Rex Stout - The Second Confession

Somebody growled something that resembled “Good morning.”

It was Paul Emerson. I was nearing the edge of the clump of trees, with Madeline not far off. When I looked up I could see only the top half of Emerson because he was standing on the other side of my car and the hood hit the rest of him. I told him hello, not expansively.

“This isn’t the same car,” he stated.

“That’s right,” I agreed. “The other one was a sedan. That’s a convertible. You have a sharp eye. Why, did you like the sedan better?”

“I suppose,” he said cuttingly, “you have Mr. Sperling’s permission to wander around here?”

“I’m here, Paul,” Madeline said sweetly. “Maybe you couldn’t see me for the trees. My name’s Sperling.”

“I’m not wandering,” I told him. “I’m looking for something.”

“What?”

“You. Mr. Wolfe sent me to congratulate you on your broadcast yesterday. His phone’s been busy ever since, people wanting to hire him. Would you mind lying down so I can run the car over you?”

He had stepped around the front of the hood and advanced, and I had emerged from the clump of trees. Within arm’s reach he stood, his nose and a corner of his mouth twitching, and his eyes boring into me.

“There are restrictions on the air,” he said, “that don’t apply here. The animal I had in mind was the hyena, the ones with four legs are never fat, but those with two legs sometimes are. Your boss is. You’re not.”

“I’ll count three,” I said. “One, two, three.” With an open palm I slapped him on the right cheek, and as he rocked I straightened him up with one of the left. The second one was a little harder, but not at all vicious. I turned and moved, not in haste, back among the trees. When I got to the other edge of the clump Madeline was beside me.

“That didn’t impress me much,” she declared, in a voice that wanted to tremble but didn’t. “He’s not exactly Joe Louis.”

I kept moving. “These things are relative,” I explained. “When your sister called Mr. Wolfe a cheap filthy little worm I didn’t even shake a finger at her, let alone slap her. But the impulse to wipe his sneer off would have been irresistible even if he hadn’t said a word and even if he had been only half the size. Anyway, it didn’t leave a mark on him. Look what your mother did to me, and I wasn’t sneering.”

She wasn’t convinced. “Next time do it when I’m not there. Who did scratch you?”

“Paul Emerson. I was just getting even. We’ll never find that card case if you don’t help me look.”

An hour later we were side by side on the grass at the edge of the brook, a little below the bridge, discussing lunch. Her polite position was that there was no reason why I shouldn’t go to the house for it, and I was opposed. Lunching with Mrs. Sperling and Jimmy, whom I had caught technically breaking and entering, with Webster Kane, whom Wolfe had called a liar, and with Emerson, whom I had just smacked on both cheeks, didn’t appeal to me on the whole. Besides, my errand now looked hopeless. I had covered, as well as I could with company along, all the territory from the house to the bridge, and some of it beyond the bridge, and I could take a look at the rest of it on the way out.

Madeline was manipulating a blade of grass with her teeth, which were even and white but not ostentatious. “I’m tired and hungry,” she stated. “You’ll have to carry me home.”

“Okay.” I got to my feet. “If it starts me breathing fast and deep don’t misunderstand.”

“I will.” She tilted her head back to look up at me. “But first why don’t you tell me what you’ve been looking for? Do you think for one minute I’d have kept panting around with you all morning if I had thought it was only a card case?”

“You haven’t panted once. What’s wrong with a card case?”

“Nothing.” She spat out the blade of grass. “There’s nothing wrong with my eyes, either. Haven’t I seen you? Half the time you’ve been darting into places where you couldn’t possibly have lost a card case or anything else. When we came down the bank to the brook I expected you to start looking under stones.” She waved a hand. “There’s thousands of ’em. Go to it.” She sprang to her feet and shook out her skirt. “But carry me home first. And on the way you’ll tell me what you’ve been looking for or I’ll tear your picture out of my scrapbook.”

“Maybe we can make a deal,” I offered. “I’ll tell you what I’ve been looking for if you’ll tell me what your idea was Tuesday afternoon. You may remember that you might have seen or heard something Monday evening that could have given you a notion about someone using my car, but you wouldn’t tell me because you wanted to save your father some dough. That reason no longer holds, so why not tell me now?”

She smiled down at me. “You never let go, do you? Certainly I’ll tell you. I saw Webster Kane on the terrace that time, and if he hadn’t used the car himself I thought he might have seen someone going to it or coming back.”

“No sale. Try again.”

“But that was it!”

“Oh, sure it was.” I got to my feet. “It’s lucky it happened to be Kane who signed that statement. You’re a very lucky girl. I think I’ll have to choke you. I’ll count three. One, two—”

She sprinted up the bank and waited for me at the top. Going back up the drive, she got fairly caustic because I insisted that all I had come for was the card case, but when we reached the parking plaza and I had the door of the car open, she gave that up to end on the note she had greeted me with. She came close, ran a fingertip gently down the line of my scratch, and demanded, “Tell me who did that, Archie. I’m jealous!”

“Some day,” I said, climbing in and pushing the starter button. “I’ll tell you everything from the cradle on.”

“Honest?”

“Yes, ma’am.” I rolled away.

As I steered the curves down the drive my mind was on several things at once. One was a record just set by a woman. I had been with Madeline three hours and she hadn’t tried to pump me with a single question about what Wolfe was up to. For that she deserved some kind of a mark, and I filed it under unfinished business. Another was a check on a point that Wolfe had raised. The brook made a good deal of noise. It wasn’t the kind you noticed unless you listened, but it was loud enough so that if you were only twenty feet from the bridge, walking up the drive, and it was nearly dark, you might not hear a car coming down the drive until it was right on you. That was a point in support of Webster Kane’s confession, and therefore a step backward instead of forward, but it would have to be reported to Wolfe.

However, the thing in the front of my mind was Madeline’s remark that she had expected me to start looking under stones. It should have occurred to me before, but anyway it had now, and, not being prejudiced like Wolfe, I don’t resent getting a tip from a woman. So I went on through the entrance onto the public highway, parked the car at the roadside, got a magnifying glass from the medicine case, walked back up the drive to the bridge, and stepped down the bank to the edge of the brook.

There certainly were thousands of stones, all shapes and sizes, some partly under water, more along the edge and on the bank. I shook my head. It was a perfectly good idea, but there was only one of me and I was no expert. I moved to a new position and looked some more. The stones that were in the water all had smooth surfaces, and the high ones were dry and light-colored, and the low ones were dark and wet and slippery. Those on the bank, beyond the water, were also smooth and dry and light-colored until they got up to a certain level, where there was an abrupt change and they were rough and much darker — a greenish gray. Of course the dividing line was the level of the water in the spring when the brook was up.