Rex Stout - Red Box, The

Wolfe's office to poison himself 1 You might at least have the politeness to tell me straight that you refuse to discuss the matter because you don't intend to get involved if you can help it, then we can proceed with the involving.” I pointed my pencil at Perren Gebert's long thin nose. “For instance, you! Did you know that Dudley Frost might tell us where the red box is?”

I concentrated on Gebert, but Mrs. Frost was off line only a little to the left of him, so I was having a glimpse of her too. Gebert fell for it absolutely. His head jerked around to look at Dudley Frost and then back at me. Mrs. Frost jerked too, first at Gebert, then back into steadiness. Dudley Frost was sputtering at me:

“What's that? What red box? That idiotic thing in McNair's will? Damn you, are you crazy too? Do you dare-”

I grinned at him. “Hold it. I just said you might. Yeah, the thing McNair left to Wolfe in his will. Have you got it?”

He turned to his son and growled, “I refuse to speak to him.”

“Okay. But the truth is, I'm a friend of yours. I'm tipping you off. Did you know that there's a way for the District Attorney to force an accounting from you of your brother's estate? And did you ever hear of a search warrant? I suppose when the cops went with one to your apartment this afternoon to look for the red box, there was a maid there to let them in. Didn't she phone you? And of course in looking for the box they would have occasion to glance at anything that might be around. Or maybe they didn't get there yet; they may be on the way now. And don't go blaming your maid, she can't help it-”

Dudley Frost had scrambled to his feet. “They wouldn't -that would be an outrage-”

“Sure it would. I'm not saying they've done it, Fm just telling you, in a case of murder they'll do anything-”

Dudley Frost had started across the room. “Come on, Lew-by Gad, we'll see-”

“But, Dad, I don't-”

“Come on, I say! Are you my son?” He had turned at the far end of the room.

“Thank you for the refreshment, Calida, let me know if there is anything I can do. Lew, damn it, come on! Helen, my dear, you are a fool, I've always said so.

Lew!”

Llewellyn stopped to murmur something to Helen, nodded to his aunt, ignored

Gebert, and hurried after his father to assist in the defense of their castle.

There were rumblings from the entrance hall, and then the door opening and closing.

Mrs. Frost stood up and looked down at her daughter. She spoke to her quietly:

“This is frightful, Helen. That this should come…and just now, just when you will soon be a woman and ready for your life as you want it. I know what Boyd was to you, and he was a great deal to me, too. Just now you're holding things against me that time will make you forget…you're remembering that I thought it wise to temper the affection you had for him. I thought it best; you were a girl, and girls should look to youth. Helen, my dear child…”

She bent down and touched her daughter's shoulder, touched her hair and straightened up again. “You have strong impulses, like your father, and sometimes you don't quite manage them. I don't agree with Perren when he sneers at you for trying to buy vengeance. Perren loves to sneer; it's his favorite pose; he would call it being sardonic…but you know him. I think the impulse that led you to hire this detective was a generous one. Certainly I have every reason to know that you are generous.” Her voice stayed low, but it got more of a ring in it, a music of metal. “I'm your mother, and I don't believe you really want to bring people here who tell me that I refuse to discuss…this matter…because I don't intend to get involved. I'm sorry I was brusque with you today on the telephone, but my nerves were on edge. Policemen were here, and you were away, just making more trouble for us to no good purpose.

Really…really, don't you see that? Cheap insults and bullying for your own family won't help any. I think you've learned, in twenty-one years, that you can depend on me, and I'd like to feel that I can depend on you too…”

Helen Frost stood up. Seeing her face, with no color in it and her mouth twisted, it looked shaky to me, and I considered butting in, but decided to keep my trap shut. She stood straight, with her hands, fists, hanging at her sides, and her eyes were dark with trouble but held level at Mrs. Frost, which was why

I didn't speak. Gebert took a couple of steps toward her and stopped.

She said, “You can depend on me, mother. But so can Uncle Boyd. That's all right, isn't it? Oh, isn't it?” She looked at me and said in a funny tone like a child, “Don't insult my mother, Mr… Goodwin.” Then she turned abruptly and ran out on us, skipped the shebang. She left by a door on the right, not toward the hall, and closed it behind her.

Perren Gebert shrugged his shoulders and thrust his hands into his pockets, then pulled one out to rub the side of his thin nose with his forefinger. Mrs. Frost, with a couple of teeth clamped on her lower lip, looked at him and then back at the door where her daughter had gone.

I said brightly, “I don't think she fired me. I didn't understand it that way.

What do you think?”

Gebert showed me a thin smile. “You leave now. No?”

“Maybe.” I still had my notebook open in my hand. “But you folks might as well understand that we mean business. We're not just having fun, we do this for a living. I don't believe you can talk her out of it. This place belongs to her.

I'm willing to have a showdown right now; say we go to her bedroom or wherever she went, and ask if I'm kicked out.” I directed my gaze at Mrs. Frost. “Or have a little chat right here. You know, they might find that red box at Dudley

Frost's, at that. How would that set with you?”

She said, “Stupid senseless tricks.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I guess so. Even Stephen. If you bounced me, Inspector Cramer would send me right back here with a man if Wolfe asked him to, and you're in no position to ritz the cops, because they're sensitive and they would only get suspicious. At present they're not actually suspicious, they just think you're hiding something because people like you don't want any publicity except in society columns and cigarette ads. For instance, they believe you know where the red box is. You know, of course, it's Nero Wolfe's property; McNair left it to him. We really would like to have it, just for curiosity.”

Gebert, after listening to me politely, cocked his head at Mrs. Frost. He smiled at her: “You see, Calida, this fellow really believes we could tell him something. He's perfectly sincere about it. The police, too. The only way to get rid of them is to humor them. Why not tell them something?” He waved a hand inclusively. “All sorts of things.”

She looked at him without approval. “This is nothing to be playful about.

Certainly not your kind of playfulness.”

He lifted his brows. “I don't mean to be playful. They want information about

Boyd, and unquestionably we have it, quantities of it.” He looked at me. “You do shorthand in that book? Good. Put this down: McNair was an inveterate eater of snails, and he preferred calvados to cognac. His wife died in childbirth because he was insisting on being an artist and was too poor and incompetent to provide proper care for her. – What, Calida? But the fellow wants factsl -Edwin Frost once paid McNair two thousand francs-at that time four hundred dollars-for one of his pictures, and the next day traded it to a flower girl for a violet-not a bunch, a violet. McNair named his daughter Glenna because it means valley, and she came out of the valley of death, since her mother died at her birth-just a morsel of Calvinistic merriment. A light-hearted man, Boyd was! Mrs. Frost here was his oldest friend and she once rescued him from despair and penury; yet, when he became the foremost living designer and manufacturer of women's woolen garments, he invariably charged her top prices for everything she bought. And he never-”