I swerved to the grassy shoulder and stopped. We were on one of the secondary roads in the higher section of the park, and, on a weekday, there wasn’t a soul in sight. To the left was woods, sloping down; to the right was a stretch of meadow with scattered trees, gently rising. All it needed was a herd of cows to make it a remote spot in Vermont.
“Is this a dead-end road?” Wolfe asked.
“No,” I told him, “it goes on over the hill and meets the north drive going east.”
“Then get out, please.” I did so. Wolfe handed me the grenade. “Take this thing.” He pointed up the rise, at right angles to the road, to a big tree in the meadow. “Put it on the ground there at the base of that tree. Next to the trunk.”
“Just lay it on the ground?”
“Yes.”
I obeyed. On my way across the meadow, a good hundred yards, and back again, I spent the time making book. I finally settled on even money. That may sound like shading it in Wolfe’s favor, but I was right there listening to it and seeing them. Wolfe’s voice alone was half of it. It was hard, dry, assured. It made it hard to believe that anything it said would happen, wouldn’t happen. The other half was the way Shattuck looked. Now that I wasn’t driving and could take him in, I realized that the jolt he had got in the office, utterly unexpected, had given him a shock that he hadn’t even begun to recover from. He was flat, taking the count, and Wolfe was doing the counting. When I reached the car Wolfe was saying:
“If so, you’re mistaken. I would prefer to fight it out with you, and so would General Carpenter. You don’t stand a chance. If you’re not put to death by the people of the state of New York, you’re done for anyhow. At a minimum, irremediable disgrace, the ruin of your career. But I don’t pretend that I brought you here, to this, as a favor to you. We would prefer to fight it out with you, but we’re working for our country, and our country is at war. To break a scandal like this, at this time, would do enormous damage. If it can possibly be avoided, it should be. I say that not to affect your decision, for I know it wouldn’t, but to explain why I took the trouble to bring you here.”
I opened the front door on Shattuck’s side, leaned against it to keep it from swinging shut, and told Wolfe, “There’s a flat rock there right near the tree. I put it on that.”
Shattuck looked at me as if he was going to say something, but nothing came out. He wet his lips with his tongue, kept on looking at me, and then wet his lips again.
Wolfe said harshly, “Get out of the car, Mr. Shattuck. It isn’t a long walk-not much more than down that corridor to Colonel Ryder’s office and back again. Thirty or forty seconds, that’s all. We’ll wait here. It will be an accident. I promise you that. The obituaries will be superb. All that any outstanding public figure could ask.”
Shattuck slowly turned to him. “You can’t expect me-” He didn’t have much voice, and in a moment he tried again. “You can’t expect me to-” He tried to swallow, and it wouldn’t work.
“Help him out, Archie.”
I took his elbow, and he came. His foot slipped off the running board, and I held him up, and led him away a couple of paces on the grass.
“He’s all right,” Wolfe said. “Come and get in.”
I climbed in the car and slammed the door and slid across behind the wheel. Wolfe spoke through his open window.
“If you change your mind, Mr. Shattuck, come back to the road, and we’ll take you back to town, and the fight will be on. I advise against it, but I doubt if my advice is needed. You’re a coward, Mr. Shattuck. I’ve had wide experience, and I’ve never known of a more cowardly murder than the murder of Colonel Ryder. Hang on to that as your bulwark. Say to yourself as you cross the meadow, ‘I’m a coward. I’m a coward and a murderer.’ That will carry you through, right to the end. You need something to take you that hundred yards, and since it can’t be courage, let it be your integrity, your deep inner necessity, as a coward. And this too, this knowledge, if you come back, you’re coming back to us-to me. I’ll be waiting.”
Wolfe stopped, because Shattuck was moving. He moved slowly, down the little incline into the drainage ditch, and then up the other side. In a few paces he began to go faster, and he kept on a straight line, straight for the tree. About halfway there his foot caught on something and he nearly fell, but then he was upright again and going faster.
Wolfe muttered at me, “Start the car. Go ahead. Slowly.”
I thought that was a mistake. Shattuck was sure to hear the sound of the engine, and there was no telling what that would do to him. But I did as I was told, as quietly as possible. I eased the car back onto the road and let it crawl uphill. It covered 100 yards, 200.
Wolfe’s voice came. “Stop.”
I shifted to neutral, set the hand brake, let the engine run, and turned in my seat to look back across the meadow. I caught one last brief glimpse of John Bell Shattuck, kneeling there by the tree, his torso bent over, and then-
Nothing got to us but the sound, and that wasn’t anything like as loud as I expected. I could see nothing in the air but the cloud of dust. But a moment later, four seconds maybe, there was a soft rustling noise as particles fell into the grass over a wide area; a noise like the big scattered raindrops that start a summer shower.
“Go ahead,” Wolfe said curtly. “Get to a telephone. Confound it, I’ve got to speak to Inspector Cramer.”
Chapter 8
