All right, it was murder then. I would be murdering Winnie Tompkins, but I would be the only one who would know it—the Perfect Crime. I laughed to myself at the thought that now Harcourt would lose his last chance to learn what Winnie had done in that fatal week before Chalmis' thorium bomb had blown me and the Alaska into the Aurora Borealis.
Although it was a cool night, I was perspiring violently. My nerves were shot to pieces. After this, I would need a rest. Winnie's business was in good shape. I could afford to keep away from the office for a time, until I grew a new face, as it were, after this shattering discovery. Then Jimmie and I—perhaps we would have a child. I'd be damned if I'd let my son be a stock-broker with a Great Dane—I might even take the Ambassadorship to Canada. The Forbes-Dutton scheme sounded too raw even for Washington—it would backfire into another Teapot Dome.
I drew a deep breath and relaxed in my bed. My course was plain. First of all, I'd attend to Ponto—burn my canine bridges behind me. Then I'd take Dr. Folsom at his word and go to the Sanctuary for a couple of weeks. My nerves were shot to pieces and if I didn't tell him or Pendergast Potter about this latest wrinkle in transmigration they would have no reason for detaining me against my will. Oh, yes, I'd have to see that Rutherford got his money. Merry Vail was still in Hartford, damn him and his nurse! Well, the thing to do was to stop off at Rutherford's office on the way to the kennels and give him a check. Vail could fix up the papers later. Once Ponto was dead, I could relax.
Was it murder? Well, that depended on how you look at it. Certainly, I was doing a better job of managing Winnie's life than he had done or could do. Look how I straightened out his mess with women and had made Germaine happy for the first time in her life. Look at the killing I had made in Wall Street, three million smackers just by using my head. Look at the way I had sold myself to the authorities at Washington, except for the State Department. The happiness and welfare of too many people now depended on my staying in charge of operations instead of Winnie Tompkins. Here, at least, was one case where the end justified the means, and nobody could call it murder.
And anyhow, chloroform is an easy death. You choke and gag a bit at first but then it's all easy, like falling off a log. You just go to sleep and never wake up. It would be the kindest possible exit for a man who had done no good in the world. I drifted off to sleep.
I awakened with a start, as though a voice had summoned me. The moonlight was streaming through the bedroom window. I knew what I must do. I got out of bed, crossed the room to the clothes-closet, felt over in the corner until my fingers found the knot-hole in the smooth pine lining. I pressed and there was a click. I reached down and lifted the sloping shelf for shoes. There, underneath it, lay a small, neatly docketed file.
There were many papers and the record went back for years. I switched on the light and examined the contents of the envelope marked "Thorium." It was all there—the ship—the names—the ports—the mission. There was documentation on Jacklin. I ran through it. It was accurate and included a specimen of my signature. There was a cross-reference to Chalmis and a small file on someone named Kaplansky. Irrelevantly included was a folder which contained three cards labeled "Retreat—Holy Week." "St. Michael" and "Stations of X!"
I crossed to the fireplace and put the papers in the grate. For an hour I sat there feeding the flames with the record of betrayal and infamy. Names, places, dates—I glanced at them, forgot them and burned them with rising exaltation. Thank God! that load was off my conscience. I might have to answer for Winnie's sins but I was damned if I'd be responsible for his crimes. And the killing of Ponto was no longer to be murder, it was an execution. For Ponto was Tompkins and Tompkins was Von Bieberstein.
Dawn was beginning to smudge the windows when the last paper had been burned and the ashes crushed to fragments beyond the power of reconstruction by forensic science. Without Winnie the organization of his gulls and dupes would fall apart and the thing that had been Von Bieberstein would cease to exist.
Another thing was clearer, too. Winnie Tompkins had had an obsession about Jacklin. Finally, through some combination of fatigue and mental shock, a Jacklin personality had taken control. Call it schizophrenia, Jekyll-and-Hyde, or whatever, there was a fair chance that I was still Winnie, but his better self. The dog had been another obsession. The dog was to blame? Well, if I believed it, it might be true, like the old scape-goat system. I was physically the same man who had been Von Bieberstein and had blown up the Alaska, planting evidence that would throw the blame on Jacklin. In my heart and spirit, it was as though I had been recreated. All the evidence had been destroyed.