Evans and I nodded.
We three were in one of the private dining rooms at Blutow’s on Sixth Street for our annual meeting. This year one of the restaurant’s smallest rooms proved adequate.
Florian ticked off the fatalities. “Carson, Abernathy, and Terwilliger met with automobile accidents.”
I had arranged two of those. Carson and Abernathy both had homes at the tops of hills with delightfully suitable winding and precipitous roads leading to their bases. A simple adjustment in the steering apparatus of their respective automobiles and they descended neatly and quickly from garage to eternity.
But who had disposed of Terwilliger? It was a puzzler indeed.
“Phelps fell or jumped from the roof of a ten story building.”
Do you realize how few — if any — windows of modem air-conditioned buildings are actually meant to be opened? I had to carry Phelps all the way to the roof before I could dispose of him. I suffered an excruciating backache for weeks.
“Schaller was electrocuted when his radio fell into his bathtub.”
Now that could have been an accident. However, I know that Schaller had no use for tubs. He was a shower man.
“Wentworth accidentally shot himself while cleaning his gun.” Florian shook his head slowly. “But we all know that he was deathly afraid of firearms and would never allow any of them in his home.”
My plans had called for him to fall off a cliff near his house. Really a beautiful view.
“Llewellyn walked into a train.”
Not my work.
“Naison was struck on the top of the head by a rivet as he took his constitutional past an apartment building under construction.” Florian showed teeth. “It was dusk and no work was at the moment in progress, but nevertheless the only conclusion the police could come to was that it was an accident.”
I wondered how that had been done. Did the murderer lurk high in the scaffolding, rivet poised between thumb and forefinger, waiting for the appropriate moment?
“And Dodsworth fell off the dock at his summer cottage and drowned.”
A direct crib from my plans, I thought indignantly. I too knew that Dodsworth couldn’t swim.
Florian pointed to the unopened magnum in a place of honor in the center of the table. “Now obviously our club members were not eliminated in order to gain possession of that bottle.”
Obviously not.
In 1946, all twelve of us were junior officers on the cruiser Spokane — united by our reserve status among the trade school boys and the prospect of impending discharge from active service.
It followed that we should gather together for a misty party of farewell before we scattered to various parts of the States. As the evening became wetter, our regrets at the possibility of our never seeing each other again became unendurable and the inevitable annual reunion was suggested.
The bourbon was excellent and the suggestion blossomed until we found ourselves in the throes of a Last Man Club.
The terms were the usual. The last survivor of our group would have the honor of drinking our duly dedicated bottle of champagne in lonely grandeur. Providing, of course, that his stomach had not so aged that the feat was impossible. And we chose a centrally located city as our meeting ground.
If we had left it at that, presumably most, if not all of us, would have been alive to attend our fourteenth meeting.
However, we realized that time has a tendency to alter one’s economic status, possibly for the worse, and so each one of us contributed five hundred dollars of our accrued pay toward a fund to be used to defray travel expenses for those of us who might need it.
A formal agreement was drafted which stipulated that besides the champagne, the last survivor would also inherit what remained of the fund.
If anything did remain.
And that specifically accounted for the present depleted state of our club.
At the suggestion of Terwilliger, an investment man who could not tolerate the sight of idle money, our six thousand dollars had been invested.
Terwilliger had chosen stocks in an insignificant little oil company.
The company is no longer insignificant and the shares were now worth almost a million dollars.
Florian regarded me for a moment. “I rather suspect that you’re the murderer, Henry. You’re the only Harvard man among us.”
“It’s remarkable that the police haven’t gotten suspicious,” Evans said.
Evans fancies himself an artist. I’ve seen some of his paintings, and while I am not a master of judgment in matters aesthetic, I do reflect that he is indeed fortunate that he does not have to pursue art for a living. He boasts of an inheritance.
“These ‘accidents,’ ” Florian said, “occurred in widely separated parts of this country. Evidently no one but us knows that there is a connecting link between them all.”
“Why don’t we call them to the attention of the authorities?” I suggested. Naturally I wasn’t serious. But I was interested in seeing which one of them would object.
“That could present some difficulties,” Florian said. “Suppose the heirs of the nine untimely deceased went to court, claiming that in the course of normal longevity they might eventually have gained possession of the million. It could lead to an anarchy of lawsuits.”
“Couldn’t we just call this whole thing quits?” Evans asked. “Dissolve the club and divide the fund three ways?”
Florian is a lawyer. He shook his head gloomily. “As a labor of love, I made the provisions of our club absolutely ironclad. In the event we dissolved the club, the fund would go to the Yale Alumni Society.”
I shuddered. That stipulation had been entered without my knowledge. “Then must we all wait to be murdered? A chilling prospect!”
“We’re safe nowhere,” Evans agreed.
Florian nodded. “Not even in our bathtubs.”
We smoked our cigars.
“Are we agreed that the motive for the murders is money?” Florian asked after awhile.
Evans and I nodded.
After several puffs of his cigar, Evans said, “I am an artist and therefore above money. Besides that, I have four hundred thousand, give or take a few dollars.”
“Ordinarily I would say that my assets are my own business,” Florian offered. “However, under the circumstances I am willing to admit to being worth close to a quarter of a million.”
“I have some five hundred thousand in shipping,” I said.
Actually my checking account showed less than a thousand. I did have a spot of family money three years ago, but I had invested heavily in Taliaferro Transit. I should have known better. The board of directors was solid Princeton.
A thought seemed to strike Florian. “By George, but we are safe from murder.”
I failed to see that.
Florian smiled. “Don’t you see, the murderer doesn’t dare strike again.”
“Why not?”
“Because if he murders once more, that will leave just two people in the club.”
“I admire your arithmetic,” I said. “However...”
Florian held up a hand. “Of the two survivors, one is the murderer and one isn’t.”
“Granted.”
“And in that case,” Florian continued, “the one who isn’t the murderer will immediately be forced to flee to the police. It is a naked matter of survival. He cannot sit about waiting to be murdered.”
Florian rubbed his hands. “The murderer will be convicted and executed and therefore the lone survivor will inherit the entire fund. Plus the champagne.”