Rex Stout (26 page)

Vail stood up. “If this is a display of virtuosity—” he began contemptuously.

“Sit down,” Hicks said.

“I don’t intend—”

“I said sit down! If Ross could knock you cold, all alone, and you with a gun, you can imagine what we could do if we went at it together. I listened to you expounding your theory, and as a matter of courtesy you can listen to my variation. When that phone call comes I’ll get practical. Good God, look at you. Do you want an ice bag for that bump?”

Vail, not replying, went back to his chair. His gaze, presumably, was fixed on Hicks; there was no way of telling. Hicks resumed to Judith:

“Last Monday, Monday morning, Vail got bad news. He saw in the paper that Mr. and Mrs. George Cooper had returned from Europe. That was awful, since the trap had already been baited and Dundee had taken the bait. If Dundee or his son met Martha Cooper, as they well might, since her sister worked for them, their suspicion would be aroused and the whole thing would certainly be exposed, and both Vail’s business and his reputation would be ruined. From there on my variation pretty well follows the original. Vail, who has plenty of sand and daring, not only proceeded to remove Martha Cooper, he did it at a place and in a way to throw suspicion on the Dundees. And this afternoon, at my room, he learned that Cooper knew about that sonotel record and had actually heard it, or part of it, and intended to investigate it. Of course that wouldn’t do. Cooper had announced that he was going to Katonah, so Vail went there too. From where he left his car on that deserted road, it’s only a fifteen-minute walk, cross-country, mostly woods, to the Dundee place. No doubt his report of his conversations with Brager is true to fact—it must be, since he is expecting Brager to corroborate it. So after he shot Cooper he went back to his car and waited there, ostensibly, for Brager to send Cooper to him.”

“You know,” Vail said quietly, “this is interesting. But I’m wondering why you’re wasting time with it, or even passing time, because you certainly haven’t given it much thought. For instance, Martha Cooper. According to the account in the paper, she was killed between three and four o’clock. From three to six yesterday afternoon I was in my factory in Bridgeport. That of course would make it difficult—”

A bell rang.

Everybody jerked around. Hicks arose, saw that Ross too was up and crossing to a cabinet against the far wall, and was there at the young man’s elbow as he swung out a phone bracket and lifted the receiver. Ross spoke into the phone, turned and said, “For you,” and handed it to Hicks.

If Vail, or anyone, expected any elucidation from Hicks’s end of the conversation, they were disappointed. It was brief, and his contribution was chiefly a series of yesses. At the end he said, “We’ll start right away,” replaced the instrument, and turned to the group:

“Okay, folks. We’re all set. Off for Katonah.”

They looked at him in astonishment. Then they all spoke at once, but Vail’s voice dominated:

“I warn you, all of you! This man’s a fool! Get Dick here! I’ll have it out with Dick face to face! Judith! Ross! I warn you—let go of me, damn you!”

Hicks had his arm. “Listen, brother,” Hicks said grimly. “Your warning days are over. We’re going to Katonah and that includes you. On the hoof or in a package?”

At a quarter to three in the morning all lights were on in the office of the Dundee laboratory, at the apex of the meadow triangle surrounded by woods. The night was sultry and oppressive, not a foretaste of the frosty month to come, but rather a left-over from the one supposed to have departed weeks ago; and the cricket and katydid concert, entering through the open windows, was desultory and disheartened, irritating to weary and nervous ears in its feeble stridency. No less irritating to tired and nervous eyes was the glancing of the lights off the slick surfaces of the pink desk and the purple one, the gray and yellow table, the chairs and various gadgets in all conceivable colors.

The only person in the room who was manifestly not sharing in the general atmosphere of fatigue and tenseness and vexation of spirit was the man in the Palm Beach suit and battered Panama hat, who was on a chair in a corner with his head resting against the wall, fast asleep. At the other extreme was Manny Beck, chief of the Westchester County detectives, who was striding up and down, glaring at every one implacably, his massive jaw fixed in a forward thrust of obdurate pugnacity; and three state policemen and a couple of men in plain clothes were keeping out of his path. James Vail, Ross Dundee, and Herman Brager were on chairs which they had pulled out from the row
along the wall. Heather Gladd sat at her own desk, with her elbows propped on it and her face covered by her hands, and seated at the end of the desk to her left was Judith Dundee, her back straight and her shoulders up, but her face drawn with strain and apprehension.

No one was talking, except the crickets and katydids outdoors, and their fretful and querulous exchanges were not calculated to soothe anybody’s nerves.

Eyes jerked to the inner door to the laboratory when it opened and three men entered. R. I. Dundee, in front, glanced around, took a step toward his wife, changed his mind, and sat on the nearest chair. Hicks crossed to Heather, muttered something to her, and propped himself against her desk and folded his arms. District Attorney Corbett with no sign whatever of joviality either on his pudgy face or in his voice, spoke to the room:

“Mr. Hicks is going to say something. Not as my representative. He is in no sense speaking officially. I want that understood. Manny, will you cut out that marathon? Sit down or hang yourself on a hook!”

Beck stopped in his tracks and glared.

“If Hicks represents no authority,” James Vail demanded, “what is the purpose—”

“We’ve had that out,” Corbett snapped. “I’ve told you, Mr. Vail, that you are not under arrest, you are not being detained, and you are at liberty to go or stay. I’ve told you that after a private consultation by Hicks and Dundee and myself there would be a statement by Hicks. If you were brought here by him against your wishes, your redress—”

“Baloney,” Hicks said impatiently. “You know darned well, Vail, what I’m going to do. I’ve got the label ready for the guy who murdered Martha Cooper and George Cooper, and I’m going to paste it on him. What are you chewing the rag about? You wouldn’t miss it for a dollar.”

Vail, ignoring him, spoke to Corbett: “I have explained to you that it is ridiculous to suppose—”

“He’s not doing the supposing,” Hicks said acidly. “I am. If it will make you feel any better, I’ll begin by explaining that in the discussion at Mrs. Dundee’s apartment I was merely theorizing, just as you were. Your suggestion was that Dundee was the murderer, though you knew he wasn’t. My suggestion was that you were the murderer, though I knew you weren’t. It didn’t do
any harm, since we were just waiting for a phone call anyhow. But now I’m ready to talk turkey.”

Vail arose, walked deliberately across to R. I. Dundee, and gazed down at him. “Look here, Dick,” he said ominously. “This Hicks is a madman. You still have a slim chance to pull out of this with your hide on. For the last time I ask you, will you listen to me? Will you talk with me privately?”

“No, damn you,” Dundee said harshly.

“You won’t?”

“No.”

Vail, with his thin mouth compressed until there were no lips at all, returned to his chair, stuck his thumbs in his vest pockets, and addressed Hicks. “Go ahead. I’ve done my best.”

“I know you have.” Hicks smiled at him. “You see, you’re handicapped. Not only do I know more than you think I do, but Dundee and the district attorney do too. When I went to that spot on Crescent Road and found it unoccupied, I was fairly certain that you had all made a beeline for Mrs. Dundee, because I had told Mrs. Gladd to go to her if anything went wrong, and I knew that both you and Ross would go along—though for different reasons. So I came here and had a little talk with Dundee and the district attorney. In passing, I wish to pay a deserved tribute to my old friend Manny Beck. With his usual thoroughness and foresight, he had kept men stationed in this building after he was summoned here to investigate the killing of Cooper. True, he had no idea what it was the men were guarding—”

“Go to hell,” Manny Beck snarled.

“But their presence made it impossible for the murderer to return and remove a vital piece of evidence.” Hicks, propped against the desk, kept his eyes on Vail, whose chair was between Ross Dundee’s and Herman Brager’s. “It will be valuable evidence in a courtroom, but it is even more valuable for the effect it will have on you here and now. First, though, I ought to ask you, are you sure you know what an accessory is? An accessory after the fact?”

Vail made a contemptuous noise.

“I guess you do.” Hicks smiled. “You began, there at Mrs. Dundee’s apartment, by saying that you didn’t intend to expose yourself to the danger of being arrested as an accessory to a murder.” Suddenly, unexpectedly, Hicks’s eyes darted to the man at Vail’s right. “You see, Brager, that was your worst miscalculation. You figured that Vail would stand for anything,
even murder, to prevent disclosure of his own dirty work, but you might have realized that there was one risk he wouldn’t—”

“What is this?” Brager’s eyes were popping with indignation. “Dirty work? I am aware you are paid by Dundee—”

“Wrong again,” Hicks cut him off. “You’re about the wrongest guy I’ve ever run up against. Your alibis were absolutely childish. Take Thursday afternoon. I came in here—will you help me out with this, Dundee?”

Dundee got up and disappeared through the door into the laboratory, closing the door after him. Hicks went on:

“I came in here and found Miss Gladd here at her desk, tears running down her face, typing like mad, with a man’s voice filling the room—Miss Gladd, will you please switch on that loud-speaker?”

Heather looked at him blankly.

“Turn it on. Not the machine, the loud-speaker from the laboratory.”

Heather reached to a switch at the end of her desk and flipped it, and instantly a man’s voice, Brager’s voice, came from the grill in the wall:

“Twelve minutes at five one oh, nine minutes at six three five! Vat two at three-ten, less tendency to streak and more uniform hardening! Shrinkage point oh three millimeters.…”

Hicks, moving to the end of the desk, turned it off.

“Foolishness!” Brager blurted. “That is merely—”

“It is merely,” Hicks snapped, “a demonstration of the method by which you got in on a three-way alibi with Miss Gladd and me at the time Martha Cooper was being killed. It’s a new twist on an old gag. Because your voice wasn’t supposed to be coming to us directly, but over a loud-speaker system, and therefore it worked. All you had to do was start a bunch of records on that machine you have in there, connected with the mike, with the proper intervals of silence, and you could go out the back way and take whatever time you needed for your errand. And you had to hurry up about it, since Ross Dundee had gone to the house, and Miss Gladd had just learned on the telephone that her sister was there, and Dundee himself was expected—”

“Foolishness!” Brager repeated. His eyes went to Corbett. “This is an insult you permit—”

A shot rang out, shattering the air.

Brager started from his chair, then sank back into it. Heather was on her feet, rigid, staring at the window. Judith Dundee and
her son were both halfway across the room toward the door to the laboratory, but they were intercepted by policemen in their path and by Hicks’s sharp command:

“Ross! Okay! Hold it!”

They turned, staring at Hicks.

“My husband,” Judith said determinedly.

“What was that?” Brager demanded hoarsely.

The door to the laboratory opened and R. I. Dundee was there. Ross backed up. Judith dropped onto the chair her husband had formerly occupied, and he stood beside her.

“That,” Hicks said grimly, “was the shot that killed George Cooper. You ought to recognize it by this time, Brager, since you fired it and also reproduced it.”

“I—” Brager gulped. “I will say nothing. Nothing! But you will see! These tricks! They will be paid for!”

“They sure will,” Hicks agreed. “You’ve used the right word for it. Foolishness. You’ve insisted all along that everyone but you is a fool, and you’ve certainly proceeded on that theory. I admit you were right up to a point, but you carried it too far. Don’t you think so? Now?”

“I will say nothing!”

“Do you mean,” Judith Dundee demanded, “that he did it all? That sonotel record—”

“It started long before that,” Hicks asserted. “Whenever it was that he began selling Dundee formulas to Vail. That was a good trick, nothing foolish about that. He got big money from your husband for discovering the formulas in this laboratory, and then he collected from Vail for them too.”

“He actually—did that?”

“He actually did. Of course I can’t prove it, but that’s where Vail will be a help. Yes, you will, Vail, don’t think you won’t! This, Mrs. Dundee, is my final report on the job you hired me to do. I’ll leave off the embroidery—for instance, I suspect that the police will find upon investigation that the coin Brager was raking in was being used for Nazi propaganda in this country, but we’ll leave that to them. Anyhow, he was getting it coming and going. But it began to get a little complicated. First, Dundee naturally got wise to the fact that he was being diddled by someone, and Brager had to watch his step. Second, Brager got captivated by your charm. Being emotionally a mixture of an ape and a sentimental ass, as Germans of a certain type always are, that led first to his abasing himself, and then to a boundless and
barbarous fury when he found that his affection wasn’t returned. I make a guess. Didn’t you humiliate him by rejecting his advances?”

Judith shivered. “Yes,” she said succinctly.

Hicks nodded. “So he hated you. Plenty. And he had a miraculous bit of luck. Through a sonotel that he had installed in the house here for experiment, he found himself in possession of a batch of records with a woman’s voice on them exactly like yours. That was nearly a year ago, but the use he could make of them probably didn’t occur to him until recently. He could kill two birds with one stone: divert any possible suspicion in Dundee’s mind from himself, and get revenge on you. He knew that Martha Cooper was in Europe, and figured that it would all be over, and you disgraced for good, before she returned. He knew, of course, that Dundee had a sonotel in Vail’s office, and had informed Vail.”