Rex Stout: Bad for Business

Fox shook his head. “Not a chance. I couldn’t deny I’m a detective, and how was I going to explain being here? If I had said my car hit you and I brought you home, I would only have made myself ridiculous. You know that. It’s one of the oldest gags in the business, especially with female operatives. I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the way you introduced yourself to Mr. Leonard Cliff. Wasn’t it?”

Amy stood staring at him, biting her lip, breathing visibly.

“Wasn’t it?”

She nodded.

“So,” Fox nodded back, “it would have gone over big if I had tried to dish that out for her. I did have a tale ready that would probably have done the trick, but I couldn’t trust you for your end. You’re all in pieces. I can’t blame you much, since in Mr. Cliff you seem to have picked on one who puts quinine in people’s food and hoodwinks you by consorting with your boss—”

“He didn’t... I didn’t—”

“Consort means merely to associate.”

Amy threw herself onto the sofa and buried her face in a cushion.

Fox stood frowning down at her. After a little he turned and strode toward the open doorway to the kitchenette, and in five paces swiftly pivoted his head to the rear; but if he expected to find her peeking he was disappointed. All he did in the kitchenette was drink two glasses of water from the faucet, letting it run a while first; then he returned to the sofa and saw that her shoulders were still making little jerks.

He spoke to the back of her head. “I’m late for an appointment, Miss Duncan, and I have to go. Your difficulties are pretty complicated. I’m in a slight one myself, because the minute I saw your eyes I fell in love with you, but we can ignore that because I’m doing it all the time. Are you listening?”

Her “yes” was muffled, but it got to him.

“Well. Your personal involvement with Mr. Cliff is out of my line, and anyway I am temporarily his rival for your affections. Did you hear the temporarily?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. As for your job, that depends on how good an operative you are. If you’re good, we can probably smooth it over with Miss Bonner after she cools off. We can’t possibly tell her you walked into my car, but I can sound extremely plausible if my heart’s in it, and for the present my heart is yours. However, the real point is that I was born curious. I can’t explain why I have a feeling that whoever put quinine in Tingley’s Titbits was daring me to find it out and prove it, but I have. I used to pretend I could ignore such things, but I can’t. So I’m not going to.”

He got his hat from the table. “You’ll hear from me. I don’t know when. I’m in the Westchester phone book. So long.”

At eleven o’clock the following morning, Tuesday, there were three persons in the dingy anteroom of the Tingley offices on the second floor of the old building on 26th Street: a red-faced youth getting his change and a receipted bill at the cashier’s window, a man in a gray suit waiting on a chair, and another man on another chair looking ferociously patient, with a large sample case on the floor between his feet. The seated men watched the youth pocket his change and leave. Soon afterward a door leading within opened and a man emerged — an erect man of sixty in a conservative and expensive topcoat and dark felt hat to match — and left by the exit to the hall. His appearance seemed to remind the man in the gray suit of something, for he got out a notebook and pencil, wrote in a neat hand, “GJ88 at TT Tues.,” and returned the tools to his pocket.

Five minutes later noises issued from the aperture of the cashier’s window. The man in the gray suit, deducing that they were intended for him, arose and approached. The old man with rheumy eyes peered through and said:

“Mr. Tingley is very busy. He wants to know what you want to see him about.”

The man in the gray suit got out the tools again, tore out a sheet from the notebook and wrote on it, “Quinine,” folded it and handed it through the hole.

“Send that to him, please.”

In another three minutes he was invited inside and a woman with a snub nose appeared to conduct him to the room whose door still said THOMAS TINGLEY. He entered, said good morning politely, and told the man seated at the roll-top desk that it was Mr. Arthur Tingley he had asked to see.

“I’m Arthur Tingley.” The plump but sagging face of the man at the desk looked as harried and exasperated as his voice sounded. He exhibited a slip of paper. “What the devil is this? Who are you?”

“I sent my name in. Fox. A man by the name of Fox.” The visitor pre-empted a chair that was by the corner of the desk, and smiled pleasantly. “I live up in the country, up near Brewster. Last week I bought some jars of Tingley’s Titbits, and when one of them was opened it tasted bitter. A chemist friend of mine analyzed it for me, and he says it has quinine in it. How do you suppose that happened?”

“I don’t know,” said Tingley shortly. “Where is it?”

“The jar? My friend still has it.”

“What kind was it?”

“Liver Pâté Number Three.”

Tingley grunted. “Where did you buy it?”

“At Bruegel’s on Madison Avenue.”

“Bruegel’s? My God! That’s the first—” Tingley stopped abruptly and regarded his caller with a flinty stare.

“I rather supposed,” said Fox sympathetically, “that I was bringing you some startling news, but apparently not. You see, I’m a detective. Tecumseh Fox. You may possibly have heard of me.”

“How the devil would I hear of you?”

“I thought you might be one of the few who have.” Only the perceptive eyes of a Pokorny would have caught the faint flicker of his vanity’s discomfiture. “No matter. The point is that, being trained to observe, I remark that your lack of astonishment and the sentence you chopped off indicate that you’ve heard of quinine before. Do you know how it got into your liver pâté?”

“No. I don’t.” Tingley wriggled in his chair. “I realize, Mr. Fox, that you certainly have a justifiable complaint—”

“I’m not complaining.” Fox waved the idea away. “Why, have you had a lot of complaints?”

“We... there have been a few...”

“Any from the pure food people? The government? Or have any of the newspapers—”

“My God, no! There’s no reason — there’s nothing dangerous about quinine—”

“That’s true. But it isn’t much of an appetizer, and it isn’t on the label. As I say, though, I am not complaining. What I’m really here for is to call to your attention the damage someone might do, me for instance, by informing the government or sicking a newspaper like the Gazette on it. Or both. Not that I’m going to do it. I’m merely threatening to do it.”

Tingley leaned forward and surveyed his caller with an angry glare. Fox smiled at him. Finally Tingley said in a strained voice, “You are, are you?”

“I am.”

“Why, you—” Tingley was trembling with rage. “You dirty scoundrel—” His jaw continued to move, but for a moment there were no more words. Then he managed some: “By God, you’ll tell me something! Who are you working for? The P. & B.?” He spat the hated initials from him.

“I’m working for no one but myself—”

“Like hell you are! So this is the squeeze, is it?” Tingley thrust out a trembling fist. “You can tell Mr. Cliff—”

“You’re wrong. I don’t know any Mr. Cliff. This is my own private personal idea. I thought it up alone.”

Fox’s tone could carry conviction when required, and it did then. Tingley sat back and scowled at him with his lips compressed to a thin line. At length he growled: