Not Quite Dead Enough (The Rex Stout Library)

“Certainly I realize. It’s a difficult errand. I doubt if there is another man anywhere, in the Army or out, who could safely be entrusted with it.”

He sure wanted that suitcase, to be ladling it out like that.

“Bushwah,” I said, and opened my door and crawled out, and headed for the stoop.

He snapped after me. “Where are you going?”

“To get a receptacle!” I called over my shoulder. “Do you think I’m going to hang it around my neck?”

Three minutes later I was on my way back to Duncan Street, the rear seat occupied not by Wolfe but by a man-size suitcase that I had got from the closet in his room. I had one of my own just as big, but I wasn’t going to risk my personal property in addition to my career as a warrior. I was sorry I hadn’t read up more fully on the regulations about courts-martial. Not that I wasted the minutes en route being sorry. I used them to consider ways and means. My watch said 6:30, and at that hour of the day I couldn’t tell what I would be up against until I had executed a patrol. You never knew around there; anyone might be out or in; anyone might leave for the day any time between four and midnight. I had my mind started on about three and a half different plans, but by the time I got to Duncan Street I had decided that I couldn’t lay out a campaign until I had looked the ground over and done a reconnaissance on the enemy.

On the tenth floor I returned the corporal’s salute, indicating by my posture that the receptacle, in my left hand, was a little hefty, assumed an urgent expression, and asked him if he had seen Lieutenant Lawson go out.

“Yes, sir. He left about twenty minutes ago.”

“Damn it. Colonel Tinkham too?”

“No, sir. I think he’s in his office.”

“Have you seen General Fife around?”

“Not for an hour or more, sir. He may be upstairs.”