Rex Stout_Tecumseh Fox 01 (24 page)

The meal dragged along under the buzz of the electric fans. Certainly no one was endeavoring to prolong it for the sake of conviviality, but then no one was in a hurry to finish in order to do something else. There was nothing to do. The continued presence of the authorities made it probable that another campaign of questioning was in preparation; they all knew that the famous Inspector Damon of the New York police had arrived and was in the library. Dusk deepened in the room and, as the sherbet and raspberries were served, Bellows switched on the lights. The desultory and intermittent mutterings of conversation continued; there was nothing to talk about, since no one tried to talk of the only thing in their minds. The state of their nerves, their readiness to be startled by any incident whatever, was displayed when Tecumseh Fox addressed Miranda across the table, necessarily raising his voice above the fans:

“May I say something, Mrs. Pemberton? I’d like to play a game.”

Eight pairs of eyes jerked to him. Miranda raised her brows: “A game?”

“Yes. Call it that.” Fox signaled to Bellows, and the butler got something from a buffet and approached with it. “I’m going to ask you all to join in, if you don’t mind.” He took the tray from Bellows and nodded thanks and sent a swift glance around the table: Miranda and Grant, Jeffrey and McElroy, Kester and Fuller, Nancy and Henry Jordan. “This may seem frivolous to you, but it won’t hurt you any. I have here
eight pads of paper and eight pencils. I’m going to pass them around and ask each of you to write something, all of you the same thing, which I’ll dictate, and sign your names for identification. I hope you’ll have no objection, Mrs. Pemberton, since—”

“Whether I sign my name or not,” put in Fuller dryly, “depends on what you ask me to write.”

“Perfectly harmless.” Fox smiled at him. “Just a pledge of our forefathers, a sentence of the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America. Bellows, if you will please hand the pads and pencils around—”

The butler took them, but instead of distributing them, he suddenly stiffened and stood rigid as the sound of peremptory shouts came in at the windows, apparently at some distance, and then jerked around as the explosion of a gunshot shattered the air. Everybody else jerked with him; and Redmond, crossing with a tray of iced tea, let it drop to the floor without even making a grab, and pierced the already offended air with a bloodcurdling scream.

W
hen, two seconds later, men came running in from the west hall, Redmond was sitting on the floor in a puddle of iced tea and broken glass, still screaming, every one had got to their feet, Jeffrey overturning his chair, Henry Jordan was white and trembling all over, Miranda was clutching Andrew Grant’s arm, McElroy the multiple director was backing to the wall….

“What—who—” Colonel Brissenden was yelling.

Fox yelled back, to top the screams, “Outdoors! Nobody’s hurt in here! Outdoors!”

Brissenden barked an order and two troopers whirled and disappeared. He barked again and the muscular giant from the hall picked up Redmond, still screaming hysterically, like a bag of cotton, and carried her out. Derwin was gesticulating and trying to say something to a man with a prize-fighter’s jaw and the morose eyes of a pessimistic poet, who, instead of listening, was looking. He strode across:

“Hello, Fox. Shot fired outdoors?”

“Hello, Inspector. Yes.”

“Bullet didn’t come in here?”

“Nobody saw it or felt it.”

Inspector Damon nodded. “We were in the library, the other side of the house, and couldn’t tell.” He turned. “Here’s something coming—”

The something was bellicose voices, upraised, from the darkness outdoors. They became fainter rounding the corner of the house. Brissenden trotted out. The voices, mingling with others, were heard again from the hall and at the sound of one of them Tecumseh Fox started for the door. But before he reached it the influx arrived. Two troopers entered, one on each side of a broad-shouldered square-faced man who was holding his left arm tight against his side and with his right hand grasping it above the elbow. He saw Fox, faced him and announced in a bass rumble that quivered without raged indignation:

“The double-breasted bastard shot me!”

Fox was by him. “Where, Dan? Let’s see. Better sit down. Thanks, Inspector. Take your hand away so I can slit the sleeve—”

“Wouldn’t it be better to—”

“No. Hold still. There. You’re nice and bloody. Hold still, you don’t have to look at it! No, thank you, Mrs. Pemberton. I won’t need a tourniquet. Please stand back, Miss Grant.” Fox glanced sharply at Nancy’s white face. “You’d better sit down—put her in a chair, Andy. It’s only flesh and skin … we ought to move into a bathroom—”

“I want to get you something first.”

“Go ahead. Hold still.”

“I’ve been trying to reach you all afternoon. They wouldn’t let me in. They wouldn’t call you on the phone. I had to get to you because I know who murdered Thorpe.”

“You do?”

“Yes. As soon as it got dark enough, or I thought it
was, I climbed the wall and started for the house. Who would have thought one of those apes would actually shoot? And not only that, he hit me.”

“It’s not bad. Thank you, Inspector. Go on and tell us who killed Thorpe.”

“His son did. Jeffrey.”

“Did he?” Fox disregarded movements and ejaculations. “How could you see him from that distance?”

“I didn’t see him. But I know the double-breasted—”

“Save that one till we get to the bathroom. I don’t think I ever saw you this mad before—Don’t push, Colonel, you’ll get it. Two double-breasted’s in three minutes. What is it you know?”

“I know he had my gun, because I gave it to him last night and if it’s the one that shot Thorpe—”

“You mean
my
gun? One of my Dowseys?”

“All right, your gun. The one I was carrying.”

Fox’s eyes blazed. “You gave that gun to Jeffrey Thorpe?”

“I lent it to him. When he was there last night—when he came downstairs to go home. I was sitting on the porch aiming with it—”

“What were you aiming at?”

“At the bug lamp.”

“Do you mean the insect trap?”

“Yes. I was showing Wallenstein how to pull it down and allow for the jump. The young ape came out and saw me and said he was going to buy a gun and wished he had one, but he couldn’t buy one until morning. I asked him what for and he said for protection. Pokorny overheard it and suggested I should lend him mine—”

“I’ve told you a thousand times to ignore Pokorny’s suggestions.”

“Right. So Thorpe asked to borrow it until he could buy one, and since he had been riding around chinning with you and Miss Grant—”

“And you let him have it.”

“Right. Hey, that hurts!”

“I’m squeezing out the juice. I won’t mention what I’d like to do.” Fox turned to Derwin at his elbow. “Do you want to ask him anything before I take him somewhere and clean him up?”

“I do.” Derwin was grim. “I want him to identify that gun and to sign a statement—”

“You can have that when I get through with him. It’s the gun, all right. I mean any detail as—”

“Yes.” Derwin faced Dan. “Was the gun loaded when you gave it to Thorpe?”

“Certainly it was loaded!” The answer came not from Dan, but from Jeffrey Thorpe, who was there confronting Derwin. “I borrowed it from him and it was loaded, and I put it in my pocket and brought it home with me!”

“You admit that?”

“Yes!”

“Come on, let’s get it bandaged,” Fox said to Dan and, as they left the room, no one offered to interfere, or even paid any attention to them, for all eyes were focused on Jeffrey. Miranda had moved and was beside him, her face pale and her jaw set. A trooper had sidled over and was directly behind him.

Brissenden snapped, “Get him out of here. Bring him to the library, Hardy.”

The trooper put a hand on Jeffrey’s arm, but he, ignoring that, spoke to Derwin:

“You want to run me through the wringer and that’s all right, but I want to ask a question. My sister told me that the gun that killed my father has been
identified as one belonging to Tecumseh Fox. Is that correct?”

“It is. And therefore it’s the gun—”

“Yes. I can count that far myself. It’s the gun I brought here and that makes it my turn to talk. But you’re not taking me to the library or anywhere else. I’ll talk right here. The people who have heard this much will hear the rest. Tell your stenographer to go get his notebook. When I got home last night—”

“Wait a minute, Jeffrey!” It was Fuller, of the law firm of Buchanan, Fuller, McPartland and Jones, stepping forward. His hard non-committal eyes were aimed at the district attorney. “It is advisable, I think, that I should have a talk with Mr. Thorpe first.”

“Tchah!” snorted Brissenden.

“I think not,” said Derwin curtly.

“I think yes.” Fuller’s tone was acid. “Otherwise it will be my duty to advise him to answer no questions and give no information—”

“You can keep your advice,” Jeffrey blurted. “I’ve been afraid all the time—”

“Jeffrey! I order you, as your attorney, to keep silent! You flouted your father’s authority when he was alive; now—”

“He did not,” Miranda denied quietly. She was on the other side of her brother from the trooper, her hand on his sleeve. “But, Jeff, I think Mr. Fuller’s right. I think you ought to speak with him before you let them try to … to …” She faltered.

He looked down at her. “Much obliged, Sis,” he said bitterly. “You think I shot him. Don’t you?”

“No, I don’t.”

“You think maybe I did. She doesn’t, but you do. I’ve been thinking you did all afternoon and when you couldn’t look at me when you were telling me about
them identifying the gun—and you knowing I had borrowed it myself last night—”

Brissenden barked, “I say get him out of here!”

Inspector Damon shook his head and muttered, “Let ’em talk.”

Fuller tried to get in: “I must insist—”

“I want to get a refusal for the record,” said Derwin. “I’m going to question him and if he refuses to answer on the advice of counsel, he has that right. Previously questioned, he has said nothing about having a gun. I also wish to question Mrs. Pemberton. I presume it was Mr. Fox who informed her that the gun that shot her father had been identified as his property. Anyway, she has admitted that she knew that and she also knew that her brother had borrowed one of Fox’s guns, and has concealed that fact.”

He glanced aside, saw that the pimply young man had got his notebook and was on a chair busy with it, and turned to Jeffrey. “Mr. Thorpe,” he demanded, “what did you do with that gun which you had borrowed when you brought it home with you, to this house, last night?”

Fuller commanded, “Don’t answer!”

Jeffrey had opened his mouth but closed it again. He looked at the lawyer. “You mean well, Mr. Fuller,” he conceded. “It doesn’t seem to me that this was the time or place to charge me with flouting my father’s authority, but you have sons of your own and I suppose you had to get that dig in.” He looked at Derwin. “I’m willing to grant that you mean well too, since you’re the district attorney.” He looked at Brissenden. “You’re a pugnacious jackass, and if I get out of this alive I’m going to meet you unofficially and sock you one. Now if you’ll all stop yapping I’ll tell you about that gun.”

“Jiffy, I order you—”

“Let me alone. If the truth won’t do it, to hell with it. When I got home and went up to my room last night—oh, I’m glad you’re in time to hear it, Fox, since it was your gun. How’s the vice-president?”

“He’ll keep for a while.” Fox smiled at him. “I’m glad I’m in time to hear it.”

“So am I. When I got home and went up to my room last night I took the gun out of my pocket and put it on the bed table. When I dressed this morning I put it in my pocket again. It was still there when Miss Grant and her uncle arrived around nine o’clock this morning. I tried to get Miss Grant to talk to me and she wouldn’t. I got peeved, not with her, with myself, and decided that I was acting like a half-wit and that I would drive off somewhere and not come back until she was gone.”

He looked at Brissenden. “That was the mysterious errand in my car which I refused to tell you about because it was none of your damn business. A few miles down the road I nearly collided with a truck and realized that in the condition I was in I was a highway menace, but the real reason I came back was that I knew Miss Grant was here and I couldn’t stay away.”

He looked at Nancy. “I apologize for bringing your name in so often but if I’m telling it I might as well tell it. When I sat down in the car the gun in my hip pocket dug into my behind, and I had taken it out and laid it on the seat. I felt silly with it anyhow in broad daylight and besides—” He stopped. “No, I might as well tell that too. I knew Miss Grant and her uncle had seen it in my pocket, because I had overheard a remark he made to her. Of course they’ll now be asked to explain why they didn’t mention that I was carrying a gun, but you can’t put them in jail for that.
The fact that I knew they had seen it made me feel sillier. Anyhow, when I got back here and left the car out in the circle, I forgot all about the gun. I didn’t even see it on the seat when I got out of the car, because my mind was on something else, but it must have been there, since I had put it there only fifteen minutes before, when I started out. That was the last time that I actually remember seeing it, when I put it on the seat. I haven’t seen it since.”

As he stopped, Fuller was at Nancy like a hawk after a chicken: “Miss Grant, you saw the gun in Jeffrey’s pocket before he left you to go for a ride?”

“Yes,” she said clearly and firmly. “Just a minute or two after we got here.”

“You the same, Mr. Grant?”

“Yes.”

“Did you see it in his pocket, or in his possession—did you see it at all—after he returned from his ride?”

“No. I didn’t know he had gone for a ride, but when he returned around ten o’clock after an absence of perhaps a quarter of an hour, I didn’t see the gun. Nor at any subsequent time.”

“Did you, Miss Grant?”