Rex Stout_Tecumseh Fox 02 (16 page)

Phil’s jaw stayed shut. His eyes, slits beneath his jutting brows, could scarcely be seen.

“You’ll have to spill it sooner or later,” said Fox patiently. “Here alone with me like this is as good a chance as you’ll have. Did you come right upstairs?”

The pivot of Phil’s jaw opened enough for him to get out, “I wasn’t here,” and closed again.

Fox shook his head. “You can’t do that now. The mention of Judd’s name got you. You’re wide open.”

“I wasn’t here.”

“You actually think you can stick in that hole?”

“I wasn’t here. No one saw me. If anyone says he did, he’s lying.”

“All right.” Fox shrugged. “Here it is in ABCs. Tingley was murdered and I’m working on it. So are the police, which is what they’re paid for. By luck and wearing out my shoes I’ve made a little collection of facts which the police haven’t got hold of. I can keep them for my private use up to a point, but beyond that point it would be not only risky but reprehensible. I ask you to tell me what you did here Tuesday evening, on the assumption that you did not murder Tingley. If you did murder him, you’ll continue to deny that you were here, and soon, probably tomorrow, I’ll feel obliged to hand my facts to the police, and they’ll screw it out of you. Don’t think they won’t. If you didn’t murder him, you’re a fool if you don’t
come clean with me here and now. Let’s start with the ten thousand dollars, since you admit you had it. Where did you get it?”

“It was mine.”

“Where did you get it?”

“It was mine. I got it. I didn’t steal it. That’s all I’m going to say.”

Fox looked at the stubborn bony jaw, the sullen obdurate mouth, the dogged expression of the eyes beneath the projecting brows.

“All right,” he said incisively, “I’m not waiting till tomorrow. You and I are going together to one of two places right now. Either police headquarters or Guthrie Judd’s office. Try balking on that and it will be a pleasure for me to take the necessary steps without any help. Which do you prefer, Centre Street or Wall Street? I think I should warn you that Inspector Damon, when he has something on you as he will have now, is a good deal tougher than you found him yesterday.”

Phil was gazing at him. “You can’t make me go anywhere with you if I don’t want to.”

“No?” Fox smiled. His right shoulder twitched. “A stupid mule like you? Damon wouldn’t care what condition you were in as long as you could talk. And I’m pretty irritated.” The shoulder twitched again. “Centre or Wall? Which?”

Phil swallowed “I have no—” He swallowed again. “I’m perfectly willing to go to Judd’s office—”

“That’s fine. Come on, and don’t obey any sudden impulses.”

O
n this second visit the suave young man never appeared at all, in the reception room on the top floor of the Metropolitan Trust Building. Nor was Fox, entering, armed with a sealed envelope or any other weapon. He merely told the young woman at the desk that Mr. Fox and Mr. Philip Tingley wished to see Mr. Guthrie Judd. After a wait of five minutes the same tough man appeared and conducted them to the room occupied by the skinny middle-aged man, who now, instead of being flanked by stenographers, was confronted by three stacks of mail on his desk ready for signing. He asked what they wanted to see Mr. Judd about.

“I think the names will be enough,” Fox told him. “Just give him the names, please.”

The skinny man got up and went out. The tough man stayed. Before long the skinny man returned, but not alone. Entering immediately behind him were two individuals in uniform, male, sturdy and rugged-looking, with deadpans for faces. They came in three paces and stood. The skinny man spoke politely:

“Come with me, please, Mr. Tingley? Mr. Judd will see you first. You won’t mind waiting, Mr. Fox?”

“It will save time if I go in with Mr. Tingley,” Fox said, and moved determinedly to do that, but with the first step he knew he was licked. A man in uniform was on either side of the door, and he saw the mobilization of their muscles. To try to slug or shoot his way through would have been heroic but futile, and the setup made it plain that argument would be wasted. Gritting his teeth, he stood and watched Phil and the skinny man disappear. For a moment the impulse to dash to the nearest phone booth and call Inspector Damon was well-nigh irresistible, but he downed it because it would have been humiliating beyond endurance; and the advantage of surprise—surprise to Guthrie Judd at the sudden and unexpected confrontation—was lost anyhow.

Outwitted, euchred, defeated and deflated, Fox sat on the edge of a chair for thrity minutes, swallowing his saliva and finding it bitter with impotence and mortification. He had not even the consolation of seeing any smirk of triumph on the faces of the men in uniform: they remained deadpans. The skinny man had returned and was at his desk busily reading and signing letters. At a buzz he pulled the phone to him and spoke into it, or rather, listened to it, and then pushed it back and turned:

“Mr. Judd will see you now, Mr. Fox.”

A uniformed man opened the door and Fox passed through; and the second door likewise. Guthrie Judd was seated at his desk of amargoso wood, erect, unsmiling and composed; Philip Tingley, in a chair near him, was tense in both posture and countenance and seemed uncertain whom to look at. As Fox entered with a guard at each elbow, not touching him but ready to, and approached the desk, Judd nodded curtly.

“Thanks, that will do. Leave us, please.”

When the door had closed noiselessly behind them, Judd, otherwise motionless, moved his eyes to focus on Fox.

“So you came back.” His voice was silk and steel as before, but with an edge to it, an edge that menaced as a sharp knife might menace a throat. “You’re determined to make a nuisance of yourself, aren’t you?”

“I am now, Mr. Judd.” Fox met his gaze. “I’m good and sore. Not at you. I hope you’re not congratulating yourself that you hung me out to dry, because I did that. If I hadn’t been a moron I’d have kept your young friend in a bottle until I got in here. But I fumbled it, and now I’m sore; and when I’m sore—anyway, don’t congratulate yourself.”

A corner of Judd’s lips faintly curled. “You will now, of course, go to the police.”

“I don’t think so. If I did that I’d have to describe my performance here, and they’d send me to an institution for mental defectives. So I guess I’ll wait till I have more on the ball.”

“Suit yourself.” Judd’s tone implied that it was no concern of his. “I asked Aiken to send you in in order to remove a misapprehension you seem to be under. I have never met Philip Tingley before. Have I, Mr. Tingley?”

“Certainly not,” Phil muttered.

“But when his name came to me along with yours I naturally surmised that he was some relation of Arthur Tingley, and I wondered why he was here with you. The thing to do was to ask him, and I sent for him. What he tells me is astonishing, even fantastic. He says that you state that he had an appointment to meet me at his father’s office Tuesday evening; that he went there at twenty minutes to eight for that
purpose and remained seven or eight minutes; and that I had already been there, arriving ten minutes before he did and leaving before he came. Further, that I had paid him ten thousand dollars to adulterate the Tingley product.” Something resembling a smile flitted over Judd’s lips. “That last is even more preposterous than the rest of it. I was poor when young, I’ve made for myself what money and position I have, and I assure you I didn’t do it by paying large sums to people for putting quinine into jars of food.”

Fox nodded. “You can try that, but I doubt if it’s wise.”

Judd’s brows went up.

“I mean,” Fox explained, “that even if I don’t start a fire under you and am compelled to give up, the police are almost sure to flush you if you take that cover. They’ll work on Tingley here, and he’s not made of reinforced ice as you are. There’s the man who saw your car drive up at Tingley’s at 7:30 Tuesday and saw you get out and enter the building. There’s the chauffeur who drove you there. There’s the ten thousand dollars, which came from somewhere. And the line you’re taking is, ‘Not me.’ With all your position and power, and the invincible will back of your eyes, I doubt very much if you can carry it off.”

“Are you through?” Judd asked, with the edge sharper on his voice.

“Thank you,” said Fox.

“For what?”

“For a lead to a tag. I’m not through, I’m just starting.”

Fox turned and went, by the other door as previously.

The rush-hour crowd would be clogging the subway,
but it was the quickest way uptown, so he took it, squeezing into a corner of the vestibule. On one side a girl’s elbow dug into his hip, and on the other a man’s newspaper tried to scratch his cheek, but he was oblivious. Swaying with the mass in response to the lurches of the train, his thoughts were all boomerangs, beginning and ending with the thorns of self-disesteem that were pricking him. At 42nd Street he fought his way out.

Since it was long past five o’clock there was a chance that he would be too late to catch Nat Collins at his office, but luck was with him. Miss Larabee was gone, but Collins was there, chewing gum and looking as if he would soon be in need of a shave, two invariable phenomena of the end of the afternoon. He greeted Fox and waved him to a chair and resumed chewing.

“News?” Fox demanded.

Collins shook his head. “Nothing explosive. Miss Duncan and I—what’s this about your asking her about when it started to rain?”

“I got curious about it. File it. How was the D.A.?”

“So-so. It was Skinner himself. He covered about the same ground that Damon did yesterday, except that they’ve dug up some stuff about some unmarried mother there at the factory.”

“That was years ago.”

“Sure, but you know. The roots of crime are in the dark and hidden past. That was all right. We were only with him an hour, and I dropped in here and would have dropped out again if it hadn’t been for a phone call. Do you know a woman at Tingley’s named Murphy? Carrie Murphy?”

“Yes, one of the forewomen. Tingley trusted her.”

“She phoned and wants to see me. Be here at six
o’clock. Probably had a dream last night and a big white bird sky-wrote the name of the murderer, and it just happens that it’s someone she doesn’t like.”

“I suppose so,” Fox agreed pessimistically. “I didn’t have a dream, but it looks as if I have a pick between two for the murderer, and I’ve made an ungodly mess of it.”

Collins stopped chewing and looked at him sharply. “Who are the two?”

“Philip Tingley and Guthrie Judd.”

“Guthrie Judd? You’re crazy.”

“No, I’m only half-witted. But. The anonymous letter and the phone call were from Leonard Cliff. I’ve had a talk with him. As he said on the phone, the man in the raincoat who arrived at 7:40 was Phil Tingley. He was wrong about the OJ55, it was GJ55, and it belongs to Guthrie Judd. Therefore Judd was there at 7:30. Also he had been there in the morning, calling on Tingley under the name of Brown. I saw him.”

The lawyer removed the gum from his mouth, wrapped it in a piece of paper and tossed it in the wastebasket, leaned back in his chair, and riveted his eyes on Fox.

“Go slower and let me look at the scenery.”

Fox did so. Succinctly but in detail, he reviewed the day: the GJ55 in his notebook, the first assault on Guthrie Judd, the interview with Leonard Cliff, the meeting in Arthur Tingley’s office, the talk with Phil in the anteroom, the second assault on Judd, the idiotic blunder he had been guilty of. Throughout Collins sat motionless and expressionless with head cocked a little sideways, a posture that was famous in New York courtrooms. When the recital ended he heaved a deep sigh and screwed up his lips.

“You couldn’t have jumped them and made it through?” he asked wistfully.

“No, I couldn’t.” Fox was grim. “In the first place, they were a pair of pugs, and secondly, you’re too busy to defend me on a charge of disorderly conduct, which is all I’d have got for my trouble.” He pushed it away. “But forget that if you can, though I don’t expect you to forgive it. It’s the worst boner I ever pulled in my life.”

“I admit it wasn’t very brilliant. I also admit it looks as if one of them did it. Holy heaven and hell. Guthrie Judd?” Collins whistled. “That would be—what
that
would be. You’ve been chewing on it. What does it taste like?”

“Well—” Fox considered. “Judd hired Phil to dope the jars and paid ten thousand bucks. Tingley somehow discovered it, must have even got proof of it. That was why Judd went to see him Tuesday morning; he had to. It was also why Tingley had Phil come to his office at five Tuesday afternoon. He arranged for both of them to come back that evening at 7:30, and because he was desperate about Phil, to whom he had given his name, and because he thought his niece could influence Phil and perhaps contribute useful advice about him, he phoned her and asked her to come at seven, so he could discuss it with her before they arrived.”

“But,” Collins objected, “when she got there, at 7:10, Tingley was already dead, and the murderer heard her coming and hid behind the screen and knocked her on the head as she entered. So Judd didn’t kill him at 7:30 and neither did Phil at 7:40.”