The League of Frightened Men

She stared at him. "Why not? It has no information that they cannot easily obtain elsewhere – from Mr. Farrell or Dr.

Burton or Mr. Drummond – any of them -"

"All the same, remarkable." Wolfe reached to his desk and pushed a button.

"Will you have a glass of beer? I drink beer, but would not impose my preferences. There is available a fair port, Solera, Dublin stout, Madeira, and more especially a Hungarian vin du pays which j comes to me from the cellar of the vineyard. Your choice…"

She shook her head. "Thank you."

"I may have beer?" |

"Please do."

Wolfe did not lean back again. He said, | "If the package could perhaps be opened?

I am especially interested in that first warning."

She began to untie the string. I got up to help. She handed me the package and I a 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 toward 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!

Ye killed the man, but not

The snake, the fox, the mouse that nibbles his hole, The patient cat, the hawk, the ape that grins, The wolf, the crocodile, the worm that works his way Up through the slime and down again to hide.

Ah! All these ye left in me,

And killed the man.

Ye should have killed me!

Long ago I said, trust time.

Banal I said, time will take its toll.

I said to the snake, the ape, the cat, the worm:

Trust time, for all your aptitudes together Are not as sure and deadly. But now they said:

Time is too slow; let us. Master.

Master, count for us!

I said no.

Master, let us. Master, count for us!

I felt them in me. I saw the night, the sea, The rocks, the neutral stars, the ready cliff.

I heard ye all about, and I heard them:

Master, let us. Master, count for us! / saw one there, secure at the edge of death, I counted: One!