Rex Stout (5 page)

“She was there during my talk with my wife—most of it. She heard that. My wife insinuated that the wedding might take place next month, next week, tomorrow. Janet is twenty-six years old. She sat and looked at her mother with the devoted expression—you’ve seen it. It would be useless my saying anything to her. I am a complete failure with my daughter. I have never yet understood one word of anything she has ever said, and only my own vanity has kept me persuaded that she may be sane. And yet she has poetry published in magazines, and she graduated from a college … but she can’t add, I’ve noticed that. But she’s my daughter, and she was not born and fed and educated to marry a scoundrel like Ranth. And it might be tomorrow! By heaven, it might! You know my wife. I can’t lock them in the cellar and feed them through a trapdoor. Can I?”

He spread out his hands. “I’m absolutely helpless, Miss Bonner. I’ve thought of everything. I’ve come to you. I want you to remove this Ranth.” He sat back.

Dol asked, with no visible smile, “You mean take him for a ride? Bump him off? I myself?”

Storrs didn’t smile either. He let down a little. “If he has to be killed, I could do that myself.” He was merely somber. “I mean get rid of him, I don’t care how. With all
her riding around on clouds, my wife is a stickler for conventional morality. Ranth’s past must be full of immoralities; prove it and discredit him. He may have been in jail; uncover it. He looks like he may be a Greek; that would probably do it; my wife thinks the Greeks are scum because they licked the Persians and upset their temples. That may sound funny, but it’s not, I got over that idea long ago, it may be anything else, but it’s not funny. But I want to suggest: you can start someone else on his record who knows how to go at it, and you can start directly on him. You can do that. Tell him you’re interested in this damned Sakti; get his mind off of Janet as soon as possible; tell him you’ve inherited a million dollars, but hold off on him and keep him working—I don’t need to tell you—I know you’re a clever woman. Maybe you can even ruin him whether we get him on his record or not. You can come out to my house this afternoon and start in; he’s always there Saturdays, you’d be sure to catch him around six o’clock, and you could make some kind of an appointment.… I’ll say I invited you. Or five-thirty …”

Storrs stopped, and scowled at her.

She sat regarding him. Storrs let the silence extend far beyond his usual limit, and then broke it:

“Well … Oh, would you like some cash? Retainer.”

“No, thanks.” Dol straightened her back, already straight. “So. Ranth has overplayed. That shows one weakness in him to begin with. Of course, Mr. Storrs, this is rather a nasty job, but if I’m going to be a detective I can’t expect to confine my contacts to saints and epicures. I’ll do it for you, but I’ll send you a stiff bill.”

“I’ll pay it.”

“Yes, I know you’re good pay. You know … it seems to me …” She hesitated, then went on, “Since you’re paying me, I suppose you should have the benefit of what I know as well as what I do. Your wife is a bluffer.”

“Bluffer?” Storrs was astonished. He snorted, “You’re not making a good start, Miss Bonner. Cleo Audrey Storrs a bluffer? If she once gets steam up on a track you might as well try to derail the Century by jumping in front of it.”

“Oh, no.” Dol shook her head. “I wish I had a nickel for every time you have given in when you didn’t need to.
Your domestic life has been one long series of unnecessary surrenders. You no more understand your wife than you do your daughter. Mrs. Storrs has many good points, of course you know that, in spite of her riding around on clouds and using your money to pay the wind for the ride—but she’s a colossal bluffer. I knew that long ago, the second time I visited Sylvia at your house.”

He gazed at her. “I don’t believe it.”

“You should. You’d find it a great help. For instance, take her threat of Ranth marrying Janet. She couldn’t possibly make that threat good if she wanted to, and she knows it. At least not until after Sylvia is married. Because Janet is deeply and passionately in love with Martin Foltz, and she isn’t the kind to resign all hope before the last breath.”

This time Storrs was too amazed to speak. He gaped at her. Then he actually stuttered: “M—M—Martin? Janet?”

Dol nodded. “You don’t believe that either.”

“My God, no!” He was forward in his chair. “But that—and Sylvia—that would be worse than Ranth—”

“Now, Mr. Storrs.” Dol was professionally soothing, in her lowest and nicest tone. “You’re all confused. It’ll work out all right. Your daughter Janet is exactly the type to get the best possible results, including a lot of poetry, out of an unrequited love, once hope is dead. Of course you’re thinking of Sylvia’s happiness—I know you approve of Martin and I suppose I do too, even if he is a man—but that isn’t going to be interfered with. Martin and Sylvia will get married and live happily ever after, and Janet will eat three meals a day and begin to get into anthologies. Not that her passion isn’t genuine, but there are lots of different kinds.”

Storrs muttered, “Passion. Janet.” Scowling with uncommon ferocity, he demanded, “How do you know this? Do you mean Martin has been at her?”

“Oh, goodness, no. Martin has had nothing to do with it. If all the women in the metropolitan district except Sylvia were sick in bed, he wouldn’t send a single flower. As for how I know, that wouldn’t do you any good. I do know. So the removal of Ranth isn’t quite as urgent as you thought. Do you still want me to start on it today?”

“I suppose so. Yes, I do.” Storrs abruptly stood up. “I have too much … too many …” He stared at Dol a
moment, apparently without knowing he was doing it, then turned and picked up his hat and coat. And Dol in turn stared at him, for, incredibly, he sounded pathetic: “I was going to play golf this afternoon. I can’t do that. There is no reason in God’s world why all this … this damnable …” He stopped, and started again: “I’m sorry, Miss Bonner. I’m usually coherent. I’ll see you at Birchhaven later? I’d like to see you when you come.”

She nodded. “Around six o’clock.”

He went. When she had heard the outer door close behind him she crossed to the picture of New Scotland Yard and told it: “If you watch me on this one you’ll get some pointers. This is going to be good.”

Birchhaven had formerly been a hundred and ninety acres; it was now eighty-five. When the chemical industry had reached the bottom of the trough in 1932 P. L. Storrs had been forced to adopt even more drastic expedients than permitting Sylvia Raffray to buy stock from the treasury of his corporation; among other things, he had sold more than half of the area of his estate to a development syndicate. Luckily they had not yet got around to developing, and he was now negotiating to buy it back. What was still his was the most desirable portion and included all the buildings; it held the wooded hill down to and beyond the brook, the winding drive and park and gardens, the shrub and evergreen plantings of his father’s time as well as his own, the pools, one for swimming and one for panfish and lilies, the stables, kennels, lawns and tennis court.

From the peak of the roof of the house, provided you could get there, you would see, for the distant view, ranks and files of far-off hills on two sides, to the east the sound,
and to the south the vague horizon flattening for New York and the ocean; for the foreground, mostly the groves and meadows of Birchhaven itself, except over and beyond the stables to the other side of the hill, where the more modest property of Martin Foltz could be reached by a ten-minute path through the trees.

When Dol Bonner, at six o’clock that Saturday afternoon, steered her coupe (one of the assets of Bonner & Raffray, Inc., soon to be dissolved) up the winding drive and onto the graveled space beyond the shrubbery bordering the terrace, she was surprised to hear sounds of activity from the direction of the tennis court. She decided to go there, since not to do so would perhaps occasion conjecture, and, nodding a greeting to Belden, the butler, who had emerged from the door, she banged the door of the car and set off along the path which pointed around the slope. She still wore the tan woolen dress, with a loose red jacket and a little brown hat which might or might not have seemed familiar to a Tyrolese.

She stopped short of the chairs and tables, unperceived. Sylvia and Len Chisholm were at combat on the court, using more energy for shouting epithets and defiance than for the combat itself. Janet Storrs stood near one end of the net, twirling a stem of goldenrod in her fingers. Martin Foltz lounged in a chair, apparently sunk in gloom, holding a glass which contained the remains of a tall drink. Steve Zimmerman, in another chair, was squinting through a sherry decanter at the sun low in the west, either admiring the color or ascertaining the level of the wine.

Dol walked across and brought up beside Foltz. “Hello, Martin. What is that, Irish?”

Foltz looked up at her without surprise and without welcome, being seemingly submerged in some medium which functioned as an insulator. He shook his head. “Bourbon. There may be Irish. The things are over there by Steve.”

Dol said pleasantly, “Grump.” A cry came:

“Hey! Theodolinda!”

The conflict on the court stopped abruptly, the ball rolling to the far end. Sylvia trotted across the boundary toward them, with Len Chisholm following. Sylvia was
calling, “Dol darling! You got lonesome for us? I’m beating the stuffing out of Len.”

Len was there. He had approached staggering, and now declared, “Theodolinda my love, you’re late. If you had come two hours ago I wouldn’t be drunk. I’m suffering.”

“He’s not drunk,” Sylvia said disdainfully. “It’s an alibi.”

Dol nodded. “It always is, with him. I’m thirsty—may I find some Irish and water to spread it out?” They moved to the table where the bottles and glasses were. Dol spoke to Zimmerman in his chair: “Hello, Steve, how are brains making out?” She went on, as Sylvia assembled her drink, “I thought you folks would be over at Martin’s. Wasn’t that the program? I stopped here for courtesy. Around one o’clock P. L. Storrs got magnanimous and telephoned me at the office to invite me out here—”

“Dol! Did he?” Sylvia extended the glass. “Did he say—did he take back what he told me this morning?”

“No, he didn’t go that far. He wasn’t retreating, he was just being tolerant. Anyway, he asked me to Birchhaven, so I thought I’d better come here before joining you at Martin’s. I stayed with Dick to the end of the matinee, sent him in a taxi to the Fergusons’, and drove here like a Valkyrie on wheels.” She took two healthy sips, nodded in approval, and sipped again. “And now I should find Mrs. Storrs for some more courtesy, since I’m having refreshment out of her glass. Didn’t you go to Martin’s after all?”

“Yes, we …” Sylvia bit her lip and waved a hand. “We were there. Men are fools. I know you think that
all
the time, but I have lapses. Len didn’t behave very well, and Martin tried to match him. We came away, and later Martin came. I suppose he and I aren’t speaking, but we soon will be.”

Len declared, loud enough to reach all around, “He’s plain dumb. Sylvia was trying to console me for your absence and for losing my job, and I was fighting her off. Martin started hissing and writhing, and since I only came—”

“Len, you gorilla!” Sylvia glared. “Martin does not hiss and writhe, he merely got mad—”

Len turned on volume: “—since I only came to do a grovel to P. L. Storrs, I took the path over here. He wasn’t
in the house and I couldn’t find him anywhere outdoors. I wandered around, and here came Sylvia. She entreated me to let her beat me at tennis, and sent for drinks.” He smirked extravagantly at Dol. “I tell you all this because I don’t want you to lose any of your illusions about me. If you lose your illusions our whole romance falls flat. I haven’t a thought—how about it, Miss Storrs? You’ve been here the past half hour, haven’t you observed that every time I took a drink—”

“Shut up, Len.” Dol widened the circle. “How’ve you been, Janet? Don’t mind him. What a nice dress—that scarf thing—did Cora Lane do it?”

Janet Storrs said yes. She was taller than either Dol or Sylvia, and not at all bad-looking, in spite of a nose rather large for her face—whether from adenoids or from patrician blood. Her gray eyes were sleepy—or perhaps smouldering, her chin somewhat pointed, her neck and shoulders magnificent but stiffish, her movements slow legato. She did successfully achieve mystery; it would have been difficult to say on brief acquaintance whether she was Valkyrie, or viper, or merely an unemployed young woman who stayed in bed too late of mornings. Her voice was a thin soprano which was not especially pleasant, but with a quality of modulation which caught attention.

The three girls chattered. Len Chisholm sidled to the table, mixed a highball, and stood holding it, looking down into the face of Steve Zimmerman, who returned the gaze without any indication of his usual interest in physiognomies. Len carefully and deliberately winked at him, shrugged broad shoulders, swallowed half of his drink, then winked at Zimmerman again. Zimmerman, without any change of expression, said distinctly: “Paranoiac.”

Len growled at him, “Melancholia. Dementia praecox. Schizo-something. Dual personality. Triple, quadruple, quintuple, and on up. I know words too. Go climb a tree.” He turned his back and stood moving his glass in a rapid circle to make the ice go around.

Martin Foltz, in his chair at a distance, submerged in his medium, had not moved or spoken. But he was now disturbed by compulsion. There was the sound of footsteps on the gravel path, and voices, and a man and woman
appeared; and since the woman was the hostess of Birchhaven, Foltz perforce lifted himself to his feet. He moved, spoke, took Mrs. Storrs’ hand and bowed over it; but was curt to the man: “Hullo, Ranth.” They moved on to the others, and he sat down again.

Mrs. Storrs greeted everyone, and even thought to introduce Chisholm and Ranth. She was sociable and urbane, but her voice never really put anyone at ease, by reason of an intensity which was invariable with it. It was not shortness of breath; rather, it seemed that her diaphragm formed a compression chamber which needed a larger valve than her throat afforded. Her eyes had intensity too; they were never casual; there was obviously something unique and unforgettable about everything and everyone she looked at. But even so, Dol Bonner thought there was more strain, both to the eyes and the voice of Mrs. Storrs, than common, and she hoped that Storrs, on arriving home, had not himself been indiscreet.