Chapter 1
On our way out of the house — his house, which was also his office, on West 35th Street over near the North River — Nero Wolfe, who was ahead of me, stopped so abruptly that I nearly bumped into him. He wheeled and confronted me, glancing at my briefcase.
“Have you got that thing?”
I looked innocent. “What thing?”
“You know very well. That confounded grenade. I want that infernal machine out of this house. Have you got it?”
I held my ground. “Colonel Ryder,” I said in a crisp military tone, “who is my superior officer, said I could keep it for a souvenir in view of my valor and devotion to duty in recovering—”
“You can’t keep it in my house. I tolerate pistols as a tool of the business, but not that contraption. If by accident the pin got removed it would blow off the top of the building, not to mention the noise it would make. I thought you understood this is out of discussion. Get it, please.”
Formerly I might have argued that my room on the third floor was my castle, tenanted by me as part of my pay for suffering his society as his assistant and guardian, but that was out now, since Congress was taking care of me by appropriating around ten billion bucks a month. So I merely shrugged to show I was humoring him, and, knowing how it annoyed him to be kept waiting standing up, moseyed over to the stair and took my time mounting the two flights to my room. It was there where I kept it on top of the chest of drawers — about seven inches long and three in diameter, painted a pale pink, looking nothing like as deadly as it was supposed to be. Reaching for it, I glanced at the safety pin to make sure it was snug, put it in the briefcase, went back downstairs at my leisure, ignored a remark he saw fit to make, and accompanied him out to the curb where the sedan was parked.
One thing Wolfe demanded from the Army, and got, was enough gas for his car. Not that he was trying to bypass the war. He really was making sacrifices for victory. As one, most of his accustomed income from the detective business. Two, his daily sessions with his orchids in the plant rooms on the roof, whenever Army work interfered. Three, his fixed rule to avoid the hazards of unessential movements, especially outdoors. Four, food. I kept an eye on that, looking for a chance to insert remarks, and drew a blank. He and Fritz accomplished wonders within the limitations of coupon fodder, and right there in the middle of New York, with black markets tipping the wink like floozies out for a breath of air on a summer evening, Wolfe’s kitchen was as pure as cottage cheese.
After burning up not more than half a gallon of the precious gas, even counting traffic stops and starts, I let him out in front of 17 Duncan Street, found a place to park, and walked back and joined him in the lobby. Leaving the elevator at the tenth floor, Wolfe had a chance to suppress some more irritation. In my uniform all I had to do was return the salute of the corporal on guard, but although Wolfe had been there at least a couple dozen times and it was no trick to recognize him, he was in cits, and the New York headquarters of Military Intelligence was finicky about civilian visitors. After he got the high sign we went through a door, down a long corridor with closed doors on both sides, one of which was to my office, turned a corner, and entered the anteroom of the Second in Command.