The Second Confesion

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 helps, 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.

CHAPTER Eighteen

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 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 colour 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.