venture pretend to any intelligent purpose?'
Hibbard had to consider. He swallowed some whiskey, washed it off with fizz, and coated that with another sip of whiskey. • He finally said, 'So help me, I don't • know. I mean I don't know now. When I left home, when I started this, all that I felt moving me was fear. The whole long 1 story of what that unlucky episode, twenty-five years ago – of what it did to me, would sound fantastic if I tried to tell | | it. I was too highly sensitized in spots; I suppose I still am, doubtless it will show again in the proper surroundings. I am inclining now to the environmental school – you hear that? Atavism! Anyhow, fear had me, and all I was aware of was a desire to get near Paul Chapin and keep him under my eye. I had no plans, further than that. I wanted to watch him. I knew if I told anyone, even Evelyn – my niece, there would be danger of his getting onto me, so I made a thorough job of it. But the last few days I have begun to suspect that in some gully of my mind, far below consciousness, was a desire to kill him. Of course there is no such thing as a desire without an intention, no matter how nebulous it may be. I believe I meant to kill him. I believe I have been working up to it, and I still am. I have no idea what this talk with you will do to me. I see no reason why it should have any effect one way or another.'
'You will see, I think.' Wolfe emptied his glass. 'Naturally you do not know that Mr. Chapin has mailed verses to your friends stating explicitly that he killed you by clubbing you over the head.'
'Oh yes. I know that.'
'The devil you do. Who told you?'
'Pit. Pitney Scott.'
I gritted my teeth and wanted to bite myself. Another chance underplayed, and all because I had believed the cripple's warning. Wolfe was saying:
'Then you did keep a bridge open.'
'No. He opened it himself. The third day I was around there I met him face to face by bad luck, and of course he recognized me.' Hibbard suddenly stopped, and turned a little pale. 'By heaven – ha, there goes another illusion – I thought Pit…'
'Quite properly, Mr. Hibbard. Keep your illusion; Mr. Scott has told us nothing; it was Mr. Goodwin's acuteness of observation, and my feeling for phenomena, that uncovered you. – But to resume: if you knew that Mr. Chapin had sent those verses, falsely boasting of murdering you, it is hard to see how you could keep your respect for him as an assassin. If you knew one of his murders, the latest one, to be nothing but rodomontade…'
Hibbard nodded. 'You make a logical point, certainly. But logic has nothing to do with it. I am not engaged in developing a scientific thesis. There are twenty-five years behind this… and Bill Harrison, Gene Dreyer… and Paul that day in the courtroom… I was there, to testify to the psychological value of his book… It was on the day that Pit Scott showed me those verses about me sucking air in through my blood that I discovered that I wanted to kill Paul, and if I wanted it I intended it, or what the devil was I doing there?'
Wolfe sighed. 'It is a pity. The backseat driving of the less charitable emotions often makes me wonder that the brain does not desert the wheel entirely, in righteous exasperation. Not to mention their violent and senseless oscillations. Run Hibbard, three weeks ago you were filled with horrified aversion at the thought of engaging me to arrange that Mr. Chapin should account legally for his crimes; today you are determined to kill him yourself. You do intend to kill him?' ‹I think so.' The psychological runt Put his whiskey glass on the desk. 'That doesn't mean that I will. I don't know. I intend to.'
'You are armed? You have a weapon?'
'No. I… no.'
'You what?'
'Nothing. I should have said, he. He is physically a weakling.' ' 'Indeed.' The shadows on Wolfe's face altered; his cheeks were unfolding. 'You will rip him apart with your bare hands.
Into quivering bloody fragments…'
'I might,' Hibbard snapped. 'I don't know whether you taunt me through ignorance or through design. You should know that despair is still despair, even when there is an intellect to perceive it and control its hysteria. I can kill Paul Chapin and still know what I am doing. My physical build is negligible, next to contemptible, and my mental equipment has reached the decadence which sneers at the blood that feeds it, but in spite of those incongruities I can kill Paul Chapin.
–I think I understand now why it was such a relief to be able to talk again in my proper person, and I thank you for it. I think I needed to put this determination into words. It does me good to hear it.
–Now I would like you to let me go. I can go on, of course, only by your sufferance. You have interfered with me, and frankly I'm grateful for it, but there I is no reason -'
'Mr. Hibbard.' Wolfe wiggled a finger at him. 'Permit me. The least offensive way of refusing a request is not to let it be made. Don't make it. – Wait, please.
There are several things you either do not know or fail to consider. For instance, do you know of an arrangement I have entered into with your friends?'
'Yes. Pit Scott, told me. I'm not interested -'
'But I am. In fact I know of nothing – else, at the moment, that interests me in | the slightest degree; certainly not your recently acquired ferocity. Further, do you know that there, on Mr. Goodwin's desk, is the typewriter on which Mr. Chapin wrote his sanguinary verses? Yes, it was at the Harvard Club; we negotiated a trade. ^o you know that I am ready for a complete penetration of Mr. Chapin's defenses, in spite of his pathetic bravado?
Do you know that within twenty-four hours I shall be prepared to submit to you and your friends a confession from Mr.
Chapin of his guilt, and to remove satisfactorily all your apprehensions?'
Hibbard was staring at him. He emptied his whiskey glass, which he had been holding half full, and put it on the desk, and stared at Wolfe again. 'I don9! believe it.'
'Of course you do. You merely don't want to. I'm sorry, Mr. Hibbard, you'll have to readjust yourself to a world of words and compromises and niceties of conduct. I would be glad – well?'
