Rex Stout - Bitter End

“Cut it out,” I said curtly. “I don’t want to—”

He hauled off and kicked me! What with my throat hurting when I talked, and the scratch on my cheek, and now this, I hit him harder, the second time, than I intended to. He didn’t topple over, he folded up. As if he had melted. Then he didn’t move.

I stooped over for a look at him, and then slid past for an inspection of the premises. The only way I could account for his violent lack of hospitality before he ever knew what I came for was that there was someone else there who wasn’t supposed to be. But the place was empty. All there was of it was a bedroom and kitchen and bath. I gave them a glimpse, including the closet and under the bed, and went back to the tenant. He was still out.

In view of his disinclination even to let me state my intentions, it didn’t seem likely that I would get any kind of co-operation from him in my desire to escort him to Wolfe’s house, so I decided to wrap him up. He was too big to do anything with in the narrow little hall, and I dragged him into the kitchen. With a length of old clothesline from a kitchen drawer and a roll of adhesive tape from the bathroom cabinet, I soon had him arranged so that he would at least listen to me without kicking and scratching. I was putting the third strip of tape crosswise on his mouth when a bell rang right behind me.

I jerked up. The bell rang again.

So that was it. Not that someone was there, but someone was expected. I found the button on the wall that released the door latch downstairs, pushed it several times, took a swift look at the job I had just completed, stepped out and closed the kitchen door, and opened the door to the public hall.

I heard faint and hesitating footsteps from below on the uncarpeted stairs. Before a head appeared above the landing I had decided it was a woman; and it was. When she got to my level she stopped again, glanced the other way, and then saw me. She was a new one on me. Fifty or maybe a little more, slim and slick, in a mink coat.

I said politely, “Good evening.”

She asked, with a sort of gasp, “Are you — Philip Tingley?”

I nodded. “Don’t you recognize me?”

That seemed to hit some mark. “How would I recognize you?” she demanded sharply.

“I don’t know. From my statue in the park, maybe.” I stood aside from her passage to the door. “Come in.”

She hesitated a second; then pulled her shoulders up as if bracing herself against peril and swept by me. I followed her in and motioned her to the living-bedroom and shut the door. All was dark before me, figuratively speaking, but anyway I could try some fancy groping and stumbling.

I went up to her. “Let me take your coat. This isn’t the sort of chair you’re used to, but it’ll have to do.”

She shuddered away from me and glanced nervously around. When she sat she let just enough of her come in contact with the shabby, soiled upholstery to call it sitting. Then she looked at me. I have never regarded myself as a feast for the eye, my attractions run more to the spiritual, but on the other hand I am not a toad, and I resented her expression.

“It seems,” I ventured, “that something about me falls short of expectations.”

She made a contemptuous noise. “I told you on the phone that there can be nothing sentimental about me and never has been.”

“Okay,” I agreed. “I’m not sentimental, either.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to be.” If the breath of her voice had dribbled off the edge of a roof it would have made icicles. “It’s not in you from either side. Neither from your father nor from me. My brother says you’re a blackguard. He also says you’re a coward and a bluffer, but considering where your blood came from, I don’t believe that. I tell you frankly, I think my brother is making a mistake.” She was biting the words off. “That’s why I came. He thinks you’ll take what he has offered, but I don’t. I know I wouldn’t, and half of you came from me.”

I was loping along behind trying to keep up. The best bet seemed to be that I was a blackguard, so I did as well as I could with a sneer. “He thinks I’m a coward, does he?” I emitted an ugly little laugh. “And he thinks I’ll take his offer? I won’t!”

“What will you take?”

“What I said! That’s final!”

“It is not final,” she said sharply. “You’re making a mistake, too. You’re a fool if you think my brother will give you a million dollars.”

“He will, or else.”

“No. He won’t.” She moved on the chair, and I thought she was going to slide off, but she didn’t. “All men are fools,” she said bitterly. “I thought I had a cool head and knew how to take care of myself, but I was doomed to be ruined by men. When I was a pretty little thing in that factory — that finished me with men, I thought — but there are more ways than one. I don’t deny that you have some right to — something; but what you demand is ridiculous. What my brother offers is also ridiculous, I admit that. If I had money of my own but I haven’t. You’re obdurate fools, both of you. He has never learned to compromise, and apparently you haven’t, either. But you’ll have to on this; you both will.”

I kept the sneer working. “He’s a pigheaded blubber-lip.” I asserted. “It takes two to compromise. How about him?”

She opened her mouth and closed it again.

“So,” I said sarcastically. “It strikes me that you’re not any too bright yourself. What good did you expect to do by coming here and reading me the riot act? Do you think I’m boob enough to say, okay, split the difference, and then you run back to him? Now, that would be smart, wouldn’t it?”

“It would at least make—”

“No!” I stood up. “You want this settled. So do I. So does he, and I know it. All right, let’s go see him together. Then you can tell both of us to compromise. Then we’ll find out who’s being ridiculous. Come on.”

She looked startled. “You mean now?”

“I mean now.”

She balked. She had objections. I overruled them. I had the advantage, and I used it. When I put on my coat she just sat and chewed on her lip. Then she got up and came along.

When we got downstairs and out to the sidewalk there was no car there but mine; apparently she had come in a cab. I doubted if Philip Tingley ought to own a car, so I snubbed it and we walked to the corner and flagged a taxi. She shoved clear into her corner and I returned the compliment, after hearing her give an address in the 70’s just east of Fifth Avenue. During the ride she showed no desire for conversation.

She allowed Philip to pay the fare, which seemed to me a little scrubby, under the circumstances. Before the massive ornamental door to the vestibule she stood aside, and I depressed the lever and pushed it open. The inner door swung open without any summons, and she passed through, with me on her heels. A man in uniform closed the door.

She seemed to have shrunk, and she looked pale and peaked. She was scared stiff. She asked the man, “Is Mr. Judd upstairs?”

“Yes, Miss Judd.”

She led me upstairs to a large room with a thousand books and a fireplace and exactly the kind of chairs I like. In one of them was a guy I didn’t like. He turned his head at our entrance.

Her voice came from a constricted throat: “Guthrie, I thought—”

What stopped her was the blaze from his eyes. It was enough to stop anyone.

I walked over and asked him, “Is Aiken around?”

He ignored me. He spoke to his sister as if she had been a spot of grease: “Where did this man come from?”

“It’s a long story,” I said, “but I’ll make it short. She went to Philip Tingley’s flat and I was there and she thought I was him.” I waved a hand. “Mistaken identity.”