Rex Stout_Tecumseh Fox 03 (7 page)

Fox was out of his chair. Going to the end of the table, between Mrs. Pomfret and the secretary, he staked a claim on the carton by laying his hand on it. “I suppose,” he inquired, “you kept the wrapper with the address on it? And the string?”

Mrs. Pomfret said, “Wells,” and the secretary disappeared behind the screen and in a moment emerged, and handed Fox a thick fold of heavy brown wrapping paper and a neat coil of twine. Fox stuck the twine in his pocket and asked:

“It was delivered this morning?”

Wells nodded. “Around nine o’clock.”

“Who opened the parcel?”

“I did. I open all packages. When I saw what was in
it I informed Mrs. Pomfret immediately. We are of course not experts, but we both thought it was the Stradivarius. She instructed me to lock it in the cabinet, and she telephoned the police commissioner.”

“And he sent a man to examine it for fingerprints and none were found.”

“That’s correct. He reported that there were none anywhere, except on the part of the wrapping paper that had been outside. And also except Mrs. Pomfret’s and my own.”

“Well, so much for that.” Fox picked up the carton and tucked it under his arm. “Now if there’s a room where I can take this for a little preliminary survey?”

“We’ll leave you here with it.” Mrs. Pomfret arose. “I suppose you would all like a cocktail? I know I would.” She moved. “Garda, I want to talk to you. Henry, please—Henry! Miss Heath is capable of standing alone. Please tell Stevens …”

They got away from their chairs and made it a general exodus.

Fox, left to himself, set about his examination of the evidence at hand without dilation of his nostrils or any other perceptible reaction of the sort that an investigator fired with ardor is supposed to display. From his manner it might even have been suspected that at least half of his mind was busy with something else. Not that he actually skimped anything; he inspected with great care the violin, the coil of string, and all sides of the carton, and then removed methodically, one by one, the pieces of tissue paper which had been used for packing. Apparently no revelation appeared, for his eyes lit up with no gleam of discovery, but they did flicker with an accent of interest when he unfolded the sheet of wrapping paper and leaned over
to peer at the address which had been printed on it in ink:

“That,” he muttered, straightening up, “helps the odds a little anyway.” Noting the postmark, Columbus Circle Station, he folded the paper up again, proceeded to repack the carton, and, turning the cover flaps into position, stood and drummed on them with his fingers and gazed first at one empty chair and then at another, as if subjecting their late occupants to a prolonged scrutiny and calculation.

The door swung open and Perry Dunham walked in.

He glanced at the closed carton and at Fox in surprise.

“What! Haven’t you started the inquest yet?”

“Sure, I’ve finished. I’m a fast worker.”

“Who sent it? Me?”

“Yes. The string smells of the perfume you use.”

“Curses! Us criminals always slip up somewhere, don’t we?” The youth had crossed to Fox’s end of the table. “Mum wants to ask you something, or maybe Garda does, anyway Mum wants you. In the yellow room, across the big hall. She sent me to guard this while you’re gone, but in case you object you can lug it—”

“I’ll take a chance, since your mother sent you. Is that where the cocktails are?”

“Yes, but don’t get fuzzy now. You’re going to need all your brains—”

Fox was going, was at the door, had it open, was in the corridor, had closed the door behind him. The entrance to this side of the big hall was twenty steps down the corridor, and he took ten of them briskly, striding along on the thick carpet, and then suddenly and abruptly turned, tiptoed swiftly back to the door he had just closed, knelt, and put his eye to the keyhole. One glance sufficed; in one burst of movement he flung the door open and regained his feet across the threshold.

The flaps of the carton were open, tissue was scattered on the table, and Perry Dunham, startled fury on his face, stood at the edge of the screen with the violin in his hands.

“Goddam you,” Perry said through his teeth.

“And how about you?” Fox moved forward, not in haste. As he got to the far end of the table and approached Perry, the young man drew back a step, clutching the violin, his body tensed for resistance, his face pale and defiant.

“Relax,” Fox said curtly. “Hand it over.”

Perry retreated another step. “Listen—”

“I’m deaf. I may be able to hear you when that thing is back where it belongs.”

Perry obviously did not intend to put it back where it belonged. He intended to fight. That was in his eyes, and it remained in them for ten seconds while they withstood Fox’s steady relentless gaze. Then they flickered, wavered.…

“We can’t roughhouse,” he said. “We’d bust it. You don’t want to bust it.”

“I’ll take a chance if you start going anywhere. I can stand here as long as you can.”

The two pairs of eyes met and clashed again, and then suddenly Perry held out the violin and Fox took it.

“Now,” Fox said, “I can hear better if you care to explain—”

Perry laughed shortly and not agreeably. “How would you like to go to hell? If only this had been somewhere else! If only …” He shrugged it off. “I’ll drown it in bourbon.” He tramped out, disappearing through the open door without bothering to close it.

Fox put the violin to bed again, placing the wrapping paper on top of the tissue before closing the flaps, got the carton snugly under his arm, and departed—down the corridor, across the main hall, where a man directed him to the yellow room, and into the presence of the hostess and the remaining guests. A glance showed him that they were all there with the exceptions of Hebe Heath and Ted Gill, in more or less animated conversation over cocktails. He crossed to where Mrs. Pomfret sat with Garda Tusar:

“Excuse me. Did you want to speak to me?”

“I?” She looked blank. “Oh. My son suggested—we were trying to persuade Garda to be reasonable—and he thought you might do that more effectively than we could—”

“I’ll be glad to try, though not right now.” Fox, glancing from her to meet Garda’s black eyes, saw no great promise of reasonableness there, though there was no lack of other qualities which might be admired and responded to by anyone with an inclination that way.

Mrs. Pomfret, glancing at the bulky carton under his arm, inquired, “Do you want Wells to lock that up again?”

“No, thanks.” Fox turned. Conversation had
stopped and he had all the eyes. Wells and Felix Beck were off in a corner, Henry Pomfret and Dora were on a nearby divan, Diego and Adolph Koch were standing in the middle of the room. Backed up to a window, with a drink in his hand, Perry Dunham met Fox’s gaze with a cool stare.

“I’m going,” Fox announced, “and I’m taking this with me. I’ll take good care of it. As soon as there is something worth reporting, I’ll report it. If I need to consult with any of you individually, which is probable, I’ll get in touch with you through Wells.” He moved.

“Have you got the violin in there?” Koch asked.

“I have.”

“Don’t you think it would be safer—”

“I think,” said Fox from the door, “that it’s safer with me than it would be—anywhere else.”

Y
ou’ve got me wrong.” Ted Gill said earnestly. “Honest you have. I don’t regard myself as a whizz-bang.”

He was seated on an Empire bench with carved legs, with his back to the keyboard of a concert grand piano. It was Saturday afternoon. The piano occupied a good quarter of the space in a walk-up room-and-bath on the third floor of a brick building in the Sixties east of Lexington Avenue, and the rest of the furniture looked equally out of place. But when, upon the sudden death of a girl’s widower father, she finds that all she owns in the world is the contents of her own room in his elaborate apartment on 57th Street which has been her home, what is to be done? As for the piano, that was for Dora Mowbray a necessity, since without it giving lessons to little boys and girls would have been impossible.

Dora, sitting on a chair that Caruso had once sat on, holding her, a three months’ baby, in his arms, had a flush on her cheeks which did no harm to her appearance. Nor, for that matter, did the faint wrinkle on her brow which gave her eyes an intentness to match the earnestness of the young man who faced her.

“You certainly do,” she said with spirit. “Not that I
don’t admire a good piece of bravura, but you pile it on so. Why don’t you carry cymbals?” The flush was spreading. “Please don’t stare at me like that!”

“I’m not staring. I’m just looking.” Ted, already on the edge of the bench, came forward another inch. “Look here, I might as well confess something. That was bunk about my wanting to plug you for radio. I wanted to come—I had to see you—and I couldn’t—” He was floundering. “Damn it,” he said resentfully, “when I’m talking to you I can’t even make a sentence with a subject and predicate! You might think if I wanted to see you I could just have told you on the phone that I wanted to see you!”

“Yes, you might,” Dora agreed. “Why didn’t you?”

“Because I was afraid you wouldn’t let me come! Not only do you have a funny effect on my grammar, you’ve turned me into a coward! Oh no, I had to think up something fancy for an excuse! That would have been understandable if I had just wanted to come because I like to look at you and hear you and be near you.…”

He was suddenly redder than she was. He slid back on the bench and said in a determined voice, “But I had to see you because I had to tell you something. It was me that mailed that violin to Mrs. Pomfret.”

Dora’s mouth fell open.

“It was me,” Ted repeated firmly. “I wrapped it up and addressed it and mailed it to her.”

“Good lord,” Dora said dully.

“I nearly told them about it yesterday afternoon, there at Mrs. Pomfret’s, but I decided not to. Because I doubt if it would really help them any to know, but that’s what I want to ask you. I’ll do whatever you say. If you think I ought to tell them, I will.”

“But I don’t understand.” The flush had gone from
Dora’s cheeks, leaving them pallid. “If that’s Jan’s violin—then it was you who took it.…”

“No, it wasn’t. But I see now that I have to tell you that too. I thought maybe—”

“You don’t have to tell me anything.” Dora’s lip started to quiver and she put her teeth on it.

“You think I don’t?” Ted was getting to his feet, then he dropped back onto the bench again, looking helpless. “For the love of Mike, don’t look like that. That’s the way you looked the first time I saw you that Monday night—kind of, I don’t know, brave and beautiful—like that. I thought I was a grown man, I ought to be, I’m thirty years old, but I don’t know, when I look at you … Listen to me now, I came here to tell you a certain sapific thing—I mean a specific thing—”

A bell rang. Ted stopped short.

“That was a bell ringing,” he said.

“Yes,” Dora said. “My doorbell.” She didn’t move. “I don’t know who would be—”

“They’ll go away.” Ted was imploring. “Why not just let ’em go away?”

The bell rang again.

“Oh!” Dora sprang to her feet. “I forgot! Mr. Fox! He phoned not long after you did and said he wanted to see you and couldn’t find you and asked if I knew where you were—and I said you were coming here—and he asked if he could come and I said he could—”

“That bird,” Ted said gloomily. His eyes appealed to her. “He can go away as well as anybody else.”

Dora shook her head. “I couldn’t do that. He was nice to me.” She was moving toward a button on the wall. “Anyway, he knows we’re—I’m here—”

“Wait a minute.” Ted went to her, faced her. “Listen.” He swallowed. “What I told you about the violin—I’m not sure they’ll have to know. It would be, uh,
embarrassing. So if you wouldn’t mention it to Fox? Please?”

The bell rang.

Dora’s questioning eyes slanted up under her troubled frown and met his, beseeching.

“Please?” he begged. “I came here to tell you about it, and I’m going to, and I’ll do whatever you think I ought to.”