Not Quite Dead Enough (The Rex Stout Library)

Wolfe was pretending that nothing startling was happening. Not that any of the others could tell there was any pretense about it; nobody else knew him as I did. They probably were not even aware that his half-closed eyes were not missing the slightest twitch of a muscle among the group.

“I’m afraid,” he said dryly, “that there’s nothing in it for you, Mr. Shattuck. No votes, no acclaim, no applause from the multitude. I made the announcement in your presence because there’s no way of proving it and probably never will be. Not a scrap of evidence. Anyone could have taken the hotel elevator and gone to Captain Cross’s room on the twelfth floor, but no one was seen doing so. The mountain of the police machinery has labored-and no mouse. The window was wide open, and he was below on the pavement, squashed, dead. That’s all.”

“Then why the devil,” Lawson demanded, “do you say he was murdered?”

“Because he was. He was as likely to fall from that window by accident as I would be to run for Congress-by accident. He did not deliberately jump out or crawl out. He phoned Colonel Ryder at eight o’clock that evening that he would come to the office in the morning to make a report; that he had had no sleep for two nights and had to rest. He sent a telegram to his fiancee in Boston that he would see her on Saturday. And then committed suicide? Pfui.”

“Oh,” Fife said, crossing his arms on the back of the chair again. “I thought-perhaps you had something.”

“I have that.” Wolfe wiggled a finger at him. “The man was murdered. But no guiding thread can be fastened to the smashed body on the pavement or in the room it fell from. The police have done a thorough job, and there is nothing. Some other point of departure is needed. If the motive was personal, out of his past as a man, the police may find it. They’re trying to. If it was professional, out of his work as a soldier, we may find it in the course of our present activities. That is, if we are to continue? Along the line as it is being developed? With the same personnel?”

Fife studied the corner of Ryder’s desk.

Wolfe said brusquely, “I put a question, General.”

Fife’s head jerked to him. “By all means. Continue? Certainly.”

Shattuck said in a tone of satisfaction, “I don’t think I need to ask you any questions, Mr. Wolfe.”

“May I” Tinkham inquired, “offer a comment?”

“Go ahead,” Fife told him.