Trouble in Triplicate

VII

That office was no place for a stranger to poke around in. It was on the first floor of a dingy old building in the middle of the block, with part of the factory, so Joe said, in the rear, and the rest on the second floor. As soon as we were inside and had the lights turned on, Helen sat in a chair at a desk and looked disdainful, but as the search went on I noticed she kept her eyes open.

Joe tossed his hat and coat on a chair, got a screwdriver from a drawer, went to the typewriter on the desk Helen was sitting at, used the screwdriver, lifted out the typewriter roller, unscrewed an end of it and turned it vertical, and about four dozen dice rolled out. He held the open end of the roller so the light would hit it right, peered in, put the dice back in and screwed the end on, and put the roller back on the machine. His fingers were as swift and accurate as any I had ever seen. Even if I had known about it, I would have needed at least ten minutes for the operation; he took about three.

“Trick dice?” I asked him.

“They’re just a stock item,” he said, and went over to a door in the rear wall, opened it, took it off its hinges leaned it against a desk, knelt on the floor, removed the strip from the bottom edge of the door-and out came about ten dozen lead pencils.

“Trick pencils?”

“When you press, perfume comes out,” he said, and stretched out flat to look into the abditory. I thought I might as well help with the doors and ambled over to open one in another wall that would probably be to a closet. I grabbed the knob and turned, and something darted out and banged me on the shin so that almost anyone but me would have screamed in pain. I uttered a word or two. The piece of wood that had hit me had gone back into place and was part of the door again.

“That shouldn’t have been left connected,” Helen said, trying not to look as if she wanted to giggle. I saw no reason to reply. My shin feeling as it did, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to see if the skin was broken and started to lift my foot to a chair, but the light was dim because the ones in that part of the room hadn’t been turned on, so I stepped to the wall and flipped a switch. A stream of water, a thin stream but with plenty of pressure, came out of the wall and hit me just below the right eye. I leaped to one side and used more and better words.

“That’s interesting,” Helen said. “Some customers say that the person won’t be standing in the right place, but you were, exactly. A person not as tall as you would get it right in the eye.”

“You are,” I told her grimly.

“I am what?”

“Not as tall as me.”

“Oh, I have better sense.”

Only a female idiot would have put it on a basis of sense. Joe, who had put the door back up and was lying on the floor again with his head stuck under a desk, said to me, “Maybe you hadn’t better touch things.”

“Thanks for the suggestion.”

I went to a chair at the end of the desk he was under and asked, “What happens if I sit on this?”

“Nothing. That one’s okay.”

I sat and became strictly a spectator, after wiping my face and neck and inspecting my shin. Joe continued his tour of the abditories, which were practically everywhere, in desk lamps, chair legs, water cooler, ash trays, even one in the metal base of a desk calendar that was on a big desk in the corner.

It was while he had that one open, jiggling things out of it, that I heard him mutter, “This is a new one on me.” He walked over and put something on the desk in front of Helen and asked her, “What is that thing, do you know?”

She picked it up, inspected it, and shook her head. “Haven’t the faintest idea.”

“Let me see.” I got up and went over, and Helen handed it to me. The second I saw it I stopped being casual inside, but I tried to keep the outside as before.

It was a thin metal capsule, about three-quarters of an inch long and not over an eighth of an inch in diameter, smooth all over, with no seam or opening, except at one end where a thread came through, a dark brown medium-sized thread as long as my index finger. I grunted. “Where did you find it?”

“You saw me find it.” Joe sounded either irritated or something else. “In that calendar on Blaney’s desk.”

“Oh, that’s Blaney’s desk. How many, just this one?”

“No, several.” Joe went to Blaney’s desk and then came back to us. “Three more. Four altogether.”

I took them from him and compared. They were all the same. I regarded Helen’s attractive face. She looked interested. I regarded Joe’s handsome face if you didn’t count the ears. He looked more interested. “I think,” I said, “that it was one of these things that was in the cigar that Poor never smoked. What do you think?”

Joe said, “I think we can damn soon find out. Give me one.” He had a gleam in his eye.

I shook my head. “The idea doesn’t appeal to me.” I looked at my wrist. “Quarter to nine. Mr. Wolfe is in the middle of dinner. The proper thing is for you to take these objects to the police, but they’re likely to feel hurt because you didn’t tell them about the abditories when they were here. We can’t interrupt Mr. Wolfe’s dinner, even with a phone call, so I suggest that I buy you a meal somewhere, modest but nutritious, and then we all three go and deliver these gadgets, calendar included, to him. He may want to ask some questions.”

“You take them to him,” Joe said. “I think I’ll go home.”

“I think I’ll go home too,” Helen said.

“No. Nothing doing. You’ll just follow each other and get all confused again. If I take these things to Wolfe without taking you he’ll fly into a temper and phone the police to go get you. Not to flatter myself, wouldn’t you prefer to come with me?”

Helen said in the nastiest possible tone, “I don’t have to eat at the same table with him.”

Joe said, trying to match her tone but failing because he wasn’t a female, “If you did I wouldn’t eat.” Which was a lot of organic fertilizer. I took them to Gallagher’s, where they not only ate at the same table but devoured hunks of steak served from the same platter. It was a little after ten when we got to Nero Wolfe’s place on Thirty-fifth Street.