Rex Stout (13 page)

“Yeah, so you might.” Cramer folded his arms tighter, and sighed again. Suddenly he demanded, “What date was it that Carew took you inside the tomb and you left your fingerprints scattered around?”

“Sunday, July 4th.” Her brows went up. “Good heavens, was that the second thing you wanted to go over with me? I suppose it is necessary for you to suspect everything any one says, but there is corroboration for that. The Indian, Wilson, was there and saw us go in.”

“The Indian don’t remember it.”

“Well.” She upturned a palm. “He hates me, of course. I don’t suppose he killed Val Carew, but he would have cheerfully killed me. But really, Inspector, you don’t dream that I killed Val Carew myself, do you? If there is any significance to those fingerprints—”

She jerked up and around. The noise that had startled her—the ring of a telephone bell—seemed much too ordinary to have produced the effect it did; and Cramer’s gaze concentrated on the back of her head as she stepped quickly across to a cabinet and pulled open a panel to disclose the instrument within. But if the sound
of the bell had rudely disconcerted her, as it seemed to, she had her voice well composed as she spoke into the transmitter. In a moment she turned:

“It’s for you, Inspector.”

Cramer crossed to her, nodded thanks, and took it. His end of the conversation was not very informative, consisting mostly of grunts, with a few brief questions, and at one point an excited but vague ejaculation. At the end he said brusquely, “No. Hold everything. We’ve got to be absolutely sure. I’ll be there as quick as I can make it.”

He pushed the instrument back, turned, and was curt: “Much obliged, Miss Tritt. I have to go look at something. I’ll be seeing you again—don’t bother—I’m used to opening doors—”

When he had gone, Portia Tritt stood staring at a deformed Epstein and as she did so succeeded, with completely mechanical movements, in getting a cigarette lit. After half a dozen puffs she finally moved to an ash tray on a stand and deposited the match-stick and crushed the cigarette, went to the next room for a glance in the mirror, a hat and a cape which went with her dress, and got a handbag from a drawer. Before leaving the apartment she stopped at the outer door to take a look in the handbag.

Down on the sidewalk, the doorman leaped into action at sight of her. In the taxi, having given the driver an address, she looked through the back window; then, after a couple of blocks, again; and after three more blocks, once more. Her lips compressed with annoyance, and she spoke to her driver: “Go to the Hotel Churchill and stop in front of the shop marked Nicholas on the
Fifty-fourth Street side.” She didn’t bother to look back again.

She had the change ready at the destination, paid the driver and hopped out and across the sidewalk to the door marked Nicholas. It was locked. She muttered, “Damn it, of course, I’m out of my mind,” skipped into a tobacco shop next door, passed straight through it into the lobby of the Churchill, went on past palms and elevators and people in the arcade, another corridor and out to Fifty-third Street. There she stopped a taxi, got in, and told the driver to wait a minute. Looking through the rear window, she noted the cars and taxis crossing the avenue toward her, and those rounding the corner. After a moment she gave the driver an address and told him, “Get past Park on this light if you can make it.”

She watched through the rear window, intermittently, until the taxi stopped at the curb on East Sixty-first Street.

She smiled through force of habit at the Japanese in a dark-blue uniform who let her in. That smile, which was no effort at all, had made ten thousand friends in ten thousand places where friendliness might never be needed, but should it be it was there.

“I’m expected, Nobu. I’m late.”

“All right, don’t bother.”

She turned to the staircase and went up, not rapidly, and down the wide second-floor hall to the door at the end. Before she reached it, it opened, and Leo Kranz was on the sill. She stopped, and their eyes met, and nothing was said; then he bowed and stepped aside and invited her, “Come in.” She entered, and after he had closed the door he turned: “Your hat and gloves? Your cape?”

She shook her head, standing, glancing sharply around, and back at him. Then she shrugged, took off her
hat and put it on a table, sat down with her handbag on her lap, and began pulling at her gloves.

“I apologise for being late,” she said, “but I couldn’t help it. I told you on the phone that police inspector was coming at 5.30, but he didn’t get there until 6. Then he stayed longer than I thought he would. Then I didn’t care to have the detective who follows me—damn it, Leo, don’t look at me like that! You’re not a dog! I don’t like dogs.”

“I know you don’t. I beg your pardon.” Kranz moved a chair and sat. “I knew the inspector would be late for his appointment with you because it was nearly 6 when he left my place.”

“Oh! He called on you too?”

“Naturally. I was at Lucky Hills that night, so I am suspected of murder. I was one of Val’s closest friends, so I am suspected of knowing things which I don’t know. Inspector Cramer is the head of the homicide squad and was called back from a Canada vacation to solve the case.”

Silence. It was prolonged. Portia Tritt put her gloves neatly together and thrust them under the strap of her handbag. She pulled her skirt down over her knee, dabbed at her nose with her handkerchief, clasped her hands on her lap, and unclasped them. Finally, she inquired in a voice with a bare suggestion of tremor:

“Well?”

“Well?” Kranz smiled, not humorously. “You phoned that you wanted to come to see me. I confess I was surprised, considering the number of times I’ve asked you in the past month….”

“Don’t be suave, Leo. You know perfectly—” With an impatient gesture she jerked her handbag open, took a paper from it, and extended her hand. “What’s that?”

He took it and looked at it. “It’s an envelope addressed
to you, with my return printed on it—this address. In fact, it’s one of my personal envelopes, and the inscription in my handwriting. Since it has no stamp, I presume it was delivered by messenger.”

“Thanks. What’s inside of it?”

He inserted two long deft fingers into the envelope, which had been slit open, and withdrew a fold of thin soft yellow material. It was so thin and soft he had difficulty unfolding it.

He held it by two corners: “Do you really want me to tell you what it is?”

“Please.”

He shrugged. “It’s a sheet of yellow Pasilex. Pasilex is the trade name of a luxury brand of paper handkerchief, used for wiping creams from the skin and similar purposes. It is superfine and so expensive that its distribution is limited to rich people—and to those who get it for nothing in publicity’s name. I believe it comes in several colours; as I say, this one is yellow.”

“Why did you send it to me?”

“Because I wanted to see you. Because for over two weeks you have avoided meeting me alone and refused to talk with me. Because it was vital that you
should
talk with me. Because you broke two promises to come, and I knew of no other way to get you here.”

“Where did you get the idiotic notion that I would come if you sent me that?”

“Idiotic? Dear Portia! I sent it at three o’clock, when you didn’t show up at the gallery. You are here, less than five hours later. And, by the way, Nobu will have dinner—”

“No thanks.” Her eyes stayed level at him. “I want to know why you sent it.”

He opened his hands. “To get you here.”

“Damn it, Leo! Why did you send it?”

He looked at her. She met his gaze. In a moment he asked in a new tone, “You want to know why? Do you, Portia?” He stood up and took a step toward her eyes. “You know why. I had to see you. You know how desperately I love you. I have loved you for five years. I have had you for twenty-two months. I had, I know, I had only crumbs—but they were your crumbs—and no one else. At least I believed that—no one else—and I still believe it. You were honest with me about Val. I’m not a sentimental fool, I’m as good a realist as you are, Portia, and I took that, your decision to marry Val. I took it. You may say I had to take it, there was nothing I could do about it after my talk with him two months ago—but anyway, I took it—”

She moved, a jerk of impatience. “I don’t need a history lecture. Why did you send me that sheet of Pasilex?”

“I’ll get to it. The history is the prelude. I’m reminding you that I gave you up once. I won’t again.” He stopped; his lips worked; he controlled them. “I won’t again, Portia. You’re going to marry me, and that will settle it. I know how ambition burns in you, and I even respect it; it was proper and logical for you to become the mistress of one of the great American fortunes; but that ordeal is over for me and I won’t submit to it again. You have been mine and now you are mine again. I wanted you before, because I loved you and because we suited each other—we fitted—we went together—” His hand fluttered. “Now I want you for that—and also because I find I must have you.” His voice was suddenly harsh. “You’ve got inside of me—fatally—fatally, Portia!”

He stopped, gazing at her, and put out a hand and took it back again. “No,” he said. “I’m not going to plead with you. I did that, and what good did it do? But all the
same, I won’t tolerate it—what you’re doing with Guy Carew. Now that the fortune is his—the wings for your ambition. I know you can do it—he’s a half-primitive infant—may be you’ve already done it—but I won’t tolerate it and I won’t allow it. I won’t, Portia! You’re mine! By God, you are!”

Their gazes met. He was trembling. But soon, abruptly, he was still and controlled. He turned and sat down and looked at her with steady composure. His voice was smooth and firm: “That’s why I sent you that sheet of yellow Pasilex. It came from a box which I bought. The nine sheets you used on July 6th are in my possession. I keep them for only one purpose: to show them to Guy Carew, and tell him how you used them, if it becomes necessary.”

“I presume you’re crazy.” Her voice was as good as his. “If you think you know what you’re talking about—”

“No, my dear.” He shook his head. “It won’t do. It’s no good at all. I found it myself—where you put it. I know all about it. I even know you had a key for the tomb—I guessed that, first, because that was the only way you could have got in.”

Portia Tritt sat and looked at him. She wet her lips. After a long silence she wet her lips again, and spoke. “You say you found it yourself? You got it yourself?”

He nodded.

“No one else knows about it? No one knows you have it?”

“No one.”

“Then that explains …” A frown was creasing her forehead. “When did you find it? How did you get it? I don’t see how you could possibly—”

She stopped, gaping at him; the blood left her face; horror was in her eyes. “Good God!” Her hands gripped the arms of the chair. “Good God, Leo! You killed Val!”

He shook his head.

“You did! You must have! There was no way … you could only …”

He shook his head again. “Portia dear. Please. Please! Listen to me. You know very well I couldn’t have killed Val. It was quite simple. After Wilson came with the news, I went to the tomb with Guy. Guy left me there with Val’s body—I was alone there ten minutes or more. I looked around, I went up the stone steps—and I saw it. I took a harpoon from the wall and got it. Naturally I wiped my fingerprints from the harpoon handle, since a man had been murdered there. I knew at once it was yours—who else in that house would have had yellow Pasilex? Anyway, it was obvious—the purpose. Later, thinking it over, it became equally obvious that you must have had a key, and I investigated. Discreetly.”

He put out an appealing hand. “Don’t narrow your eyes at me, Portia. Don’t pretend that you think it possible that I murdered my old friend—even for you. And don’t—you can’t—blame me for using a weapon that fell into my hands. Better thank God it was me. What if the police had found it? They wouldn’t have known at once, as I knew, that you use yellow Pasilex, but they certainly would have discovered it. My dear! I’m not holding the police over your head, I’m not holding anything over your head, I’m only saying that I love you and I must have you—and you won’t force me to go to Guy Carew with this—”

“Bah!”

His brows lifted. “Bah?” he inquired.

“Yes, Leo. Bah. Guy wouldn’t believe you.”

“I think he would. I can offer corroboration—for instance, the key.”

“Do you have a key?”

“No. You have.”

“Then … a search warrant?”

“It wouldn’t be necessary. Since I knew Val intimately, and all his habits—among others, the pocket on his belt in which he kept the key to the tomb—and since his valet, Richards, was therefore the only person who could have had an opportunity to take an impression of the key—do you think so simple a calculation was beyond me? You can’t depend on Richards, Portia. Val is dead, and it’s a case of murder. Guy can be made to believe. And Tsianina was his mother, and he loved her, and your trespass was in her tomb. Don’t think because people like you and me have abandoned reverence, that there is none left. What you did was desecration—what—”

He jumped up. “What the devil—”

Portia Tritt was on her feet, moving to the table, reaching for her hat and cape. She said calmly, “I’m going.”

He grasped her arm. She shook loose and got her hat on. He stepped back, picked up the sheet of yellow Pasilex, and extended it in a hand not quite steady. “And this?” he demanded.

“I’ll let you know.” Her cape was around her shoulders.

“I prefer to know now.”

“I’ll let you know.”

“But, Portia—I said I wouldn’t plead with you again—but my God, you simply can’t force me—”

“I’ll let you know, Leo.” She faced him, and by her straightness seemed almost as tall as he was. “I am fully capable of recognising a rotten mess when I see one. I take back what I said about your murdering Val; you’re not the type. One thing I’m afraid of, I’m afraid I don’t like you much.”

She moved, swiftly to the door, through it, along the hall, down the broad stairs. Below, the Japanese, having heard her descent, came trotting and, seeing her accoutered with hat and cape, at once opened the outer door. As she passed through she said, “Thank you, Nobu,” and smiled at him.