Rex Stout (3 page)

“I don’t know. I don’t think I saw anybody.”

He took his hand from her shoulder. “I was aware you didn’t. I should note the exceptions. I know you’ve had enough trouble and grief to throw any ordinary girl off balance for good, and your feelings about that were genuine enough, I don’t doubt that for a minute. That day at the funeral I bit a hole in my own lip from watching you biting yours, holding yourself in.”

“I didn’t see you, Ty.”

“I know you didn’t. You didn’t see anyone. But
aside from your feelings about your father and then your mother, which I’m willing to admit were as deep and genuine as feelings can be, I say you’re a pure unadulterated fake. Now you sit still. I’ve been chewing my cud a lot. I’ve been doing that because I can’t help it, because I can’t get you out of my system. And I—”

“Not even with Wynne Durocher to help you? I mean Wynne Cowles? I mean the Mountain Cat?”

“Rot. You’re faking now. And you were faking when you pretended you were fond of me but you wouldn’t marry me because it would gum up your career. You were no more fond of me than you were of one of your uncle’s stuffed jack rabbits. Do you remember how you would fasten your eyes on me and talk down in your throat about Duse and Bernhardt?”

He stopped, staring gloomily down at her, then shook his head and returned to his swivel chair and sat down.

“I should have been wise to you then,” he went on after a moment. “But I wasn’t, because I was over my head in love with you. I still am, but I’ve had a chance to stand off and take a look. I actually thought you were going to be a great actress just because you said so. I didn’t tumble that all you were doing with me was practice. I even went to that thing you were in at the high school and sent you a bunch of flowers and had a lump in my throat because I thought you were wonderful. Now I realize you weren’t wonderful at all. The fact is you were lousy.”

Instead of exploding with rage, which would have been one way to handle it, Delia merely smiled faintly. “I don’t deny it,” she said calmly. “It takes years of work and sacrifice to develop—”

“Bah! Excuse me, but I tell you I’ve been thinking
about it. You have to have something to work on, to start with. You no more have the makings of a great actress than I have. You’ve merely got the same ailment as a million other girls your age, you’re stage-struck. That’s all right, it’s as normal and common as measles, but I just want to let you know that I know it and that you had no right to use me for a practice dummy! By God, you hadn’t! And I’ll say this, no matter how brutal it is; I’ll say that I thought there was a chance that this—I mean your mother—coming on top of what happened to your father—I thought maybe it would give you a jolt that would bring you out of it—but here you are, coming here and striking a pose and pretending to be jealous of Wynne Cowles when the fact is that you don’t care enough about me to feel jealous if you found me occupying a harem with literally thousands of wives and concubines and houris—” He broke off and breathed.

Then he put a fist on the desk again and said fervently, “I wish to God you would go away! I wish you would go to the coast or New York and start the work and sacrifice! But you won’t, you never will! Deep down in your heart you’re as wise to yourself as I am!”

The same faint smile moved her lips again. “Perhaps I am,” she agreed. “Only in a different way. You are quite correct when you say I won’t go away to work and sacrifice. Whatever sacrifice I make— Anyhow, I have abandoned the idea of a career.”

He stared. He asked in a weak voice. “What? What’s that?”

“I shall have no career.”

A swift eagerness that had flashed into his eyes as swiftly disappeared. He demanded suspiciously, “What’s the idea? Why not?”

She shook her head. “You’d say I was faking,” she
declared without resentment. “I hope, Ty, that it won’t make you miserable some day to remember what you’ve said to me this morning. I hope only that. And I hope if you do marry Wynne Cowles—” She stopped to swallow, and her hand fluttered. “Anyhow, I didn’t come here to exhibit jealousy, fake or otherwise. I came to consult you. To ask you a question because you’re a lawyer.”

“It is possible,” said Dillon, looking straight at her as if he hoped so, “that I am a damned fool.”

She shook her head. “It’s a legal question.”

“But you say you’ve abandoned— All right. Consult me first. What’s the question?”

“I must put it carefully.” She hesitated. “It’s what you call a hypothetical question. I’ve written it down.” She opened the leather handbag and rummaged among its contents, but the revolver was in the way, so she took it out and laid it across her knees. Then her fingers found the paper she wanted, and she took it out and unfolded it and read it in a monotone:

“ ‘Question for Tyler Dillon:
If a person decides to commit murder, for reasons which she considers legitimate and justifiable, and if she does not intend to conceal the act but, on the contrary, intends to declare it and intends to plead the circumstances as a defense, would it help if she made an affidavit, or something like that, in advance and left it with a lawyer, telling about the circumstances, or would it be preferable for her to proceed with the act and tell her lawyer about the circumstances after the act was committed and she was arrested?’ ”

She folded the paper and returned it and the revolver to the bag, lifted her eyes to the lawyer, and said, “That’s it.”

He was staring at her. In a moment he said, “Give me that paper, Del.”

She shook her head. “I only want an answer.”

He continued to stare. “Where did you get the gun?”

“It was my father’s.”

“Is it loaded?”

“Not yet. I bought a box of cartridges this morning.”

“Let me see it.”

She shook her head.

“Who are you going to shoot?”

She shook her head.

Dillon got up, walked around the desk, and stood looking down at her. “I would give my right eye,” he said slowly, “to know whether things that have happened really have got you unbalanced, or whether you are just practicing again. I have good reason to know that whether you have any ability as an actress or not, you have unlimited talent for dressing up a scene. I would give my right arm, too.”

Delia had her head tilted back to look up at him. “You told me once,” she said, “that a way for a client to refer a problem to a lawyer without committing or compromising either of them was to put it in the form of a hypothetical question. So that’s what I’m doing.”

Dillon groaned.

“Well, didn’t you?”

He stretched out a hand. “Give me that paper. And the gun.”

“Don’t get dramatic, Ty.” She had all her fingers on the handbag and her tone sang. “I won’t take any spurs, you know very well I won’t.”

He gazed at her with his lips pressed together, breathing, in spite of her command, dramatically. After
a minute he backed to the desk without turning, sat on its edge with his feet still on the floor, and said professionally, “Okay. I’m your lawyer and you’ve put a hypothetical question. In such a case my advice would be that all circumstances should be written down and submitted to a lawyer for him to put in the form of an affidavit. There should be nothing in it about an intention to commit murder, merely a recital of the circumstances. A lawyer is bound by his oath to reveal any knowledge that may come into his possession regarding an intention to commit a crime.”

Delia stood up. “Reveal?”

“Right. Pass it on.”

“To whom?”

“The proper authorities.”

“Then it’s a good thing I made it a hypothetical question. Thank you very much.” She started off.

He let her get within a yard of the door and then sprang after her and caught her arm. “Delia! Del! For God’s sake—”

She jerked free. Her tone was withering. “Didn’t I tell you not to get dramatic?” She went.

It appeared that Ty Dillon was going to make another grab for her, but he didn’t. Then it appeared that he was going to pursue her down the hall, but he didn’t do that either. Instead, he waited until the door leading to the anteroom had closed behind her, and then headed in the other direction, stopping at the last door at the end. He had his knuckles raised to rap on it when it suddenly opened away from him and he was confronted by a bulky man in his shirt sleeves, with red suspenders.

There was a grunt. “You want me, Ty?”

But the sight of Phil Escott’s shrewd and cynical old face made Ty realize that he had better try his own
shrewdness first. So he said, “Nothing urgent. I just wanted to report that Mrs. Cowles seems to be all set. She was just in talking to me.”

“Good. Excuse me. I have to play a tune.” The senior partner tramped off.

The junior partner returned to his room and sat at his desk. He sat there motionless for a full quarter of an hour and then muttered half aloud, “She’s an actress. Or she’s a little stage-struck fool. Or she’s a hundred percent fake. Or she’s hyperpituitary or something like that. Or she’s the girl I love, unbalanced by grief and getting herself in a jam.”

He swung his chair, reached for the telephone book, flipped the pages and ran his eye down a column until it stopped at the entry:
Cole’s Detective Agency 109 Vrgna St.… 3656
. He pursed his lips at it, considering, then finally tossed the book aside and shook his head for a decided negative.

“No good,” he muttered. “If it’s baloney I’d be a jackass, and if it’s real it would be dangerous.” He groaned. “But what the hell? I say what the hell!”

Five minutes later he reached for the phone book again, turned to a page, inspected it, scowled, muttered something and spoke into the phone. “Miss Vine, please ask Information for the number of Quinby Pellett over on Fresno Street. It doesn’t seem to be listed.”

He hung up, fiddled and fidgeted, and when the buzzer sounded got the receiver to his ear again. “What? He hasn’t got a phone? I’ll be darned. Much obliged.” He shoved the phone back, grabbed his hat, and departed.

D
elia did a little shopping on her way back to where she had parked the car, then got in and swung into the traffic. Shortly after twelve o’clock she turned in at the driveway of the Brand home, a block away from the river, on Vulcan Street. It was an unpretentious house with a large yard which had been bought by her father at a time when she was eating with a bib on. As she circled the path she frowned at a border of scraggly calendulas, and she dragged the end of a hose there and set a sprinkler going before she entered the house. At the door she inserted her key, twisted it and found it wouldn’t turn in the ordained direction, turned the knob and discovered that the door wasn’t locked, and backed up a step, stiffening. She held the pose for a moment, then opened the handbag and took out the revolver. Gripping it in her right hand, she pushed the door open with her left and entered the hall. It was empty, but, hearing a noise, she called loudly, “Who are you?” Then, as the voice that answered was the most familiar voice in the world to her, she hastily returned the gun to the handbag and went by way of the dining room to the kitchen.

Standing at the electric range, frying eggs, was a tall good-looking young woman some three or four years beyond Delia’s twenty.

“What’s the idea?” Delia demanded.

Clara Brand flipped an egg and announced, “Home cooking is
so
much better than anything you can get—”

“Sure, I know.” Delia discarded her hat and bag. “How’d you get here?”

“Walked. It’s only ten or twelve minutes.”

“What’s the idea, really?”

Clara shrugged. “Nothing startling, only I don’t like bum food and the lunches I am accustomed to at Mischne’s cost over a dollar, and two eggs and half a cantaloupe here will come to about twenty-five, and since I will be out of a job beginning Saturday at noon—but on the other hand I may not, after all. I have a date at four o’clock for a talk with Atterson Brothers, and Jackson has generously allowed me to take whatever time I want this week to look for another place.”

“Very
generous,” said Delia with bitter sarcasm, taking a pound of butter from her package and putting it in the refrigerator.

Clara smiled at her. “What the heck, he has paid me handsomely for over a year.”

“He wouldn’t have had anything to pay you with if it hadn’t been for Dad. Here, I’ll use the same pan. You won’t get any princely salary at Atterson’s.”

“No, I imagine it will be a lot less. If I land it.”

“And your savings are gone. You’ll have to give up your trip to the coast.”

Clara set her plate of eggs on the table in the breakfast nook and then turned to the other with exasperation. “Damn it, sis, can’t you see I’m being cheerful and brave? Certainly my savings are gone, and the
bank says the house wouldn’t bring a dime above the mortgage, and Uncle Quin is a darling and a brick but you can’t get blood out of a brick, and mother was our dearest mother but she did raise cain with the family finances, trying to get revenge that wouldn’t have done anyone any good—”

“It wasn’t revenge!” Delia, gripping the egg turner, faced her sister with flaming eyes. “Or what if it was? There are worse things than revenge, I can tell you!”

“All right, there are.” Clara gave the younger one a pat on the shoulder as she crossed for the salt. “Take it easy, Del. I’m not kicking. Cheerful and brave.” She sat at the table. “I still think it was foolish of mother to spend thousands of dollars, all she had, and mortgage the house, to pay a bunch of detectives to find out who killed Dad—especially since they didn’t find out anyway, though that wasn’t her fault. But it was her money and her house, and I don’t know why the devil I mentioned it again. This month since she … she died … it’s been enough …”

Delia let the egg turner fall onto the range and flew across and gathered her sister’s head into her arms and crushed it against her breast.

After ten seconds Clara said quietly, “Okay, sis. Let’s behave ourselves. Don’t let your eggs burn, and before you sit down get out a jar of the grape jelly. We’re not going to leave it there forever. That wouldn’t do anyone any good either.”