I was watching them all at once, or trying to, but he or she was too good for me. The one who wasn’t surprised and startled put on so good an imitation of it that I was no better off than I was before. Wolfe was taking them in too, his narrowed eyes the only moving part of him, his arms folded, his chin on his necktie.
“And,” he rumbled, “it worked. This morning. Miss Nichols got in the tub, cut her arm, took the bottle from the cabinet, and applied the stuff—”
“Good God!” Brady was out of his chair. “Then she must—”
Wolfe pushed a palm at him. “Calm yourself, doctor. Antitoxin has been administered.”
“By whom?”
“By a qualified person. Please be seated. Thank you. Miss Nichols does not need your professional services, but I would like to use your professional knowledge. First — Archie, have you got that brush?”
It was on my desk, still wrapped in the paper Hoskins had got for me. I removed the paper and offered the brush to Wolfe, but instead of taking it he asked me:
“You use a bath brush, don’t you? Show us how you manipulate it. On your arm.”
Accustomed as I was to loony orders from him, I merely obeyed. I started at the wrist and made vigorous sweeps to the shoulder and back.
“That will do, thank you. — No doubt all of you, if you use bath brushes, wield them in a similar manner. Not, that is, with a circular motion, or around the arm, but lengthwise, up and down. So the cut on Miss Nichols’s arm, as Mr. Goodwin described it to me, runs lengthwise, about halfway between the wrist and the elbow. Is that correct, Miss Nichols?”