Belknap’s face was a mosaic of varying expression: sympathy of a kind, eager curiosity, distrust and threatening disapprobation. A man of Whittaker’s evil propensities could do considerable damage if he was driven, as now, to turn at bay.
“Think twice, Whittaker,” Belknap warned him quietly, “before you mention your idea even to me. We can drop it here and now. I promise to ask no questions. Remember a doctor’s judgement has been as often reversed as a judge’s! Don’t be rash under the first shock.”
“I’m not being rash. This is a certainty, born witness to by my flesh and bones. The doctors didn’t surprise me, to tell you the truth. But I had rather banked on being tabled, so to speak, and dying under the knife. No such luck. So it’s my six months or my week-end, and I’m going to make it the week-end. If that fails me I can always fall back on the pistol. Putting two and two together, do you begin to get my drift?”
“I can’t say I do in the least. I suppose I’m stupid.”
“For a detective I think you are. Well, to call a spade a spade, I intend to be murdered—with you in attendance to get the murderer. Is that clear enough?” Belknap, without the flicker of an eye-lash, darkly concentrated on a point somewhere between himself and the ceiling. Whittaker examined him secretly and furtively from under overhanging brows. The atmosphere had a tendency to thicken before Belknap drew himself back to the necessities of speech.
“Thanks most awfully,” he said with a hard, ironic twist of the lips, “for this amazing opportunity. It quite takes my breath away. Undoubtedly I should make a drastic effort to turn your intention, as one is expected to withhold a man about to leap from the Brooklyn Bridge. But I admit I’m frankly curious as to details. So before I seize you around the neck, metaphorically speaking, let’s hear more.”
Whittaker’s body, from a slight stiffening, yielded to the shape of his chair.
“I’m delighted that your first reaction is curiosity, Belknap; for in that case I feel sure I can eventually enlist your interest in the bizarre and dramatic elements of the situation. I feared you’d mount the pulpit, or the bench, or the stand of mere friendship, deliver me a moral lecture, and ring up your pet specialist for an appointment. In which event,” he added with faint mockery, “I should have resorted to your rival, Silas Berry. So you see I am determined. And so far so good. I swear it’s been good fun making arrangements.”
“Such as?”
“Well, for one thing, putting in what I call my supply of ammunition. Although I have a fair handful of erstwhile, and therefore potential, murderers on my visiting list, it was another matter to bring enough of the right sort together to insure a pleasant week-end, and a week-end that, as you can see for yourself, may be indefinitely prolonged—for them! Several of my favorite respectable killers are in foreign parts. But I’ve managed at least eight. Do you want a brief synopsis? Of course certain of them are familiar to you.”