Rex Stout_Tecumseh Fox 01 (14 page)

There was a knock at the door. He looked at Nancy. She said, “Come in,” and the door swung wide to make room for the broad shoulders of Dan Pavey. To Fox’s inquiring glance he said:

“Mr. Thorpe calling. The young one.”

“On the phone?”

“No, he’s down on the porch. His sister’s with him.”

“Tell them I’ll be down in a few minutes.”

Dan shook his head. “I think it’s just a social call. He asked to see Miss Grant.”

Nancy blurted, “Why—of all the unbelievable nerve—”

“I told him I’d see if you were still up.” Dan eyed her with gloomy scepticism. “He’ll wait if you want to take time to think it over. Now that his old man’s alive and well and his cash has reverted to prospects, if you want to play it different—”

“Play what different?” Nancy demanded. “I’m not playing anything.”

Dan grunted. “Call it work then. I suppose it’s a kind of work at that. Providing for the future—okay, call it work. You can ask Fox and your uncle what they think, but my advice is to stay on that horse. His old man won’t live forever, even if nobody shoots him. You’ve already got him blinded with dust. How would
this be? I’ll go down and tell him you refuse to see him, and I’ll keep him there talking, and pretty soon you can come down, pretending you thought he had gone—”

“Are you intimating—” Nancy choked with indignation. “Are you daring to intimate—”

Dan nodded imperturbably. “I sure am. What’s that to get sore about? I’m only being practical. The question is whether it’s time to begin to reel him in, whether I ought to go down and tell him—”

Nancy turned her back on the vice-president, as offensively as possible, and her eyes flashed at Fox. “Will you please tell Mr. Pavey,” she began scathingly, “to tell Mr. Thorpe that unless he stops annoying—”

“No,” said Fox brusquely. “You’ll have to control your personal reactions. If you want me to help your uncle you’ll have to help me too. In the job you asked me to do, getting you people out of a difficulty, Jeffrey Thorpe’s eagerness to converse with—may I say us—is a valuable asset. Hate him and despise him if you want to, that’s all right, but you can do it with him present as well as in his absence. Even better, I should think.” He turned to Dan. “Anyone else on the porch?”

“Oh, just two or three.”

“Anyone in the living room?”

“Leo and Wallenstein are playing chess.”

“Dining room?”

“Crocker’s reading poetry to Mrs. Trimble. Some of his.”

Fox grimaced. “That’s the disadvantage …”

He looked around. “This is a little small and anyway I doubt if Miss Grant would let him in her room. Will you please bring him up to my room?”

Dan said he would and went. Fox invited the Grants to accompany him. Nancy muttered mutinously, but went through the door when it was opened for her and again through another door into the large corner room. Fox got the lights on and some chairs moved, and then returned to the hall to receive the visitors. In a few moments he was back with them. Grant stood up and bowed and answered greetings: Nancy was absorbed in a bulletin of the United States Department of Agriculture which she had picked up from Fox’s desk. That position was untenable, for she would unquestionably have to speak to Miranda, who had been quite decent at the encounter in the courthouse; but before she had worked out a solution of the problem Jeffrey Thorpe marched over, planted himself in front of her and demanded hoarsely:

“Will you marry me?”

“Good heavens,” gasped Miranda and dropped into a chair.

Jeffrey ignored that. “I’m asking you, will you marry me?” He was hunched over at Nancy. “Of course you won’t, not now you won’t, but I wanted to ask that first to get things clear. Next, I want to ask when did you give your photograph to my father and why, and under what circum—hey, now don’t—”

But, popping out of her chair, Nancy slid past him, avoiding his hand outstretched to stop her, circled around Fox like a breeze around a bush, and only after she had the door open turned on the threshold to say to Miranda:

“Good evening, Mrs. Pemberton. I’m glad your father wasn’t murdered.”

Then she went out and pulled the door to behind her.

She headed for her room. At the top of the stairs she paused irresolutely, thinking that outdoor air might cool her off a little, but faint voices came to her from below, evidently from the porch, so she resumed her course along the hall. Because the composition soles of her sport shoes made no noise on the hall floor, postponing the warning of her approach until she flung the door of her room open, her surprised glance showed her not only Dan Pavey sitting in a chair, but also her photograph which he held in both hands as if it were a book he was reading.

“Excuse me,” Nancy said in an astonished voice, leaving the door open and standing there.

“Sure,” Dan nodded. He arose, without haste, facing her. “Mrs. Trimble asked me to come up and see about towels.”

“That’s curious. She told me where to get towels from the cupboard.”

“Oh.” Dan cleared his throat. “Then I guess she didn’t ask me to come up and see about towels.”

“You ought to know.”

“Yes, I ought,” Dan agreed. He tapped the photograph with his finger. “You see, this thing is important evidence. Fox shouldn’t leave it around like this. I happened to remember he had left it in here—”

“It is not evidence,” Nancy asserted stiffly. “I have given Mr. Fox a satisfactory explanation of how Mr. Thorpe got it. Am I supposed to explain to you too?”

“You’re not supposed to, but you can if you want to.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Right.”

“Are you prepared to maintain that Mr. Thorpe’s having my photograph is any of your business?”

“No.”

“Especially since my explanation satisfied Mr. Fox completely?”

“Right.”

Nancy stamped her foot. “Don’t stand there and say ‘Right’ like a robot!”

“Okay.”

“And Mrs. Trimble did not send you to my room to see about towels!”

“I’ve conceded that point.”

“So,” Nancy swept on scornfully, “why didn’t you say you sneaked in just for the thrill of looking at my picture? That would have flattered me! That would have made me tremble with delight!”

“You’re trembling anyhow.”

“I am not trembling! If I am, I assure you it isn’t with delight! And even if you came in here to snoop for what you regard as evidence, I’m glad you did because it gives me a chance to make a polite request. I would greatly appreciate it if in future you will confine your conversation to things you know something about. I am referring to the remarks you made a while ago about my—my purely private affairs—”

“I was only offering a suggestion,” Dan declared. “It struck me you were overplaying your hand. If you handle it right, I don’t think there’s any question that he’s all set to ask you to marry him—”

“He has already asked me to marry him. In Mr. Fox’s room just now.”

“Then you
were
trembling with delight. Congratulations.”

“Thank you very much.”

“I said, congratulations.”

“I said, thank you very much.”

“Then you—” Dan stopped.

“I what?”

“Nothing. I guess my suggestion wasn’t necessary. Congratulations.”

“You’re repeating yourself. You have already congratulated me.”

“So I have.” Dan got up. He tapped the picture again with his fingers. “I’ll give this to Fox.” He moved, detouring not to brush against her on his way to the door, and with his hand on the knob turned to say:

“I’ll wish you happiness some day. At present I hope you choke.”

He was gone before she got a retort out, though apparently one was on its way, for her mouth was open as she stood gazing at the closed door. “That’s what comes,” she muttered at it, “of eating six ice-cream sodas in five hours. The nerve of some bassos!”

She crossed to the mirror, decided her face was too red, went to the washbowl and started the faucet running, and when the water was cold enough took a cloth and dabbed her forehead and cheeks and neck. She was engaged at the mirror with her compact when there was a tap at the door. It opened as she turned, to admit Andrew Grant.

“Well?” Nancy demanded.

“More complications,” said her uncle wearily. “Fox wants to ask you something.”

“I’m not going back where that—”

“Oh, forget it, Nan. Let him yap. What’s the difference? We’re in Fox’s house and he’s trying to help us. Come on.”

Nancy compressed her lips, and after a moment said, “All right, I’ll come in a minute.”

She finished with the compact, made a couple of passes at her hair with a comb, marched into the hall
and along it to Fox’s room, and entered. Her uncle was back in his chair between Miranda and Jeff.

“Sit down,” Fox told her curtly. He looked and sounded exasperated. “You bounce around too much. I would like to discuss ladies’ gloves. Mrs. Pemberton tells me that the police found one Sunday night under a shrub outside the window of the bungalow, and one on the running board of the car you were driving. Also that Derwin says you told him they aren’t yours and you know nothing about them. You undertook to tell me everything you know about this business, but you didn’t mention gloves.”

“Why should I?” Nancy demanded. “They weren’t mine. I had never seen them before.”

“Derwin showed them to you?”

“Yes.”

“What were they like?”

“Yellow cotton with outseams, very nice, about my size, with the Hartlespoon label.”

“You work at Hartlespoon’s.”

“What if she does?” Jeffrey sputtered. “That’s no proof—”

“Mind your own business,” said Nancy scornfully. “I don’t need your assistance, thank you.”

“Ha! You spoke to me!”

“You certainly are battering down obstacles, Jeff dear,” Miranda told him. She turned to Fox. “I took a good look at the gloves when Derwin showed them to us.” She smiled. “I think they would fit me as well as they would Miss Grant. The strange thing was that they were both for the right hand.”

“They were?”

“Yes.”

“Were they alike?”

She nodded. “Exactly alike. And both new, or almost
new. Derwin seemed to think the police could trace them, but he said hundreds of pairs like that had been sold by Hartlespoon’s, so I think it would be rather difficult.”

“And one of them was found on the running board of Miss Grant’s car?”

“So Derwin said.”

“Did he tell you that, Miss Grant?”

“Yes, he did,” Nancy declared, “and I don’t believe it.”

“You’re absolutely right,” Jeffrey asserted. “Who found the gloves? Some cop. If you think cops don’t lie—once a motorcycle—”

“Please, Jeff dear,” his sister remonstrated. “I didn’t know you were hauling me over here as a witness, but now that I’m here—” She looked at Fox and smiled. “I want to say something that is hard to say without giving offense.”

“Try it one way,” he suggested, “and if that doesn’t work, try another.”

“I might not get a second chance. But I’ll try. I want to ask first, does this—the fact that it wasn’t my father who was killed—does that make any difference in the position of Mr. Grant and his niece?”

Fox shook his head. “I don’t see how it could. Not if they thought the man in the bungalow was really Thorpe. And they did.”

“Then they’re still in danger?”

“I wouldn’t say great danger. Unless something startling and unexpected turns up I doubt very much if either of them will be charged. Especially if Miss Grant can continue to explain suspicious circumstances as she did your father’s possession of that photograph. It was given to him by a voice teacher of hers, in grateful acknowledgment of his donation towards
the expenses of a recital. She had never seen him before Sunday night in the bungalow and since that wasn’t him, she never has seen him.”

“I knew it!” Jeffrey cried exultantly. “Didn’t I tell you? Didn’t I say I was perfectly certain—”

“You said that, yes,” Miranda interposed crushingly, “but you were afraid to ask him and you didn’t eat any dinner. Don’t start your married life with misrepresentation.” She returned to Fox. “But they’ll still need a lawyer? And you?”

“Oh, yes. They’re under bond, and that’s unpleasant. They were unlucky enough to be at the bungalow without having been invited. Until the murderer is discovered—”

“Isn’t that Collins man expensive?”

“He is.”

“Then that …” Miranda sent a quick glance at Nancy and another at her uncle. “That’s what I want to say. My father regrets very much that Mr. Grant and his niece have got into trouble—through no fault of theirs—on account of him. Not that it was his fault either, but that’s his place, and that man was supposed to be him … so he feels it would be unjust to expect them to bear the expense in addition to the unpleasantness and notoriety, which can’t be helped….”

Nancy, flushing, opened her mouth, closed it and bit her lip. She looked at Miranda and said with restraint, “Damn it all. I took money from your father once, though I didn’t know him. For the sake of my career, not to deprive the world of my gifts. Honestly, I believed it! Now that I’m working for $31.50 a week, I know more about money and I’ve got snobbish about it. I like my own more than anybody else’s. At five dollars a week I could pay my share of the lawyer’s
fee in a couple of years. Don’t you agree, Uncle Andy?”

Andrew Grant shook his head. “No, I can’t say that I do. I’m not snobbish about anything. If Ridley Thorpe, with his millions, would feel better if I let him pay the lawyer, I’m willing to accommodate him.”

“That’s sensible—”

“Excuse me, Mrs. Pemberton. The trouble is, while I could easily persuade myself that it would be all right for your father to pay it, I see no reason why you should.”

“I didn’t say—”

“I know you didn’t, but I suspect you should have. I don’t think you’re telling the truth. From your manner, the way you spoke, I don’t think your father said a word about it. I’m sure he didn’t. You were making the offer on your own hook. I’m pretty good at self-justification, I’ve had a lot of practice, but I’m afraid I couldn’t justify my accepting that offer from you, except on the supposition that you committed the murder yourself and you don’t want to see innocent people suffer on account of it.”