Rex Stout (8 page)

“I am not.” She sounded weary, but emphatic. “It would be impossible to conceive of any one as dumb as I am. You could search the world over, and in the end you would come back to me. I was probably going too fast, and I apologise. If you write out a summons, I’ll take it. If you don’t write out a summons, I’ll dream about you.”

The cop grunted. He opened his mouth, but apparently the comeback he had in mind wasn’t good enough, for he abandoned it, and after another grunt turned without a word. He was just straddling his saddle when the roadster whirred by in second.

I
n the room which represented chaos, but not, as she had decided, disorder, Eileen Delaney stood at noon on Friday and, with exasperation tempered by concern, regarded her partner Jean Farris, who was removing her hat with leisurely and unprecedented gentleness. When the hat had been disposed of, on top of a pile of material which was itself piled on a box of yarn, Jean turned to say:

“I know, Eileen. I’m sorry. You’re nice to be nice about it. I couldn’t drag myself out of bed. I have a headache.”

“What! You never have a headache.”

“I know. I’m out for a record. You’d better phone Muir & Beebe and tell them a week from Monday.”

“I suppose I’ll have to.” Miss Delaney started off, then turned back. “Did Cora tell you about your caller?”

“No, I hurried through. Who was it?”

“Not was. Is. He’s out in the big room, said he’d like to see the looms going. He’s been here since ten o’clock. It’s your Indian.”

“My—You don’t mean Guy Carew?”

“Right.”

“What—” Jean stared. “What does he want?”

“I didn’t ask him. I presume his collar is choking him and he wants help.”

Jean slowly got on to the stool, rested her elbows on the table and her forehead on her fists, and closed her eyes. After a silence she said without moving, “Send him in here. Please?”

Miss Delaney looked at her partner, opened her mouth and shut it again, and went.

When the caller entered two minutes later, Jean was quite busy. Squared paper was in front of her, a crayon in one hand and colour cards in the other, and she was obviously buried in calculation. But in a couple of seconds she looked up:

“Oh, good-morning. Miss Delaney tells me you’ve been here since ten o’clock. I’m sorry you had to wait.”

“So am I.” He came to the end of the table and stood, gazing at her face. “You got hurt.”

“Yes. Moderately. Apparently it takes quite a blow to crack a skull open.”

“I know it does. That’s what happened to my father. Have you had a doctor?”

“No, I don’t need one. I just have a sore head.”

“That’s silly.” He stepped forward briskly. “There might be a minor fracture. Let me see.” He had his fingers on her head before she knew what he was doing. “Which side? Oh. Not much of a bruise. Hold still.”

“Stop, damn it! That hurts! Will you please let me alone?”

He stepped back, cast a glance around, went to a chair and removed from its seat various miscellaneous items, and sat down. “It’s silly not to have a doctor look at it,” he declared. “Why is it that some women can’t be kept away from doctors, and others won’t go to them at all? It seems to be universal, because Indian women are that way too.”

Jean had the attitude of a person, momentarily interrupted, who expects to be immersed in her work again as soon as possible. “I don’t suppose,” she observed, “that you have been waiting two hours in order to establish a universal fact about women.”

Guy Carew frowned, and with a deliberate forefinger rubbed the bridge of his nose. “You can imagine,” he said at length, “how I have been … that I’ve been a good deal upset. I telephoned your apartment last night and got no answer. I phoned this morning and gave my name and was told that you were sleeping. I called there at 9.30 this morning and was told that you didn’t feel like seeing any one. Now that I see you … I told you the other day, last Saturday, that you made me think of a Kiowan phrase, ‘Your eyes are open to me.’ But yesterday afternoon … and now … I don’t know how to say what I want to.”

“Go ahead and say it. Because I’m pretty busy …”

His gaze was concentrated at her, his black eyes narrowed a little. “There’s another saying,” he declared. “This one is in Caddoan. ‘When a woman grinds the corn with one hand, don’t let it in your belly.’ I’m not sure, but I think it means: ‘Don’t take a capricious woman for a wife.’”

“It seems to me,” said Jean without smiling, “that you’re wasting a lot of folklore. I am not capricious, and I don’t
think
I’ve applied to any one for a position as wife. But if I did, and you’re trying to tell me that you’re sorry, I can’t have the job—”

“Miss Farris! Please! You know very well what I’m trying to say. I thought we were pretty good friends. If your eyes were open to me, it’s quite obvious that they aren’t now. I want—I needed very much to see you and ask you some things—but I can’t very well ask favours of an enemy.”

Jean’s brows went up. “Me an enemy?”

“Certainly. Your manner and your tone of voice—you might as well be wearing a war bonnet. So that’s my first question. Why?”

“Well. Since you ask it—in the first place, it seems quite possible that you hit me on the head last evening and stole my clothes.”

“Me? Good God! You say I did that?”

“I said it seems possible.”

“That I knocked you on the head? You aren’t serious.”

“I am absolutely serious.”

“Then you’re an awful fool.” He got up, without haste, and walked to her. He towered above her, frowning down at her, the muscles of his jaw perceptibly moving. “Look here, Miss Farris. The other day we seemed to … No, I won’t say that. I don’t know how it seemed to you. But to me it seemed—what I said, that your eyes were open to me. I felt that there was no fear and no meanness between us, and no calculation. That was the first time in my life that I ever had that feeling. I thought—from the way you talked—that you felt the same way. Perhaps I was wrong.” He stopped, regarded her a moment in silence, and then returned to his chair. He repeated, this time making it a question, “Perhaps I was wrong?”

“Perhaps.” Jean wasn’t looking at him. As he had stood frowning down at her he had been unspeakably stern and darkly handsome, and now she wasn’t looking at him. “Or perhaps I was. You really want to be frank, do you? Then for meanness, how about your asking me to give you that skirt and jacket, without any reason? Now wait a minute! It was only the second time we were together that evening at Lucky Hills two weeks ago. When I admired that jacket you told me it was real
bayeta and you’d like to have me take it. You told me it wasn’t in its original blanket form anyway, and even if it had been you wouldn’t care, because you’d like to see what my art could do with it. And you said—certain other things. So I took it, and I didn’t even let one of my girls unravel it; I did it myself, here in this room, and I spent hours selecting yarns to go with it, and I spent twenty more hours at one of the looms, weaving it myself. Then I took it to Krone, and I wouldn’t let his cutter touch it; I did the cutting. When it came yesterday I thought it was beautiful. This is what they call a sob story. When you showed up at Barth’s you didn’t even notice it; you barely glanced at it. That was all right; maybe you had something else to do. But a little later you calmly came and asked me to give it to you because it was desirable for you to have it!” Jean’s eyes flashed at him. “I’ll tell you one thing, Mr. Carew, I’m a well-known designer, and where my work is concerned I’m conceited and jealous, and I haven’t taken the time or the trouble to unravel any yarn or run a loom myself for years, and what surprises me is that I should bother to say anything to you at all except go to the devil! Except one thing, that I intended to send that jacket and skirt to you this morning by parcel post!”

Guy Carew was still frowning at her. “The trouble is,” he muttered, “the chief trouble is, the kind of man I am. But I’m that kind. I don’t know why, either; it isn’t a Cherokee trait; the average Cherokee will tell you anything. Maybe it’s the mixture. It isn’t acquired, for I’ve always been that way. I was like that when I was a boy, and later at college, and the three years I spent in Europe, and since then among the tribes. I don’t think I’m secretive, exactly, it’s just a lack of impulse to communicate my own affairs. And then, there really was a reason for me to hesitate to tell any one why I wanted you to
give me that jacket and skirt. Especially—I had no right to burden you with such confidence.”

Jean said drily, “You thought knocking me on the head was better.”

“I did not. You know very well I did not. And in any case, I admit I had no right to ask you for it without saying why I wanted it. Another thing, I should have told you why I was sticking close to Portia Tritt.”

“Not at all. That’s none of
my
business.”

“But you seemed to think it was. I mean, the remark you made. When I saw you were jealous—”

“Me? Jealous? My dear fellow—”

“But what you said—”

“What I said? Oh!” Jean laughed. “Now I remember. Maybe I was a little jealous at the thought of her wearing that costume I had designed for myself.”

“Of course. That’s what I meant.” Guy looked slightly bewildered. “Anyhow, I have an impulse now to communicate my affairs. To you. I want to tell you why I asked you to give me the skirt and jacket, and why I was with Portia Tritt—”

“It isn’t at all necessary.”

“It is to me. I want to find out who murdered my father. I’ve told you that much before, but I haven’t talked about it. I’m not talking about it now, except to you. It looks as if the police either can’t do it or won’t, and if they won’t I will. Another thing. Look at me, Miss Farris. Have you heard the—the talk that I killed my father myself?”

“Why—” Jean faltered. “I … of course some people …”

“I know. Lots of people.” Blood was at the surface of the smooth tight skin over his cheekbones. “I’m surprised I can talk about it, even with you. They say my father was killed with a war club and scalped, and I’m
half Indian. They say he had been giving me half a million a year for my work among the tribes and had decided to stop it. They say he was going to marry Portia Tritt and cut me out of his will. They say one reason I didn’t want him to marry Portia Tritt was that I loved her myself. They say I got home from the West on Tuesday, July 6th, and he was killed the next morning.” The blood had mounted higher. “You’ve heard all that?”

Jean nodded and murmured, “Some of it.”

“Of course you have.” Guy leaned forward at her. “I wouldn’t have asked you this before, because it wouldn’t have seemed possible … but now you say it’s possible that I hit you on the head…. Do you believe that I killed my father?”

“No.”

“Do you think I know who did it or had anything to do with it?”

“No. But … that’s two questions. You might know who did it.”

“I don’t. Do you believe me?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Now I have to ask you this, can you conceive of any circumstances in which you would want to marry me?”

Jean’s mouth fell open, and immediately closed again. She laughed a little. “Certainly. If we fell in love with each other, and we both had sound bodies and sound minds, and neither of us was otherwise entangled, and we had money enough to pay for a license and a trip to Niagara Falls—”

“I don’t mean a joke. You’re not in love with me now, are you?”

“Of course not.”

“No, of course.” He stopped, with his jaw muscles working, and then continued, “The reason I ask is that
I’m confused about the code I’m living under. Until I was eight years old I lived among the Cherokees with my father and mother, and with my grandfather. Chief William Straightfoot. My name is Guy Straightfoot Carew. With my schooling in the East and travelling, the culture you were born to has become a part of me, but being born to it is different. I never have any trouble or feeling of strangeness in dealing with men, but I’m never sure with women, nor about them. My mother, Tsianina, died when I was twenty-one, just finishing at Harvard. Maybe you’ve seen a picture of her?”

Jean nodded. “Lately, in the papers … on account of …”

“Yes. That has been—” He shrugged. “She was extraordinary. I believe it is correct to suppose that a man’s attitude toward women and behaviour with them is based on his early intimate experiences with his mother. She sets his tone for life. My mother was a true Indian woman. I don’t mean there was any complex or fixation or any of that stuff, but she was my mother and I loved her, and unconsciously she set my tone, and that’s what got me confused about the code of my adopted culture. Through reading and so on I know what the rules are, but many of them don’t seem natural to me. Still I would like to live up to them. That’s what I’m getting at, that I’m trying to observe one of the rules. As I understand it, a man isn’t supposed to mention his experiences with women to any one, except his fiancee under certain circumstances. That’s why I want to tell you about Portia Tritt—
”

Jean put in hastily, “I’m not your fiancée!”

“
I know it. Not yet. But it seems to me that the technical position at any given moment doesn’t matter; what’s important is the man’s intentions. If I can tell my fiancee, why can’t I tell a woman I am trying to get for a
fiancée, when I need to, to remove difficulties? Isn’t that all right?”

“But I—” Jean brushed back her hair. “You’ve got me confused too. If you mean me … I haven’t noticed any ardent attempt to get me for a fiancée. One little item, for example, you haven’t proposed to me, have you?”

“Certainly not. Didn’t you just tell me that you’re not in love with me? What good would it do me to propose before you fall in love with me?”

“It might do a lot of good. You’re a multi-millionaire.”

“Rubbish. Would you marry me for money?”

“I would not.”

“If I propose to you now will you accept?”

“I don’t like hypothetical questions.”

“Will you marry me?”

“No.”

“You see.” He was frowning at her. “One thing, I don’t need to tell you that you can have any amount of fun with me, you see that yourself. I wasn’t born for the kind of juggling you can do so well. But that doesn’t mean I’m a fool. You know how clever Portia Tritt is. As near as I can judge, she’s the cleverest woman I’ve ever known.”