Not Quite Dead Enough (The Rex Stout Library)

“Well, to start with, material witness. You talk, or I take you down, and maybe I do anyway.”

“You mean arrest me as a material witness?”

“That’s what I mean.”

“Go ahead. It will be the first time I’ve ever been arrested in the city of New York. And by you! Go ahead.”

He growled. He was getting mad. “Goddamn it, Archie, don’t be a sap! In that uniform? You’re an officer, ain’t you?”

“I am. Major Goodwin. You didn’t salute.”

“Well, for God’s sake-”

“No good. Final. Regarding Ann Amory, anything about Ann Amory, I don’t open my trap.”

“All right,” he said. “I’ve always thought you were cuckoo. You’re under arrest. Get in that car.”

I did so.

There was one little chore left before I could sit back and let nature take its course. Arriving at Centre Street, and asserting my right to make one phone call, I got a lawyer I knew out of bed and gave him some facts to relay to Bill Pratt of the Courier. At 3:45 in the morning, after spending three hours in the company of Inspector Cramer, two lieutenants, and some assorted sergeants and other riffraff, and still refusing to utter a syllable connected in any way with the life or death of Ann Amory, I was locked into a cell in the beautiful new city prison, which is not as beautiful inside as outside.

Chapter 8

It had cost me two bucks to get it smuggled in to me, but it was worth it. Wednesday noon I sat on the edge of my cot in my cell gazing admiringly at it, a front page headline in the early edition of the Courier:

ARMY MAJOR HELD IN MURDER CASE

NERO WOLFE’S FORMER ASSISTANT

LOCKED UP

As the schoolboy said to the teacher, good-hell, it’s perfect. The “Army Major” was plenty disgraceful, and the “Nero Wolfe’s Former Assistant” was superb. Absolutely degrading. As added attractions, there were pictures of both Wolfe and me on the second page. The article was good too. Bill Pratt hadn’t failed me. It gave me a good appetite, so I relinquished another two bucks to send out for a meal that would fit the occasion. After that was disposed of, I stretched out on the cot for a nap, having got behind on my sleep the last two nights.