Richard Deming - Tweak the Devil’s Nose

“Out of town?” I repeated. “Did he present my proposition at your board meeting last night?”

“Board meeting?” He sounded puzzled.

“Didn’t you have a board meeting last night?”

“No...” slowly. “I wasn’t even in town last night, Mr. Moon. But I don’t quite understand what you mean anyway. We have no board of directors. We’re not incorporated. Knight and I are sole owners. What was your proposition?”

I hung up quietly.

Mrs. Knight’s squat figure was centered in the dining-room door. Her hands rigidly clasped each other and fright peered from the back of her eyes. All I did was look at her without any expression on my face, but she backed into the dining room as though terrified.

I followed her without hurry. “Where is he?” I asked in an easy voice.

“I don’t know! Honest I don’t!” Then words tumbled from her in a deep-toned stream. “I don’t know where he goes. He says board meetings and comes in at all hours, and I know it’s not board meetings because his company has no board. But it isn’t drinking either. I’ve smelled his breath after he’s asleep. I don’t know where he goes or what he does.”

She stopped with fat shoulders pressed against a wall. Her frightened face tilted upward and she licked trembling lips.

I said, “Don’t you ask where he goes?”

“I couldn’t. If you knew his temper, you’d see I couldn’t. All I know is he makes good money, but we never have anything. If I said right out I didn’t believe his board meetings, he’d — he’d kill me, like as not.”

Then her eyes grew even wider and the back of one hand pressed against her mouth. “He wouldn’t really,” she whispered. “He wouldn’t kill anybody.”

I looked down at her thoughtfully until two tears seeped from the corners of her eyes and dribbled across her cheeks. Then, suddenly, I felt infinitely sorry for her and a little ashamed of myself.

I said, “Take it easy, Mrs. Knight. Your husband may be able to explain the whole thing.”

She shook her head. “You’ll tell the police. I know you will. And they’ll arrest him for something he didn’t do.”

Her shoulders hunched and she bowed her head into upturned palms as sobs began to shake her body. As quietly as I could, I got my hat from the front room and left, feeling somewhat like a heel.

From a drugstore booth I phoned Warren Day at his home.

“How does this sound?” I asked. “Three hours before Lancaster got it, a guy threatened to fix him. The guy’s wife says he has a temper, and he wasn’t where he told his wife he was at the time of the murder. Also, he’s taken a powder.”

Day said, “Who’s the guy?”

“Willard Knight. Jones and Knight Investments.” I told him the same story the secretary-bookkeeper had told me. “He’s the kind of guy who invests all his money in stock and lives in a five-thousand-dollar shack.”

“Where’s the shack?”

I told him the address.

“I’ll have Hannegan get a picture from his wife and we’ll send out the word. That all?”

“All for now.”

“Okay. Good-bye.”

“You’re welcome,” I said.

“Huh? Oh, you mean you want thanks. Listen, Moon, I been off duty for hours and I was watching a television show. I should thank you for pulling me away from Hopalong Cassidy?”

His receiver slammed in my ear.

Harlan Jones’s house was on Park Lane over on the West Side. It was a modest but substantial place, along in the fifteen-thousand-dollar class. I contrasted the broad, well-kept lawn and solidly built brick bungalow with Willard Knight’s strip of unkempt yard and his flimsy frame house. Before ever seeing him I bet that Mr. Jones never took fliers on the market.

It was just eight P.M.. when I pushed the button next to the front door.

The woman who answered my ring was as much a contrast to Mrs. Knight as her home was to the Knight home. Sleek and serene, she escaped thinness by that slight margin stylists call willowy, which is between slender and skinny. Golden hair pushed back from a broad unlined brow in careful waves. Her eyes were wide spaced and green, and her nose arched slightly but delicately over a soft, humorous mouth. She looked thirty, but by the barely discernible crow’s-feet at her eye corners, I judged her a well-preserved thirty-five.

I said, “Mrs. Jones?”

“Yes.” It was the same throaty voice I had heard over the phone.

“Mr. Jones in?”

“Not at the moment. He just stepped down to the drugstore, but he’ll be right back. Will you come in?”

I said, “Thanks,” and let her lead me into a tastefully furnished living room equipped with modern furniture which was neither new nor worn, but had an air of much comfortable use.

“I’m Manville Moon,” I explained when we were settled in easy chairs with a knee-high glass-topped table between us. “I phoned earlier.”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “I answered the phone.” She laughed lightly. “Harlan will be glad to see you. He was upset when you hung up on him.” Her tone grew an edge of tolerant cynicism. “Harlan is always upset when he thinks he’s lost a chance to make a nickel.”

Then, apparently realizing her flippancy was not exactly diplomatic with one of her husband’s prospects, she looked contrite. “I shouldn’t say that. I’m always saying things I shouldn’t.”

“It won’t hurt your husband’s business,” I said dryly. “I’m afraid I left a wrong impression with Mr. Jones. I’m not in the market for stocks and bonds.”

Fishing out my wallet, I handed my license over for examination for the third time that day. She read it carefully, then looked at me with an amused quirk lifting the corners of her mouth.

“A detective! How dramatic! Don’t tell me Harlan is secretly a criminal.”

I shook my head. “My interest isn’t in your husband.”

“Neither is mine,” she said frankly, then colored to the roots of her hair and emitted a throaty little laugh. “Don’t I say the damnedest things?”

I let a grin form on what I use for a face.

“You’re nice when you grin,” she said. “Sort of like a friendly Saint Bernard whose face has been chewed by a bulldog. Do you mind my saying that? You must know you’re not exactly handsome. But of course with those shoulders, you don’t have to be.”

As she seemed to require only occasional answers when carrying on a conversation, I contented myself with merely continuing to grin.

“Are you interested in me?” she asked suddenly.

“How do you mean? As a detective?”

“How else?” Then her eyes widened and she let out a healthy, spontaneous laugh. “Are you interested some other way? That might be fun.”

“I came to see your husband about his partner,” I explained.

All laughter faded from her eyes. “Willard?” I nodded, mildly intrigued by her use of Knight’s first name.

“What’s he done?” Her tone was intently serious.

I shrugged. “Nothing I know of. Except disappear.”

She studied me estimatingly and a faint trace of amusement reappeared in her eyes. “Going out of town on business is hardly disappearing.” Then she frowned. “At least Harlan said he was away on business.”

I remained silent.

“Harlan never lies. To me, anyway. I’d catch him in a minute.” Continuing to eye me, her tone gathered impatience. “What do you want to know about Willard?”

“Where he is.”

“Why?”

“Want to talk to him.”

She gripped one side of her lower lip between even teeth and watched me vexedly. “Is it a secret?” she asked finally.

“No, but I’d just as soon hold it till your husband comes home and not have to repeat myself.”