by Rex Stout
Wolfe sighed. "You killed Clyde Osgood to prevent the exposure of your fraud. Even less, to avoid the compulsion of having to share its proceeds. Now it threatens you again. That's the minimum of the threat."
McMillan tossed his head, as if he were trying to shake something off. The gesture looked familiar, but I didn't re- member having seen him do it before. Then he did it again, and I saw what it was: it was the way the bull had tossed his head in the pasture Monday afternoon.
He looked at Wolfe and said, "Do me a favor. I want to go out to my car a minute. Alone."
Wolfe muttered, "You wouldn't come back."
"Yes, I would. My word was good for over 50 years. Now it's good again. Ill be back within 5 minutes, on my feet."
"Do I owe you a favor?"
"No. I'll do you one in return. I'll write something and sign it. Anything you say. You've got it pretty straight. I'll do it when I come back, not before. And you asked me how I killed Buckingham. I'll show you what I did it with."
Wolfe spoke to me without moving his head or his eyes. "Open the door for him, Archie."
I didn't stir. I knew he was indulging himself in one of his romantic impulses, and I thought a moment's reflection might show him its drawbacks; but after only half a moment he snapped at me, "Well?"
I got up and opened the door and McMillan, with a heavy tread but no sign of the blind staggers, passed out. I stood and watched his back until the top of his head disappeared on his way downstairs. Then I turned to Wolfe and said sarcastically, "Fortune-telling and character-reading. It would be nice to have to explain-"
"Shut up."
I kicked the door further open and stood there, listen- ing for the sound of a gunshot or a racing engine or what- ever I might hear. But the first pertinent sound, within the 5 minutes he had mentioned, was his returning footsteps on the stairs. He came down the hall, as he had promised, on his feet, entered without glancing at me, walked to Wolfe and handed him something, and went to his chair and sat down.
"That's what I said I'd show you." He seemed more out of breath than the exertion of his trip warranted, but other- wise under control. "That's what I killed Buckingham with." He turned his eye to me. "I haven't got any pencil or paper. If you'll let me have that pad…"
Wolfe held the thing daintily with thumb and forefinger, regarding it-a large hypodermic syringe. He lifted his gaze.
"You had anthrax in this?"
"Yes. Five cubic centimeters. A culture I made myself from the tissues of Caesar's heart the morning I found him dead. They gave me hell for cutting him open, but-" He shrugged. "I did that before I got the idea of saying the carcass was Buckingham instead of Caesar. I only about half knew what I was doing that morning, but it was in my mind to use it on myself-the poison from Caesar's heart. Watch out how you handle that. It's empty now, but there might be a drop left on the needle, though I just wiped it off."
"Will anthrax kill a man?"
"Yes. How sudden depends on how he gets it. In my case collapse will come in maybe twenty minutes, because I shot more than two cubic centimeters of that concentrate in this vein." He tapped his left forearm with a finger. "Right in the vein. I only used half of it on Buckingham."
"Before you left for Crowfield Tuesday afternoon."
"Yes." McMillan looked at me again. "You'd better give me that pad and let me get started."
I got out the pad and tore off the three top sheets which contained the sketches, and handed it to him, with my fountain pen. He took it and scratched with the pen to try it, and asked Wolfe, "Do you want to dictate it?"
"No. Better in your own words. Just-it can be brief. Are you perfectly certain about the anthrax?"
"Yes. A good stockman is a jack of all trades."
Wolfe sighed, and shut his eyes.
I sat and watched the pen in McMillan's hand moving along the top sheet of the pad. Apparently he was a slow writer. The faint scratch of its movement was the only sound for several minutes. Then he asked without looking up:
"How do you spell 'unconscious'? I've always been a bad speller."
Wolfe spelled it for him, slowly and distinctly.
I watched the pen starting to move again. My gun, in my pocket, was weighting my coat down, and I transferred it back to the holster, still looking at the pen. Wolfe, his eyes closed, was looking at nothing.
21
THAT WAS two months ago. Yesterday, while I was sitting here in the office typing from my notebook Wolfe's dictated report on the Crampton-Gore case, the phone rang. Wolfe, at his desk in his oversize chair, happening not to be pouring beer at the moment, answered at his instrument. After a second he grunted and muttered:
"She wants Escamillo."
I lifted my receiver. "Hello, trifle. I'm busy."
"You're always busy." She sounded energetic. "You listen to me a minute. You probably don't know or don't care that I seldom pay any attention to my mail except to run through it to see if there's a letter from you. I've just discovered that I did after all get an invitation to Nancy's and Jimmy's wed- ding, which will be tomorrow. I know you did. You and I will go together. You can come-"
"Stop! Stop and take a breath. Weddings are out. They're barbaric vestiges of… of barbarism. I doubt if I'd go to my own."
"You might. You may. For a string of cellophane pearls I'd marry you myself. But this wedding will be amusing. Old Pratt and old Osgood will be there and you can see them shake hands. Then you can have cocktails and dinner with me."
"My pulse remains steady."
"Kiss me."
"Still steady."
"I'll buy you some marbles and an airgun and roller skates…"
"No. Are you going to ring off now?"
"No. I haven't seen you for a century."
"Okay. I'll tell you what I'll do. I'm going to the Strand tomorrow evening at 9 o'clock to watch Greenleaf and Bald- win play pool. You can come along if you'll promise to sit quietly and not chew gum." "I wouldn't know a pool from a pikestaff. But all right. You can come here for dinner-"
"Nope. I'll eat at home with my employer. I'll meet you in the lobby "of the Churchill at 8:45."
"My God, these public assignations-"
"I am perfectly willing to be seen with you in public."
"8:45 tomorrow."
"Right."
I replaced the instrument and turned to my typewriter. Wolfe's voice came:
"Archie."
"Yes, sir."
"Get the dictionary and look up the meaning of the word 'spiritual.'"
I merely ignored it and started on paragraph 16 of the report.
THE END
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FB2 document info
Document ID: 56a64971-e22b-40e7-9337-0be48e12f579
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 30.4.2012
Created using: calibre 0.8.13 software
Document authors :
Rex Stout
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