Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Vol. 11, No. 51, February 1948

Help wanted, male by Rex Stout[1]

One of the brightest observations ever wade about Rex Stout’s work in the detective field, and seemingly one of the most penetrating ever advanced by an American critic, is credited to Howard Haycraft. Speaking of Nero Wolfe’s “paint-fresh assistant,” Archie Goodwin, Mr. Haycraft offers the opinion that Archie is “the one example in history of a Watson who steals the play from his Holmes, and a first-rate Holmes to boot.” Your Editor does not agree. True, Archie Goodwin is something that most Watsons are not: he is a three-dimensional character in his own right and easily in the top rank of clever and engaging “narrators”; but when the shouting is over, Archie remains what he started out to be — the great Nero Wolfe’s stooge. It is Nero Wolfe who is the criminological catalyst; it is Nero Wolfe who pulls the culprit out of the hat; it is the elephantine and elephant-memoried Nero Wolfe who always makes sense out of nonsense; and infinitely more important, it is Nero Wolfe who emerges as the fuller of two three-dimensional characters. Once you have met Nero, you will never forget him — and that is the test.

Consider: Can you ever forget the physical Nero Wolfe? No, the excessively fat man created by Rex Stout is as permanently lodged in your memory as the excessively thin man created by Dashiell Hammett. Can you ever forget the mental Nero Wolfe? No, he is one of our keenest razor-brains — a master manhunter. Can you ever forget the emotional Nero Wolfe? No, his mannerisms, his idiosyncrasies and eccentricities, are such stuff as emotions are made on. But can all this be said of Archie Goodwin? We chuckle at Archie’s breeziness and brashness; we revel in the way Archie slings slang; we have more than a sneaking admiration for his wolfish tactics with the female of the species; but we really do not know Archie Goodwin as well as we know Nero Wolfe — physically, mentally, or emotionally. Archie is the modern, streamlined packaging: he is the quick sales appeal which attracts customers and excites comment — but the real merchandise is inside the package.

Critics of fiction and detectives of fiction have much in common: they both investigate after the fact; they both seek the truth; and they both have a weakness for subtlety. It is so easy not to see the forest for the trees; it is so easy — both for critics and detectives — to overlook the obvious. For example, Harrison Smith makes this perfectly obvious statement in his “The New Detectives” (Good Housekeeping, September 1947): “[Sherlock Holmes’s] nearest equivalent in present-day fiction is Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe, that man of fat, foibles, and egotism who solves the murder while he sits in his armchair, and without whom the best detectives in the New York Police Department are helpless.”

So obvious — yet so true. The personal eccentricities are all there: Nero Wolfe’s orchid-growing and beer-drinking are creative variations on Sherlock Holmes’s violin-playing and cocaine-injecting, which in turn were creative variations on Auguste Dupin’s day-hibernating and night-rambling. The methods? All laid down irrevocably by Edgar Allan Poe, revitalized by Conan Doyle, and perpetuated by Rex Stout. Yes, the original pattern still flourishes — that is the real secret of the detective story and its popularity. The original theme was an imperishable work of art, and we love every modem variation. That is why it is Nero Wolfe the sleuth, not Archie Goodwin the literary device, who has such a firm grip on our affections...

With which we now bring you the first in our new series of detective novelettes, each complete-in-one-issue. Within the next six months we shall bring you another Nero Wolfe novelette, and at that time tell you more about the man behind Nero and Archie — the dynamic, outspoken Rex Stout himself.

He paid us a visit the day he stopped the bullet.

Ben Jensen was a publisher, a politician, and, in my opinion, a dope. I had had a sneaking idea that he would have gone ahead and bought the inside Army dope that Captain Root had offered to sell him if he had been able to figure out a way of using it without any risk of losing a hunk of hide. But he had played it safe and had cooperated with Nero Wolfe like a good little boy. That had been a couple of months before.

Now, early on a Tuesday morning, he phoned to say he wanted to see Wolfe. When I told him that Wolfe would be occupied with the orchids, as usual, until eleven o’clock, he fussed a little and made a date for eleven sharp. He arrived five minutes ahead of time, and I escorted him into the office and invited him to deposit his big, bony frame in the red leather chair.

After he sat down he asked me, “Don’t I remember you? Aren’t you Major Goodwin?”

“Yep.”

“You’re not in uniform.”

“I was just noticing,” I said, “that you need a haircut. At your age, with your gray hair, it looks better trimmed. More distinguished. Shall we continue with the personal remarks?”

There was the clang of Wolfe’s personal elevator out in the hall, and a moment later Wolfe entered, exchanged greetings with the caller and got himself, all of his two hundred and sixty-some pounds lowered into his personal chair behind his desk.

Ben Jensen said, “Something I wanted to show you — got it in the mail this morning,” and took an envelope from his pocket and stood up to hand it across. Wolfe glanced at the envelope, removed a piece of paper from it and glanced at that, and passed them along to me. The envelope was addressed to Ben Jensen, neatly handprinted in ink. The piece of paper had been dipped from something, all four edges, with scissors or a sharp knife, and it had printed on it, not by hand, in large, black type:

Wolfe murmured, “Well, sir?”

“I can tell you,” I put in, “free for nothing, where this came from.” Jensen snapped at me, “You mean who sent it?”

“Oh, no. For that I would charge. It was clipped from an ad for a movie called Meeting at Dawn. The movie of the century. I saw the ad last week in The American Magazine. I suppose it’s in all the magazines. If you could find—”

Wolfe made a noise at me and murmured again at the fidgeting Jensen, “Well, sir?”

“What am I going to do?” Jensen demanded.

“I’m sure I don’t know. Have you any notion who sent it?”

“No. None at all.” Jensen sounded grieved. “Damn it, I don’t like it. It’s not just the usual junk from an anonymous crank. Look at it! It’s direct and to the point. I think someone’s going to try to kill me, and I don’t know who or why or when or how. I suppose tracing it is out of the question, but I want some protection. I want to buy it from you.”

I put up a hand to cover a yawn. I knew there would be nothing doing — no case, no fee, no excitement. In the years I had been living in Nero Wolfe’s house on West 35th Street, acting as goad, prod, lever, irritant, and chief assistant in the detective business, I had heard him tell at least fifty scared people, of all conditions and ages, that if someone had determined to kill them and was going to be stubborn about it he would probably succeed.

On occasion, when the bank balance was doing a dive, he had furnished Gather or Durkin or Panzer or Keems as a bodyguard at a 100 per cent mark-up, but now they were all very busy fighting Japs, and anyhow we had just deposited a five-figure check from a certain client.

Jensen got sore, naturally, but Wolfe only murmured at him that he might succeed in interesting the police, or that we would be glad to give him a list of reliable detective agencies which would provide companions for his movements as long as he remained alive — at sixty bucks for twenty-four hours. Jensen said that wasn’t it, he wanted to hire Wolfe’s brains. Wolfe merely made a face and shook his head. Then Jensen wanted to know what about Goodwin? Wolfe said that Major Goodwin was an officer in the United States Army.

“He’s not in uniform,” Jensen growled.

Wolfe was patient. “Officers in Military Intelligence on special assignments,” he explained, “have freedoms. Major Goodwin’s special assignment is to assist me in various projects entrusted to me by the Army. For which I am not paid. I have little time now for my private business. I think, Mr. Jensen, you should move and act with reasonable precaution for a while. For example, in licking the flaps of envelopes — such things as that. Examine the strip of mucilage. Nothing is easier than to remove mucilage from an envelope flap and replace it with a mixture containing a deadly poison. Any door you open, anywhere, stand to one side and fling the door wide with a push or a pull before crossing the sill. Things like that.”

“Good God,” Jensen muttered.

Wolfe nodded. “That’s how it is. But keep in mind that this fellow has severely restricted himself, if he’s not a liar. He says he will watch you die. That greatly limits him in method and technique. He or she has to be there when it happens. So I advise prudence and a decent vigilance. Use your brains, but give up the idea of renting mine. No panic is called for... Archie, how many people have threatened to take my life in the past ten years?”

I pursed my lips. “Oh, maybe twenty-two.”

“Pfui.” He scowled at me. “At least a hundred. And I am not dead yet, Mr. Jensen.”

Jensen pocketed his clipping and envelope and departed, no better off than when he came except for the valuable advice about licking envelopes and opening doors. I felt kind of sorry for him and took the trouble to wish him good luck as I escorted him to the front door and let him out to the street, and even used some breath to tell him that if he decided to try an agency, Cornwall & Mayer had the best men.

Then I went back to the office and stood in front of Wolfe’s desk, facing him, and pulled my shoulders back and expanded my chest. I took that attitude because I had some news to break to him and thought it might help to look as much like an army officer as possible.

“I have an appointment,” I said, “at nine o’clock Thursday morning, in Washington, with General Carpenter.”

Wolfe’s brows went up a millimeter. “Indeed?”

“Yes, sir. At my request. I wish to take an ocean trip. I want to get a look at a Jap. I would like to catch one, if it can be done without much risk, and pinch him and make some remarks to him. I have thought up a crushing remark to make to a Jap and would like to use it.”

“Nonsense.” Wolfe was placid. “Your three requests to be sent overseas have been denied.”

“Yeah, I know.” I kept my chest out. “But that was just colonels and old Fife. Carpenter will see my point. I admit you’re a great detective, the best orchid-grower in New York, a champion eater and beer-drinker, and a genius. But I’ve been working for you a hundred years — anyhow, a lot of years — and this is a hell of a way to spend a war. I’m going to see General Carpenter and lay it out. Of course he’ll phone you. I appeal to your love of country, your vanity, your finer instincts what there is of them, and your dislike of Japs. If you tell Carpenter it would be impossible for you to get along without me, I’ll put pieces of gristle in your crabmeat and sugar in your beer.”

Wolfe opened his eyes and glared at me. The mere suggestion of sugar in his beer made him speechless.

That was Tuesday. The next morning, Wednesday, the papers headlined the murder of Ben Jensen on the front page. Eating breakfast in the kitchen with Fritz, as usual, I was only halfway through the report in the Times when the doorbell rang, and when I answered it I found on the stoop our old friend, Inspector Cramer, of the homicide squad.

Nero Wolfe said, “Not interested, not involved, and not curious.”

He was a sight, as he always was when propped up in bed with his breakfast tray. The custom was for Fritz, his chef, to deliver the tray to his room on the second floor at eight o’clock. It was now 8:15, and already down the gullet were the peaches and cream, most of the bacon, and two thirds of the eggs, not to mention coffee and the green tomato jam. The black silk coverlet was folded back, and you had to look to tell where the yellow percale sheet ended and the yellow pajamas began. Few people except Fritz and me ever got to see him like that, but he had stretched a point for Inspector Cramer, who knew that from nine to eleven he would be up in the plant-rooms with the orchids, and unavailable.

“In the past dozen years,” Cramer said in his ordinary growl, without any particular feeling, “you have told me, I suppose, in round figures, ten million lies.”

The commas were chews on his unlighted cigar. He looked the way he always did when he had been working all night — peevish and put upon but under control, all except his hair, which had forgotten where the part went.

Wolfe, who was hard to rile at breakfast, swallowed toast and jam and then coffee, ignoring the insult.

Cramer said, “He came to see you yesterday morning, twelve hours before he was killed. You don’t deny that.”

“And I have told you what for,” Wolfe said politely. “He had received that threat and said he wanted to hire my brains. I declined to work for him and he went away. That was all.”

“Why did you decline to work for him? What had he done to you?”

“Nothing.” Wolfe poured coffee. “I don’t do that kind of work. A man whose life is threatened anonymously is either in no danger at all, or his danger is so acute and so ubiquitous that his position is hopeless. My only previous association with Mr. Jensen was in connection with an attempt by an army captain named Root to sell him inside army information for political purposes. Together we got the necessary evidence, and Captain Root was court-martialed. Mr. Jensen was impressed, so he said, by my handling of that case. I suppose that was why he came to me when he decided that he wanted help.”

“Did he think the threat came from someone connected with Captain Root?”

“No. Root wasn’t mentioned. He said he had no idea who intended to kill him.”

Cramer humphed. “That’s what he told Tim Cornwall, too. Cornwall thinks you passed because you knew or suspected it was too hot to handle. Naturally, Cornwall is bitter. He has lost his best man.”

“Indeed,” Wolfe said mildly. “If that was his best man...”

“So Cornwall says,” Cramer insisted, “and he’s dead. Name of Doyle; been in the game twenty years, with a good record. The picture as we’ve got it doesn’t necessarily condemn him. Jensen went to Cornwall & Mayer yesterday about noon, and Cornwall assigned Doyle as a guard.

“We’ve traced all their movements — nothing special. In the evening Doyle went along to a meeting at a mid town club. They left the club at eleven-twenty, and apparently went straight home, on the subway or bus, to the apartment house where Jensen lived on Seventy-third Street near Madison. It was eleven-forty-five when they were found dead on the sidewalk at the entrance to the apartment house. Both shot in the heart with a thirty-eight, Doyle from behind and Jensen from the front. We have the bullets. No powder marks. No nothing.”

Wolfe murmured sarcastically, “Mr. Cornwall’s best man.”

“Nuts,” Cramer objected to the sarcasm. “He was shot in the back. There’s a narrow passage ten paces away where the guy could have hid. Or the shots could have come from a passing car, Or from across the street. We haven’t found anybody who heard the shots. The doorman was in the basement stoking the water heater, the excuse for that being that they’re short of men like everybody else. The elevator man was on his way to the tenth floor with a passenger, a tenant. The bodies were discovered by two women on their way home from a movie. It must have happened not more than a minute before they came by, but they had just got off a Madison Avenue bus at the corner.”

Wolfe got out of bed, which was an operation deserving an audience. He glanced at the clock on the bed table. It was 8:35.

“I know, I know,” Cramer growled. “You’ve got to get dressed and get upstairs to your horticulture... The tenant going up in the elevator was a prominent doctor who hardy knew Jensen by sight. The two women who found the bodies are Seventh Avenue models who never heard of Jensen. The elevator man has worked there over twenty years without displaying a grudge, and Jensen was a generous tipper and popular with the bunch. The doorman is a fat nitwit who was hired two weeks ago only because of the manpower situation and doesn’t know the tenants by name.

“Beyond those, all we have is the population of New York City and the guests who arrive and depart daily and nightly. That’s why I came to you, and for the lord’s sake give me what you’ve got. You can see that I need it.”

“Mr. Cramer.” The mountain of yellow pajamas moved. “I repeat. I am not interested, not involved, and not curious.” Wolfe headed for the bathroom.

Exit Cramer — mad.

Back in the office there was the morning mail. I was getting toward the bottom of the stack without encountering anything startling or promising when I slit another envelope, and there it was.

I stared at it. I picked up the envelope and stared at that. I don’t often talk to myself, but I said, loud enough for me to hear, “My goodness.” Then I left the rest of the mail for later and went and mounted the three flights to the plant-rooms on the roof. Proceeding through the first three departments, past everything from rows of generating flasks to Cattleya hybridscovered with blooms, I found Wolfe in the potting-room, with Theodore Horstmann, the orchid nurse, examining a crate of sphagnum that had just arrived.

“Well?” he demanded, with no sign of friendliness. The general idea was that when he was up there I interrupted him at my peril.

“I suppose,” I said carelessly, “that I shouldn’t have bothered you, but I ran across something in the mail that I thought you’d find amusing,” and I put them 011 the bench before him, side by side: the envelope with his name and address printed on it by hand, in ink, and the piece of paper that had been clipped from something with scissors or a sharp knife, reading in large, black type, printed, but not by hand:

“It sure is a coincidence,” I remarked, grinning at him.

Wolfe said without any perceptible quiver, “I’ll look over the mail at eleven o’clock as usual.”

It was the grand manner, all right. Seeing he was impervious, I retrieved the exhibits without a word, returned to the office, and busied myself with the chores.

It was eleven on the dot when he came down, and began the routine. Not until Fritz had brought the beer and he had irrigated his interior did he lean back in his chair, let his eyes go hall shut, and observe, “You will, of course, postpone your trip to Washington.”

I let my frank, open countenance betray surprise. “I can’t. I have an appointment with a Lieutenant General. Anyhow, why?” I indicated the envelope and clipping on his desk. “That tomfoolery? No panic is called for. I doubt the urgency of your peril. A man planning a murder doesn’t spend his energy clipping pieces out of adver—”

“You are going to Washington?”

“Yes, sir. I have a date. Of course, I could phone Carpenter and tell him your nerves are a little shaky on account of an anony—”

“When do you leave?”

“I have a seat on the six o’clock train.”

“Very well. Then we have the day. Your notebook.”

Wolfe leaned forward to pour beer and drink, and then leaned back again. “I offer a comment on your jocosity. When Mr. Jensen called here yesterday and showed us that thing, we had no inkling of the character of the person who had sent it. It might have been merely the attempt of a coward to upset his digestion.

“However, we no longer enjoy that ignorance. This person not only promptly killed Mr. Jensen, with wit equal to his determination, but also killed Mr. Doyle, a stranger, whose presence could not have been foreseen. We now know that this person is coldblooded, ruthless, quick to decide and to act, and an egomaniac.”

“Yes, sir. I agree. If you go to bed and stay there until I get back from Washington, letting no one but Fritz enter the room, I may not be able to control my tongue when with you, but actually I will understand and I won’t tell anybody. You need a rest, anyway. And don’t lick any envelopes.”

“Bah.” Wolfe wiggled a finger at me. “That thing was not sent to you. Presumably you are not on the agenda.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And this person is dangerous and requires attention.”

“I agree.”

Wolfe shut his eves. “Very well. Take notes as needed... It may be assumed, if this person means business with me as he did with Mr. Jensen, that this is connected with the case of Captain Root. I had no other association with Mr. Jensen... Learn the whereabouts of Captain Root.”

“The court-martial gave him three years in the cooler.”

“I know it. Is he there? Also, what about that young woman, his fiancée, who raised such a ruction about it? Her name is Jane Geer.” Wolfe’s eyes half opened for an instant. “You have a habit of knowing how to locate personable young women without delay. Have you seen that one recently?”

“Oh,” I said offhand, “I sort of struck up an acquaintance with her. I guess I can get in touch with her. But I doubt—”

“Do so. I want to see her... Excuse me for interrupting, but you have a train to catch... Also, inform Inspector Cramer of this development and suggest that he investigate Captain Root’s background, his relatives and intimates, anyone besides Miss Geer who might thirst for vengeance at his disgrace. I’ll do that. If Captain Root is in prison, arrange with General Fife to bring him here. I want to have a talk with him... Where is the clipping received yesterday by Mr. Jensen? Ask Mr. Cornwall and Mr. Cramer. There is the possibility that this is not another one like it, but the same one.”

I shook my head. “No, sir. This one is clipped closer to the printing at the upper right.”

“I noticed that, but ask, anyway. Inspect the chain bolts on the doors and test the night gong in your room. Fritz will sleep in your room tonight. I shall speak to Fritz and Theodore. All of this can easily be attended to by telephone except Miss Geer, and that is your problem. When will you return from Washington?”

“I should be able to catch a noon train back — my appointment’s at nine. Getting here around five.” I added earnestly, “If I can clear it with Carpenter to cross the ocean, I will, of course, arrange not to leave until this ad-clipper has been attended to.”

“Don’t hurry back on my account. Or alter your plans. You receive a salary from the Government.” Wolfe’s tone was dry, sharp, and icy. He went on with it: “Please get General Fife on the phone. We’ll begin by learning about Captain Root.”

The program went smoothly, all except the Jane Geer number. If it hadn’t been for her I’d have been able to make the six o’clock train with hours to spare. Fife reported back on Root in thirty minutes, to the effect that Root was in the clink on government property down in Maryland, and would be transported to New York without delay for an interview with Wolfe.

Cornwall said he had turned the clipping and envelope Jensen had received over to Inspector Cramer, and Cramer verified it and said he had it. When I had explained the situation, Cramer emitted a hoarse chuckle, and said offensively, “So Wolfe is not interested, involved, or curious.” I knew Wolfe would have a visit from him. Not pleasant.

On Jane Geer the luck was low. When, before noon, I phoned the advertising agency she worked for, I was told that she was somewhere on Long Island admiring some client’s product for which she was to produce copy. When I finally did get her after four o’clock, she went willful on me, presumably because she regarded my phoning five times in one day as evidence that my primal impulses had been aroused and I was beginning to pant. She would not come to Nero Wolfe’s place unless I bought her a cocktail first. So I met her a little after five at the Stork Club.

She had put in a full day’s work, but, looking at her, you might have thought she had come straight from an afternoon nap.

She darted her brown eyes at me. “Let me,” she said, “see your right forefinger.”

I poked it at her. She rubbed its tip gently with the tip of her own. “I wondered if it had a callus. After dialing my number five times in less than five hours.”

She sipped her Tom Collins, bending her head to get her lips to the straw. A strand of her hair slipped forward over an eye and a cheek, and I reached across and used the same finger to put it back in place.

“I took that liberty,” I told her, “because I wish to have an unobstructed view of your lovely phiz. I want to see if you turn pale.”

“Overwhelmed by you so near?”

“No, I know that reaction — I correct for it. Anyhow, I doubt if I’m magnetic right now, because I’m sore at you for making me miss a train.”

“I didn’t phone you this time. You phoned me.”

“Okay.” I drank. “You said on the phone that you still don’t like Nero Wolfe and you wouldn’t go to see him unless you knew what for, and maybe not even then. So this is what for: He wants to ask you whether you intend to kill him yourself or hire the same gang that you got to kill Jensen and Doyle.”

“Mercy.” She looked my face over. “You’d better put your humor on a diet. It’s taking on weight.”

I shook my head. “Ordinarily, I would enjoy playing catch with you, as you are aware, but I can’t miss all the trains. Because Wolfe’s life has been threatened in the same manner as Jensen’s was, the supposition is that Jensen was murdered for revenge, for what he did to Captain Root. Because of the cutting remarks you made when Root was trapped, and your general attitude, there is a tendency to want to know what you have been doing lately.”

“Nero Wolfe seriously thinks I — did that? Or had it done?”

“I didn’t say so. He wants to discuss it.”

Her eyes flashed. Her tone took on an edge: “It is also extremely corny. And the police. Have you kindly arranged that when Wolfe finishes with me I proceed to headquarters?”

“Listen, Tiger-eyes.” She let me cut her off, which was a pleasant surprise. “Have you noticed me sneaking up on you from behind? If so, draw it for me. I have explained a situation. Your name has not been mentioned to the police, though they have consulted us. But since the police are onto the Root angle they are apt to get a steer in your direction without us, and it wouldn’t hurt if Wolfe had already satisfied himself that you wouldn’t kill a fly.”

“By what process?” She was scornful. “I suppose he asks me if I ever committed murder, and I smile and say no, and he apologizes and gives me an orchid.”

“Not quite. He’s a genius. He asks you questions like do you bait your own hook when you go fishing, and you reveal yourself without knowing it.”

“It sounds fascinating.” Her eyes suddenly changed. “I wonder,” she said.

“What is it? — and we’ll both wonder.”

“Sure.” Her eyes had changed more. “This wouldn’t by any chance be a climax you’ve been working up to? You, with a thousand girls and women, so that you have to issue ration books so many minutes to a coupon, and yet finding so much time for me? Leading up to this idiotic frame—”

“Turn that one off,” I broke in, “or I’ll begin to get suspicious, myself. You know darned well why I have found time for you, having a mirror as you do. I have been experimenting to test my emotional reaction to form, color, touch, and various perfumes, and I have been deeply grateful for your cooperation. I thank you — but that is all.”

“Ha, ha.” She stood up, her eyes not softening nor her tone melting. “I am going to see Nero Wolfe. I welcome an opportunity to reveal myself to Nero Wolfe. Do I go or are you taking me?”

I took her. I paid the check and we went out and got a taxi.

But she didn’t get to see Wolfe.

Since chain-bolt orders were in effect, my key wouldn’t let us in and I had to ring the doorbell for Fritz. I had just pushed the button, when who should appear, mounting the steps to join us on the stoop, but the army officer that they use for a model when they want to do a picture conveying the impression that masculine comeliness will win the war. I admit he was handsome; I admitted it to myself right then, when I first saw him. He looked preoccupied and concentrated, but, even so, he found time for a glance at Jane.

At that moment the door swung open and I spoke to Fritz: “Okay, thanks. Is Mr. Wolfe in the office?”

“No, he’s up in his room.”

“All right; I’ll take it.” Fritz departed, and I maneuvered into position to dominate the scene, on the doorsill facing out. I spoke to the masculine model: “Yes, Major? This is Nero Wolfe’s place.”

“I know it is.” He had a baritone voice that suited him to a T. “I want to see him. My name is Emil Jensen. I am the son of Ben Jensen, who was killed last night.”

“Oh.” There wasn’t much resemblance, but that’s nature’s lookout. I have enough to do. “Mr. Wolfe has an appointment. It would be handy if I could tell him what you want.”

“I want to — consult him. If you don’t mind, I’d rather tell him.” He smiled to take the sting off. Probably Psychological Warfare Branch.

“I’ll see. Come on in.”

I made room for Jane, and he followed her. After attending to the bolt I escorted them to the office, invited them to sit, and went to the phone on my desk and buzzed Wolfe’s room.

“Yes?” Wolfe’s voice came.

“Archie. Miss Geer is here. Also, Major Emil Jensen just arrived. He is the son of Ben Jensen and prefers to tell you what he wants to consult you about.”

“Give them both my regrets. I am engaged and can see no one.”

“Engaged for how long?”

“Indefinitely. I can make no appointments for this week.”

“But you may remember—”

“Archie! Tell them that please.” The line died.

So I told them that. They were not pleased. The Lord knows what kind of performance Jane would have put on if she hadn’t been restrained by the presence of a stranger; as it was, she didn’t have to fumble around for pointed remarks. Jensen wasn’t indignant, but he sure was stubborn. During an extended conversation that got nowhere, I noticed a gradual increase in their inclination to cast sympathetic glances at each other.

I thought it might help matters along, meaning that they might clear out sooner if I changed the subject, so I said emphatically, “Miss Geer, this is Major Jensen.”

He got to his feet, bowed to her like a man who knows how to bow, and told her, “How do you do? It looks as if it’s hopeless, at least for this evening, for both of us. I’ll have to hunt a taxi, and it would be a pleasure if you’ll let me drop you.”

So they left together. Going down the stoop, which I admit was moderately steep, he indicated not obtrusively that he had an arm there, and she rested her fingers in the bend of it to steady herself. That alone showed astonishing progress in almost no time at all, for she was by no means a born clinger.

Oh, well, I was a major too. I shrugged indifferently as I shut the door. Then I sought Wolfe’s room, knocked, and was invited in.

Standing in the doorway to his bathroom, facing me, his old-fashioned razor in his hand, all lathered up, he demanded brusquely, “What time is it?”

“Six-thirty.”

“When is the next train?”

“Seven o’clock. But what the hell, apparently there is going to be work to do. I can put it off to next week.”

“No. It’s on your mind. Get that train.”

I tried one more stab. “My motive is selfish. If, while I am sitting talking to Carpenter in the morning, word comes that you have been killed, or even temporarily disabled, he’ll blame me and I won’t stand a chance. So for purely selfish reasons—”

“Confound it!” he barked. “You’ll miss that train! I have no intention of getting killed. Get out of here!”

I faded...

After the war I intend to run for Congress and put through laws about generals. I have a theory that generals should be rubbed liberally with neat’s-foot oil before being taken out and shot. Though I doubt if I would have bothered with the oil in the case of General Carpenter that morning if I had had a free hand.

I was a major. So I sat and said yessir yessir yessir, while he told me that he had given me the appointment only because he thought I wanted to discuss something of importance, and that I would stay where I was put, and shut my trap about it. When it was all over, he observed that since I was in Washington I might as well confer with the staff on various cases, finished and unfinished, and I would report immediately to Colonel Dickey.

I doubt if I made a good impression, considering my state of mind. They kept me around, conferring, all day Thursday and most of Friday. I phoned Wolfe that I was detained. By explaining the situation on 35th Street I could have got permission to beat it back to New York, but I wasn’t going to give that collection of brass headgear an excuse to giggle around that Nero Wolfe didn’t have brains enough to keep on breathing, in his own house, without me there to look after him. Wolfe would have had my scalp.

But I was tempted to hop a plane when, late Thursday evening, I saw the ad in the Star. I had been too busy all day to take more than a glance at the New York papers I’d been following for news of the Jensen case. I was alone in my hotel room when it caught my eye, bordered and spaced to make a spot:

I read it through four times, stared at it disapprovingly for an additional two minutes, and then reached for the phone and put in a New York call. I got Fritz Brenner on the phone, and he assured me Wolfe was all right.

Getting ready for bed, I tried to figure out in what manner, if I were making preparations to kill Nero Wolfe, I could make use of an assistant, hired on a temporary basis at a hundred bucks a day, who was a physical counterpart of Wolfe. The two schemes I devised weren’t very satisfactory, and the one I hit on after I got my head on the pillow was even worse, so I flipped the switch on the nervous system and let the muscles quit...

In the morning I finished conferring and made tracks for New York.

Arriving at Wolfe’s house on 35th Street a little before eleven, I gave the button three short pushes as usual, and in a moment there were footsteps, and the curtain was pulled aside and Fritz was peering at me through the glass panel. Satisfied, he let me in.

I saw Wolfe was in the office, since the door to it was open and the light shining through, so I breezed down the hall and on in.

“I am a fug—” I began, and stopped. Wolfe’s chair behind his desk, his own chair and no one else’s under any circumstances, was occupied by the appropriate mass of matter in comparatively human shape — in other words, by a big, fat man — but it wasn’t Nero Wolfe. I had never seen him before.

Fritz, who had stayed to bolt the door, came at me from behind, talking. The occupant of the chair neither moved nor spoke, but merely leered at me. Fritz was telling me that Mr. Wolfe was up in his room.

The specimen in the chair said in a husky croak, “I suppose you’re Goodwin. Archie. Have a good trip?”

I stared at him. In a way I wished I was back at the Pentagon, and in another way I wished I had come sooner.

He said, “Fritz, bring me another highball.”

Fritz said, “Yes, sir.”

He said, “Have a good trip, Archie?”

That was enough of that. I marched out to the hall and up a flight, went to Wolfe’s door and tapped on it, and called, “Archie!” Wolfe’s voice told me to come in.

He was seated in his number two chair, under the light, reading a book. He was fully dressed, and there was nothing in his appearance to indicate that he had lost his mind.

I did not intend to give him the satisfaction of sitting there smirking and enjoying fireworks. “Well,” I said casually, “I got back. If you’re sleepy we can wait till morning for conversation.”

“I’m not sleepy.” He closed the book, with a finger inserted at his page. “Are you going overseas?”

“You know damn well I’m not.” I sat down. “We can discuss that at some future date when I’m out of the Army. It’s a relief to find you all alive and well around here. It’s very interesting down in Washington. Everybody on their toes.”

“No doubt. Did you stop in the office downstairs?”

“I did. So you put that ad in the Star yourself. How do you pay him — cash every day? Did you figure out the deductions for income tax and social security? I sat down at my desk and began to report to him. I thought it was you. Until he ordered Fritz to bring him a highball, and I know you hate highballs. Deduction. It reminds me of the time your daughter from Yugoslavia showed up—”

“Archie. Shut up.”

Wolfe put the book down and shifted in his chair, with the routine grunts. When the new equilibrium was established he said, “You will find details about him on a slip of paper in the drawer of your desk. He is a retired architect named H. H. Hackett, out of funds, and an unsurpassed nincompoop with the manners of a wart hog. I chose him, from those answering the advertisement, because his appearance and build were the most suitable and he is sufficiently an ass to be willing to risk his life for a hundred dollars a day.”

“If he keeps on calling me ‘Archie’ the risk will become—”

“If you please.” Wolfe wiggled a finger at me. “Do you think the idea of him sitting there in my chair is agreeable to me? He may be dead tomorrow or the next day. I told him that. This afternoon he went to Mr. Ditson’s place in a taxicab to look at orchids, and came back ostentatiously carrying two plants. Tomorrow afternoon you will drive him somewhere and bring him back, and again in the evening. Dressed for the street, wearing my hat and lightweight coat, carrying my stick, he would deceive anyone except you.”

“Yes, sir. But why couldn’t you just stay in the house? You do, anyway. And be careful who gets in. Until...”

“Until what?”

“Until the bird that killed Jensen is caught.”

“Bah!” He glared at me. “By whom? By Mr. Cramer? What do you suppose he is doing now? Pfui! Major Jensen, Mr. Jensen’s son, arriving home on leave from Europe five days ago, learned that during his absence his father had sued his mother for divorce. The father and son quarreled, which was not unique. But Mr. Cramer has a hundred men trying to collect evidence that will convict Major Jensen of killing his father! Utterly intolerable asininity. For what motive could Major Jensen have for killing me?”

“Well, now.” My eyebrows were up. “I wouldn’t just toss it in the wastebasket. What if the major figured that sending you the same kind of message he sent his father would make everybody react the way you are doing?”

Wolfe shook his head. “He didn’t. Unless he’s a born fool. He would have known that merely sending me that thing would be inadequate, that he would have to follow it up by making good on the threat: and he hasn’t killed me, and I doubt if he intends to. General Fife has looked up his record for me. Mr. Cramer is wasting his time, his men’s energy, and the money of the people of New York. I am handicapped. The men I have used and can trust have gone to war. You bounce around thinking only of yourself, deserting me. I am confined to this room, left to my own devices, with a vindictive, bloodthirsty maniac waiting an opportunity to kill me.”

He sure was piling it on. But I knew better than to contribute a note of skepticism when he was in one of his romantic moods, having been fired for that once; and, besides, I wouldn’t have signed an affidavit that he was exaggerating the situation. So I only asked him, “What about Captain Root? Did they bring him?”

“Yes. He was here today and I talked with him. He has been in that prison for over a month and asserts that this cannot possibly be connected with him or his. He says Miss Geer has not communicated with him for six weeks or more. His mother is teaching school at Danforth, Ohio; that has been verified by Mr. Cramer; she is there. His father, who formerly ran a filling station at Danforth, abandoned wife and son ten years ago, and is said to be working in a war plant in Oklahoma. Wife and son prefer not to discuss him. No brother or sister. According to Captain Root, there is no one on earth who would conceivably undertake a ride on the subway, let alone multiple murder, to avenge him.”

“He might just possibly be right.”

“Nonsense. There was no other slightest connection between Mr. Jensen and me. I’ve asked General Fife to keep Root in New York and to request the prison authorities to look over his effects there if he has any.”

“When you get an idea in your head—”

“I never do. As you mean it. I react to stimuli. In this instance I am reacting in the only way open to me. The person who shot Mr. Jensen and Mr. Doyle is bold to the point of rashness. He can probably be tempted to proceed with his program.”...

I went up to my room.

The gong was a dingus under my bed. The custom was that when I retired at night I turned a switch, and if anyone put his foot down in the hall within ten feet of Wolfe’s door the gong gonged. It had been installed on account of a certain occurrence some years previously, when Wolfe had got a knife stuck in him. The thing had never gone off except when we tested it, and in my opinion never would, but I never failed to switch it on, because if Wolfe had stepped into the hall some night and the gong hadn’t sounded it would have caused discussion.

This night, with a stranger in the house, I was glad it was there.

In the morning breakfast was all over the place. Afterward I spent an hour up in the plant-rooms with Wolfe.

We got to details. Jane Geer was making a nuisance of herself. I understood now, of course, why Wolfe had refused to see her Wednesday evening. After sending me to get her he had conceived the strategy of hiring a double, and he didn’t want her to get a look at the real Nero Wolfe, because if she did she would be less likely to be deceived by the counterfeit and go to work on him.

She had phoned several times, insisting on seeing him, and had come to the house Friday morning and argued for five minutes with Fritz through the three-inch crack which the chain bolt permitted the door to open to. Now Wolfe had an idea for one of his elaborate charades. I was to phone her to come to see Wolfe at six o’clock that afternoon. When she came I was to take her in to Hackett. Wolfe would coach Hackett for the interview.

I looked skeptical.

Wolfe said, “It will give her a chance to kill Mr. Hackett.”

I snorted. “With me right there to tell her when to cease firing.”

“I admit it is unlikely, but it will give me an opportunity to see her and hear her. I shall be at the hole.”

So that was really the idea. He would be in the passage, a sort of alcove, at the kitchen end of the downstairs hall, looking through into the office by means of the square hole in the wall. The hole was camouflaged on the office side by a picture that was transparent one way. He loved to have an excuse to use it.

Major Jensen had phoned once and been told that Wolfe was engaged; apparently he wasn’t as persistent as Jane.

When I got down to the office Hackett was there in Wolfe’s chair, eating cookies and getting crumbs on the desk.

From the phone on my desk I got Jane Geer at her office. “Archie,” I told her.

She snapped, “Archie who?”

“Oh, come, come. We haven’t sicked the police onto you, have we? Nero Wolfe wants to see you.”

“He does? Ha, ha. He doesn’t act like it.”

“He has reformed. I showed him a lock of your hair. I showed him a picture of Elsa Maxwell and told him it was you. This time he won’t let me come after you.”

“Neither will I.”

“Okay. Be here at six o’clock and you will be received. Six o’clock today p.m. Will you?”

She admitted that she would.

I made a couple of other Calls and did some miscellaneous chores. But I found that my jaw was getting clamped tighter and tighter on account of an irritating noise. Finally I spoke to the occupant of Wolfe’s chair: “What kind of cookies are those?”

“Gingersnaps.” Evidently the husky croak was his normal voice.

“I didn’t know we had any.”

“We didn’t. I asked Fritz. He doesn’t seem to know about ginger-snaps, so I walked over to Ninth Avenue and got some.”

“When? This morning?”

“Just a little while ago.”

I turned to my phone, buzzed the plant-rooms, got Wolfe, and told him, “Mr. Hackett is sitting in your chair eating gingersnaps. Just a little while ago he walked to Ninth Avenue and bought them. If he pops in and out of the house whenever he sees fit, what are we getting for our hundred bucks?”

Wolfe spoke to the point. I hung up and turned to Hackett and spoke to the point. He was not to leave the house except as instructed by Wolfe or me. He seemed unimpressed.

“All right,” he said; “if that’s the bargain I’ll keep it. But there’s two sides to a bargain. I was to be paid daily in advance, and I haven’t been paid for today. A hundred dollars net.”

I took five twenties from the expense wallet and forked it over.

“I must say,” he commented, folding the bills neatly and stuffing them in his waistband pocket, “this is a large return for a small effort. I am aware that I may earn it — ah, suddenly and unexpectedly.” He leaned toward me. “Though I may tell you confidentially, Archie, that I expect nothing to happen. I am sanguine by nature.”

“Yeah,” I told him, “me too.”

I opened the drawer of my desk, the middle one on the right, where I kept armament, got out the shoulder holster and put it on, and selected the gun that was my property — the other two belonged to Wolfe. There were only three cartridges in it, so I pulled the drawer open farther to get to the ammunition compartment, and filled the cylinder.

As I shoved the gun into the holster I happened to glance at Hackett, and saw that he had a new face. The line of his lips was tight, and his eyes looked startled, wary.

“It hadn’t occurred to me before,” he said, and his voice had changed, too. “This Mr. Wolfe is quite an article, and you’re his man. I am doing this with the understanding that someone may mistake me for Mr. Wolfe and try to kill me, but I have only his word for it that that is actually the situation. If it’s more complicated than that, and the intention is for you to shoot me yourself, I want to say emphatically that that would not be fair.”

I grinned at him sympathetically, trying to make up for my blunder, realizing that I should not have dressed for the occasion in his presence. The sight of the gun, a real gun and real cartridges, had scared him stiff.

“Listen,” I told him earnestly; “you said a minute ago that you expect nothing to happen. You may be right. I’m inclined to agree with you. But in case somebody does undertake to perform, I am wearing this little number” — I patted under my arm where the gun was — “for two purposes: first, to keep you from getting hurt; and, second, if you do get hurt, to hurt him worse.”

It seemed to satisfy him, for his eyes got less concentrated, but he didn’t resume with the gingersnaps. At least, I had accomplished that much.

To tell the truth, by the time the afternoon was over and I had him back in the house again, a little after five-thirty, I had to maintain a firm hold on such details as gingersnaps and his calling me “Archie” to keep from admiring him. During that extended expedition we made stops at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Botanical Gardens, and three or four stores. He occupied the rear seat, of course, because Wolfe always did, and the mirror showed me that he sat back comfortably, taking in the sights, a lot more imperturbable than Wolfe, himself, ever was in a car.

When we made one of our slops and Hackett got out to cross the sidewalk, he was okay. He didn’t hurry or dodge or jerk or weave, but just walked. In Wolfe’s hat and coat and stick, he might even have fooled me. I had to hand it to him, in spite of the fact that the whole show struck me as the biggest bust Wolfe had ever concocted.

Back in the house, I left Hackett in the office and went to the kitchen, where Wolfe was sitting at the big table drinking beer.

I reported: “They tried to get him from the top of the Palisades with a howitzer, but misled him. He was a little bruised on his left elbow from the revolving door at Rusterman’s, but otherwise unhurt.”

Wolfe grunted. “How did he behave?”

“Okay.”

Wolfe grunted again. “After dark we may more reasonably expect results. I repeat what I told you at noon; you will take an active part in the interview with Miss Geer, but you will restrain yourself. If you permit yourself to get fanciful, there is no telling what the effect may be on Mr. Hackett. As you know, his instructions are precise, but his discipline is questionable. See that she speaks up, so I can hear her. Seat her at the corner of my desk farthest from you, so I will have a good view of her face.”

“Yes, sir.”

But, as it turned out, I wasn’t able to obey orders. It was then nearly six o’clock. When the doorbell rang, a few minutes later, and I went to answer it, glancing in at the office on my way down the hall to make sure that Hackett didn’t have his feet up on the desk, I opened the door, to find that Miss Geer hadn’t ventured alone on the streets of the great city, after all. Major Emil Jensen was there with her.

“Well,” I said brightly, “two on one hook?”

Jensen said hello. Jane volunteered, “Major Jensen decided to come on the spur of the moment. We were having cocktails.” She looked me up and down; it was true that I was blocking the way. “May we come in?” Certainly I could have told Jensen we had only one extra chair so he had better go for a walk, but if there was going to be anything accomplished by having either of those two get the idea that Hackett was Nero Wolfe, I would have picked him for the experiment rather than her. On the other hand, with Hackett primed only for her, it would have been crowding our luck to confront him with both of them, and, anyway, I couldn’t take such a chance on my own hook. I needed advice from headquarters. So I decided to herd them into the front room, ask them to wait, and go consult Wolfe.

“Sure,” I said hospitably; “enter.” I had got them seated, and was headed for the hall before noticing an unfortunate fact: The door from the front room to the office was standing open. That was careless of me, but I hadn’t expected complications. If they moved across, as they naturally would, Hackett, sitting in the office, would be in plain sight. But what the hell, that was what he was there for. So I kept going, down the hall to the turn into the alcove at the far end, found Wolfe there ready to take position at the peephole, and muttered to him:

“She brought an outrider along. Major Jensen. I put them in the front room. The door into the office is open. Well?”

He scowled at me. He whispered, “Confound it. Return to the front room by way of the office, closing that door as you go. Tell Major Jensen to wait, that I wish to speak with Miss Geer privately. Take her to the office by way of the hall, and when you—”

Somebody fired a gun.

At least, that’s what it sounded like, and the sound didn’t come from outdoors. The walls and the air vibrated. Judging by the noise, I might have fired it myself, but I hadn’t. I moved. In three jumps I was at the door to the office. Hackett was sitting there, looking startled and speechless. I dashed through to the front room. Jensen and Jane were there, on their feet, she off to the right and he to the left, both also startled and speechless, staring at each other. Their hands were empty, except for Jane’s bag. I might have been inclined to let it go for Hackett biting a gingersnap if it hadn’t been for the smell. I knew that smell.

I snapped at Jensen, “Well?”

“Well yourself.” He had transferred the stare to me. “What the hell was it?”

“Did you fire a gun?”

“No. Did you?”

I pivoted to Jane. “Did you?”

“You — you idiot,” she stammered, trying not to tremble. “Why would I fire a gun?”

“Let me see the one in your hand,” Jensen demanded.

I looked at my hand and was surprised to see a gun in it. I must have snatched it from the holster automatically en route. “Not it,” I said. I poked the muzzle to within an inch of Jensen’s nose. “Was it?”

He sniffed. “No.”

I said, “But a gun was fired inside here. Do you smell it?”

“Certainly I smell it.”

“Okay. Let’s join Mr. Wolfe and discuss it. Through there.” I indicated the door to the office with a flourish of the gun.

Jane started jabbering about a put-up job, but I followed Jensen into the other room.

“This is Mr. Nero Wolfe,” I said. “Sit down.” I was using my best judgment, and figured I was playing it right, because Wolfe was nowhere in sight. I had to decide what to do with them while I found the gun and maybe the bullet.

Jane was still trying to jabber, but she stopped when Jensen blurted, “Wolfe has blood on his head I”

I glanced at Hackett. He was standing up behind the desk, leaning forward with his hand on the desk, staring wildly at the three of us. Blood dribbled down the side of his neck.

I took in breath and yelled, “Fritz!”

He appeared instantly, probably having been standing by in the hall, and when he came I handed him my gun. “If anybody reaches for a handkerchief, shoot.”

“Those instructions,” Jensen said sharply, “are dangerous if he—”

“He’s all right.”

“I would like you to search me.” Jensen stuck his hands toward the ceiling.

“That,” I said, “is more like it,” and crossed to him and explored him from neck to ankles, invited him to relax in a chair, and turned to Jane. She darted me a look of lofty disgust.

I remarked, “If you refuse to stand inspection and then you happen to make a gesture and Fritz shoots you in the tummy, don’t blame me.”

She darted more looks, but took it. I felt her over not quite as comprehensively as I had Jensen, took her bag and glanced in it, and returned it to her, and then stepped around Wolfe’s desk to examine Hackett. After Jensen had announced the blood he had put his hand up to feel, and was staring at the red on his fingers, with his big jaw hanging open.

“My head?” he croaked. “Is it my head?”

The exhibition he was making of himself was no help to Nero Wolfe’s reputation for intrepidity.

After a brief look I told him distinctly, “No, sir. Nothing but a nick in the upper outside corner of your ear.”

“I am not — hurt?”

I could have murdered him. In-stead, I told Fritz, standing there with my gun, that unnecessary movements were still forbidden, and took Hackett to the bathroom in the far corner and shut the door behind us. While I showed him the ear in the mirror and dabbed on some iodine and taped on a bandage, I told him to stay in there until his nerves calmed down and then rejoin us, act detached and superior, and let me do the talking.

As I reappeared in the office, Jane shot at me, “Did you search him?”

I ignored her and circled around Wolfe’s desk for a look at the back of the chair. The head rest was upholstered with brown leather; and about eight inches from the top and a foot from the side edge, a spot that would naturally have been on a line behind Hackett’s left ear as he sat, there was a hole in the leather. I looked behind, and there was another hole on the rear side. I looked at the wall back of the chair and found still another hole, torn into the plaster.

From the bottom drawer of my desk I got a screwdriver and hammer, and started chiseling, ran against a stud, and went to work with the point of my knife. When I finally turned around I held a small object between my thumb and finger. As I did so, Hackett emerged from the bathroom.

“Bullet,” I said informatively. “Thirty-eight. Passed through Mr. Wolfe’s ear and the back of his chair, and ruined the wall.”

Jane sputtered. Jensen sat and gazed at me with narrowed eyes. Hackett shuddered.

“It could be,” Jensen said coldly, “that Wolfe fired that bullet himself.”

“Yeah?” I returned his gaze. “Mr. Wolfe would be glad to let you inspect his face for powder marks.”

“He washed them off in the bathroom,” Jane snapped.

“They don’t wash off...” I continued to Jensen, “I’ll lend you a magnifying glass. You can examine the chair, too.”

By gum, he took me up. He nodded and arose, and I got the glass from Wolfe’s desk, the big one. First he went over the chair, the portion in the neighborhood of the bullet hole, and then crossed to Hackett and gave his face and ear a look. Hackett stood still with his lips compressed and his eyes straight ahead. Jensen gave me back the glass and returned to his seat.

I asked him, “Did Mr. Wolfe shoot himself in the ear?”

“No,” he admitted. “Not unless he had the gun wrapped.”

“Sure.” My tone cut slices off of him. “He tied a pillow around it, held it at arm’s length, pointing it at his ear, and pulled the trigger. How would you like to try demonstrating it? Keeping the bullet within an inch of your frontal lobe?”

He never stopped gazing at me. “I am,” he declared, “being completely objective. With some difficulty.”

“If I understand what happened—” Hackett began, but I cut him off.

“Excuse me, sir. The bullet helps, but the gun would help still more. Let’s be objective, too. We might possibly find the object in the front room.” I moved, touching his elbow to take him along. “Fritz, see that they stay put.”

“I,” said Jensen, getting up, “would like to be present—”

“The hell you would.” I wheeled on him. My voice may have gone up a notch. “Sit down, brother. I am trying not to fly off the handle. Whose house is this, anyway, with bullets zipping around?”

He had another remark to contribute, and so did Jane, but I disregarded them and wangled Hackett ahead of me into the front room and shut the soundproof door.

“It seems incredible to me,” Hackett said, choosing his words carefully, “that one of them could have shot at me from in here, through the open door, without me seeing anything.”

“You said that before, in the bathroom. You also said you didn’t remember whether your eyes were open or shut, or where you were looking, when you heard the shot.”

I moved my face to within fourteen inches of his. “See here. If you are suspecting that I shot at you, or that Wolfe did, you have got fleas or other insects playing tag in your brain and should have it attended to. One thing alone: The way the bullet went, straight past your ear and into the chair-back, it had to come from in front, the general direction of that door and this room. It couldn’t have come from the door in the hall or anywhere else, because we haven’t got a gun that shoots a curve. Now, you will sit down and keep still.”

He grumbled, but obeyed. I surveyed the field. On the assumption that the gun had been fired in that room, I adopted the theory that either it was still there or it had been transported or propelled without. As for transportation, I had got there not more than five seconds after the shot and found them there staring at each other. As for propulsion, the windows were closed and the Venetian blinds down. I preferred the first alternative.

I began to search, but I had the curious feeling that I probably wouldn’t find the gun, no matter how thoroughly I looked; I have never understood why.

If it was a hunch, it was a bad day for hunches, because when I came to the big vase on the table between the windows and peeked into it and saw something white, and stuck my hand in, I felt the gun. Getting it by the trigger guard, I lifted it out. Judging by smell, it had been fired recently, but of course it had had time to cool off. It was an old Granville thirty-eight, next door to rusty. The white object I had seen was an ordinary cotton handkerchief, man’s size, with a tear in it through which the butt of the gun protruded. With proper care about touching, I opened the cylinder and found there were five loaded cartridges and one shell.

Hackett was there beside me, trying to say things. I got brusque with him:

“Yes, it’s a gun, recently fired, and not mine or Wolfe’s. Is it yours? No? Good. Okay, keep your shirt on. We’re going back in there, and there will be sufficient employment for my brain without interference from you. Do not try to help me. If this ends as it ought to, you’ll get an extra hundred. Agreed?”

I’ll be damned if he didn’t say, “Two hundred. I was shot at. I came within an inch of getting killed.”

I told him he’d have to talk the second hundred out of Wolfe, and opened the door to the office and followed him through. He detoured around Jane Geer and went and sat in the chair he had just escaped being a corpse in. I swiveled my own chair to face it out.

Jensen demanded sharply, “What have you got there?”

“This,” I said cheerfully, “is a veteran revolver, a Granville thirty-eight, which has been fired not too long ago.” I lowered it onto my desk. “Fritz, give me back my gun.”

He brought it. I kept it in my hand.

“Thank you. I found this other affair in the vase on the table in there, dressed in a handkerchief. Five unused cartridges and one used. It’s a stranger here. Never saw it before. It appears to put the finishing touch on a critical situation.”

Jane exploded. She called me an unspeakable rat. She said she wanted a lawyer and intended to go to one immediately. She called Hackett three or four things. She said it was the dirtiest frame-up in history. “Now,” she told Hackett, “I know damned well you framed Captain Root! I let that skunk Goodwin talk me out of it! But you won’t get away with it this time!”

Hackett was trying to talk back to her, making his voice louder and louder, and when she stopped for breath he could be heard:

“... will not tolerate it! You come here and try to kill me! You nearly do kill me! Then you abuse me about a Captain Root, and I have never heard of Captain Root!” He was putting real feeling into it; apparently he had either forgotten that he was supposed to be Nero Wolfe, or had got the notion, in all the excitement, that he really was Nero Wolfe. He was proceeding, “Young lady, listen to me! I will not—”

She turned and made for the door. I was immediately on my feet and after her, but halfway across the room I put on the brake, because the doorway had suddenly filled up with a self-propelled massive substance and she couldn’t get through. She stopped, goggle-eyed, and then fell back a couple of paces.

The massive substance advanced, halted, and used its mouth: “How do you do? I am Nero Wolfe.”

He did it well, at top form, and it was quite an effect. Nobody made a chirp. He moved forward, and Jane retreated again.

Wolfe stopped at the corner of his desk and wiggled a finger at Hackett. “Take another chair, sir, if you please?”

Hackett sidled out, without a word, and went to the red leather chair. Wolfe leaned over to peer at the hole in the back of his own chair, and then at the hole in the plaster, grunted, and got himself seated.

“This,” Jensen said, “makes it a farce.”

Jane snapped, “I’m going,” and headed for the door, but I had been expecting that, and with only two steps had her by the arm with a good grip and was prepared to give her the twist if she went thorny on me. Jensen sprang to his feet with both of his hands fists. Evidently in the brief space of forty-eight hours it had developed to the point where the sight of another man laying hands on his Jane started his adrenalin spurting in torrents.

“Stop it!” Wolfe’s voice was a whip. It turned us into a group of statuary. “Miss Geer, you may leave shortly, if you still want to, after I have said something. Mr. Jensen, sit down. Archie, go to your desk, but be ready to use the gun. One of them is a murderer.”

“That’s a lie!” Jensen was visibly breathing. “And who the hell are you?”

“I introduced myself, sir. That gentleman is my temporary employee. When my life was threatened I hired him to impersonate me.”

Jane spat at him, “You fat coward!”

He shook his head. “No, Miss Geer, It is no great distinction not to be a coward, but I can claim it. Not cowardice. Conceit convinced me that only I could catch the person daring and witty enough to kill me. I wished to be alive to do so.”

He turned abruptly to me: “Archie, get Inspector Cramer on the phone.”

Jane and Jensen both started talking at once, with vehemence.

Wolfe cut them off: “If you please! In a moment I shall offer you an alternative: the police or me. Meanwhile, Mr. Cramer can help.” He glanced at Hackett. “If you want to get away from this uproar, there is your room upstairs...”

“I think I’ll stay here,” Hackett declared. “I’m a little interested in this myself, since I nearly got killed.”

“Cramer on,” I told Wolfe.

He lifted his phone from the cradle. “How do you do, sir?... No... No, I have a request to make. If you’ll send a man here right away, HI give him a revolver and a bullet. First, examine the revolver for fingerprints and send me copies. Second, trace the revolver if possible. Third, fire a bullet from it and compare it both with the bullet I am sending you and with the bullets that killed Mr. Jensen and Mr. Doyle. Let me know the results. That’s all... No... Confound it, no! If you come yourself you will be handed the package at the door and not admitted. I’m busy.”

As he hung up I said, “Does Cramer get the handkerchief, too?”

“Let me see it.”

I handed the gun to him, with its butt still protruding through the tear in the handkerchief. Wolfe frowned as he saw that the handkerchief had no laundry mark or any other mark and was of a species that could be bought in almost any dry-goods store.

“We’ll keep the handkerchief,” Wolfe said.

Jensen demanded, “What the devil was it doing there?”

Wolfe’s eyes went shut. He was, of course, tasting Jensen’s expression, tone of voice, and mental longitude and latitude, to try to decide whether innocent curiosity was indicated or a camouflage for guilt. He always shut his eyes when he tasted. In a moment they opened again halfway.

“If a man has recently shot a gun,” he said, “and has had no opportunity to wash, an examination of his hand will furnish incontestable proof. You probably know that. One of you, the one who fired that shot, certainly docs. The handkerchief protected the hand. Under a microscope it would be found to contain many minute particles of explosive and other residue. The fact that it is a man’s handkerchief doesn’t help. Major Jensen would naturally possess a man’s handkerchief. Miss Geer could buy or borrow one.”

“You asked me to stay while you said something,” Jane snapped. She and Jensen were back in their chairs. “You haven’t said anything yet. Where were you when the shot was fired?”

“Pfui.” Wolfe sighed. “Fritz, pack the gun and bullet in a carton, carefully with tissue paper, and give it to the man when he comes. First, bring me beer. Do any of you want beer?”

Evidently no one did.

“Very well, Miss Geer. To assume, or pretend to assume, some elaborate hocus-pocus by the inmates of this house is inane. At the moment the shot was fired I was standing near the kitchen talking with Mr. Goodwin. Since then I have been at a spot from which part of this room can be seen and voices heard.”

His eyes went to Jensen and back to Jane. “One of you two people is apt to make a mistake, and I want to prevent it if possible. I have not yet asked you where you were and what you were doing at the instant the shot was fired. Before I do so I want to say this, that even with the information at hand it is demonstrable that the shot came from the direction of that door to the front room, which was standing open. Mr. Hackett could not have fired it; you, Mr. Jensen, satisfied yourself of that. Mr. Brenner was in the kitchen. Mr. Goodwin and I were together. I warn you one of you — that this is sufficiently provable to satisfy a jury in a murder trial.

“Now, what if you both assert that at the instant you heard the shot you were together, close together perhaps, looking at each other? For the one who fired the gun that would be a blessing, indeed. For the other it might be disastrous in the end, for when the truth is disclosed, as it will be, the question of complicity will arise... How long have you two known each other?”

Jane’s teeth were holding her lower lip. She removed them. “I met him day before yesterday. Here.”

“Indeed. Is that correct, Mr. Jensen?”

“Yes.”

Wolfe’s brows were up. “Hardly long enough to form an attachment to warrant any of the more costly forms of sacrifice. Unless the spark was exceptionally hot, not long enough to weld you into collusion for murder. I hope you understand. Miss Geer, that all that is wanted here is the truth. Where were you and what were you doing when you heard the shot?”

“I was standing by the piano. I had put my bag on the piano and was opening it.”

“Which way were you facing?”

“Toward the window.”

“Were you looking at Mr. Jensen?”

“Not at the moment, no.”

“Thank you.” Wolfe’s eyes moved. “Mr. Jensen?”

“I was in the doorway to the hall, looking down the hall and wondering where Goodwin had gone to. For no particular reason. I was not at that moment looking at Miss Geer.” Wolfe poured beer, which Fritz had brought. “Now we are ready to decide something.” He took them both in. “Miss Geer, you said you wanted to go to a lawyer, heaven protect you. But it would not be sensible to permit either of you to walk out of here, to move and act at your own will and discretion. Since that bullet was intended for me, I reject the notion utterly. On the other hand, we can’t proceed intelligently until I get a report from Mr. Cramer. There is time to be passed.”

Wolfe heaved a sigh. “Archie, take them to the front room and stay there till I send for you. Fritz will answer the bell.”

Two hours of stony silence grow tiresome.

I appreciated the break in the monotony when, a little before nine, I heard the doorbell, and Fritz came in. He said, “Archie, Mr. Wolfe wants you in the office. Inspector Cramer is there with Sergeant Stebbins. I am to stay here.”

If the situation in the front room had been unjovial, the one in the office was absolutely grim. One glance at Wolfe was enough to see that he was in a state of uncontrollable fury, because his forefinger was making the same circle, over and over, on the surface of his desk. Hackett was not in the room, but Sergeant Purley Stebbins was standing by the wall, looking official. Inspector Cramer was in the red leather chair, with his face about the color of the chair.

Wolfe tapped a piece of paper on his desk. “Look at this, Archie.”

I went and looked. It was a search warrant.

Wowie! I was surprised that Cramer was still alive, or Wolfe, either.

Cramer growled, holding himself in, “I’ll try to forget what you just said, Wolfe. It was totally uncalled for. Damn it, you have given me a runaround too many times. There I was, with that gun. A bullet fired from it matched the bullet you sent me and also the two that killed Jensen and Doyle. That’s the gun, and you sent it to me. All right; then you’ve got a client, and when you’ve got a client you keep him right in your pocket. I would have been a fool to come here and start begging you. I’ve begged you before.”

He started to get up. “We’re going to search this house.”

“If you do you’ll never catch the murderer of Mr. Jensen and Mr. Doyle.”

Cramer dropped back in the chair. “I won’t?”

“No, sir.”

“You’ll prevent me?”

“Bah!” Wolfe was disgusted. “Next you’ll be warning me formally that obstruction of justice is a crime. I didn’t say that the murderer wouldn’t be caught, I said you wouldn’t catch him. Because I already have.”

Cramer said, “The hell you have.”

“Yes, sir. Your report on the gun and bullets settles it. But I confess the matter is a little complicated, and I do give you a formal warning: You are not equipped to handle it. I am.” Wolfe shoved the warrant across the desk. “Tear that thing up.”

Cramer shook his head. “You see, Wolfe, I know you. Lord, don’t I know you! But I’m willing to have a talk before I execute it.”

“No, sir.” Wolfe was murmuring again: “I will not submit to duress. I would even prefer to deal with District Attorney Skinner. Tear it up, or proceed to execute it.”

That was a dirty threat. Cramer’s opinion of Skinner was one of the defects of our democratic system of government. Cramer looked at the warrant, at Wolfe, at me, and back at the warrant. Then he picked it up and tore.

“Can the gun be traced?” Wolfe said.

“No. The number’s gone. It dates from about nineteen-ten. And there are no prints on it that are worth anything. Nothing but smudges.”

Wolfe nodded. “Naturally. A much simpler technique than wiping it clean or going around in gloves... The murderer is in this house.”

“I suspected he was. Is he your client?”

“The main complication,” Wolfe said, in his purring tone, “is this: There are a man and a woman in that front room. Granting that one of them is the murderer, which one?”

Cramer frowned at him. “You didn’t say anything about granting. You said that you have caught the murderer.”

“So I have. He or she is in there, under guard. I suppose I’ll have to tell you what happened, if I expect you to start your army of men digging, and it looks as though that’s the only way to go about it. I have no army. To begin with, when I received that threat, I hired a man who resembles me—”

Purley Stebbins nearly bit the end of his tongue off, trying to get it all in his notebook.

Wolfe finished. Cramer sat scowling. Wolfe purred, “Well, sir, there’s the problem. I doubt if it can be solved with what we have, or what is available on the premises. You’ll have to get your men started.”

“I wish,” Cramer growled, “I knew how much dressing you put on that,”

“Not any. I have only one concern in this. I have no client. I withheld nothing and added nothing.”

“Maybe.” Cramer straightened up like a man of action. “Okay, we’ll proceed on that basis and find out. First of all I want to ask them some questions.”

“I suppose you do.” Wolfe detested sitting and listening to someone else ask questions. “You are handicapped, of course, by your official status. Which one do you want first?”

Cramer stood up. “I’ve got to see that room before I talk to either of them. I want to see where things are. Especially that vase.”

Jane was seated on the piano bench. Jensen was on the sofa, but arose as we entered. Fritz was standing by a window.

Wolfe said, “This is Inspector Cramer, Miss Geer.”

She didn’t make a sound or move a muscle.

Wolfe said, “I believe you’ve met the inspector, Mr. Jensen.”

“Yes, I have.” Jensen’s voice had gone unused so long it squeaked, and he cleared his throat. “So the agreement not to call in the police was a farce, too.” He was bitter.

“There was no such agreement. I said that Mr. Cramer couldn’t be kept out of it indefinitely. The bullet that was fired at me — at Mr. Hackett came from the gun that was found in that vase” — Wolfe pointed at it — “and so did those that killed your father and Mr. Doyle. So the field has become — ah, restricted.”

“I insist,” Jane put in, in a voice with no resemblance to any I had ever heard her use before, “on my right to consult a lawyer.”

“Just a minute, now,” Cramer told her in the tone he thought was soothing. “We’re going to talk this over, but wait till I look around a little.”

He proceeded to inspect things, and so did Sergeant Stebbins. They considered distances, and the positions of various objects. Then there was this detail: From what segment of that room could a gun send a bullet through the open door to the office and on through the hole in Wolfe’s chair and the one in the wall? They were working on that together when Wolfe turned to Fritz and asked him, “What happened to the other cushion?”

Fritz was taken aback. “Other cushion?”

“There were six velvet cushions on that sofa. Now there are only five. Did you remove it?”

“No, sir.” Fritz gazed at the sofa and counted. “That’s right. They’ve been rearranged to take up the space. I don’t understand it. They were all here yesterday.”

“Are you sure of that?”

“Yes, sir. Positive.”

“Look for it. Archie, help him.”

It seemed like an odd moment to send out a general alarm for a sofa cushion, but since I had nothing else to do at the moment I obliged.

I finally told Wolfe, “It’s gone. It isn’t in here.”

He muttered at me, “I see it isn’t.”

I stared at him. There was an expression on his face that I knew well. It wasn’t exactly excitement, though it always stirred excitement in me. His neck was rigid, as if to prevent any movement of the head, so as not to disturb the brain, his eyes were half shut and not seeing anything, and his lips were moving, pushing out, then relaxing, then pushing out again.

Suddenly he turned and spoke: “Mr. Cramer! Please leave Mr. Stebbins in here with Miss Geer and Mr. Jensen. You can stay here, too, or come with me, as you prefer. Fritz and Archie, come.” He headed for the office.

Cramer, knowing Wolfe’s tones of voice almost as well as I did, came with us.

Wolfe waited until he was in his chair before he spoke: “I want to know if that cushion is on the premises. Search the house from the cellar up — except the south room; Mr. Hackett is in there lying down. Start in here.”

Cramer barked, “What the hell is all this about?”

“I’ll give you an explanation,” Wolfe told him, “when I have one. I’m going to sit here and work, now, and must not be disturbed.”

He leaned back and closed his eyes, and his lips started moving. Cramer slid farther back in his chair, crossed his legs, and got out a cigar and sank his teeth in it.

Half an hour had passed while I searched the office, when I heard Wolfe let out a grunt. I nearly toppled off the stepladder turning to look at him. He was in motion. He picked up his wastebasket, which was kept at the far corner of his desk, inspected it, shook his head, put it down again, and began opening the drawers of his desk. The first two, the one at the top and the one in the middle, apparently didn’t get him anything, but when he yanked out the double-depth one at the bottom, as far as it would go, he looked in, bent over closer to see better, then closed the drawer and announced, “I’ve found it.”

In those three little words there was at least two tons of self-satisfaction and smirk.

We all goggled at him.

He looked at me: “Archie. Get down off that thing, and don’t fall. Look in your desk and see if one of my guns has been fired.”

I stepped down and went and opened the armament drawer. The first one I picked up was innocent. I tried the second with a sniff and a look, and reported, “Yes, sir. There were six cartridges, and now there are five. Same as the cushions. The shell is here.”

“Tchah! The confounded ass!... Tell Miss Geer and Mr. Jensen that they may come in here if they care to hear what happened, or they may go home or anywhere else. We don’t need them. Take Mr. Stebbins with you upstairs and bring Mr. Hackett down here. Use caution, and search him with great care. He is an extremely dangerous man.”

Naturally, Jane and Jensen voted for joining the throng in the office, and their pose during the balloting was significant. They stood facing each other, with Jensen’s right hand on Jane’s left shoulder, and Jane’s right hand, or perhaps just the fingers, on Jensen’s left forearm. I left it to them to find the way to the office alone, told Purley Stebbins what our job was, and took him upstairs with me.

It was approximately ten minutes later that we delivered our cargo in the office. Even though Mr. Hackett staged one of the most convincing demonstrations of unwillingness to cooperate that I have ever encountered.

We got him to the office in one piece, nothing really wrong with any of us that surgical gauze wouldn’t fix. We propped him in a chair.

I said, “He was reluctant.”

I’ll say one thing for Wolfe — I’ve never seen him gloat over a guy about to get it. He was contemplating Hackett more as an extraordinary object that deserved study.

I said, “Purley thinks he knows him.”

Purley, as was proper, spoke to his superior: “I swear, Inspector, I’m sure I’ve seen him somewhere, but I can’t remember.”

Wolfe nodded. “A uniform makes a difference. I suggest that he was in uniform.”

“Uniform?” Purley scowled. “Army?”

Wolfe shook his head. “Mr. Cramer told me Wednesday morning that the doorman on duty at the apartment house at the time Mr. Jensen and Mr. Doyle were killed was a fat nitwit who had been hired two weeks ago and didn’t know the tenants by name, and also that he claimed to have been in the basement stoking the water heater at the moment the murders were committed. A phone call would tell us whether he is still working there.”

“He isn’t,” Cramer growled. “He left Wednesday afternoon because he didn’t like a place where people were murdered. I never saw him. Some of my men did.”

“Yeah,” Purley said, gazing at Hackett’s face. “By God, it’s him.”

“He is,” Wolfe declared, “a remarkable combination of fool and genius. He came to New York deter-mined to kill Mr. Jensen and me. By the way, Mr. Hackett, you look a little dazed. Can you hear what I’m saying?”

Hackett made no sound.

“I guess you can,” Wolfe went on. “This will interest you. I requested Military Intelligence to have an examination made of the effects of Captain Root at the prison in Maryland. A few minutes ago I phoned for a report, and got it. Captain Root was lying when he stated that he was not in communication with his father and had not been for years. There are several letters from his father among his belongings, dated in the past two months, and they make it evident that his father, whose name is Thomas Root, regards him as a scion to be proud of. To the point of mania.”

Wolfe wiggled a finger at Hackett. “I offer the conjecture that you are in a position to know whether that is correct or not. Is it?”

“One more day,” Hackett said in his husky croak. His hands were twitching. “One more day,” he repeated.

Wolfe nodded. “I know. One more day and you would have killed me, with the suspicion centered on Miss Geer or Mr. Jensen, or both, on account of your flummery here this afternoon. And you would have disappeared.”

Jensen popped up. “You haven’t explained the flummery.”

“I shall, Mr. Jensen.” Wolfe got more comfortable in his chair. “But first that performance Tuesday evening.”

He was keeping his eyes on Hackett. “That was a masterpiece. You decided to kill Mr. Jensen first, which was lucky for me, and, since all apartment house service staffs are short-handed, got a job there as doorman with no difficulty. All you had to do was await an opportunity, with no passers-by or other onlookers. It came the day after you mailed the threat, an ideal situation in every respect except the presence of the man he had hired to guard him.

“Arriving at the entrance to the apartment house, naturally they would have no suspicion of the doorman in uniform. Mr. Jensen probably nodded and spoke to you. With no one else in sight, and the elevator man ascending with a passenger, it was too good an opportunity to lose. Muffling the revolver with some piece of cloth, you shot Mr. Doyle in the back, and when Mr. Jensen whirled at the sound you shot him in the front, and skedaddled for the stairs to the basement and started stoking the water heater. I imagine the first thing you fed it was the cloth with which you had muffled the gun.”

Wolfe moved his eyes. “Does that rattle anywhere, Mr. Cramer?”

“It sounds tight from here,” Cramer said.

“That’s good. Because it is for those murders that Mr. Hackett — or Mr. Root, I suppose I should say — must be convicted. He can’t be electrocuted for hacking a little gash in his own ear.” Wolfe’s eyes moved again, to me. “Archie, did you find any tools in his pockets?”

“Only a boy scout’s dream,” I told him. “One of those knives with scissors, awl, nail file...”

“Let the police have it to look for traces of blood. Just the sort of thing Mr. Cramer docs best.”

“The comedy can wait,” Cramer growled. “I’ll take it as is for Tuesday night and go on from there.”

Wolfe heaved a sigh. “You’re rushing past the most interesting point of all: Mr. Hackett’s answering my advertisement for a man. Was he sufficiently acute to realize that its specifications were roughly a description of me, suspect that I was the advertiser, and proceed to take advantage of it to approach me? Or was it merely that he was short of funds and attracted by the money offered?

“Actually, I am sure that he saw it as precisely the kind of opportunity I meant it to be — an opportunity to kill Nero Wolfe. Nor was my insertion of the advertisement a mere shot in the dark. I was very sure we were dealing with a dangerous killer and a bold ingenious personality.

“Accordingly, Archie, when, after you had left to meet Miss Geer, I looked out the window and saw this fellow pass by, and saw him again three times in the next three hours in the vicinity of the house, it occurred to me that a lion is much safer in a cage even if you have to be in the cage with him. I thought the advertisement should provide proper enticement for a character who had shown complete disregard for danger in his previous attempt at murder...

“In any event, having answered the advertisement and received a message from me, he was, of course, delighted, and doubly delighted when he was hired.

“Now, from the moment he got in here, Mr. Root was concocting schemes, rejecting, considering, revising; and no doubt relishing the situation enormously. The device of the handkerchief to protect a hand firing a gun was no doubt a part of one of those schemes.

“This morning he learned that Miss Geer was to call on me at six o’clock, and he was to impersonate me. After lunch, in here alone, he got a cushion from the sofa in there, wrapped his revolver in it, and fired a ballet through the back of this chair into the wall.

“He stuffed the cushion into the rear compartment of the bottom right-hand drawer of this desk, then put the gun in his pocket.”

“If the hole had been seen, the bullet would have been found,” Cramer muttered.

“I have already pronounced him,” Wolfe said testily, “an unsurpassable fool. Even so, he knew that Archie would be out with him the rest of the afternoon, and I would be in my room. I had made a remark which informed him that I would not sit in that chair again until he was permanently out of it. At six o’clock Miss Geer arrived, unexpectedly accompanied by Mr. Jensen. They were shown into the front room, and that door was open. Mr. Root’s brain moved swiftly, and so did the rest of him. He got one of my guns from Archie’s desk, returned to this chair, opened the drawer where he had put the cushion, fired a shot into the cushion, dropped the gun in, and shut the drawer.”

Wolfe sighed again. “Archie came dashing in, cast a glance at Mr. Root sealed here, and went on to the front room. Mr. Root grasped the opportunity to do two things: return my gun to the drawer of Archie’s desk, and use a blade of his knife, I would guess the awl, to tear a gash in the corner of his ear. That, of course, improved the situation for him. What improved it vastly more was the chance that came soon after, when Archie took him to the bathroom and left him there. He might have found another chance, but that was perfect. He entered the front room from the bathroom, put his own gun, handkerchief attached, in the vase, and returned to the bathroom, and later rejoined the others here.

“It was by no means utterly preposterous if I had not noticed the absence of that cushion. Since this desk sits flush with the floor, no sign of the bullet fired into the bottom drawer would be visible unless the drawer was opened, and why should it be? It was unlikely that Archie would have occasion to find that one of my guns in his desk had been fired, and what if he did? Mr. Root knows how to handle a gun without leaving fingerprints, which is simple.”

Cramer slowly nodded. “I’m not objecting. I’ll buy it. But you must admit you’ve described quite a few things you can’t prove.”

“I don’t have to. Neither do you. As I said before, Mr. Root will be put on trial for the murder of Mr. Jensen and Mr. Doyle, not for his antics here in my house.”

Cramer stood up. “Let’s go, Mr. Root.”

Back in the office, Wolfe, in his own chair with only one bullet hole that could easily be repaired, and with three bottles of beer on a tray in front of him was leaning back, the picture of a man at peace.

He murmured at me, “Archie, remind me in the morning to telephone Mr. Viscardi about that tarragon.”

“Yes, sir.” I sat down. “And if I may, sir, I would like to offer a suggestion. Let’s advertise for a man-eating tiger weighing around two hundred and sixty pounds capable of easy and normal movement. We could station him behind the big cabinet, and when you enter he could leap on you from the rear.”

It didn’t faze him. He was enjoying the feel of his chair and I doubt if he heard me.