Rex Stout - Bad for Business

She knew all three of the people whose conversation her entrance had interrupted. The plump fussy-looking man at the desk, with hair not really gray but showing signs of it, was Arthur Tingley, grandson of the name on the door. The one with hair completely gray, even white, standing like a parson with his hands behind his back and four buttons on his coat, all buttoned, was Sol Fry, the sales manager. The woman, somewhere between the two men as to age, who in case of need could have been transformed instantly into the commanding officer of a Women’s Battalion by merely buying her a uniform, was G. Yates, devoid of title in the unincorporated firm, but actually in charge of production. No one was supposed to know that the G. stood for Gwendolyn; Amy had learned it inadvertently from Phil Tingley.

They greeted her, Sol Fry and G. Yates amicably enough though without exuberance, Arthur Tingley with a frown of irritation and a voice to match. The greetings over, he demanded brusquely:

“I suppose that Bonner woman sent you here? Have you accomplished anything?”

Amy counted three, as she had decided to do, knowing in advance that this interview would require self-control in the face of provocation. “I’m afraid,” she said calmly and, she hoped, not aggressively, “we haven’t accomplished much. But Miss Bonner didn’t send me. I came personally — I mean not officially — not from Miss Bonner. There’s something I think I ought to tell you.” She glanced at the other two. “Privately.”

“What do you mean?” He was glancing at her. “Do you mean a private matter? What kind of a private matter? This is a business firm and these are business hours!”

“We’ll go,” said G. Yates in a decided but surprisingly soprano voice. “Come on, Sol—”

“No!” Tingley snapped. “You stay.”

But the woman had Sol Fry’s elbow and was steering him to a door; not the one Amy had entered by. As she opened it she turned:

“She’s your niece and she wants to talk with you. We ought to be taking a look anyhow.”

The closing door rattled the partition. Tingley frowned at it, then at his niece, and snapped. “Well? Now that you’ve interrupted an important conference to bother me with your private affairs—”

“I didn’t say it was my private affair. I didn’t know I was interrupting a conference. I was told to come on in.”

“Certainly you were! I wanted to tell you something! I wanted to tell you that I learned only this morning that it was you who had been put to work on this thing, and I told that Bonner woman that I didn’t trust you and I wouldn’t have it!” Tingley slapped the desk with his palm. “And I won’t! If she has already told you and that’s what you came to see me about, I’ll give you three minutes by my watch!” He pulled it from his vest pocket.

Amy felt that she was trembling, and knew that she was beyond the point where counting three would help any. He was simply too impossible. But though she had failed to control her adrenaline, she would at all events control her voice, and she succeeded. “You may be my mother’s brother,” she said firmly and clearly, “but you’re a troglodyte,” and turned and left the room, paying no attention to the sputtering behind her.

She retraced her way through the labyrinth of partitions, on through the anteroom, to the head of the creaky old stairs, and descended to the street, and walked east at a brisk and determined pace. She was good and mad. So the miserable creature had told Miss Bonner he didn’t trust her, had he? But that was nothing worse than a minor irritation, since she had explained things to Miss Bonner when the assignment had been given her. She considered that for a block, and passed on to other aspects. At Seventh Avenue she turned south and, getting warm, unfastened the gray fur coat to let in some air.

If she lost her job, that would be bad. She had to have a job, and this was a pretty good one. But it was a very complicated and confused situation. Very. In spite of that, she had decided what to do, and had gone to do it, and had failed because she had got mad at Uncle Arthur when he had acted as she had known he would act. Now it was just as complicated and confused as ever.

Preoccupied, buried in her problem, she bumped into people twice, which wasn’t like her. At Fourteenth Street she did something more perilous. Stepping down from the curb and emerging incautiously from behind a parked taxi, she walked smack into the bumper of a passing car and was knocked flat.

Hands helped her to her feet and supported her. Though she was not ordinarily testy, she was unreasonably irritated at being supported by strange hands, and shook herself loose; and nearly fell again from dizziness. Voices asked if she was hurt, and she made a vaguely negative reply. A cop came trotting up, grasped her arm firmly, and escorted her to the sidewalk.

Her head cleared enough for her to realize that she was filled with rage. She told the cop in a quavering voice, “Please let go of me. I’m not hurt. I walked right into it. Let me—”

“Wait a minute,” put in a voice not the cop’s. “My car hit you. Look at you, you’re covered with dirt. You don’t know whether you’re hurt or not. I’ll drive you to a doctor.”

“I don’t need a doctor.” Amy, still a little dizzy, raised her head and was looking into a face with brown eyes, a nose and chin not quite pointed, and a mouth that smiled at the corners. It was the compelling and convincing quality of the eyes, focused at hers, though she didn’t stop to consider it, that led her to add immediately, “But you can drive me home — if you — it isn’t very far—”

The cop put in, “I’d better look at your license.”

The man produced it. The cop took it and read the name, and looked up with a grin of surprised interest. “Oh, yeah? Pleased to meetcha.” He handed it back. Amy took the man’s proffered arm, found in three steps that she didn’t need it, and permitted herself to be assisted into the front seat of a dark-blue Wethersill convertible. Her right knee hurt a little and she wanted to look at it, but decided to wait. There was another man in the back seat. As the car rolled forward the man beside her asked:

“Up or down?”

“Down, please. 320 Grove Street.”

After the car circled south into the clutter of traffic on Seventh Avenue nothing was said for three blocks, when the man driving spoke abruptly, keeping his eyes straight ahead:

“Your fingers are short.”

“Not only that,” came from the back seat, in a baritone with a strong foreign accent that sounded deliberately musical, “but her eyes are the color that they painted the front bathroom upstairs.”

“Excuse me,” said the driver. “That’s Mr. Pokorny back there. Miss—”

“Duncan,” said Amy, feeling too shaken to twist her head for confirmation of her acquaintance with Mr. Pokorny. “He seems to be whimsical. As far as that’s concerned, so do you. I regret my fingers being too short, but I’m perfectly satisfied—”

“I said short, not too short. It was meant as a compliment. I don’t like women who look as if their fingers and legs and necks had undergone a stretching process.”

“Everyone in America,” said the back seat, “regards Russians as whimsical.”

Amy tried turning her head. It gave her a twinge in the left shoulder, but she made it far enough to see a round innocent face whose owner might have been anything between thirty and fifty, with baby-blue wide-open eyes. One of the eyes winked at her with an indescribably cheerful carnality, and she winked back without meaning to.

She faced around to look at the driver and inquired, “And your name?”