Rex Stout - Bad for Business

“And you’re afraid you’ll lose your job and that’s the jam you’re in.”

Amy shook her head. “That’s not it. Or only a small part of it. I got acquainted with — uh — the P. & B. vice-president three weeks ago, and started — that is, I proceeded with the investigation. He’s young and quite presentable, competent and assured and rather — I imagine pretty aggressive as a business man. We got — on fairly good terms. Then, Saturday afternoon, I saw him in a booth at Rusterman’s Bar, having what appeared to be a very confidential conversation with Dol Bonner.”

“The poor devil,” Fox laughed. “With two of you after him—”

“Oh, no,” Amy protested. “That’s the trouble. If she had been working him, she would certainly have let me know. I was given to understand that she had never met him or even seen him. This morning, when I phoned her, I gave her an opening to tell me about her meeting with him Saturday, but she still pretended she had never seen him. So obviously she is double-crossing Tingley. And making a fool of me.”

Fox frowned and pursed his lips. “Not obviously. Conceivably.”

“Obviously,” Amy insisted stubbornly. “I’ve tried to think of another explanation, and there isn’t any. You should have seen how confidential they were.”

“They didn’t see you?”

“No. I’ve been trying to decide what to do. Much as I dislike my uncle, I can’t just go ahead with it as if I thought it was on the square. Miss Bonner pays me, but the money comes from Tingley’s Titbits, and while I may not be a saint I hope I have my share of plain ordinary honesty. Just after I phoned her this morning, before I stopped to think I called up — the vice-president and canceled two dates I had with him. That was silly, because it didn’t really settle anything. Then I... excuse me—”

The telephone was ringing. She went to it, at a corner of the table, and spoke:

“Hello... Oh, hello... No, I haven’t... No, really... I’m sorry, but I can’t help it if you misunderstood...”

After several more phrases, equally unrevealing, she hung up and returned to her chair. Incautiously she met Fox’s gaze, and again the compelling expectancy in his eyes caused her to speak without meaning to.

“That was the P. & B. vice-president,” she said.

Fox smiled at her and inquired pleasantly. “About the canceled dates? By the way, what’s wrong with his name?”

“Nothing that I know of.”

“I just wondered. You keep calling him the vice-president, but surely you know his name, don’t you?”

“Certainly. Leonard Cliff.”

“Thanks. You were saying...”

“I was going to say that I went to see my uncle.”

“Today?”

“Yes, right after lunch. I hated to lose my job, and I decided to tell him the facts and try to persuade him to take the case away from Bonner & Raffray without giving a reason, and turn it over to some other agency. I was going to offer to return to him my pay for the three weeks I had been working on it. It seemed to me that was a fair thing to do. But the minute he saw me he began yelling about how he had told Miss Bonner he didn’t trust me and didn’t want me working on it, and if I had told him what I intended to he would instantly have phoned Miss Bonner about it, which I might have known anyhow if I had used my head. So I got mad and called him an ape, only I said troglodyte, and left.”

She stopped. Fox prodded her, “Go ahead.”

“That’s all. I started to walk home, and before I got here I walked into your car.”

“But you said you’re in a jam.”

Amy stared. “Well, good heavens, aren’t I?”

“Not that I can see. Unless you’ve left something out.”

“Then you must have an exalted idea of a jam,” Amy declared indignantly. “The least that can happen is that I lose my job. That may seem very picayune to you, with your ten-thousand-dollar fees, but it’s darned important to me. And anyway, if I just quit and let it go at that, how about the double-cross they’re putting over on my uncle? I may dislike him, in fact I do, but that’s all the more reason why I don’t want to have a hand in a game to cheat him.”

“You won’t have a hand in it if you quit your job.”

“But I don’t want to quit!”

“I suppose not. And that’s all? That’s the jam you’re in?”

“Yes.”

Fox regarded her a moment, and said quietly, “I think you’re lying.”

She stared, gulped, and demanded, “I’m lying?”

“I think so.”

Her eyes flashed. “Oh, well,” she said, and rose to her feet.

“Now wait a minute.” Fox, otherwise not moving, was smiling up at her. “You’ve asked for some professional courtesy, so you’re going to get it. You may not know you’re lying, or let’s say misrepresenting; it may be only that something is interfering with your mental processes. Some uncontrollable emotion. There are two things wrong with your story. First, your unwarranted assumption that because you saw Miss Bonner talking with the vice-president — there, I caught it from you — she is double-crossing Tingley. There are any number of possible explanations besides that. Second, the obvious thing to do is to tell Miss Bonner that by accident you saw her with Leonard Cliff. Just tell her that, of course without any intimation that you suspect her of skulduggery. She may give an explanation that will completely relieve your conscience. If she doesn’t, you can then decide what to do. Don’t tell me that anyone with eyes as intelligent as yours hasn’t thought of as obvious a step as that.”

“But I was scared to. I was too afraid of losing my job to do anything—”

“Oh, no, you weren’t. You did do something drastic. You canceled two dates with Mr. Cliff. What for? In case there was an innocent reason for the Bonner-Cliff conversation, those dates were an important function of the job you don’t want to lose. You were too befuddled to think straight. Befuddled by what? Well, you canceled the dates with Cliff in a fit of pique. When you were describing him to me you faltered and broke a sentence off in the middle. You didn’t want to pronounce his name, and when you did pronounce it because I asked for it, your voice changed. When you talked to him on the phone just now, you turned your back on me, but not enough so that I couldn’t see the color in your cheek. You’re in a jam, I admit that, but in the last twenty centuries there have been billions of girls in the kind of jam you’re in. You have acquired a tender sentiment for Mr. Cliff. Is he married?”

Amy said, in a small voice, “No.” She sat down and looked at Fox’s dark-red necktie, and after a moment lifted her gaze to meet his eyes. “I deny it,” she said aggressively.

“Why? Why deny it?”

“Because it isn’t true.”

Fox shrugged. “You tricked me,” he declared. “What you need isn’t Tecumseh Fox, it’s Dorothy Dix. I suppose what irks you most is that you were nursing a belief that the P. & B. vice-president was inclined to reciprocate in the matter of sentiment, but if he is secretly in cahoots with Miss Bonner he must know that you are merely doing professional work on him and therefore his own apparent reactions are open to suspicion. Of course on that point I can’t help you any, but I should think your feminine intuition—”

Amy jumped up and made for the bedroom, not hobbling, and from the inside closed the door.

Fox sat for five seconds, looking at the door, raised brows widening his eyes. Then he sighed, arose, got his hat from the table, and started for the entrance to the hall. Halfway there he stopped abruptly, wheeled, sailed his hat through the air to an accurate landing in the center of the table, went to the bedroom door and opened it, and entered.