“How do you know he didn’t?” Larry demanded.
“Because he kept them. He must have kept them, since he used them. Yesterday he put the bogus iodine in the cabinet in Miss Nichols’ bathroom, and the piece of glass in tier bath brush.”
I was watching them all at once, or trying to, but he or she was too good for me. The one who wasn’t surprised and startled put on so good an imitation of it that I was no better off than I was before. Wolfe was taking them in too, his narrowed eyes the only moving part of him, his arms folded, his chin on his necktie.
“And,” he rumbled, “it worked. This morning. Miss Nichols got in the tub, cut her arm, took the bottle from the cabinet, and applied the stuff-”
“Good God!” Brady was out of his chair. “Then she must-”
Wolfe pushed a palm at him. “Calm yourself, doctor. Antitoxin has been administered.”
“By whom?”
“By a qualified person. Please be seated. Thank you. Miss Nichols does not need your professional services, but I would like to use your professional knowledge. First- Archie, have you got that brush?”
It was on my desk, still wrapped in the paper Hoskins had got for me. I removed the paper and offered the brush to Wolfe, but instead of taking it he asked me:
“You use a bath brush, don’t you? Show us how you manipulate it. On your arm.”
Accustomed as I was to loony orders from him, I merely obeyed. I started at the wrist and made vigorous sweeps to the shoulder and back.
“That will do, thank you.-No doubt all of you, if you use bath brushes, wield them in a similar manner. Not, that is, with a circular motion, or around the arm, but lengthwise, up and down. So the cut on Miss Nichols’s arm, as Mr. Goodwin described it to me, runs lengthwise, about halfway between the wrist and the elbow. Is that correct, Miss Nichols?”
Janet nodded, cleared her throat, and said, “Yes,” in a small voice.
“And it’s about an inch long. A little less?”
“Yes.”
Wolfe turned to Brady. “Now for you, sir. Your professional knowledge. To establish a premise invulnerable to assault. Why did Miss Nichols carve a gash nearly an inch long on her arm? Why didn’t she jerk the brush away the moment she felt her skin being ruptured?”
“Why?” Brady was scowling at him. “For the obvious reason that she didn’t feel it.”
“Didn’t feel it?”
“Certainly not. I don’t know what premise you’re trying to establish, but with the bristles rubbing her skin there would be no feeling of the sharp glass cutting her. None whatever. She wouldn’t know she had been cut until she saw the blood.”
“Indeed.” Wolfe looked disappointed. “You’re sure of hat? You’d testify to it?”
“I would. Positively.”
“And any other doctor would?”
“Certainly.”
“Then we’ll have to take it that way. Those, then, are he facts. I have finished. Now it’s your turn to talk. All of •ou. Of course this is highly unorthodox, all of you to-;ether like this, but it would take too long to do it properly,
ingly.”
He leaned back and joined his finger tips at the apex of is central magnificence. “Miss Timms, we’ll start with you. Talk, please.”
Maryella said nothing. She seemed to be meeting his gaze, but she didn’t speak.
“Well, Miss,Timms?”
“I don’t know-” she tried to clear the huskiness from her voice-“I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“Nonsense,” Wolf said sharply. “You know quite well. you are an intelligent woman. You’ve been living in that house two years. It is likely that ill feeling or fear, any motion whatever, was born in one of these people and extended to the enormity of homicide, and you were totally unaware of it? I don’t believe it. I want you to tell me the things that I would drag out of you if I kept you here all afternoon firing questions at you.”
Maryella shook her head. “You couldn’t drag anything out of me that’s not in me.”
“You won’t talk?”
“I can’t talk.” Maryella did not look happy. “When I’ve got nothing to say.”
Wolfe’s eyes left her. “Miss Nichols?”
Janet shook her head.
“I won’t repeat it. I’m saying to you what I said to Miss Timms.”
“I know you are.” Janet swallowed and went on in a thin voice, “I can’t tell you anything, honestly I can’t.”
“Not even who tried to kill you? You have no idea who tried to kill you this morning?”
“No-I haven’t. That’s what frightened me so much. I don’t know who it was.”
Wolfe grunted, and turned to Larry. “Mr. Huddleston?”
“I don’t know a damn thing,” Larry said gruffly.
“You don’t. Dr. Brady?”
“It seems to me,” Brady said coolly, “that you stopped before you were through. You said you know who murdered Miss Huddleston. If-”
“I prefer to do it this way, doctor. Have you anything to tell me?”
“No.”
“Nothing with any bearing on any aspect of this business?”
“No.”
Wolfe’s eyes went to Daniel “Mr. Huddleston, you have already talked, to me and to the police. Have you anything new to say?”
“I don’t think I have,” Daniel said slowly. He looked more miserable than anyone else. “I agree with Dr. Brady that if you-”
“I would expect you to,” Wolfe snapped. His glance swept the arc. “I warn all you, with of course one exception, that the police will worm it out of you and it will be a distressing experience. They will make no distinction between relevancies and irrelevancies. They will, for example, impute significance to the fact that Miss Timms has been trying to captivate Mr. Larry Huddleston with her charms-”
“I have not!” Maryella cried indignantly. “Whatever-”
“Yes, you have. At least you did on Tuesday, August 19th. Mr. Goodwin is a good reporter. Sitting on the arm of his chair. Ogling him-”
“I wasn’t! I wasn’t trying to captivate him-”
“Do you love him? Desire him? Fancy him?”
“I certainly don’t!”
“Then the police will be doubly suspicious. They will suspect that you were after him for his aunt’s money. And speaking of money, some of you must know that Miss Huddleston’s brother was getting money from her and dissatisfied with what he got. Yet you refuse to tell me-”
“I wasn’t dissatisfied,” Daniel broke in. His face flushed and his voice rose. “You have no right to make insinuations-”
“I’m not making insinuations.” Wolfe was crisp. “I am showing you the sort of thing the police will get their teeth into. They are quite capable of supposing you were blackmailing your sister-”
“Blackmail!” Daniel squealed indignantly. “She gave it to me for research-”
“Research!” his nephew blurted with a sneer. “Research! The Elixir of Life! Step right up, gents …”
Daniel sprang to his feet, and for a second I thought his intention was to commit mayhem on Larry, but it seemed he merely was arising to make a speech.
“That,” he said, his jaw quivering with anger, “is a downright lie! My motivation and my methods are both strictly scientific. Elixir of Life is a romantic and inadmissible conception. The proper scientific term is ‘catholicon.’ My sister agreed with me, and being a woman of imagination and insight, for years she generously financed-”
“Catholicon!” Wolfe was staring at him incredulously. “And I said you were capable of using your brains!”
“I assure you, sir-”
“Don’t try. Sit down.” Wolfe was disgusted. “I don’t care if you wasted your sister’s money, but there are some things you people know that I do care about, and you are foolish not to tell me.” He wiggled a finger at Brady. “You, doctor, should be ashamed of yourself. You ought to know better. It is idiotic to withhold facts which are bound to be uncovered sooner or later. You said you had nothing to tell me with any bearing on any aspect of this business. What about the box of stable refuse you procured for the stated purpose of extracting tetanus germs from it?”
Daniel made a noise and turned his head to fix Brady with a stare. Brady was taken aback, but not as much as might have been expected. He regarded Wolfe a moment and then said quietly, “I admit I should have told you that.”
“Is that all you have to say about it? Why didn’t you tell the police when they first started to investigate?”
“Because I thought there was nothing to investigate. I continued to think so until this morning, when you phoned me. It would have served no useful purpose-”
“What did you do with that stuff?”
“I took it to the office and did some experiments with two of my colleagues. We were settling an argument. Then we destroyed it. All of it.”
“Did any of these people know about it?”
“I don’t-” Brady frowned. “Yes, I remember-I discussed it. Telling them how dangerous any small cut might be-“