So they left together. Going down the stoop, which I admit was moderately steep, he indicated not obtrusively that he had an arm there, and she rested her fingers in the bend of it to steady herself. That alone showed astonishing progress in almost no time at all, for she was by no means a born clinger.
Oh, well, I was a major too. I shrugged indifferently as I shut the door. Then I sought Wolfe’s room, knocked, and was invited in.
Standing in the doorway to his bathroom, facing me, his old-fashioned razor in his hand, all lathered up, he demanded brusquely, “What time is it?”
“Six-thirty.”
“When is the next train?”
“Seven o’clock. But what the hell, apparently there is going to be work to do. I can put it off to next week.”
“No. It’s on your mind. Get that train.”
I tried one more stab. “My motive is selfish. If, while I am sitting talking to Carpenter in the morning, word comes that you have been killed, or even temporarily disabled, he’ll blame me and I won’t stand a chance. So for purely selfish reasons—”
“Confound it!” he barked. “You’ll miss that train! I have no intention of getting killed. Get out of here!”
I faded...
After the war I intend to run for Congress and put through laws about generals. I have a theory that generals should be rubbed liberally with neat’s-foot oil before being taken out and shot. Though I doubt if I would have bothered with the oil in the case of General Carpenter that morning if I had had a free hand.
I was a major. So I sat and said yessir yessir yessir, while he told me that he had given me the appointment only because he thought I wanted to discuss something of importance, and that I would stay where I was put, and shut my trap about it. When it was all over, he observed that since I was in Washington I might as well confer with the staff on various cases, finished and unfinished, and I would report immediately to Colonel Dickey.
I doubt if I made a good impression, considering my state of mind. They kept me around, conferring, all day Thursday and most of Friday. I phoned Wolfe that I was detained. By explaining the situation on 35th Street I could have got permission to beat it back to New York, but I wasn’t going to give that collection of brass headgear an excuse to giggle around that Nero Wolfe didn’t have brains enough to keep on breathing, in his own house, without me there to look after him. Wolfe would have had my scalp.
But I was tempted to hop a plane when, late Thursday evening, I saw the ad in the Star. I had been too busy all day to take more than a glance at the New York papers I’d been following for news of the Jensen case. I was alone in my hotel room when it caught my eye, bordered and spaced to make a spot:
weighing about 260–270, around 5 ft. 11; 45–55 years old, medium in coloring, waist not over 48, capable of easy and normal movement. Temporary. Hazardous. $100 a day. Send photo with letter. Box 292 Star.
I read it through four times, stared at it disapprovingly for an additional two minutes, and then reached for the phone and put in a New York call. I got Fritz Brenner on the phone, and he assured me Wolfe was all right.
Getting ready for bed, I tried to figure out in what manner, if I were making preparations to kill Nero Wolfe, I could make use of an assistant, hired on a temporary basis at a hundred bucks a day, who was a physical counterpart of Wolfe. The two schemes I devised weren’t very satisfactory, and the one I hit on after I got my head on the pillow was even worse, so I flipped the switch on the nervous system and let the muscles quit...
In the morning I finished conferring and made tracks for New York.
Arriving at Wolfe’s house on 35th Street a little before eleven, I gave the button three short pushes as usual, and in a moment there were footsteps, and the curtain was pulled aside and Fritz was peering at me through the glass panel. Satisfied, he let me in.
I saw Wolfe was in the office, since the door to it was open and the light shining through, so I breezed down the hall and on in.
“I am a fug—” I began, and stopped. Wolfe’s chair behind his desk, his own chair and no one else’s under any circumstances, was occupied by the appropriate mass of matter in comparatively human shape — in other words, by a big, fat man — but it wasn’t Nero Wolfe. I had never seen him before.
Fritz, who had stayed to bolt the door, came at me from behind, talking. The occupant of the chair neither moved nor spoke, but merely leered at me. Fritz was telling me that Mr. Wolfe was up in his room.
The specimen in the chair said in a husky croak, “I suppose you’re Goodwin. Archie. Have a good trip?”
I stared at him. In a way I wished I was back at the Pentagon, and in another way I wished I had come sooner.
He said, “Fritz, bring me another highball.”
Fritz said, “Yes, sir.”
He said, “Have a good trip, Archie?”
That was enough of that. I marched out to the hall and up a flight, went to Wolfe’s door and tapped on it, and called, “Archie!” Wolfe’s voice told me to come in.
He was seated in his number two chair, under the light, reading a book. He was fully dressed, and there was nothing in his appearance to indicate that he had lost his mind.
I did not intend to give him the satisfaction of sitting there smirking and enjoying fireworks. “Well,” I said casually, “I got back. If you’re sleepy we can wait till morning for conversation.”
“I’m not sleepy.” He closed the book, with a finger inserted at his page. “Are you going overseas?”
“You know damn well I’m not.” I sat down. “We can discuss that at some future date when I’m out of the Army. It’s a relief to find you all alive and well around here. It’s very interesting down in Washington. Everybody on their toes.”
“No doubt. Did you stop in the office downstairs?”
“I did. So you put that ad in the Star yourself. How do you pay him — cash every day? Did you figure out the deductions for income tax and social security? I sat down at my desk and began to report to him. I thought it was you. Until he ordered Fritz to bring him a highball, and I know you hate highballs. Deduction. It reminds me of the time your daughter from Yugoslavia showed up—”
“Archie. Shut up.”
Wolfe put the book down and shifted in his chair, with the routine grunts. When the new equilibrium was established he said, “You will find details about him on a slip of paper in the drawer of your desk. He is a retired architect named H. H. Hackett, out of funds, and an unsurpassed nincompoop with the manners of a wart hog. I chose him, from those answering the advertisement, because his appearance and build were the most suitable and he is sufficiently an ass to be willing to risk his life for a hundred dollars a day.”
“If he keeps on calling me ‘Archie’ the risk will become—”
“If you please.” Wolfe wiggled a finger at me. “Do you think the idea of him sitting there in my chair is agreeable to me? He may be dead tomorrow or the next day. I told him that. This afternoon he went to Mr. Ditson’s place in a taxicab to look at orchids, and came back ostentatiously carrying two plants. Tomorrow afternoon you will drive him somewhere and bring him back, and again in the evening. Dressed for the street, wearing my hat and lightweight coat, carrying my stick, he would deceive anyone except you.”
“Yes, sir. But why couldn’t you just stay in the house? You do, anyway. And be careful who gets in. Until...”
“Until what?”
“Until the bird that killed Jensen is caught.”
“Bah!” He glared at me. “By whom? By Mr. Cramer? What do you suppose he is doing now? Pfui! Major Jensen, Mr. Jensen’s son, arriving home on leave from Europe five days ago, learned that during his absence his father had sued his mother for divorce. The father and son quarreled, which was not unique. But Mr. Cramer has a hundred men trying to collect evidence that will convict Major Jensen of killing his father! Utterly intolerable asininity. For what motive could Major Jensen have for killing me?”