She began to untie the string. I got up to help. She handed me the package and I put it on Wolfe’s desk and got the paper off. It was a large cardboard letter-file, old and faded but intact. I passed it to Wolfe, and he opened it with the deliberate and friendly exactness which his hands displayed towards all inanimate things.
Evelyn Hibbard said, “Under I. My uncle did not call them warnings. He called them intimations.”
Wolfe nodded. “Of destiny, I suppose.” He removed papers from the file. “Your uncle is indeed a romantic. Oh yes, I say is. It is wise to reject all suppositions, even painful ones, until surmise can stand on the legs of fact. Here it is. Ah! Ye should have killed me, watched the last mean sigh. Is Mr. Chapin in malevolence a poet? May I read it?”
She nodded. He read:
Ye should have killed me, watched the last mean sigh
Sneak through my nostril like a fugitive slave
Slinking from bondage.
Ye should have killed me.
Ye killed the man,
Ye should have killed me!