Free Rex Stout_Nero Wolfe 07 by Over My Dead Body Page A

fingers and thumb and eased it out. It was rolled tight. As I unrolled it, it became a heavy canvas gauntlet, with reinforced palm, and a little metal dingus slid off onto the desk.
    “Let’s don’t touch that,” I suggested, and bent over to inspect it. At its middle it was about a quarter of an inch thick. At one end it had three claws, or fingers, and at the other it tapered to a single point, sharp as an ice pick. I straightened up with a nod.
    “Uh-huh, I thought so.”
    “What the devil is it?”
    “My God, look at it! It’s the
col de mort
!”
    “Confound you, Archie—”
    “Okay, but let it alone.” I told him about the disappearance of the curio from Miltan’s cabinet and the history of it. He listened with his lips compressed.
    When I was through he demanded, “And you think this was used—”
    “I know damn well it was. The end of the épée that killed Ludlow was blunt, and Miltan said it couldn’tpossibly have been thrust through him that way. So this thing was removed afterwards. It looks as if it would slide right off. I doubt if I need to point out those stains on the glove where this was wrapped up in it.”
    “Thank you. I can see.”
    “And you can also see that it is a woman’s glove. It looks big on account of the way it’s made, but it’s not big enough—”
    “I can see that too.”
    “And you can see that if I had stayed there and that contraption had been found in my pocket, or if I had tried to hide it—”
    I stopped because his lips were working and he had shut his eyes. It didn’t take long, maybe thirty seconds, then he reached for the button and pushed it. When Fritz appeared he was in a cap and apron similar to those worn by the man in the court who hadn’t seen my wife’s cat.
    “Turn out the light in the hall and do not answer the door,” Wolfe told him.
    “Yes, sir.”
    “If the phone rings, answer it in the kitchen. Archie is not here and you don’t know where he is or when he will return. I am engaged and cannot be disturbed. Draw the heavy curtains in the front and the dining room, but first—is there a full loaf of the Italian round?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Bring it, please, with a small knife and a roll of waxed paper.”
    When Fritz left I followed him, to hang my coat in the hall and shoot the bolt on the front door. As I returned I flipped the light switch, and in a moment Fritz returned with the required articles on a tray.Wolfe told him to stand by and then attacked the loaf of bread with the knife, which of course was like a razor, as Fritz’s knives always were. He described a circle four inches in diameter in the center of the loaf, and then dug in, excavating a neat round hole clear to the bottom crust but leaving the crust intact. Next he picked up the
col de mort
with the tips of his fingers, placed it on the palm of the glove, rolled the glove up tight, wrapped it in some waxed paper, and stuffed it into the hole in the loaf. He filled the extra space with wads of paper, and spread a sheet of paper smoothly over the top. With his swift and dexterous fingers, the entire operation consumed not over three minutes.
    He told Fritz, “Make a chocolate icing, at once, and cover this well. Put it in the refrigerator. Dispose of the bread scraps.”
    “Yes, sir.” Fritz picked up the tray and departed.
    I said sarcastically, “Bravo. It’s wonderful how your mind works. If that had been me I would just have gone up and chucked it in my bureau drawer. Of course it’s more picturesque to disguise it as a cake, but it’s an awful waste of chocolate, and who do you think is going to come looking for it? Do you think I’d have brought it here if anyone had any suspicion that I had it?”
    “I don’t know. But someone knows that you had it and that you brought it away—the person who put it there. Who had an opportunity to do that?”
    “Everybody. They were all there in the office. While I was on guard at the street door.”
    “When you