Not Quite Dead Enough (The Rex Stout Library)

I started the engine and eased away from the curb into the traffic. She made no attempt to dangle the bait or put on another worm, and if she had I probably wouldn’t have heard her. Several things had me guessing, and the one at the top of the list was the suitcase. Wolfe had said it was important, and here was this lovely innocent creature offering ten thousand bucks for it, when as far as I could see a reasonable OPA ceiling on it would have been twenty cents at the outside. It irritated me to be $9,999.80 out in my calculations, and since when I’m irritated I have a tendency to feed more gas, the remainder of the trip to Wolfe’s place on 35th Street was a mere step.

It was only half an hour to dinner time, and I expected to find Wolfe in the kitchen supervising experiments, but he was hard at work at his desk in the office, rearranging field commanders probably, on his battle map of Russia. When we entered he kept right on.

Bruce said, “So this is Nero Wolfe’s office,” and looked around, at the leather chairs, the big globe, the shelves of books, the old-fashioned two-ton safe, the little bracket where he always had one orchid in bloom. I removed the cord from the carton, opened the flaps, got a grip on a section of the frame of the suitcase, pulled gently but firmly, got it out, and put it on a chair because the map was covering his desk. There were other items in the carton-papers and miscellany-but I stowed it over by the wall without disturbing them.

“Ah, you got it.” Wolfe said, finally looking up. “Satisfactory. But evidently not unobserved. Did Miss Bruce come along to help you carry it?”

“No. She came because she can’t bear to have it out of her sight. I went for it and it wasn’t there. Gone. The corporal said nobody had taken anything. So since nobody had taken it, but it was gone, I figured that nobody couldn’t be anybody but Sergeant Bruce. I had seen her in the anteroom packing things in a carton, and with the suitcase there on the floor only two steps from the door to the anteroom, and the corporal’s back turned, it would have been a cinch for her and impossible for anyone else. Getting the address of her apartment and going there-two rooms, kitchenette and bath-I found the suitcase in the carton in the bedroom closet. Also in the closet was Lieutenant Lawson. Alive and well.”

“The deuce he was.” Wolfe leaned back and let his eyelids down a little. “Won’t you be seated, Miss Bruce? No, that chair, if you don’t mind.”