At that point I gave up entirely. I went to the office, to the phone on my desk, buzzed the plant rooms, and told Wolfe what had happened. Then, still following instructions, I retired to the kitchen. I wasn’t supposed to show up in the office until after they had come down from the plant rooms. Why? As far as I knew, because. Evidently they were in no hurry. I had finished two bananas and a glass of milk before I heard the elevator complaining. After hearing their voices in the hall I gave them time to get in the office and solve the seating problem. Then I joined them.
It didn’t strike me as an atmosphere of jollity, as I circled around their chairs to reach mine at my desk. I would have been perfectly willing to salute my superior officers, but their attitudes didn’t seem to call for it. None of them was in handcuffs or even had his insignia ripped off, so as far as I could see the booby trap was a turkey. The closest chair to mine was Shattuck’s, and beyond him was Tinkham. Fife was in the big one at the other end of Wolfe’s desk. Lawson was to his right and back of him.
Wolfe, having got himself comfortably adjusted, sighed clear to the bottom. “Now,” he said in a tone of satisfaction, “we can proceed. I thank you gentlemen again for your patience. I hope you’ll agree with me, when I’ve explained, that it was worth it. It was the only way that occurred to me of learning whether one of you murdered Colonel Ryder, or Miss Bruce did.”
“Murder?” Fife was scowling at him. “Goodwin told me you didn’t know-”
“If you please, General.” Wolfe was curt. “This will take all day if you start heckling. What Major Goodwin told you, and Colonel Tinkham and Lieutenant Lawson, was that I wanted to see you at my office, privately, that I was still undecided as to the manner of Colonel Ryder’s death, that I had learned that Miss Bruce was involved on account of a report being prepared by Colonel Ryder which would have meant her ruin, and that I had received a sealed communication from Colonel Ryder, mailed yesterday, which I wished to open in your presence.”
“But now you say-”
“General. Please.” Wolfe’s eyes swept the circle. “I can now tell you that I devised an experiment. I arranged for you to arrive here at fifteen-minute intervals, and to be left alone in this office. On the desk where you couldn’t fail to see it was an envelope addressed to me, with Colonel Ryder’s return address, his home address, and the inscription,
“I wondered about that,” Colonel Tinkham said dryly. “It was postmarked eleven p.m. Ryder had been dead seven hours.”
“Irrelevant,” Wolfe snapped. “That could have been accounted for in a dozen ways. On the envelope I placed a grenade like the one that killed Colonel Ryder. I asked General Carpenter for it on the phone last evening, and he sent it by messenger on a plane. The experiment was to leave each of you in here alone for ten minutes, with those objects on the desk, and see what would happen. After each of you left, Fritz came in to inspect-especially to learn if the envelope had been tampered with. That may seem a little crude. But consider: consider the state of mind of the murderer. Could he stay in here alone for ten minutes, with that envelope staring him in the face, and do nothing about it? Make no effort whatever to learn what was in it? Impossible. Absolutely impossible!”
Fife snorted. “I never saw the damn thing. I don’t see it now.” He was regarding Wolfe as anything but a valued associate. “And you had the gall, by God, to put me on your list!”
“It impresses me,” Tinkham said coldly, “as kindergarten stuff.”
“Ah, Colonel,” Wolfe wiggled a finger at him, “but it worked!” He wiggled the finger at the desk. “As General Fife remarked, he doesn’t see it now. It’s gone.”
They all goggled at him. Then, as the implication soaked in, they looked at one another. Currents of startled inquiry, uneasiness, distrust, darted from one pair of eyes to another, here and there, in all directions, crossing, meeting.
Fife barked at Wolfe, “What the hell are you talking about? What are you insinuating?”
“Nothing,” Wolfe said quietly. “I’m merely reporting. I know you gentlemen are on edge, but even so you might let me finish. As I said, Fritz entered to look things over after each of you had been in here ten minutes. And all of you passed the test admirably. Lawson, Tinkham, Fife, Shattuck. But there was another. The last to come was Miss Bruce. She too had her allotted ten minutes. But, gentlemen, she remained for only seven of them! The keyhole of the kitchen door commands a view of the hall. After seven minutes Fritz saw Miss Bruce emerge from the office and depart by the front door. He came in here-and both the envelope and the grenade were gone! Why she took the grenade I don’t know, unless for the purpose of hurling it through the window at me.”
They all glanced at the window, and I did too, to make it unanimous.
Fife was on his feet. “I want to use that phone.”
Wolfe shook his head. “It requires a little discussion, General. For one thing, we can’t afford to make enemies of the police. For another, they are already attending to Miss Bruce. I arranged with Inspector Cramer to post men outside, to follow any of you, including Miss Bruce, who left the house before one o’clock. For still another, General Carpenter phoned me from Washington last evening and gave me some special instructions. As I said, he sent me that grenade. And with it, the instructions in writing. So if you’ll bear with me a little longer-”
Fife sat down.
“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.
