Rex Stout - Double for Death

“You deserve to,” Miranda stood up. “And you said you aren’t snobbish! That’s the lowest form of snobbishness, about money. Very well. Mr. Fox, when this is all over I’m going to invite you to dinner. Jiffy, come on home and get busy on your list for your bachelor dinner. Miss Grant — why don’t I call you Nancy?”

“Go ahead.”

“I will. Good-night, Nancy. My God, you’re lovely.”

Twenty minutes later Tecumseh Fox had his room to himself again for the night. It was still hot, though the sun had been gone for three hours and from the darkness beyond the screens of the open windows came the amazing concert of the crickets and katydids, a disturbing bedlam to unaccustomed ears, a lullaby to those who lived with it and loved it. Barefooted, in white pajama trousers and nothing above them but his tanned skin undulating with the muscle fibres, Fox was at his desk speaking into the phone:

“Harry? This is Tec. What? Yes, I’ve been moving around a little. Yep, quite a show. I’m sorry to be bothering you at home — what? Thirty-two thousand? Do tell! I’m glad you did. No, that’s a secret. Unload it before noon tomorrow. I know that, but get rid of it. No, not a thing, but a dollar today is worth a dozen in the sweet by and by. I want to ask you something absolutely under your hat, and be sure you keep your hat on. I know you do. Here it is: have you had any information recently, or heard any rumor, that Ridley Thorpe was running short? No, I’ve heard nothing myself, I’m just fishing. As far as you know, he’s right on top? Thanks. No, I tell you, I don’t know a thing, but do something for me. Ask around a little tomorrow. It won’t be hard to do that without starting any gossip yourself, with all the hullabaloo that’s going on anyhow. I want very much to know if Thorpe needed money badly or quickly, or both. No, thanks, I’ll give you a ring after the market closes. How’s the family? Good. Good-night.”

Fox hung up, went to the safe against an inner wall, twirled the combination, swung the door open, took an envelope from a pigeonhole and returned to his desk. Unfolding the paper which he extracted from the envelope, he bent the gooseneck of the lamp still lower to get a stronger light.

The message on the paper was printed in ink:

“You have left me nothing to live for and I must die but you must die first. I am ruined and I am nothing to my family and friends and you did it. I have waited, thinking to find an excuse to live, but there is no more hope. I give you my word of honour, you will die. It gives me deep pleasure to tell you so, and it would be a still greater pleasure to tell you which one of your victims I am, but I must deny myself that, knowing only that in your many frantic guesses I will be included. You will meet me on the pavement or lunching at the club, I still have enough cash for that, you will even speak to me, and you will not know I am the one who will kill you.”

Fox read it, each word, three times, and then studied the whole under the bright light. The paper was white, a sheet of ordinary sulphide bond torn from a 5 × 8 pad; the envelope was common and cheap, the kind that may be bought anywhere 25 for a nickel. It was addressed to Ridley Thorpe at his New York office and marked personal , in the same uneven handprinting, with ink, as the message itself, and it had been postmarked in New York, Station “F,” at 6:30 p.m., eight days previously.

Fox replaced it in the envelope, returning the envelope to the safe and shut the door and twirled the knob, muttered to himself, “It would stand a bet, but it may only be that he reads Galsworthy,” put on the pajama top and went to bed.

The next day, Wednesday, started its series of surprises before the birds stopped saluting it. Fox was out of bed at seven o’clock, which, since it was daylight saving, meant six by standard time. Liking, as he had said, to play safe when there was a choice, he had decided to take Henry Jordan to New York with him, and since he would have to leave by 7:50 in order to reach Ridley Thorpe’s office by nine, he trotted down the hall in his pajamas to knock Jordan up. Three efforts bringing no response, he turned the knob and pushed the door open, looked in, saw no Jordan on the bed, but only evidence that he had been there, entered and found the room empty. There were three bathrooms on that floor besides his private one; he trotted to each in turn and found each unoccupied. Men who live on the water are usually early risers, he knew, but still... He hastened downstairs to the kitchen and, silent in his bare feet, caught Mrs. Trimble in the middle of a magnificent yawn.

“Good morning, darling. Have you seen Mr. Jordan?”

“Good morning. Sleepwalking? No, I haven’t.”

“I have.” It came from Mr. Trimble, who was seated at the table drinking black coffee with a doughnut. “Soon after I got up, going to the barn, I saw him crossing the yard to the drive.”

“How long ago?”

“Coupla hours. I got up at five.”

“Which way did he go?”

“He seemed to be headed for the road. I didn’t ask him and he didn’t volunteer.”

Fox stood motionless for ten seconds, gazing at space, and then said brusquely, “May I have fruit and coffee in my room in three minutes? This will make me jump.”

His first jump took him back upstairs. After a brief halt at the door of Dan’s room he was in his own, dressing. In a moment Dan entered, in cerise pajamas with chartreuse piping, blinking but awake. Fox went on dressing as he told him.

“Jordan has skipped. Bill saw him leaving at five o’clock. I’ll have to go on to New York. Take the old sedan and get to Port Jefferson as quick as you can. Phone Bridgeport about a ferry and if you can make better time go around by the Triborough Bridge. Jordan’s boat is docked at Port Jefferson and I think that’s where he went. If he’s there, bring him back and sit on him. Persuade him. Make it up yourself. All right?”

“I’ll get him. But the new sedan would be better—”

“No. Miss Grant wants to drive over to Westport to get the luggage she left where she was weekending. If Jordan isn’t there when you arrive, phone me at Thorpe’s office— Thank you, darling. No, that’s all.” Fox buckled his belt with one hand and ate a peach with the other. Mrs. Trimble bustled out.

Dan had questions to ask and Fox answered them as he drank his coffee, finished dressing, brushed his hair and got the envelope from the pigeonhole in the safe, more or less simultaneously. He gulped down the last of the coffee, grimacing at the heat, and left Dan at the door of his room. Outdoors, back at the garage, he found that Trimble had run the convertible out and turned it around and was wiping the windshield. He climbed in.

“Thanks, Bill. Private property, no trespassing.”

“Yes, sir, I’ll keep an eye out.”

“Make it both eyes. Miss Grant is going to drive to Westport and I suppose her uncle will go along. They can take the new sedan. Dan will be using the old one. Ask Crocker to take Brunhilde to the veterinary in the station wagon. You’d better stick around. If a man phones from Pittsburgh about a bridge, tell him I can’t come. Are you doing the cover spray on the apples?”

“Yes, sir, today. That storm yesterday—”

“Good. Look out, dogs!”

The dashboard clock said 7:22 as he swung from the drive on to the highway. That appeared to be rushing it, since his allowance for reaching Wall Street from his home was an hour and ten minutes; but he was calculating on two stopovers, a telephone call and a brief visit to the apartment of Dorothy Duke. While neither his life nor his liberty was at stake on account of the alibi he had manufactured for Ridley Thorpe — since Thorpe was not suspected of murder or any other crime — still, as a minimum consideration, he liked to have things that he arranged stay arranged, not to mention the fee involved and his aversion for apologies, except polite ones, to district attorneys. He had gone to the trouble of hauling Jordan home with him purely as a safeguard for that alibi and now that Jordan had gone on hitchhiking God knew where, he wanted the assurance of another look and a word with the only other person who could shatter it.