Rex Stout - Bad for Business

There was no answering click. He tried it again, and then again, with silent intervals between, the third time making it an insistent and importunate series, meanwhile muttering inelegant but expressive imprecations. He was just ready to make a dash through the downpour for a lunchroom at the corner, in search of a phone booth, when a woman came backing into the vestibule from outside — backing in, because she was collapsing an umbrella to get it through the door. That accomplished, she turned, and with a start of surprise saw Fox.

“Lucky again,” he observed. “I came for a brief chat with you. No escort at this time of night?”

Amy Duncan’s eyes were without sparkle and her skin without bloom. “I went to bed,” she said, “and couldn’t sleep. So I got up and dressed and went for a walk.” She got a key from her bag.

“Didn’t Mr. Cliff stick around awhile?”

“No. He went soon after you did. As soon as he had made a few — remarks.” She had the door open. “After you — after what you — but I asked you to help me and I suppose I have no right to resent anything. Are you coming up?”

“If I may. I’d like to ask you a couple of questions.”

She made no reply, and Fox followed her in and up the stairs. Another key opened the door, and they were in the living room. She turned on the lights.

“Excuse me while I deposit this,” she said with dreary politeness, and with the dripping umbrella in her hand crossed and opened another door. Fox, with a sudden unaccountable frown creasing his forehead, stepped forward to get the room she was entering within his range of vision. It was the bathroom, and she was standing the umbrella in the tub to drain. That done, she came out and unbuttoned her coat.

“Blister my belly!” Fox said.

At his tone, she jerked her head up to look at him, and, seeing his face, she goggled. “What... what’s the matter?”

“Excuse me,” said Fox. “I apologize. I have just been struck by lightning. Rain usually follows lightning, but in this case it preceded it. I no longer need to ask you any questions. You are a beautiful and enchanting creature, and whereas I loved you before I now adore you. Good night and happy dreams.”

She was still goggling when the door had closed behind his exit.

Fox did not descend the stairs rapidly. He went down, and out to his car, slowly and deliberately, like a man whose head is so completely engrossed with other matters that his feet, in their wisdom, are quite aware that the detail of locomotion is being left to them with no assistance from above. In the car behind the wheel, he sat a long time without moving, staring at the globules dancing down the windshield with a concentration that could not have been surpassed by his eighteenth century namesake, the statesman Charles James Fox, when he wagered fifty thousand pounds with Richard Brinsley Sheridan on a raindrop race down a club window. Finally, still deliberately, he turned the ignition key; and it took him twice as long to retrace the route to 914 East 29th Street as it had taken him to come.

He exchanged nods with the man in the raincoat, who seemed relieved to see him back, pressed the button and opened the door on the click, and mounted the four flights for the fourth time that day. The door above was open, and Inspector Damon, standing there, rumbled at sight of him:

“It’s about time. Come on in here. The D.A. wants to hear—”

“Let him wait.” Fox, no longer deliberate, was crisp. He pushed by and entered the kitchen. “The place for a D.A. is a courtroom. Come in here instead, and shut the door. I’ve got it.”

Damon, being fairly well acquainted with Fox’s tones of voice and manners of speech, after one sharp glance at him, stepped inside the kitchen and quietly closed the door.

“All right,” he said, “I’ll bite. What have you got?”

“I think I have,” Fox amended. “Do me a favor. Bring that box here.”

The inspector regarded him. “I don’t know. I’m aware that you pick up a lot of gossip, but—”

“Now come. Just bring it here, huh?”

Damon went, and in a moment he was back with the leather bag. He placed it on the table and removed the box and handed it to Fox. Then he stood in readiness to take appropriate action in the remote event that Fox had gone crazy.

It did in fact appear that Fox’s mind was touched, though not in a way that justified restraint by force, for instead of opening the box, he grasped it firmly in both hands and shook it violently from side to side. His attitude suggested that he was listening for something, but the banging of the shoes against the metal sides of the box was all there was to hear. He stopped and gazed at the box a moment with his lips screwed up, waggled it again as before but more gently, returned it to the bag, and looked at the inspector with a nod of satisfaction.

“That’s all right,” he declared. “I’ve got it. I know who killed Tingley.”

“That’s fine,” said Damon sarcastically. “That’s just fine. Name and address?”

Fox shook his head. “Not yet. And for God’s sake don’t start shoving, because it’ll only lead to an argument and you can’t win it.”

“I can if—”

“No, you can’t. You’ve got nothing to open me with because you haven’t the faintest idea where the joker is. You admitted in there that as far as you can see it’s Guthrie Judd and it’s hopeless. I’m not sticking out my tongue at you, I’m just stating a fact. If you’ll just tell me one or two things — for instance, were there any prints on the box?”

“Ha, by God. I’m to tell you.”

Fox upturned his palms. “Be reasonable. Will it stop your circulation to tell me if there were prints on the box?”

“No. There weren’t any. It had been wiped.”

“Any on the stuff inside?”

“Yes. Plenty. Tingley’s and Philip’s and a mess of old ones.”

“Much obliged. That fits. Have you still got a man in Tingley’s office?”

“I’ve got two men. Six men on three shifts. We couldn’t seal the room because they needed things.”

“Fine. Have you removed anything from the room?”

“Certainly we have.”

“What?”

Damon shifted, went closer, so that his eyes, straight into Fox’s, were only inches away. “You know,” he said in a hard tone, “if there is any chance, any chance at all, that this is a ride around the block—”

“There isn’t. I have more sense. What was taken from the room?”

“The corpse. Two bloody towels. The knife and the weight and Miss Duncan’s bag. Five small jars with some stuff in them which we found in a drawer of Tingley’s desk. We had the stuff analyzed for quinine and there wasn’t any. We were told they were just routine samples.”

“That’s all?”

“Yes.”

“No other sample jars were found?”

“No. I didn’t do the searching myself, but those five were brought to me, and if any others had been there they would have been brought too.”

“Then it’s still there. It ought to be. It must be. Get your hat and coat and let’s go see.”

Damon, showing no inclination to move, demanded, “What and where?”

“I’ll show you. Tingley’s office. I swear by heaven, if you balk on me I’ll spill it to the D.A. and get him to go with me, and leave you to chew the rag with that bony wonder in there. Well?”

Damon, scowling, said, “You wait here,” picked up the leather bag, and stalked off in the direction of the inner room. Fox heard him speaking with Skinner, and then he reappeared and gestured to Fox to go ahead, and they left the apartment. Downstairs in the vestibule the man in the raincoat was instructed to go up and stay with the district attorney, and he went. There ensued a brief argument about cars, which Fox won: he would drive his own, and the inspector would follow in the police car.