Wolfe was fidgeting. He fidgets by making circles the size of a dime with a fingertip on his chair arm. “I trust,” he grumbled, “that the doctors will now justify your calling on me and this long recital. Or at least one of them.”

“No, sir.” David Fyfe shook his head. “They found nothing wrong. My brother died of pneumonia. Doctor Buhl – that’s the one from Mount Kisco, Doctor Frederick Buhl – he signed the death certificate, and my brother was buried Monday, yesterday, in the family plot. Of course the nurse having gone made the – uh – the situation was a little embarrassing, but no serious question was raised.”

“Then what the devil do you want of me?”

“I’m about to tell you.” Fyfe cleared his throat, and when he went on his voice was more careful than ever. “After the funeral yesterday that man Arrow asked us to come to the apartment at eleven o’clock this morning to hear the will read, and of course we went. Louise brought her husband along. There was a lawyer there, a man named McNeil who had flown down from Montreal, and he had the will. It had all the usual legal rigmarole, but what it amounted to was that Bert left his whole estate to Paul and Louise and me, and made that man Arrow the executor. It put no value on the estate, but from things Bert had said I would have thought his uranium holdings were worth upwards of five million dollars, possibly twice that.”

Wolfe stopped fidgeting.

“Then,” Fyfe went on, “the lawyer took another document from his brief case.