Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 10 (14 page)

On the tenth floor I returned the corporal’s salute, indicating by my posture that the receptable, in my left hand, was a little hefty, assumed an urgent expression, and asked him if he had seen Lieutenant Lawson go out.

“Yes, sir. He left about twenty minutes ago.”

“Damn it. Colonel Tinkham too?”

“No, sir. I think he’s in his office.”

“Have you seen General Fife around?”

“Not for an hour or more, sir. He may be upstairs.”

I breezed through to the inner corridor. No one in sight. The door to my room was about twenty paces
down normally, and it took me not more than fourteen. Inside I took a breath, and deposited the big suitcase on my desk. It began to seem more possible. Like this. I go to the scene and tell the corporal Nero Wolfe sent me back to do a close-up on something. I enter and examine the top of Ryder’s desk with my little glass. I make noises of dissatisfaction and tell the corporal to go ask Major Goodman if I may borrow his big magnifying glass, Goodman’s office being on the eleventh floor. The corporal goes, I grab the suitcase, dive down the hall to my room, and cache it in Wolfe’s case. That would be the only risk, the five seconds negotiating the hall. The rest would be pie. I turned it over and around, looking for a way to reduce the risk still more, but decided that was the minimum.

I got the little glass from a drawer of my desk and stuck it in my pocket, went out and down the corridor, turned the corner, saw that the same corporal was on guard and no one else around, said my little piece to him, was passed in without any question, crossed to Ryder’s desk, and began inspecting it with the glass. But my heart wasn’t in my work because I had had plenty of time, approaching the desk, to perceive that the suitcase wasn’t there.

I
continued to inspect the desk, remarking to myself meanwhile, “Of all the blank blink blonk blunk luck.”

Since nothing more helpful than that occurred to me, I finally straightened up for a comprehensive survey. As far as I could see, everything was as before with the single exception of the suitcase. I went over to the corporal.

“Anyone been in here since Colonel Tinkham and Wolfe and I left?”

“No, sir. Oh yes, Colonel Tinkham came back shortly afterward. General Fife was with him.”

“Oh,” I said casually, “then I guess they took that chair.”

“Chair?”

“Yeah, one of the chairs Wolfe wanted me to examine—it seems to be gone—I’ll go and see—”

“There can’t be a chair gone, sir. Nobody took any chair or anything else.”

“You’re sure of that? Not even General Fife or Colonel Tinkham?”

“No, sir. Nobody.”

I grinned at him. “If I was Nero Wolfe, corporal,
which I’m not, I would advise you to confine your assurances to the boundaries of your knowledge. That’s his way of putting it. You say positively that nobody took anything. But I notice you stand here in the doorway facing the hall, your back to the room. There’s no glass left in the windows. How do you know a paratrooper didn’t come in that way and take anything he wanted?”

For half a second he looked slightly startled, and for the next half a second the look in his eyes plainly indicated what he would have said, and probably done, if we had been just people instead of a corporal and a major. All he did say was “Yes, sir.”

“Okay,” I told him as man to man. “Probably I counted wrong. Skip it. I always get mixed up when I go above six.”

I went down the corridor to my room, sat on the edge of my desk, and applied logic. Of course it was obvious, if the corporal wasn’t either blind or a liar. Mental operations like figuring the cube root of minus two I leave to Nero Wolfe, but I can do simple addition and subtraction. So I pulled the phone over and got Captain Foster, in charge of personnel, and asked him for the home address of Sergeant Dorothy Bruce.

He was inclined to be flippant, but I told him the request was official and he loosened up. The Bronx or Brooklyn would have been a blow, since I was taking the trip not on information or a hunch, but only on logic, and I was relieved when he gave me a number on West Eleventh Street. That was right on the way home. Toting the receptacle which apparently I had brought along just for the ride, I evacuated via the elevator, went to the car, and started back uptown.

The Eleventh Street number was the only modern structure in a block of old brownstones. Leaving the receptacle in the car, I entered and brushed past the
hallman in a military stride, columned left on a guess, spied the elevator, and said brusquely to the girl loitering outside, “Bruce.” Manifestly I was not a man to be questioned. She followed me in and started us up, stopped and opened the door at the seventh, and said musically, “Seven C.” I found it, the second on the right down the hall, pushed the button, and after a little wait the door opened. But it swung only to a gap of a few inches, so as a precaution I unobtrusively planted a foot beyond the line of the sill.

“Oh!” she said in a tone of surprise. I didn’t say pleased surprise. “Major Goodwin!”

“Right,” I said cheerfully. “You sure have a memory for faces. My eye’s bothering me again.”

“That’s too bad, sir.” She seemed perfectly affable, but the door showed no inclination to exercise its hinges. “As I told you, I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do about it.”

“Not in this bum light you can’t. Nice little place you’ve got here. Are these your own things, or do you rent it furnished? Some of them must be yours. It just looks like you.”

“Oh, thank you, sir. It’s the woman’s touch, of course.”

“Yeah. I never saw a more attractive door. I’ll tell you what. I could say, Sergeant Bruce, I wish to come in and have a little talk with you. Or I could simply push and enter. Let’s compromise. You propel the door and I’ll propel me.”

She nearly laughed, but it didn’t get beyond a sort of a chuckle. Anyhow the door swung open and she invited me nicely, “Come in, Major.” Also she closed it. The foyer was about the size of a suitcase. At a gesture I preceded her into a room which wasn’t like her at all because it wasn’t like anybody. Pure month-to-month-or-reduction-on-a-lease.
Two windows. A couch and three chairs. Door to kitchenette and door to bedroom. A glance gave me that, and when I turned she was there and smiling at me. It was absolutely a female smile, and at any previous moment I would have considered it a big step forward, but something had come between us if logic was worth its salt. Still I kept it on a friendly basis.

I asked her, “Remember that carton you were packing your things in at the office? I need one exactly that size, and if you’re through with it I’d like to make an offer.”

She was good. She was very good. The way the smile went and her lips parted a little and her eyes widened—it was just what you would expect if I had said something fairly silly and unquestionably cuckoo.

Then she smiled again and said, “I can get one for you wholesale.”

I shook my head. “Your mistake. You didn’t say
sir
. The idea is this. I won’t be happy until I see that carton, and I’m hell-bent for happiness. Either you trot it out or I tour the place. You can save me trouble and both of us time.”

“Is that an official command, sir? Are you here as my superior officer or as—yourself?”

“Any way you like it. Whichever you prefer. Take it going and coming and call it both, but get the carton.”

She moved. To get to the door to the bedroom she had to detour around me, which she did, and disappeared through the opening. But I had decided that probably not much was beyond her up to sailing off on a broomstick, so I stepped across on my toes to the doorway to keep her in sight. But either I made some noise or she was suspicious by nature, because halfway across the bedroom she turned and saw me. She came
back and took hold of the knob of the door, obviously intending to close it when the obstruction, namely me, was removed.

“You can wait out there,” she said, and meant it. “I’ll bring the carton.”

I was not particularly enjoying things, and it was getting too prolonged for me. Evidently she had been headed for a closed closet door at the far corner of the room. I stepped past her, rounded the foot of the bed and got to the door, and pulled it open. I admit I was surprised enough to back up two steps when a uniform, erect in the closet, moved toward me, and there was Lieutenant Kenneth Lawson. He came out and stood and looked at me. He didn’t salute.

“Indeed,” I said. That was Nero Wolfe’s word, and I never used it except in moments of stress, and it severely annoyed me when I caught myself using it, because when I look in a mirror I prefer to see me as is, with no skin grafted from anybody else’s hide, even Nero Wolfe’s.

Lawson, as I have said, was big and strong and handsome. The situation, as it stood, seemed to indicate that anything was possible, and I had no desire to join Cross and Ryder on the other side of the river, so I backed into the closet with the door opened as wide as it would go. It wasn’t necessary to do any searching. The carton was right there, bound with cord. I yanked it out, jerked off the cord, lifted the flaps, and was looking at shredded pigskin. For logic, one hit, one run, no errors. I closed the flaps and got the cord back on. Among other things I didn’t know, at that point, was whether Lawson was there on purely personal business or whether he was a partner in the enterprise of salvaging damaged luggage, so the position was delicate in more ways than one.

Lawson said, with no special sign of agitation, “I heard Bruce ask you—and it might clear things up a little—is this an official visit, Major?”

After all, he had me. Wolfe had told me to get the suitcase without the knowledge of Fife, and Fife was my commanding officer. My ignorance was stupendous. Was Lawson straight and would he report to Fife? Was Lawson a crook or a murderer, or both—and would he report to Fife anyway to cover up? Were Lawson and Sergeant Bruce—But there was no sense standing there all night asking myself questions I couldn’t answer, with them staring at me.

I spoke. “Ladies and gentlemen. I have been assigned, as you know, to assist Nero Wolfe in work he is doing for the Army. I’m now going to report to him, and take this carton with me. Up to there, as far as you’re concerned, since you’re only a non-com and a shavetail, we can put it that the only difference between General Eisenhower and me is that he’s not here. But beyond that we’re just folks. If on my way out Lawson tries to trip me or hit me with a chair I won’t appeal to authority, now or later. I’ll merely knock his block off.”

A corner of Lawson’s mouth was turned up. “I wasn’t going to be so crude,” he said coldly, “but now I don’t know.”

“Make up your mind, brother,” I told him, and focused on Sergeant Bruce. “So I offer a suggestion. Not an order from Major Goodwin, just a person-to-person call. How about accompanying the carton and me to Wolfe’s place? I’ve got a car down in front. The trip might do you good.”

If she had flashed a glance at Lawson that would have answered at least one of my questions, but all she did was cock her head at me.

“I think,” she said, “that I ought to tell you you’ll probably be sorry for this, Major.”

“I already am. I don’t like any part of it. Are you coming?”

“Certainly. That carton and its contents belong to me.” She moved, crossing to Lawson and putting her hand on his arm. “Ken darling, this is nothing. Really. But I’m afraid—I don’t know how long it will take. I’ll phone you later. And perhaps you had better phone my sister in Washington—right away.”

“I could,” he growled, “wring him out and hang him up to dry.”

“I’m sure you could.” She patted his arm. “But you behave yourself. There’s more than one way to—cure a cold. Phone me later, Ken?”

“I will.”

“Be sure the door’s locked when you leave. Are we going, Major?”

Lawson didn’t move a muscle as I passed him, with the carton in the hand nearest him, so the other hand would be free in case he decided to show her how big and brave he was. But either she was the boss and he was obeying orders, or he wanted to be alone to think. I signified that she, being a lady, should go first, and she did so, stopping in the other room only to get her peck-measure cap from the table, and letting me close the door after us and push the button for the elevator as if she enjoyed having a male escort attend to such details.

On the street, I put the carton in the rear and her in the front, went around and slid in behind the wheel, beside her, and got going. No conversation. Apparently there wasn’t going to be any. But as I waited for a light at Twenty-Third Street, suddenly she spoke.

“I wonder if you’d like to do me a little favor.”

“I doubt it. What? Want me to phone your sister in Washington?”

She made a little noise, between a chuckle and a gurgle. Three hours earlier I would have thought it very attractive. “No,” she said, “nothing as complicated as that. Just to stop a minute, anywhere there’s a place at the curb, so I can ask you something.”

The light changed and we rolled. A block farther on a roomy space came in view, and I steered into it and shut off the engine.

“Okay. Ask me something.”

“I hope your eye feels better.”

Her tone made it plain that it was not a sergeant speaking to a major. It abolished all consideration of worldly rank and superficial barriers. Not that it conveyed the impression that she intended to seduce me right there on Sixth Avenue in the midst of traffic, but it did indicate that a closer understanding between the two of us would be a natural and wholesome development.

I said, “It feels fine. That all?”

“No. I wish it was.” She was turned to me full face, and I was reciprocating. “I wish there was nothing, I mean with you and me, except silly little pleasant things like that. Don’t think I’m being obvious. I’m just clever enough, just barely, to know how clever you are. If I were a fool, I might think I could start your head whirling in no time, parked here on our way to Nero Wolfe, but I know better than to try idiotic tricks with you.”

I grinned at her. “You do know how to handle your lips and eyes, though. And especially your voice. Which you were going to use to ask me something.”