Not Quite Dead Enough (The Rex Stout Library)

It was still broad daylight in that corner room, with a nice breeze from the windows, since there was no glass left in them. As we looked things over, stepping to avoid chunks of plaster and similar obstructions, various details were worthy of note. By a freak of the blast, the partition to the hall was a wreck, but the one to the anteroom only had a couple of cracks. The door to the anteroom was standing open, and looked intact but a little cockeyed. Two of the chairs were nothing but splinters, four were battered and scarred, and Ryder’s own chair, against the wall back of his desk, didn’t have a mark. The desk top was smashed and pockmarked, as if someone had first dropped a two-ton weight on it and then used it for a target with a shotgun loaded with slugs. On it and all around that area were bloodstains, from single drops up to a big blob the size of a dishpan on the floor back of the desk. The remains of the suitcase and its contents, also on the floor, were over near the door to the anteroom, the contents strewn around, the suitcase twisted and riddled so that for a second I didn’t recognize it. Everywhere, in all directions, were little pieces of metal, as small as the head of a pin or as big as a thumbnail, black on one side and pink on the other. Anyone anywhere in that room when the thing exploded would have stopped at least a dozen of them-and they would have stopped him. I dropped a couple in my pocket to add to my collection in a drawer at home.

I also acquired another souvenir. A piece of folded paper in the jumble of the contents of the suitcase looked familiar. Wolfe and Tinkham were at the other side of the room. I stooped and snared the paper, saw at a glance that it was the anonymous letter to Shattuck that had started the morning’s conference, and slipped it into my inside breast pocket.

We were still poking around, observing and commenting, and Tinkham was still acting as chaperon, when I became aware that company had arrived next door. I stepped through to the anteroom. Sergeant Bruce was standing there, frowning at a tennis racket she held in her hand.

“Damaged?” I inquired brightly.

“No, sir.”

Nuts, I thought, this sir stuff is worse than a suit of armor. She put the racket into a fiber shipping carton that stood on the floor with its end flaps open, and moved around behind her desk. The place was thick with dust, and things were displaced, but nothing seemed to be hurt much.

“Can I help?”

“No, sir, thanks.”