Win, Lose or Die by Cynthia Manson & Constance Scarborough

Author:Cynthia Manson & Constance Scarborough [Manson, Cynthia & Scarborough, Constance]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0786703172
Publisher: Carroll & Graf
Published: 1996-05-31T21:00:00+00:00

Harry Kemelman

END PLAY

It was Friday, my regular evening for chess with Nicky, a custom begun when I had first joined the Law Faculty at the University and continued even after I had given up teaching to become County Attorney. I had just announced a mate in three more moves to win the rubber game of our usual three-game match.

Nicky’s bushy white eyebrows came together as he scrutinized the corner of the board where my attack was focused. Then he nodded briskly in admission of defeat.

“You might have prevented it,” I offered, “if you had advanced the pawn.”

“I suppose so,” he replied, his little blue eyes glittering with amusement, “but it would only have prolonged the game and the position was beginning to bore me.”

Nicky, Nicholas Welt, Snowden Professor of English Literature at the University, could be the most exasperating of men. Although only two or three years my senior, he treated me with the condescending tolerance typical of a professor dealing with a Freshman of less than average intelligence. And I—perhaps because his prematurely white hair (my own was only just beginning to gray at the temples) and lined gnome-like face made him seem much older—I suffered it.

I was on the point of retorting that he was most apt to be bored by the position when he was losing, when the doorbell rang and I rose to answer it. It seemed as if I was always being interrupted whenever I had a chance to answer Nicky in kind.

My caller proved to be Colonel Edwards of Army Intelligence who was collaborating with me on the investigation of the death of Professor McNulty. Perhaps it would be fairer to say that we were both investigating the same case rather than that we were collaborating, for there had been an ill-concealed rivalry in our association from the beginning, and we had both gone our separate ways, each working on that phase of the problem that seemed to him most likely to bear fruit. True, we had agreed to meet in my office every morning and discuss our progress, but there was no doubt that each of us was as much concerned with being the first to solve the case as to bring it to successful conclusion. Since I had had a conference with Colonel Edwards that morning and expected to have another the following morning, his appearance now gave me a vague feeling of uneasiness.

He was a young man, little more than thirty, entirely too young in my opinion to sport eagles. He was short and stocky with something like a strut in his walk, not uncommon in men of that build, and not necessarily indicating conceit. He was a decent chap, I suppose, and probably good at his job, but I did not warm to him and had not from the beginning of our association some two days before. In part, this was due to his insistence, when we had first met, that he should have full charge of the investigation inasmuch

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