Rex Stout_Tecumseh Fox 02

by Bad for Business

  “Oh,” she said.

  Fox said he was sorry to disturb her and asked if he might come in, and was permitted, not graciously perhaps but still not grumpily, to dispose of his coat and hat on a rack in the foyer and enter a large and comfortable room with a little too much furniture and an air of being thoroughly contented with the status quo. He accepted an invitation to a chair. Miss Yates sat on an upholstered divan, on its edge as if it had been a wooden bench, and said bluntly:

  “In case you think you fooled somebody this afternoon, you’re wrong. Arthur Tingley told me he didn’t trust you. Neither do I.”

  “Then we’re even.” Fox matched her bluntness. “My trust in you is nothing to brag about. And apparently Tingley’s trust in you was something less than absolute, since he arranged secretly with Carrie and Edna to check on you.”

  Miss Yates made a noise. The muscles of her face tightened, but the expression that appeared in her eyes could not have been called fear. Finally she began, “So Carrie—” and stopped.

  Fox merely nodded.

  “Very well.” She wet her lips. “What about it?”

  “Several things about it, Miss Yates. For one thing, your extraordinary conduct. Is it true that you spoke with Tingley on the telephone at eight o’clock Tuesday evening?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you positive it was his voice?”

  “Certainly I am. And what he said—it couldn’t have been anyone else.”

  “Then why—I don’t ask why you didn’t tell me, since you weren’t obliged to tell me anything if you didn’t feel like it—but did you tell the police?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  She just looked at him.

  “Why not?” Fox insisted. “You’re intelligent enough to know that in their investigation of the murder that information was essential, vital. Did you want to obstruct the inquiry into the murder?”

  Miss Yates’s eyes were leveled at his. “You just said,” she declared evenly, “that I wasn’t obliged to tell you anything if I didn’t feel like it. I’m not obliged to tell you anything now, either. But if I refuse to, I’m not fool enough to suppose that that will be the end of it, now that Carrie—” Her lips tightened, and in a moment she went on, “You asked if I wanted to obstruct the inquiry into the murder. I didn’t care about that one way or another.”

  “You don’t care whether the person who killed Tingley—knocked him on the head and cut his throat—is discovered or not?”

  “Well—I care, yes. I don’t suppose any normal person wants a murderer to go free. But I knew if I told about that phone call I’d have to tell what it was about, and I’m entitled to my pride, everybody is. There has only been one pride in my life—I’ve only had one thing to be proud about—my work. The work and the business I’ve given my life to—and for the last twenty years I’ve been responsible for its success. My friends and the people who know me, they know that—and what’s more important, I know it. And when Carrie—when I learned that Tingley had actually suspected me, had actually had my subordinates spying on me—”

  A flash gleamed in her eyes and vanished again. “I could have killed him myself. I could. I would have gone there if Cynthia Harley hadn’t come—”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “No,” she said bitterly, “I didn’t.”

  “And you didn’t tell about the phone call because you didn’t want it known that Tingley had you watched by your subordinates.”

  “Yes. And then later, there was another reason, when it came out about Amy’s getting hit on the head and lying there unconscious for an hour. I didn’t understand it, and I don’t now, but I don’t believe she killed her uncle or was involved in it, and I saw that if it became known that he was alive at eight o’clock it would make it a lot harder for her. So that was another reason. But not the main reason.”

  “But there was also,” Fox suggested, “a pretty cogent reason why you should have told about the phone call. Wasn’t there?”

  “I don’t know what.”

  “Your own position. As a murder suspect. You’re aware, of course, that with the police you’re still under suspicion. You have no alibi during the period that they now regard as the important one. It isn’t very pleasant to be suspected of murder, and by telling about the phone call—”

  Miss Yates snorted. “Let them suspect. Anyway, if they seriously suspect me of murder, what good would it do to tell them about the phone call? No one but me heard Arthur Tingley’s voice, and couldn’t they say I was lying?”

  “I suppose they could.” Fox eyed her gloomily. “I wish to inform you that at present it is not my intention to tell the police about this, and I don’t think Carrie Murphy is going to, at least not right away. How about you?”

  “Why should I tell them now if I haven’t already? If they find out about it and come and ask me—and I don’t trust Carrie or you either—”

  “I don’t blame you.” Fox arose. “I don’t trust myself after today. My heart’s in the right place, but my brain’s withering. Thank you very much. Don’t get up.”

  But Miss Yates, adhering to the common courtesies even for a man she didn’t trust, went to the foyer with him and let him out.

  He got in his car and drove to Seventh Avenue and turned downtown. Near 18th Street he stopped in front of a restaurant, went in, and told the waitress to bring him something good to eat provided it wasn’t codfish or cauliflower. He was not by any means indifferent to food, and even in his present deplorable condition would have become aware of it if he had been served with something inedible, but when he left half an hour later he could not possibly have told whether the contented feeling in his stomach should be credited to breast of guinea hen or baked beans.

  The dashboard clock, which he kept set within a minute or two, said five minutes to eight as he rolled to the curb in front of 320 Grove Street, got out and crossed the sidewalk to the vestibule. A figure emerged from a shadowy corner and was revealed as Mr. Olson with a toothpick in his mouth. He announced that Miss Duncan’s bell was still being ignored upstairs, let Fox in, and stood listening in the hall until voices from above assured him that this caller was still a friend.

  Fox, however, saw plainly from the expression on Amy’s face that though he might be regarded as a friend he certainly wasn’t the right one. When the door opened he was confronted by a vision of youthful loveliness in a becoming green frock, eyes shining and cheeks a little flushed with warm though restrained expectancy; and the passage of the cloud of disappointment across her features was not swift enough to escape his glance.

  “Only me,” he said. “Sorry.”

  She tried to compensate. “Oh, I’m glad! How nice—I mean I was hoping you—here, let me have your coat—”

  He let her put it on a hanger. A rapid swoop of his eyes showed that the room had recently received attention; the cushions on the sofa had been patted into shape and neatly arranged; the magazines and other objects on the table had been tidily disposed; the rugs showed no careless speck and the ashtrays were chaste.

  “You going out?” he asked politely.

  “Oh, no. Sit down. No, I’m not going out. I—will you have a cigarette?”

  “Thanks. I suppose I should have phoned—”

  He stopped, and she whirled, as a bell rang. “Excuse me,” she said, and stepped to the door to the hall and opened it. Fox surmised, of course, who it was, and was inclined to look the other way not to constrain any display of sentiment that might be contemplated, but the sound of Amy’s modestly effusive greeting tapering off on a note of bewildered surprise demanded his attention and got it. Whereupon his own brows were raised in surprise, for Leonard Cliff entered the room like a thundercloud, somber, grim and menacing.

  Chapter 14

  Fox, standing, said, “Hello there.”

  Cliff looked square at him and said nothing. Amy, having closed the door, came around Cliff and looked at him, with no shine in her eyes or flu
sh on her cheeks.

  “What,” she faltered, “what has happened?”

  “Nothing.” Cliff bit the word off savagely. “Nothing much. If you two are talking business, I won’t—”

  “But Leonard—what’s the matter?”

  “I just came to ask if it’s true that you’re a detective working for Dol Bonner. That she assigned you to work on me. That your—my car hitting you was a fake. That the whole thing was a fake!” His voice pitched into harshness. “Well? Answer me!”

  “My lord,” Amy said in a very small voice.

  He barked at her, “Answer me!”

  “Really, Cliff,” Fox intervened, “that’s no way—”

  It was a mistake in judgment, for Cliff had a more precarious grip on his self-control than his appearance indicated. With his teeth clenched in sudden ungovernable rage, he hauled off and started his fist for Fox’s jaw. It met nothing but air. Fox ducked, sidestepped, collapsed like a folding stool, and was sitting on the floor with his legs crossed. Cliff recovered his balance and his stance and glared down at him:

  “Get up! I didn’t hit you! Get up!”

  Fox shook his head. “Oh, no. That’s the trick. You can’t hit me while I’m sitting on the floor, and if you try kicking me, I warn you that my next trick won’t be so comical. If you’ll take my advice—”

  “I don’t want your advice! I don’t want—”

  “Leonard!” Amy implored him. “This is so—so foolish—”

  “Is it?” He faced her grimly. “You’re wrong. This is where it stops being foolish! There’s been a lot of talk about making a monkey out of me. By that damn clown. You didn’t talk about it, you just did it! I ask you! Didn’t you? I ask you!”

  “No, I didn’t. I wouldn’t ever—want to make a monkey out of you—”

  “No? I’ve asked you a question! Will you answer it? Did you deliberately fake that meeting with me because you were assigned to work on me? Inspector Damon has told me you did. I’ve asked Dol Bonner and she admits it. Now I—” His face worked and he tried to arrange it. “Now I ask you! Did you?”

  “Yes,” Amy said. She was meeting his blazing eyes. “That was a fake. But it stopped being a fake—soon—even that very first time—”

  “You’re a liar!”

  “I am not a liar, Leonard.”

  His jaw opened and he clamped it shut again. For a fraction of a second the flame of anger and resentment in his eyes gave way to a weaker and more desperate gleam, a gleam of credulous hope; then that was in turn replaced by dull despair and disbelief. “By God, look at you,” he said bitterly. “You’re good. No wonder you took me in! Right now you look as sweet and true and lovely—if I didn’t know—”

  It seemed that it was all over and that he could no further trust his strength to resist such blandishments even knowing they were false, for he turned abruptly and headed for the door. But after only three steps, just as Amy began a movement, he wheeled and faced her again.

  “You expect me to believe it stopped being a fake,” he said hoarsely. “God knows I’d like to. There’s nothing in the world I’d like to believe as much as that! For hours I’ve been thinking about it, going over every minute, every little thing that happened. A week ago tonight, here in this room—do you remember—that was the most beautiful—”

  “Yes, it was, Leonard.”

  “It was to me. What was it to you? A fake? I’ve gone back over every minute. That evening dancing at the Churchill—do you remember that? Or even the very first time, when we were driving around after dinner—that first time you let me touch your hand—the way you looked and the way I felt—right then you were suspecting me of being a crook and a damned scoundrel and working on me! You admit that was a fake! Then it all was! It is right now! What do you want out of me now? You’re not getting paid to work me anymore. Why did you say I could come here tonight? Why don’t you lay off and tell me to go to hell?”

  “I don’t want anything out of you—”

  “Oh, yes, you do! You bungled your job and got suspected of murder, you lady detective, and you need my help—”

  “No!” Amy’s eyes snapped. “If you can think that—”

  “Miss Duncan!” Fox, who had quietly transshipped from the floor to a comfortable chair, spoke sharply. “Don’t make a brawl of it! The man’s in pain, and you gave it to him. It may take a couple of sessions to remove all traces of doubt, but the least you can do now, in common decency, is to look him in the eye and tell him you are madly and hopelessly in love with him. Don’t you realize the condition he’s in? When he came and saw me here, he was so jealous he tried to sock me.”

  There were spots of color on Amy’s cheeks. “After what he just accused me of,” she declared with spirit, “I’m more apt to say I’m madly and hopelessly in love with you.”

  “No no. Climb down. You deserved more than you got. You were a lady detective and you were working on him. If I were in his place I wouldn’t completely trust you until after the honeymoon.”

  “What—what I said—” Cliff, still hoarse, was stammering. “There is no—what I said—I don’t believe—”

  “You will,” said Fox shortly. “If there was nothing worse than this to worry about, but there is. You spoke of Miss Duncan’s being suspected of murder. She was, vaguely. But if two people tell the police what they’ve just told me, it won’t be vague anymore. She’ll probably be charged, locked up, and held without bail.”

  They stared at him.

  Amy sat down on a corner of the sofa. “But—what could anyone—”

  Cliff demanded, in an entirely new tone of voice, “What’s this, a gag?”

  “No. I don’t make gags about charges of murder. I’ve seen a man electrocuted. Nor am I trying to make smoke without a fire, just to see if someone will choke—Miss Duncan, look at me, please, you can look at him later. I want to know what’s wrong with your recital of what happened while you were in that building Tuesday evening.”

  Amy met his gaze. “There’s nothing wrong with it,” she said stoutly.

  Fox grunted. “You said that you entered the building, went straight upstairs, turning on lights on the way, found the door of Tingley’s office open, heard no voices or other sounds and saw no one, got to the edge of the screen and knew no more until you came to on the floor, got out as soon as you could navigate, and came straight here. Do you maintain that that’s the truth and the whole truth?”

  “I do.”

  “You’re not going to change any of that this side of death?”

  “I am not.”

  “All right. You, Mr. Cliff. I won’t repeat your story, as you’ll probably prefer to tell Miss Duncan about it yourself—”

  “I doubt if she’ll be interested—”

  “Okay. You handle that part of it. What I want to know is, how much of it was true and how much wasn’t.”

  “It was all true.”

  “You’re sticking to that?”

  “I certainly am.”

  “In spite of the statement I made a minute ago?”

  “In spite of everything.” Cliff was frowning uneasily. “But if Miss Duncan—I mean, I thought that was helping her—”

  “So did I. And if you want to be gallant and lie to the police or a judge and jury to protect a lady detective, that’s your affair, I have no objection. But understand this, you’re an idiot if you lie to me. I want the truth.”

  “You have it. I resent—”

  “Go ahead and resent.” Fox arose and went for his hat and coat, returned, and included them both in a glance. “If you ask Nat Collins in the morning, he may tell you what happened today that puts Miss Duncan in real and imminent danger of being arrested for murder. I have stopped telling anyone anything. I still do not believe that either of you was involved in Tingley’s death, but someone is lying for a world’s record, and until I find out who it is I won’t feel like talking. Good night.”

  Fox turned and strode out.

  On the stre
et in front, he sat in his car for twenty minutes with his arms folded, his head hanging, and his eyes closed. At the end of that time he jerked himself straight, muttered, “It’s either that or let the cops do it,” and started the engine.

  But he didn’t find Philip Tingley at the Womon office on Sixth Avenue. The result of his visit there was in fact entirely negative, for the man who ate too much was so unfriendly and uncommunicative that it needed no great perspicuity to guess that he and Miss Adams had been spoken to about divulging the identity of the ten-thousand-dollar contributor. But Phil wasn’t there, so Fox left, sought a phone booth, called the Tingley residence and got another negative result, and drove to 914 East 29th Street.

  The door in the vestibule of that dismal tenement was not unlatched as it had been before. Fox considered a moment, punched the first button in a row on the righthand side, and put his hand against the door, ready to push at the first click. When the click came he was inside like a flash and on his way up the dimly lighted stairs. Just short of the first landing he halted, waited till he heard a door open below, called down, “Thanks very much, forgot my key!” and resumed the ascent. Four flights up, he knocked on the door in the rear, stood hoping for the favor of one little break, and got it. Steps sounded from within and he got his weight ready to oppose reluctance, but that wasn’t necessary. The door swung wide and Philip Tingley was there. He scowled when he saw who it was, and without a word started the door on a return journey, but it was obstructed by Fox’s hundred and seventy pounds after only ten degrees of its arc.

  “Get out!” Phil demanded sullenly. “You can’t pull any rough stuff with me!”

  Fox, resolved not to commit another costly blunder in his relations with this six-foot bony eel, refrained from pushing past him for fear he might make a dash for the stairs and the street. Instead, he pushed against him, crowding him back to make room for closing the door; and got a surprise when Phil suddenly and astonishingly displayed capabilities as a man of action. Long arms shot out and long bony fingers gripped Fox’s throat, and the grip was anything but puny. Fox went for the wrists and got them, but to his amazement they were immovable; he was gagging and choking and the muscles of his neck were helpless; a terrific stifling pain was in his constricted gullet and his eyes were going to pop out. He abandoned the wrists, hooked his right elbow, and crashed his fist against Phil’s jaw, but the blow was glancing and lost most of its force through the interference of Phil’s biceps. Fox hooked again, this time cutting up from beneath between the two arms, straight for the button, and that did it. Phil’s head snapped up with a noise like a spasmodic snore, his grip loosened, and he staggered back.