The Doorbell Rang (The Rex Stout Library)

I stood with it in my hand. It was a hundred to one that it was the gun that Althaus had had a permit for, and it had fired the bullet that had gone through him, and Sarah Dacos had pulled the trigger. To hell with the one chance in a hundred. The question was what to do with it. If I took it, it would never be an acceptable exhibit in a murder trial, since I had got it illegally. If I left it there and went out to a phone booth and rang Cramer to tell him to get a warrant to search Sarah Dacos's apartment, the cops would get the gun all right, but if the FBI found out about it within thirty-six hours, as they easily might, the big act for Thursday night would be kaput. And of course if I left it in the hatbox and didn't phone Cramer, Sarah Dacos might decide that tonight would be a good time to take it and toss it in the river.

Since that left only one alternative, the only decision that had to be made was where to put it. I returned the hat to the box and the boxes to the shelf, put the chair back where it belonged, and looked around. No spot in the bedroom appealed to me, and I moved to the living room. It was now more than ever desirable not to be interrupted by a cleaning woman or anyone else. I went and examined the couch and found that underneath the cushion was a box spring, and underneath the spring was a plywood bottom. Good enough. If she got the hatbox down and found the gun gone, she certainly wouldn't suppose it had merely been moved to another spot in the apartment and start looking. I put it on the bottom under the spring, glanced around to see that things were as I had found them, grabbed my hat and coat, and got out of there in such a hurry that I almost appeared on the sidewalk wearing rubber gloves.

In the taxi I had to answer another question: did I or didn't I tell Wolfe? Why not wait until Thursday night had come and gone? The answer was really simple, but of course that's one thing we use our minds for, finding complicated reasons for dodging simple answers. By the time the cab stopped in front of the old brownstone my mind had run out of reasons and I was facing the fact that it wouldn't improve with age.