sifter, and now we’ve got everybody that’s been in Barstow’s home at the university for the past nine months.'
'Oh no. By no means. No known poison, exposed to the air, by being smeared on a needle for instance, will retain an efficacy sufficient to kill a man as Barstow was killed for more than a day or two. Probably only a few hours. It depends on the poison.
I grinned at him. 'That’s a help. What else did you read?'
'A few interesting things. Many tiresome ones. So the golf bag’s itinerary is not bad news at all. Its later disappearance interests us only indirectly, for we never could have expected to come upon the driver. But who caused it to disappear and why?'
'Sure. But as far as that’s concerned, who came to ask you to return the reward unopened and why? We already knew there’s someone in that family with funny ideas.'
Wolfe wiggled a finger at me. 'It is easier to recognize a style from a sentence than from a single word. But as for that, the removal of the golf bag from the scene was direct, bold and forthright, while the visit to our office, though direct enough, was merely desperate.'
I said, 'Doctors know all about poisons.
'Yes. This one-this Dr. Bradford-is satisfactorily forthright. Three times today I was told that he was too busy to come to the telephone, and the indication was that that condition could be expected to continue. You are intending to resume in the morning?'
I nodded. 'The club first, I thought, then the coroner, then back to town for Doc Bradford’s office. I’m sorry old Kimball’s gone; I’d like to clean up that foursome. You don’t think Saul Panzer would enjoy a trip to Chicago?'
'It would cost a hundred dollars.'
'That’s not much of a chunk out of fifty grand.'
Wolfe shook his head. 'You’re a spendthrift, Archie. And unnecessarily thorough. Let us first make sure no murderer can be found within the commuting area.'
'Okay.' I got up and stretched. 'Good night, sir.'
'Good night, Archie.'
CHAPTER 11
There was a point on the public road from which the Green Meadow clubhouse could be seen, but at a considerable distance; to reach it you turned off the highway into a grove, and when you left that you were winding around a hollow. The clubhouse had a grove of its own, on top of a moderate hill; on one side were a bunch of tennis courts and an outdoor pool, everywhere else, in all directions, were smooth rolling fairways dotted with little tee plateaus, sand traps of various shapes and sizes, and the vivid velvet carpets of the putting greens. There were two courses of eighteen holes each; the Barstow foursome had started on the north course, the long one.
The club professional, who had dined with us at Wolfe's place Monday evening, wasn't there yet when I arrived and wasn't expected until eleven o'clock, so the only introduction I had to offer was Larry Barstow's phone call the preceding afternoon which had been received by the chief steward. He was nice enough and went with me out to the caddy master. Two of the caddies I wanted to see didn't come on weekdays, since the schools they attended weren't out yet, and the other two were out on the links somewhere with early morning matches. I monkeyed around for an hour trying to find someone for a page in the notebook, but as far as real information was concerned they were about as helpful as a bunch of Eskimos. I hopped in the roadster and beat it for White Plains.
The coroner's office was in the same building as Anderson's, where I had been six days previously trying to get Wolfe's money covered, and as I passed the door with District Attorney painted on the glass panel I stuck out my tongue at it. The coroner wasn't in, but by luck there was a doctor there signing papers and he was the one who had done the Barstow autopsy. Before leaving home in the morning I had telephoned Sarah Barstow, and now this doctor told me that he had had a phone call from Lawrence Barstow and had been told that I would visit the coroner's office as a representative of the Barstow family. I thought to myself, I'll have that Barstow brat fixing my flat tires before I get through with this.
But I came away as good as empty. Everything that the doctor could tell me I had read three days earlier in the newspapers except for a bunch of medical terms which the papers hadn't tried to print for fear of a typesetters' strike. I don't high-hat technical words, because I know there are a lot of things that can't be said any other way, but the doctor's lengthy explanation simply boiled down to this, that nothing conclusive could be said regarding the poison that had killed Barstow, because no one had been able to analyze it. Additional tissues had been sent to a New York laboratory but no report had been received. The needle had been taken by the District Attorney and was presumably being tested elsewhere.
'Anyway,' I said, 'there's no chance he died of old age or something? He was actually poisoned? He died a violent death?'
The doctor nodded. 'Absolutely. Something remarkably virulent. Haemolysis-'
'Sure. Just between you and me, what is your opinion of a doctor who would go up to a man who had just died like that and would say coronary thrombosis?'
He stiffened as if he had just got rigor mortis himself, only much quicker. 'That is not a question for me to decide, Mr. Goodwin.'
'I didn't ask you to decide anything, I just asked your opinion.'
'I haven't got any.'
'You mean you have, only you're going to keep it to remember me by. All right. Much obliged.'
On my way out of the building I would have liked to stop in and ask Derwin for Ben Cook's telephone number or some such pleasantry, but I had too much on my mind. By the time I got back to the Green Meadow Club it was nearly noon and I had pretty well decided that life would be nothing but a dreary round until I had had
