Not Quite Dead Enough (The Rex Stout Library)

An Army sergeant was sitting at a desk giving the keyboard of a typewriter the one-two.

I said good morning.

“Good morning, Major,” the sergeant replied. “I’ll tell them you’re here.” She reached for a phone.

Wolfe was staring. “What in the name of heaven is this?” he demanded.

“WAC,” I told him. “We’ve got some new furniture since you were here last. Brightens the place up.”

He compressed his lips and continued to stare. Nothing personal; what was eating him was the sight of a female, in uniform, in that job.

“It’s all right,” I soothed him. “We don’t tell her any of the important secrets, such as Captain So-and-So wears a corset.”

She was through at the phone. “Colonel Ryder said to ask you to join them, sir.”

I said sternly, “You didn’t salute.”

If she’d had a sense of humor she’d have stood up and snapped one at me, but in the ten days she had been there I hadn’t been able to discover any sign of it. Which didn’t mean I had quit trying. I had decided she was putting it on. Her serious efficient eyes and straight functional nose led you to expect a jutting bony chin, but that’s where she fooled you. It didn’t jut. It would have fitted nicely in the palm of your hand if things ever got to that point.

She was speaking. “I beg your pardon, Major Goodwin. I am obeying the regulations-”

“Okay.” I waved it aside. “This is Mr. Nero Wolfe. Sergeant Dorothy Bruce of the United States Army.”

They acknowledged each other. Stepping to a door at the other end, I opened it, let Wolfe go through, then followed him and shut the door.

It was a roomy corner office with windows on two sides and the space of the other two walls filled with locked steel cabinets reaching two-thirds of the way to the ceiling, except for a spot occupied by another door which gave access to the hall without going through the anteroom.