The League of Frightened Men

I've been in service and I'm not ashamed of that, but I'm educated. You're trying to talk so I won't understand you, but I |do." • w "Good. Then there is no need -"

She snapped at him suddenly and violently. "You're a fat fool!", ^ Wolfe shook his head. "Fat visibly, though I prefer Gargantuan. A fool only in the broader sense, as a common characteristic of the race. It was not magnanimous of you, Mrs. Chapin, to blurt my corpulence at me, since I had spoken of your fatuity only in general terms and had refrained from demonstrating it. I'll do that now." He moved a finger to indicate the knife which still lay on the newspaper on the desk.

"Archie, will you please clean that homely weapon."

I didn't know, I thought maybe he was bluffing her. I picked up the knife and stood there with it, looking from her to him. "Wash off the evidence?"

"If you please."

I took the knife to the bathroom and turned on the faucet, rubbed the blood off with a piece of gauze, and wiped it.

Through the open door I couldn't hear any talking. I went back.

"Now," Wolfe instructed me, "grip the – handle firmly in your right hand. Come | towards the desk, so Mrs. Chapin can see you better; turn your back. So. Elevate your arm and pull the knife across your neck; kindly be sure to use the back of the blade, not to carry the demonstration too far. You noted the length and the position of the cuts on Mrs. Chapin? Duplicate them on yourself. – Yes. Yes, quite good.

A little higher for that one. Another, somewhat lower. Confound you, be careful. That will do. – You see, Mrs. 1 Chapin? He did it quite neatly, don't you think? I am not insulting your intelligence by hinting that you expected us to think the wounds could not have been selfinflicted in the position you chose for them. More likely, you selected it purely as a matter of precaution, knowing that the front, the neighborhood of the ( anterior jugular…" ^ He stopped, because he had no one to | talk to except me. When I turned around after my demonstration she was already getting up from her chair, holding her head stiff and a clamp on her mouth.

Without a word, without bothering to make any passes at him with her little gray glass eyes, she just got up and went; and ' – -"^ no attention, he went on with his speech until she had opened the office door and was through it. I noticed she was leaving her knife, but thought we might as well have it in our collection of odds and ends. Then all of a sudden I jumped for the hall.