Rex Stout - Bitter End

“She thought—” He was speechless. That alone was worth the price of admission. His sister was staring at me frozenly.

He picked on her. “Get out!” he said in cold fury. “You incomparable fool!”

She was licked. She went.

I waited till the door had closed behind her and then said, “We had a good, long talk. It’s an interesting situation. Now I can give you an invitation I was going to extend yesterday when you interrupted me. You’re going down to Thirty-fifth Street to call on Nero Wolfe.”

“I’ll talk with you,” he said between his teeth. “Sit down.”

“Oh, no. I invited you first. And I don’t like you. If you do any wriggling and squirming, I swear I’ll sell it to a tabloid and retire on the proceeds.” I pointed to the door. “This way to the egress.”...

Wolfe sat at his desk. I sat at mine, with my notebook open. Guthrie Judd was in the witness box, near Wolfe’s desk.

Wolfe emptied his beer glass, wiped his lips, and leaned back. “You don’t,” he said, “seem to realize that the thing is now completely beyond your control. All you can do is save us a little time, which we would be inclined to appreciate. I make no commitment. We can collect the details without you if we have to, or the police can. The police are clumsy and sometimes not too discreet, but when they’re shown where to dig they do a pretty good job. We know that Philip Tingley is your sister’s son, and that’s the main thing. That’s what you were struggling to conceal. The rest is only to fill in. Who, for instance, is Philip’s father?”

Judd, his eyes narrowed, and his jaw clamped, gazed at him in silence.

“Who is Philip’s father?” Wolfe repeated patiently.

Judd held the pose.

Wolfe shrugged. “Very well.” He turned to me. “Call Inspector Cramer. With the men he has, a thing like this — Did you make a noise, sir?”

“Yes,” Judd snapped. “Damn you. Philip’s father is dead. He was Thomas Tingley. Arthur’s father.”

“I see. Then Arthur was Philip’s brother.”

“Half-brother.” Judd looked as if he would rather say it with bullets than words. “Thomas was married and had two children, a son and a daughter, by his wife. The son was Arthur.”

“Was the wife still alive when—?”

“Yes. My sister went to work in the Tingley factory in 1909. I was then twenty-five years old, just getting a start in life. She was nineteen. Arthur was a year or two younger than me. His father, Thomas, was approaching fifty. In 1911 my sister told me she was pregnant and who was responsible for it. I was making a little more money then, and I sent her to a place in the country. In September of that year the boy was born. My sister hated him without ever seeing him. She refused to look at him. He was placed in a charity home, and was forgotten by her and me. At that time I was occupied with my own affairs to the exclusion of considerations that should have received my attention. Many years later it occurred to me that there might be records at that place which would be better destroyed, and I had inquiries made.”

“When was that?”

“Only three years ago. I learned then what had happened. Thomas Tingley had died in 1913, and his wife a year later. His son Arthur had married in 1912, and Arthur’s wife had died in an accident. And in 1915 Arthur had legally adopted the four-year-old boy from the charity home.”

“How did you know it was that boy?”

“I went to see Arthur. He knew the boy was his half-brother. His father, on his deathbed, had told him all about it and charged him with the child’s welfare — secretly, since at that time Thomas’s wife was still alive. Two years later, after Arthur’s wife had died, leaving him childless, he had decided on the adoption.”

“You said you had a search made for records. Did Arthur have them?”

“Yes, but he wouldn’t give them up. I tried to persuade him. I offered — an extravagant sum. He was stubborn, he didn’t like me, and he was disappointed in the boy, who had turned out a blithering fool.”

Wolfe grunted. “So you made efforts to get the records by other methods.”

“No. I didn’t.” A corner of Judd’s mouth twisted up. “You can’t work me into a melodrama. I don’t fit. Not even a murder. I knew Arthur’s character and had no fear of any molestation during his life-time, and he conceded me a point. He put the papers in a locked box in his safe and willed the box and its contents to me. Not that he told me where they were. I found that out later.”

“When?”

“Two days ago.”

Wolfe’s brows went up. “Two days ?”

“Yes. Monday morning Philip called at my office. I had never seen him since he was a month old, but he established his identity, and he had copies with him of those records. He demanded a million dollars.” Judd’s voice rose. “A million!”

“What was the screw, a threat to publish?”

“Oh, no. He was smoother than that. He said he came to me only because his adopted father would allow him nothing but a pittance — he said ‘pittance’ — and had disinherited him in his will. Arthur had been fool enough to let him read the will, rubbing it in, I suppose, and the bequest of the locked box to me had made him smell a rat. He had stolen the box from the safe and got it open, and there it was. His threat was not to publish, but to sue me and my sister for damages, for abandoning him as an infant, which of course amounted to the same thing, but that put a face on it. And was something we could not allow to happen under any circumstances, and he knew it.”

Wolfe said, “So why didn’t you pay him?”

“Because it was outrageous. You don’t just hand out a million dollars.”

“I don’t, but you could.”

“I didn’t. And I wanted a guaranty that that would end it. For one thing I had to be sure I was getting all the original records, and Arthur was the only one who could satisfy me on that, and he would see me Monday. I put Philip off for a day. The next morning, yesterday, Arthur phoned me that the box was gone from the safe, but even then he wouldn’t come to my office or meet me somewhere, so I had to go to him.”

I looked up from the notebook with a grin. “Yeah, and I met you coming out. When I put that chalk—”

He rudely went on without even glancing at me. “I went to his office and told him of Philip’s demand and threat. He was enraged. He thought Philip could be brow-beaten into surrendering the box, and I didn’t. What I proposed — but I couldn’t do anything with him. He would have it his way. It was left that he would talk with Philip that afternoon, and the three of us would have it out the next morning, Wednesday — that would have been today — in his office. I had to accept—”

“That won’t do,” Wolfe said bluntly. “Don’t try any dodging now.”

“I’m not. I am telling you—”

“A lie, Mr. Judd. It’s no good. You three were to meet at Tingley’s office Tuesday evening, not Wednesday morning. And you went there—”

I missed the rest. The doorbell rang, and I went to attend to it, because Fritz wasn’t being permitted to exert himself. A peep through the glass showed me a phiz only too well known, so I slipped the chain on before I opened the door to the extent of the six inches which the chain permitted.

“We don’t need any,” I said offensively.

“Go to hell,” I was told gruffly. “I want to see Guthrie Judd. He’s here.”

“How do you know?”

“So informed at his home. Take off that damn’ chain—”

“He might have got run over on the way. Be seated while I find out.”

I went to the office and told Wolfe, “Inspector Cramer wants to see Judd. Was told at his home that he had come here.”