Not Quite Dead Enough (The Rex Stout Library)

The lovely innocent creature sat.

I resumed. “I didn’t know whether Lawson was there as a cavalier or a porter or what. The conversation didn’t light that up, except that she called him ‘Ken darling.’ So I left him and brought her and it. On the way here she made me a cash offer for the carton and contents-ten thousand dollars by tomorrow afternoon-and me erasing it from my mind. I think she’ll pay more if you press her, but I didn’t want to haggle because she had her hand on my arm. If you don’t close with her, I’ll give you a dime for it.”

Wolfe grunted. “Her offer was for the carton and contents? What else is in it?”

“I haven’t looked.”

“Do so.”

I picked it up and fished out the papers and miscellany, piling them on my desk. It was a thin crop-tennis racket, empty handbag, pair of stockings, a copy of Is Germany Incurable?, a jar of cream, other similar items. There was nothing among the papers to quicken my pulse-a copy of Army Regulations, four issues of Yank, a dozen or so G.I. postcards. I flipped the pages of the Regulations, and when a folded sheet of paper fluttered out I picked it up and unfolded it. It had typewriting on one side:

THE LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;

Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

There was more of it. “This may be something,” I told Wolfe. “Where’s Innisfree?”

He was scowling at me. “What?”

“She writes poetry.” I placed the sheet on the desk before him, stepping around so I could finish reading it. “She’s going to Innisfree and build a cabin and start a victory garden and keep bees. Maybe there’s more clues in it.” I read on:

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,

I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

“Defeatist,” I declare. “Peace propaganda. Stop the war. And you notice-”

Wolfe cut me off. “Pfui. It was written fifty years ago, by Yeats.” He wiggled a finger at the stack of junk on my desk. “Nothing in that?”