Rex Stout_Tecumseh Fox 01 (15 page)

“Really,” said Miranda. “I couldn’t very well confess it before witnesses, could I?”

“Not very well. I realize that. Or the alternative supposition that you know your brother did it and you feel similarly—”

“You’re not funny,” said Jeffrey gruffly.

“I know I’m not, Mr. Thorpe. I just threw that in. You’d never kill any one if you were sober. Tecumseh Fox taught me how to look at people.” He regarded Miranda. “You might, though, if you were working on a problem and that was the only answer you got.” He smiled at her. “Of course it would depend on how vital the problem was.”

She smiled back. “All right, I did the murder. I want to pay your lawyer and Mr. Fox.”

“No, Mrs. Pemberton, I’m sorry. I’m especially sorry because I’m out of a job right now.”

“But why can’t I be permitted to dislike seeing innocent people suffer even if I’m—”

He shook his head with finality. “No, please don’t. I can assure you that it hurts me worse than it does you. I’ll probably be paying the damn thing for years.”

“You deserve to,” Miranda stood up. “And you said you aren’t snobbish! That’s the lowest form of snobbishness, about money. Very well. Mr. Fox, when this is all over I’m going to invite you to dinner. Jiffy, come on home and get busy on your list for your bachelor dinner. Miss Grant—why don’t I call you Nancy?”

“Go ahead.”

“I will. Good-night, Nancy. My God, you’re lovely.”

T
wenty minutes later Tecumseh Fox had his room to himself again for the night. It was still hot, though the sun had been gone for three hours and from the darkness beyond the screens of the open windows came the amazing concert of the crickets and katydids, a disturbing bedlam to unaccustomed ears, a lullaby to those who lived with it and loved it. Barefooted, in white pajama trousers and nothing above them but his tanned skin undulating with the muscle fibres, Fox was at his desk speaking into the phone:

“Harry? This is Tec. What? Yes, I’ve been moving around a little. Yep, quite a show. I’m sorry to be bothering you at home—what? Thirty-two thousand? Do tell! I’m glad you did. No, that’s a secret. Unload it before noon tomorrow. I know that, but get rid of it. No, not a thing, but a dollar today is worth a dozen in the sweet by and by. I want to ask you something absolutely under your hat, and be sure you keep your hat on. I know you do. Here it is: have you had any information recently, or heard any rumor, that Ridley Thorpe was running short? No, I’ve heard nothing myself, I’m just fishing. As far as you know, he’s right
on top? Thanks. No, I tell you, I don’t know a thing, but do something for me. Ask around a little tomorrow. It won’t be hard to do that without starting any gossip yourself, with all the hullabaloo that’s going on anyhow. I want very much to know if Thorpe needed money badly or quickly, or both. No, thanks, I’ll give you a ring after the market closes. How’s the family? Good. Good-night.”

Fox hung up, went to the safe against an inner wall, twirled the combination, swung the door open, took an envelope from a pigeonhole and returned to his desk. Unfolding the paper which he extracted from the envelope, he bent the gooseneck of the lamp still lower to get a stronger light.

The message on the paper was printed in ink:

Fox read it, each word, three times, and then studied the whole under the bright light. The paper was white, a sheet of ordinary sulphide bond torn from a 5 × 8 pad; the envelope was common and cheap, the kind that may be bought anywhere 25 for a nickel. It
was addressed to Ridley Thorpe at his New York office and marked
personal
, in the same uneven handprinting, with ink, as the message itself, and it had been postmarked in New York, Station “F,” at 6:30 p.m., eight days previously.

Fox replaced it in the envelope, returning the envelope to the safe and shut the door and twirled the knob, muttered to himself, “It would stand a bet, but it may only be that he reads Galsworthy,” put on the pajama top and went to bed.

The next day, Wednesday, started its series of surprises before the birds stopped saluting it. Fox was out of bed at seven o’clock, which, since it was daylight saving, meant six by standard time. Liking, as he had said, to play safe when there was a choice, he had decided to take Henry Jordan to New York with him, and since he would have to leave by 7:50 in order to reach Ridley Thorpe’s office by nine, he trotted down the hall in his pajamas to knock Jordan up. Three efforts bringing no response, he turned the knob and pushed the door open, looked in, saw no Jordan on the bed, but only evidence that he had been there, entered and found the room empty. There were three bathrooms on that floor besides his private one; he trotted to each in turn and found each unoccupied. Men who live on the water are usually early risers, he knew, but still … He hastened downstairs to the kitchen and, silent in his bare feet, caught Mrs. Trimble in the middle of a magnificent yawn.

“Good morning, darling. Have you seen Mr. Jordan?”

“Good morning. Sleepwalking? No, I haven’t.”

“I have.” It came from Mr. Trimble, who was seated at the table drinking black coffee with a doughnut.
“Soon after I got up, going to the barn, I saw him crossing the yard to the drive.”

“How long ago?”

“Coupla hours. I got up at five.”

“Which way did he go?”

“He seemed to be headed for the road. I didn’t ask him and he didn’t volunteer.”

Fox stood motionless for ten seconds, gazing at space, and then said brusquely, “May I have fruit and coffee in my room in three minutes? This will make me jump.”

His first jump took him back upstairs. After a brief halt at the door of Dan’s room he was in his own, dressing. In a moment Dan entered, in cerise pajamas with chartreuse piping, blinking but awake. Fox went on dressing as he told him.

“Jordan has skipped. Bill saw him leaving at five o’clock. I’ll have to go on to New York. Take the old sedan and get to Port Jefferson as quick as you can. Phone Bridgeport about a ferry and if you can make better time go around by the Triborough Bridge. Jordan’s boat is docked at Port Jefferson and I think that’s where he went. If he’s there, bring him back and sit on him. Persuade him. Make it up yourself. All right?”

“I’ll get him. But the new sedan would be better—”

“No. Miss Grant wants to drive over to Westport to get the luggage she left where she was weekending. If Jordan isn’t there when you arrive, phone me at Thorpe’s office—Thank you, darling. No, that’s all.” Fox buckled his belt with one hand and ate a peach with the other. Mrs. Trimble bustled out.

Dan had questions to ask and Fox answered them as he drank his coffee, finished dressing, brushed his
hair and got the envelope from the pigeonhole in the safe, more or less simultaneously. He gulped down the last of the coffee, grimacing at the heat, and left Dan at the door of his room. Outdoors, back at the garage, he found that Trimble had run the convertible out and turned it around and was wiping the windshield. He climbed in.

“Thanks, Bill. Private property, no trespassing.”

“Yes, sir, I’ll keep an eye out.”

“Make it both eyes. Miss Grant is going to drive to Westport and I suppose her uncle will go along. They can take the new sedan. Dan will be using the old one. Ask Crocker to take Brunhilde to the veterinary in the station wagon. You’d better stick around. If a man phones from Pittsburgh about a bridge, tell him I can’t come. Are you doing the cover spray on the apples?”

“Yes, sir, today. That storm yesterday—”

“Good. Look out, dogs!”

The dashboard clock said 7:22 as he swung from the drive on to the highway. That appeared to be rushing it, since his allowance for reaching Wall Street from his home was an hour and ten minutes; but he was calculating on two stopovers, a telephone call and a brief visit to the apartment of Dorothy Duke. While neither his life nor his liberty was at stake on account of the alibi he had manufactured for Ridley Thorpe—since Thorpe was not suspected of murder or any other crime—still, as a minimum consideration, he liked to have things that he arranged stay arranged, not to mention the fee involved and his aversion for apologies, except polite ones, to district attorneys. He had gone to the trouble of hauling Jordan home with him purely as a safeguard for that alibi and now that Jordan had gone on hitchhiking God
knew where, he wanted the assurance of another look and a word with the only other person who could shatter it.

At a filling station on the Sawmill River Parkway he pulled up and told the attendant to fill the tank and went inside to use the phone. He knew neither the number nor the name, only the street address, so it took a few minutes to get the call through. But finally he heard the voice and recognized it from the hello.

“Hello! Is this 916 Island Avenue? No, this is the man you talked to through your window yesterday morning when I called to see Henry Jordan and he wasn’t home. Remember? Thank you very much. Yes, indeed he has. Yes, I’m Tecumseh Fox. Thank you very much. I just called Mr. Jordan’s number and there was no answer. Has he returned home? Oh, no, I just have a message for him. Will you do me a favor? You see, he’s quite annoyed at all the publicity and he may not answer the phone. If he comes home will you give me a ring? Croton Falls 8000. That’s right, easy to remember. Thank you very much. Sure, I’d love to meet your husband. We’ll do that some day.”

He went out and paid for the gas and was off again. At that hour the traffic was thin and he made good time—on over the Henry Hudson Bridge and down the West Side Highway. He left it at 79th Street and headed east, crawled crosstown and across the park, and parked the car on 67th Street at the identical spot where he had parked the truck the previous morning.

The day’s second surprise was awaiting him in apartment 12H of the palace on the avenue. The same functionary as before greeted him, this time with no astonishment, phoned his message and waved him to the elevator. Also as before, Dorothy Duke herself
opened the door of the apartment to him, and though she looked more rested and less pinched by apprehension, her voice was squeaky with an irritation so pronounced that he was startled.

“Come on in here,” she said, turning for the rear.

“No, thank you, Miss Duke, this will do—”

“Come in here a minute,” she squeaked peevishly and kept going. He followed her because there was nothing else to do, entered, at her heels, a large, cushioned, perfumed room with the shades drawn and the lights turned on, and saw Henry Jordan sitting there in a chair.

Fox stood and took a breath.

Miss Duke confronted her father. “Ask him,” she demanded, “whether it was dumb or not.”

“Good morning,” Jordan said. “How did you know I was here?”

“Good morning.” Fox took another breath. “I didn’t. I was on my way downtown and stopped for a word with Miss Duke. Nothing important. May I ask how you got here?”

Dorothy Duke furnished the information. “He hitched a ride to Brewster and took a train. I used to invite him to come to see me and he never would. Now he comes just when—”

“I didn’t come to see you,” Jordan protested. “I came because it was absolutely necessary. I had let myself be bullied into joining in a deception—”

“It isn’t costing you anything, is it?”

Fox shook his head at her. “Please, Miss Duke. It isn’t costing him anything, but he isn’t making anything either. Mr. Thorpe offered him a lot of money to help us out and he wouldn’t take it. You understand how we handled it, I suppose.”

“Certainly I do. It was obvious as soon as I heard it on the radio last night.”

“Of course. Well, as I understand it, your father consented to help us only for the purpose of protecting you from undesirable publicity. Don’t you appreciate that?”

“Sure I do.” The squeak was gone. “I told him I did, I think it was swell of him. But he shouldn’t have come here! What if somebody followed him, or saw him downstairs and recognized him from his picture in the paper? It’s mighty damn dangerous!”

“I agree with you there. Will you tell me why you came, Mr. Jordan?”

“I will.” The little man’s tone was uncompromising. “I came because there had been a murder done and I had been browbeaten into furnishing an alibi for a man, and I wanted to make sure that man had been where he said he was at the time the murder was committed. The only way I could do that was come and ask my daughter.”

“Do you mean you suspected that Thorpe had committed the murder himself?”

“I didn’t suspect anything. But wouldn’t I be a fool if I let myself in for a thing like that without making sure? A man had been killed at that bungalow that Thorpe owned. You and he came and told me that he didn’t want it known that he was down at that cottage, and asked me to furnish a false alibi for him. I agreed to do it, but I made up my mind last night that I’d find out for sure whether he could have been at that bungalow himself. I’m not in the business of furnishing an alibi for a murderer, not even for the sake of—not for anything.”

“Neither am I,” Fox declared. “But I thought you
already knew that Thorpe spent his weekends with—at the cottage.”

“He did,” Miss Duke put in. “He knew all about it.”

“What if I did?” Jordan demanded testily. “Did I know for certain he was there that weekend? I didn’t know anything for certain. I hadn’t even heard about the murder until you chaps came alongside and boarded me. I had every right to come and see my daughter and satisfy myself—”

Dorothy Duke, who had sunk into cushions on a divan, sprang up again. “That’s not why you came!” she squeaked. “You didn’t doubt for one second that he was at the cottage with me! You came for the pleasure of reminding me that you had warned me that my way of living would bring trouble! And to tell me that the only thing that was preventing trouble now was your coming to the rescue! And I wouldn’t be surprised—I was expecting it any minute—you were going to threaten that if I didn’t agree—that you would—that if I didn’t …”