The Second Confesion

We finally finished with the field, including the route around the back of the outbuildings, and the inside of the barn. As we neared the vicinity of the house from the other direction, the south-west, I kept bearing left, and Madeline objected that we hadn't gone that way. I replied that I had been outdoors on other occasions than our joint night expedition, and went still further left. At last I was in bounds. Thirty paces off was a clump of trees, and just the other side of it was the gravelled plaza where my car was parked. If someone had batted Rony on the head, for instance with a piece of a branch of a tree with stubs of twigs on it, before running the car over him, and if he had then put the branch in the car and it was still there when he drove back to the house to park, and if he had been in a hurry and the best he could do was give the branch a toss, it might have landed in the clump of trees or near by. That cluster of ifs will indicate the kind of errand Wolfe had picked for me. Searching the grounds for a likely weapon was a perfectly sound routine idea, but it needed ten trained men with no inhibitions, not a pretty girl in a cotton print looking for a card case and a born hero pretending he was doing likewise.

Somebody growled something that resembled “Good morning.” It was Paul Emerson. I was nearing the edge of the clump of trees, with Madeline not far off. When I looked up I could see only the top half of Emerson because he was standing on the other side of my car and the hood hid the rest of him. I told him hello, not expansively.

“This isn't the same car,” he stated.

“That's right,” I agreed. “The other one was a sedan. That's a convertible. You have a sharp eye. Why, did you like the sedan better?” “I suppose,” he said cuttingly, “you have Mr Sperling's permission to wander around here?” “I'm here, Paul,” Madeline said sweetly. “Maybe you couldn't see me for the trees. My name's Sperling.” “I'm not wandering,” I told him. “I'm looking for something.” “What?” “You. Mr Wolfe sent me to congratulate you on your broadcast yesterday. His phone's been busy ever since, people wanting to hire him. Would you mind lying down so I can run the car over you?” He had stepped around the front of the hood and advanced, and I had emerged from the clump of trees. Within arm's reach he stood, his nose and a corner of his mouth twitching, and his eyes boring into me.