Rex Stout_Tecumseh Fox 01 (13 page)

“Oh, I’m childish, am I? What about you?” Thorpe thumped the desk again. “With your imbecile theories about my son and daughter and secretary and valet and people named Grant that I have never seen! Wasting time having me make signed statements about a trip on a boat and asking Luke what he was fighting about! You’re a fool. Why don’t you ask me who killed me—who killed Arnold?
Good
gracious! Do you want me to tell you or not? I will!” He reached in his pocket for something and tossed it on the desk. “There! Whoever sent me that killed Corey Arnold! You and your half-witted theories!”

Derwin picked it up, an envelope that had been slit open, and removed from it a piece of paper. The others sat watching him, except Thorpe and Fox, who stood, as he unfolded the paper and read it, first rapidly, then a second time slowly.

Fox put out a hand. “May I see it?”

“No,” said Derwin shortly. He raised his eyes to Thorpe. “When did you—”

“Give it to him.”

“But I want—”

“I said give it to him! It’s mine!”

Fox got it and with the same swoop of his hand collected the envelope from the desk.

Thorpe faced him: “Keep it. I want to see you about it. Your name is Tecumseh Fox? I’ve heard of you. Apparently your head works, since you seem to have deduced for yourself that it wasn’t me that was killed. A head’s going to be needed—”

Derwin blurted, “I want that paper. It’s vital—”

“Quiet,” Thorpe snapped. “Stop interrupting me—Where’s your office? New York?”

“I haven’t any office. I live up south of Brewster.”

“Can you be at my New York office at nine in the morning?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Ask for Kester and he’ll get you in to me. Vaughn, bring him in at once. I’m tired and hungry. You’d better come and spend the night at Maple Hill. What about you children? Where are you bound for?”

“I was in bed at Maple Hill last—Sunday night, when this news came,” said Miranda. “I slept there last night. So did Jeff.”

“Then we’ll all go there. Have you got a car? Good.” Thorpe wheeled to the stenographer. “Is there any good reason why you aren’t getting those statements typed so we can sign them and go?”

The stenographer flushed, arose and trotted out. Derwin said firmly:

“I want that paper. I am not through with Luke Wheer. Also I want to question Mr. Kester—”

“That paper is mine.” Thorpe looked as if he might begin thumping again. “I’ll send you a photostat of it tomorrow. Fox, remember that. We’ll keep the original or turn it over to the New York police. I suppose I should have done that when I got it, but I was too busy. Luke is my valet and I need him—look at me! If you insist on heckling him, you can see him at Maple Hill tomorrow. You can see Kester at my New York office, but you’d better phone for an appointment. In case you want an appointment with me, make it through my counsel Buchanan, Fuller, McPartland and Jones—Yes, Henry? You saying something?”

“I’ve been trying to.” The wiry little man had to tilt his head back to meet the eyes of the taller one. “I’m worrying a little about my boat. I’d like to get
back over there and I don’t know about a bus or a ferry from Bridgeport—”

“Excuse me,” Tecumseh Fox interposed. “You’re Henry Jordan, aren’t you? The owner of the boat Mr. Thorpe was on?”

“I am.”

“Well, if I were you I wouldn’t try to get back there tonight. You and your boat are objects of great romantic interest. The Hermit of the
Armada
, they’ll probably call you. They’ll interview you and photograph you all night and all day. You couldn’t keep them off with a machine gun. It wouldn’t be any better if you went home. You’d better come and spend the night with me; there’s plenty of room at my place.”

“I’m worried about the boat.”

“The police will take care of it.”

“He’s right, Henry,” Thorpe asserted. “You’d better spend the night with him, or you can come with us to Maple Hill.”

Jordan shook his head doubtfully. “I don’t know—”

He was kept from finishing it by an interruption almost as startling as the former one at the window, only this came from the anteroom. There were scuffling noises and the door burst violently open, and the floor shook under their feet as a man came bounding through. Bounding after him, clutching for him, tripping each other up in their eagerness, were four others, two state troopers and two in plain clothes. The hare kept coming without deceleration clear to the desk, the hounds at his heels, greeted by exclamations from the group as it scattered to avoid being trampled underfoot. Derwin was up barking again.

The man looked at Tecumseh Fox, ignoring the
hands reaching and grabbed him, and said in a deep rumble of relief, “Oh, there you are.”

“What in the devil is this?” Derwin shouted.

A trooper panted, “Chased him all the way upstairs—a mob outside and we’re guarding the entrance—said he wanted to find Tecumseh Fox—wouldn’t let him in—he tore through and got in and up the stairs—”

“You’re out of breath,” said the man. “Let loose of me.” He looked at Fox. “I know you told me to stay in the car, but I heard they had pinched you and I thought it would be better—”

“No.”

“Right again.”

“I apologize,” Fox said to everybody. “Let me present Mr. Pavey, my vice-president. Mr. Derwin, Mr. Thorpe, Mrs. Pemberton, Mr. Kester, Mr. Jeffrey Thorpe, Mr. Wheer, Mr. Jordan. I’m going home and take a bath and eat something. I’ll see you in the morning, Mr. Thorpe. Come on, Dan. Come, Mr. Jordan—”

“Wait! He hasn’t signed that statement!”

They waited for it. Derwin was summoned by the phone. Ridley Thorpe spoke with his son and daughter. The troopers and the other two left. Kester approached Fox and muttered at him in an undertone, and got nods but no words in reply. Finally the stenographer entered, and Henry Jordan was given a chair and a pen, and the statement was read and signed. He departed, looking stubborn and a little bewildered, with Fox at one elbow and Dan Pavey at the other.

In that formation they fought their way through the street mob at the entrance to the building and walked two blocks to where Dan had parked the convertible.
There, when he was invited to climb in, Jordan’s stubbornness found words.

“I’m much obliged,” he said, hanging back, “but I’m worried about the boat. I have no doubt I can find a bus—”

“I expect you can,” Fox agreed, “but you won’t. The fact is, Mr. Jordan, I want you around. You’re an extremely important person, since you’re in on the secret of our little dodge. Frankly, you strike me as a man to be trusted, and I admire you and respect you for refusing to take pay for this. But a bunch of newspaper reporters are quick to take a hint and you might let one out inadvertently. If you did and they got a nose on the trail, a day’s hard work would be spoiled. Not only that, you’d have all your trouble for nothing, since you’re doing this to prevent a blaze of publicity on your daughter. Get in.”

“I can keep my mouth shut.”

“You can do it a lot easier if you stick with me. I insist on it, really. It’s the only way to do it. I like to play safe when I’ve got a choice.”

Jordan, grumbling about the boat, climbed in the rear with Dan and Fox took the wheel.

It was dark, after nine o’clock, when they got home. In spite of the fact that Mrs. Trimble greeted him with the news that Andrew Grant and his niece were up in the room that had been assigned to Nancy, waiting for him, Fox did not go there when he proceeded upstairs, but to his own room. After a bath and shave he returned below, joined Dan and Jordan in the dining room, and helped them dispose of cold roast beef, bread and butter, a mixed salad, iced tea, pot cheese, home-made sponge cake and strawberries and cream, while Mr. and Mrs. Trimble and various guests sat around and listened to a recital of such of
the day’s activities as he cared to recite. He liked that and so did they.

That over, he went back upstairs, stopped in his room a moment, proceeded to Nancy’s room and entered after knocking, greeted her and her uncle, handed her a large rectangle of pasteboard and inquired:

“What was that doing in a drawer in a cabinet in Ridley Thorpe’s dressing room in his New York residence?”

N
ancy looked at it, saw what it was and looked up at Fox in astonishment.

“What kind of a crazy trick is this?” she demanded. “Did you say—say it again.”

“That photograph of you, bearing the inscription, was found by the police when they searched Ridley Thorpe’s rooms in his New York residence, in a drawer in a cabinet.”

Grant, having peered at the pasteboard over his niece’s shoulder, snorted incredulously. “Who says it was?”

“Derwin. He had it. He must have got it somewhere. But also, he put it up to Ridley Thorpe himself and all Thorpe did was hit the ceiling because the cops had invaded his home. He didn’t deny the picture had been there.” Fox’s eyes were on Nancy. “What about it?”

“Nothing about it.” She looked dazed. “But I can’t—do people actually do things like this? I’ve heard of frame-ups, but I never—I can’t believe—”

“It’s—why, it’s too damned funny!” Grant stared at the picture in helpless and indignant bewilderment.

“You say Thorpe—it wasn’t him that was killed, was it?”

“No. You’ve heard about it?”

“Yes. Crocker got it on the radio and came up and told us. He’s alive?”

“He is. Alive and kicking. Especially kicking. But, Miss Grant, while it may be incredible that the photograph was where the police say they found it, it is still more incredible that it’s a frame-up. No one but a lunatic would think of trying—”

“Then it’s a lunatic,” said Nancy firmly. “Those pictures were taken more than two years ago, when I was going to try a concert. I only got six. I sent one to my mother and gave one to Uncle Andy, and two went to the newspapers and—Oh!” Her eyes widened in horrified disbelief, and she lifted her fists and pushed them into her cheeks. “My God! Uncle Andy! Do you know—” She was speechless.

“Do I know what?” Grant demanded irritably.

Fox, gazing at her, said nothing.

“Oh—it’s awful!” she cried. It was the bleat of a camel whose back is bending under the last straw. “Of all the people in the world—did it have to be Ridley Thorpe? Did it?”

“I don’t know,” said Fox shortly. “Apparently it was.”

Grant shook her shoulder in a rough grasp. “What the hell are you talking about? Do you mean to say you wrote that on that picture and gave it to Ridley Thorpe?”

Nancy wriggled free, looked up at him, nodded and burst into laughter. She kept on nodding, bent over, laughing louder—high-pitched and half hysterical. Her uncle got her shoulder again and straightened her up.

“Cut it out,” he ordered. “This isn’t—”

“But it’s funny!” She gasped. “It’s a scream! It
is
funny!”

“Good,” said Fox. “Let’s hear it.”

Grant shook the shoulder he held. She pulled free again and told him with spirit, “Quit that! It hurts!” She looked at Fox. “It must have been—I suppose—Ridley Thorpe. And I say it’s funny. But I swear I don’t remember the name, not even now. Uncle Andy was helping me all he could, paying for my lessons, and my teacher said I should have a recital, but it would cost a lot of money and I couldn’t afford it—or rather, I just didn’t have it. My teacher was sure I was going to have a big career on account of my personality—I didn’t have sense enough to know I was being played for a sucker—and he said he could get a thousand dollars to finance the concert from a millionaire who was a well-known philanthropist and patron of the arts and I told him to go ahead. I suppose he must have told me the name of the millionaire, but if he did it glanced off because at that time I didn’t hear anything that wasn’t about me and my voice and my personality and my career. It was one of those. If you think I’m off the key now, you should have known me then. Having those pictures taken was one of the things I did with the thousand dollars and my teacher said it would be nice to autograph one for the millionaire, and I did so and gave it to my teacher to give to him. I’ll bet I thought he was getting more than his money’s worth, having that picture. That’s the way young geniuses feel about the rich boobs that stake them. And now—it was Ridley Thorpe! It must have been! Do you say that isn’t funny?”

Her uncle was scowling at her. “You never told me anything about a millionaire.”

“Certainly not. I was afraid to. I let you think enough tickets were sold to cover expenses. I guess eight or ten tickets actually were sold. The rest was paper.” She touched Grant’s sleeve. “Now don’t get huffy. You darned sweet old Puritan.”

“I’m not a Puritan.”

“Yes, you are, Andy, I’ve told you that myself.” Fox tossed the photograph on the bureau, pulled a chair around and sat. He smiled at Nancy. “I like you very much. Every time evidence turns up that you’re a liar, you dissolve it with a story out of your past so improbable that no liar could invent it. And you can’t be much over twenty. You should have a marvelous future.”

“Are you kidding me?” Nancy wrinkled her brows at him. “You believe me, don’t you? About the picture?”

“Of course I believe you. I doubt if you could be trained to lie, you’re too conceited—No, we’ll argue that some other time. I want to ask you—I understand that you’re under bond as a material witness?”

“Yes. Mr. Collins—”

“Both of us are,” Grant put in. “Collins arranged it. He drove us here—he suggested it. He said if we went to New York we’d be pestered … we took the liberty of coming here …” He hesitated with embarrassment. “I don’t think I ever properly thanked you for letting me stay here—as your guest—so long that time … and now you’re doing this just because Nancy came and asked you—”

“Forget it.” Fox waved a hand. “I do what everyone else does who can afford it, I do what I like to do. I suppose you’ve heard me say that what keeps my spring wound up is curiosity. I’ve never seen or heard of anything yet that I wasn’t curious about. The
things that move are more interesting than the things that stand still and the most interesting moving things that I’ve seen so far are people. All I’m saying, I’m just relieving your mind of the notion that you have anything to thank me for. The fact is, I ought to be thanking you, because I’m collecting a big fat fee out of this. I can’t tell you who from or what for, but I wanted to mention it and tell you that it won’t conflict with the job I undertook—”