Rex Stout_Tecumseh Fox 02 (3 page)

“Up or down?”

“Down, please. 320 Grove Street.”

After the car circled south into the clutter of traffic on Seventh Avenue nothing was said for three blocks, when the man driving spoke abruptly, keeping his eyes straight ahead:

“Your fingers are short.”

“Not only that,” came from the back seat, in a baritone with a strong foreign accent that sounded deliberately musical, “but her eyes are the color that they painted the front bathroom upstairs.”

“Excuse me,” said the driver. “That’s Mr. Pokorny back there. Miss—”

“Duncan,” said Amy, feeling too shaken to twist her head for confirmation of her acquaintance with Mr. Pokorny. “He seems to be whimsical. As far as that’s concerned, so do you. I regret my fingers being too short, but I’m perfectly satisfied—”

“I said short, not too short. It was meant as a compliment. I don’t like women who look as if their fingers and legs and necks had undergone a stretching process.”

“Everyone in America,” said the back seat, “regards Russians as whimsical.”

Amy tried turning her head. It gave her a twinge in the left shoulder, but she made it far enough to see a round innocent face whose owner might have been anything between thirty and fifty, with baby-blue wide-open eyes. One of the eyes winked at her with an indescribably cheerful carnality, and she winked back without meaning to.

She faced around to look at the driver and inquired, “And your name?”

“Fox.”

“Fox?”

“Fox.”

“Oh.” She regarded his profile, and saw that from the side his nose looked more pointed and his chin less. “That might account for the cop’s being pleased to meet you. I’d better look at your license.”

Without glancing aside, he got the little leather folder from his pocket and handed it to her. She opened it and saw the name neatly printed in accordance with instructions: TECUMSEH FOX.

“The sword of justice and the scourge of crime,” said Pokorny. “Do you know who he is?”

“Certainly.” Amy returned the license. “I would anyway, only it happens that I’m a detective too, though of course infinitely obscure compared to him.”

“Now who’s being whimsical?” Fox demanded.

“Not me. Really. I’m an operative for a private agency. I may not be tomorrow, but I am today—it’s farther down, there just the other side of the awning—”

The car rolled to a stop at the curb in front of Number 320, and Pokorny emerged from the back and opened the front door on her side.

“I’m glad no bones were broken,” said Fox.

“So am I.” Amy didn’t move. “I walked right into you. If I felt like laughing, that would be especially funny.”

“Why?”

“Oh—” She fluttered a hand. “Reasons. You were very nice not to run over me.” She looked at him, full face now, hesitated, and then went on. “I’ve just made a decision. I’m not usually so impulsive—” She stopped.

“Go ahead.”

“But I’m in a jam, and if by pure luck I find myself on speaking terms with Tecumseh Fox—of course I don’t know whether detectives exchange professional courtesies the way doctors do—you know a doctor never charges another doctor for treatment or advice—and you have a reputation for a heart as warm as your head is cool—”

“And your fingers are short,” said Pokorny from the sidewalk.

Fox was frowning at her. “Which do you need, treatment or advice?”

“Advice. I’ll make it as brief as I can—but there’s no use sitting out here in the cold—”

“All right, climb out.” Fox followed her to the sidewalk, and turned to Pokorny: “There’s a drugstore at the corner. Would you mind phoning Stratton we’ll be late and waiting here in the car?”

“I would,” Pokorny declared. “I’m fairly cold myself.”

“Then you can wait in the drugstore and drink chocolate. If you heard Miss Duncan’s story you’d base a new theory of human conduct on it, and you have too many already.”

Pokorny took it with a cheerful nod and another
wink at Amy, and they left him. She limped a little, but declined assistance mounting the stairs. In the living room of her apartment, Fox insisted that she should first go and take a look at herself, so she hobbled to the bedroom and made enough of an examination to establish that except for soiled clothing, ruined stockings, and a bruised knee, the damage was slight. Then she returned and sat on the sofa with him on a chair facing her, and told him:

“The chief trouble is: I think I have to quit my job, and I can’t afford to and don’t want to.”

“Who do you work for?”

“Bonner & Raffray. They have an office on Madison Avenue—”

Fox nodded. “I know. Run by Dol Bonner. Based on the fact that most men get careless sooner or later when they’re talking to a pretty woman, especially if the woman is also clever and can guide a conversation. But I should think your eyes would put a man on guard.”

“What’s wrong with my eyes?”

“Nothing. They’re very interesting. Excuse me. Go ahead.”

“Well, I’ve been working there about a year. I lived in Nebraska with my parents, and five years ago, when I was twenty, my mother died, and soon afterwards I came to New York and my uncle gave me a job in his office. I didn’t like it much, mostly on account of my uncle, but I stayed nearly a year and then left and got a job in a law office.”

“If your incompatibility with your uncle is important, tell me about it.”

“I don’t know that it’s important, but it has a bearing—that’s why I mentioned it. He’s ill-mannered and quick-tempered and generally disagreeable, but the
quarrel—what brought it to a head was his attitude about unmarried mothers.”

“Oh.” Fox nodded.

“Oh, no.” Amy shook her head. “Not me. It was a girl who worked in the canning department, but I learned that it had happened twice before in previous years. He simply fired her, and you should have heard him. I got mad and told him what I thought of him, and quit before he could fire me too. I had been working in the law office for three years, and was the secretary of a member of the firm, when I met Miss Bonner and she offered me a job and I took it. Do you know her?”

“Never met her.”

“Well—talk about clever women.” Amy, without thinking, started to cross her knees, grimaced, and forbore. “You ought to hear her coaching me on a job. I’m the youngest of the four women on what she calls her siren squad. When I’m on a case I’m not allowed to go to the office and if I meet her accidentally I’m not supposed to speak to her. Last spring I got evidence for—but I guess I shouldn’t tell you that.”

“Are you on a case now?”

“Yes. Have you ever heard of Tingley’s Titbits?”

“Certainly. Appetizers in glass jars with a red label showing a goat eating a peacock’s tail. Lots of different varieties. Expensive but good.”

“They’re better than good, they’re the best you can buy. I admit that. But a month ago they began to have quinine in them.”

Fox cocked a surprised eye at her. “I beg your pardon?”

“Yes, they did. Complaints began to come in that they tasted bitter, couldn’t be eaten, and thousands of jars were returned by dealers, and when they were
analyzed some of them were found to contain quantities of quinine. Tingley—Mr. Arthur Tingley, the present head of the firm—engaged Dol Bonner to investigate.”

“Do you know how he happened to pick Miss Bonner?”

Amy nodded. “For quite a while P. & B. has been trying to buy the Tingley business—”

“Do you mean the Provisions & Beverages Corporation?”

“That’s it. The food octopus. They offered three hundred thousand dollars for the business. One of their vice-presidents has been working on it quite a while, but Tingley refused to sell. He said the name alone, with the prestige it has established over seventy years, was worth half a million. So when this trouble occurred, the only thing they could think of was that P. & B. had bribed someone in the factory to put in the quinine, to give Tingley such a headache that he would be glad to sell and get out. They started their own investigation among the employees, but they thought something might be done from the other end.”

“And they set Bonner on the P. & B.”

“Yes. A woman named Yates is in charge of production at the Tingley factory, which is up on Twenty-sixth Street. She knew of Miss Bonner because they are both members of the Manhattan Business Women’s League. At her suggestion Tingley engaged Dol Bonner, and I was assigned to work on the P. & B. vice-president who had been trying to make a deal with Tingley. I told Miss Bonner that Arthur Tingley was my uncle and that I had once worked for him, and had quarreled with him and quit, but she
said that shouldn’t disqualify me for the job and the rest of the squad were busy.”

“Was it agreeable to Tingley?”

“He didn’t know about it. I hadn’t seen him for a long time, and he didn’t even know I was working for Bonner & Raffray. At least I don’t suppose he did. But he told me this afternoon that he had learned this morning that I was working on his case, and he had told Miss Bonner that he didn’t trust me and he wouldn’t have it.”

“And you’re afraid you’ll lose your job and that’s the jam you’re in.”

Amy shook her head. “That’s not it. Or only a small part of it. I got acquainted with—uh—the P. & B. vice-president three weeks ago, and started—that is, I proceeded with the investigation. He’s young and quite presentable, competent and assured and rather—I imagine pretty aggressive as a business man. We got—on fairly good terms. Then, Saturday afternoon, I saw him in a booth at Rusterman’s Bar, having what appeared to be a very confidential conversation with Dol Bonner.”

“The poor devil,” Fox laughed. “With two of you after him—”

“Oh, no,” Amy protested. “That’s the trouble. If she had been working him, she would certainly have let me know. I was given to understand that she had never met him or even seen him. This morning, when I phoned her, I gave her an opening to tell me about her meeting with him Saturday, but she still pretended she had never seen him. So obviously she is double-crossing Tingley. And making a fool of me.”

Fox frowned and pursed his lips. “Not obviously. Conceivably.”

“Obviously,” Amy insisted stubbornly. “I’ve tried
to think of another explanation, and there isn’t any. You should have seen how confidential they were.”

“They didn’t see you?”

“No. I’ve been trying to decide what to do. Much as I dislike my uncle, I can’t just go ahead with it as if I thought it was on the square. Miss Bonner pays me, but the money comes from Tingley’s Titbits, and while I may not be a saint I hope I have my share of plain ordinary honesty. Just after I phoned her this morning, before I stopped to think I called up—the vice-president and canceled two dates I had with him. That was silly, because it didn’t really settle anything. Then I—excuse me—”

The telephone was ringing. She went to it, at a corner of the table, and spoke:

“Hello … Oh, hello … No, I haven’t … No, really … I’m sorry, but I can’t help it if you misunderstood….”

After several more phrases, equally unrevealing, she hung up and returned to her chair. Incautiously she met Fox’s gaze, and again the compelling expectancy in his eyes caused her to speak without meaning to.

“That was the P. & B. vice-president,” she said.

Fox smiled at her and inquired pleasantly. “About the canceled dates? By the way, what’s wrong with his name?”

“Nothing that I know of.”

“I just wondered. You keep calling him the vice-president, but surely you know his name, don’t you?”

“Certainly. Leonard Cliff.”

“Thanks. You were saying …”

“I was going to say that I went to see my uncle.”

“Today?”

“Yes, right after lunch. I hated to lose my job, and
I decided to tell him the facts and try to persuade him to take the case away from Bonner & Raffray without giving a reason, and turn it over to some other agency. I was going to offer to return to him my pay for the three weeks I had been working on it. It seemed to me that was a fair thing to do. But the minute he saw me he began yelling about how he had told Miss Bonner he didn’t trust me and didn’t want me working on it, and if I had told him what I intended to he would instantly have phoned Miss Bonner about it, which I might have known anyhow if I had used my head. So I got mad and called him an ape, only I said troglodyte, and left.”

She stopped. Fox prodded her, “Go ahead.”

“That’s all. I started to walk home, and before I got here I walked into your car.”

“But you said you’re in a jam.”

Amy stared. “Well, good heavens, aren’t I?”

“Not that I can see. Unless you’ve left something out.”

“Then you must have an exalted idea of a jam,” Amy declared indignantly. “The least that can happen is that I lose my job. That may seem very picayune to you, with your ten-thousand-dollar fees, but it’s darned important to me. And anyway, if I just quit and let it go at that, how about the double-cross they’re putting over on my uncle? I may dislike him, in fact I do, but that’s all the more reason why I don’t want to have a hand in a game to cheat him.”

“You won’t have a hand in it if you quit your job.”

“But I don’t want to quit!”

“I suppose not. And that’s all? That’s the jam you’re in?”

“Yes.”

Fox regarded her a moment, and said quietly, “I think you’re lying.”

She stared, gulped, and demanded, “I’m lying?”

“I think so.”

Her eyes flashed. “Oh, well,” she said, and rose to her feet.

“Now wait a minute.” Fox, otherwise not moving, was smiling up at her. “You’ve asked for some professional courtesy, so you’re going to get it. You may not know you’re lying, or let’s say misrepresenting; it may be only that something is interfering with your mental processes. Some uncontrollable emotion. There are two things wrong with your story. First, your unwarranted assumption that because you saw Miss Bonner talking with the vice-president—there, I caught it from you—she is double-crossing Tingley. There are any number of possible explanations besides that. Second, the obvious thing to do is to tell Miss Bonner that by accident you saw her with Leonard Cliff. Just tell her that, of course without any intimation that you suspect her of skulduggery. She may give an explanation that will completely relieve your conscience. If she doesn’t, you can then decide what to do. Don’t tell me that anyone with eyes as intelligent as yours hasn’t thought of as obvious a step as that.”