Trouble in Triplicate

IV

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 that the question of my going overseas had been decided long ago and I would shut my trap about it. I never found out whether Wolfe had phoned him or not. He didn’t phone Wolfe. He didn’t even pat me on the head and tell me there, there, be a good soldier. He merely said, in effect, nuts. Then he observed that since I was in Washington I might as well confer with the staff on various cases, finished and unfinished, and would I 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 Thirty-fifth 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 arrange to keep on breathing, in his own house, without me there to look after him. Besides, I knew that Carpenter would have phoned Wolfe, out of courtesy as well as concern, and Wolfe’s reaction to that when I got back would be apt to displease me.

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, and at dinner with a bunch of them and after, to take a look at a New York paper. I was alone in my hotel room when it caught my eye, bordered and spaced to make a spot:

WANTED A MAN

weighing about 260-270, around 5 ft. 11,

45-56 years old, medium in coloring, waist not over 48, capable of easy and normal movement. Temporary. Hazardous.

$100 a day. Send photo with letter.

Box 292 Star.

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. It was going on midnight, but Wolfe never went to bed early. But when the connection was made, after a short wait, it wasn’t his voice that I heard. It was Fritz Brenner’s. “Mr. Nero Wolfe’s residence.”

Fritz, who had been with Wolfe even longer than me, had his own ideas about certain details. When he answered the phone in the daytime between nine and five he said, “Mr. Nero Wolfe’s office.” At any other time he said, “Mr. Nero Wolfe’s residence.”

“Hello, Fritz. Archie. Calling from Washington. Where’s Mr. Wolfe?”

“He’s in bed. He had a hard day. And evening.”

“Doing what?”

“He was very busy on the telephone. Also some callers. Mr. Cramer. And he had that stenographer from that place.”

“Oh. He did. Using my typewriter. Do you happen to know whether he looked at the Star today?”

“The Star?” Fritz hesitated. “Not that I know of. He never does. There is only my copy, and it’s in the kitchen.”

“Get it, and look at an ad, a small one in a box, near the lower right corner on page eleven. Read it. I’ll hold the wire.”

I sat and waited. Before long he was back on. “I read it.” He sounded puzzled. “Are you calling clear from Washington to make a joke?”

“I am not. I don’t feel like joking. The Army won’t let me go anywhere. They turned me down. As you read the ad, who did it make you think of?”

“Well-it entered my mind that it was just about a good description of Mr. Wolfe.”

“Yeah, it entered mine too. If whoever wrote that wasn’t thinking of Nero Wolfe, I’ll eat it. First thing in the morning, show it to him. Tell him it looks to me-no, just show it to him. It would annoy him to be told how it looks to me. Anyhow, it will look to him the same way. How’s everything?”

“All right.”

“The bolts and the gong and so forth?”

“Yes. With you away-”

“I’ll be back tomorrow-I hope. Probably late afternoon.” 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 went to the Pentagon Building and started conferring again, but it was a lot of hooey. There wasn’t anything they really needed me for, and I didn’t pretend, even to be polite, that I needed them. Still it went on. By three in the afternoon they seemed to be taking me for granted, as if I belonged there. A feeling that I was doomed began to ooze into me. The Pentagon had got me and would never turn me loose. I was on my way down its throat, and once it got me into its stomach and the machinery began to churn me and squirt dissolving juice over me…

At five o’clock I called up all my reserves and told a colonel, “Looky. Don’t you think, sir, I’ve done all I can here? Would it not be advisable for me to return to my post in New York?”

“Well.” He lifted his chin to consider. “I’ll ask Major Zabreskie. He will of course have to consult Colonel Shawn. It will have to go through-when did you get here?”

“Yesterday morning.”

“Whom did you see first on arrival?”

“General Carpenter.”

“Oh. The devil.” He looked worried. “Then it will have to go to him, and he’s tied up. I’ll tell you what we’d better do.”

He told me what we’d better do. I listened attentively, but it didn’t register.

Doomed was no word for it. I was sunk for the duration, possibly for life. I told him there was no great rush, it could wait till morning. I would ask Major Zabreskie myself, and managed to break away from him. I got into a corridor, made it to the ground floor, used all my faculties, and succeeded in breaking through to the open air. My trained mind and years of experience as a detective got me onto the right bus. Five minutes at the hotel were enough to get my bag and pay my bill, and I shared a taxi to the airport and bought a ticket to New York. Eating could wait. But it didn’t. I did. There was no room on either the six-thirty or the seven-thirty, so, with both appetite and time, I tried four kinds of sandwiches and found them all edible. Finally I got a seat on the eight-thirty plane, and when it landed at La Guardia Field an hour and a half later I began to feel safe. Surely I could elude them in the throngs of the great metropolis. Actually I was offering ten to one that by morning everybody at the Pentagon would have forgotten that I had been there.

Arriving at Wolfe’s house on Thirty-fifth Street a little before eleven, I didn’t get out my key because I knew the door would be bolted and I would need help. 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 and greeted me with a tone and expression indicating that he was pleased to see me. 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.