Rex Stout - Double for Death

“I haven’t had time to look at a paper. No, I’ll bring her back all right, but I can’t say when. While you’re warming her up I’ll step across the street and get a sandwich.”

In a quarter of an hour he was back, with a large package under his arm and a bundle of newspapers. At the end of one of the piers a long narrow powerboat, with seats for six in a glassed-in cockpit, was purring smoothly. Fox hopped in and got behind the wheel, the engine swelled to a roar and then purred again, a man holding her to the pier gently eased her off and she glided away, with Don Carter watching her with pride in his eyes. Fox took her out beyond the last marker, turned her north and opened up the throttle. She reared, lifted up her long narrow aristocratic nose and scooted.

In twenty minutes he went ten miles. He throttled down the engine, aimed for a desolate-looking stretch of beach strewn with rocks and old seaweed; a hundred yards offshore he reversed to stop her, left the seat and catfooted it to the bow, and dropped an anchor. Peering inshore, he caught through scraggly trees a glimpse of a white object with a splotch of red on its side. A survey of the beach showed him no sign of life. He hopped to the stern, unlashed a dinghy that lay athwart, lowered it into the water, got the oars and rowed to the beach. Jumping out, he stood and surveyed the scene again, and in a moment saw activity around the white object, and soon three men emerged from among the trees and stumbled towards him over the stones. They looked unmistakably like men running away from something and Fox scowled fiercely as they approached, but when they reached him he said only:

“Get in. Thorpe and Luke in the stern, Kester in the bow. Get in!”

With that weight in the little dinghy, he had to wade in to his knees to get her free; then he hopped over the gunwale and took the oars. Back alongside the boat, he got them transhipped, pulled the dinghy to the stern and lashed it, and issued instructions:

“You are all to lie low. No faces showing. It would be a shame to spoil it now. There are sandwiches and beer in that package, and help yourselves to the newspapers. We’ve taken a trick. Jordan left Thursday on his boat and hasn’t returned. I won’t describe it or tell you the name of it, or you’d be sticking your faces up to help me look for it.”

Ridley Thorpe growled faintly: “My stomach hurts and I think I’m going to vom—”

“Lie down and take it easy. Open that window, Luke, and he’ll soon get enough air. Now remember, keep down.”

He went to the bow and upped the anchor, climbed into the seat and started the engine, reversed and nosed her around for open water, and the search for the Armada was on.

By four o’clock that afternoon Tecumseh Fox would have given ten to one that there were fifty million boats on Long Island Sound and that a high percentage of them were white cruisers with brown cabin trim. The Carter Express Forty had poked its nose in at a hundred coves, inlets and harbours, all the way from Norwalk to Niantic on the Connecticut shore, and back from Plum Island as far as Wading River on the Long Island side. It was at four o’clock that an act of God came perilously close to terminating the operation by the conclusive process of sinking the entire outfit. Fox saw it coming around three-thirty and he knew that prudence dictated a flight for shelter, but he decided the boat could take it with proper handling. It came swooping and swirling from the west, a savage wind lashing with a thousand staggering blows, the recently placid water swelling, rushing, breaking, careening like a maniac, the summer day darkened into night. Fox throttled down, took it three-quarters on and prayed that the gear was good. The boat quivered, lunged and plunged, turned on its side, righted and tried the other side for a change, fought desperately to keep its nose into the danger. The act ended almost as abruptly as it had begun; and when he could, Fox turned for a look at his passengers. Vaughn Kester was trembling and as white as a sheet; Luke Wheer was not white but he was trembling; Ridley Thorpe nodded at Fox and declared, “You did that very well! Gracious, that was a blow! You handled it just right!”

Fox nodded back at him and returned to his steering, muttering to himself, “One more proof that no man is a total loss. Never forget that.”

Ten minutes later, not far beyond Shoreham, a tiny cove no bigger than a hollow tooth came into view and planted in the middle of it was a white cruiser with brown cabin trim. Apparently it was well anchored, for there was no sign that the storm had torn it loose. Fox circled inshore and in a minute made out the name on the stern: Armada. He throttled down and floated up to it, alongside, reversed, grabbed the cruiser’s gunwale to hold off and killed his engine. In the cockpit, mopping water which the storm had blown in, was a man around sixty, brown as leather, small but not puny, with jutting cheekbones guarding deep-set grey eyes.

Fox asked him, “Are you Henry Jordan?”

“I am,” said the man. “Who are you?”

That was at 4:40 p.m.

Across Long Island Sound and some miles west, Dan Pavey slouched in the front seat of the convertible, parked in front of Don Carter’s place at South Norwalk. He was motionless and his eyes were closed. Suddenly his right leg twitched, then his left arm; his eyes opened; he jerked himself upright, stared around, blinked at his wristwatch and saw that it said 4:40.

“Well!” he told himself, in a rolling rumble of shocked incredulity.

He stared fixedly at space for three minutes.

“Well!” he repeated, still incredulous. “Mrs. Pavey’s boy Dan dreaming about a girl. Don’t deny it. Wake up. Is your boy running a fever, Mrs. Pavey? Perhaps he has acute cerebral flimmuxosis. What a pity. Flush out his skull and let it dry in the sun. How far can he spit? Phut!”

He got out, walked along the sidewalk to a door with a sign, BAR & GRILL, entered and ordered a double Scotch.

He downed it in a gulp, frowned around the place and ordered another. It went the way of the first. He ordered a third, sent it after its predecessors and ordered another one. The man behind the bar demurred.

“Right,” Dan growled. “It’s a waste of money. You might as well try to fill a gas tank with a teaspoon.”

He picked up his change from the bar, returned to the street, walked a block and a half to a drugstore, climbed on to a stool at the fountain and told the boy:

“Westchester Delight with nuts.”

He muttered to himself, as the boy started the complex operation.

“Yes, sir, nuts.”

In the late afternoon, a little after six o’clock, District Attorney P. L. Derwin sat at his desk in his office at White Plains, wearily mopping his face with a damp handkerchief. Not only was he harassed by the impacts and exigencies of the most spectacular murder case Westchester County had enjoyed during his term of office, but also the weather was getting him; the thunderstorm that had raged across the city on its way to the sound in midafternoon had brought only ephemeral relief; it was now hotter and more humid than ever. Derwin looked at the man and girl in chairs facing him, let his handkerchief drop to the desk and spoke irritably:

“I may need to question you further at any time. I can’t say when or how long or how often. Mr. Collins is of course correct when he says that it is your right to refuse to answer questions, but if you do so, the law has a right to make inferences from that refusal. You have both been released under bond as material witnesses.” Perspiration showed on his forehead again. “You are bound, under severe penalty, to be available when needed. That publicity stunt of Tecumseh Fox’s — that radio broadcast — has no bearing whatever on your status. As you know, Fox disappeared from his home during the night, has not returned and cannot be found.”