Not Quite Dead Enough (The Rex Stout Library)

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-