“Hold it. Not chickens, poultry.”
“Chickens are poultry.”
“You told me to stop you.”
“But not to argue with me.”
“You started the argument, I didn’t.”
He showed me a palm. “Let’s go on… beginning usually at the age of one week. The flavor of a four months old cockerel, trained to eat large quantities of blueberries from infancy, and cooked with mushrooms, tarragon and white wine-or, if you would add another American touch, made into a chicken and corn pudding, with onion, parsley and eggs-is not only distinctive, it is unique; and it is assuredly haute cuisine. This is even a better illustration of my thesis than the ham, for Europeans could not have fed peanuts to pigs, since they had no peanuts. But they did have chickens-chickens, Archie?”
“Poultry.”
“No matter. They did have chickens and blueberries, and for centuries no one thought of having the one assimilate the other and bless us with the result. Another demonstration of the inventiveness-”
“Hey, wait! You left out a whole paragraph. ‘You will say perhaps-’”
“Very well. Do you think you might sit still? You keep that chair creaking. You will say, perhaps, that all this does not belong in a discussion of cookery, but on consideration I believe you will agree that it does. Vatel had his own farm, and gave his personal attention to its husbandry. Escoffier refused fowl from a certain district, however plump and well-grown, on account of minerals in the drinking water available for them there. Brillat-Savarin paid many tributes…”
I was on my feet. Seated, I had twitches in my arms and legs and I couldn’t sit still. With my eye on the script, I moved across to the table and got hold of the carafe and poured myself a glass of water and drank it. Wolfe went on, droning it out. I decided not to sit down again, and stood in the middle of the floor, flexing and unflexing the muscles of my legs to make the twitching stop.
I don’t know what it was that alarmed me. I couldn’t have seen anything, because my eyes were on the script, and the open window was at my left, at least a dozen feet away, at right angles to my line of vision. I don’t think I heard anything. But something made me jerk my head around, and even then all I saw was a movement in the shrubbery outside the window, and I have no idea what made me throw the script. But I threw it, straight at the window. At the same moment a gun went off, good and loud. Simultaneously smoke and the smell of powder came in at the window, the script fluttered and dropped to the floor, and I heard Wolfe’s voice behind me:
“Look here, Archie.”
I looked and saw the blood running down the side of his face. For a second I stood dead in my tracks. I wanted to jump through the window and catch the son of a-the sharp-shooter, and give him personal treatment. And Wolfe wasn’t dead, he was still sitting up. But the blood looked plenteous. I jumped to the side of the bed.
He had his lips compressed tight, but he opened them to demand, “Where is it? Is it my skull?” He shuddered. “Brains?”
“Hell no.” I was looking, and was so relieved my voice cracked. “Where would brains come from? Take your hand away and hold still. Wait till I get a towel.” I raced to the bathroom and back, and wrapped one towel around his neck and sopped with the other one. “I don’t think it touched the cheekbone at all, it just went through skin and meat. Do you feel faint?”
“No. Bring me my shaving mirror.”
“You wait till I-”
“Bring the mirror!”
“For God’s sake. Hold that towel there.” I hopped to the bathroom again for the mirror and handed it to him, and then went to the phone. A girl’s voice said good morning sweetly.
“Yeah. Swell morning. Has this joint got a doctor?… No, wait, I don’t want to speak to him, send him over here right away, a man’s been shot in Suite 60, Upshur Pavilion… I said shot, and step on it, and send the doctor, and that Odell the house detective, and a state cop if there’s one around loose, and a bottle of brandy. Got it?… Good for you, you’re a wonder.”
I went back to Wolfe, and whenever I want to treat myself to a laugh all I have to do is remember how he looked on that occasion. With one hand he was keeping the towel from unwinding from his neck, and with the other he was holding up the mirror, into which he was glaring with unutterable indignation and disgust. I saw he was holding his lips tight so blood wouldn’t get in his mouth, and went and got some of his handkerchiefs and did some more sopping.
He moved his left shoulder up and down a little. “Some blood ran down my neck.” He moved his jaw up and down, and from side to side. “I don’t feel anything when I do that.” He put the mirror down on the bed. “Can’t you stop the confounded bleeding? Look out, don’t press so hard! What’s that there on the floor?”
“It’s your speech. I think there’s a bullet hole through it, but it’s all right. You’ve got to get stretched out and turned over on your side.-Now damn it, don’t argue-here, wait till I get rid of these cushions…”
I got him horizontal, with his head raised on a couple of pillows, and went to the bathroom for a towel soaked in cold water and came back and poulticed him. He had his eyes shut. I had just got back to him with another cold towel when there was a loud knock on the door.
The doctor, a bald-headed little squirt with spectacles, had a bag in his hand and a nurse with him. As I was ushering them in somebody else came trotting down the hall, and I let him in too when I saw it was Clay Ashley, the Kanawha Spa manager. He was sputtering at me, “Who did it how did it happen where is he who is it…” I told him to save it up and followed the doctor and nurse inside.
The bald-headed doc was no slouch, at that. The nurse pulled up a chair for the bag and opened it, and I shoved a table over by the bed, while the doc bent over Wolfe without asking me anything. Wolfe started to turn over but was commanded to lie still.
Wolfe protested, “Confound it, I have to see your face!”
“What for? To see if I’m compos mentis? I’m all right. Hold still.”
Clay Ashley’s voice sounded at my elbow. “What the devil is it? You say he was shot? What happened?”
The doctor spoke without turning, with authority: “Quiet in here, until I see what we’ve got.”
There was another loud knock on the door. I went out to it, and Ashley followed me. It was my friend Odell and a pair of state cops, and behind them the greenjacket from the main hall. Ashley told the greenjacket:
“Get out of here, and keep your mouth shut.”
“I just wanted to tell you, sir, I heard a shot, and two of the guests want to know-”
“Tell them you know nothing about it. Tell them it was a backfire. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
I took the quartette to my room. I ignored Ashley, because I had heard Wolfe say he was bourgeois, and spoke to the cops: