Free The Seventh Bullet by Daniel D. Victor Page B

neither homosexuality nor incest have ever elicited the tiniest intellectual curiosity on my part, I confess in these pages that I did know exactly what he meant.
    “When they were young,” he resumed, “Carolyn’s mother didn’t let Graham play with any other children for the longest time—and then finally she would only let him play with girls. Dr. Watson,” he said, looking me in the eye, “we’re men of the world. We understand such things.”
    “Maybe so, Mr. Frevert,” I said rising from my seat, “but whatever one may understand does not require one to draw the sordid conclusions that you are suggesting.”
    I turned to Beveridge, who was in the act of putting out his cigar. It was obvious to him, as I hoped it was obvious to Mr.Frevert, that our interview had ended and that I was quite ready to go to my hotel.
    Frevert, however, would not be denied. He rose and caught my arm. Positioning himself very close to me, he said with a hushed voice, “Perhaps, as you say, Doctor, we don’t know anything for sure. But I’ll tell you this, as Beveridge there is my witness, that woman so loved her brother that if he ever seriously looked at another woman, why, I think Carolyn might have committed murder herself to prevent someone else—anyone else—from possessing him.”
    With that, he sat down, obviously talked out.
    Indeed, we were all tired. Thus, with Frevert’s charges still reverberating, Beveridge and I excused ourselves, bade good night to our hostess and her remaining guest, and left for the hotel.
    So sleepy was I and inattentive to my surroundings that I scarcely appreciated the largesse of Mrs. Frevert, who had obviously spared no expense in securing rooms for Holmes and me. As my head hit the pillow, however, I was contemplating neither the immense room in which I was lodged nor the testered bed in which I was now ensconced, but rather the initial peculiarities I had discovered in a case containing much that was not as it appeared: a provocative woman who seemed so different at home, a youthful senator who seemed to possess the cynicism of older men, a quiet husband who had so much to say. What had Holmes once observed about the deadly souls who practised deception? They were like the purring cat when he sees prospective mice.
    When I began contemplating the fluffed-up Ruffle so thin underneath his snow-white fur, I knew that I was in desperate need of rest.

Five

P OLITICAL P ERSONAGES
    “As the world knows, the eternal verities are kept alive solely by the hypocrites who preach and profess them.”
    —David Graham Phillips, Light-Fingered Gentry
    W hen Mrs. Frevert said that she would take care of our accommodations, the Waldorf-Astoria, like the R.M.S. Majesty, was certainly more than I had anticipated. * Rubbing elbows with “nobs,” as the local aristocrats were known, was not beyond the purview of Holmes’s investigations. Indeed, on more than one occasion he had come to the aid of membersof some royal family or another, but sharing their way of life was a different matter. With servants available at the touch of a button and marble pillars and satin wall-hangings providing the backdrop, one might envisage oneself residing at a palace instead of a hotel. Nonetheless, amidst all the splendour, I was able to locate and bolt down a simple breakfast of rashers and eggs in the Men’s Cafe. Not for me the posh Palm Garden restaurant, separated from the Cafe by only a glass wall, or the celebrated Peacock Alley, the lengthy corridor leading to the Garden, from whose cushioned chairs beneath whirling ceiling fans people could gawp at the affluent or renowned characters who frequented the sumptuous hostelry.
    After hurrying down the tessellated walkway and through the grand doors swung wide by a commissionaire in a long burgundy coat and matching flat, short-billed military-style hat, I found Rollins and the Packard waiting on Fifth Avenue between Thirty-third and Thirty-fourth streets where