THE WOUNDED TYROLEAN

When Professor Behring of the Middleton University physics department was found fatally stabbed in his home late one October afternoon, the crime caused an understandable wave of disbelief to sweep over the quiet university town. However, for those whose duty brought them into close contact with the intimate facts of the case, it had an added flavor—of the unreal.

From every conceivable aspect, the murder was an impossible crime.

The only person to arrive at the true explanation of the matter was John Rossiter, a bright young senior who was the editor of the student newspaper, the Campus Daily. But having reached the answer through a feat of inspired logic, Rossiter never revealed the solution to a soul. That is why “The Case of the Wounded Tyrolean,” as it came to be known, has remained a classic puzzle to the general public and is still preserved in the local police files under “Crimes Unsolved.”

The recent death of one of the principal figures involved in the investigation, however, has at last made it possible for the entire story to be told. For the interested reader, it begins one chill afternoon, amid the autumnal splendor of a Midwest college town in the now distant fall of 1948.

The bike ride from the student publications building to Professor Behring’s home left John Rossiter wind-whipped and numb. As he stopped before the modest house in the traditional faculty residential district of town, his first impression was that the police had worked very quickly. The routine examination and photography of the scene had apparently been completed, since two litter carriers were just emerging from the open doorway carrying a sheet-covered form to the ambulance parked at the curb.

Even in the presence of this unmistakable evidence, it was hard for John to believe the news that only shortly before had been phoned to him at his desk. Something within him refused to accept the fact that the old Wounded Tyrolean was dead. The celebrated professor had always seemed like an indelible figure. The colorful nickname was known to many, many classes of Middleton students. His characteristic limp was the consequence of a leg wound he had suffered in the First World War while fighting in the German army. John had to adjust to the evident fact: the end had come for the old professor.

A short, hatless man who was closely following the body was giving instructions to the stretcher bearers to watch their step.

Lew Klein, the Campus Daily staff photographer, pulled his bike alongside Rossiter’s on the sidewalk and commented wryly, “That’s Dr. Gaines, the coroner, with the body. Ever see such concern over a dead man?”

“Lew,” Rossiter replied, “see if you can get a shot of that. It looks like we got here just in time.”

Klein crouched into a practiced freeze as the stretcher disappeared into the back of the ambulance. “OK,” he said, “I got it. Looks like he’s given his last exam.”

“Let’s see what we can find out,” Rossiter said. At the door, he spoke briefly with a police officer and they entered the house. Inside, a number of persons stood in small groups, quietly conversing. Rossiter recognized Sergeant Staffan of the Homicide Division. He was standing by the fireplace in the living room where he was speaking with a slender, gray-haired man.

“Look, Lew,” Rossiter said, nudging his companion. “There’s President Wenley. Odd. Why would he be here?”

“Wenley was one of the people who found the ol’ prof’s body,” offered a person who had come up behind the two students.

“Hi, Fletch,” said Lew, turning to greet Hal Fletcher, a reporter for the local Herald News.

“Well,” said Rossiter, “What a splash all this is going to make, eh?”

“In this sleepy town, strictly dynamite,” the reporter answered.

Rossiter took out a notebook from his pocket. “For the record, Fletch, what have you found out so far? What about Wenley, for starters?”

“Not too much yet. Staffan’s been tied up since I’ve been here. From what I’ve overheard, though, it seems that Behring had an appointment with Wenley and Dr. Gaines, a friend of Behring’s as well as his personal physician. Exactly what that appointment was supposed to be about, I can’t say.”

Rossiter motioned down a hallway that led to the back of the house where a door stood ajar, hanging on one hinge. “They found him there?”

“Right, they had to break the door down to get in. They found him inside the room stabbed in the back.”

Lew slipped a new plate into his camera. “I’ll see about some pictures right now, okay?”

Rossiter nodded.

“Well, my friend,” Fletcher said. “How many times have you told me how interested you were in crime reporting? What do you say? Here’s your big chance.”

Rossiter smiled. “I’d say you’re right. Let’s see if we can get a statement from Wenley now.”

Sergeant Staffan, a husky, slightly stoop-shouldered man with a friendly air about him, had pocketed the notes he had been taking and appeared to have finished speaking with President Wenley.

When he saw Rossiter and Fletcher approaching, he said, “Here’s the press, sir. Are you willing to give a statement?”

Wenley absently ran a hand through his sweeping gray hair. “I think so, Sergeant. Thank you.” His voice was firm and strong. It did not betray the emotion that had gripped him from the moment he and Gaines had burst in upon the scene in Behring’s study.

Staffan headed down the hall toward the broken door as Rossiter and Fletcher approached Wenley. The latter motioned toward several chairs in the living room and the three sat down. The president slumped forward, his gaze unfocussed, and gave a short statement.

Behring, he recounted, had made an urgent request to see both Gaines and him concerning a matter related to an unspecified scientific project. The appointment had been arranged for that afternoon at Behring’s home. Wenley and Gaines, arriving together, had gotten no response to their knock at the door. Since Behring lived alone, Gaines thought that they should try the door and go on in, suggesting that perhaps he had dozed off. They entered and could find no one in the house. They tried the inner doors and when Gaines noted that the study door was locked from the inside, he was suddenly very disturbed. He said he was afraid that something had happened. He knew that his friend’s study was lined with bookshelves and that the room had no windows. At Gaines’s suggestion, they had forced the door open. Behring lay stretched out on the floor in the middle of the room, face down, with what appeared to be the handle of a kitchen knife protruding from his back. There was no one else in the room. Gaines had examined him immediately and determined that he was dead. He asked Wenley to go to the phone in the hall and call for the police and an ambulance.

Wenley finally brought his gaze back to his two listeners and said. “And that is all. It—it is a terrible occurrence.” He added that Behring’s death had tragically deprived him from accepting a recent appointment to a newly formed government commission on atomic research. Then, grimly, he said, “Until the authorities can bring further light to the situation, I shall withhold any additional comment. Except,” he continued in a softer voice, “that the loss of Professor Behring as an honored contributor in his field and as an esteemed colleague will be very deeply felt in this community.”

Wenley stood, and Rossiter and Fletcher rose as he excused himself and left.

The house was now quite still.

Sergeant Staffan had dispatched the last two uniformed officers. One remained at the front door and the other waited at the wheel of the squad car parked outside at the curb. Staffan remained standing in the study, arms crossed, deep in thought.

“Let’s see if we can have a look inside the room,” Rossiter suggested to Fletcher. He motioned to Lew Klein and the three went down the hall.

Staffan failed to notice them when they entered the bookshelf-lined study, furnished simply with a desk and a few chairs. He was tapping here and there at the floor-to-ceiling shelves that covered three walls, kicking at the floor boards and rapping at the paneling. Lew joined them and stood in a corner, changing bulbs for a final shot.

“Well, what’s the word, Sergeant?” Fletcher asked.

“Solid!” he exclaimed without turning away. “These walls are solid all the way around. No niches, no concealed panels, nothing! Just that door. And look at it.”

Rossiter stepped back to the entrance to the study and examined the broken door. It hung sideways from a twisted hinge. A shot bolt protruded from its outside edge. Its matching bracket hung from the opposite jamb by one loosened screw.

“Locked from the inside,” Staffan enunciated slowly. “Gaines explained how he and Wenley had to ram it from the outside to get in.”

“The old locked room puzzle—just like in the mystery stories,” Klein observed as he left, camera under his arm.

Staffan forced a smile in response to the comment. He turned to face Rossiter and Fletcher, gesturing broadly. “A locked room!” He lit a cigarette that he placed between his lips. “Let me review things for you, because what we have here is something that just doesn’t happen to take place in real life. The victim—Behring—was in this room, alone. For some reason he locked the door from the inside while he waited for his appointment with Wenley and Gaines. When they arrived, he didn’t answer the door, so they came in. This is where they eventually found him, here where I am standing, in the middle of this room. There was no one else in the room and there is no other exit from it beside that door. The room was as good as sealed. No gimmicks, no nothing.”

Rossiter found himself recalling Klein’s words: “. . . just like in the mystery stories.”

“Understand this, my friends,” Staffan said. “And I am speaking to you frankly. Our job at this moment is not primarily to find who murdered the professor. With all this locked room business, first we’re going to have to figure out how the crime was committed.” He paused for a brief moment to allow the impact of his words to sink in. Then he added, “We can hope for Coroner Gaines’s report by tomorrow.” He motioned down the hall with a wave of his hand. “Gentlemen, after you.”

 
The following day was bleak and cold. Overcoats and mufflers were more in evidence about the campus, and coffee sales rose markedly in the bordering sandwich shops and drugstores. Heavy gray skies attracted students’ speculative gazes and inspired thoughts of eventual snowfall.

After his morning classes, John Rossiter had spent two hours at the editor’s desk in the large, high-ceilinged student publications building. Amid the paperwork pushed aside on the desk before him was an editorial he had been composing on the controversial topic of suspected infiltration of Communist sympathizers into American colleges and universities. He had no taste for the subject now. What mattered above all was the problem of Behring’s death. Ignorant of the clatter of typewriter and teletype in the spacious Daily office, he had outlined the circumstances as he knew them. After determining that he was unable to find a flaw in the problem as he had laid it out, he decided that he needed to approach the matter from a fresh angle. By four o’clock he realized he had to have information that could be provided only by the coroner’s report. He got up, pulled on his short beige jacket and went out.

 
The overcast sky made the hour seem like twilight. The sharp, biting wind swept through swaying branches and nipped at the few remaining leaves, whisking them along the street. Immersed in thought, he covered the short distance between the Daily and police headquarters.

Sergeant Staffan was busy behind closed doors when Rossiter arrived, so he took a seat in the outer office and occupied himself by studying a large wall map of the city marked by numerous colored push-pins.

Ten minutes later, seated behind his desk, Staffan was saying, “Well, Rossiter, what’s on your mind? Have a seat.”

“Can you tell me if anything new has turned up—about Behring? Some new angle?”

The detective chewed on his pencil for a moment. “No. We’ve cleared up a little about his past, which doesn’t help a great deal. It’s established that Behring was alone in this country. No relatives. But he had a brother in Austria, which was occupied by the Russians after Behring left. I was told that the brother and his family had visited Behring here a couple of times, but that was years ago. Behring’s wife had been the only person who emigrated with him from the Tyrol, in Austria, which was where he was born. She died ten years ago.” Staffan tapped nervously on his desk with the pencil. “He kept pretty much to himself. Ten years of living alone had apparently limited his circle of acquaintances. Gaines said that he had played chess with him on occasion. What he tells me substantiates the testimony I’ve had from several of his colleagues in the physics department. He was a hard-headed, strongly determined person, with a real talent for solving problems.”

“President Wenley said that the government had just recently offered him a . . .”

“Yes. We’ve looked into that, too. Behring was a specialist in his field, outstanding enough to be named to a newly formed commission on atomic energy. He was notified of the appointment only a week or so ago. It’s a shame, isn’t it?”

“I wonder if you could tell me what the coroner’s report has to add,” Rossiter said, pulling out a sheaf of notes from his pocket.

“Dr. Gaines finished it late last night.” Staffan shrugged. “Routine. The estimate is that he had been dead for less than an hour when he was found. The cause of death was the single knife wound in the back. Punctured the heart. He died instantaneously. No other signs on the body, except for some scarring on the lower left leg. He used a cane, didn’t he?”

“Right, Sergeant. It was because of that leg wound that the students ended up calling him the Wounded Tyrolean. By the way, do you suppose I could see the photos you’ve got of the body as it was found?”

“Sure,” Staffan said. He pulled a few glossy prints from a drawer and dropped them on the desk in front of Rossiter.

The objective eye of the camera had captured in detailed clarity the sight that had greeted Wenley and Gaines in the study. Behring was lying almost in the exact middle of the open area in the center of the room, face down, his arms flung out before him, the hilt of what seemed to be a kitchen knife standing almost perfectly parallel to the walls. The stain around the wound formed a dark circle on the back of his suit coat and some blood had reached the carpet.

“How about fingerprints on the knife?” Rossiter asked

“Only Behring’s,” Staffan replied.

Rossiter rose and placed the photos on the desk. “Well, thanks, Sergeant. That’s all, I guess. A few things had puzzled me and I just wanted to verify a couple of facts if I could.”

“Look, I appreciate your interest in our investigation. If you come up with anything of interest—being close to things going on around the campus—please give me a call.”

“Thanks again for your help. I’m going to stick with this,” Rossiter said. “There has to be an answer.”

The moment the door closed behind his visitor, Staffan pulled out the photos and spread them out on the desk. For a while his eyes moved from one to another, absorbing familiar details. After a while he was forced to conclude that that no matter in what direction the meager evidence that he had gathered might lead him, the inescapable fact would always still confront him: Behring had died in a room that was bolted from the inside.

After a few minutes, he gathered up the photos, threw them into a drawer, put on his hat, and went home.

 
“Team spirit! A great thing!” exclaimed Lew Klein.

He and Rossiter were seated in comfortable leather armchairs in the lobby of the Student Union. They had moved their chairs over to a window that looked out on University Avenue, where a mob of chanting students swarmed down the middle of the street, pushing ahead and immobilizing every vehicle in their path. From the crowd below came the cries and laughter of the long snake-dance line that had formed following the traditional Friday night pep rally held for the football team at the athletic fields nearby. The twisting line of fans was pushing on toward the business district a few blocks away, inevitably bound for a trip through the aisles of the two campus-town movie theaters and then back out onto the street.

“Team spirit, right,” Rossiter replied. “But don’t forget that football glory is only one pretty small aspect of what a university is all about. When you think about it, it’s really an unimportant part of what we’re doing here.”

“Well, aren’t you the wet blanket,” Klein replied with some surprise. “What a sobersides!”

“I’m sorry, Lew. I guess my mind is someplace else. Do you mind if I use you to run a few of my ideas by? I’ve been thinking about Behring.”

“Aha, I’m not surprised. So, where are your ideas leading you?”

“To be honest, nowhere.”

“OK, you’ve got my full attention. Shoot.”

Rossiter was silent for a moment, and then took a deep breath. “Let’s look at it this way, Lew. And I’m trying to be as objective as I can. How did Behring die? Strictly speaking, there are only four possibilities: murder, suicide, accidental death, and natural death.

“That he didn’t die a natural death with a knife in his back is clear enough, right? Accidental death? Well you’ll admit, Lew, that someone might cut his finger or nick his knee accidentally. But stab himself in the back—fatally? Besides, when Staffan showed me the coroner’s report today it stated that the knife penetrated the heart, killing him instantaneously. Now that would have required a tremendous force behind the knife that is unimaginable in an accident. So rule out accidental death.

“Suicide? How could he have committed suicide?”

“Assuming,” interjected Lew, “that he’d have chosen such a gruesome way out. Stabbing himself in the back!”

“All right. We still have to consider it as a possibility anyway,” Rossiter insisted.

Lew shook his head skeptically.

“No wait, Lew. In the first place, it is possible that he might have grabbed the knife and swung it over his shoulder into his back. But that’s no good. He could never have produced enough force to drive the knife in that deep. Anyway, the angle of the knife in the body—vertical, the photos show—is wrong. Coming from over the shoulder it would have had to enter at an angle.

“Or he could have held the knife at his back and rammed himself into a wall or into the closed door. That’s no good either. Gaines’s report states that Behring died instantaneously. In that case, his body would have been found next to the wall where he had dropped. But he was found in the center of the room, away, removed from all the walls. So that’s out.

Finally, and this is unlikely, too, he could have held the knife at his back and dropped on it. But then he would surely have died face up. But he was found face down. And even if somehow he had rolled over on the knife after he fell, that would have resulted in a wound much different from the single clean stab that killed him. So that’s eliminated.”

Rossiter stopped at this point and threw up his hands. “So what’s left?”

“Murder, of course. That’s no revelation!”

“Ah, but you’re wrong. Murder is impossible! Behring was killed in a room that had only one entrance, a door. It was bolted on the inside. Both Gaines and Wenley have made that clear. Staffan swears there were no gimmicks inside the room that could have brought about his death. Behring must have been alone and alive behind that door. And when Gaines and Wenley arrived, only a short time after he died, he is found in the empty room—stabbed to death. He couldn’t have been killed by someone outside that room. A physical impossibility! So murder’s out. Now what’s left?”

Lew looked at his friend in bewilderment and shrugged. “Nothing.”

“That’s right. Nothing.”

And that, in a word, was how it stood.

Even at police headquarters later that evening, though the logic had not been so precise and detailed, the conclusion was nonetheless identical. Nothing.

At ten o’clock Sergeant Staffan shook his head wearily and pushed himself back from his desk. There had to be a break somehow, somewhere, but he could not find it.

The official investigation, therefore, came to an early standstill.

 
Rossiter had his first suspicion the following day.

The night before Lew Klein had tried to persuade Rossiter that his chain of reasoning had to have a weak link. And Rossiter challenged his friend to point out where there was an error or a misstatement. Lew replied that he’d go home and sleep on it. Rossiter replied that he’d do the same.

The next morning was a football Saturday, cold and overcast, and along with thousands of other fans Rossiter headed to the stadium to watch the final game of his team’s so far undefeated season. It was a very good game, played against Middleton’s traditional rival from the north, which was favored to win this last match-up of the year. Middleton came off with the victory, however, because the home team did not lose its composure when, early in the first quarter, it fell behind by two sudden touchdowns.

Pushing out of the stadium through the crowd, Rossiter’s thoughts returned to the perplexing problem of the locked room. The facts remained the same. The persistent steps in his reasoning held firm and the same conclusion loomed up. But . . . He stopped short in his tracks. An idea came rushing into his consciousness . . . The pressing mob jolted ahead, forcing him along roughly. Under his breath he uttered the answer, incredulously. “Could that be it? It was the only possibility. But possible?” Stumbling on, he realized that he had reached the only explanation. He suddenly saw that there could be no other one.

He made the decision quickly. Moving away from the crowd, he turned and headed downtown while the mob pushed on toward the campus. He looked at his watch and saw that it was only five o’clock. Perhaps it wasn’t too late.

It was almost 5:30 when Rossiter walked into the reception room of the Main Street office where the coroner carried out his private practice. The door to the inner office was open, and when he approached it he saw Dr. Gaines seated alone at his desk, smoking a pipe, in the small, darkening consultation room.

The doctor turned and regarded him quizzically.

“Yes?” Gaines said, reaching for his glasses.

Rossiter walked into the room, his eyes fixed steadily on the doctor. Without speaking, he held out a hand as if to restrain or reassure him. He took a seat in the chair opposite the desk.

“My name is John Rossiter, Dr. Gaines. I’m the editor of the Campus Daily.”

“I see,” Gaines replied. “Just what is on your mind?” He leaned forward to tap tobacco ash into an ashtray on the desk.

In one sentence, Rossiter told him. What he said was blunt and unadorned.

The pipe froze in doctor’s grasp. There followed a silence. After a long moment, during which neither of the two uttered a word, Gaines set the pipe down and took a deep breath. Looking away from his visitor, he lowered his gaze and shook his head slowly. Then he replied to Rossiter. “You are right, of course.”

Gaines then reached into a desk drawer and quickly pocketed something that Rossiter could not see. He rose and asked, “Will you come with me?”

With some apprehension, Rossiter replied, “Certainly.”

They drove north out of town, Gaines at the wheel of his car. His gaze was fixed on the road ahead, but Rossiter knew that his thoughts had to be elsewhere. As darkness fell, the first flurries of snow appeared in the car’s headlights.

Neither of them spoke for many miles, until Rossiter finally had to ask a crucial question.

“At the Daily, I’ve recently been working on an editorial about the suspected presence of Communist party members on the faculties of American universities. That’s a coincidence, don’t you think? I mean, what happened to Professor Behring is somehow related, isn’t it?”

Gaines nodded, but gave no further response. They drove for another twenty minutes, at which point Gaines turned his car into a narrow dirt road that led away from the highway toward a lake that in the summer months was a popular camping and vacation spot.

Gaines explained. “My cottage is down by the lake. The area is quite deserted this time of year.”

Snow was falling heavily as the car rounded several sharp curves and then stopped in front of a white-shingled cottage set in the midst of a circle of tall pine trees. They got out of the car in the darkness and walked to the porch, where Gaines unlocked the front door.

Rossiter entered first. He stopped just inside the door, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the gloomy obscurity. Suddenly, a voice from some place within called out, “Who is this person?”

Rossiter, peering through the dim light, made out a familiar figure, now framed in the doorway by the glow of a fireplace that illuminated that room.

It was Professor Behring.

 
A few minutes later, they had settled around the freshly tended fireplace, which threw off warmth to combat the chilling winds that swept around the wooden-frame cottage. The professor spoke then.

“Although I’m not quite sure how you saw through our deception, Mr.— Rossiter, did you say your name was?— I do feel that Dr. Gaines and I owe you an explanation for this fairly intricate scheme. Come, do move your chair closer to the fire. This will take some explaining.”

The slight, white-haired man winced and pushed himself forward in the straight-backed chair cushioned with pillows.

“To get right to the essence of things, Rossiter,” he began, “circumstances became such that I had decided to disappear—for all intents and purposes—from the face of the earth. For a period going on more than two years now, I have been forced to maintain carefully controlled undercover contact with a group of Communist agents in this country. You need to know that over my head they held the threat of taking steps to endanger the lives of my brother and his family, who still live in Austria—or maybe in some other place that I do not know about—in reprisal for my not cooperating with them in their plans to secure highly sensitive information related to my professional activity. These innocent people, whose lives are so cruelly threatened, are the only family I have and after all these years I still feel very close to them.”

He looked at Rossiter, as if trying to determine the effect that his words were having on him. The expression on the professor’s angular, unshaven face was somber.

“I see,” said Rossiter. “And then we have the news of your recent appointment to a government commission looking into atomic—.”

“Yes, yes. I am almost afraid to conjecture about what prompted that. But, you’re right. That was imminent. I faced a dilemma. If I rejected the post, I would be refusing to contribute my knowledge to a critical government program. If I accepted it, I would put myself in a compromised position and run the risk of undermining—in spite of my best intentions—this country’s security. I have no family here, so I felt free to take whatever drastic step might be necessary to escape the threat that was hanging over my head.”

Behring took a deep breath and looked directly at Rossiter.

“By simply withdrawing from the university setting, I would only have been perpetuating the problem. I needed a definite break in order to achieve the kind of freedom I require. Some time after reaching that decision, I determined that the only way out for me was to ‘die.’ I worked out the basic scheme and then confided the plan to my friend and confidant, Dr. Gaines.”

Gaines stirred uncomfortably in his chair as Behring continued.

“My ‘death’ needed to be convincingly realistic. I decided that being stabbed would serve my purposes. My good friend here thought the plan to be extremely dangerous, but I felt it was what I had to do. You are probably familiar with the details. As the city’s medical examiner, he had a critical role. Through his critical participation, I was pronounced dead. For good measure, he described my death as instantaneous, from the stab wound.”

“But things did not go as we had planned,” Gaines added. “When President Wenley and I—”

Behring raised his hand to interrupt.

“It was up to me to set the scene. I was able to make the injection that numbed an area of my back that permitted the insertion of the knife into my back. The knife I used was in fact barely a quarter of the length of the weapon that was eventually placed into evidence. Two grains of digitalis taken earlier had slowed my heartbeat to a minimum. This served to reduce the signs of life that I might have shown before I could be moved. Having thus prepared my demise and feeling very weak, I assure you, I slumped to the floor of my study where I was to be found.

“But the whole plan nearly fell through because I had indulged in a perfectly natural precaution prior to preparing the setting of the apparent crime. You see, to insure perfect privacy while I was carrying out these critical steps, I unthinkingly bolted the study door.

“The plan, of course, was to make my death seem like a murder. But the door had to be open to make the murder possible!”

“I have to confess,” Gaines admitted, “that I was absolutely panicked when I found that the study door was locked from the inside. I knew that he had to be in there, but—” He stopped, pausing to light his pipe with an unsteady hand. “What could I do? I had to insist that Wenley help me break the door down. Our appointment was a vital part of our scheme. He will never know what he contributed to lending credence to the plan.”

Behring continued. “The police came immediately in response to Wenley’s call. They took their photographs and then my friend here took over. I was spirited away. I did lose blood, of course. I will need some time still to recover.”

The professor pursed his lips and looked away into a dark corner of the room.

“I am now presumed dead, thanks to our coroner’s manufactured report. In accordance with the wishes expressed in my will, and once more with the cooperation of Dr. Gaines, my remains will be presumably returned to the Tyrol, to the place of my birth. And that will bring an end to the preparation for my disappearance. Between here and there, I will cease to exist.”

Behring sighed wearily

“Of course, all that I am telling you must be maintained under absolute secrecy. I—I wonder if I can depend on you to protect me by revealing nothing of what we have told you.”

“Believe me, Professor,” Rossiter said, “ I am astonished by what you have done and by the sacrifice that all of this entails. And I promise you that I will never reveal a word about what I know.”

“Thank you,” Behring replied. He made an attempt to stand, but settled back into his chair.”

“Easy,” cautioned Gaines. “Recovering from what you have been through is going to take some time. Here, take these.” He reached into his pocket and handed Behring a small package. “They will help with the pain.”

He took the pills and said, “Thank you. You have been a good friend.”

“Well now, young man,” said Gaines, “you have been very cooperative. Perhaps we should end this now. If you’re ready, I’ll take you back to town.”

Rossiter rose and took the hand that Behring held out to him. They shared at that moment a brief, wordless acknowledgment of mutual respect.

“Just one more thing,” Behring added. “Before you go, a question.”

“Of course. What is it?”

“How did you conclude that I was not dead, and why would you go to Dr. Gaines’s office and tell him what you thought the truth was? I’m sure it was not a hunch, but a result of reasoned thinking. Clearly, I had made a mistake that undermined the success of what we had planned.”

“That’s right,” Rossiter replied. “The circumstances that I observed in your study just didn’t end up explaining how you could have died there. You know, there was something that Sherlock Holmes once pointed out. He—”

“Ah, yes. Of course. Sherlock Holmes.” Behring interrupted. “I have always appreciated his adherence to scientific and logical principles. I think you were going to refer to his observation that if you eliminate all possible solutions to a problem, save one, then that solution—no matter how unlikely—is the correct one.”

“Yes Professor, it was as plain as that,” Rossiter agreed. “After thinking things through, and considering all the evidence and the limited possibilities, one answer remained. If there was no way you could have died—”

“Then I wasn’t dead.” Behring smiled and wearily waved his hand in a gesture of farewell.

“Ready?” Gaines asked from the doorway.

“Goodbye, Professor,” Rossiter said and turned away.

Gaines closed the door behind them and they went out into the dark, snowy night. Rossiter paused for a moment, pulling his coat collar up, and then stepped back into the world where Professor Behring no longer existed and where tomorrow’s deadline and next Monday’s exam were of unrivalled importance.