“You’ll hear that in their presence. Otherwise, from me, nothing. Nor from them, either, on a bet. Send for them.”
Derwin, with the sweat trickling down the side of his neck, gazed at him truculently. But he gave in. He finally looked at the trooper and ordered, “Get Wheer and Kester.”
The trooper went. Fox said, “You’ll waste time if you start in on them. That’s straight. Let me do it, if you really want to get this out of the way. You can always stop me.”
“You’re damned right I can,” Derwin growled.
When the valet and secretary entered, after a short wait, Fox gave them a sharp glance to see what he had to deal with. He was moderately satisfied. Kester’s pale cold eyes showed no signs of panic or surrender as their focus crossed his own and Luke’s firm jaw promised all the stubbornness required. Fox started speaking as they crossed the room, the trooper behind them:
“I asked Mr. Derwin to send for you fellows and he kindly consented. A matter has come up that you know about. He has found the stub of a check which Mr. Thorpe gave me this morning.”
“I know he has,” Kester said. His voice was squeaky with strain. “He showed me the stub, in my writing, and I told him I made the check out as ordered by Mr. Thorpe and gave it to him. Beyond that I know nothing about it.”
Fox shook his head. “I’m afraid that won’t do, Mr. Kester. The trouble is that Derwin insists that I tell him what the check was in payment of, which is understandable when you consider that Thorpe was murdered within two hours after he gave it to me and that I had just got through denying that Thorpe had ever paid me anything. He suspects that there is some connection between the check and the murder, and you can’t blame him. We’ll have to clear it up, for two reasons. First, if we don’t, he’ll fuss around with us on that and won’t get his job done, which is finding a murderer; and second, he’ll do things to me that I’ll regret immediately and he’ll regret later.”
Kester’s eyes on Fox were hostile and menacing. “If you mean you’re going to clear it up by—”
“Come to the point!” Derwin blurted.
“I’m there now.” Fox turned to him. “Thorpe gave me that check to pay for a job I did for him. The job was legal, proper, involved no moral turpitude and had no bearing whatever on either of the two murders you’re investigating. I asked you to send for Wheer and Kester because I know you wouldn’t accept that statement from me without corroboration. They both know the statement is true. They know what the job was, they know that Thorpe agreed to pay me fifty thousand dollars if I performed it satisfactorily, and they know that I did so perform it.”
“Come to the point! What was it?”
Fox shook his head. “No, Mr. Derwin. I’m pretty sure that neither Wheer nor Kester will tell you that and I’m darned sure I won’t. And with them to confirm me that I did nothing actionable and nothing that would help you solve a crime, I don’t see what you can do about it.”
“I can have you committed—”
“Sure, I know, you can fiddle around and make me pay for a bond and all that gets you is the assurance that I probably won’t skip the jurisdiction, and what good will that do when you couldn’t drag me away from Westchester County right now with a five-ton truck? Let me make a suggestion: if you think there is any chance of prying out of Wheer or Kester or me any information about the job Thorpe paid me for, which there isn’t, turn us over to three of your subordinates and you go on with your business.”
Luke Wheer said with explosive approval, “That’s telling him, Mr. Fox!”
Vaughn Kester observed, his eyes merely frosty again, “You had me worried. If Mr. Thorpe were alive, he would feel that his judgment of men had once more been confirmed——”
“Get them out of here!” Derwin barked at the trooper. The trooper opened the door, and they about-faced and tramped out.
Fox unfolded his arms and stretched. “I apologize,” he said courteously. “I’ve been sitting too long. I have another suggestion to offer: I’ll swap a couple of ideas for a little information. Such as whether the shot was fired from outdoors, through those open windows, or from inside the house. I suspect the former. I couldn’t detect any smell in here. Also, the fact that Miss Grant, sitting on the side terrace, guessed that the shot came from the direction of the swimming pool, is quite understandable if the shot was fired outdoors, otherwise less so. Of course anyone who was in the house could have slipped out by the hall entrance, fired through the windows and slipped back in again. But if the shot was fired outdoors, how did the gun get in here on the floor? Thrown in, do you think? Pretty slick. It’s an extraordinarily fine problem, if it’s still open, and I suppose it is or you wouldn’t be fooling with me. How did Miss Grant’s scarf get in here? Did the murderer use it to cover his hand? I suspect so, since the examination we let you make apparently didn’t get any results. In that case, it was someone who had an opportunity to get it from the seat of the car where she left it. Does that eliminate anybody? I suppose not. And who has an alibi and who hasn’t? With the authority you have to drag them in——”
“Shut up!” said Derwin savagely. “You’re making a mistake not telling me about that check.”
“No. I’m not. Even if it were a mistake I’d have to make it, because a part of the job was the pledge of secrecy that went with it. What about the swap I suggested?”
“Swap? If you have any information regarding—”
“I didn’t say information, I said ideas. For export, to be balanced by imports. I’d like very much to examine Miss Grant’s scarf. Also to know whether it was the same gun as the one that fired the bullet that killed Arnold Sunday night. You must have sent it to a microscope. Information is what I want.”
“You won’t get it from me.”
“I’m sorry.” Fox stood up. “Are we through?”
“We are for now.”
“I suppose I’m to stick around?”
“No. I can get you if I want you. I don’t want you around this house. You talk too much.”
“The devil you say.” Fox frowned. “You can’t put a guest out, you know. I was invited here by the owner.”
“The owner is dead.”
“The previous owner is dead. The present one is alive. Property rights hate a vacuum as much as nature does. You say I talk too much. I hereby inform you that I am now going to have a private talk with Mrs. Pemberton.”
Derwin looked him in the eye. “You will leave this place within an hour. If it’s necessary to escort you, I’ll provide the escort.” He turned to the trooper. “Bring in Henry Jordan and ask Colonel Brissenden to step in here a moment.”
Chapter 16
In the side hall between the library and the music room, two men in unpressed summer-weight suits with straw hats on the back of their heads were having a muttered conversation. Fox pushed past them to get at the door which was an exit to the side of the house which had the French windows, but all he saw out there was two state troopers and a bareheaded man in shirt sleeves going over the lawn and shrubbery inch by inch. Fox re-entered the house, approached a man standing on guard at the door of the music room and said, “If you please. Is Andrew Grant still in there with Colonel Brissenden?” The man nodded without speaking.
Fox detoured through another room to reach the hall which led to the terrace at the other side of the house, but found no one visible except a trooper seated in the hall, and on the terrace a Bascom uniformed guard trying to take something out of the eye of a muscular giant whom Fox recognized as Lem Corbett, a county detective. Fox went on by and took to the lawn. As he rounded the far corner of the house he heard voices and found their source when he reached the front terrace. It was a sufficiently curiously assorted quartet to cause him to send them a second glance, but he was going on without halting when one of them called:
“Fox! Come here a minute!”
He altered his course. The same voice, which was that of Harlan McElroy, the hollow-cheeked multiple director, resumed:
�
�This is Mr. Fuller, of Mr. Thorpe’s counsel. Tilden, this is Tecumseh Fox.”
Fox shook hands with the lawyer, who looked nondescript except for his bitter sensitive mouth and hard noncommittal eyes. Then he glanced at Nancy Grant and Jeffrey Thorpe and asked casually, “Having a conference?”
“Oh, no,” Fuller said, “I’m just getting a picture of what happened before I see the district attorney. This is a frightful business. Frightful. Miss Grant informs me that you are acting in her interest.”
“I’m not doing much in anyone’s interest, I’m afraid,” Fox admitted. “I was engaged by her for her uncle in connection with the murder of Arnold, Sunday night.” He looked at Jeffrey. “How did you get along with the colonel? No blows struck?”
Jeffrey grunted. “I behaved myself pretty well. He was sore at me to start with because I told him to go to hell the other day. He kept going over and over where I was, and why and why not, when I heard the shot fired that killed my father.”
“Where were you, by the way?”
“I was out behind the rose trellis, going over my past. I could see Miss Grant sitting on the terrace, but she couldn’t see me. When she darted off towards the swimming pool I started to run after her, but then someone in the house let out a yell and I turned and headed for that.”
Fox nodded. “I’ve heard a lot about that yell, but I don’t know yet who yelled it.”
“Vaughn did. Kester. He was the first one in there. The other thing the colonel kept harping on, they’ve learned from some kind friend that I had been trying to get a stake from my father and hadn’t been able—”
Fuller interposed, “I don’t think it’s necessary to go into that, Jeffrey—”
“Nuts. You mean in front of Fox? They took it down in shorthand, didn’t they?” He returned to Fox. “Mr. Fuller is a lawyer. He sends for Miss Grant to speak to her, and what he wants is to ask her to lie and say she saw me standing behind the rose trellis at the time the shot was fired, so I can’t be charged with murdering my father! That’s the kind of—”
Fuller started to sputter. McElroy put a restraining hand on him. “Take it easy, Clint, the boy’s upset.”
“Yes,” said Jeffrey truculently, “I’ll tell the world I’m upset!”
Nancy put in, in a thin voice, “He didn’t ask me to lie, Mr. Thorpe.”
“Of course I didn’t!” Fuller declared. “I merely wanted to establish definitely whether you had seen him or not.”
“Well, she didn’t,” said Jeffrey. “Are you my lawyer? That’s fine. I’ve got no alibi and the cops know I didn’t like my father, and I’ll inherit a pile from him, and I wanted money and he wouldn’t give it to me. Work on that.” He turned precipitately and tramped off across the terrace, unheeding Fuller’s call:
“Jeffrey! I want to ask—”
“Let him alone,” McElroy said. “He’s upset. We can find him when we’re through with Miss Grant and Fox.”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to postpone me too,” said Fox. “I have to find Mrs. Pemberton and arrange not to get thrown off the place. Do you know where she is?”
Nancy nodded. “Over there on the lawn. I saw her when I passed about ten minutes ago.”
“Thank you very much. I’ll see you later,” Fox promised and deserted them.
He found her, seated on the grass in the shade of trees which had prevented his seeing her when he had looked out from the side hall entrance. He frowned when he saw that Vaughn Kester was with her, but had it erased by the time he came up to them. Kester arose as he approached and Miranda said:
“Stow the etiquette, Vaughn. Only the British dress for dinner when the ship’s sinking.”
“Then I won’t apologize for interrupting,” said Fox. “Are you British, Mr. Kester?”
“No,” Kester replied curtly, without vouchsafing any vital statistics. “Did you want to ask me something?”
“Nothing in particular. I just wandered down to tell Mrs. Pemberton that when she is disengaged I’d like to have a few words with her in private.”
“If it’s urgent,” said Miranda, “I’m sure Vaughn will disengage me immediately.”
“Certainly,” Kester declared stiffly.
“Well,” said Fox, “I’m afraid it’s urgent. If I don’t say it now, I’m afraid I won’t get to say it at all. Derwin says I talk too much and I have to get out of here.”
Kester bowed, said, “I’ll see that it’s done the way you want it, Miranda,” turned on his heel and marched off across the turf.
Fox sat down on the grass, cross-legged, three feet from Miranda, facing her. Her handsome features were not now impeccably arranged; the corners of her mouth were down, her sleepy lids looked flabby and there was grey in her skin.
“Well?” she asked.
“Well,” said Fox with his eyes on her, “there are several things I want to say, but first I have to ask a question. What time did you go to the bungalow Sunday night, how long did you stay, and what did you see and do while you were there? I mean your father’s bungalow where Corey Arnold was killed.”
“Oh.” Miranda had blinked and blinked again, but had done nothing else. “You mean that bungalow.”
“Yes. You have admirable control of your nerves. Under the circumstances, extraordinary. You may stall for a couple of minutes if you want to, to get your head working, but it won’t do you any good. I have the gloves. The ones for the left hand.”
“You have?”
“Yes. Your maid, Miss Knudsen, gave them to a little girl named Helen Gustava Flanders and I got them from her. I was starting for the house to ask you about it when the shot was fired that killed your father.”
“Do you mean you have them or Mr. Derwin has them?”
“Neither one. I was afraid the colonel might overdo it and search us, and I hid them in the piano.”
Miranda took a breath. It was her first since he had asked his question and it was half gasp and half sigh.
“I’m disinclined to think that you killed either Arnold or your father,” said Fox. “If you did, I get a black mark, because I sized you up wrong. But you’d better go ahead and tell me about it.”
Miranda suddenly moved. He thought she was arising, but she only got up to her knees, went close to him on them and said, “Lift your head up, I want to kiss you.”
He raised his face to her, and she bent to it and kissed him competently and thoroughly on the lips. Then she dropped to her former position.
“That,” she said, “was a feeble expression of gratitude for your not telling the police,” she shivered. “Lord, that would have been awful! Now I’ll tell you about it. It was around half-past eleven when I got there Sunday night. A car was parked on the road near the gate—”
“Excuse me. I want the whole works. There must have been quite a build-up. Just the essentials, because we may be interrupted and if I’m to rescue those gloves from the piano—”
“All right.” Miranda was crisp. “You already know that Jeff and I had dinner at the Green Meadow Club with Vaughn, Sunday evening.”
“Yes.”
“Well. Five months ago Jeff decided that he wanted a quarter of a million dollars to start a publishing business. He had determined he wanted to make a man of himself. Why he thought being a publisher would do that, I don’t know. I didn’t know then even why he wanted to be a man, but of course it was Nancy Grant. When he found her he wanted to be able to stick his chest out. Father was displeased with him, because he hadn’t stayed in the office when he was started there, and he wouldn’t even discuss it with him. I tried a couple of times to talk Father into it, but it was next to impossible—”
“Just the essentials. By the way, while you were kissing me I thought I heard you murmur that you would like me to stay to dinner and spend the night, and also that you wish to hire me to stay here and investigate. At a dollar a year. I annoy Derwin, but he can’t kick me out if you’ve hired me. Did I hear right?”
“Certainly.” Miranda
nearly smiled. “But to avoid misunderstanding, that kiss was pure gratitude. I think I am going to marry Andrew Grant, but don’t tell him.”
“I won’t. Thank you very much. Go ahead.”
“I was saying it was next to impossible for me to get Father to discuss anything with me seriously. I didn’t like him on account of the way he had treated Mother and he knew it. Some day I’ll tell you about him; he was inhuman and fascinating. Jeffrey began to get sort of wild. I got a letter from him last Saturday that scared me a little and Sunday I flew down from the Adirondacks and found him, and arranged for us to meet Vaughn that evening and see what we could do about the quarter million. Vaughn was far from encouraging about the prospects. We left him around nine-thirty. Jeff went off to Long Island and I came on home, here, because I was tired. But I kept thinking about it and got pretty mad. I got in a car and drove to the bungalow. I had never been in it, but I knew exactly where it was, because Jeff and I drove around and found it one day a long time ago, out of curiosity. What I intended to do was blackmail my father. I fully expected to find that some woman was there with him and I thought under those circumstances I could make him talk sense. You would understand that if you knew how fearful he was that his reputation—”
“Let’s save that. Just what happened that night.”
“I’m paying you to listen. A dollar a year. When I got there I saw that car parked and the gate standing open, but I wasn’t stopping then for little things like that. I drove right in and on to the bungalow, easing along in high to keep my engine silent. When I got out and stood there I could hear a man’s voice that didn’t sound like either my father’s or Luke’s. That stumped me and instead of going to the door I sneaked around to the side where there was light shining from a window, and got behind a bush and looked in. A girl was sitting in a chair with her hands covering her face and a man I had never seen was talking on the telephone and I heard him saying that Ridley Thorpe had been killed. I stood there a minute pulling myself together enough to be able to move. I didn’t really decide not to go in or decide what to do, but the first thing I knew I was back in the car and on my way out. Then before I got to the road I stopped the car to think a minute and automatically, because I always wear them when I drive, I started to put on my gloves. I had one on and was looking for the other one before I remembered that I had come away with two right-hand ones. I thought I’d better find the other one, but I couldn’t; it wasn’t there. It had been tucked in a pocket of my jacket and it was obvious that if it wasn’t in the car it must have dropped out of my pocket at the bungalow. And like a perfect nitwit, I got panicky. Plain unadulterated funk. I sent the car down the driveway in second gear, roaring. At the gate I had a crazy impulse which seemed brilliant at the moment and I stopped alongside the parked car and threw the other glove in it through the window, only I couldn’t even do that properly. It dropped on to the running board instead of going in. I started to open my door to get out and do it right, but my hand was trembling so I actually—”
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