"They don't live here any more."
"Listen, you goddamn squirt," Cramer said impolitely. "Open the door!"
"Can't. The hinge is broke."
"I say open up! We know they're here!"
"You do in a pig's eye. The things you don't know. If you've got one, show it. No? No warrant? And all the judges out to lunch-"
"By God, if you think-"
"I don't. Mr. Wolfe thinks. All I have is brute force. Like this-"
I banged the door to, made sure the lock had caught, went to the kitchen and stood on a chair and removed a screw, bolted the back door and told Fritz to leave it that way, and returned to the office. Wolfe stopped talking to look at me. I nodded, and told him as I crossed to my chair:
"Three irate men. They'll probably return with legalities."
"Who are they?"
"Cramer, Rowcliff, Stebbins."
"Ha." Wolfe looked gratified. "Disconnect the bell."
"Done."
"Bolt the back door."
"Done."
"Good." He addressed them: "An inspector, a lieutenant, and a sergeant of police have this building under siege. Since they are investigating murder, and since all of the persons involved have been collected here by me and they know it, my bolted doors will irritate them almost beyond endurance. I shall let them enter when I am ready, not before. If any of you wish to leave now, Mr. Goodwin will let you out to the street. Do you?"
Nobody moved or spoke, or breathed.
Wolfe nodded. "During your absence, Archie, Dr. Brady stated that outdoors on that terrace, with a breeze going, it is not likely that the absence of the iodine odor would have been noticed by him, or by anyone. Is that correct, doctor?"
"Yes," Brady said curtly.
"Very well. I agree with you." Wolfe surveyed the ijroup. "So X's improvisation was a success. Later, of:ourse, he replaced the genuine iodine in the cupboard and removed the bogus. From his standpoint, it was next to perfect. It might indeed have been perfect, invulnerable to any inquest, if the chimpanzee hadn't poured some of that mixture on the grass. I don't know why X didn't attend to that; there was plenty of time, whole days and nights; possible he hadn't seen the chimpanzee doing it, or maybe he didn't realize the danger. And we know he was foolhardy. He should certainly have disposed of the bogus iodine and the piece of glass he had removed from Miss Huddleston's bath brush when it was no longer needed, but he didn't. He-"
"How do you know he didn't?" Larry demanded.
"Because he kept them. He must have kept them, since he used them. Yesterday he put the bogus iodine in the cabinet in Miss Nichols' bathroom, and the piece of glass in tier bath brush."
I was watching them all at once, or trying to, but he or she was too good for me. The one who wasn't surprised and startled put on so good an imitation of it that I was no better off than I was before. Wolfe was taking them in too, his narrowed eyes the only moving part of him, his arms folded, his chin on his necktie.
"And," he rumbled, "it worked. This morning. Miss Nichols got in the tub, cut her arm, took the bottle from the cabinet, and applied the stuff-"
"Good God!" Brady was out of his chair. "Then she must-"
Wolfe pushed a palm at him. "Calm yourself, doctor. Antitoxin has been administered."
"By whom?"
"By a qualified person. Please be seated. Thank you. Miss Nichols does not need your professional services, but I would like to use your professional knowledge. First- Archie, have you got that brush?"
It was on my desk, still wrapped in the paper Hoskins had got for me. I removed the paper and offered the brush to Wolfe, but instead of taking it he asked me:
"You use a bath brush, don't you? Show us how you manipulate it. On your arm."
Accustomed as I was to loony orders from him, I merely obeyed. I started at the wrist and made vigorous sweeps to the shoulder and back.
"That will do, thank you.-No doubt all of you, if you use bath brushes, wield them in a similar manner. Not, that is, with a circular motion, or around the arm, but lengthwise, up and down. So the cut on Miss Nichols's arm, as Mr. Goodwin described it to me, runs lengthwise, about halfway between the wrist and the elbow. Is that correct, Miss Nichols?"
Janet nodded, cleared her throat, and said, "Yes," in a small voice.
"And it's about an inch long. A little less?"
"Yes."
Wolfe turned to Brady. "Now for you, sir. Your professional knowledge. To establish a premise invulnerable to assault. Why did Miss Nichols carve a gash nearly an inch long on her arm? Why didn't she jerk the brush away the moment she felt her skin being ruptured?"
"Why?" Brady was scowling at him. "For the obvious reason that she didn't feel it."
"Didn't feel it?"
"Certainly not. I don't know what premise you're trying to establish, but with the bristles rubbing her skin there would be no feeling of the sharp glass cutting her. None whatever. She wouldn't know she had been cut until she saw the blood."
"Indeed." Wolfe looked disappointed. "You're sure of hat? You'd testify to it?"
"I would. Positively."
"And any other doctor would?"
"Certainly."
"Then we'll have to take it that way. Those, then, are he facts. I have finished. Now it's your turn to talk. All of •ou. Of course this is highly unorthodox, all of you to-;ether like this, but it would take too long to do it properly,
ingly."
He leaned back and joined his finger tips at the apex of is central magnificence. "Miss Timms, we'll start with you. Talk, please."
Maryella said nothing. She seemed to be meeting his gaze, but she didn't speak.
"Well, Miss,Timms?"
"I don't know-" she tried to clear the huskiness from her voice-"I don't know what you want me to say."
"Nonsense," Wolf said sharply. "You know quite well. you are an intelligent woman. You've been living in that house two years. It is likely that ill feeling or fear, any motion whatever, was born in one of these people and extended to the enormity of homicide, and you were totally unaware of it? I don't believe it. I want you to tell me the things that I would drag out of you if I kept you here all afternoon firing questions at you."
Maryella shook her head. "You couldn't drag anything out of me that's not in me."
"You won't talk?"
"I can't talk." Maryella did not look happy. "When I've got nothing to say."
Wolfe's eyes left her. "Miss Nichols?"
Janet shook her head.
"I won't repeat it. I'm saying to you what I said to Miss Timms."
"I know you are." Janet swallowed and went on in a thin voice, "I can't tell you anything, honestly I can't."
"Not even who tried to kill you? You have no idea who tried to kill you this morning?"
"No-I haven't. That's what frightened me so much. I don't know who it was."
Wolfe grunted, and turned to Larry. "Mr. Huddleston?"
"I don't know a damn thing," Larry said gruffly.
"You don't. Dr. Brady?"
"It seems to me," Brady said coolly, "that you stopped before you were through. You said you know who murdered Miss Huddleston. If-"