Rex Stout_Tecumseh Fox 03 (18 page)

Similarly he observed the square and stolid countenance of the uniformed maid who admitted him to Suite D on the ninth floor. Her name and address—Frida Jurgens, 909 East 83rd Street—was in a notebook
in his pocket, one of several procured the day before from Inspector Damon; and one glimpse of her obdurate geometrical visage was enough to explain the meagerness of her contribution to the dossier. With efficiency, if with no grace, she disposed of Fox’s hat and coat and conducted him within.

Garda, advancing to meet Fox, greeted him with an extended hand, a half smile confined to a corner of her mouth, and the full direct regard of her black eyes, with now no blaze in them.

“It took you a long time to get around to it,” she said with pretended petulance. “That’s a better chair there. You remember you told Mrs. Pomfret you’d try to persuade me to be reasonable? That was more than a week ago.” Sitting, she shivered delicately. “It seems a year. Doesn’t it?”

Fox, taking the recommended chair, said that it did. So she was going to be amiable and charming, which she could do without straining at it. The chair was in fact comfortable, the room was not too hot and had air in it, the décor was tasteful and restrained.…

“I don’t know,” Fox said, “about persuading you to be reasonable, but I’d like to persuade you to be frank. Henry Pomfret’s Wan Li vase is back home again.”

A flicker of her lids veiled the black eyes for an instant, then he had them back. “His vase? You mean the one that was stolen?”

“Yep, that one.”

“It’s back home? You mean he got it back? How nice!” She was effusive. “Where did you find it?”

“Thanks for the compliment.” Fox smiled at her. “Undeserved. Mr. Koch returned it to him this morning.”

“What!” Garda looked blank. “Koch!—How did
he—my God, Koch? He stole it? He had it all the time?”

“Not according to him,” Fox said dryly. “He got it the way Mrs. Pomfret got the violin back—it came by parcel post. This morning. He spent an hour or so admiring it and then delivered it to its owner. Pomfret is delighted.”

“And Koch doesn’t know who sent it to him?”

“Nope.”

“And no one—then they’ve got it back but they don’t know who took it.”

“That’s right. They don’t. But I think I do. I think you took it.”

Garda’s eyes opened at him. The blaze was there for a fleeting second, then she burst into laughter. It was not an affected ripple or a forced haw-haw, but a real and hearty laugh. She checked it, leaned forward and pursed her lips prettily at Fox, and coaxed him in mock entreaty:

“Tell me another one! Oh, please!”

Fox shook his head. “That’s the only one I know, Miss Tusar. I’d like to enlarge on it. May I?”

“You may if you’ll keep it funny.” Garda had sobered. “That’s the first time I’ve laughed since—for a long time.”

“I doubt if you’ll find it funny. It’s complicated, too. It begins with a question the police have been trying to answer, where your income comes from. Inspector Damon says that you spend more than ten thousand a year, probably a good deal more, that its source is not visible, and that you decline to reveal it.”

“Why should I? It’s none of their business. Nor yours.”

“That may be true. But that’s the trouble with a criminal investigation: it tries every hole in sight until
it finds the one its rabbit is in, and that’s often a serious inconvenience to innocent bystanders. I suppose you know that the police have tested the theory that you are being financed by some person—uh—”

“Don’t spare my sensibilities,” Garda snapped. “Of course I know it. They’ve even tried to bully my maid.”

“Sure. What do you expect? You’re one of the central figures in a murder case, and you’re concealing something. They conclude, since you won’t tell the source of your income, that it must be either criminal or disgraceful, or both. The theory I spoke of—they haven’t been able to get evidence of that, so they’re trying another one. That you’re blackmailing someone.”

“They!…” Garda’s eyes flashed. “They wouldn’t dare!”

Fox nodded imperturbably. “That’s what they’re working on now. I doubt if they’ll get anywhere. My own theory is that you’re a bandit. I think you stole Pomfret’s vase.”

“That was funny the first time—”

“I didn’t mean it to be. Please. Just let me sketch it. You are beautiful and clever, probably unscrupulous, and have entrée to places where there are all kinds of small and portable objects of considerable value. It would be no trick at all for you to realize considerably more than ten thousand a year. You took that vase of Pomfret’s, knowing it was worth a lot of money, but had to hang onto it because you found it was impossible to dispose of it safely. Please, Miss Tusar, you might as well let me finish. Diego, who loved you and had been intimate with you, knew how you—made money. He suspected, or even knew, that you had taken the vase, charged you with it, and compelled you to turn it over to him. He may have threatened to
expose you, but if he did it was only a bluff, for Diego is too much of a gentleman to expose a lady bandit. Doubtless his intention was to return it to Pomfret, but being a simple soul, wholly devoid of the resources of an intriguer—”

“That’s enough!” Garda’s eyes were snapping. “To expect me to sit and listen to a rigmarole of lies—”

“Not all lies, Miss Tusar. It isn’t a lie that Diego had the vase. I saw it there at his place.”

Garda’s lips parted, and Fox could hear the breath going in. There was no fire in her eyes; instead, they withdrew; the lids half closed, and the slits were dull dead-black. “I don’t—” she began, and stopped.

Fox said patiently, “I saw the Wan Li vase in Diego’s closet. I assure you that isn’t a lie. How it got from there into a parcel-post package is another matter. I have an assortment of theories on that, but they can wait. The point now is, where did Diego get it? I’m convinced he got it from you. In no other way can I account for his having acted as he did to me. He did, didn’t he, Miss Tusar? He got the vase from you?”

Garda shook her head, but apparently not to signify a simple negative, for a corner of her mouth curled upward in disdain, half indignant and half amused. “Really?” she said. “You really ask me if I am a common little thief, like that? And if it were so? You would expect me—do you know what?” Her eyes danced at him. “I have a notion to say yes, and see what next you would say—” She stopped abruptly, her whole expression changed, and she fairly spat at him, “You are a complete fool!”

Fox sighed, gazed at her gloomily, and said nothing.

“Your Diego too!” Garda said harshly. “Speak of Diego! He’s your friend, no? And he had that vase?
Why don’t you ask him where he got it? That would be a different affair, now, if you bring him and he would lie and say he got the vase from me—”

“Shut up!” Fox blurted at her savagely.

Instantly she smiled at him. “Ah,” she said softly, “you don’t like—”

“I said shut up!” Fox was standing, towering over her, his neck muscles twitching. “So if Diego said you had the vase you’d call him a liar, would you? You may or may not be a common little thief, I admit I can’t prove it, but you’re certainly a common little rat!” She came up from her chair; his hand roughly pushed her back; she smiled up at him.

“I would enjoy,” Fox said more quietly but not with any less feeling, “rubbing that smile off. If it wasn’t for Diego I would. I like Diego. I might even say I love him if I hadn’t quit loving anybody whatever some years ago. I’ve been hired by Mrs. Pomfret to investigate the murder of her son. At the time I took the job I didn’t think Diego could possibly have been sneak enough to poison a man, but since then I’ve learned about his infatuation for you, God help him, and also about that vase. He won’t tell me anything about the vase. I ask you about it, because if it had nothing to do with the death of Perry Dunham I can forget the damn thing and go on with the job I was hired for.”

He pressed his hand harder on her shoulder, the fingers through the soft flesh to the bone. “Quit wriggling! I still can’t believe that Diego poisoned Dunham, but it’s possible. To protect you he might have done anything. If what you tell me about the vase makes it seem probable that he did, I’m out of it. If the police get him, then they do. I hope they don’t. I’m not going to. You can take my word for that. So that’s why I’ve
got to know about the vase. Quit wriggling! If you have any sense—”

“Frida! Frida!”

Fox straightened up and folded his arms. From the other side of a door steps were heard, a little hurried but not precipitate; the door opened, and from the threshold the maid looked across at them, her phlegmatic facial geometry perfectly composed.

“Phone downstairs,” Garda told her in a voice that was not quite steady, “and tell Mr. Thorne a man is here annoying me. Or—wait a minute—or get Mr. Fox’s hat and coat.” Her eyes darted to Fox. “Which would you prefer?”

“You’re making a mistake. Perhaps a fatal one. If it’s like this I’m going through with it.”

Their eyes met. His were cold and hard; hers were hot, defiant, contemptuous.

“The hat and coat, Frida,” she said.

“Then take what you get,” Fox said with pale ferocity, and left her.

O
n the outside the old house on East 83rd Street, though not exactly disreputable, was certainly dingy and dirty; on the inside it was still dingy but not dirty at all. On the contrary, it was extremely clean. In the lower hall and dining room at nine thirty that Tuesday evening, there was a pervasive odor of pork cooked with sour cream. In the kitchen the odor pervaded not only the room but also the breath of Frida Jurgens, which was to be expected, since she had just completed the consumption of four of the fillets with trimmings. Usually she was fairly satisfied with what she had got at the apartment of her employer, but on Tuesday, the day her aunt Hilda had
Schweinsfilets mit sauer Sahne
, she always left plenty of room.

She put down her knife and fork and eructed with pure pleasure, and was in so benign a mood that when a voice sounded from the front calling her name no faintest sign of protest accompanied the pushing back of her chair.

In the dining room her aunt Hilda had turned on the light and was squinting defensively at a strange man standing with an enormous flat book under his arm. His appearance was at the same time comical and
maleficent; the former chiefly by reason of slick oily hair parted in the middle and enormous black-rimmed spectacles, and the latter by a jagged livid scar that slanted from his right cheekbone to the corner of his mouth. He had put his hat on a corner of the dining table.

“Sinsuss man,” Aunt Hilda hissed warningly at Frida.

“United States decennial census,” the man said sternly, the distortion of his lips by the scar making it indescribably sardonic.

“The census?” Frida demanded. “Already? The paper and the radio both said April second.”

“This,” the man said scornfully, “is the prolegomenon. The radio explained that.”

“I didn’t hear it. And at night like this?”

“Well.” The man leered at her. “If you wish me to report to the district administrator …”

“Now, now,” Aunt Hilda said anxiously. Aunt Hilda was constitutionally anxious. “Report you by us? Now, now.” She turned to Frida and sputtered a stream of German at her, and got a little of it back. At the end she told the man, “My niece speaks better English,” and bustled out of the room. Frida pulled out two chairs, sat on one of them, clasped her hands on her lap, and said with no expression whatever, “My name is Frida Jurgens. I am a naturalized citizen—”

“Wait a minute, please.” The man, sitting, got the book opened and cocked at an angle that kept its pages out of her range of vision. “First, the head of this household?”

Fifteen minutes later Frida was showing faint but unmistakable signs of strain. She had answered questions regarding two aunts, four cousins, and a brother who drove a taxicab, and the responsibility was heavy;
for it was a general suspicion in that neighborhood that the census was some kind of a police trick and dire consequences might be expected. The trouble was her two cousins who belonged, as she knew, to a certain organization—she felt moisture on her forehead but dared not wipe it off—so when he finished with the others and began on her, her relief was so great that she failed to notice that the United States appeared to possess a greatly augmented curiosity in her particular case. Where was her present employment, how long had she been there, what was the nature of her duties, how many persons were there in the household, either constantly or occasionally, how many meals was she expected to prepare, what were her hours, how much time did she have off?…

She said she had plenty of time off, but just how much, it depended. The census taker declared, with a frown of dissatisfaction, that for the purpose of the employment census that was too vague. It depended on what?

“It depends on her,” Frida told him. “She don’t eat in much. When she don’t, I leave at seven, sometimes even earlier. But then again she tells me to leave at two o’clock maybe, or in the morning even, and not to come back that day. So the time off is fine.”