Part 2 (1/2)

Remarkable.”

She stared at him. ”Why not? It has no information that they cannot easily obtain elsewhere from Mr. Farrell or Dr.

Burton or Mr. Drummond any of them -”

”All the same, remarkable.” Wolfe reached to his desk and pushed a b.u.t.ton.

”Will you have a gla.s.s of beer? I drink beer, but would not impose my preferences. There is available a fair port, Solera, Dublin stout, Madeira, and more especially a Hungarian vin du pays which j comes to me from the cellar of the vineyard. Your choice...”

She shook her head. ”Thank you.”

”I may have beer?”

”Please do.”

Wolfe did not lean back again. He said,

”If the package could perhaps be opened?

I am especially interested in that first warning.”

She began to untie the string. I got up to help. She handed me the package and I a put it on Wolfe's desk and got the paper off. It was a large cardboard letter-file, old and faded but intact. I pa.s.sed it to

Wolfe, and he opened it with the deliberate and friendly exactness which his hands displayed toward all inanimate things.

Evelyn Hibbard said, ”Under I. My uncle did not call them warnings. He called them intimations.”

Wolfe nodded. ”Of destiny, I suppose.”

He removed papers from the file. ”Your uncle is indeed a romantic. Oh yes, I say is. It is wise to reject all suppositions, even painful ones, until surmise can stand on the legs of fact. Here it is. Ah! Ye should have killed me, watched the last mean sigh. Is Mr. Chapin in malevolence a poet? May I read it?”

She nodded. He read: Ye should have killed me, watched the last mean sigh Sneak through my nostril like a fugitive slave Slinking from bondage.

Ye should have killed me.

Ye killed the man, Ye should have killed me!

Ye killed the man, but not The snake, the fox, the mouse that nibbles his hole, The patient cat, the hawk, the ape that grins, The wolf, the crocodile, the worm that works his way Up through the slime and down again to hide.

Ah! All these ye left in me, And killed the man.

Ye should have killed me!

Long ago I said, trust time.

Ba.n.a.l I said, time will take its toll.

I said to the snake, the ape, the cat, the worm: Trust time, for all your apt.i.tudes together Are not as sure and deadly. But now they said: Time is too slow; let us. Master.

Master, count for us!

I said no.

Master, let us. Master, count for us!

I felt them in me. I saw the night, the sea, The rocks, the neutral stars, the ready cliff.

I heard ye all about, and I heard them: Master, let us. Master, count for us! I saw one there, secure at the edge of death, I counted: One!

I shall count two I know, and three and four...

Not waiting for time's toll.

Ye should have killed me.

Wolfe sat with the paper in his hand, glancing from it to Miss Hibbard. ”It would seem likely that Mr. Chapin pushed the judge over the edge of a cliff.

Presumably impromptu. I presume also, totally un.o.bserved, since no suspicions were aroused. There was a cliff around handy?”.

”Yes. It was in Ma.s.sachusetts, up near Marblehead. Last June. A crowd was there at Fillmore Collard's place. Judge Harrison had come east, from Indiana, for commencement, for his son's graduation. They missed him that night, and the next morning they found his body at the foot of the cliff, beaten among the rocks by the surf.”

”Mr. Chapin was among them?”

She nodded. ”He was there.”

”But don't tell me the gathering was for purposes of atonement. It was not a meeting of this incredible league?”

”Oh no. Anyway, Mr. Wolfe, no one ever quite seriously called it a league. Even Uncle Andrew was not -” she stopped short, shut her lips, stuck her chin up, and then went on, ”as romantic as that. The crowd was just a crowd, mostly from the cla.s.s of 1912, that Fillmore Collard had taken up from Cambridge. Seven or eight of the well, league were there.”

Wolfe nodded and regarded her for a moment, then got at the file again and began pulling things out of its compartments. He flipped through the sheets of a loose-leaf binder, glanced inside a record book, and shuffled through a lot of papers. Finally he looked at Miss Hibbard again: ”And this quasi-poetic warning came to each of them after they had returned to their homes, and astonished them?”

”Yes, a few days later.”

”I see. You know, of course, that Mr.

Chapin's little effort was sound traditionally. Many of the most effective warnings in history, particularly the ancient ones, were in verse. As for the merits of Mr. Chapin's execution, granted the soundness of the tradition, it seems to me verbose, bombastic, and decidedly spotty. I cannot qualify as an expert in prosody, but I am not without an ear.”

It wasn't like Wolfe to babble when business was on hand, and I glanced up wondering where he thought he was headed for. She was just looking at him. I had to cut my glance short, for he was going on: ”Further, I suspect him specifically, in his second stanza I suppose he would call it stanza of plagiarism. It has been many years since I have read Spenser, but in a crack of my memory not quite closed up there is a catalogue of beasts Archie. If you wouldn't mind, bring me that Spenser? The third shelf, at the right of the door. No, farther over more yet dark blue, tooled. That's it.”

I took the book over and handed it to him, and he opened it and began * skimming.

”The Shepheardes Calender, I am certain, and I think September. Not that it matters; even if I find it, a petty triumph scarcely worth the minutes I waste. You will forgive me, Miss Hibbard? Bulls that bene bate... c.o.c.ke on his dunghill...

This wolvish sheepe ”would catchen his pray... no, certainly not that. Beasts here and there, but not the catalogue in my memory. I shall forgo the triumph; it isn't here. Anyway, it was pleasant to meet Spenser again, even for so brief a nod.” He slid forward in his chair, to a perilous extreme, to hand the book to Miss Hibbard. ”A fine example of bookmaking, worth a glance of friends.h.i.+p from you. Printed of course in London, but bound in this city by a Swedish boy who will probably starve to death during * the coming winter.” I She summoned enough politeness to look at it, turn it over in her hand, glance inside, and look at the backbone again.

Wolfe was back at the papers he had taken from the file. She was obviously through with the book, so I got up and took it and returned it to the shelf.

Wolfe was saying, ”Miss Hibbard. I know that what you want is action, and doubtless I have tried your patience. I am sorry. If I might ask you a few questions?”

”Certainly. It seems to me -”

”Of course. Pardon me. Only two questions, I think. First, do you know whether your uncle recently took out any life insurance?”

She nodded impatiently. ”But, Mr.

Wolfe, that has nothing to do with -”