Rex Stout_Tecumseh Fox 02

by Bad for Business

  Fox moved his own head slowly from side to side and tried swallowing. In a moment, when he was sure the road was open for words, he would instruct Phil not to be foolish. But that didn’t get done, for before he could speak Phil came at him again, not trying for his throat this time, but apparently intending to break through the open door. He came fast, but Fox was faster. He stopped him with his left, clipped him with his right, and Phil toppled to the floor. As he went down Fox whirled and swung the door shut all but two inches, applied his ear to the crack, and listened. No sound of steps or voices came, so he softly closed the door till the lock snapped to, and turned just as Phil was lifting himself to his elbow.

  “Look,” Fox said, “I don’t want to bust any more knuckles—”

  Phil opened his mouth and started a bellow that promised to send waves all the way to Centre Street.

  Fox leaped for him. Before the bellow swelled into full volume, he got a hold on his throat, with his thumbs in position to choke off utterance without doing serious damage, but it was immediately evident that that would not do. Phil struggled, writhed, clawed, banged the floor with his heels. Fox, tightening the grip on the throat with his left hand, doubled his right fist and planted it accurately and scientifically on the mandible hinge. The clawing and banging stopped.

  Fox frowned at his right hand, opening and shutting the fingers, looked at the motionless figure on the floor and muttered, “The stubborn son-of-a-gun,” and resumed activity. Rapidly he made a survey of the place, and found nothing in the nondescript furnishings of the two small rooms and smaller kitchen that was sturdy enough to withstand any violent effort at displacement, except the water pipes. Luckily, the kitchen cupboard yielded a length of clothesline, and the bathroom cabinet a roll of adhesive tape. A glance without showed him that Phil was stirring, so he lost no time. The tape, properly and plentifully applied to the mouth, precluded another bellow, and two pieces of clothesline secured the wrists and the ankles. Another piece of line lashed a wooden chair firmly to the water pipe in the kitchen, and still others, after Phil had been dragged in there and seated in the chair, fastened down his shoulders and thighs and all but immobilized him.

  Fox looked the job over, nodded with satisfaction, got a drink of water from the faucet, brought another chair from the bedroom and sat on it, lit a cigarette, and regarded his captive.

  “Well, here we are.” He took another puff. “I did you up like that because there’s no telling how long this will last and I’ll probably want to go out for meals and exercise. At intervals I’ll remove enough tape for you to articulate, and when I do so I hope you won’t compel me to any more violence, because I only enjoy it when it’s tough going. My minimum demands are these: Tell me where you got that ten thousand dollars and what for, and tell me what you did and what and whom you saw in the Tingley building Tuesday evening. After I get that we’ll understand each other better and we’ll see.”

  He took another puff, went and put out the cigarette in a saucer on the table, and returned to his chair. “I’ll try to be patient and placid, but I’m apt to get impetuous when things go wrong, and they’ve never gone any wronger. To be forced to resort to this sort of thing hurts me worse than it does you, and that’s not a joke. And I know it won’t get me anywhere if you murdered Tingley, because you have a certain amount of guts, but if you didn’t murder him this will get results and don’t think it won’t. You won’t be the same man in seven or eight hours that you are now. I have in mind a little mechanical arrangement that will keep you awake while I take a nap. By the time I come back from breakfast—”

  A bell was ringing, there in the kitchen. Fox jerked around, and was on his feet. Since there was no bell from the hall door, it must be from the vestibule downstairs. He found the button, above the sink, and punched it, observing as he did so that the muscles of Phil’s arms and legs were swelling and twisting and his eyes were glaring in helpless fury. Fox took a swift look at the knots, stepped outside, closed the kitchen door, and opened the door to the public hall. He listened. The footsteps coming up the stairs were faint, light, lagging; there was a long pause, presumably for the collection of breath; then they were resumed. Before a head appeared at the rim of the landing Fox had decided definitely that it was a woman and quickly considered his line for a Murphy or Yates or Adams or Duncan. But it was none of those, though it was a female. Achieving the landing, panting, and glancing uncertainly toward the front before she caught sight of Fox standing in the doorway at the rear, he had a chance to appraise her. She was over fifty, was slim and well-preserved and stiffly handsome, and looked furtive and frightened; and the mink coat she was wearing had cost enough to pay the rent for all the apartments in that tenement for a year.

  Fox took a step into the hall. “How do you do.”

  “Oh!” It was a little gasp from her. She moved toward him and stopped again. “Oh!” She came two more short steps. “You—are you Philip Tingley?”

  Fox nodded and smiled at her. “This is me at the entrance of my castle.”

  “I’m late,” she said inconsequently. She came closer and he got, faintly, her perfume. “I’m always late.” She looked nervously around. “Let’s go inside.”

  He stepped aside, entered behind her, and closed the door. As he motioned her to the farther room, her head jerked around at a sound from the kitchen, but he reassured her: “Just my dog. I shut him in there because he jumps on people.” He followed her within. “Let me take your coat. This isn’t the sort of chair you’re used to, but it’ll have to do.”

  She glanced around and he saw a shudder of repugnance run over her; and she permitted just enough of her person to touch the shabby soiled upholstery to call it sitting. Then he saw, by the intentness of her eyes as they fastened on him, that there was something about him sufficiently interesting or compelling to make her ignore the surroundings after that first involuntary spasm of fastidious distaste. He sat. She did not, apparently, intend to speak, and the fixity of her gaze made him wary; it seemed likely he was supposed to say something cogent and to some purpose, and therefore it was risky to say anything. But if she was determined merely to sit and stare at him….

  He smiled at her and asked pleasantly, “Do I fall short of expectations? I mean, the way you look….”

  She stiffened. “Nothing like that is in my mind,” she said coldly. “Understand that. I had no—expectations. I came here only because your impossible conduct, your impossible demands, compelled me to come to appeal to you to have some regard for decency. I expect and desire no filial sentiments from you.”

  Chapter 15

  Fox permitted himself three seconds for a rapid movement and reorganization of his cerebral forces, covering the operation by wiping his face with his handkerchief.

  “Wrestling with the dog made me sweat,” he observed.

  The lady in mink had nothing to say to that.

  “Naturally,” he went on, “I disagree with your characterization of my conduct and demands.” Smiling pleasantly at her had of course been wrong, and he was meeting her intent regard with a rude stare. “And I certainly have no intention of making any display of filial sentiment, even if I felt any, which I don’t. If you’re going to appeal to me …” He left it hanging.

  She continued to gaze at him another moment and then said abruptly, “My brother told me you were a blackguard. A vulgar common swindler. I think he made a mistake.” A frosty smile was on her lips and gone. “A woman can tell those things better than a man. You don’t look—that way. My brother is not very tolerant or understanding, and I think he handled—undoubtedly he was blunt about it.” She tried to smile again. “That’s his manner. He probably insulted you about this—this business you want the money for—”

  “Womon,” said Fox aggressively.

  She nodded. “Whatever it is. He thinks that’s just a sham and a pretense, that you really want the money for yourself. He doesn’t realize, as I do, that young people are often genuinely unselfish an
d idealistic. But a million dollars—that’s impossible! He won’t pay it!”

  “I think he will,” said Fox menacingly.

  “But he won’t!” She extended a gloved hand, and let it fall again. “I admit that I would, if I had it, but I haven’t. I have nothing. I have come here, to this place, to appeal to you! I am dependent on my brother for everything. He has been generous with me, but I am dependent on him, and to expect him to pay any such sum—even half that—”

  “He will. He’ll have to.” Fox scowled at her. “You might as well cut it. If all you came for is to try to save him some money, you may as well save your breath. You know damn well he’ll pay it.”

  She was silent, gazing at him. Her jaw twitched, and her lips worked, but Fox was saved the bother of swallowing any compunction by the expression of her eyes, for even in fear and real distress there was no softness in them. He had no difficulty to maintain his scowl intact.

  “You are a blackguard,” she said in a thin hard tone. “You are willing to ruin me. I bore you, and you would destroy me. Then this is what I want to say. You think my brother will pay what you demand. Maybe he will. I don’t know. But I know he won’t on your terms. He has already given you ten thousand dollars. He won’t give you another cent, this I know, until you give up the papers about—your birth—and until you sign what he wants you to about that, and about your going to meet him that evening. If you do tomorrow what you threatened to do if you don’t get the money, you’ll lose everything and so will I. That’s what I came to tell you, that’s why I was willing to suffer this intolerable humiliation, because apparently you think my brother is bluffing, and he isn’t. I know him.”

  “I am not bluffing either—uh—madam.”

  “I suppose you’re not.” Deep and bitter resentment was in her eyes and tone. “You’re a man—look at you! I was doomed to be ruined by men. When I was a poor little pretty thing in that factory—that finished me, I thought, with men—but there are more ways than one. You have some of me in you, and my blood is the same as my brother’s. Your father—you haven’t learned from those papers who your father was, have you?”

  “No.”

  “He was hard, too, in a different way from us. But you’re half him and half me.” She laughed, a terrible little puff of rancor. “So I wouldn’t expect you to bluff. But I have warned my brother and I came here to warn you: unless you fix this, unless you two somehow make terms, all of us will suffer. I’ll be smashed, finished. His pride will get a blow that it will never recover from, hard as he is. You won’t get a dollar, let alone a million. And there’s another thing.”

  “Still another?”

  “Yes.” Her eyes bored into his. “Tuesday night.”

  “What about Tuesday night?”

  “Don’t be inane,” she said contemptuously. “I don’t know who killed Arthur Tingley. Do you? Does my brother? I don’t know.”

  “Same here,” said Fox gruffly. “That’s no good with me for an inducement to compromise. But you knew we were going to be there, and I’ve been wondering if you didn’t decide to make the gathering complete—”

  The gleam of disdain in her eyes met the sentence and stopped it.

  “All right.” He shrugged. “Then let us worry about who killed Tingley, if you’re out of it. As for the rest—shall I tell you what I think?”

  “I came here in the hope that you would prove to be capable of thought.”

  “I am. I hope he is. I’ve been going over it, and I’ve come to the same conclusion you have. If we don’t look out nobody will win and everybody will lose. But he’s a hard man to deal with, you know that. I think if you were with us, if the three of us were together, we would get somewhere. I think the thing to do is for you and me to go to him now and settle it.”

  She frowned. “But he—” She seemed to be shrinking. “He would be—”

  “You’re afraid of him.” Fox was on his feet. “I don’t blame you, but you are. I’m not. I’ve got him where I want him, and you too. Suit yourself. I’m ready to go.”

  She shivered a little.

  “Where is he, at home?” Fox asked.

  “Yes. Waiting for me …”

  “Suit yourself. If you want it settled—I don’t know how I’ll feel about it tomorrow—”

  “Wait a minute.” Her head drooped, and for a while she sat there motionless, her face not visible to him. Then she straightened up, arose, and said in a controlled voice, “Very well. We’ll settle it.”

  Fox lost no time getting her out of there. But out in the public hall, before he closed the door, he turned to her as one who has suddenly remembered something:

  “The dog. I’d better give the dog a bone. I’ll be right back.”

  He slipped away and into the kitchen. A quick inspection of the bonds of the captive showed that all the knots were still intact, which might have been expected, since that had been his intention when he tied them. To the eyes that blazed with fury he paid no attention whatever, as he applied two more strips of tape to the mouth, and then began exploring pockets, not finding the bunch of keys until he got to the right hip of the trousers, which was hard to get at. Back at the entrance door, he would have liked to make sure the right key was there for his re-entry, whenever that might be, but the lady in mink was standing waiting, facing him, so he merely pulled the door shut for the spring lock to catch.

  She preceded him down the four flights, and from the way she steadied herself with her fingertips along the grimy old rail it was plain that those gloves would have a cleaning before they were worn again. Outside, there was no car in front but his own, and he decided to ignore that, since he wished to preserve appearances and it was an unlikely chattel for an idealistic young man who lived in squalor.

  He hesitated. “Your car?”

  “I didn’t bring it. I didn’t want to—I came in a cab.”

  He turned west and they walked together to Second Avenue and after a short wait flagged a passing taxi, and she gave an address in the Seventies just east of Fifth. She took her corner and he took his, and nothing was said until the destination was reached, the driver was paid, and he hopped out and offered her a hand which she did not take.

  There on the sidewalk, she looked smaller, less erect, her eyes less determined and hard.

  “I had better go in first,” she said, “and tell him—”

  “No,” Fox said bluntly. “We’re doing this together or not at all.”

  She didn’t insist. Fox depressed the lever of the massive ornamental door to the vestibule, pushed, held it for her to enter, and followed. She touched a button in the jamb, and almost at once the inner door opened and she passed through, with him at her heels. A man in the conventional uniform closed the door and stood ready for anything from negation of his existence to decapitation without change of expression.

  “Is Mr. Judd upstairs?”

  “Yes, Miss Judd.”

  “Then just take my things here.” He was behind her for her coat. “And take Mr.—”

  “Sherman,” Fox said.

  “Of course. Mr. Sherman’s coat and hat.”

  That was done. Fox followed her across the spacious reception hall and up the broad carpeted stairs, admiring the fine old cherrywood of the curving rail and comparing it with the rail she had touched so gingerly less than half an hour ago. Upstairs was a landing only less spacious than the hall below, and broad corridors in three directions. She led the way to the right, opened a door, and passed through, into a large room of warmth and color and comfort and a thousand books. Only one person was there, a man in an easy chair with his feet raised to a stool, smoking a pipe and reading a magazine. His head turned to them as they entered.

  Miss Judd spoke in a high-pitched voice. “Guthrie, I thought the best thing—”

  She stopped and stood transfixed, at the expression on her brother’s face.

  Chapter 16

  Fox said, in a tone of malign and insufferable affability, “I’ve got that
fire started, Mr. Judd.” To say that, in that tone, required an exceptional degree of tough audacity. It was doubtful if ever before, in all his ruthless, cold-blooded, predaceous career, Guthrie Judd had been rendered incapable of speech by a paroxysm of helpless rage, and to watch it happening on his face might have been found momentarily terrifying by almost anyone. The cold fury of his eyes, in particular, made credible the fable of the basilisk; but Fox, standing with his hands in his coat pockets and his legs apart, was meeting them.

  Miss Judd was not. “I thought—” she faltered. “It seemed best—” She couldn’t go on.

  “She had never seen him,” Fox said brusquely. “I was there, and she took me for him. We have discussed it fairly completely. Now I’d like to discuss it with you.”

  “She—took you for Philip Tingley?”

  “Yes. That’s why she brought me here.”

  Judd looked at his sister and said in a tone of caged and concentrated ferocity, “Get out.”

  She was gaping at Fox. “You—” The rest was stifled in pale incredulity. “You said—then who—”

  “Get out!” Judd moved toward her, one step. “Get out now! You incomparable fool.”

  Her mouth opened again, but nothing came out of it. She was now perforce meeting her brother’s eyes, and plainly had no will against them.

  He said, “Go to your room and stay there. I may send for you.”