Rex Stout - Double for Death

“Is Grant in the house with Kester now?”

Jeffrey nodded. “I think Vaughn took him into the library to see Father. Or, I don’t know, there’s quite a collection scattered around. Five or six directors and vice-presidents and that kind of muck have shown up, and they’re in there some place, and that rooster what’s-his-name is pacing up and down the front terrace muttering to himself—”

“Derwin?”

“No, the colonel with the chest. Briss something—”

“Oh, Colonel Brissenden.”

“Yeah, that’s him. They’ve kept him waiting nearly an hour and he’s as sore as a boil. I beg your pardon. Miss Grant, I see by the face you made that that expression is disgusting to you and I humbly apologize. I humbly apologize.” He gazed at her face a moment and burst out indignantly, “I tell you, when you look like that, it’s inhuman not to let me look at you! Can I help it how I react? I’ll tell you something, my sister has an account at Hartlespoon’s, and she’s going there to look at clothes and I’m going with her, and you’ll model the clothes, and by God I’m going to sit there for hours and look at you and what are you going to do about that? Now, damn it, please... please don’t! I’ll control it!! You haven’t had your orange juice! I’ll talk to Fox.” He turned. “I’ve got a request to make of you anyway. That photograph you took home with you yesterday. You don’t need it any more, do you? I’d a lot rather have her give me one, but that will take time...”

Fox raised the obvious objections, but Jeffrey persisted. It appeared that he really did want the photograph. The refreshments arrived and were distributed, and Jeffrey took a gulp of his highball and pursued his argument to a point where it became probable that he was merely trying to force a contribution to the discussion from Nancy. She sipped her orange juice with an air of aloof indifference that might have been thought slightly unnatural for a girl who was hearing a personable and eligible young man intimate that a picture of her was the most beautiful and desirable inanimate object on the face of the earth. She was doing a good job of it when her ordeal was mercifully ended by a voice from the doorway pronouncing Fox’s name.

Vaughn Kester stood there. “Through this way, Mr. Fox?”

Fox excused himself and entered the house. He was conducted down a side hall, that not being the main entrance, through a room which contained among other things a grand piano elaborately carved and across another hall into a room somewhat larger but less formal. Two of its walls were completely lined with books; a third had French windows, standing open to invite emergence on to a shady lawn made private by a nearby screen of shrubbery; and on its fourth side an enormous fireplace was flanked to the right and left by more books. Cool-looking summer rugs were on the floor, the chairs were cool too with linen covers, and the familiar staccato click came from under the glass dome of a stock ticker, which was at one end of a large flat-topped desk. Standing, fingering the tape, frowning at it, was Ridley Thorpe, shaven, groomed, refreshed, himself. Fox told him good morning. “Good morning.” Thorpe let the tape drop. “I’m sorry you had the trip to town and back. You had already left when Kester phoned your place. May I have that letter from that lunatic?”

Fox took it from his pocket and handed it over. “I doubt if it was written by a lunatic, Mr. Thorpe. I thought perhaps its style and contents had suggested someone to you.”

Thorpe grunted. “Nothing very definite. We’ll go into this later. I have — by the way, I said I’d pay you when your job was successfully completed. Did you make out that check, Vaughn?”

Kester got it from a drawer of a smaller desk and handed it to his employer with a fountain pen. Thorpe glanced at it, signed it, and gave it to Fox. Fox too glanced at it and said, “Thank you very much,” as he put it in his pocket.

“You didn’t earn it,” Thorpe declared. “I should have offered you five thousand, that would have been ample, but I was close to desperate and my head wasn’t working. Not that you didn’t handle it well; you did. It was a perfect job. If you had taken me to White Plains, saying you had found Jordan’s boat and me on it, there would have been a certain amount of suspicion and investigation. The way you did it, leaving me there and letting Luke and Kester be discovered on your boat with you, was good work. I admire it. I want to hire you to find out who killed Arnold. I’m not making any more foolish offers, but I’ll pay you all it’s worth. Unless he is found and taken care of I’ll get killed myself and I doubt very much if the police—”

Fox interrupted. “I’m not sure I can take the job. I understand you sent for Andrew Grant. I’m working for Grant and I can’t undertake—”

“There’ll be no conflict unless Grant killed Arnold and I don’t think he did.”

“What did you send for him for?”

“Because my daughter asked me to. Also because he was there at the bungalow and I wanted to question him myself.”

“All right,” Fox conceded, “I’ll talk it over, anyhow. I already have an idea about that letter you got—”

“It’ll have to wait,” said Thorpe brusquely. He glanced at his wristwatch. “Good gracious, it’s eleven o’clock. I only called you in now to get that letter. Colonel Brissenden of the state police is here and he’ll want to see it. I’ll get rid of him as soon as possible, but then I must have to talk with some of my business associates who have come up from New York. This thing is making a lot of trouble and causing a lot of foolish rumors. You’ll have to wait till I’m through. If you get hungry, find my daughter and tell her to give you some lunch.”

“It’s only a thirty-minute drive to my place. I’ll go there and you can phone—”

“I’d rather you’d wait here. I may be through sooner than I expect. Take a dip in the pool or something. Vaughn, bring Colonel Brissenden.”

Fox returned to the outdoors by the way he had come. Two men were standing talking in the living room as he passed through, one large and fat and florid, the other angular and hollow-cheeked, with a nose whose bridge took all the space between his eyes. They looked worried and ill-humored and stopped talking when Fox appeared. He continued on to the flagged terrace at the side of the house and found that its only remaining occupant was Henry Jordan, still in his chair. He got his glass from the table where he had left it and finished the drink before inquiring:

“Did they go off and leave you?”

Jordan nodded. “The young lady jumped up and went, and young Thorpe followed her.”

“Which way did they go?”

“Down that path.”

A glance showed that the path was deserted up to a bend where it disappeared around a rose trellis. Fox shrugged and informed Jordan, “I’m sorry, but we’re held up here. Thorpe has to see a policeman and then have a business talk first. It may be a couple of hours or more. Did you have any breakfast?”

Jordan looked morose. “I’m all right. My daughter gave me a biscuit and tea. I wouldn’t eat anything at this place. I’d just as soon not see Thorpe. Is there any chance of him coming out here?”

“No, I don’t think so. He’s in the library on the other side of the house, busy dominating. I don’t like him much either. Want to walk around a little?”

Jordan said he was all right where he was, and Fox left him and strolled on to the lawn. Some scale on a limb of dogwood caught his eye and he stopped to examine it with a frown. It was a shame, he reflected, that with millions of dollars a man couldn’t keep scale off his dogwood. Going on, he found himself skirting the border of an elaborate series of trellises covered with climbing roses. As he neared its farther end there was a halt in his step, as of a momentary inclination to turn towards a gap in the trellis; then he resumed his course. Another vast expanse of lawn, punctuated with trees and shrubbery, opened to his view; and there were two moving figures at a distance. Nancy Grant was strolling along the straggling edge of a planting of junipers and fifty paces behind her, now sidling forward, now pausing as if for a reinforcement of resolution, was Jeffrey Thorpe. Fox stood there watching them, then suddenly burst into laughter, turned and entered the central path between the trellises, marched down it for ten yards, stopped abruptly and said aloud: