Rex Stout (17 page)

“There it is. There it is, my dear.” He looked at Hicks and demanded, “Where did you get it? From Brager? From my son?” He looked at his wife again. “There’s nothing you can say. Of course. What have you got to say?”

She said nothing. Hicks addressed her:

“That’s the evidence I was telling you about last night. From a sonotel planted in Vail’s office. That’s what you hired me to do, get the proof your husband said he had. Done. Huh?”

Judith Dundee moved. In no haste, deliberately, she returned to her chair, sat, and folded her hands in her lap. With no glance at her husband, she looked at Hicks, and there was a tremor, the tremor of controlled passion, under the metallic hardness of her voice.

“Yes, you did it,” she said. “But you’re not done. I have quite a little property of my own. You can have it—any or all of it. Whatever it takes, whatever you want, when you find out how that contemptible trick was played, and who did it, and why.”

“Good God!” Dundee was gawking at her. “Trick! You mean you’re trying to deny it?” He pointed a trembling finger at the radio. “Did you hear it? Good God, didn’t you hear it?”

He left his chair and stood in front of her. “I know you, Judith,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady. “I know you’ve got iron inside of you. I didn’t ever think you would do a thing like this, but you did. Now you won’t admit it, I know you won’t, but I wanted to show you that I know. Not that I suspect, I
know.
” He pointed a finger at the radio again. “There it is!” He shook the finger at his wife. “And I’m warning you about that other thing, your being up there yesterday. As your husband, I warn you! In that you’re not dealing with me, you’re dealing with the police. With murder! Do you want to be suspected of murder? Do you want this whole dirty business shouted about in a courtroom and printed in the papers? Will you, for God’s sake, will you come to your senses and tell the truth, so we can decide what to do?”

“You are either crazy, Dick,” his wife said in the same hard voice, “or I have lived with you for twenty-five years without even getting acquainted with you. I’m not proud of that.”

“Look here,” Hicks said. “Both of you. You’re only making it worse. When I said listening to that thing might be helpful I meant it. I’m going to run it through again, and I want—”

An inarticulate noise came from Dundee’s throat, and he turned and tramped from the room.

Hicks gazed after him, then moved away from the radio and sat down. Mrs. Dundee pressed her palms to her eyes.

After a silence they heard, from a distance, a door closing.

Judith looked at her hands, dropped them again onto her lap, gazed at Hicks’s face a moment, and said, “I don’t like your eyes. I thought I did, but I don’t.”

“You’re tough, all right,” Hicks said admiringly. “Do you want to hear that thing again?”

“No. What good would that do?”

“Is it your voice?”

“No.”

“What!” His brows lifted. “It isn’t? At that, it may not sound like it to you. People are often astonished at a recording of their own voice.”

“It may sound like my voice,” Judith said. “I don’t know. But I know it isn’t me. It isn’t me simply because it couldn’t be! I never had any such conversation with Jimmie Vail, and another thing, there are some phrases that I never say. It isn’t me.” Her hand made a fist and hit her knee. “It’s a despicable trick! It—”

She got up and started for the radio, but Hicks was on his feet and there ahead of her, blocking the way.

“Don’t be absurd,” she said scornfully. “I merely want to look at it. Anyway, it’s mine. I paid you to get it for me.”

Hicks removed the plate from the turntable. “You can look at it,” he conceded, “but I’m delaying delivery.” He held it before her eyes. “Not that I have any use for it at present, but I think it’s going to be needed as evidence to convict someone of murder.”

She stared at him. “Nonsense,” she said shortly. “Just because that woman was killed at that place—it was her husband—”

“No. It wasn’t her husband.”

“But it was! The papers—and he ran away—”

“The papers print what they know, which isn’t much. I know more than they do, but not enough. Maybe I know who killed her, but I’m not—”

“If you think it was my son or my husband, you’re an idiot.”

“I’m not an idiot.” Hicks smiled at her, tucking the plate under his arm. “Nor do you think I am, or you wouldn’t be offering me all your worldly goods to find out who cooked this up.” He tapped the edge of the plate with his finger. “What I’m telling you, when I do find out, you’re going to get more than your money’s worth. You’re going to be a witness at a murder trial. The only way to avoid that would be to throw this thing in the garbage can, and leave the perpetrator of it undisclosed and unpunished. Is that your idea of a happy solution?”

Mrs. Dundee, meeting his eyes, said without hesitation, “No. I think perhaps you are being too clever. I don’t believe the murder of that woman, a stranger to all of us, had any connection with—this other.”

“But even if it had, I go ahead?”

“Yes.”

“That’s fine.” Hicks patted her on the shoulder. “Of course I was going to anyway.”

“Don’t you think I knew it?” Judith demanded scornfully. “Neither am I an idiot.”

When he left the Dundee apartment at a quarter to six, Hicks was bound for Katonah. With a double purpose; he meant to get Heather Gladd away from there, and he wanted certain information from her or Mrs. Powell or both of them.

If he had started for Katonah immediately, and driven recklessly, a life might have been saved; but he did neither. First he stopped at a haberdasher’s and procured a cardboard box and tissue paper for packaging the sonograph plate; next he drove to Grand Central and checked the package in the parcel room; and then he went to Joyce’s on 41st Street and ate baked oysters and arranged his mind.

By that time it was too late. At the moment, twenty-five minutes past six, that Hicks was spearing his second oyster, Heather Gladd was sitting in the kitchen of the house at Katonah, finishing a lamb chop and drinking tea, and trying to pretend to listen to Mrs. Powell. The usual dinner hour was seven, but Heather, not wishing to join any gathering, however small, at the table, was anticipating it. The sun, she thanked heaven, was getting low; the day would soon be over; perhaps she would be able to sleep tonight.…

The door from the dining room swung open and Ross Dundee was there. Heather glanced at him, and sipped her tea; the hand that held the cup was quite steady and she frowned at it. Ross looked at her uncertainly, stood hesitant, and blurted:

“You’ve been dodging me.”

“Leave her alone!” Mrs. Powell snapped.

“I wasn’t aware,” Heather said, “that I was dodging anybody.”

“But you—” Ross stopped himself. “There I go. Damn it, I never do say anything right! I mean to you. What I meant, I only wanted to ask you—” He stopped again, cocked an ear to listen, and strode across the room to peer through a window screen at a car that was coming along the drive.

“My father,” he said. “Fine. You dodge me and I dodge him.” Three swift paces took him to the door and he had gone.

“It’s terrible,” Mrs. Powell asserted disapprovingly. “A son and father like that! No wonder things happen!”

Heather had no comment. She went to the garbage pail with her plate and disposed of the scraps, put the plate in the sink, and returned to her chair.

“You look terrible,” Mrs. Powell said. “You look like a cabbage plant that needs watering. Go up and go to bed.”

“I’m going to.” Heather sighed. “It’s hot up there.”

A voice came bellowing from within the house: “Ross! Ross!”

Mrs. Powell started for the door to the dining room, checked herself at the sound of footsteps, and the door came swinging in, bringing R. I. Dundee with it. He glanced from one to the other and demanded:

“Where’s my son?”

“He’s not in here,” Mrs. Powell declared.

“I see he isn’t. I’m not blind. Is he at the laboratory?”

“I don’t think so. I guess he’s outdoors.”

“Is Brager back from White Plains?”

“Yes, he got back about an hour ago. I think he’s over at the laboratory.”

“Has anyone else been here?”

“You mean police.” Mrs. Powell’s tone plainly implied that if he meant police he ought to be straightforward enough to say police. “Not since you left.” She turned at a sound behind her—the back door opening with a complaining squeak—and announced as if she had accomplished something:

“Here’s Mr. Brager.”

Brager, entering, looked around at them, ending with Dundee.

“Oh, you’re back,” he said. He seemed more popeyed, and hence more bewildered, than usual. “Just get back?”

Dundee nodded. “Is Ross at the laboratory?”

“No.”

“What took you so long at White Plains?”

“Fools.” Brager was wiping sweat from his face with his handkerchief. “Fools!” he repeated. “Nothing but foolishness. I shall tell about it later.” He looked at Heather. “Miss Gladd, that transcript is all wrong. There are sections missing. You will please come and look at it.”

“Leave her alone!” Mrs. Powell snapped. “She’s going to bed.”

Brager glared at her, but Heather stopped the argument before it got started by arising and saying that it would only take a few minutes and she would rather go and get it done. Brager opened the door and they went out. Mrs. Powell, muttering, got a pan from a drawer and deposited it on the table with a savage bang. Dundee stood and scowled at her a moment and then disappeared by way of the dining room.

Brager and Heather skirted the corner of the house, crossed the lawn, and entered the woods at the path. She was swinging along in front and he with his short legs was trotting to keep up. Her weary and harassed consciousness, grateful for the excuse, was concerned with the problem of the transcript. Had she skipped a whole plate? But she always checked them back.…

Her mind slid off that wretched little hummock, back into the morass of reality, when, nearing the bridge over the brook, the grotesque events of the night were recalled. She broke her stride as she glanced aside at the scene of that nocturnal face, then went on, crossing the bridge and turning with the path.…

“Miss Gladd! Stop a minute!”

She halted and turned. Brager was right there, close enough to touch her.

“That was a lie,” he said. “About the transcript. That wasn’t what I came after you for.”

Suddenly and preposterously Heather began to tremble. She felt it in the muscles of her legs, around her knees. She had not, at least not consciously, been alarmed by Hicks’s warning of a possible danger to her person; certainly she had not been frightened; and if she had entertained any thought of peril the source last to be suspected would have been the popeyed flustery Brager. Yet now, suddenly and inexplicably, there in the depth of the woods alone with him, her knees were shaking and she wanted to scream. She nearly did scream. She wanted to back away from him and couldn’t. But she knew, she saw, that there was
nothing threatening or sinister in the expression of his face, his comical round face.

She made her knees rigid. “This is ridiculous!” she said sharply.

Brager nodded. “Everything is ridiculous,” he agreed. “I have all my life been ridiculous, except in my work. Now I cannot work. All this—” He made an odd little gesture. “This disturbance. It is impossible! The trouble is, I tell you frankly, I am sentimental. I always have been, but I suppress it. Science and work cannot be sentimental. But I cannot work. So I become sentimental, and therefore a fool. Cooper is there and wants to see you. Your sister’s husband. But I think I should be with you.”

Heather’s eyes were wide. “Where is he?” She looked around as though expecting to find him behind a tree.

“No, no. In the office. I told him I would bring you. He is unhappy. I have never seen a man so unhappy, and he is not guilty. He is absolutely not guilty!”

“He’s waiting in the office?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll go on alone, Mr. Brager. You go back.”

Brager shook his head. “No,” he said stubbornly, “enough things have happened here already.”

Heather looked at him, decided it was useless to argue the matter, turned and resumed her course along the path. The senseless momentary panic that had seized her was entirely gone. As for George, she had no desire to see George, but there was something she wanted to say, a question she wanted to ask him.…

The late afternoon sun was full in her eyes as she crossed the meadow, with Brager at her heel, until they were in the shadow of the oak trees and the laboratory building. She ran up the steps and opened the door to the office and entered. A breeze from an open window had scattered sheets of paper over the floor from her desk basket. She noticed that before she saw that there was no one in the room. No George was visible. She turned to Brager inquiringly. His eyes were bulging in astonishment.

“He’s not here,” Heather said.

“He was here,” Brager said complainingly. “In that chair!” He pointed. “I wonder if he—” He trotted to the door leading to the laboratory and disappeared within. Heather jumped when one of the sheets of paper, caught in an eddy from the window,
flapped against her ankle. She gathered up the sheets, returned them to the basket, and put a weight on them.

Brager came back. “Not there!” he said angrily. “Not anywhere!” He faced Heather as if she had subjected him to a personal affront. “I tell you this is finally too much! Where is he?”

Heather was going to laugh. She knew she was going to, and she knew she must not. All day she had not cried, and now she was going to laugh, because the sight of Brager being mad at her on account of George not being there was irresistibly funny. She set her teeth on her lip.

“It is outrageous!” Brager insisted. “Outrageous! It is at last too much! He sat in that chair and said he must speak to you! Did I telephone? No! I would not telephone because I thought someone might hear! I leave him here and I go after you! Because I thought he was unhappy! Because—”

He stopped because the air exploded. Cracking, shattering the air, came the sound of a gunshot.