Prisoner's Base

"Later, after my guests had gone, when I was undressing for bed, I was reflecting on another problem, not for the first time. Would I have to make her manageable by hitting her with something before using the cord? I thought it greatly preferable to use only the one weapon, the cord, if it could be done that way. Removing it from my waist, I tried encircling various objects with it-the arm of a chair, a book, a pillow-and pulling it tight, but that told me nothing. I had to know how much tension was needed to choke off air and sound and make her helpless quickly. So I put the cord around my neck, got a good hold, and started to pull."

All eyes were fixed on him as he lifted his fists to touch knuckles beneath his chin, and slowly to begin parting them.

"My God," someone said.

Quest nodded. "Yes, but it's anticlimax. No one came to me just in time. I merely came to myself, after collapsing on the floor and lying there naked some minutes-I don't know how many. Nor do I know whether my collapse was only psychological or physical, or was physically induced by my tightening the cord. I do know that that was the one time in my life when the notion of suicide has flashed into my mind-not when I put the cord around my neck and pulled on it, I was conscious of no such notion then-but after I came to. For a moment my mind was quite empty. I sat on the floor staring at the cord in my hand-and suddenly it all rushed in on me as if a dam had burst. I had been seriously and deliberately planning murder, and there was the cord to prove it! Or had it been just a nightmare? I clambered to my feet and went to a mirror to look, and there was a livid ring around my neck. If at that moment there had been an easy way at hand-say, a loaded gun-I think I would have killed myself. But there wasn't, and I didn't. Later on, toward morning, I believe I even slept.

"Well." Quest gestured. "That was the end of that. For ten years that cord, neatly coiled, has been on a tray on my dresser, where I see it morning and night. I have often been asked what it is and why it is there, but I have never told until now. As I-"

"Is it still there?" Wolfe asked.

Quest was startled. "Of course!"

"Has it been there continuously?"