Wolfe: Nor does he know me. A meeting can be arranged.
Hibbard: I didn't mean – hah. It would take more than a meeting. It would take more, I think, than all your talents.
But that is beside the point. I have failed to make myself clear. I would not pay ten thousand dollars, or any other sum, for you to bring this man to – justice? Ha!
Call it justice. A word that reeks with maggots. Anyhow, I would not be a party to that, even in the face of death. I have not told you his name. I shall not.
Already perhaps I have disclosed too much. I wish your services as a safeguard for myself, not as an agency for his destruction. 1 Wolfe: If the one demands the other?
Hibbard: / hope not. I pray not… could I pray? No. Prayer has been washed ' from my strain of blood. Certainly I -would not expect you to give me a warrant | of security. But your experience and ingenuity – I am sure they would be worth whatever you might ask -, Wolfe: Nonsense. My ingenuity would be worth less than nothing, Mr. Hibbard.
Do I understand that you wish to engage me to protect your life against the unfriendly designs of this man without taking any steps whatever to expose and. restrain him? ^01 ^ a.
Hibbard: Yes, sir. Precisely. And I have been told that once your talents are – committed to an enterprise, any attempt to !• circumvent you will be futile.?r Wolfe: / have no talents. I have genius or nothing. In this case, nothing. No, Mr.
Hibbard; and I do need money. What you need, should you persist in your quixotism, is first, if you have dependents, generous life insurance; and second, a patient acceptance of the fact that your death is only a matter of time. That of course is true of all of us; we all share that disease with you, only yours seems to have reached a rather acute stage. My advice would be, waste neither time nor money on efforts at precaution. If he has decided to kill you, and if he possesses ordinary intelligence – let alone the brilliance you grant him – you will die.
There are so many methods available for killing a fellow-being! Many more than there are for most of our usual activities, like pruning a tree or threshing wheat or making a bed or swimming. I have been often impressed, in my experience, by the ease and lack of bother with which the average murder is executed. Consider: with the quarry within reach, the purpose fixed, and the weapon in hand, it will often require up to eight or ten minutes to kill a fly, whereas the average murder, I would guess, consumes ten or fifteen seconds at the outside. In cases of slow poison and similar ingenuities death of course is lingering, but the act of murder itself is commonly quite brief. Consider again: there are certainly not more than two or three methods of killing a pig, but there are hundreds of ways to kill a man.
If your friend is half as brilliant as you think him, and doesn't get in a rut as the ordinary criminal does, he may be expected to evolve a varied and interesting repertory before your league is half disposed of. He may even invent something new. One more point: it seems to me there is a fair chance for you. You may not, after all, be the next, or even the next or the next; and it is quite possible that somewhere along the line he may miscalculate or run into bad luck; or one of your league members, less quixotic than you, may engage my services. That would save you.
I took my eyes from the sheet to look at Wolfe. 'Pretty good, sir. Pretty nice. I'm surprised it didn't get him, he must have been tough. Maybe you didn't go far enough. You only mentioned poison really, you could have brought in strangling and bleeding and crushed skulls and convulsions -'
'Proceed.'
I Hibbard: / will pay you five hundred dollars a week.
Wolfe: I am sorry. To now my casuistry has managed a satisfactory persuasion that the money I have put in my bank has been earned. I dare not put this strain upon it.
Hibbard: But… you -wouldn't refuse.
You can't refuse a thing like this. My
God. You are my only hope. I didn't realize it, but you are. ‹ Wolfe: I do refuse. I can undertake to render this man harmless, to remove the threat – Hibbard: No. No!
Wolfe: Very well. One little suggestion: if you take out substantial life insurance, which would be innocent of fraud from the legal standpoint, you should if possible manage so that when the event comes it cannot plausibly be given the appearance of suicide; and since you will not be aware of the event much beforehand you will have to keep your wit sharpened. That is merely a practical suggestion, that the insurance may not be voided, to the loss of your beneficiary. IBHibbard: But… Mr. Wolfe… look here… you can't do this. I came here … I tell you it isn't reasonable – I Wolfe stopped me. 'That will do, Archie.'
I looked up. 'There's only a little more.'
'I know. I find it painful. I refused that five hundred dollars – thousands perhaps – once; I maintained my position; your reading it causes me useless discomfort. Do not finish it. There is nothing further except Mr. Hibbard's confused protestations and my admirable steadfastness.'
'Yes, sir. I've read it.' I glanced over the remaining lines. 'I'm surprised you let. him go. After all -' 4 Wolfe reached to the desk to ring for Fritz, shifted a little in his chair, and settled back again. 'To tell you the truth, | Archie, I entertained a notion.'
'Yeah. I thought so.'
'But nothing came of it. As you know, it takes a fillip on the flank for my mare to dance, and the fillip was not forthcoming. You were away at the time, and since your return the incident has not •been discussed. It is odd that you should have innocently been the cause, by mere chance, of its revival.' ‹I don't get you.'
Fritz came with beer. Wolfe took the opener from the drawer, poured a glass, gulped, and leaned back again. He resumed, 'By annoying me about the man on the witness-stand. I resigned myself to your tantrum because it was nearly four o'clock. As you know, the book came. I read it last night.'
'Why did you read it?' ^
'Don't badger me. I read it because it was a book. I had finished The Native's Return, by Louis Adamic, and Outline of Human Nature, by Alfred Rossiter, and I read books.'
