“Oh. You do.” Burton looked at him, sizing him up, with sour steadiness. “Then I might as well disclose it myself. It was common gossip.” He glanced at the others. “I knew that, though naturally it didn’t reach my ears. If I show reluctance, it is only because it was... unpleasant.”
“Yes.”
“Yes, it was. I presume you don’t know that of all of us, this group, I was the only one who knew Paul Chapin before the college days. We came from the same town — I more or less grew up with him. He was in love with a girl. I knew her — one of the girls I knew, that was all. He was infatuated with her, and he finally, through persistence, reached an understanding with her before he went away to college. Then the accident occurred, and he was crippled, and it was all off. In my opinion it would have been off anyway, sooner or later, without the intervention of an accident. I didn’t go home for my vacations; I spent my summers working. It wasn’t until after I was through with medical school that I went back for a visit, and discovered that this girl had become... that is... I married her.”
He glanced aside at Cabot’s cigarette case thrust at him by the lawyer, shook his head, turned back to Wolfe and went on, “We came to New York. I was lucky in my profession; I have a good bedside manner and a knack with people’s insides, especially women. I made a lot of money. I think it was in 1923 that my wife engaged Dora Ritter — yes, she was with us eight years. Her competence was a jewel in a nigger’s ear—”
“Ethiope.”
“Well, that’s a nigger. One day Paul came to me and said he was going to marry my wife’s maid. That was what was unpleasant. He made a nasty scene out of if.”
Wolfe inclined his head. “I can imagine him explaining that the action contemplated was by way of a paraphrase on the old institution of whipping-boy.”
Dr. Burton jerked his head up, startled, and stared at him. “How the devil did you know that?”
“He said that?”
“Those words. He said paraphrase.”