Not Quite Dead Enough (The Rex Stout Library)

“Then I’m afraid we won’t make any progress tonight.” Wolfe glanced at the clock on the wall. He put his hands on the edge of the desk and pushed his chair back. “It’s midnight. I assure you, sir, if tricks are being played on me I’m apt to find it out and return the compliment.” He got to his feet. “I may have something more concrete for you by tomorrow. Say by tomorrow noon. Would it be convenient for you to drop in here at twelve noon? If I do have anything, I wouldn’t care to announce it on the telephone.”

“I think I can make it,” Shattuck said, also standing. “I will make it. I have a reservation on the three o’clock plane for Washington.”

“Good. Then I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I escorted the visitor to the front and let him out, closed the door and shot the night bolt, and returned to the office. I had supposed Wolfe was prepared to call it a day and go up to bed, but to my surprise he was back in his chair, and apparently, from the arrangement of his face, his mind was working.

I remarked rudely, “So you’re going to use Shattuck too. For what? Is he it?”

“Archie. Be quiet.”

“Yes, sir. Or is he Miss Bruce’s principal and you’re going to close the deal?”

No reply.

I went to the shelf and got the grenade, tossed it in the air, and caught it. I saw him shudder. That was something. “This,” I said, “is Army property. So am I, as you remind me every hour on the hour. I don’t ask where you got it, since you told me to be quiet. But I’ll keep it in my room and return it to the Army in the morning.”

“Confound you! Give me that thing.”

“No, sir. I mean it. If I’ve got allegiances, as you say I have, I take this grenade to General Fife first thing in the morning, and I tell him-”

“Shut up!”

I stood and glared at him.

He glared back, as if something was almost more than he could bear, and he would leave it to me what.

Finally he said, “Archie. I submit to circumstances. So should you. And I’ll make a concession to you. For instance, about that suitcase. Its metal frame is bent outward, in all directions. How could an explosion from anywhere on the outside of the suitcase, at whatever distance, near or far, bend its frame outward? It couldn’t. Therefore the grenade was inside the suitcase when it exploded. The innumerable holes and tears in the leather made by the fragments confirm that. They are from the inside out.”

I put the grenade on his desk.