Rex Stout - Alphabet Hicks

Hicks got out his wallet and extracted a card and handed it over.

“How would you like,” Hicks asked, “to have a job slicing skunk cabbage? I think I can get you one.”

“That is not a friendly remark,” the man declared sadly.

“The hell it isn’t. It’s positively indulgent. Compared with taking orders from Manny Beck, slicing skunk cabbage would be paradise.”

The man arose and stepped over to Hicks and shook hands, and went back and sat down again, without saying anything, either with his tongue or with his face.

Hicks left, mounted the back stairs, went to Heather’s room, and sat down.

It was now, of course, not only necessary to leave the house, it was imperative. The two other outside doors he had not tried would unquestionably be guarded, and besides, they could be reached only through the living room. There were plenty of windows, but if troopers were stationed without, that was not feasible. Doubtless he could rush it, but in the hue and cry he might and he might not be able to get to the car in time to get away with Heather. He could go across the hall and poke Dundee’s lawyer in the snoot, which would be a satisfaction and a pleasure, and force him to change clothes, but there was no way of changing faces.

A stratagem was needed.

He sat for ten minutes, muttered, “It’ll have to do, I haven’t got all night,” arose and went downstairs to the side hall, confronted the man there and asked:

“Where’s Miss Gladd? She’s not upstairs. I want to see her if I’ve still got the right of free speech.”

“She went outdoors.”

Hicks looked startled. “She went where?”

“Outdoors.”

“When?”

“Oh, an hour ago.”

“Yeah. She said to call her if she was wanted. Do you want me to call her?”

“If you please.”

The man went to the open window and spoke through it to the terrace:

“Al, call Miss Gladd. She’s wanted.”

There was a bellow outside: “Miss Gladd!” A pause. “Miss Gladd!” After a long pause the bellow swelled in volume. “Miss Gladd! ”

Another wait, and the bellow was down to a rumble. “She don’t answer. Shall I keep it up?”

“After a minute. She probably — hey!”

But Hicks was through the door and inside the living room, and across to the table, his eyes blazing down angrily at Corbett’s pudgy face.

“Haven’t you,” he demanded furiously, “had enough corpses around here? You and your damn army?”

“What—”

“What what what! They ought to put it on your tombstone! What! That super-simp ordering me arrested if I try to leave the house, and letting that girl out alone unprotected! Now find her! Try and find her! When you do, remember you mustn’t move the body until the police arrive!”

“What girl?” Corbett’s face had lost some color. “What the devil are you talking about?”

The man from the hall said, “Miss Gladd went outdoors, sir. About an hour ago, maybe a little more. There were no orders to confine anyone but Hicks. She said she’d be around close and to call if she was wanted. Hicks said he wanted to see her and Al called her.”

“Was that the yelling I heard just now?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did she answer?”

“No, sir.”

“Find her,” Hicks said witheringly, “and maybe you’ll understand why she didn’t answer. You ought to be up to that.”

Corbett stood up. “Why are you so certain she has been attacked?”

“I’m not certain. I didn’t do it. I’ve been in the house. But there have been two people killed here in two days, and one was her sister and the other her brother-in-law, and out she goes to wander around alone in the dark, and is that dumb? Will you kindly give me permission to borrow a flashlight and go out through a door? Or lock me in a closet and go yourself?”

“Shut your trap!” Manny Beck barked, striding across to the door to the hall. As he opened it the bellow came through from the terrace, “Miss Gla-a-a-dd!” Others followed him, including the district attorney. Mrs. Powell elbowed her way through them, muttering unintelligibly, and disappeared into the dining room. A man entered from the terrace and told Beck:

“She don’t answer. Do you want me—”

“Phone to White Plains for a basket,” Hicks said savagely.

“This is a hell of a note,” Beck snarled.

Corbett said curtly, “Get everybody here. Get Lieutenant Baker. Damn it, call them in here! If something has happened to that girl, with the whole damn barracks and the whole damn county...”

Men moved, including Hicks, but he did not join the general steam toward the terrace. Having noticed that the card collector, attracted by the commotion, had shuffled morosely in, Hicks went to the dining room and through to the kitchen. However, it was not empty. Mrs. Powell sat on the edge of a chair putting on rubbers. On the table beside her was a flashlight.

“You going out, Mrs. Powell?”

“I am,” she said resolutely. “This is the biggest set of tomfools—”

“What are the rubbers for?”

“They’re for dew.”

“It’s cloudy.” Hicks was directly behind her, and, since she was bent over tugging at a rubber, she was quite unaware that he was acquiring the flashlight. “There isn’t any dew.” Four steps took him to the door, it opened with its creak, and he was outside.

He swung the beam of the light to right and left and picked up no one. Shouted commands from around the corner of the house made it evident that all forces were converging upon the side terrace to be organized into a searching party. Without even bothering to deploy to the rear of the garage, he struck off to the right, made his way through the collection of cars parked on the graveled space, found a gap in the hedge, and a little farther on ran smack into a patch of briars. He got around it without using the light, found himself among white birches which had not been trimmed to head height, and in another two minutes emerged from that into what he took to be an orchard, since round things that he stepped on proved to be apples. The shouts from the direction of the house were now much fainter, barely audible. He bore right, going at a good pace, with a hand guarding his face after he got a twig in the eye, and when he stumbled onto the stone fence which bordered the road he turned left and followed the fence. In a hundred paces suddenly there was no fence, and his hands found the bars that were the gate to the lane. He slipped through, went cautiously not to bump into the car...

But there was no car.

He stepped down the little incline to the road and back up again. This was a let-down. Could this be the wrong lane? From up the road he could hear voices raised; since they were at the Dundee house, the distance seemed about right. He proceeded to settle the point by switching on the light and flashing it around — yes, there was the curve, there was the bush at the right — and there, perched on the stone fence, was a man — no, a boy, gazing into the light.

“Hello,” Hicks said, turning the light off and approaching the fence. “I didn’t know you were there. What’s your name?”

“My name’s Tim Darby. Are you a dick?”

“I am not,” Hicks said emphatically. He was close enough to the boy to see that he had eyes and a mouth. “My name’s Al Hicks. How long have you been here? I mean sitting here.”

“Oh, I’ve been here for a considerable time. You’re not a cop, because you haven’t got a uniform.”

“No, I’m just a man. The reason I asked, I left my car here and now it’s gone. Somebody must have stolen it, and I thought maybe you saw them. Did you see a car here?”

“Sure I saw a car here. I live right down the road.”