Mr. Root was not clearing up today.
“Very well. I can offer no inducement. In any event, having answered the advertisement and received a message from me, you were of course delighted, and doubly delighted when you were hired.” Wolfe’s eyes described an arc, including everybody in the roundup. “I invite comment, anything from irony to derision, on the fact that I paid a hundred dollars a day, to get him to live in my house, eat my food, and sit in my chair, to a man who had resolved to kill me. I can afford the invitation only because, in spite of that overwhelming handicap, I shall go on living and he will not.”
Nobody seemed to have any irony or derision ready, but Jensen chipped in, “You still haven’t explained the flummery.”
Wolfe nodded at him. “I’m getting to it, sir. Naturally, from the moment he got in here, Mr. Root was concocting schemes, rejecting, considering, revising; and no doubt relishing the situation enormously. The device of the handkerchief to protect a hand firing a gun was no doubt a part of one of those schemes, but it served admirably for the one he finally used. This morning he learned that Miss Geer was to call on me at six o’clock, and he was to impersonate me. After lunch, in here alone, he got a cushion from the sofa in there, wrapped his revolver in it, and fired a bullet through the back of this chair into the wall. He could, if he wished, have held the thing right against the back of the chair, and probably did. He stuffed the cushion into the rear compartment of the bottom right-hand drawer of this desk, having observed that the contents of the front of the drawer indicated that it was rarely opened. He put the gun in his pocket. He kept the chair pushed back to the wall to cover the hole in the plaster. The hole in the leather was not conspicuous and he took the risk of its being seen; when he was in the chair he covered the hole with his head.”
“If the hole had been seen the bullet would have been found,” Cramer muttered.
“I have already pronounced him,” Wolfe said testily, “an unsurpassable fool. Even so, he knew that Archie would be out with him the rest of the afternoon, and I would be in my room. I had made a remark which informed him that I would not sit in that chair again until he was permanently out of it. At six o’clock Miss Geer arrived, unexpectedly accompanied by Mr. Jensen. They were shown into the front room, and that door was open. Mr. Root’s brain moved swiftly, and so did the rest of him. He got one of my guns from Archie’s desk, returned to this chair, opened the drawer where he had put the cushion, fired a shot into the cushion, dropped the gun in, and shut the drawer.”
Wolfe sighed again. “Archie came dashing in, cast a glance at Mr. Root seated here, and went on to the front room. Mr. Root grasped the opportunity to do two things: return my gun to the drawer of Archie’s desk, and use a blade of his knife, I would guess the awl, to tear a gash in the corner of his ear. That of course improved the situation for him. But what improved it vastly more was the chance that came soon after, when Archie took him to the bathroom and left him there. He might have found another chance, but that was perfect. He entered the front room from the bathroom, put his own gun, handkerchief attached, in the vase, and returned to the bathroom, and later rejoined the others here.”
“Jesus!” Purley Stebbins said incredulously. “That guy would jump off the Empire State Building to catch an airplane by the tail.”
“No doubt,” Wolfe agreed. “I have called him a fool; and yet it was by no means utterly preposterous if I had not noticed the absence of that cushion. Since this desk sits flush with the floor, no sign of the bullet fired into the bottom drawer would be visible unless the drawer was opened, and why should it be? It was unlikely that Archie would have occasion to find that one of my guns in his desk had been fired, and what if he did? Mr. Root knows how to handle a gun without leaving fingerprints, which is simple. Confound it, no. It was entirely feasible for him to await an opportunity to kill me, this evening, tonight, tomorrow morning, with all suspicion aimed at Miss Geer and Mr. Jensen — and disappear.”
Cramer slowly nodded. “I’m not objecting. I’ll buy it. But you must admit you’ve described quite a few things you can’t prove.”