Rex Stout (9 page)

Dol said wearily, “I know it. Quit arguing, I’ll tell you.”

Colonel Brissenden grunted. Sherwood said, “Oh. You’ve changed your mind.”

“Yes. I’ve thought it over. I’ll explain.… I haven’t any idea who killed Storrs. I found that paper there, that promissory note, and then I made Ranth give it up when he tried to get away with it, but I knew that didn’t prove he had killed Storrs. I have no use for Ranth, but because I had done all that, I thought it might be doing him an injustice if I told you what Storrs asked me to come out here for.”

Brissenden growled, “We’ll handle the justice.” Sherwood asked, “Well?”

“Well … as you know, I am a detective. I run a licensed detective agency. Storrs came to my office yesterday at one o’clock and said that Ranth was getting too much money from his wife and he wanted to stop it. He engaged me to look up Ranth’s record and discredit him if possible. Also to go after him myself and see what could be done. He put it that he wanted to get rid of Ranth, get him away from Mrs. Storrs, by any feasible means short of murder. He said that if it came to murder he would do it himself. Of
course that was only a man talking.” Dol glanced from the attorney to the colonel and back again. “And you understand that his objection to Ranth was only on financial and—well, call it spiritual—grounds. Ranth is the founder and promoter of a thing called the League of the Occidental Sakti, and he gets money—”

Sherwood nodded impatiently and put up a hand. “I know all that. I’ve heard of Ranth before. We’ve got some of his record and we’re getting the rest.” He squinted at her. “So Storrs wanted to hire you to get rid of Ranth?”

“He did hire me.”

“And that’s what you came out here for yesterday? What were you going to do?”

“I don’t know. Nothing definite.” Dol lifted her shoulders and dropped them. “I was going to look at him.”

“You had seen him before, hadn’t you?”

“Certainly, several times.”

“But you wanted to look at him.” Sherwood slowly rubbed his plump cheek. “Of course you realize, Miss Bonner, it never hurts any kind of a statement, no matter who makes it, to be backed up by corroboration. You realize that. For instance, since Storrs hired you, I suppose he paid you a retainer? In cash, or a check?”

“No, he didn’t. He asked me if I wanted one, and I said no.”

Brissenden grunted, and when Dol glanced at him she met an unbelieving stare. Sherwood was saying, “That’s too bad. Was anyone else present at your conversation with Storrs?”

“No. We were alone in my office. My secretary had gone home.”

“I see. Did you and Storrs discuss anything else? Anything besides his hiring you to get rid of Ranth?”

“No.”

“Nothing whatever?”

“No.”

“Search your memory, Miss Bonner.” Sherwood leaned toward her. “You will reflect that we are investigating a murder, and it was you who furnished the first demonstration of proof that it was murder. You did not attempt to retire behind the shield of feminine delicacy and horror.
You have offered us two strong points against Ranth: that paper yesterday, and your story here about Storrs’ hostility towards him. If Ranth did it we’ll get him. All that can be done is being done. But we can’t afford to overlook anything, and we’re not going to. As you know, I spent five hours here last night asking questions of everybody concerned, and there are things that need explanation, and I expect you to help explain them if you can. Search your memory. Are you sure that Storrs said nothing to you yesterday about a visit made to his office that morning by Steve Zimmerman?”

“Yes. He said nothing about it.”

“Didn’t mention it?”

“No.”

“And are you sure that he said nothing about threats that had been made against his life by Leonard Chisholm?”

“Threats—” Dol looked astonished. Then she looked contemptuous. “Rubbish.”

Sherwood calmly agreed: “Quite possibly. I’m aware that men are constantly declaring their readiness to kill other men; it’s a universal safety valve; I do it myself. But the point here is that Storrs did get killed. That’s why it may not be rubbish. I am informed that Chisholm stated specifically that he would strangle Storrs, and that you heard him say it. Is that correct?”

“It is. I think it is also irrelevant.”

“That may be. Did Storrs mention Chisholm’s threats at your office yesterday?”

“No.” Dol was getting irritated. “How could he? He couldn’t possibly have heard of it—unless Martin Foltz telephoned him as soon as he left my office with Chisholm and Miss Raffray, and that is inconceivable. There are some things that some men don’t do. Martin Foltz wouldn’t do that.”

“But Chisholm might have previously made the same threat direct to Storrs. He could have phoned him or called on him. Couldn’t he?”

“No.—Oh, I suppose he could. Did he?”

“He says not. If he did, and anyone heard it, we’re likely to find it out. The New York police are co-operating with
us. What I am asking you is, did Storrs mention such a threat, or anything about Chisholm, to you?”

“No. Chisholm wasn’t mentioned.”

“I see. You expect me to believe that.”

Dol opened her mouth, then clamped it shut. After a moment she spoke with complete composure: “Yes, Mr. Sherwood. I expect you to believe everything I say.”

Brissenden suddenly and explosively barked, “Take her down! You’re wasting time, Dan! The others too! You’ve got to turn on some heat!” The middle-aged man, startled, jerked up his head so violently that his spectacles slid down on his nose. Simultaneously an interruption came from the door. There was a knock, and the trooper opened it to admit a bulky man in a dark blue suit with his hat in his hand who looked like what he was, a county detective. He crossed to the table and nodded separately to the colonel and the attorney. Sherwood asked, “Well?”

The man’s voice was husky, flat, and utterly without hope: “I had an idea I thought I ought to tell you about.”

“You mean you’ve found something?”

“Not exactly found something, no, sir. I’ve been working the places to the north and east, like you said, with Mullins. We haven’t really dug up anything. There’s a guy owns a cottage over towards Sumac Knolls that’s as crazy as a loon, but he was on the sound all day yesterday. What I wanted to tell you: Mullins and I was talking with a couple of wops that work on Foltz’s place, down the hill, north. Foltz keeps a lot of pheasants and hares, and there’s been something funny going on all summer. It started about the middle of May—”

Sherwood stopped him with a gesture. “I know all about that. The strangled pheasants. What about it?”

“Well, the wops thought it was quite a coincidence. Strangling going on there all summer, off and on, and now all of a sudden a man gets strangled. It looks like it’s in the air, and it looks like there might be some connection … some kind of a tie-up we could look into.…” The detective stopped, looking even more frustrated than he had before. He muttered disconsolately, “If you want me and Mullins to follow it up …”

“Was that your idea?”

“Yeah, that was it.”

This was a case where severity was obviously deserved, and Sherwood supplied it. Since he was engaged on an important and difficult murder case and time was precious, he made it short, but not ambiguous. The detective received it as if it was no worse than he had expected, without any notable change of expression, acknowledged with a nod the attorney’s orders to continue to follow the instructions that had been given him, and departed.

Sherwood said, “You talk about material, Colonel. You talk about
esprit de corps
. But we’ll untangle it, you’ll see.” He turned to Dol: “You mustn’t mind Colonel Brissenden. He’s an army man, and he’s impatient. He hears you say things that are hard for him to believe—and, frankly, I agree with him.” He leaned forward again, looking directly into Dol’s eyes, in no wise affected or disconcerted by the remarkable combination of caramel irises and jet lashes. “Is it true that you had seriously offended Mr. Storrs?”

Dol returned his gaze. “I see. So Sylvia—but why shouldn’t she tell you that? Naturally she would. The poor girl is sunk in remorse.”

“Obviously. My question, Miss Bonner.”

“Yes. Mr. Storrs had been offended … at me, at his ward, Miss Raffray, at both of us … no matter.”

“But it does matter.” Sherwood’s voice sharpened. “There was a violent scene yesterday morning between Storrs and Miss Raffray. She has described it to us. He spoke of Zimmerman, who had just visited him. He spoke of getting Chisholm fired from his job. He spoke of you with deep rancor—”

“I don’t believe that,” Dol snapped. “I don’t believe Miss Raffray told you that. She’s upstairs. Call her.”

Sherwood gestured impatiently. “You don’t like ‘rancor.’ Call it animosity, disapproval, whatever you please. The fact is that Storrs vehemently insisted that Miss Raffray should stop associating with you, and she—”

“I don’t believe that either. She didn’t tell you that. He insisted that she should sever her connections with the detective business.”

“All right, then he did that. He was violently angry because his name and his ward’s name had been disgraced
by publicity connecting them with that business. He demanded that she should immediately cease any association with you in that business. He made a vital point of it and expressed himself with positiveness and deep feeling. And in the face of all that”—Sherwood raised a finger and shook it at her for emphasis—“do you expect me to believe that within two hours after his scene with Miss Raffray, Storrs went to your office to ask you to do a confidential job for him, without once mentioning the injury you had done him? You have said that you and Storrs discussed nothing whatever but his hiring you to get rid of Ranth.” Sherwood threw up his hands. “Do you wonder that Colonel Brissenden says we should take you down?”

“Oh, my lord.” Dol sounded disgusted, and was. “That’s what you’ve been building up to. Mr. Sherwood, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

Brissenden growled, “Don’t let her get cute.”

“That’s what I’ve been building up to,” Sherwood told her emphatically. “You can’t minimize it. Storrs had ruined your business by depriving it of financial support and of a partner who had valuable connections. I’m not being fantastic. I’m not suggesting that to get revenge, and to remove his opposition, you came out here and murdered him. But I do believe that you and he discussed something besides his hiring you to do a job, and I want to know what it was.”

“I see.” Dol regarded him. She considered. “I still think you should be ashamed of yourself, but I see how your mind works. Because I said we discussed nothing but the job, and because it seems unnatural that we shouldn’t mention the rumpus about Miss Raffray, you think I’m deliberately lying. That may be logical, but it’s darned silly. We may have discussed the weather, too. We did mention the rumpus, briefly. He accused me of a tantrum and I told him I never had one. He brushed that aside and said that the fact that he disapproved of Miss Raffray being in the detective business had nothing to do with his admiration of my abilities and competence, and he wanted me to do a job. Then we discussed the job.” Dol bent toward him earnestly. “Honestly, Mr. Sherwood, I hate to see you wasting time on me like this. You have a lot to do. It begins
to look as if the man who murdered Storrs avoided any foolish mistake, and had no bad luck. If you’re going to find him, and find proof against him, you have your hands full.”

Sherwood stared at her thoughtfully. He turned to Colonel Brissenden and raised his brows inquiringly. Brissenden thrust at him: “Never believe anything a woman says when she’s in a hole.”

Dol used her coolest tone: “You’re being silly, Colonel. I dislike all men anyway, and I particularly dislike men in uniforms with military titles, because I detest war. I am not in a hole. A man got me in a hole once, and no man is going to do it again.” She shifted her level gaze to Sherwood without interrupting the flow of her oration: “I presume you’re being thorough and looking up the history of all of us who have got caught here by this thing. You will find out, if you haven’t already, that mine is pathetic and banal. It followed an old and trite formula. A man loved me and wanted me, and I loved and wanted him. I wore his ring and I was a proud and happy girl, waiting decorously for the day. The day never came, because my father met ruin and killed himself, and I was a poor girl instead of a rich one. He got his ring back. The banality of it didn’t make the pain any less, though you might have thought it would have. I tell you this because it is certainly no secret and you’ll be hearing of it anyway, and to let you know that I am still crawling out of that hole and no man is going to get me into another one. No kind of a hole. So for goodness’ sake, don’t waste time trying to push me into one.—You, Mr. Brissenden, I dislike you very much. You are the north wind type, there is nothing to you but velocity; in anything requiring insight or subtlety, you are merely a nuisance.—I could work with you, Mr. Sherwood, if you would let me. I think I’m clever. I’m quite young, and it may turn out that I’m merely conceited and my pride has been hurt, but I
think
I’m clever. I’m going to try to be.”

Brissenden might have been expected to blow, but he didn’t; apparently, in addition to his velocity, he had a brake on it. He glared ferociously, not at Dol but at Sherwood; the attorney returned the glare with a gaze half defiant and half deprecatory. The fact was that the colonel was saying to the attorney with his glare, “If you repeat that
about north wind type in certain circles I’ll get your scalp,” and the attorney was replying with his gaze, “If I repeat it, it will only be as a good joke, and anyway it
is
clever.”

Sherwood abandoned that clash for the business in hand, for Dol. He turned to her with a frown of appraisal and indecision. But the question whether or not to accept her declaration of good faith had to be left open, for the door guarded by the trooper suddenly swung wide, and a shuffling of feet and murmur of voices announced a visitation. The trooper sprang up but hesitated to challenge when he saw that the leader of the group was Mrs. Storrs, the mistress of the house. She walked with assurance and purpose into her card room, and behind her were her daughter Janet, Sylvia Raffray, Leonard Chisholm, Martin Foltz, Steve Zimmerman and George Leo Ranth. As she halted in the middle of the room, her deepset eyes focused on the four at the table as on something unique and unforgettable. The characteristic intensity of her voice seemed heightened, seemed in fact half hysterical, as she demanded: