Over My Dead Body

What happened, happened quick, but even so I might have headed her off if I had turned two seconds sooner. She came from inside the tonneau of Barrett's car, leaping out, and went like a bat out of hell across the sidewalk, up the steps and through the door I had left ajar. I was after her, and I am not old enough to be incapable of rapid movement. I was starting up the steps as she hurtled through the door, and by the light in the hall I saw a glittering streak from something she had in her hand. I gave it all I had then, but I couldn't catch lightning. When I was at the door she was swerving into the office. As I made the office she was half-way across it and her hand was up with the shining blade, and Wolfe was there in his chair with no time to move, and I had no gun, and all I could do was yell and keep going.

I do not know now how Wolfe did it, and I never will know, though he has kindly explained it to me several times. He says that when he heard the commotion in the hall he stiffened into attention, which is the most credible part of it; that when he saw her leaping in with the dagger flashing he grabbed a beer bottle with each hand; that when she was upon him he struck simultaneously with both hands, with his left at her descending wrist and with his right at anything at all. I don't know. I do know that something broke her right wrist and something cracked her skull.

When I reached them he was still sitting in his chair with a beer bottle in each hand and she was on the floor back of his chair, flat on the floor, with her legs twitching, spasmodically. I looked at him for blood and didn't see any. Fred Durkin busted in from the front room. Fritz came running from the kitchen. Father and son stood there white and speechless. I couldn't see anything wrong with Wolfe, but I asked him in a voice that sounded funny to me:

"Did she get you?"

"No!" he bellowed. He couldn't get up because her body against his chair kept him from shoving it back to make room.

I knelt down to take a look at her. Her legs had stopped twitching. I couldn't feel any heart. It was close quarters, with her there between Wolfe's chair and the wall, and I squirmed around to get on the other side of her. As I did so I heard a voice from the middle of the room: