my uniform all I had to do was return the salute of the corporal on guard, but although Wolfe had been there at least a couple dozen times and it was no trick to recognize him, he was in cits, and the New York headquarters of Military Intelligence was finicky about civilian visitors. After he got the high sign we went through a door, down a long corridor with closed doors on both sides, one of which was to my office, turned a corner, and entered the anteroom of the Second in Command.

An Army sergeant was sitting at a desk giving the keyboard of a typewriter the one-two.

I said good morning.

“Good morning, Major,” the sergeant replied. “I’ll tell them you’re here.” She reached for a phone.

Wolfe was staring. “What in the name of heaven is this?” he demanded.

“WAC,” I told him. “We’ve got some new furniture since you were here last. Brightens the place up.”

He compressed his lips and continued to stare. Nothing personal; what was eating him was the sight of a female, in uniform, in that job.

“It’s all right,” I soothed him. “We don’t tell her any of the important secrets, such as Captain So-and-So wears a corset.”

She was through at the phone. “Colonel Ryder said to ask you to join them, sir.”

I said sternly, “You didn’t salute.”

If she’d had a sense of humor she’d have stood up and snapped one at me, but in the ten days she had been there I hadn’t been able to discover any sign of it. Which didn’t mean I had quit trying. I had decided she was putting it on. Her serious efficient eyes and straight functional nose led you to expect a jutting bony chin, but that’s where she fooled you. It didn’t jut. It would have fitted nicely in the palm of your hand if things ever got to that point.

She was speaking. “I beg your pardon, Major Goodwin. I am obeying the regulations—”

“Okay.” I waved it aside. “This is Mr. Nero Wolfe. Sergeant Dorothy Bruce of the United States Army.”

They acknowledged each other. Stepping to a door at the other end, I opened it, let Wolfe go through, then followed him and shut the door.

It was a roomy corner office with windows on two sides and the space of the other two walls filled with locked steel cabinets reaching two-thirds of the way to the ceiling, except for a spot occupied by another door which gave access to the hall without going through the anteroom.

There was no humor in there either. The four men on chairs were about as chipper as a bunch of Dodger fans after watching dem bums drop a double-header. Seeing that the atmosphere didn’t call for military etiquette, I let the arm hang. The two colonels and the lieutenant we knew, and though we had never met the civilian we knew who he was, having been told about him; and besides, almost any good citizen would have recognized John Bell Shattuck. He was shorter than I would have expected, and maybe a little bulkier, but there was no mistaking his manner as he got up to shake hands with us and look us in the eye. True, we were residents of New York, but an elected person can never be sure you aren’t going to move to his own state and be a constituent with a vote.

“Meeting Nero Wolfe is a real occasion,” he said, in a voice that sounded as if it was pitched lower than God intended it to be. I had run across that before. Half the statesmen in Washington have been trying to sound like Winston Churchill ever since he made that speech to Congress.

Wolfe was polite to him and then turned back to Ryder. “This is my first opportunity, Colonel, to offer my condolences. Your son. Your only son.”

Ryder’s jaw was set. It had been for nearly a week, since the news came. “Yes,” he said. “Thank you.”

“Had he killed any Germans?”

“He had shot down four German planes. Presumably he killed Germans. I hope he did.”

“No doubt.” Wolfe grunted. “I can’t speak about him, I didn’t know him. I know you. I would hold up your heart if I could. Obviously you are capable of holding your chin up yourself.” He looked around at the chairs that were empty, saw they were of equal dimensions, and moved to one and got himself onto it, with the usual lapping over at the edges. “Where was it?”

“Sicily,” Ryder said.

“He was a fine boy,” John Bell Shattuck put in. “I was his godfather. No finer boy in America. I was proud of him. I still am proud of him.”

Ryder closed his eyes, opened them again, reached for the phone on his desk, and spoke in it. “General Fife.” After a moment he spoke again, “Mr. Wolfe has come, General. We’re all here. Shall we come up now? Oh. Very well, sir. I understand.”

He pushed the phone back and told the room, “He’s coming here.”

Wolfe grimaced, and I knew why. He knew there was a bigger chair up in the general’s office, in fact two of them. I moved to Ryder’s desk, put my briefcase on it, unbuckled the straps, and took out the grenade.

“Here, Colonel,” I said, “I might as well do this while we’re waiting. Where shall I put it?”

Ryder scowled at me. “I said you could keep it.”

“I know, but I have no place to keep it except my room at Mr. Wolfe’s house, and that won’t do. I caught him tinkering with it last night. I’m afraid he’ll hurt himself.”

Everybody looked at Wolfe. He said testily, “You know Major Goodwin, don’t you? I wouldn’t touch the thing. Nor will I have it on my premises.”

I nodded regretfully. “So the cat came back.”

Ryder picked it up and glanced at the safety, saw it was secure, and then suddenly he was out of his chair and on his feet, straight as a Rockette, as the door opened and Sergeant Dorothy Bruce’s voice came to us, clipped and military: “General Fife!”

When the general had entered she backed out again, taking the door along. Of course by that time the rest of us were Rocketteing too. He returned our salute, crossed to shake hands and exchange greetings with John Bell Shattuck, and, after another sharp glance around, stretched an arm and pointed a finger at Ryder’s left hand.

“What the devil are you doing with that thing?” he demanded. “Playing catch?”

Ryder’s hand came up holding the grenade. “Major Goodwin just returned it, sir.”

“Isn’t it one of those H14’s?”

“Yes, sir. As you know, he found them. I gave him permission to keep one.”

“You did? I didn’t. Did I?”

“No, sir.”

Ryder opened a drawer of his desk, put the grenade in it, and closed the drawer. General Fife went to a chair and twirled it around and sat on it assbackwards, crossing his arms along the top of the chair’s back. The understanding was that he had formed that habit after seeing a picture of Eisenhower sitting like that, which I record without prejudice. He was the only professional soldier in the bunch there present. Colonel Ryder had been a lawyer out in Cleveland. Colonel Tinkham, who looked like a collection of undersized features put together at random in order to have somewhere to stick a little brown mustache, had had some kind of a gumshoe job for a big New York bank. Lieutenant Lawson had just come up from Washington two weeks before and was still possibly mysterious personally, but not ancestrally. He was Kenneth Lawson, Junior; Senior being the Eastern Products Corporation tycoon who had served his country in its hour of need by lopping one hundred thousand dollars off his own salary. All I really knew about Junior was that I had heard him trying to date Sergeant Bruce his second day in the office and getting turned down.

The only chair left was over by the steel cabinets, occupied by a small pigskin suitcase. Trying to make just the right amount of noise and commotion for a major under the circumstances, I deposited the suitcase on the floor and sat down.

Meanwhile General Fife was speaking. “Where have you got to? Where’s the public? Where’s the press? No photographers?”

Lieutenant Lawson started to grin, caught Colonel Ryder’s eye, and composed his handsome features. Colonel Tinkham moved the tip of his forefinger along the grain of his mustache, right and left alternately, which was his number-one gesture for conveying the impression that he was quite unperturbed.

“We haven’t got anywhere, sir,” Ryder said. “We haven’t started. Wolfe just got here. Your other questions—”

“Not for you,” Fife said curtly. He was looking, conspicuously, at John Bell Shattuck. “Public servant, and no public? No microphones? No newsreel cameras? How are the people to be informed?”

Shattuck didn’t even blink, let alone try to return the punch. “Now look here,” he said reproachfully, “we’re not as bad as that. We try to do our duty, and so do you. Sometimes I think it might be a good plan for us to take over the armed forces for a period, say a month—”

“Good God.”

“—and let the generals and admirals take over the Capitol for the same period. No doubt we would all learn something. I assure you I understand perfectly that this matter is confidential. I have not even mentioned it to the members of my committee. I thought it my duty to consult you, and that’s what I’m doing.”

Fife’s gaze at him showed no sign of melting into fondness. “You got a letter.”

Shattuck nodded. “I did. An anonymous unsigned type-written letter. It may be from a crackpot, it probably is, but I didn’t think it wise to ignore it.”

“May I see it?”

“I have it,” Colonel Ryder put in. He took a sheet of paper from under a weight on his desk and stepped across to pass it to his superior. But Fife was using his hands to pat the pockets of his jacket.

“Left my glasses upstairs. Read it.”

Ryder did so.

Silence. Dead silence.

Colonel Tinkham cleared his throat. “Well-written letter,” he observed, in the tone of a teacher commending a pupil for a good composition.

“May I look at it?” Nero Wolfe inquired.

Ryder handed it to him, and I got up and crossed the room to take a squint over Wolfe’s shoulder. Tinkham and Lawson got the same notion and did likewise. Wolfe considerately held it at an angle so we could all see. It was a plain sheet of ordinary bond paper, and the text was single-spaced neatly in the center of the sheet with no errors or exings. From habit and experience I noted two mechanical peculiarities: the c hit below the line; and the a was off to the left — in war, for instance, it touched the top corner of the w. I was going on from there when Tinkham and Lawson finished and moved away, and Wolfe handed the sheet to me to return to Ryder.

“Hot stuff,” Lawson said, sitting down. “He could a tale unfold, but he doesn’t. Nothing but insinuations.”

Fife asked him sarcastically, “Does that close the matter, Lieutenant?”

“Sir?”

“I ask, is your verdict final, or are we to be permitted to proceed?”

“Oh.” Lawson showed color. “I beg your pardon, sir. I was merely observing—”

“There’s another way to observe. Look and listen.”

“Yes, sir.”

“If I may be allowed—” Colonel Tinkham offered.

“Well?”

“Interesting points about that letter. It was written by a person who is incisive and highly literate and who also types expertly. Or it was dictated to a stenographer, which doesn’t seem likely. The margining at the right is remarkably even. And the double spaces after periods—”

Wolfe made a noise, and Fife glanced at him. “What?”

“Nothing,” Wolfe said. “I suppose I wouldn’t mind if this chair were properly constructed and of a proper size. I suggest, if the discussion is to be at kindergarten level, that we all sit on the floor.”

“Not a bad idea. We may come to that.” Fife turned to Shattuck. “When did you get the letter?”

“In the mail Saturday morning,” Shattuck told him. “Plain envelope of course, address typed, marked personal. Postmarked New York, Station R, 7:30 p.m. Friday. My first impulse was to turn it over to the F.B.I., but I decided that wouldn’t be fair to you fellows, so I telephoned Harold — Colonel Ryder. I was coming to New York today anyway — speaking at a dinner tonight of the National Industrial Association — and we agreed this was the way to handle it.”

“You haven’t — you didn’t take it up with General Carpenter?”

“No.” Shattuck smiled. “After that performance when he appeared to testify before my committee a couple of months ago — I didn’t feel like crossing his path.”

“This is his path.”

“I know, but he’s not patrolling this sector of it at this moment—” Shattuck’s eyes widened— “or is he?”

Fife shook his head. “He’s stewing in Washington. Or sizzling. Or both. So you’re turning the letter over to us for investigation. Is that it?”

“I don’t know.” Shattuck hesitated. He was meeting the general’s eyes. “It came to me as chairman of a Congressional committee. I came here — to discuss the matter.”

“You know—” Fife also hesitated. He went on, choosing words: “You know, of course, I could merely say military security is involved and the question cannot be discussed.”

“I know,” Shattuck agreed. “You could say that.” He bore down a little on the “could.”

Fife regarded him without affection.

“This is unofficial and off the record. There is nothing in that letter to show that the writer has any useful information. Anyone with any sense would know that in our war production, with thousands of men in positions of trust, and enormous interests and billions of dollars involved, things happen. Lots of them, probably including the sort of thing that letter hints at. One of the jobs of Military Intelligence is to help to prevent such things from happening, as far as we can.”

“Of course,” Shattuck put in, “I had no idea this would be a bolt from the blue for you.”

“Thank you.” Fife didn’t sound grateful. “It isn’t. Did you see that pink thing Ryder put in his desk drawer? You did. That’s a new kind of grenade — not only new in construction, but in its contents. Somebody wanted some samples, and got them. Not the enemy — at least we don’t think so. Captain Cross, who died last week, was working on it. Nobody on earth except the men in this room knew what Cross was doing. Cross found the trail, we don’t know how, because he hadn’t reported in since Monday, and now we may never know. Major Goodwin did a neat piece of work with an entry in Cross’s memo book which apparently didn’t mean anything, and found the grenades in a shipping carton in the checkroom at a bus terminal where Cross had left them. I tell you about this because Cross is mentioned in that letter, and also as an instance to show that if the writer of the letter wants to tell us anything we don’t know he’ll have to come again.”

Shattuck remonstrated. “Good heavens, General, I know very well you weren’t born yesterday. And ordinarily any anonymous letter I receive gets tossed in the wastebasket. But I thought you ought to know about it — and then the one specific thing in it — about Cross. Of course that was investigated?”

“It was. By the police.”

“And,” Shattuck insisted, “by you?” Then he added hastily, “I think that’s a proper question. Unofficially. Since a police investigation would be somewhat ineffectual unless they were told exactly what Cross was doing and were given the names of those who were — well — aware of it. I don’t suppose you felt free to disclose that to the police?”

Fife said slowly, choosing his words again, “We co-operate with the police to the limit of discretion. As for your first question, proper or not, it is no military secret that Nero Wolfe has worked with us on various matters as a civilian consultant — since it has been published in newspapers. Do you regard Wolfe as a competent investigator?”

Shattuck smiled. “I’m a politician. You’re not apt to find me in a minority of one.”

“Well, he’s investigating Cross’s death. For us. If you find out who wrote you that letter, tell him that. That ought to satisfy him.”

“It satisfies me,” Shattuck declared. “I wonder if you’d mind — could I ask Mr. Wolfe a couple of questions?”

“Certainly. If he wants to answer them. I can’t order him to. He’s not in the Army.”

Wolfe grunted. He was displaying all the signs, long familiar to me, of impatience, annoyance, discomfort, and an intense desire to get back home where chairs had been built to specifications to fit the case, and the beer was cold. He snapped:

“Mr. Shattuck. Perhaps I can make your questions unnecessary. Whether they come from idle curiosity, or are in fact sparks from the flame of your burning patriotism, Captain Cross was murdered. Does that answer them?”

Silence. Nobody made a sound. The look that General Fife flashed at Colonel Ryder met one coming back at him, and they both held. Colonel Tinkham’s finger tip made contact with his mustache. Lieutenant Lawson stared at Wolfe, frowning. Shattuck’s eyes, narrowed with a gleam in them, went from face to face.

Lieutenant Lawson said, “Oh, lord.”