Rex Stout_Tecumseh Fox 03 (16 page)

It was the same with all the other traditionally indicated lines of inquiry. In dogged desperation Damon had even nosed into the matter of Lawrence Mowbray’s death four months previously, but had found nothing in that hole either. Alone in his office on the twentieth floor of a building on 48th Street, at 5:37 P.M. on November 29th, Mowbray had toppled from a window, bounced from a ledge eighty feet down, and smashed on the pavement. The routine investigation had disclosed that Jan Tusar had entered the building two or three minutes later and taken an elevator to the twentieth floor, to keep an appointment with Mowbray, but that was the only item of the record which might have possessed significance, and it had none for the present problem.

No, Fox decided as he set down his empty coffee cup and scowled at it, it was hopeless to start barking at the tails of the trained dogs. What was needed was a flash of inspiration, and the devil of it was that none came. All he could do was poke around somewhere and wait for it, and as good a place to poke as any was Perry Dunham’s place on 51st Street, for which he had a key. There would even be a bed there which he might as well use. He paid his check, went to the phone booth
again, asked for Brewster 8000, and after a little wait heard a familiar voice.

“Mrs. Trimble? Fox. Please tell Pokorny the billiard date is off because I won’t get home tonight. And tell Sam to leave the strawberries until I get a look at them. I hope to be there tomorrow evening. Everything all right?”

“Fine.” Mrs. Trimble had her mouth too close to the transmitter, and talked too loud, as usual. “Mr. Crocker skinned his leg a little and two pigs got out. There’s a telegram.”

“Telegram? From that fellow in Boston?”

“Not Boston, New York. Wait till I get it, Sam wrote it down.” An interval, then her voice again: “It’s from a woman, anyway it’s signed Dora Mowbray: D, O—”

“I know. What does it say?”

“It says, ‘Telegram received. Will arrive Brewster 8:48 as requested.’ ”

Fox missed a breath. “Read it again.”

She repeated it.

“What time did it come?”

“Sam wrote it down. At 7:15.”

“Hold the wire.” Fox put the receiver on the shelf, whisked papers from his pocket, found a timetable among them and ran his eye down a column of it, glanced at his wrist watch, picked up the phone and told it, “All right, Mrs. Trimble, good-bye,” and shot from the booth. Grabbing his hat and coat, and narrowly avoiding collisions with two startled waiters, he made for the street. Luckily there had been a space for his car near the entrance, and, running to it, he scrambled in, got it started, and jerked it into the lane.

Though it would take precious minutes to go cross-town, the West Side Highway was his only hope, and
he swung into 57th Street and headed for it. Nothing much could be done for that stretch, with a light and a stream of traffic at every avenue; the Wethersill was no better than any old jalopy; instead of fretting about it, he calculated. A part of the timetable column was in his head:

At Eighth Avenue his dashboard clock said 7:55. Then either Bedford Hills or Katonah was out of the question. Golden’s Bridge, barely possible. Purdy’s, possible. Croton Falls, yes, with luck. Brewster itself, of course, but he didn’t like that. He wanted to be on that train, and find her, before it reached Brewster. The person who had got her on that train by sending her a telegram signed Tecumseh Fox had probably concocted a stratagem that would get her off of it this side of Brewster.

Purdy’s, possible.

Ninth Avenue … Tenth … Eleventh … he circled to the ramp, shot up to the highway, and accelerated.

The only problem was cops, and that was a simple one. As every motorist knows, there are two ways to avoid trouble with cops: drive so slow they don’t stop you, or so fast they can’t catch you. The second was no good for the West Side Highway, since a phone call to the toll booths at the Henry Hudson Bridge would have caught him, so Fox gritted his teeth and held it
under sixty, weaving smoothly and expertly through the crowd holding to the conventional forty-five.

Half a mile beyond the toll gate his speedometer said 90. That, he thought, would do; and even at 90, on the curves and dips of the rolling parkway, the rubber screamed in protest at the outrageous imposition. On the curves all of Fox was in his fingers on the wheel; on the infrequent straightaways he could spare an instant for a glance in the driving mirror. The sign marking the city limits flashed by and he was on the Saw Mill River Parkway. He stepped it up to 95, and while the tires sang the engine lifted the long car over a sharp rise like a swallow enjoying its wings. As he flew under the Crestwood light his clock said 8:19. Purdy’s still possible, so at Hawthorne Circle he would take Route 22.

But he didn’t. Neither the cop nor the curve at the circle would like anything over 50, so on the approach he lifted his toe; then suddenly, getting nearer, he pressed it down again and put a thumb on the horn button and kept it there. His headlights had picked up the cop, who, instead of loafing near the police booth as was customary, was standing in the middle of the roadway waving both arms. Fox set his jaw, gripped the wheel, kept the horn going, fed gas, and aimed straight for the cop. When the cop jumped, with nothing to spare, he jumped left, and Fox swerved right. Then he pulled it sharp left for the circle, swayed, and was on two wheels, the tires shrieking, got on all four again, and jerked straight into the Bronx River Parkway Extension.

Of course there would be more phoning ahead, this time doubtless to the State Barracks near Pleasantville, and in three minutes the parkway would be too hot for him. So in two minutes he left it, swinging right
onto a bumpy country road. He thought it would take him straight to Armonk, but it didn’t take him straight anywhere; at a fork he had to guess, bumped along in all directions for another two miles, and finally had to ask a boy the way to Route 22. When at length he got to it, Purdy’s was not even a hope.

On that narrow curving route it took more driving, and he gave it all he had. Near Bedford Hills he missed a car emerging from a driveway only by taking to the grass on the other side and grazing a pole. At Katonah his clock said 8:35; the train had been and gone eight minutes earlier. At Golden’s Bridge he had cut it down to five minutes. He rocketed through Purdy’s at 8:39, stepped it up a little, lost traction on a downhill curve, got a wheel in the ditch and miraculously made the road again, and heard the train whistle for Croton Falls. One minute later he turned off onto gravel, scooted downgrade to the Croton Falls station and jerked to a stop, tumbled out and ran, and grabbed the step rail of the vestibule of the last coach and swung himself on board.

He was sickeningly certain he had made a fool of himself; surely, by some ruse or other, she had been taken off before now. If so …

He opened the door to the rear coach and entered. It was the smoker, and was nearly empty, since the train was nearing the end of its run, and of the seven or eight passengers in sight none was female. In the next coach ahead there were three women, but a glance at the backs of their heads, all that showed from the rear, was enough to eliminate them; nevertheless, as he strode up the aisle, he turned his head for glimpses of faces. There were only two more chances.

He used but one. Three paces inside the next coach, he saw her. He stopped and stared, bracing himself
against a seat as the train lurched around a curve. Yes. She was in profile, her head turned to look at the traveling companion who was speaking to her. Fox moved on up the aisle; but even when he halted beside the seat immediately back of them, no notice was taken of him. He stood and glared down at them. He could actually see the soft light that shone in Dora’s eyes, but they were oblivious of him; and the beatified murmur of Ted Gill’s voice as he gazed back at her.…

Fox was close enough to touch them.…

From the end of the coach a trainman sang out: “Brewster!”

“Oh,” Dora said, “he said Brewster.” Ted nodded, heaved a sigh which indicated that he had been neglecting his breathing, tore his eyes loose, stood up to reach for the coat rack, became aware of surveillance, turned his head, and said calmly and imperturbably:

“Hello.”

Dora’s glance came up over the back of the seat. “Why, hello there!”

Fox slowly shook his head. “Holy Saint Peter.”

“We’re getting off at Brewster,” Ted announced, handling Dora’s coat as if it were made of angel down and star dust.

“Correct,” Fox said grimly. “We’re there. Go ahead and get your things on.”

The train rolled alongside the station and jerked to a stop. Fox followed them up the aisle and down the steps to the platform. A raw wind was blowing and a few snowflakes were dancing around the globes of the platform lights, and Ted hurried Dora inside the station. Fox was impeded for a moment by a man who wanted to greet him, and when he rejoined the couple over by a window Ted was saying to Dora:

“This is the first place we ever went together.
Brewster. But not the last. It’s a nice little station. Very nice.”

“Well?” Fox demanded.

Dora smiled at him.

“Oh, yes,” Ted said affably, recollecting him. “I guess I owe you an explanation. Did you get a telegram?”

“I did. Acknowledging one I had sent to Miss Mowbray.”

“That’s right. Only it was me that sent it. Lucky coincidence your being on the same train. You see, I figured she probably wouldn’t wire an answer, she’d just take the train I told her to take, because I told her it was something very urgent—”

“And signed my name.”

“I wrote it on the telegram, sure. I had to. I thought you’d never even know about it, and you wouldn’t have if she hadn’t wired a reply. The trouble was, she wouldn’t let me see her. She wouldn’t let me talk to her. She sent back a letter I wrote her. She misunderstood about my going to Mexico to get Hebe. I knew—well, I didn’t know, but I hoped—if I got her some place like on a train—you see, she thought I was a lousy tramp—”

“I did not,” Dora denied. “I merely thought—”

“Excuse me,” Fox said dryly. “You’ve had an hour and a half for that. I doubt if your minds are in any condition to deal with externals, but it wasn’t a lucky coincidence that I was told about the telegram, and I drove from 57th Street to Croton Falls in forty-four minutes. The cop at Hawthorne Circle is alive only because he didn’t jump a tenth of a second too late; I risked that. At a hundred miles an hour I missed a car coming out of a driveway by maybe three inches.”

“Gosh,” Ted said cheerfully, “good thing you missed him!”

“I wish I’d been with you,” Dora declared. “I’ve always wanted to drive like that, just once.”

“You do?” Ted asked her reproachfully. “You wish you’d been with him, do you?”

“Well—” Their eyes met, and clung. “I wish I had a twin and she was with him.”

It was obviously hopeless; their cerebrums had entirely suspended operations. They were blissfully incapable of understanding why news of the telegram had caused Fox to risk life and limb and make his car a deadly menace over fifty miles of highway and byway; the question didn’t even occur to them.

He demanded, “What are you going to do now?”

“Oh,” Ted said, “there’s a train back at ten thirty. We’ll take a walk or fool around …”

“That’s a good idea. Take a long walk. You may get lost and starve to death.”

Fox marched for the door on the street side, debouched, found his friend Joe Prisco, the taxi man, and asked to be driven to Croton Falls. When they got there a brief inspection of the Wethersill disclosed no marks of battle except scratched paint where the rear fender had grazed the pole.

“You ought to be more careful,” Joe admonished him.

“Yeah, I’m going to be,” Fox agreed.

Heading towards New York, he left Route 22 at the first intersection, worked east, and eventually made the Hutchinson River Parkway. That way he didn’t go within miles of Hawthorne Circle. Idling along at 50, he invited his nerves to calm down a little, but they ignored the invitation. They had prepared themselves
for an explosion of energy, and all they were getting was an evening ride in the country.

It was a quarter to eleven when, having left the car at a garage, he arrived at the address on 51st Street where Perry Dunham had maintained a bachelor apartment. There he encountered a fresh irritation in the shape of a sour and suspicious hallman, who, not satisfied by Fox’s possession of the key and the note signed by Mrs. Pomfret, insisted on communicating with the police; and since the matter had to be referred to Inspector Damon and he was not on duty, it was necessary to phone him at home. At length the hurdle was cleared, and Fox was taken in an elevator to the sixth floor and directed to a door. He opened it with the key, entered and found light switches and flipped them, and gazed around in blank astonishment.

“I suppose,” he muttered sarcastically, “it was Ted Gill looking for a telegraph blank.”

There was a phone on a table by the opposite wall. Dodging obstacles, he crossed to it, found it was connected, and asked for a number. After a wait he responded to a hello:

“Inspector Damon? Tecumseh Fox. I’m sorry to disturb you again, but whoever worked Dunham’s apartment neglected to straighten up. I never saw such a mess, books and things all over the floor, cushions slashed open—What? No. I don’t know, I just came in. Sure. Okay.”

He stood and glared around at the indescribable jumble. This was where he had intended to spend a restful night after an hour or so of leisurely inspection. A feather, one of thousands out of the cushions, was clinging to the cuff of his trousers, and he plucked it off and puffed it into the air. There was no bed in sight. He went to a door that was standing ajar, passed through,
and discovered a bed, but not in a condition to invite repose. The covers were strewn around, and the mattress was in the middle of the floor with its ticking ripped off and its insides scattered in all directions. He returned to the other room and made a tour, looking, but not touching anything. He would have liked to rescue a copy of
Inside Asia
that was sprawling in a heap of other books, its leaves crumpled, but forbore. He saw
The Grapes of Wrath; Rouge et Noir; The Mason Wasps
—apparently Dunham’s tastes had ranged—
Madame Recamier; No Arms, No Armour; Thomas Bissell Old Coins Catalogue No. 38—