Rex Stout (5 page)

A man was kneeling there, with a face like a gargoyle. He saw them and seemed to think the noises he was making were words. Heather ran to him, or rather to the figure prostrate before him, and went down to it—

“Sis!” she cried from her heart. “Sis dearest—”

“Don’t!” the man blubbered. “Don’t pull at her! She’s dead.”

At the office at the laboratory building the late afternoon sun flooded in through the windows, and the colored plastics fought back and made a hubbub of it.

Herman Brager sat in a chair frowning at R. I. Dundee. The fact that he was popeyed gave his frown an air of ferocity which was probably misleading. Dundee, paying no attention to him, was absorbed in an activity which, if not mysterious, seemed at least pointless. He was seated at the purple desk, with the contraption like a portable phonograph in front of him, and beside it was a carrying case, made of the ubiquitous plastic, with the lid open, containing dozens of the disks resembling phonograph records. A stack of the disks was there on the desk, and Dundee was taking them one at a time, playing the first few words of each, and returning them to the case.

“Resume on number four—”

“Vat two is now—”

“Viscosity disap—”

“Coefficient of all—”

The voice coming from the disks on the machine was Brager’s. As the stack was nearly exhausted, Brager started from his chair, offering:

“I’ll bring another case.”

“I’ll get it myself,” said Dundee shortly. “You understand, Herman, I’m going to make sure—well, damn your nerve!”

The door had opened and Hicks was there.

Brager shifted his frown to the intruder. Dundee switched off the machine, shoved back his chair, nearly toppling it over, and came around the desk.

His voice trembled with fury. “Look here, I told you to get—”

“Can it!” Hicks said peremptorily. “No time for comedy. The cops are coming. Police. Gendarmes.”

Dundee stared. “What kind of—”

“Crime.” Hicks’s eyes, their glint more insolent than ever but the laziness gone, went from Dundee to Brager and darted back again. “Assault and battery. A woman over here on the terrace has been assaulted and battered—”

“A woman? What woman?”

“I’m telling you. Martha Cooper. Mrs. George Cooper. Miss Gladd’s sister. Do you know her?”

“Certainly not! Never heard of her! What was she doing—”

“Do you know her, Mr. Brager?”

“No.” Brager looked more popeyed and flustered than ever. “And I assure you I did not assault her and batter her.”

“Nobody said you did. But there she is. She’s lying on the terrace in front of an open window. The top of her skull is crushed in. On the window sill is a heavy brass candlestick, and it looks as if a corner of its base would fit the hole in her head, but I didn’t try it because the police are touchy about things like that, and also I didn’t have time. I wanted—”

“You mean, she was hit with the candlestick?”

“It’s a bet.”

“Is she badly hurt?”

“She’s dead.”

Dundee’s jaw fell. “Good God.” He stood, looking foolish. “This is a fine situation,” he said somewhat inadequately. He looked at the paraphernalia on the desk, and at Brager. “You’d
better get over there, Herman. I’ll lock up here and come along.”

Brager arose, protesting, “The vats have to be cleaned—”

“They can wait. Go ahead. Tell Ross I’ll be right over—”

“Just a minute,” Hicks interposed. He spoke to Dundee. “I may detain you a little. I suggest that Mr. Brager ought to forget about your little display of temper a while ago when you arrived and found me here. As I remember it, it was like this: I was sitting here waiting to see Brager when you entered and said you wanted to speak with him privately, so I went outside to wait. Wasn’t that it? You see, Brager couldn’t tell the police what brought me here even if he wanted to, because he doesn’t know. But they’ll want me to tell them, and I guess I’ll have to. I’ll have to admit that you hired me, that I came out here on a confidential job for you—which they’ll have to ask you about, and you can tell them what you please.”

Brager was regarding Dundee with an expression of mingled reproach and bewilderment, but the latter was looking not at him but at Hicks, thoughtfully and warily.

“I don’t know,” said Hicks, “whether I’ve made it plain that that woman was murdered. And we’re all going to be put through the wringer and hung out to dry. My suggestion may be a little complicated, and if you don’t understand it—”

“I understand it perfectly,” Dundee snapped. He turned to Brager. “Herman, this is going to be damned unpleasant. Please go over there. If you find the situation isn’t as Hicks describes it, phone me. If it is, I suppose you’d better notify the police—”

“They’re already there,” Hicks said. “I took to the woods and waited till I saw them come.”

“Good God.” Dundee looked from Hicks to Brager and repeated, “Good God. Herman, get over there. And please forget my display of temper when I found this man here. I wished to speak with you privately, and he went outside to wait. You understand.”

Brager, slipping off his apron and dropping it on a chair, did not look happy. “I don’t understand at all,” he declared. “Not at all. But very well. And I am no good at taking charge of a murder. And the vats, as you know.…”

They got him out. Hicks opened the door for him and closed it after him. Then he sat down and said:

“All right, let’s have it. Where’s your proof that your wife sold your secrets to Vail?”

Dundee looked at him with no friendliness. “So that’s it.”

Hicks nodded. “That’s it. With no palaver. Unless you want the police trying to tie it up to a murder.”

“It has nothing to do with a murder.”

“That won’t keep them from trying.”

“I know it won’t. If there was a murder. It’s incredible—”

Hicks pointed to the phone. “Call up the house. Ask your son.”

Dundee took the chair at the desk, but he didn’t reach for the phone. “Who the devil,” he demanded, “could have done such a thing? How did she get there? Did she come alone?”

“Yes. Who did it will have to wait. I’d advise you to quit stalling, because we might be interrupted. Let’s see the proof you told your wife about.”

“I haven’t got it.”

“You told her you had it.”

“I did have it. It’s gone.”

“Gone? You mean lost? Stolen? Burned? Dissolved?”

“I don’t know.”

“What was it?”

Dundee scowled at the phone, reached a hand for it, stopped the hand in mid-air and after a second withdrew it, rested his elbows on the desk, and stared at Hicks with his mouth drawn tight.

“Suit yourself,” Hicks said as if he wasn’t interested. “The cops won’t like it that I went for a walk. If one of them drops in here, say two minutes from now, and starts asking me questions, I’ll answer by the book. I came out here to try to earn the two hundred bucks your wife gave me. That will certainly make him curious, and I have nothing to conceal.”

Dundee’s mouth stayed tight.

Hicks twisted his head around for a glimpse of the meadow path through the window, and then shifted his chair so that he could keep an eye on it without twisting. “My mouth isn’t watering,” he declared. “I’d prefer to catch the next train back to town and forget it, but that isn’t practical.”

Dundee snapped, “It was a sonotel record of a conversation between my wife and Jimmie Vail.”

Hicks met his angry eyes. “What’s a sonotel record?”

“A sonotel is an electric eavesdropper. I had a detective agency plant one in Vail’s office over a year ago. I had reason to believe that Republic was getting some of our formulas, and I knew that
if they were it was Vail who was working it. For a year I got nothing—at least, I didn’t get what I was after. Then I did get something.” Dundee looked grim. “I got more than I bargained for. A record of my wife in Vail’s office talking with him, telling him she hoped he’d be pleased with what she’d brought him, and him saying he would if it was anything like carbotene. The damned crook. In 1938 we had developed a formula to the patent stage, and found that a patent had already been applied for by Republic, the identical formula and process. They called it carbotene, and they’re going to make millions on it.”

“What date was it? The conversation.”

“September fifth. Two weeks ago today.”

“How sure are you it was your wife’s voice?”

“I’ve been listening to it for twenty-five years.”

Hicks nodded. “Long enough. What does a sonotol record look like?”

“It’s a plate. Like these sonograph plates.” Dundee indicated the stack of disks on the desk. “They’re made from one of our plastics. That’s what I was doing, looking for that record—”

Hicks shook his head. “Go back a little. Where and when did you see it last?”

“I only saw it once. In the testing room at my office. I thought I took it—”

“When was that?”

“Tuesday. A week ago Tuesday.”

“But you said the conversation took place on the fifth, and a week ago Tuesday was the tenth.”

“What of it?” Dundee was not making friends. “I had paid for so damned many of those records from Vail’s office without any result that I had lost interest in them. I had them stacked in cases in the testing room. Once in a while I ran through a batch. I was doing that, that afternoon, and there I heard it—my wife’s voice and Vail’s. I was stunned. I was absolutely stunned. I ran it through again, and right in the middle of it somebody came in. I stopped the machine and took the plate off and put it at the end of the case. Other men came. We had a conference scheduled, among other things to test results on variations of the formula on this plastic. We’re selling it for all kinds of sound reproduction. They came from Bridgeport, from the factory, for the conference. I stayed with them a while as long as I could stand it, and then I got the plate from the end of the case and took it to my
room and locked it in a drawer of my desk, and went home and—spoke to my wife.”

“Why didn’t you take the plate with you?”

“That’s what I’d like to know,” Dundee said bitterly. “I didn’t want to hear the damned thing in my home—and the servants—and it was a business matter. My wife denied it—”

“I know that part.”

“Very well. I spent that night at a hotel. The next day I asked my wife—”

“I know that too. She was to go to your office at four o’clock to hear the proof, and at three you phoned her not to go.”

“Yes. Because I got the plate from my desk and went to the testing room and started it on the machine, and it wasn’t the one. I supposed someone had put another plate at the end of the case, though I thought I had kept my eye on it. And all the others were gone, case and all. After the conference they had taken everything from the testing room, some to the factory and some out here. I sent instructions to both places to return all JV plates to me—”

“JV for Jimmie Vail?”

“Yes. That’s how Sharon’s man marked them, JV and the date, in pencil. This plastic takes either pencil or ink. I got them back and ran them through, but it wasn’t there.”

“Did you get back the same number of JV September fifth plates as there had been originally?”

“I don’t know. I hadn’t counted them.”

“Didn’t Sharon have a record of the number he had turned in?”

“No. His man gets paid by the day, not per plate.”

“Does he hear the sounds—the conversations—as they are recorded?”

“No. The way it works—”

“I wouldn’t understand it. Does Sharon run the plates through, listen to them, before he sends them to you?”

“No.”

“Then no one but you ever heard that record?”

“I suppose not. I hope not. But
I
heard it.”

“Sure, I know you heard it. Have you done any more searching?”

“Yes. The factory and here, both. There are thousands of these plates filed away, tens of thousands, but no more of the JV plates were found. So I—”

Dundee stopped abruptly.

Hicks nodded. “So here you were having a go at every plate in the place, no matter how it was marked. Suspecting that someone had deliberately changed the marking?”

“Suspecting nothing,” Dundee snapped. “But I want that plate.”

“So do I,” Hicks said sympathetically. “I’ve been paid two hundred dollars for it. Were Brager and your son present at the conference that afternoon?”

“They—” Dundee bristled. “My son,” he said, and stopped as if he had completed a sentence. Possibly he would have gone on to furnish the remainder of it if there had been no interruption, but Hicks’s eyes had left him to concentrate suddenly on the view through the window. Dundee turned his head to look, and saw that it was Heather Gladd approaching, trotting across the meadow. It was more of a shuffle than a trot, her feet and legs betrayed into clumsiness by the urgency that impelled them; and as she got to the edge of the graveled drive in front of the building she stumbled and nearly fell, regained her balance, came on to the door, and entered.

She was panting, which was incongruous and even startling, because her face, which should have been flushed from an effort that made her pant, was gray with no color at all except for a smudge of dirt that streaked from a corner of an eye toward a corner of her mouth.

Dundee said something, but disregarding him, she opened a leather handbag she was carrying, fumbled in it, and took out something which, unfolded, proved to be a ten-dollar bill. She held it out to Hicks and said:

“That’s for a retainer. I need some advice.”

Dundee repeated what he had said before.

“We’re busy,” he said sharply. “Go back to the house.”

Hicks was out of his chair. He took a folded white handkerchief from the breast coat pocket of his new brown suit, held it by a tip and flipped it to open it out, and with it wiped at the smear on the girl’s face. He was as impersonal about it as though he were cleaning a windshield.

“What is it?” Heather asked.

“Dirt. It still shows, a couple of scratches.”

“I fell down in the woods.”

“Damn it—” Dundee sputtered explosively, and stopped abruptly as his eye caught something through the window. The others looked too, and saw a six-footer in the uniform of the State Police, having emerged from the woods, striding across the meadow.