Rex Stout - Alphabet Hicks

“Holy smoke,” Hicks said in a tone of dazed incredulity.

He read it again. It was appalling. It made him a little sick, but only for an instant, for there were its practical implications to consider; and he considered them, meanwhile replacing the top blotter, tucking its corners in and smoothing it out neatly. For if, however preposterously, the flustery, popeyed Brager was possessed of such a passion for Judith Dundee, it was quite possible that he had intervened to save her from the consequences of her folly, and there was an excellent reason to suppose that the sonotel plate was hidden in this room. He might, of course, have destroyed it... but he might not...

Hicks stood up and looked around. Behind the books? The mattress? Then suddenly he sat down again, as quick footsteps outside in the hall stopped at the door; and by the time the door swung in and Herman Brager entered, Hicks was leaning back in the chair with his arms extended and his mouth wide open in a yawn.

Brager stopped short and goggled at him.

“I beg your pardon,” Hicks said amicably. “I guess you’re surprised to find me here.”

“This is my room,” Brager asserted truculently.

“Yeah, I know it is.”

“But I am not surprised. I am no longer surprised no matter what happens.” Brager walked to the bed and sat on its edge. Suddenly he exploded bitterly, “I would not work in that factory! Oh, no! I would have a place of peace and quiet where I could work! And now this! In the evening I sit on that terrace where I can hear the brook!”

Hicks nodded. “And now there’s blood on it. But I doubt if it was bloodied up just to irritate you.”

“I don’t say it was. What are you doing here in my room?”

“Waiting for you. There’s a question I want to ask you.”

“I won’t answer it. Down with that man I have answered a thousand foolish questions.”

“Mine isn’t foolish, it’s just a plain question. What was in your brief case the night you left it at the Dundee apartment?”

Brager scowled at him. “My brief case?”

“Yep. About a month ago. Ross drove to town especially to get it the next morning.”

“You ask me what was in it?”

“Yep.”

“Who told you to ask me that?”

“Mrs. Dundee.”

“You are a liar.”

Hicks’s brows went up. “Maybe I am at that,” he conceded. “She told me about it yesterday, and we discussed the matter, but I guess she didn’t tell me in so many words to ask you what was in it. Despite which, I ask. I’m working for Mrs. Dundee.”

“No,” Brager said.

“No what?”

“You are not working for Mrs. Dundee. You are working for Mr. Dundee.”

“So are you. It’s all in the family. I’m just trying to straighten out a little misunderstanding. You know about that.”

“I do not know about it!” Brager jumped up and flapped his arms. “My God,” he blurted, “all I ask is peace to work! All I expect is a little sweetness! A little sweetness from people to people!” His eyes were popping with indignation. “Above all I must work! And what happens in these places where I work? Dark things and perhaps ugly things! Suspicions!” He hissed. “Suspicions! Now that woman dead, dying there where I sit in the evening and can hear the brook! Can I sit there now and hear the brook? And I come to my room and find you here—”

The door opened and a policeman was on threshold, the one whom Hicks had encountered in the lower hall. He looked at Hicks and said curtly:

“You’re wanted downstairs.”

The lights had been turned on in the living room, though it was only the beginning of twilight outdoors. It was a large and pleasant room, with comfortable chairs and sofas still in gay summer covers. Two men in the uniform of the State Police were there, in addition to the one who accompanied Hicks, and seated around a large table with a reading lamp were three in civilian clothes. One of these, with dark skin and hair pasted down, was armed with a stenographer’s notebook; the other two, Hicks was acquainted with. The one with little gray eyes and a jaw displaying more expanse than his forehead was Manny Beck, chief of the Westchester County detectives, and the one with a pudgy round face and scarcely any mouth at all was Ralph Corbett, the district attorney. Corbett half rose to his feet and extended a hand across the table for a shake.

“Hello there, Hicks! How have you been? This is the first we’ve seen of you around here since you set a fire under us on that Atherton case! How have you been?”

He was beaming with cordiality. Manny Beck nodded and mumbled a greeting.

“I’m hearty, thanks,” Hicks said, and sat down.

“You look it,” Corbett declared enthusiastically. “Driving a taxi seems to agree with you.”

The glint in Hicks’s eyes could have been dislike, or merely their reaction to the glare of the reading lamp. “You keeping tabs on my career?”

“No, no,” Corbett laughed. “Ha ha. But here we’ve got a murder on our hands, and here you are on the spot, so naturally we phoned New York to satisfy our curiosity. Driving a taxi! Ha ha. You’re a character. Out here on your day off?”

“No. I took on a little job.”

“Well, of course, I know you did.” Corbett beamed at him. “I know better than to try any subtlety with you. I’ll just come right out and ask you, why were you following this Mrs. Cooper?”

Hicks shook his head. “Now ask me why I was selling turnips without a license.”

Corbett laughed. “I’ll get around to that later. But I know all about your following her. You came out on the same train that she did.”

“It was a public train.”

“And you told the taxi man at the station to follow the car she was in.”

“Did I? Have you got him here? Get him in here. As I remember it, I happened to overhear her telling her man she was going to Dundee’s on Long Hill Road, and I told mine I was going to the same place.”

“Now come,” Corbett protested genially. “You know darned well you were following her. Weren’t you? Yes or no.”

“No.”

“This is on the record, you know.”

“I see it is.”

“Would you like to discuss it with me privately?”

Hicks shook his head. “Nothing to discuss.”

Manny Beck growled suddenly and not at all genially, “If you weren’t tailing her, what were you coming here for?”

“You remember Manny Beck,” Corbett said. “He gets impatient because he knows I’m just a good-natured boob.”

“He’s wrong on two counts,” Hicks said. “You’re not good-natured and you’re not a boob.”

“Thank you !” Corbett threw back his head and laughed. He turned it off abruptly. “But at that it’s a fair question.”

“Yeah,” Beck growled. “What were you coming here for?”

“On business.”

“What kind of business?”

“Mr. Dundee’s business. Confidential. You’ll have to ask him.”

“We have. Now we’re asking you.”

“I can’t tell you without Dundee’s permission.”

“Hicks is a lawyer,” Corbett put in. He asked Hicks playfully, “Or shall I say, was a lawyer?”

“Suit yourself.”

“Anyway, you know the law. Manny and I are beneath contempt. Ha ha. You decline to tell us what Dundee sent you out here for?”

“Yes.”

“But he did send you?”

“Yes.”

“He sent you out here to this house, which he owns, to do something for him?”