On Mon, 21 Jun 2004 03:02:26 +0200, Charles D. Bohne
<CharlesBohne@PasoSchweiz.de> wrote:

{...}

never had any a problem with a snake.

Fear de lance

The League of Frightened Men
Copyright 1935, 1963 By Rex Stout


For Wolfe and Archie, the affair began on the afternoon of Friday, November
2, 1934 (it came to it's startling conclusion on Monday, November 12), but
actually it had begun in 1909, when Paul Chaplin, the novelist, had been
permanently crippled as the result of "a boyish prank" played on him by his
Harvard classmates. The classmates formed a "League of Atonement" to help
Paul, and all seemed to be going as well as possible under the circumstances
until June 1934, when a crowd of them assembled at Fillmore Collard's place
near Marblehead, Massachusetts. Judge Harrison had come East from Indiana
for the commencement exercises at his son's graduation. They missed him that
night, and the next morning they found his body at the foot of the cliff,
beaten about among the rocks by the surf. To tragedy was added terror: soon
thereafter each surviving member of the league had received a set of verses
boasting of the judge's murder. These verses could have been written by only
one man: Paul Chapin.

Then Eugene Dryer, the art dealer, was poisoned, and Andrew Hibbard, the
psychologist, disappeared. And in each case there was another set of
taunting verses....