Rex Stout - The Second Confession

Good for you, I thought, you’ve made one hell of a discovery and now you’re a geologist. All you have to do now is put every damn rock under the glass, and along about Labor Day you’ll be ready to report. Ignoring my sarcasm, I went on looking. I moved along the edge of the brook, stepping on stones, until I was underneath the bridge, stood there a while, and moved again, upstream from the bridge. By that time my eyes had caught onto the idea and I didn’t have to keep reminding them.

It was there, ten feet up from the bridge, that I found it. It was only a few inches from the water’s edge, and was cuddled in a nest of larger stones, half hidden, but when I had once spotted it it was as conspicuous as a scratched cheek. About the size of a coconut, and something like one in shape, it was rough and greenish gray, whereas all its neighbors were smooth and light-colored. I was so excited I stood and gawked at it for ten seconds, and when I moved, with my eyes glued on it for fear it would take a hop, I stepped on a wiggler and nearly took a header into the brook.

One thing sure, that rock hadn’t been there long.

I bent over double so as to use both hands to pick it up, touching it only with the tips of four fingers, and straightened to take a look. The best bet would of course be prints, but one glance showed that to be an outside chance. It was rough all over, hundreds of little indentations, with not a smooth spot anywhere. But I still held it with my fingertips, because while prints had been the best bet they were by no means the only one. I was starting to turn, to move away from the brook to better footing, when a voice came from right behind me.

“Looking for hellgrammites?”

I swiveled my head. It was Connie Emerson. She was close enough to reach me with a stretched arm, which would have meant that she was an expert at the silent approach, if it hadn’t been for the noise of the brook.

I grinned at the clear strong blue of her eyes. “No, I’m after gold.”

“Really? Let me see—”

She took a step, lit on a stone with a bad angle, gave a little squeal, and toppled into me. Not being firmly based, over I went, and I went clear down because I spent my first tenth of a second trying to keep my fingertip hold on my prize, but I lost it anyway. When I bounced up to a sitting position Connie was sprawled flat, but her head was up and she was stretching an arm in a long reach for something, and she was getting it. My greenish gray stone had landed less than a foot from the water, and her fingers were ready to close on it. I hate to suspect a blue-eyed blonde of guile, but if she had it in mind to toss that stone in the water to see it splash all she needed was another two seconds, so I did a headlong slide over the rocks and brought the side of my hand down on her forearm. She let out a yell and jerked the arm back. I scrambled up and got erect, with my left foot planted firmly in front of my stone.

She sat up, gripping her forearm with her other hand, glaring at me. “You big ape, are you crazy?” she demanded.

“Getting there,” I told her. “Gold does it to you. Did you see that movie, Treasure of Sierra Madre ?”

“Damn you.” She clamped her jaw, held it a moment, and released it. “Damn you, I think you broke my arm.”

“Then your bones must be chalk. I barely tapped it. Anyway, you nearly broke my back.” I made my voice reasonable. “There’s too much suspicion in this world. I’ll agree not to suspect you of meaning to bump me if you’ll agree not to suspect me of meaning to tap your arm. Why don’t we move off of these rocks and sit on the grass and talk it over? Your eyes are simply beautiful. We could start from there.”

She pulled her feet in, put a hand — not the one that had reached for my stone — on a rock for leverage, got to her feet, stepped carefully across the rocks to the grass, climbed the bank, and was gone.

My right elbow hurt, and my left hip. I didn’t care for that, but there were other aspects of the situation that I liked even less. Counting the help, there were six or seven men in and around the house, and if Connie told them a tale that brought them all down to the brook it might get embarrassing. She had done enough harm as it was, making me drop my stone. I stooped and lifted it with my fingertips again, got clear of the rocks and negotiated the bank, walked down the drive and on out to the car, and made room for the stone in the medicine case, wedged so it wouldn’t roll around.

I didn’t stop for lunch in Westchester County, either. I took to the parkways and kept going. I didn’t feel really elated, since I might have got merely a stray hunk of granite, not Exhibit A at all, and I didn’t intend to start crowing unless and until. So when I left the West Side Highway at Forty-sixth Street, as usual, I drove first to an old brick building in the upper Thirties near Ninth Avenue. There I delivered the stone to a Mr. Weinbach, who promised they would do their best. Then I drove home, went in and found Fritz in the kitchen, ate four sandwiches — two sturgeon and two home-baked ham — and drank a quart of milk.

When I swallowed the last of the milk it wasn’t five o’clock yet, and it would be more than an hour before Wolfe came down from the plant rooms, which was just as well since I needed to take time out for an overhaul. In my room up on the third floor I stripped. There was a long scrape on my left knee and a promising bruise on my left hip, and a square inch of skin was missing from my right elbow. The scratch on my cheek was developing nicely, getting new ideas about color every hour. Of course it might have been worse, at least nobody had run a car over me; but I was beginning to feel that it would be a welcome change to take on an enemy my own sex and size. I certainly wasn’t doing so well with women. In addition to the damage to my hide, my best Palm Beach suit was ruined, with a big tear in the sleeve of the coat. I showered, iodined, bandaged, dressed, and went down to the office.

A look in the safe told me that if I was right in supposing that the specialist to be hired was Mr. Jones, he hadn’t been hired yet, for the fifty grand was still all there. That was a deduction from a limited experience. I had never seen the guy, but I knew two things about him: that it was through him that Wolfe had got the dope on a couple of Commies that had sent them up the river, and that when you bought from him you paid in advance. So either it wasn’t to be him or Wolfe hadn’t been able to reach him yet.

I had been hoping for a phone call from Weinbach before Wolfe descended at six o’clock, but it didn’t come. When Wolfe entered, got seated behind his desk, and said “Well?” I thought I was still undecided about including the stone in my report before hearing from Weinbach, but he had to know about Connie, so I kept on to the end. I did not, however, tell him that it was a remark of Madeline’s that made me think of stones, thinking it might irritate him to know that a woman had helped out.

He sat frowning.

“I was a little surprised,” I said smugly, “that you didn’t think of a stone yourself. Doc Vollmer said something rough and heavy.”

“Pfui. Certainly I thought of a stone. But if he used a stone all he had to do was walk ten paces to the bridge and toss it into the water.”

“That’s what he thought. But he missed the water. Lucky I didn’t take the attitude you did. If I hadn’t—”

The phone rang. A voice that hissed its esses was in my ear. Weinbach of the Fisher Laboratories hissed his esses. Not only that, he told me who he was. As I motioned to Wolfe to get on, I was holding my breath.

“That stone you left with me,” Weinbach said. “Do you wish the technical terms?”