“We have a typewriter here. Would you be good enough to sit at Mr. Goodwin’s desk and type something at my dictation?”
“Why should I?” He hesitated, and was certainly being careful now. He looked around and saw twelve pairs of eyes at him; then he smiled and said easily, “But for that matter, why shouldn’t I?” He limped back towards me.
I pulled the machine up into position, inserted a sheet of paper, got up, and held my chair for him. He shook his head and I moved away, and he leaned his stick up against the desk and got himself into the chair, shoving his bum leg under with his hand. Nobody was saying a word. He looked around at Wolfe and said, “I’m not very fast. Shall I double-space it?”
“I would say, single-space. In that way it will most nearly resemble the original. Are you ready?” Wolfe suddenly and unexpectedly put volume and depth into his voice: “Ye should have killed me — comma — watched the last mean sigh —”
There was complete silence. It lasted ten seconds. Then Chapin’s fingers moved and the typewriter clicked, firm and fast. I followed the words on it. It got through the first three, but at the fourth it faltered. It stopped at the second l in killed, stopped completely. There was silence again. You could have heard a feather falling. The sounds that broke it came from Paul Chapin. He moved with no haste but with a good deal of finality. He pushed back, got himself onto his feet, took his stick, and thumped off. He brushed past me, and Arthur Kommers had to move out of his way. Before he got to the door he stopped and turned. He did not seem especially perturbed, and his light-colored eyes had nothing new in them as far as I could see from where I was.
He said, “I would have been glad to help in any authentic test, Mr. Wolfe, but I wouldn’t care to be the victim of a trick. I was referring, by the way, to intelligence, not to a vulgar and obvious cunning.”
He turned. Wolfe murmured, “Archie,” and I went out to help him on with his coat and open the door for him.
Chapter 7
When I got back to the office everybody was talking. Mike Ayers had gone to the table to get a drink, and three or four others had joined him. Dr. Burton stood with his hands dug into his pockets, frowning, listening to Farrell and Pratt. Wolfe had untwined his fingers and was showing his inner tumult by rubbing his nose with one of them. When I got to his desk Cabot the lawyer was saying to him:
“I have an idea you’ll collect your fees, Mr. Wolfe. I begin to understand your repute.”