Rex Stout - Double for Death

At a filling station on the Sawmill River Parkway he pulled up and told the attendant to fill the tank and went inside to use the phone. He knew neither the number nor the name, only the street address, so it took a few minutes to get the call through. But finally he heard the voice and recognized it from the hello.

“Hello! Is this 916 Island Avenue? No, this is the man you talked to through your window yesterday morning when I called to see Henry Jordan and he wasn’t home. Remember? Thank you very much. Yes, indeed he has. Yes, I’m Tecumseh Fox. Thank you very much. I just called Mr. Jordan’s number and there was no answer. Has he returned home? Oh, no, I just have a message for him. Will you do me a favor? You see, he’s quite annoyed at all the publicity and he may not answer the phone. If he comes home will you give me a ring? Croton Falls 8000. That’s right, easy to remember. Thank you very much. Sure, I’d love to meet your husband. We’ll do that some day.”

He went out and paid for the gas and was off again. At that hour the traffic was thin and he made good time — on over the Henry Hudson Bridge and down the West Side Highway. He left it at 79th Street and headed east, crawled crosstown and across the park, and parked the car on 67th Street at the identical spot where he had parked the truck the previous morning.

The day’s second surprise was awaiting him in apartment 12H of the palace on the avenue. The same functionary as before greeted him, this time with no astonishment, phoned his message and waved him to the elevator. Also as before, Dorothy Duke herself opened the door of the apartment to him, and though she looked more rested and less pinched by apprehension, her voice was squeaky with an irritation so pronounced that he was startled.

“Come on in here,” she said, turning for the rear.

“No, thank you, Miss Duke, this will do—”

“Come in here a minute,” she squeaked peevishly and kept going. He followed her because there was nothing else to do, entered, at her heels, a large, cushioned, perfumed room with the shades drawn and the lights turned on, and saw Henry Jordan sitting there in a chair.

Fox stood and took a breath.

Miss Duke confronted her father. “Ask him,” she demanded, “whether it was dumb or not.”

“Good morning,” Jordan said. “How did you know I was here?”

“Good morning.” Fox took another breath. “I didn’t. I was on my way downtown and stopped for a word with Miss Duke. Nothing important. May I ask how you got here?”

Dorothy Duke furnished the information. “He hitched a ride to Brewster and took a train. I used to invite him to come to see me and he never would. Now he comes just when—”

“I didn’t come to see you,” Jordan protested. “I came because it was absolutely necessary. I had let myself be bullied into joining in a deception—”

“It isn’t costing you anything, is it?”

Fox shook his head at her. “Please, Miss Duke. It isn’t costing him anything, but he isn’t making anything either. Mr. Thorpe offered him a lot of money to help us out and he wouldn’t take it. You understand how we handled it, I suppose.”

“Certainly I do. It was obvious as soon as I heard it on the radio last night.”

“Of course. Well, as I understand it, your father consented to help us only for the purpose of protecting you from undesirable publicity. Don’t you appreciate that?”

“Sure I do.” The squeak was gone. “I told him I did, I think it was swell of him. But he shouldn’t have come here! What if somebody followed him, or saw him downstairs and recognized him from his picture in the paper? It’s mighty damn dangerous!”

“I agree with you there. Will you tell me why you came, Mr. Jordan?”

“I will.” The little man’s tone was uncompromising. “I came because there had been a murder done and I had been browbeaten into furnishing an alibi for a man, and I wanted to make sure that man had been where he said he was at the time the murder was committed. The only way I could do that was come and ask my daughter.”

“Do you mean you suspected that Thorpe had committed the murder himself?”

“I didn’t suspect anything. But wouldn’t I be a fool if I let myself in for a thing like that without making sure? A man had been killed at that bungalow that Thorpe owned. You and he came and told me that he didn’t want it known that he was down at that cottage, and asked me to furnish a false alibi for him. I agreed to do it, but I made up my mind last night that I’d find out for sure whether he could have been at that bungalow himself. I’m not in the business of furnishing an alibi for a murderer, not even for the sake of — not for anything.”

“Neither am I,” Fox declared. “But I thought you already knew that Thorpe spent his weekends with — at the cottage.”

“He did,” Miss Duke put in. “He knew all about it.”

“What if I did?” Jordan demanded testily. “Did I know for certain he was there that weekend? I didn’t know anything for certain. I hadn’t even heard about the murder until you chaps came alongside and boarded me. I had every right to come and see my daughter and satisfy myself—”

Dorothy Duke, who had sunk into cushions on a divan, sprang up again. “That’s not why you came!” she squeaked. “You didn’t doubt for one second that he was at the cottage with me! You came for the pleasure of reminding me that you had warned me that my way of living would bring trouble! And to tell me that the only thing that was preventing trouble now was your coming to the rescue! And I wouldn’t be surprised — I was expecting it any minute — you were going to threaten that if I didn’t agree — that you would — that if I didn’t...”

She flopped on to the divan, buried her face in cushions and wept.

Fox looked down at her with the helpless exasperation that is a man’s first reaction to a woman’s tears from Singapore to Seattle, going either direction. From behind him came Jordan’s quiet voice:

“Now listen to that, will you? Without the slightest justification, the slightest reason — Mr. Fox, this must be embarrassing for you. It is for me too. I would like you to know that I have not plagued my daughter about her way of living. Five years ago, when I first learned of her relations with Mr. Thorpe, I disapproved and told her so. She was too old to bow to my authority and too independent to be influenced by my counsel. I regretted it certainly, but I haven’t plagued her. It wouldn’t have done any good. I admit I threatened her once, a long time ago. I insisted on knowing who the man was and on meeting him, and threatened to take steps to find out unless I was given that much satisfaction. I wanted at least to know that she had not become a gangster’s moll. I was to some extent reconciled when I learned that the man was Ridley Thorpe, as I suppose many eighteenth-century fathers were when they discovered that it was a duke or an earl. I also acknowledge the fact that it is her life she is living. I have never tried to coerce her and she has no right to accuse me of coming here to threaten her. It is a relief to me to speak of this to another person. I agreed to do what I was asked yesterday, by you and Mr. Thorpe, because I don’t care to have my friends read in a newspaper that Thorpe was weekending with his mistress, Dorothy Duke, and that her real name is May Jordan and she is my daughter.”

Miss Duke sat up. “You didn’t intend to threaten—”

“I did not. Did I say anything that would give you any reason to suppose I did?”

“No, but I thought—”

“You didn’t think at all. You never do.”

“Well,” said Fox, “I don’t blame you a bit for coming here to make sure you weren’t shielding a murderer. I did the same thing myself yesterday. But your daughter’s right that it was dangerous. If some bright newspaper reporter was hanging around my place and followed you here and learns that you got out at five o’clock in the morning to come and call on your beautiful young daughter who lives alone on Park Avenue — we’ll hope he didn’t. Are you convinced now that you weren’t persuaded to furnish an alibi for a murderer?”