Not Quite Dead Enough (The Rex Stout Library)

“I do not state,” Wolfe said, “that Miss Bruce murdered Colonel Ryder. She has the appearance of a resourceful and determined woman, but we certainly haven’t enough evidence to charge her with murder. Why she stayed in here seven minutes, instead of seizing the envelope as soon as she saw it and leaving with it, I don’t know. She may have been coolheaded enough to open it and examine the contents, but that doesn’t seem likely, since all it contained was blank sheets of paper. At any rate, we can now start to work on her, and whether her wrongdoing went to the length of murder or not, she’ll pay for whatever she did.” Wolfe frowned. “I admit I don’t like her having that grenade. I didn’t foresee that. If she gets in a corner and kills someone with it-” He shrugged. “Archie, you’d better phone Mr. Cramer and tell him to warn his men-but first, where’s that letter from General Carpenter? Have you got it in your desk?”

It was just as I opened my mouth to answer him that I realized what he was doing. This was the booby trap.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “I think you took it. I’ll look.” I pulled a drawer of my desk open. I would have given a month’s pay to be able to watch their faces, but I knew that was Wolfe’s part of it and went on with mine. I shut the drawer and opened another one. “Not here.” I opened a third drawer and closed it.

Wolfe, leaning back with his arms folded, said testily, “Try mine.”

I went around to the side of his desk and did so. The middle drawer; the three on the left; the four on the right. I was about to mutter something about trying the files when Wolfe spoke.

“Confound it, I remember! I put it back in the suitcase. Get it.”

I returned to my desk. Just as my fingers were reaching for the catches of the suitcase Wolfe’s voice snapped like a whip: “Mr. Shattuck! What’s the matter?”

“Matter? Nothing,” Shattuck’s reply came, but it wasn’t much like his voice.

I wheeled to look at him. His hands were grasping the arms of his chair, his jaw was clamped, and his eyes glittered with what seemed to be, from my distance, half fear and half fight.