Rex Stout_Tecumseh Fox 01 (5 page)

Ben Cook cackled and then swallowed it.

“Excuse me,” Tecumseh Fox said pleasantly, “but I have work to do. If you want to question Miss Grant after I’ve had a talk with her uncle—”

“That’s out,” Derwin blurted.

Fox gazed at him in astonishment. “But you agreed if I brought Miss Grant—”

“It’s out. I’ve consulted Colonel Brissenden and he completely disapproves—”

“Oh. He does. I thought the district attorney was the chief investigating officer—”

“Think again,” Brissenden spluttered, in the tone of a colonel who has just been told to go to hell. “And go somewhere else to do it! Derwin says you threatened to get Nat Collins. Go ahead, get ten of him! Get out! The trouble with you is that your head’s got swelled to the point where you presume to interfere with the processes of law—”

Fox said in a voice so strained through tensed throat muscles that it was nearly a squeak: “I haven’t interfered—”

“All right, don’t.”

“I have requested permission to see Andrew Grant.”

“We heard you. On out.”

Fox took two steps and got Nancy by the elbow. “Come on, Miss Grant.”

“No you don’t.” Brissenden moved towards them. “She stays here. We want her.”

“So do I. Don’t touch her.” Fox was in between, expanded to cover her. “Don’t touch me either. I’m telling you. Have you got a commitment? No. Touch her and I’ll give you a lesson in the processes of law.”

“Why, you damned insolent—”

“Easy, Colonel.” Derwin was there. “This is my office and I won’t stand for—”

“Come on, Miss Grant,” Fox said, and took her elbow again and steered her out.

T
hey left the building and gained the sidewalk, but were not to get away without interference. As they climbed into the car, with Nancy protesting and demanding to know what was going to be done, Dan Pavey rumbled from the back seat:

“Hey, you didn’t pay your check. Here comes a waiter after you.”

The next moment Jeffrey Thorpe in his white dinner jacket, hatless, his eyes more bloodshot than ever from the rubbing, was standing on the running board and poking his head in and blurting:

“Miss Grant, I want you to understand—”

Nancy, clutching Fox’s sleeve, pleaded: “Go ahead! Please!”

Dan, leaning over from the back, asked: “Shall I push him off?”

“No.” Fox eyed Jeffrey. “Have you got a car around here?”

“Yes, that Wethersill Special across the street. I just want to tell her—”

“You can’t tell her anything here. Give—”

“He can’t tell me anything anywhere!”

“Miss Grant, you talk too much, too often and too
soon. Mr. Thorpe, the man in the back seat is Mr. Pavey, my vice-president. Give him the key to your car, and take his place. Dan, take the Wethersill and follow us. Nothing fancy, just follow us.”

“But I just—”

“We’re leaving now.”

Jeffrey fished in his pocket for the key and handed it to Dan. Dan scrambled out and headed for the Wethersill, and Jeffrey took his place. As soon as Dan had got the Wethersill turned around ready to follow, Fox started the car rolling and spoke to Nancy.

“First, if you don’t mind, I’d like to catch up. You told me you didn’t know any Thorpes or any one connected with them. Your words.”

“I don’t!”

“You don’t. Does he know you?”

The back seat put in: “Let me tell—”

“No, Mr. Thorpe, I’m working for Miss Grant, I’d rather have it from her. Does he know you?”

“No, and he never will. He’s an arrogant fool. It was just—disagreeable. Last winter at the Metropolitan Opera House he accused me of stealing an ermine thing from his wife or fiancée.”

The back seat protested: “I’m not married and it wasn’t my fiancée! It was a girl I had—”

“Hold it,” Fox told him. “Please don’t do that any more. What were you doing at the Metropolitan Opera House?”

“Listening to an opera. I was a standee, of course, and dressed accordingly—I told you I came to New York to have a career—I was going to be a prima donna and was taking lessons—which Uncle Andy helped me pay for—but I finally found out that some of the notes are missing from my voice and now I’m modelling at Hartlespoon’s and earning my bread and
butter. It happened in the refreshment room. She had carelessly left it on a table and I had a perfect right to move it—are standees people?—and the stupid disagreeable—he was actually going to have me arrested—”

“I was not! She was! She’s an imbecile—”

“Arbitrate it,” Fox suggested, bringing the car to a stop at the curb in front of a drugstore at the edge of town. “I have a phone call to make.”

He got out, entered the store and sought a phone booth. After a five-minute conversation he came out again and slid into his seat. “Get it settled?” he inquired as the car moved on.

“There’s nothing to settle,” said Nancy curtly.

“Uh-huh,” he grunted. “I called Nat Collins and he’ll be at the courthouse in half an hour. He may not be able to get a writ without an argument, but there’ll be fur flying.”

“Why didn’t we wait there for him?”

“Because I didn’t want to call him from there and we couldn’t help him anyway, and I can’t stand around or sit down when I’m sore. Also I wanted you out of there.”

“What the devil good am I, there or anywhere else? I can’t even pay the lawyer his retainer. You’re being—oh, damn—”

“Look here.” Jeffrey was leaning forward to her over the back of the seat. “Let me pay the lawyer—now wait! Say I’m an ape. Say I’m loathsome and repellent. Okay. But I owe you something. You could probably have collected colossal damages. That imbecile girl—she was my aunt’s husband’s partner’s daughter—she started it, but I admit I joined in and I’ll tell you why. I had been roped in. I hate opera and I thought if there was a row it might develop into our
getting out of there. Then I got a good look at you with your eyes flashing and I’m here to tell you it was an experience. Right then and there it aroused—well, it was an experience. Then the excitement made that girl sick at her stomach and she insisted on leaving when I had decided I wanted to stay. I took her home and scooted back and got there before the show ended, but you had gone too—at least I couldn’t find you. I hunted you. The next day I got a detective. I advertised. I kept hoping I’d hear from a lawyer that you were suing for damages, but I never did. You should have. So it would merely be paying a legal debt if I pay a lawyer for defending your uncle—granting that he’s guilty, a guilty man has a right to a lawyer—”

“Make him shut up,” Nancy said savagely, “or I’ll open the door and jump out!”

“Another thing.” Jeffrey leaned farther forward. “I spoke of the exper—”

Nancy grabbed the door handle and pushed it down. Fox lifted his foot from the accelerator and snapped: “Don’t do that!”

“But I will! I swear I will—”

The car left the concrete, bumped a few feet along the wide grassy shoulder and stopped. Fox reached across Nancy to pull the door to, twisted around to face the back seat, saw that the Wethersill was stopping a dozen yards behind and spoke to Jeffrey.

“Will you quit talking to her?”

“But my God, I’ve just begun—”

“You’ll have to swallow it. She’ll jump out and break her neck. Or there’s your car waiting for you.”

“I like it here.”

“You can’t talk to her.”

“All right, I won’t. I’ll sit and look at the back of her head.”

“I see no profit in that—for me. I’m paying for the gas.”

“Well, hell’s bells, what do you want me to do? Talk to you?”

“You might.”

“What about?”

“Oh … tell me about Luke Wheer, your father’s valet. Have the police found him?”

“No.”

“What’s he like?”

“He’s dark brown, tall and skinny, and a little popeyed. As I just told what’s-his-name back there, he’s square and straight and easy-going, and Father had complete confidence in him. He’s been with Father over twenty years.”

“Have they found your father’s car—the one Luke went away in?”

“No.”

“Where did they take you to identify the body—was it still in the bungalow?”

“No. They didn’t find me till after two o’clock, out on Long Island and he—they had taken it to White Plains for the autopsy. I went there.”

“Have you ever been in that bungalow?”

“No. Nobody has.”

“Nobody at all?”

“No one that I know of. Of course, there might have been dozens and I wouldn’t have known it. All I knew about my father was what I read in the papers. I happen to know, though, that Kester had been in the bungalow.”

“Vaughn Kester, your father’s confidential secretary?”

“Yes. He mentioned it only last night. He said he was up there a couple of weeks ago to arrange about some repairs—”

“Wait for me. I must have skipped something. I thought Kester was at Green Meadow, near Pleasantville, last night, and it was after he was notified of the murder and left there for the bungalow that he disappeared.”

“That’s right.”

“And you were on Long Island?” Fox was frowning. “Where did you see Kester?”

“At Green Meadow. My sister and I had dinner there with him, and I went to Long Island afterwards.”

Fox’s frown gathered another wrinkle. “I guess I’ll quit reading the papers. I read that your sister was in the Adirondacks.”

“She was, but she flew down yesterday afternoon for the meeting I had arranged with Kester. He was our liaison officer with headquarters, meaning our parent. I’m not revealing secrets. All our best friends love to talk about it. When we needed to undertake financial negotiations we went to Kester. When I decided to be a Communist a few years ago it was Kester I notified.”

“Oh. Are you a Communist?”

“Not any more. I tried it a couple of months. I was so damn bored and useless. I ought to have a job, but I don’t seem to find anything. How about being a detective? Have you got an opening?”

“Not right this minute.” Fox’s tone had no banter. “I’ll consider it. After dining with Kester, did your sister go to Long Island with you?”

“Nuts.” Jeffrey scowled. “Mr. Fox, my sister didn’t kill my father and neither did I. That what’s-his-name
back there had me convinced that Andrew Grant did, but now that I know who his niece is I hope he’s a fathead. I mean what’s-his-name.”

“Your hope seems reasonable,” Fox declared. “He has no evidence that Grant had a gun. The only motive that can be imputed to him, resentment at being fired from his job, is puerile. Beyond that, Derwin has nothing whatever except that Grant was there.”

“Oh, yes, he has. Grant lied.”

“Lied? What about?”

“About the time he got there, or maybe—anyway, he lied. He said when he looked in at the window Father was sitting there smoking a cigar and listening to the radio play band music, and it was a little after eleven o’clock. That’s impossible. If it was between eleven and eleven-thirty, Father was listening to Dick Barry. He hasn’t missed it once in three years.”

Fox made a noise of contempt. “As thin as that? Maybe he couldn’t get that station, or maybe in the bungalow his tastes changed, or maybe someone else turned on the radio—that’s as close to nothing—”

“No, really,” Jeffrey protested. “I tell you it’s a point. Grant must be lying. Ask anybody that knows my father. A year ago, when Dick Barry changed from seven to eleven o’clock, Father changed his bedtime. I don’t say he would have lost a leg to avoid missing it, but it’s a million to one that if he was in a room where a radio was at eleven o’clock, and he was conscious and free to act, he dialed WLX and got Dick Barry. Ten million to one. I suppose I shouldn’t tell you how what’s-his-name dopes it, but I will. He thinks Grant was in the room, covering Father with the gun, and Grant turned on the band music to smother the sound of the shots. Then of course he had to say the band music was playing because someone
might have heard it. I hate to say it, but it sounds to me—what are you staring at?”

“Excuse me,” said Fox softly. “I apologize, Mr. Thorpe. I also apologize for a sudden decision I’ve made. I’m going somewhere in a hurry. So if you’ll kindly take possession of your car—” He stuck his head out the window and called: “Dan! Come here! Step on it!”

“But my God,” Jeffrey complained, “I was doing my best—”

“I know you were. I appreciate it. Thank you. Why don’t you write Miss Grant a letter? Get in, Dan, get in! If you don’t mind, Mr. Thorpe—thanks—women always read letters before they return them unopened. See you again. Look out, I’m—”

The convertible moved, regained the concrete, was at 20 in second, at 40 in high, at 60. Fox’s baritone was approximating the tune of “The Parade of the Wooden Soldiers”:

“Lah-de-dah, dum dum, lah-de-dah, dum dum …”

The back seat, Dan’s bass again, demanded: “Why, are we getting hot?”

“Dee-dee-dee—no! We’re taking a flyer on a ten-million-to-one shot!”

Nancy spoke loud to his ear: “But you’re turning south! I don’t—where are we going?”

“Going to work, Miss Grant. Heigh-ho! We’re going to New York to find someone who knows someone who knows Dick Barry.”

Two hours later Dan and Nancy were seated at a table in a corner of an enormous air-conditioned room
on Madison Avenue near 60th Street. She was sipping an orangeade and he was finishing a Perisphere Float.

Dan was telling her not to worry. “He’ll find him all right,” he assured her. “If he’s buried he’ll dig him up. Don’t worry about your uncle either. That’ll work out. If you’ve got to worry, worry about me. I’m supposed to keep you awake. You might think it wouldn’t matter where you were awake or not, but you heard me trying to suggest—huh. Here he comes again. Find him, Tec?”

Tecumseh Fox, his hat in his hand, stopped at their table, and shook his head. “Not yet. Some day you’re going to get a stomach-ache. Come on.”

Two hours still later Dan and Nancy were facing each other in a booth of the fountain grill of the Hotel Churchill. She was sipping iced pineapple juice and he was working on a Strawberry Dream.

“You’re dead wrong,” Dan was saying earnestly. “I mean in my opinion. The right age for a man to marry is between fifty and fifty-five. I can give you a dozen good reasons, but I won’t do it now because you’re not wide enough awake to appreciate them and anyway you’re too young. I expect to get married in about fifteen years. Say I had got married when I was twenty-five. Where would I be now? A fellow I know named Pokorny was saying the other day—here he comes again. Find him, Tec?”