by Fer-De-Lance
“The devil.” Wolfe looked around at his piles, and at me helplessly. He sighed. “Can’t he wait a while?”
“Of course, sure. How would next week do?”
He sighed again. “Confound it. Bring him in.”
“With that junk scattered all over the desk?—Oh, all right, I told him you’re eccentric.” I had kept my voice lowered; now I lowered it some more to let him know how Kimball had shaped up and what I had said to him. He nodded, and I went to get Kimball.
Kimball had his worried-amused look back on again. I introduced him and pulled a chair around for him, and after they had exchanged a few words I said to Wolfe, “If you won’t need me, sir, I’ll get on to those reports.” He nodded, and I got fixed at my desk with papers all around and half underneath a pad which I used for a notebook on such occasions. I had got my signs so abbreviated that I could get down every word of some pretty fast talk and still give the impression to a careless eye that I was just shuffling around looking for last week’s delicatessen bill.
Wolfe was saying, “You are perfectly correct, Mr. Kimball. A man’s time is his own only by sufferance. There are many ways in which he may be dispossessed: flood, famine, war, marriage—not to speak of death, which is the most satisfactory of all because it closes the question finally.”
“Goodness gracious.” Kimball was fidgety. “I do not see why that should make it satisfactory.”
“You came very near finding out, a week ago last Sunday.” Wolfe wiggled a finger at him. “You are a busy man, Mr. Kimball, and you have just returned to your office after a week’s absence. Why, under those circumstances, did you take time this morning to come to see me?”
Kimball stared at him. “That’s what I want you to tell me.”
“Good. You came because you were confused. That is not a desirable condition for a man in the extreme of danger, as you are. I see no indication in your face of alarm or fear, merely confusion. That is astonishing, knowing as I do what Mr. Goodwin has told you. He has informed you that on June fourth, twelve days ago, it was nothing but inadvertence that killed Peter Oliver Barstow, and the same inadvertence saved your life. You met his statement with incredulity, crudely expressed. Why?”
“Because it’s nonsense.” Kimball was impatient. “Rubbish.”
“Before, you said poppycock. Why?”
“Because it is. I didn’t come here to argue about that. If the police get into difficulties trying to explain something they don’t happen to understand and want to make up any sort of a fancy tale to cover themselves, that’s all right, I believe in letting every man handle his own business his own way, but they don’t need to expect me to take any stock in it, and they can leave me out of it. I’m a busy man with something better to do. You’re wrong, Mr. Wolfe, I didn’t come to see you because I was confused, and I certainly didn’t come to give you a chance to try to scare me. I came because the police apparently are trying to mix me up in a fancy tale that might give me lot of trouble and publicity I don’t want, and your man gave me to understand you could show me how to avoid it. If you can, go ahead and I’ll pay you for it. If you can’t, say so, and I’ll find better advice.”
“Well.” Wolfe leaned back in his chair and let his half-shut eyes study the broker’s face. Finally he shook his head. “I’m afraid I can’t show you how to escape trouble, Mr. Kimball. I might with good fortune show you how to escape death. Even that is uncertain.”
“I have never expected to escape death.”
“Do not quibble. I mean of course unpleasant and imminent death. I shall be frank with you, sir. If I do not at once bid you good day and let you depart on your business, it is not because of my certain knowledge that you are confronting death like a fool. I refrain from contributing to certain Christian enterprises because I think that no man should be saved by coercion. But here I am guided by self-interest. Mrs. Barstow has offered a reward of fifty thousand dollars for the discovery of her husband’s murderer. I intend to discover him; and to do so I need only learn who it was that tried to kill you on June fourth and will proceed to do so within a reasonable time if means are not found of preventing him. If you will help me, it will be convenient for both of us; if you will not, it may well be that only through some misstep or mischance in his successful second attempt shall I be able to bring him to account for his abortive first one. Naturally it would be all the same to me.”
Kimball shook his head. But he didn’t get up; instead, he was settling into his chair. Still he showed no sign of alarm, he merely looked interested. He said, “You’re a good talker, Mr. Wolfe. I don’t think you’re going to be of any use to me, since you seem to like fancy tales as well as the police, but you’re a good talker.”
“Thank you. You like good talking?”
Kimball nodded. “I like everything good. Good talking, and good trading, and good manners, and good living. I don’t mean high living, I mean good. I’ve tried to live a good life myself, and I like to think everyone else does. I know some can’t, but I think they try to. I was thinking of that in the car a little while ago, riding up here with your man. I’m not saying that the tale he told me made no impression on me at all; of course it did. When I told him it was poppycock I meant it, and I still mean it, but nevertheless it got me thinking. What if somebody had tried to kill me? Who would it be?”
He paused, and Wolfe murmured at him, “Well, who would it be?”
“Nobody.” Kimball was emphatic.
I thought to myself, if this guy turns out like Barstow, so lovable a mosquito wouldn’t bite him, I’m through.
Wolfe said, “I once met a man who had killed two other men because he had been bettered in a horse trade.”
Kimball laughed. “I’m glad he wasn’t in grain. If his method of averaging down was universal I would have been killed not once, but a million times. I’m a good trader, it’s the one thing I’m proud of. What I love is wheat. Of course what you love is a fancy tale and a good murder, and that’s all right, that’s your business. What I love is wheat. Do you know there are seven hundred million bushels of wheat in the world? And I know where every one of them is this minute. Every one.”
“You probably own a hundred or so yourself.”
“No, not one. I’m out. Tomorrow I’ll be back in, or next week.—But I was saying, I’m a good trader. I’ve come out on top in a good many deals, but no one has any kick coming, I’ve stuck to the rules. That’s what I was thinking on the way riding up here. I don’t know all the details of this Barstow business, just what I’ve read in the papers. As I understand it, they haven’t found the driver. I don’t believe it ever existed. But even if they found it, and even if I did lend mine to Barstow on the first tee, I still would have a hard time believing anyone intended it for me. I’ve stuck to the rules and played fair, in my business and in my private life.”
He paused. Wolfe murmured, “There are many kinds of injuries, Mr. Kimball. Real, fancied, material, spiritual, trivial, fatal—”
“I’ve never injured anyone.”
“Really? Come now. The essence of sainthood is expiation. If you will permit it, take me. Whom have I not injured? I don’t know why your presence should stimulate me to confession, but it does. Forget the Barstow murder, since to you it is poppycock; forget the police; we shall find means of preventing their becoming a nuisance to you. I enjoy talking with you; unless your affairs are really pressing. I would not keep you from anything urgent.”
“You won’t.” Kimball looked pleased. “When anything’s urgent I attend to it. The office has got along without me for a week; an hour more won’t hurt them.”
Wolfe nodded approvingly. “Will you have a glass of beer?”
“No, thanks. I don’t drink.”
“Ah.” Wolfe pressed the button. “You’re an extraordinary man, sir. You have learned to abstain, and you are at the same time a good businessman and a philosopher.—One glass, Fritz.—But we were speaking of injuries, and I was hovering on confession.
Whom have I not injured? That of course is rhetorical; I would not pose as a ruffian; and I suffer from a romantic conscience. Even so, making all allowances, it is not easy for me to understand why I am still alive. Less than a year ago a man sitting in the chair you now occupy promised to kill me at his earliest convenience. I had pulled the foundations of his existence from under him from purely mercenary motives. There is a woman living not twenty blocks from here, and a remarkably intelligent one, whose appetite and disposition would be vastly improved by news of my death. I could continue these examples almost to infinity. But there are others more difficult to confess and more impossible to condone.—Thank you, Fritz.”
Wolfe removed the opener from the drawer and opened a bottle and dropped the cap into the drawer before he closed it again. Then he filled a glass and gulped it down. Kimball was saying, “Of course every man has to take the risks of his profession.”
Wolfe nodded. “That’s the philosopher in you again. It is easy to see, Mr. Kimball, that you are a cultured and an educated man. Perhaps you will understand the obscure psychology which prompts—well, me, for instance—to persist in an action which deserves unqualified condemnation. There is a woman under this roof at this moment, living on the top floor of this building, who cannot wish me dead only because her heart is closed to venom by its own sweetness. I torture her daily, hourly. I know I do and that knowledge tortures me; still I persist. You can guess at the obscurity of the psychology and the depth of the torture when I tell you that the woman is my mother.”
I got it all down as he said it, and I almost glanced up at him in surprise, he said it so convincingly, with little emotion in his voice but the impression that the feeling underneath was so overwhelming that it was kept down only by a determined will. For a second he darned near had me feeling sorry for his mother though it was I who, balancing the bank account each month, checked off the debit item for his remittance to her at her home in Budapest.
“Goodness gracious,” Kimball said.
Wolfe downed another glass of beer and slowly shook his head from side to side. “You will understand why I can recite a category of injuries. I can justly claim familiarity.”
It seemed to me that Kimball wasn’t going to take the hint. He was looking sympathetic and self-satisfied. In fact, he smirked. “I’m wondering why you think I’m an educated man.”
Wolfe’s eyebrows went up. “Isn’t it obvious?”
“It’s a compliment if you think so. I quit school—out in Illinois—when I was twelve, and ran away from home. It wasn’t much of a home, with an uncle and aunt. My parents were dead. I haven’t been in a school since. If I’m educated it’s self-education.”
“Not the worst kind.” Wolfe’s voice was low and quiet, not much more than a murmur; the voice that he used to say “go on” without saying it. “You are another proof of it, sir. And New York is itself an education for a lad of that age if he had spirit and character.”
“Probably. It might be, but I didn’t come to New York. I went to Texas. After a year on the Panhandle, to Galveston, and from there to Brazil and the Argentine.”
“Indeed! You did have spirit; and your education is cosmopolitan.”
“Well, I covered a lot of territory. I was in South America twenty years, mostly in the Argentine. When I came back to the States I nearly had to go to school again to learn English. I’ve lived—well, I’ve lived a lot of funny ways. I’ve seen a lot of rough stuff and I’ve taken part in it, but wherever and whatever it was I always did one thing, I always stuck to the rules. When I came back to the States I was selling beef, but gradually I worked into grain. That was where I found myself; grain takes a man not afraid to guess and ready to ride his guess the way a gaucho rides a horse.”
“You were a gaucho?”
“No, I’ve always been a trader. It was born in me. Now I wonder if you would believe this. Not that I’m ashamed of it; sitting in my office sometimes, with a dozen markets waiting to see which way I’m going to jump, I remember it and I’m proud of it. For two years I was a rope peddler.”
“Not really.”
“Yes. Three thousand miles a season in the saddle. I still show it when I walk.”
Wolfe was looking at him admiringly. “A real nomad, Mr. Kimball. Of course you weren’t married then.”
“No. I married later, in Buenos Aires. I had an office then on the Avenida de Mayo—”
He stopped. Wolfe poured another glass of beer. Kimball was looking at him, but his eyes were following the movement without seeing it, for obviously the vision was inside. Something had pulled him up short and transported him to another scene.
Wolfe nodded at him and and murmured, “A memory—I know—”
Kimball nodded back. “Yes—a memory. That’s a funny thing. Goodness gracious. It might almost seem as if I had thought of that on account of what you said about injuries. The different kinds, fancied injuries. Fatal injuries. But this wasn’t one at all, the only injury was to me. And it wasn’t fancied. But I have a conscience too, as you said you have, only I don’t think there’s anything romantic about it.”
“The injury was to you.”
“Yes. One of the worst injuries a man can suffer. It was thirty years ago, and it’s still painful. I married a girl, a beautiful Argentine girl, and we had a baby boy. The boy was only two years old when I came home from a trip a day too early and found my best friend in my bed. The boy was on the floor with his toys. I stuck to the rules; I’ve told myself a thousand times that if I had it to do over I’d do it again. I shot twice—”
Wolfe murmured, “You killed them.”
“I did. The blood ran onto the floor and got on one of the toys. I left the boy there—I’ve often wondered why I didn’t shoot him too, since I was sure he wasn’t mine—and went to a café and got drunk. That was the last time I drank—”
“You came to the States—”
“A little later, a month later. There was no question of escaping, you don’t have to run away from that in the Argentine, but I wound things up and left South America for good, and I’ve only been back once, four years ago.”
“You brought the boy with you?”
“No. That’s what I went back for. Naturally I didn’t want him, my wife’s family took him. They lived out on the pampa, that’s where I got her from. The boy’s name was Manuel, and that had been my friend’s name; I had suggested naming him after my friend. I came back alone, and for twenty-six years I lived alone, and I found the market a better wife than the one I had tried. But I suppose there was a doubt in me all the time, or maybe as a man gets older he softens up. Maybe I just got lonely, or maybe I wanted to persuade myself that I really had a son. Four years ago I got things in shape and went to Beunos Aires. I found him right away. The family had gone broke when he was young and they were mostly dead, and he had had a hard time of it, but he had made good. When I found him he was one of the best aviators in the Argentine army. I had to persuade him to break away. For a while he tried my office, but he wasn’t cut out for it, and he’s going into the airplane business with my money. I bought a place up in Westchester and built a new house on it, and I only hope when he gets married he won’t take any trips that end the way mine did.”
“Of course he knows—about his mother?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t know, it’s never been mentioned. I hope not. Not that I’ve got any remorse about it; if I had it to do over I’d do it again. I don’t pretend, even to him, that Manuel is exactly the son I would want to get if I could just file a buy order; after all, he’s Argentine and I’m Illinois. But his name’s Kimball and he’s got a head on him. He’ll get an American girl, I hope, and that will even it up.”
“Indubitably.” Wolfe had left his beer untasted so long that the foam was gone, leaving it as still as tea. He reached for the glass and gulped it. “Yes, Mr. Kimball, you proved your point; the injury was to you. But you—let us say—took care of it. If there was an injury to the boy you
are repairing it handsomely. Your confession is scarcely as damaging as mine; I perforce admit culpability; as Mr. Goodwin would say, I have no out. But if the boy feels the injury?”
“No.”
“But if by chance he does?”
I saw Kimball’s eyes fall. It was sometimes not easy to meet Wolfe’s eyes, but Kimball the trader should have been impervious to any eye. He wasn’t. He didn’t try it again. Abruptly he got up and, standing, said:
“He doesn’t. I took no such advantage of your confession, Mr. Wolfe.”
“You may, sir.” Wolfe didn’t stir. “You are welcome to all advantages. Why not be frank? There is no danger in me to the innocent.” He looked at his watch. “In five minutes there will be lunch. Lunch with me. I do not pretend to be your friend, but certainly for you or yours I have no ill-will. Thirty years ago, Mr. Kimball, you faced a bitter disappointment and acted upon it with energy; have you lost your nerve? Let us see what might be done. Lunch with me.”
But Kimball wouldn’t. As a matter of fact, it seemed to me that for the first time he looked scared. He wanted to get away from there. I didn’t quite get it.
Wolfe tried some more to persuade him to stay, but Kimball wasn’t having any. He quit looking scared and got polite. He said goodness gracious, he had no idea it was so late, and that he was sorry Wolfe was able to suggest nothing to prevent the police from making a nuisance of themselves, and that he trusted Wolfe would consider their conversation confidential.
I went to the door with him. I offered to drive him back downtown, but he said no, he could get a taxi at the corner. From the stoop I watched him shoving off, and he was right, you could see he had been in a saddle enough to bend his knees out.
When I got back to the office Wolfe wasn’t there, so I went on to the dining-room. He was getting himself set in front of his chair, with Fritz behind ready to push it. After he had got fixed I sat down. I had never known him to discuss business during a meal, but I was thinking that day he might. He didn’t. However, he did violate a custom; ordinarily he loved to talk as he ate, leisurely and rambling on any subject that might happen to suggest itself, as much to himself as to me, I suspected, though I think I was always a good audience. That day he didn’t say a word. In between his bites I could see his lips pushing out and pulling back again. He didn’t even remember to commend Fritz for the dishes; so as Fritz cleared away for the coffee I tossed a wink at him and he nodded back with a solemn smile, as much as to say that he understood and would bear no grudge.