Not Quite Dead Enough (The Rex Stout Library)

“I won’t be alive? An hour from now?” Shattuck laughed, and it wasn’t very hollow at that. “This is incredible. I suppose you’re going to threaten to blow me to pieces with that grenade unless I sign a confession to anything you tell me to. Absolutely unbelievable!”

“Not like that. The grenade, yes. I brought it along for you to kill yourself with.”

“By God-you are crazy!”

Wolfe shook his head. “Don’t shout at me. Keep your wits. You’re going to need them. Archie, where are you going?”

“Leaving the highway,” I told him, “for the park entrance. Then what?”

“Secluded roads in the park.”

“Yes, sir.” We rolled on down the incline.

“The reason you shouted,” Wolfe went on to Shattuck, “was because the first glimmer of a fact darted into your brain-the fact that you are fighting for your life. That was a mean trick I played on you in my office. You had seen the grenade on my desk. You were told that a person who thought I was endangering her safety had been in there alone for seven minutes, had departed, and the grenade had disappeared. The most vivid impression your mind held at that moment was the memory of what you yourself had done the day before with a grenade like that one. When Major Goodwin began pulling drawers open-the grenade trap, just like the one you had set, might have been in any of them-control of your involuntary processes was out of the question. When I told him to open the suitcase-it’s a pity you couldn’t have seen yourself. It was magnificent-better, really, than if you had leaped screaming to your feet and fled from the room.

“Archie, confound it, can’t you see a hole?

“What you want, of course, is to learn how much I know. How much General Carpenter knows. I’m not going to tell you. You got in this car with me to match your wits against mine. Abandon the attempt. If we met on equal terms, there’s no telling what the score would be, but we don’t. I am free and safe; you are a doomed man. You’re cornered, with no space to maneuver.”

“I’m letting you talk,” Shattuck said. “You’re talking drivel.”

We entered Van Cortlandt Park.