The Rynox Mystery

by Philip MacDonald

  The face seemed to come nearer. It was almost through the pigeon-hole. Mr Musgrove recoiled; once more felt his chair rock beneath him.

  ‘I didn’t,’ said the harsh voice, which seemed to find trouble with English r’s, though none with English idiom, ‘I didn’t ask for today’s performance. I asked about tomorrow!’

  ‘Oh! Er … I’m sorry!’ Mr Musgrove babbled. ‘I’m sorry. I’m afraid I didn’t catch what—’

  ‘Cut it out! Have you or have you not three stalls for tomorrow night’s performance?’

  ‘Tomorrow, sir, tomorrow?’ said Mr Musgrove. ‘Three stalls, sir, three stalls. Would you like them in the middle, sir, at the back, or in the front at the side … I have a nice trio in H—’

  ‘I don’t care,’ said the voice, ‘in the least where the hell the damn seats are! All I want is three stalls. Give ’em to me and tell me how much they are so that I can get away from your face. It’s not a pleasant face, I should say, at the best of times. This morning it’s an indecency.’

  Mr Musgrove flushed to the top of his maculate forehead. The tips of his ears became a dark purple colour. As he said to the boys that evening: ‘D’you know, you chaps, if it had been any other sort of man, well, I’d have been out of that office and set about him in half a second. You know me! But as it was, well, believe me or believe me not, I just couldn’t move. I was rooted! All I could do was to give him his three seats and take his money. You see some odd customers in my job, but I’ve never seen such an odd one as that before and I don’t want to see another one like it. Horrible old bloke! Sort of nasty, sinister way to him, and what with that beard and those dark glasses and that limp—he sort of seemed to drag his left leg after him and yet go pretty fast—he was a horrible sort of chap! I’m going to look out for him tomorrow night and see what sort of company he’s got … Thanks, Ted; mine’s a port and lemon. Cheerioski!’

  COMMENT THE FIRST

  NOT a pleasant person, Mr Marsh. Little Ockleton—where he has had a weekending cottage for the past six months—cannot abide him. Nor can any one, it seems, with whom he comes into contact. And how he dislikes having to pay excess postage—or was that outburst more by reason of his feelings towards the sender of that particular letter?

  SEQUENCE THE SECOND

  Thursday, March 28th, 193— 12.30 p.m. to 3.30 p.m.

  THE offices of RYNOX (Unlimited) are in New Bond Street. A piece of unnecessary information this, since all the world knows it, but it serves to get this Sequence started.

  Up the white marble steps of Rynox House—RYNOX themselves use only one floor in the tall, narrow, rather beautiful building—there walked, at 12.30 in the early afternoon of this Thursday, Francis Xavier Benedik—‘F. X.’ to his many friends and few but virulent enemies.

  The door-keeper, a thin, embittered person with the name of Butterflute, smiled. The effort seemed—as F. X. had once indeed remarked—to sprain the poor man’s face. But smile he did. Everybody smiled at F. X.—except those few but very bitter enemies. F. X. paused upon the top step.

  ‘’Morning, Sam,’ he said.

  ‘Good-morning, sir,’ said Butterflute.

  ‘How’s the sciatica?’

  ‘Something chronic, sir.’

  ‘That’s a bad job. How’s the family?’

  ‘Not too well, sir,’ said Butterflute. ‘Wife’s confined again; I dunno ’ow she does it! Me boy got three weeks yesterday, for D. and D. in charge of a motor car, and me daughter—well, sir—’

  F. X. was grave and sympathetic, also determined. ‘Damned hard luck, Butterflute. Damned hard! Anything you want, just let me know, will you?’

  Butterflute touched his cap. ‘Yes, sir. I will that, sir. Thank you, sir.’

  F. X. went on and through the main doors and so along the corridor to the lift; a tall, burly but trim, free-striding figure which might have been from the back that of an athletic man of thirty. It was only when you saw his face that you realised that F. X. was a hard-living, hard-working, hard case of fifty-five. You realised that, and you were quite wrong. Wrong about the age, anyhow, for this day was the sixty-seventh birthday of Francis Xavier Benedik. But whatever your guess, whoever you were—unless indeed you were one of those few but very violent enemies—you loved F.X. on sight. He was so very much the man that all the other men who looked at him would have liked to have been. He had obviously so much behind him of all those things of which, to be a man, a man must have had experience.

  ‘’Morning, sir!’ said Fred. Fred was the liftboy. In direct contrast to Butterflute Fred did not smile. You see, Fred otherwise always smiled, but Fred felt, as every one, that one must do something different for F.X. So instead of smiling, Fred looked grave and important.

  ‘’Morning, Frederick! Lovely day!’

  ‘It is that, Mr Benedik, sir. Beautiful day.’

  The lift purred softly and swiftly upwards. Frantic would-be passengers on the first, second and third floors were passed with a cool contempt. Had not Fred got RYNOX in his lift!

  The lift stopped. For other passengers Fred was wont to jerk the lift, being the possessor of rather a misguided sense of humour, but for F. X. Fred stopped the lift as a lift should be stopped; so smoothly, so gently, so rightly that for an appreciable instant the passenger was not aware of the stopping.

  At the gates F. X. paused. He said over his shoulder:

  ‘You look out for that girl, Frederick.’

  From between Fred’s stiffly upstanding cherry-coloured collar and Fred’s black-peaked cherry-coloured cap, Fred’s face shone like a four o’clock winter sun.

  ‘Beg pardon, sir?’ said Fred. ‘Which girl was you meanin’, sir?’

  ‘You can’t tell me, Fred! That little dark one; works on the first floor. Between you and me, you might tell her that their Enquiries door wants a coat of paint, will you? … She’s all right, Fred, but you want to look out for that sort with black eyes and gold hair.’

  The winter sun took on an even deeper shade.

  ‘Oh, Fred!’ said F.X.

  The lift shot downwards at the maximum of its speed.

  Past the big main doors upon this top floor—the big doors with their cunningly blazoned sign:

  RYNOX

  S. H. RICKFORTH

  ANTHONY X. BENEDIK

  F. X. BENEDIK

  went F. X., with his long, free stride which seemed somehow out of place in a city. Past these and past the next small door bearing the sign:

  RYNOX

  ENQUIRIES HERE

  and so to the modest mahogany door—the door which most people passing along this corridor thought was that of a lavatory. The handle of this door turned in F. X.’s fingers. He went in, shutting the door behind him.

  ‘’Morning, Miss Pagan. ’Morning, Harris.’ Thus F. X., hanging up his light grey, somehow dashing-looking hat.

  ‘Good-morning, Mr Benedik,’ said Miss Pagan, her sad, blond beauty illumined by one of her rare smiles.

  ‘’Morning, sir,’ said Harris.

  ‘Mr Rickforth in, Miss Pagan?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Benedik. I think he’s in your room. He said he wanted to see you particularly before you started work.’

  ‘Mr Anthony here?’

  ‘Not yet, Mr Benedik. Mr Anthony wired from Liverpool that he was coming in on the twelve-fifty; would you wait lunch for him?’

  F. X. crossed the room, stood with his fingers upon the baize door which separated this outer office of his from the corridor leading to the partners’ rooms.

  ‘Anything else, Miss Pagan?’ he said. ‘I don’t want you to come in with the letters just yet. Wait until I’ve seen Mr Rickforth.’

  ‘Very well, Mr Benedik.’ Another of Miss Pagan’s rare and sadly beautiful smiles. ‘No, nothing else except Mr Marsh.’

  A frown marred the pleasantness of the senior partner’s tanned face. ‘Marsh,’ he said. His voice grated on the ear. ‘Has he been bothering you?’

  Miss Pagan shrugged elegant shoulde
rs. ‘Well, not bothering, Mr Benedik, but he’s rung up twice this morning; the second time only five minutes before you got here. He seems to want you very urgently.’

  ‘Ever know him,’ growled F. X., ‘when he didn’t want to see me very urgently?’

  Miss Pagan shook her blond head. ‘I’ve never seen Mr Marsh, Mr Benedik. I must say, though, on the telephone he always does sound cross.’

  ‘Crosser than his letters?’ said F. X.

  ‘That,’ said Miss Pagan, ‘would be impossible … Anyhow, he said would you please telephone him as soon as you got here.’

  F. X. raised his eyebrows. ‘Number?’ he said.

  ‘I asked him for the number, Mr Benedik, and he wouldn’t give it.’ Miss Pagan’s eyebrows suggested that Mr Benedik should know by this time what Mr Marsh was like. ‘All he’d say was “the Kensington number”.’

  F. X. laughed, a snorting contemptuous laugh. ‘That’s like the fool!’ he said. ‘All right, I’ll get on to him. I’ll see Mr Rickforth now. I’ll ring when I want you, Miss Pagan.’

  2

  ‘But good gracious me!’ said Rickforth. ‘My dear Benedik, I daresay that I have not your push, your ability to handle big things courageously, but I do know, and I think that you know too, that I’m a man with a certain amount of business knowledge, and what I say, Benedik—’

  F. X., whose gravity throughout this interview had amounted to more than sadness, suddenly grinned. The whole man, with that flash of white teeth, shed twenty hard-fought years. He said:

  ‘Sam, my boy, when you clasp your hands over that pot-belly of yours and start calling me Benedik, I can’t help it, but I want to kick your bottom. You know, Sam, the trouble with you is that you’ve got the ability of a Hatry, the tastes of a sexless Nero, and the conscience of an Anabaptist minister. You’re a mess, Sam, an awful mess, but you’re not a bad fellow as long as you don’t hold your belly and call me Benedik, and’—momentarily the smile faded—‘and as long as you don’t try to teach F. X. Benedik his job. Good Lord, man, don’t you think that I know what state the business is in? You seem to forget, as a matter of fact, that I made the damn business. I know how deep we are in it, but I know, too, how high we’re going to soar out of it after this waiting business is over, so for God’s sake stop moaning. If you want to get out, get out! Go for a holiday or something. Go and hold your belly in a cinema. Don’t come here and try to make that fat face of yours all long. I can’t stand it and I won’t!’

  Samuel Harvey Rickforth laughed; but it was a laugh that had in it an undercurrent of fear.

  ‘My dear F. X.,’ he said, ‘I’m not being what I suppose you’d call “a wet sock.” I’m merely trying to show you the sensible point of view. RYNOX gave up practically all their other interests for the Paramata Synthetic Rubber Company. You did it. You backed your own judgment and we, very naturally, followed you. But even at the time—at the beginning, I mean—I freely confess I got nervous. I thought to myself, can he pull it off? … What’s the matter? …’

  F. X. had sunk into an armchair of deep and yielding leather. His long legs were thrust stiffly out before him. A large white silk handkerchief covered his face. His hands were folded over his chest in the manner of a sleeping Crusader. From under the handkerchief his voice came hollow:

  ‘Nothing’s the matter. Go on, Samuel, go on!’

  Again Rickforth laughed. ‘It’s all very well,’ he said, ‘but I will finish. It’s my opinion, F. X., and I’m not joking, that you’ve done what you’d call “bitten off more than you can chew.” Look at us, overdrawn here, overdrawn there; creditors beginning to get uneasy, and what are we waiting for? Orders that may come but equally may not, and … and …’ His fat, well-to-do voice grew suddenly sharp. ‘And, F. X., RYNOX is unlimited! You would have it, and it is, and whereas I might not say all this if we were a limited company, as a partner in an unlimited company I must say all this.’

  The handkerchief flew a foot into the air as F. X. let out his pent breath. Suddenly he hoisted his bulky length from the chair, took two steps, and clapped a lean brown hand—which to Samuel Harvey Rickforth felt like the end of a steel crane—upon Samuel Harvey Rickforth’s shoulder.

  ‘My dear Sam!’ said F. X., ‘if you don’t know me by this time well enough to know that I wouldn’t let a blue-nose go into your house and sell your glass while you’re drinking out of it, you’re an old fathead! Now, for God’s sake, go out, buy yourself a couple of bottles of Pol Roget ’19 and charge ’em down to the travellers’ expenses. And when you come back, for God’s sake come back cheerful. I’ve got enough troubles without seeing those podgy hands of yours clasping that obscenity you call a stomach. What you wear those buff waistcoats for, I can’t make out! They only accentuate it. What you want, Sam, is a bit more of your daughter’s spirit. If I were to tell Peter what you’ve been saying this morning—’

  ‘I say, F. X., you wouldn’t do that, would you?’ Mr Rickforth was alarmed.

  F. X. put back his head and laughed. ‘By God, Sam! I believe I’ve got you!’ he said. ‘I haven’t tried it before, but I’ll try it now. If I have any more of this S.O.S. stuff, I’ll tell Tony and then you’ll get it hot all round. Now, buzz off, you old blight!’

  Rickforth went, but the door was only just closed behind him when it opened again. It admitted his round pink-and-white face, somehow frightened-looking under the ivory white sheen of his baldness.

  ‘I say, F. X.’ said the face, ‘you won’t really tell Peter, will you? I mean, damn it, business is business …’

  The 193—edition of the Directory of Directors smote the door with all its half-hundredweight of matter one-tenth of a second after Samuel Harvey Rickforth had closed it.

  F. X. reached out for the telephone; picked it up; lay back in the chair with the receiver at his ear and the body of the instrument cuddled closely against his chest. He always spoke. like many men who have lived at least half their lives, in very different places from city offices, very loudly over the telephone. ‘Kensington,’ he shouted, ‘four-double-nine-nine-oh … Is that Kensington four-double-nine-nine-oh? …’ His voice was thunderous. ‘Can I speak to Mr Marsh? … Eh? … What’s that? … Mr Marsh, I said. M for Marjorie, A for Ambrose Applejohn, R for rotten, S for sausage, H for How-d’ye-do … Marsh … Oh, right. I’ll hold on.’

  He reached out a long arm, the receiver still at its end, and pressed that one of the buttons on his desk which would bring Miss Pagan. When Miss Pagan came he was talking again. He was saying:

  ‘Well, certainly, we’ve got to get this matter settled. I can’t make you see reason by writing, so I suppose we’d better meet. Now, I’m very busy. I suggest we should meet some evening, as soon as you like. Not tonight. I’ve got a dinner party. Tomorrow night, say. Just a moment, I’ll ask my secretary … All right, keep your shirt in! Keep your shirt in! Keep letting it hang out like that and you’ll be arrested for exhibitionism.’

  He looked up from the telephone, clasping the mouthpiece firmly to his waistcoat.

  ‘Miss Pagan,’ he said, ‘got my book?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Benedik.’ Miss Pagan’s tone was faintly injured. Of course she had his book.

  ‘Am I doing anything tomorrow night?’

  ‘There’s nothing in this book, Mr Benedik.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know of anything,’ said Benedik; then into the telephone: ‘Marsh, still there? … Look here, Marsh, I’m free tomorrow night. Come along to my house and see me, will you? And I want to assure you that we’re going to settle. You worry the life out of me and you worry the life out of my people and your voice is beastly over the telephone anyhow! Understand what I’m talking about? I’m going to settle! Are you free tomorrow night? … Right, ten o’clock suit you? … Right. Well, come to my place ten o’clock … What’s that? … You great sap, you know damn well where I live. Oh, well, perhaps you’re right, perhaps I never told you; thought you might come round worrying the servants or something. 4 William Pitt
Street, West one … No, Mayfair … Yes, come through the market if you’re coming from the Piccadilly side. Four. That’s right … Right, ten o’clock tomorrow night. Good-bye!’

  He replaced the receiver with a savage click; set the telephone down upon his desk with a bang. ‘And,’ he said, looking at it, ‘God blast you!’ He looked up at Miss Pagan. ‘Shove that down, will you? Ten p.m., house—for tomorrow this is, you understand—ten p.m., house, Marsh. And put it in big red capital letters. And I’d like to tell you this, Miss Pagan, that if ever that’—he drew a deep breath—‘if ever that person—I can’t say more in front of a gently nurtured English girl—if ever he puts his wart-hog’s nose in this office after tomorrow night, you have my instructions to crown him with the heaviest thing you can lay your hands on. And if he rings up, ring off … Mr Anthony back yet?’

  ‘Not yet, Mr Benedik. Shall I ask him to come and see you as soon as he gets in?’

  ‘Please,’ said F. X. ‘And now you might bring me that last lot of composers’ reports from Lisbon, and tell Mr Woolrich to come and see me.’

  The Lisbon reports had been brought and read and digested before Woolrich came. Twice F. X., now alone, had looked at his watch before there came a soft tapping upon the door and round its edge Woolrich’s sleek fair head.

  F. X. looked up. He said:

  ‘Enter Secretary and Treasurer with shamefaced look. And you’d better hurry, too.’

  Woolrich came in.

  ‘I’m awfully sorry, sir,’ he said. ‘Afraid I missed my train this morning. I’d been down to … down to … to the country.’

  F. X. looked at him. F. X., after one frosty instant, smiled. ‘You’re always,’ he said, ‘going down to the country. You know, Woolrich, you ought to be careful of that country. I’m not sure it’s doing you much good … in fact, if you weren’t such a damned good man I should have a great deal more to say about the country … Sit down!’

  Woolrich moved over to the big chair at the far side of the desk. He was a tall and broad-shouldered and exquisitely-dressed person of an age difficult to determine. He might have been anything between twenty-five and forty. Actually he was thirty-six. His tan was as deep almost as F. X.’s own, and his ash-blond hair was bleached by the sun and open air … but under the startlingly blue eyes were dark and lately almost permanent half-moons.