IVBut this is Washington. What made my spine stiffen, in that appalled instant, had nothing to do with the proposed murder—or call it killing—of Congressman Hamilton Vair. What appalled me was Mrs. Rufus Brent’s making, out loud and in words nobody would have to misquote or distort, the deliberate statement that her husband Rufus Brent was going to kill Hamilton Vair, and with no more compunction than he’d have if he killed a rattlesnake. Maybe knowing Colonel Primrose has conditioned me to murder, but nothing I’ve ever known has conditioned me to the incredible speed with which the merest and most private whisper leaks into public amplifiers these last few years in Washington. There’s a sonic osmosis in Washington walls that makes a paralyzed deaf mute the only absolute security risk here
