On the tenth floor I returned the corporal’s salute, indicating by my posture that the receptable, in my left hand, was a little hefty, assumed an urgent expression, and asked him if he had seen Lieutenant Lawson go out.
“Yes, sir. He left about twenty minutes ago.”
“Damn it. Colonel Tinkham too?”
“No, sir. I think he’s in his office.”
“Have you seen General Fife around?”
“Not for an hour or more, sir. He may be upstairs.”
I breezed through to the inner corridor. No one in sight. The door to my room was about twenty paces down normally, and it took me not more than fourteen. Inside I took a breath, and deposited the big suitcase on my desk. It began to seem more possible. Like this. I go to the scene and tell the corporal Nero Wolfe sent me back to do a close-up on something. I enter and examine the top of Ryder’s desk with my little glass. I make noises of dissatisfaction and tell the corporal to go ask Major Goodman if I may borrow his big magnifying glass, Goodman’s office being on the eleventh floor. The corporal goes, I grab the suitcase, dive down the hall to my room, and cache it in Wolfe’s case. That would be the only risk, the five seconds negotiating the hall. The rest would be pie. I turned it over and around, looking for a way to reduce the risk still more, but decided that was the minimum.
I got the little glass from a drawer of my desk and stuck it in my pocket, went out and down the corridor, turned the corner, saw that the same corporal was on guard and no one else around, said my little piece to him, was passed in without any question, crossed to Ryder’s desk, and began inspecting it with the glass. But my heart wasn’t in my work because I had had plenty of time, approaching the desk, to perceive that the suitcase wasn’t there.
Chapter 4
I continued to inspect the desk, remarking to myself meanwhile, “Of all the blank blink blonk blunk luck.”
Since nothing more helpful than that occurred to me, I finally straightened up for a comprehensive survey. As far as I could see, everything was as before with the single exception of the suitcase. I went over to the corporal.
“Anyone been in here since Colonel Tinkham and Wolfe and I left?”
“No, sir. Oh yes, Colonel Tinkham came back shortly afterward. General Fife was with him.”
“Oh,” I said casually, “then I guess they took that chair.”
“Chair?”
“Yeah, one of the chairs Wolfe wanted me to examine — it seems to be gone — I’ll go and see—”
“There can’t be a chair gone, sir. Nobody took any chair or anything else.”
“You’re sure of that? Not even General Fife or Colonel Tinkham?”
“No, sir. Nobody.”
I grinned at him. “If I was Nero Wolfe, corporal, which I’m not, I would advise you to confine your assurances to the boundaries of your knowledge. That’s his way of putting it. You say positively that nobody took anything. But I notice you stand here in the doorway facing the hall, your back to the room. There’s no glass left in the windows. How do you know a paratrooper didn’t come in that way and take anything he wanted?”
For half a second he looked slightly startled, and for the next half a second the look in his eyes plainly indicated what he would have said, and probably done, if we had been just people instead of a corporal and a major. All he did say was “Yes, sir.”
“Okay,” I told him as man to man. “Probably I counted wrong. Skip it. I always get mixed up when I go above six.”
I went down the corridor to my room, sat on the edge of my desk, and applied logic. Of course it was obvious, if the corporal wasn’t either blind or a liar. Mental operations like figuring the cube root of minus two I leave to Nero Wolfe, but I can do simple addition and subtraction. So I pulled the phone over and got Captain Foster, in charge of personnel, and asked him for the home address of Sergeant Dorothy Bruce.
He was inclined to be flippant, but I told him the request was official and he loosened up. The Bronx or Brooklyn would have been a blow, since I was taking the trip not on information or a hunch, but only on logic, and I was relieved when he gave me a number on West Eleventh Street. That was right on the way home. Toting the receptacle which apparently I had brought along just for the ride, I evacuated via the elevator, went to the car, and started back uptown.
The Eleventh Street number was the only modern structure in a block of old brownstones. Leaving the receptacle in the car, I entered and brushed past the hallman in a military stride, columned left on a guess, spied the elevator, and said brusquely to the girl loitering outside, “Bruce.” Manifestly I was not a man to be questioned. She followed me in and started us up, stopped and opened the door at the seventh, and said musically, “Seven C.” I found it, the second on the right down the hall, pushed the button, and after a little wait the door opened. But it swung only to a gap of a few inches, so as a precaution I unobtrusively planted a foot beyond the line of the sill.
“Oh!” she said in a tone of surprise. I didn’t say pleased surprise. “Major Goodwin!”
“Right,” I said cheerfully. “You sure have a memory for faces. My eye’s bothering me again.”
“That’s too bad, sir.” She seemed perfectly affable, but the door showed no inclination to exercise its hinges. “As I told you, I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do about it.”
“Not in this bum light you can’t. Nice little place you’ve got here. Are these your own things, or do you rent it furnished? Some of them must be yours. It just looks like you.”
“Oh, thank you, sir. It’s the woman’s touch, of course.”
“Yeah. I never saw a more attractive door. I’ll tell you what. I could say, Sergeant Bruce, I wish to come in and have a little talk with you. Or I could simply push and enter. Let’s compromise. You propel the door and I’ll propel me.”
She nearly laughed, but it didn’t get beyond a sort of a chuckle. Anyhow the door swung open and she invited me nicely, “Come in, Major.” Also she closed it. The foyer was about the size of a suitcase. At a gesture I preceded her into a room which wasn’t like her at all because it wasn’t like anybody. Pure month-to-month-or-reduction-on-a-lease. Two windows. A couch and three chairs. Door to kitchenette and door to bedroom. A glance gave me that, and when I turned she was there and smiling at me. It was absolutely a female smile, and at any previous moment I would have considered it a big step forward, but something had come between us if logic was worth its salt. Still I kept it on a friendly basis.
I asked her, “Remember that carton you were packing your things in at the office? I need one exactly that size, and if you’re through with it I’d like to make an offer.”
She was good. She was very good. The way the smile went and her lips parted a little and her eyes widened — it was just what you would expect if I had said something fairly silly and unquestionably cuckoo.
Then she smiled again and said, “I can get one for you wholesale.”
I shook my head. “Your mistake. You didn’t say sir. The idea is this. I won’t be happy until I see that carton, and I’m hell-bent for happiness. Either you trot it out or I tour the place. You can save me trouble and both of us time.”