Rex Stout_Tecumseh Fox 02 (11 page)

Fox got up and crossed over, bent and kissed her proficiently on the lips without skimping, and returned to his chair.

“A little domestic but nice,” Nat Collins allowed. “Now for God’s sake let’s line up a few—Come in!”

It was Miss Larabee. She advanced to the desk, handed Collins an envelope, and announced, “By special delivery five minutes ago. And Mr. Philip Tingley is here.”

“Ask him to wait. If he gets restless, soothe him. If he gets too restless, send him in.”

Miss Larabee went. Collins, regarding the inscription on the envelope, grunted, “Personal
and
important,” and reached for a knife and slit the flap. Extracting a sheet of paper, he unfolded it and read it with a frown.

He glanced up at the others. “From our old friend John Henry Anonymous. As usual, he forgot to sign
it. Cheap envelope, cheap paper, typewritten by one who knows how to spell and punctuate. Marked at Station F at three
P.M.
today. I’ll read it to you:

Collins looked at Amy. “Of course you did. Stumble on the step and stand holding the rail. Otherwise John Henry wouldn’t have tacked on that embellishment.”

Fox, scowling, reached across the desk. “Let me see that thing.”

“I’m not sure,” said Amy, concentrating. “My head was so dazed I’m not very sure about anything. But then—” Suddenly she straightened. “Someone was there watching! Dol Bonner was having me tailed!”

Fox, folding the sheet of paper, grunted. “Or the cop on the beat saw your eyes as you went in,” he said dryly. “May I borrow this awhile?”

Collins nodded. He had reached for his phone and made a request to it, and presently he spoke:

“Bill? Nat. Love and kisses. Will you do me a little favor with the speed of light? Regarding a careless automobile, motor vehicle to you. New York license OJ55, whose is that? Call my office. Much obliged.”

He leaned back and eyed Fox. “Well, what is it? I don’t see how it can very well be a nut, with that about Miss Duncan stumbling. Do you?”

“Not a nut,” Fox agreed. “I’ll have to do some work on it, which of course will start with the owner of that license number. It’s fairly certain that whoever wrote it was there when Miss Duncan left the building, probably in the tunnel of the driveway or she would have seen him. He was close enough to see a hat brim turned down and a license number, if he’s not a liar. It’s also certain that he’s a trained writer—I’d say a newspaper man. Did you notice it?”

“Notice what?”

“There’s no ‘I’ in it. Any ordinary person would have put in at least half a dozen. He was describing something he himself had seen, his own experience. Elimination of the ‘I’ from a recital of a personal experience requires training and acquired discipline. ‘I couldn’t see distinctly because it was dark and rainy.’ That’s the natural way to put it. Other places the same. It’s a simple enough trick, but if you haven’t learned it you just don’t do it.”

“You’re right,” Amy declared. “One of the operatives at Bonner and Raffray was on the
Herald Tribune
over a year.”

“No, really?” Fox was sarcastic. “For the present, Miss Duncan, you’d better forget you’re a detective. You have sentiments involved that tend to thwart the inductive process. You’ll never forgive Dol Bonner for drinking a cocktail—”

“That isn’t true!” Amy denied indignantly. “Just because I permitted you to kiss me—”

“Permitted? Ha!”

“Be quiet!” Nat Collins told them. The telephone had buzzed and he was at it. After a short conversation, from his end mostly growls, he hung up and made a face at Fox.

“He’s a trained writer, all right. Fiction writer. There is no OJ55. There’s no OJ at all with less than three figures.”

T
hey looked at each other. No pertinent comment appeared to be forthcoming.

Finally Collins addressed Amy: “We ought to know if you stumbled on that step or not.”

“She probably did.” Fox tapped his breast over the pocket where he had put the paper. “I’ll fiddle around with this in my spare time. What about Philip Tingley? Did you send for him or is he a volunteer?”

“I sent for him. I prodded Miss Duncan on the probable reason why her uncle phoned to ask her to come to see him. She doesn’t know. She doesn’t see how it could possibly have been in connection with the quinine thing. As a wild guess, the best she can do is that it might have been something about her cousin Phil. Tingley and his adopted son used to have frequent clashes, and Miss Duncan took Phil’s side. She thinks Tingley had an exaggerated idea of her influence with Phil, because he once came down from his perch and appealed to her to use it to make him a better boy. So I got in touch with him and asked him to drop in.”

“All right, let’s take a look at him. May I have the overture?”

“Help yourself.”

Collins used the phone for a message to Miss Larabee, and after a moment Philip Tingley was ushered in. Tall and ungainly and bony, dressed conceivably for a bread line, his hollow cheeks and the sagging corners of his mouth might have been attributed, by one who had never seen him before, to the shock and strain of the current casualty. He greeted Amy composedly, with a piercing glance from his deep-set eyes, allowing Collins and Fox, introduced, to grasp his bony fingers, and lowering himself into the chair that had been vacated by Leonard Cliff.

Amy said nervously, as one impelled to speak without having any specific communication to make, “It’s ghastly, isn’t it, Phil?”

“Not particularly,” declared the last Tingley who was not a Tingley. “The death of one economically useless man, even in such an abhorrent manner, is regrettable only in a very restricted sense. If he had been my father I might feel differently. As it is, I don’t feel.”

“I congratulate you,” said Fox cheerfully. “Not many people ever achieve that philosophic detachment toward death. You’re not faking it, are you?”

“Why the deuce would I fake it?”

“I don’t know. I suppose you wouldn’t; you’d be more apt to fake distress and woe, which is often done. Do you feel equally indifferent to the fate of your cousin?”

“My cousin?” Phil frowned in puzzlement. “Oh—you mean Amy. I do not. I rarely form personal attachments, but she is the only woman I have ever proposed marriage to.”

“Phil!” Amy protested. “You were only talking.”

He shook his head. “No, I meant it. I had decided I
wanted to marry you. Of course I’m glad now I didn’t, because it would have interfered.”

“That was some time ago?” Fox inquired.

“That was in May and June, 1935.”

“I see. It was the season of the year that unnerved you. But you are still well-disposed toward her? I ask because she needs a little friendly help. Did you know that your father—your foster father—phoned her yesterday to ask her to come to see him?”

“No. Did he? I don’t think it was mentioned in the
Times.
I read only the
Times.”

“Well, he did. He phoned at a quarter to six, speaking of a problem on which he needed her assistance, and asked her as a family favor to be at his office at seven. That’s why she went there. But the police have only her word as evidence that she received that phone call, and corroboration would help a lot. We have considered the possibility, among others, that the problem he spoke of was connected in some way with you.”

“Why do you assume that?”

“Not assume it. Admit it as a possibility.”

“Very well,” Phil conceded, “it’s a possibility.”

“Thank you. But can’t you make it more than that? Had any—uh—discussion between you and your father recently become acute?”

“Our quarrel was always acute. Chronic and acute both.”

“But did it, between three o’clock Monday and six o’clock yesterday afternoon, reach a new crisis?”

“No.”

“It didn’t?” Fox smiled at him. “The reason I specify those hours is because Miss Duncan called on your father Monday afternoon, and when she left him, about half past three, his attitude was uncompromisingly
hostile and certainly didn’t indicate that he was about to ask her a favor. But at a quarter to six Tuesday he did telephone to ask her a favor. It would be helpful if we could establish that in the interim something occurred to account for that. You realize, don’t you, that it would be extremely helpful to your cousin?”

“Yes, I realize that.”

“But you can’t fill it in for us.”

“No, I can’t.”

“Your father sent word for you to go to his office, at five o’clock yesterday, and you went. What was that about?”

Phil compressed his lips, thereby counteracting most of the drooping effect at the corners. “That,” he said. He moved in his chair for an easier position. “You sound like a police parrot. They asked about that too. I understood you were merely defending Amy’s position in this.”

“I am. Protecting the flanks as well as the front and rear. If you’ll tell us what you and your father said to each other yesterday it might give us a peg to hang that phone call on.”

“We said what we always said.”

“With no novel variations?”

“No.” Phil was frowning at the necessity for touching upon a highly distasteful subject. “It was enough without variations. He was chronically enraged at me because I had brains enough to see the criminal futility and cachexia of the orthodox capitalist economy and finance, and because I wouldn’t immolate my brains on the tottering altar of the petty business that bounded his horizon. I was equally enraged, though I controlled it better than he did, because he could easily have afforded to contribute considerable sums to
the cause I had embraced, the purification and rejuvenescence of world economy, and he refused. He paid me a mere pittance for my work as a salesman. Forty dollars a week. I live on fifteen and give the remainder to the cause. It pays for printing—”

He broke off abruptly and leveled his eyes at Amy. “By the way. That pamphlet I gave you. You gave it to the police. Did you read it?”

“To the police?” Amy looked bewildered. “But I didn’t—Oh! Of course. It was in my bag—that I left there—”

“May I ask what pamphlet?” Fox got in.

“Womon Bulletin Number Twenty-six.” Phil surveyed him. “I presume you have heard of Womon?”

“I’m sorry, but I haven’t, unless it’s a new pronunciation—”

“No. It’s Womon.” Phil spelled it. “It will remove the world’s economic cancer. It stands for Work-Money. Its central and revolutionary doctrine is that all money must be based on the median potential of man labor calculated by—”

“Excuse me. Is that the cause you are devoted to?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’re not an anarchist?”

“Good God.” Phil’s tone was of unutterable disgust. “Where did you get that idea?”

“No matter.” Fox waved it aside. “You say you live on fifteen dollars a week. But of course you live at your father’s home.”

“No, I don’t. I moved out two years ago. In addition to all the rest of it, it was a constant battle there to keep from playing bridge.”

“May I have your address, in case—”

“Certainly. Nine-fourteen East 29th. There is no phone. Four flights up in the rear.”

The phone buzzed and Nat Collins said, “Excuse me,” and reached for it. He said, “Nat Collins speaking,” and for something like twenty seconds merely listened; then he spoke again: “Hello! Hello? Hello hello?” He hung up and pushed the phone back, reached for a scratch pad and pencil, scribbled rapidly, tore the page off and handed it to Fox.

“A lead on that accident case,” he said. “Follow it up when you get a chance.”

Fox read the sprawling words:

“Thanks,” Fox nodded. “I may be able to get at it tomorrow.” He stuck the paper in his pocket, and smiled at Phil. “Well, Mr. Tingley, I’m sorry you can’t help us out with a motive for that phone call to Miss Duncan. I understand your talk with your father began shortly after five o’clock?”

“That’s right.”

“Would you mind telling me how long it lasted?”