Rex Stout - The Broken Vase

But Diego protested that he wanted more than that, he wanted the company of his friend with a sandwich and a drink, and though Fox objected that he had sixty miles to drive and needed eight hours sleep and intended to prune grape vines in the morning, he consented. They drove in his car, stopping at an all-night delicatessen on the way to get sandwiches, to Diego’s address on 54th Street, an old brownstone house, and mounted two flights of stairs to his apartment. Even with its polygenetic and rather shabby furnishings, the medium-sized living room was comfortable and not unattractive, and Diego did the honors with a Spanish flourish, taking Fox’s hat and coat and disposing of them in the closet.

“I’ll serve the feast,” he proposed. “Soda with yours?”

“I don’t suppose I could have coffee?”

“Sure. I make mine for breakfast. Ten minutes.”

“That’ll be marvelous. You’d make some woman a good wife. I want to wash my hands.”

“That door over there.”

Fox went to the bathroom. Behind the closed door he permitted himself the luxury of a wanton yawn, succeeded by a scowl of dissatisfaction. He did intend to prune grape vines in the morning, but when he did that kind of work he liked to enjoy it, to taste it, and he knew his mind too well to suppose that under the present circumstances it would be content to devote itself to the questions of spurs and fruiting canes. Even now, when he was sleepy or should be, only by a sustained effort of the will could he prevent it from diving into the fascinating problem of the cerebral processes of Hebe Heath...

He got his hands washed with soap, and his face doused, and looked for a towel. There was none on the rack, nor on the hook on the door. At the left was a smaller door, and he opened it, disclosing shelves with towels aplenty as well as a miscellany of other objects. He took a turkish, preferring them always to smooth ones, got his face dried, and, as he wiped his hands, ran his eyes over the array of articles on the shelves. But in spite of that display of idle curiosity, and of his trained capacity of observation, he would not have seen it but for his remarkably sharp vision, for the closet was dim. As it was, he did see it, the upper side of it, behind a pile of washcloths, peered in at it, and finally reached in and brought it to the light.

Under the light he examined it with a gathering frown. The pure black glaze. The delicate decorations in white enamel at the bottom. The golden yellow dragons and flowers in the middle, interspersed with the feathery green twigs and leaves. The odd, even unique, shape — Pomfret had said “unique.”

There could be no doubt about it. It was Pomfret’s Wan Li black rectangular, a picture of which he had shown to Fox, and which Mrs. Pomfret was convinced had been stolen by Hebe Heath.

Fox put the vase back in the closet, shut the door, turned to the basin, and began to wash his hands again. A little consideration was required to decide how to handle it. He was, of course, under no compulsion to handle it at all; however the thing had got to Diego’s closet, it had nothing to do with pruning grape vines. But it was ridiculous to expect any animal with a monkey for an ancestor not to meddle with a thing like that. Fox used the towel on his hands, got the vase from the closet, opened the door and stepped into the living room, and called:

“Hey, Diego, where did you get this?”

“What?” Diego stuck his head out of the kitchenette the other side of the room. “Where did I get what? Oh—”

He saw it. His face stiffened. He was motionless a moment, then started across.

“It’s a peach,” Fox said enthusiastically. “Where did you get it?”

“That thing?” Diego growled. “Why... I don’t know. Somebody gave it to me.” He started to put out a hand for it, then let the hand drop. “Why, is it any good?”

“It certainly is. I’m not an expert, but I think it’s a sixteenth-century Ming. What’ll you take for it?”

“Oh, I — How did you happen to see it? Looking for an aspirin?”

“No, a towel. There wasn’t any on the rack. Really, I’d like to buy it.”

“Sure you would.” Diego laughed, not too successfully. “I never saw anything yet you wouldn’t like to buy. But I... uh... that is, I’d hate to stick you. I doubt if it’s worth much of anything — don’t see how it can be. How did you happen to see it... it’s dark in there...”

“I’m cat-eyed. Caught a glimpse of the green and gold enamel.” Fox put the vase down on a table. “Let me know if you decide to sell it. I smell coffee, don’t I?”

When, half an hour later, Fox departed, no further reference had been made to the vase. It was of course natural, in view of the events of the day, that the comradely consumption of sandwiches and coffee should not have assumed the character of a festivity, but Diego had been so sour and glum that it might reasonably have been asked why he had requested the company of his friend at all.

So Fox, driving home through a ghostly and swirling night mist that kept him down to forty miles an hour, had still another puzzlement to harass him. It was as good as certain that Diego knew that the vase in his bathroom closet was the stolen property of Henry Pomfret, had been the most highly prized treasure of the Pomfret collection. It was next to certain that Diego had not stolen it, or if he had, that it had been for a more complicated and romantic motive than the acquisition of an article of value. No, it was impossible to fit Diego, as known, into the frame of so commonplace a vulgarity...

For a solid week that enigma, and others more or less persistent, kept dodging nimbly around in Fox’s brain, trying to keep out of his way. For seven days he pruned vines and trees, started hot-beds and cold frames, removed top layers of winter mulch, repaired fences, helped a cow have a calf, and performed a hundred chores which ordinarily he left to Sam Trimble and those of the Zoo’s guests who felt like making a token payment for their board and room. It was his annual salute to the approaching spring. There was one interruption, on Tuesday, when a phone call from New York requested his presence at the district attorney’s office, which resulted in no enlightenment on either side; and of evenings he read the newspapers. But in spite of the dozens of columns throughout the week on the subject of the Dunham murder and its link to the spectacular suicide of Jan Tusar, all of the enigmas remained intact. Still they made it readable and even exciting. The press had somehow got onto the varnish in the violin, whether or not by official communiqué was not made clear, and of course that was honey. The Gazette even printed a picture of the violin itself, so stated, with a daggerlike arrow pointing to the f-hole through which the varnish had been poured, which was an extraordinary journalistic achievement, considering that the violin was still in the vault at the Day and Night Bank where Fox had put it.

Wednesday a sideshow got the black headlines — a divagation conceived, planned and executed by Hebe Heath. It had all the earmarks, Fox remarked as he read it, of her peculiar genius: simplicity, lightning abruptness, and spotless imbecility. She had taken an airplane for Mexico City, and, what was more, had got there; and, besought telegraphically, refused to return. Thursday she was still there, but Mr. Theodore Gill had gone after her. Friday they were both in Mexico City and not, apparently, preparing to travel. Saturday the Gazette gave the police the devil for letting Gill slip out of their clutches by a subterfuge; but in the Sunday morning papers he had brought her back.

She granted interviews. She had left New York to escape publicity. (That, Fox decided, was her masterpiece.) She had had two good reasons for choosing Mexico City: First, she had never been there before, and second, the first long-distance plane to leave New York after her decision to go was scheduled for there. She hadn’t the faintest desire to flee from an obligation to co-operate in the processes of the law; to do that, she declared, would be horribly revolting... Fox clipped the interview from the Times and put it in his scrapbook.