Rex Stout (3 page)

“No, you won’t. It won’t affect us—this business. At least, not much.”

“I don’t believe it. You don’t mean it’s all settled?”

“Why …” Jean hesitated, and her brow showed a wrinkle. “It is and it isn’t. Secretly it
is
settled. I mean, I know about it, but he doesn’t. You’ve never seen him, have you?”

“No. How does it happen he doesn’t know it’s settled?”

“Because it hasn’t come up.” The wrinkle in Jean’s
brow was joined by another. “You see … you know how I am. I’ve never been much for men, have I?”

No, thank God. You’ve been too busy.”

Jean nodded. “I’m not as innocent as you think I am. I’ve had lots of—I suppose you might call them ideas—about different men—especially the one in Vienna who wanted to give me that mountain I told you about—but whenever it got to a certain point I couldn’t help laughing. You know, when they begin to look as if their collar was choking them?”

“I don’t know. I don’t seem to have that effect on their collars.”

“Well, I do … that is, I mean, they do look that way, and it isn’t possible to keep from laughing, and they get as made as the devil. Then I suppose, as you say, I’ve been so interested in my work—”

“Has this Indian begun choking yet?”

“No.” Quick blood made spots of colour on Jean’s cheeks. Her chin lifted. “Nothing has occurred … I don’t consider him in that connection. I do make quick decisions about things, you know I do. Up till Saturday afternoon I had no idea whether I would ever be married or not; I hadn’t thought about it much. Then quite suddenly I decided I would marry him. That’s why I say it’s settled for me, but it hasn’t been settled for him yet.”

“Has he mentioned the subject?”

“Certainly not. He’s only seen me four times.”

Miss Delaney sat motionless, with pursed lips, staring with concentrated speculation at her partner’s face. Finally, she declared with emphasis, “I don’t believe it. You’re rolling me. You’re fairly well educated, and you have a good sense of humour, and there you sit talking like a paleolithic cave girl on leap-year day. Unless you’re really deep and devious, which I’ve never suspected,
and you’ve decided in cold blood to freeze on to that twenty million or whatever it is.”

Jean was laughing. “I don’t care whether he has twenty million or twenty cents! I can always make money, with you to help.” She sobered. “But it’s settled. Really, Eileen. And don’t you dare mention it to
anybody,
because I don’t know, it may take years—Well! Come in!”

The knock had been at the door in the partition behind her, across the room from the one by which Miss Delaney had entered. It opened, and the chunky little woman from the ante-room appeared, carrying a large flat box of green and yellow cardboard secured with wide yellow tape. She advanced to the table.

“From Krone.”

Jean Farris had bounded from the stool and was exclaiming. “Thank heaven! I was afraid it wouldn’t get here in time. I’ll be late as it is. No, wait, Cora, don’t go, I want to see how you like it. You too, Eileen, of course.” She had the lid off and the top garment unfolded and was holding it up for inspection. “Oh, my God! He ended that stripe at the wrong—no, he didn’t. Look! See how the line of the stripe in the jacket will meet it? Hey, what’s that? Oh—snip that thread, will you, Cora? Isn’t it pretty fine? Would you think that stripe could be so quiet? That’s because the dark blend of the tabby absorbs it—just a trick! Everything is just a trick.” She laughed. With the smock off and likewise the dress that had been under it, the pink silk hanging from the shoulder straps left almost as much bare skin displayed as if it had been a fashionable swimming suit. The skin was nicely tanned. She touched the pink silk. “Have you seen these, Eileen? Bretton’s are featuring them—they call them Shapesheers! Isn’t that terrible? Sheepshears, Shakespeares—it will haunt you. Cora, please dear, the
brown pumps from that cupboard—no, over there—I’m glad it isn’t sweltering, because I do want to show this sort of casually—and oh, I forgot to phone Roberts & Creel to send samples of that two-sixteens mixture—”

Miss Delaney was emptying a drawer, trying to find stockings to go with the brown pumps.

I
nspector Cramer removed a shred of cigar from his tongue with his finger and thumb and deposited it in an ash tray on the police commissioner’s desk. “I’m not exactly kicking,” he declared, “I’m only remarking. I only say, it’s not our cat and why should we apologise if we don’t skin it? I take a man’s-size vacation for the first time in fifteen years, and to get called back like this for something that happened at the North Pole—”

District Attorney Skinner gestured impatiently. “Swallow it, Cramer. You’re sore because the fishing wasn’t good and the flies bit you. Mount Kisco isn’t the North Pole. It’s out of our jurisdiction, but District Attorney Anderson of Westchester has asked for help, and the press and the public know we’re working on it anyhow, and we’re taking it on the chin. Anyway, here you are. Do you mean to say you haven’t read about it?”

“I do.” The inspector sounded bitter. “I’ve been up in Canada branding moose, and as for fish—”

“All right.” Skinner was brusque. “Then you’ll have to hear all of it. Shall I shoot, Humbert?”

The police commissioner nodded. “Go ahead.”

“Okay. I’ll condense it as much as I can.” Skinner took a thick batch of papers from a folder, laid them on
the table, and leaned back in his chair. “I suppose you know the history of Val Carew.”

“Some.”

“We know it all, now. Thirty-five years ago he was a gambler out in Oklahoma. We haven’t picked up anything definite earlier than 1905, when he met an Indian girl, a Cherokee, and married her. They had a son, and lived on the tribal land until 1913, when the oil thing got big and the Indians cleaned up. The Indian girl—her name was Tsianina—her father was a chief and got ten headrights, so he was rich, and he staked Carew and his daughter and they came east, straight to New York. Since Val Carew was a born gambler, he took his stake to Wall Street, where the gambling was good, and within five years, by the time the war ended, he had multiplied his pile by ten and learned all the tricks.

“Ten years ago, in 1927, his wife died. He had introduced her around New York as an Indian princess, and apparently she really was a princess to him, or even, you might say, a goddess, for he worshipped her from the day he married her until the day she died.” Skinner rummaged among the papers, withdrew one, and tossed it across. “There’s a picture of her. People say she was even more beautiful than that; I never met her. Anyhow, by 1927 Carew was up in the really high brackets, and when his wife died he built a tomb for her out of Oklahoma sandstone on his estate at Lucky Hills, as he called it, up north of Mount Kisco. I’ve been in it; all of us have, for a special reason. It’s as big as a barn. The walls, inside, are covered with Indian relics, and there are cabinets filled with them too. The ceiling is thirty feet high. Stone steps lead up to a stone platform, and on top of the stone platform is a casket made of wood, covered with buckskin, and with a glass top. Inside the casket, in plain view, is Tsianina. You ought to see her.”

Cramer grunted. “I ought to be in Canada fishing.”

“Oh, forget it. Anyway, there she is. I’ve seen her. We all have. It sounds grotesque, but it isn’t, it’s impressive. But how do you like this for grotesque? All along one side, running across the wall in a straight line about twenty feet from the floor, is a row of holes eight inches in diameter. There are 365 holes. All you can see, standing on the floor and looking up, is just a hole; but if you climb a ladder and look directly into one, you find that a cylinder has been chiselled clear through the stone wall, thirty inches thick, and you are looking at daylight. What do you suppose those 365 cylinders were chiselled through that wall for?”

Inspector Cramer shook his head. “Got me. Hell, you could have had this printed and mailed me a copy.”

“Yeah. But you should have the picture. As I said, Val Carew was a born gambler, and so naturally was superstitious. Also, he worshipped Tsianina, his wife. Also, the Cherokees were traditionally sun worshippers, and Tsianina’s father stuck to many of the old customs which most of his tribe had discarded. I’ve had a lot of this from Amory Buysse, curator of the National Indian Museum; you’ll meet him; wait till I tell you. This is what the holes in the wall were for: they were so arranged, as to direction, that each morning, an hour after sunrise, the sun’s rays would enter through one of them and shine directly on Tsianina’s face. That took some mathematics and some engineering. Carew had experts for that.”

“Wait a minute.” Cramer had an eye cocked and his cigar tilted up. “Seems to me I’ve heard of that stunt before.”

“Maybe. The Egyptians did it in the Great Pyramid, but only for one day in the year. Carew saw ’em and raised ’em. In a basement beneath the tomb is an enormous
electric motor. Every day, at noon, the platform holding the casket, and the stone steps, slide automatically to the proper position for the next morning.”

The inspector grunted. “He went to a lot of trouble.”

“He did. But as I say, Tsianina’s people were sun worshippers, and he worshipped Tsianina, and he was a superstitious gambler. All that arrangement had a purpose. Undoubtedly you could call him a nut if he hadn’t piled up more millions than he had fingers and toes; you can anyway, if you want to, but it won’t have any effect on your bank account. As for the purpose of the sunshine on Tsianina’s face, he made no secret of it. He often went to the tomb at daybreak and stayed there until an hour after sunrise, and when he had any sort of important decision to make, he let her make it. If at that moment the sun’s rays were on Tsianina’s face, it meant that he was supposed to be concentrating on his memory of her and that nothing else mattered, and therefore it was thumbs down on whatever course of action he might be contemplating; but if her face remained in shadow he was supposed to go ahead with whatever he had in mind.”

“For God’s sake.” Cramer sounded disgusted. “I still think he went to a lot of trouble. Who kept him from fudging?”

The district attorney shook his head. “You’re not a mystic, Cramer. Neither am I. I don’t know whether Val Carew fudged or not, but I do know that plenty of modern buildings, right here in this modern metropolis, omit the thirteenth floor. I’m just letting you know what that tomb is like and how it got that way. You have to know, because it was in Tsianina’s tomb that Val Carew was found murdered at 7.20 in the morning of Wednesday, July 7th, four weeks ago yesterday.”

“Huh. Four days after I left.” Cramer took out a fresh cigar and settled into his chair. “Go ahead.”

Skinner settled too. “His body was found at the foot of the stone steps leading to the platform on which the casket with Tsianina rested, huddled as if it had fallen down the steps. You’ll see the photographs. A few feet away on the floor was one of the relics from the wall, an Indian war club—a round heavy stone with a hickory sapling for a handle. Carew had been struck twice with it—a glancing blow on the right cheekbone, and a crusher back of the left temple. The second blow caved his skull in. Also near by on the floor was another relic, an old hunting knife with a curving blade. It had been used to remove a circle of hide and hair from the top of Carew’s head, some three inches in diameter. In other words, he had been scalped. The scalp was found. Among the relics on the wall is a buckskin tunic that was once worn by Tsianina’s great-grandfather, and the scalp had been tucked into the girdle of that.”

Cramer grunted. “This ain’t a case for a detective inspector, what you need is Buffalo Bill. Who found the body, a party of Boy Scouts?”

“No. Woodrow Wilson.”

“Who?” Cramer stared. He growled sarcastically, “I see you’re being funny. I’m still sore and I’m not laughing. Save the gags till next time.”

“It wasn’t a gag. Carew’s body was found by Woodrow Wilson. When Carew came east in 1913 with his wife and young son, and his stake, an Indian came along—a cousin or something of Tsianina’s. The Indian decided that since he was coming to the white man’s big city he should take a white man’s name, and he had often heard of Woodrow Wilson because Wilson was President then, so he picked that one. I suppose it doesn’t matter what his Indian name was, and it’s a good thing it doesn’t
because he claims he has forgotten it. I don’t know how old he was in 1913, but now he appears to be somewhere between 60 and 90. He grunts exactly the way an Indian is supposed to grunt. For the past ten years, since Tsianina died, he has spent most of his time hanging around her tomb, either inside or outside the high yew hedge which surrounds it. He was doing that on the morning of July 7th, having left the house before daybreak, and he saw Carew enter the tomb, letting himself in with his key for the triple Willentz lock. Sunrise that morning was at 4.30—5.30 daylight saving; so Carew would have been awaiting the sun on Tsianina’s face, if any, at half-past six. The Indian says that he and Carew spoke to each other. Only three people besides Carew were ever permitted to enter the tomb: Woodrow Wilson, Amory Buysse of the National Indian Museum, and Guy Carew, the son. But the Indian says he didn’t enter that morning. About forty minutes after sunrise, which would have been at 6.10, he was standing by a gap at the end of an alley in the yew hedge, when something hit him from behind. That’s all he knows about it, or all he’ll tell; he was knocked out. He had a bruise on his scalp. When he came to he was tied and gagged with strips of his own shirt. He worked himself loose and went to the tomb and found Carew’s body there. He says he touched nothing and went to the house almost immediately, and he got to Guy Carew’s room a minute or two before 7.30.”

Cramer interrupted chewing his cigar to mutter half to himself, “More than four weeks ago. I hate these damned stale setups. When did we first get it?”

“Well, we haven’t got it. We have and we haven’t. It wasn’t in our county and it still isn’t our case, but Anderson of Westchester started yelling uncle two weeks ago, and, of course, we have to co-operate, and besides, most
of the investigation has centred in New York. Carew lived at Lucky Hills only four months of the year. The newspapers and the public regard it as a New York case, and we can’t laugh that off. You’ll have to take it, that’s all there is to it, and give it all you’ve got. I’ve given you the bare facts, and now you’d better go through the reports and all this stuff, then see the commissioner and me again, and then have a talk with Anderson. As you say, it’s stale, so you can’t rush any one off his feet anyhow.”