Trouble in Triplicate

IX

I had no hand in the phone call to General Fife-or rather, as I learned later, to Colonel Voss, who was on duty that evening at the downtown G-2 headquarters-because I was busy with the chores. First, with regard to Jane and Jensen. When I delivered Wolfe’s message to them, in a few well-chosen words, they blinked in bewilderment, which was understandable. Then they both opened the valves and here came the steam. I silenced them by mere force of personality. I told Jensen, “You came to see Wolfe to get him to help catch the murderer of your father. He has not only helped, he has done it single-handed, practically without getting out of bed. For God’s sake, what more do you want?”

I told Jane, “You wanted to avoid publicity as a suspect in a murder case so you can be a vice-president. Wolfe has done the avoiding for you. As my contribution, I have made you acquainted with this prominent major. You should beef?”

Naturally they 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 to the south room.

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, beginning the instant I put a hand on him to frisk him, only about six of the ten minutes were devoted to persuading him that there were worse things than going downstairs.

For the other four minutes I sat on him, examining my shin to see if his kicks had busted the skin and testing my wrist to decide if it was sprained, while Purley was in the bathroom washing blood off his cheek and neck and applying Band-Aids. Not that Hackett had confined himself to kicking and scratching; he hadn’t confined himself at all. Purley and I did the confining.

We got him to the office in one piece, nothing really wrong with him but a few bruises, and put him in a chair. Purley took an upright position right behind him, with the evident intention of standing by, so I went to my desk. Jane and Jensen were on a couple of chairs side by side, over near the big globe. Cramer was as before.

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 got murdered. I never saw him. Some of my men did.”

“Yeah,” Purley said, gazing at Hackett’s face. “By God, it’s him. I thought he didn’t have brains enough to know which end to pick up a shovel.”

“He is,” Wolfe declared, “a remarkable combination of fool and genius. He came to New York determined 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 and didn’t flutter an eyelid. “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 Peter 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, probably after again complaining that you don’t like a place where people get murdered.”

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 conceded.

“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 does best.”

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

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? I lean to the latter, but I confess I am curious. I don’t suppose, Mr. Root, you would care to clear that up for me?”

Mr. Root was not clearing up today.

“Very well. I can offer no inducement. In any event, having answered the advertisement and received a message from me, you were of course delighted, and doubly delighted when you were hired.” Wolfe’s eyes described an arc, including everybody in the roundup. “I invite comment, anything from irony to derision, on the fact that I paid a hundred dollars a day, to get him to live in my house, eat my food, and sit in my chair, to a man who had resolved to kill me. I can afford the invitation only because, in spite of that overwhelming handicap, I shall go on living and he will not.”

Nobody seemed to have any irony or derision ready, but Jensen chipped in, “You still haven’t explained the flummery.”

Wolfe nodded at him. “I’m getting to it, sir. Naturally, 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, but it served admirably for the one he finally used. 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 bullet through the back of this chair into the wall. He could, if he wished, have held the thing right against the back of the chair, and probably did. He stuffed the cushion into the rear compartment of the bottom right-hand drawer of this desk, having observed that the contents of the front of the drawer indicated that it was rarely opened. He put the gun in his pocket. He kept the chair pushed back to the wall to cover the hole in the plaster. The hole in the leather was not conspicuous and he took the risk of its being seen; when he was in the chair he covered the hole with his head.”

“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 seated 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. But 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.”

“Jesus!” Purley Stebbins said incredulously. “That guy would jump off the Empire State Building to catch an airplane by the tail.”

“No doubt,” Wolfe agreed. “I have called him a fool; and yet 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. Confound it, no. It was entirely feasible for him to await an opportunity to kill me, this evening, tonight, tomorrow morning, with all suspicion aimed at Miss Geer and Mr. Jensen-and disappear.”

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. And I wish you would take him somewhere else. I’ve seen enough of him.”

“I can’t say I blame you,” Cramer grinned, which was rare. He stood up. “Let’s go, Mr. Root.”

After letting them out and watching Cramer and Purley manipulating Hackett-Root down the steps to the sidewalk and into the police car, I shut the door without bothering about the bolt and returned to the office. Jane and Jensen were standing side by side in front of Wolfe’s desk, just barely not holding hands, beaming down at him.

“… more than neat,” Jensen was saying. “It was absolutely brilliant.”

“I still can’t believe it,” Jane declared. “It was wonderful.”

“It was merely a job,” Wolfe murmured, as if he knew what modesty was.

Nobody paid any attention to me. I sat down and yawned. Jensen seemed to be hesitating about something, then abruptly got it out.

“I owe you money. I came here Wednesday to engage you to investigate my father’s murder. Later, when the police got the crazy idea that I was involved in it, I was even more anxious to engage you, but still you wouldn’t see me, and now of course I understand why. I may not be in debt to you legally, but I am morally, and it will be a great satisfaction to pay it. I haven’t my checkbook with me, so I’ll have to mail you one-say, five thousand dollars?”

Wolfe shook his head. “I accept pay only from clients, as arranged in advance. If you send me a check I’ll have to return it. If you have to send one in order to sleep, send it to the National War Fund.” I managed to keep my face straight. As for Wolfe’s renunciation, his income for the year had already reached a point where out of an additional five grand he would have been able to keep about one-fifth. As for Jensen’s generosity, if it is okay for males at one age to climb trees and turn somersaults in the presence of females, why isn’t it okay for them at another age to wave checkbooks? The way Jane was looking at him reminded me of the way a fifth-grade girl looked at me once, out in Ohio, when I chinned myself fourteen times.

So they settled it on a basis of reciprocal nobility, and the pair turned to go.

Not caring to appear churlish, I went to open the front door for them. As they were passing through, Jane suddenly realized I was there and stopped and impulsively extended her hand. “I take it back, Archie. You’re not a rat. Shake on it. Is he, Emil?”

“He certainly is not,” Emil baritoned heartily.

“Gee,” I stammered with moist eyes, “this is the happiest day of my life. This will make a new rat of me.” I closed the door.

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 with his hands resting on the chair arms and his eyes open only to slits, the picture of a man at peace.

He murmured at me, “Archie. Don’t forget to 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.”

“What?”

“Only 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 would lay 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.