had merely a surmise. Talking with these people last
evening, I got nothing but faint intimations. Miss Kirk?
Unlikely. She attended a ballet school regularly, she
exercised an hour every morning, and she received a
monthly remittance from her father, all of which could
be checked. Mr. Dell? Also unlikely. He had paid no
room rent for three years. Mr. Ferris? Possibly, but
with a reservation. His statement that two of the agen-
cies he called at yesterday would corroborate him made
it improbable that he had followed Miss Annis here
yesterday morning.”
“So what?” Cramer rasped.
“So my attention centered on Mr. Hannah. He had
lived there only four months. He had paid for his room
every week. He had almost certainly lied when he said
Miss Baxter had told him that a man had twice followed
her to the door. Miss Baxter was an agent of the Secret
Service of the Treasury Department, and she—”
“Who said so?” Leach demanded.
“No one. Mr. Goodwin inferred it. You have carried
discretion to an extreme, Mr. Leach, in concealing the
interest of your organization in the occupants of that
house, but you will soon agree that it is no longer
needed. So I did not believe that Miss Baxter had told
Mr. Hannah that. Finally, Mr. Hannah’s account of his
movements yesterday left him completely free up to
noon. He could have followed Miss Annis here and,
when she left without entering, back to her house. He
could have stolen a parked car and, when she left her
Rex Stout
house a second time, tried to run it over her; but, since
he failed, that is of little consequence.”
“There’s damn little consequence in anything you’ve
said,” Cramer growled.
Wolfe nodded. “I’m only explaining why my atten-
tion centered on Mr. Hannah. I could indulge in
speculation—for instance, why did he kill Miss Baxter
there and then? Had she seen him try to kill Miss Annis
with the car, and confronted him when he returned to
the house? But you can speculate as well as I, and it will
be your job, not mine, to screw a confession out of him.”
“I’ve got nothing to confess,” Hannah said. “You’re
going to regret this. You’re going to regret it good.”
“I think not, Mr. Hannah.” Wolfe’s eyes went to
Leach, standing, and then to Cramer, sitting. “So when
I sent three men to those addresses, with the invita-
tions to luck, I sent Saul Panzer to the Mushroom. Mr.
Panzer leaves less to luck than any man I know. He
phoned four times to report progress. The third time,
around three o’clock, he asked for reinforcements and I
sent them. The fourth time, less than two hours ago, I
told him to come and I phoned you gentlemen. Saul, will
you describe the situation?”
Since Saul was over by the big globe, all but Wolfe
and Stebbins and me had to twist their necks. “Just the
situation?” Saul asked.
“Lead up to it briefly.”
“Yes, sir. The first two hours I covered the neighbor-
hood, but got no lead, so I went inside the building. I
didn’t tell the superintendent what I was after, just
that I wanted to look around for something, and the
way he reacted and the way he accepted forty dollars
for his trouble, I decided he was honest. He showed me
around the theater and the basement and the second
floor. The third floor is occupied by a job-printing shop
with two presses and the other equipment you would
expect. He told the two men there what I had sug-
gested, that I was an insurance underwriters’ inspector
looking for violations. From the way the men looked I
decided I was hot, and I told the superintendent I
The Homicide Trinity 203
would have to give the shop a good look and it would
take a while, and he left. When I started looking behind
things on shelves they jumped me and I had to get
rough and pull my gun. I didn’t shoot, but I had to knock
one of them out. There was a phone on a table, and I
rang you and asked you to send Fred and Orrie to help
me search the place. You said they would be calling in
soon, and you would—”
“That’s far enough,” Wolfe said. “And now?”
“They’re still there. In behind stacks of paper on one
of the shelves there are eight stacks of new twenty-
dollar bills. In a compartment in the back of a cupboard
are four engraver’s plates that were probably used to
make the bills. The two men are on the floor with their
hands and feet tied. I don’t know their names. There’s
only one chair in the room and Fred Durkin is sitting on
it, or he was when I left, and Orrie Gather was sitting on
a pile of paper. One of the men has a lump on the side of
his head where I hit him with my gun, but he’s not hurt
much. I gave the superintendent another twenty dol-
lars. That’s the situation.”
Paul Hannah had started to rise, but hands on his
shoulders had stopped him—Stebbins on the left and
Leach on the right.
“You might add one detail,” Wolfe told Saul. “The
name one of them mentioned.”
“Yes, sir. That was after Fred and Orrie came and we
had them tied and we found the plates. One of them said
to the other one, ‘I told you Paul would squeal. The
goddamn murderous bastard. I told you we ought to
clear out.’ Do you want to hear the rest of it?”
“That will do for now. You will of course report in full
to Mr. Cramer and Mr. Leach.” Wolfe’s head moved.
“As you see, gentlemen, I was faced with a dilemma,
since he was both a counterfeiter and a murderer. Pre-
ferring not to choose, I asked you both to come, and I
leave the question of priority to you. Since Mr. Cramer
has him under arrest—”
The movement that interrupted him was by Paul
Hannah, but it wasn’t much of a movement. Apparently
Rex Stout
his idea was to lunge at Wolfe, but Stebbins and Leach
had him pinned. They glared at each other and Hannah
glared at Wolfe, and Hattie Annis’s voice came from the
couch.
“You see, Falstaff? Didn’t I tell you?”
She had told him absolutely nothing.
Chapter 9
One day three weeks later Wolfe and I were in the
office disagreeing about something when the
doorbell rang. It was Hattie. I escorted her in,
and she sat in the red leather chair, opened her hand-
bag, and took out a little package wrapped in brown
paper. Wolfe made a face. I thought, Good Lord, she’s
found another one. But she reached into the bag again
and came out with an envelope that I recognized.
“This check you sent me,” she said. “You say in your
letter it’s for my share of the reward, a hundred dollars.
So you kept your share?”
“Yes,” Wolfe lied.
“Did you get yours, Buster?”
“Yes,” I lied.
“Then that’s all right. But what about this bill? Five
thousand dollars fee for services and $621.65 for ex-
penses. What did I tell you that day, Buster? Didn’t I
say I could pay forty-two thousand dollars?”
“You did.”
“Then here it is.” She tossed the package onto
Wolfe’s desk. “A man at the bank helped me pick those
bonds and he says there’s none better. These are trans-
ferred to you. This is the first time I ever let any of them
go, and I hope it’s the last, but it was worth it. That was
a day, the best day I’ve had since my father died. I
didn’t like it when I saw in the paper that he had
The Homicide Trinity 205
confessed, but that wasn’t your fault. I’ve got no use for
anybody that confesses anything to the cops. That Paul
Hannah was no good. He even told them how he stole
the car and tried to kill me with it because he thought I
had the package and knew who put it in my parlor, and
he saw Tammy across the street and knew she saw him,
and when he went back to the house she was at the
phone dialing a number and he got the knife from the
kitchen, and when he got near her and she stood up he
stabbed her, and then he carried her in the parlor and
left her there with her skirt up to her waist. He was no
good. I’ll have to be more careful about people that
want a room.”
Wolfe was frowning. “I can’t accept those bonds,
mad—Miss Annis. Not all of them. I prefer to evaluate
my services myself. I did so and sent you a bill.”
She nodded. “I tore it up. The day I told Buster that,
that settled it. I hired you and I said what I could pay.