Rex Stout (4 page)

Len Chisholm nodded. “It must be either the office boy or Steve Zimmerman. It couldn’t be Martin, because he thinks Martin is the bubble in the champagne. It couldn’t be me, because he knows I’d break his neck. What’s eating you, Martin?”

“Nothing.” Foltz jerked around to him. “Only—Steve is an old friend of mine, and he does get funny sometimes—I was wondering …”

“Nothing to wonder about. Steve went down there to do Storrs a mortal injury, and Storrs wants to bounce it back at him. It’s all right. Those things always reach a climax sooner or later. Like the job I had. It took me a year to get on the Gazette. Oh, well.” He turned to Dol Bonner. “Let’s go get some lunch.”

She shook her head. “You’re broke.”

“No. I just meant that as a euphemism. Anyway, my credit’s good at George and Harry’s, and I’ll win a fortune at bridge tonight if you’ll be my partner.”

She shook her head again. “I’m busy. You can all get out of here any time now.—I’ll mail you a copy of this statement, Sylvia.”

“You’ll what?” Sylvia stood up. “Now don’t be eccentric, Dol—How did you come in, Martin, train?—Good. I’ve got
the big car. We’ll all have a bite together and drive out to Martin’s. Come, comrades.”

They got up, but Dol Bonner sat. “Run along and godspeed.” She waved a hand.

Sylvia wheeled. “Dol … Dol dear … won’t you come?”

“No. Really.”

“Do you hate me?”

“Of course not. I adore you. I like you. I can’t go to Birchhaven because I’m taking Dick to a matinee. He leaves Monday for Gresham. At least—” She hesitated. “I guess he does.” She shrugged, and smiled. “Piffle. Of course he does.”

Sylvia had looked suddenly startled, and now stood with compressed lips. She opened them: “Good Lord. That shows you what I’m like. I hadn’t thought of Dick at all. But Dick certainly has nothing to do with the detective business, and there’s no reason—”

“No, Sylvia.” Dol’s eyes flashed. “Really, you know—not even from you.”

“And why not?” Sylvia demanded. “Why shouldn’t I? Don’t be selfish. Just because you’ve got a kid brother you’re proud of, and I haven’t got any at all—you were going to pay the darned school out of your salary, weren’t you? And now it’s all arranged for Gresham, and the fact is I’m as responsible as you are—”

“No.” Dol was incisive. “He’s my brother and nobody else’s, and certainly I’m selfish. I shouldn’t have mentioned it. I’ll manage.”

“Please?” Sylvia extended both her palms. “
Please!
”

Dol shook her head. “Not even you, Sylvia. You know the jolt my pride got two years ago, and I have to baby it. Not even you.”

It sounded final. Sylvia stood and stared at her helplessly. After a moment Dol said brusquely, “You folks had better move along. And Sylvia—you’d better tell your room goodbye.”

“I won’t! I won’t look at it! I …” Sylvia went to the desk and stood there looking down into her former partner’s caramel-colored eyes. After a moment she demanded: “Dol, am I a louse?” After another moment: “Oh, damn!”
she exploded, and turned and ran out of the room. Foltz followed her.

Dol surveyed the ex-newspaper man and said, “Go on, Len. Go away.”

Chisholm stood looking surly. “I won’t if you don’t. Come to lunch.”

“Len Chisholm.” Dol’s voice had bite in it. “You need that job. Realpolitik. Run.”

Len strode to the door, turned there, extended his long arms as a suppliant, and whined, “Sister, can you spare a dime?” Then he flung the door open and was gone.

As the door banged behind him Dol Bonner winced, just perceptibly. She sat straight listening to the sound of his four steps crossing the ante-room, and the opening and closing of the door to the corridor, then she crossed her arms on the blue-lacquered desk-top and let her head go down to them. Apparently she was not crying, for her trim shoulders in a lightweight tan woolen dress, and her soft light brown hair, all that showed of her head, were motionless.

She was still like that ten minutes later, when there was a light tapping at the door and it began to open cautiously.

Dol jerked herself up. “Come in.”

It was the Mediterranean girl. Dol asked, “Yes?” The girl said: “A man wants to know if you will be here at one o’clock. It’s twenty minutes to one.”

“What man?”

“He won’t give his name. He sounds … important.”

“Maybe he is. It doesn’t matter. I’ll be here.”

The girl went. When the door had closed again, Dol got up and walked to a window and stood there looking down at roofs and chasms. After a while her arms went up and out and she stretched herself thoroughly, then patted and pulled at the woolen dress, down and around. She wandered about the room, looking at this and touching that, finally stopped in front of a picture on the wall between the windows, a fine engraving of a stodgy pile of a building with an inscription beneath: NEW SCOTLAND YARD. She wasn’t really looking at it; she had not liked it, thinking it pretentious or ridiculous, or both, to have it there; Sylvia had insisted on it as the display of an ideal. Dol Bonner was
thinking of something else; her practical, impatient and lonely mind had no time to waste on ideals, either as goals or as decorations. Suddenly she turned and went to the door, entered the ante-room, and crossed to the desk in the corner.

She said to the girl: “Martha, I ought to tell you. I have to give you a week’s notice. Should it be two weeks?”

“Why—” The girl gasped. “You mean—Miss Bonner—” Her face flamed. “I thought—”

“We’re shutting the office. Quitting. Dissolving the firm. If it should be two weeks you’ll get the pay. You’re okay, and you’d earn more than you’d get, anywhere. I know lots of people, and I won’t mind doing one of them a favor by telling him to hire you.”

“Oh … I can get a job any time.” So the tears that had appeared in Martha’s eyes were not for that. “But it’s so wonderful here with you and Miss Raffray … you don’t really … really have to dissolve.…”

“Don’t you dissolve in tears.—Or maybe you ought to. I’ve never been able to manage it—it—must be convenient for you people, keeping your emotional pipes clean and open with all that flushing—good heavens, you really are—”

Dol turned and fled back to her room and went to her desk. She was definitely uncomfortable and irritated, but not, she thought, depressed. The contretemps had its consolations. She hated to lose Sylvia because she loved and admired her, but it would bring satisfaction to be on her own. A cheaper and dingier office would be less pleasant, since she had all her life been accustomed to desirable things, even elegant ones, but after all a detective agency should not look like a beauty parlor. She might, before getting on her feet, have to borrow money from some other source than Sylvia, but the obligation of a debt ceased when it was discharged with interest. In any event, Dick should go to Gresham and be maintained there—both her brother and her pride deserved that. She sat considering these things, and others connected with them, when she might better have been devoting her talents to the problems of some of the Bonner & Raffray clients: the $400 gown that had unaccountably disappeared between the
salon of Elizabeth Hawes and the Park Avenue apartment of Anita Gifford; the whereabouts of the champion Sealyham whose prolonged absence was sending Colonel Fethersee into fits; the strangled pheasants of Martin Foltz; the intentions of a showgirl name Lili Lombard with regard to a youth named Harold Ives Beaton, and his with regard to her. But she was so far away from those problems and the immediate scene that she did not hear the sounds accompanying an arrival in the ante-room.

There was a tap at the door of her room, and it opened, and closed. Martha was there. Her eyes looked red.

“A man to see you, Miss Bonner. It’s the man that phoned.”

“Oh. Has he remembered his name?”

“I … I didn’t ask him. Shall I ask him?”

Dol shook her head. “Send him in.”

Martha, out again, left the door open, and in a moment a man came through, and Martha, behind him, was at the knob. At sight of the caller there was a flicker of surprise beneath Dol’s black lashes. But it was not noticeable in her voice: “How do you do, Mr. Storrs.—You may go, Martha. I won’t need you.”

“I can stay if you want, Miss Bonner.”

“No. I don’t want. Behave yourself. See you Monday.”

Martha backed out with the knob. P. L. Storrs approached the desk. He removed a handsome topcoat, placed it on a chair and his hat on top, took another chair for himself, and rumbled in his bass:

“You’re surprised to see me, I suppose. I didn’t give my name on the telephone because I know you’re temperamental and you might have run away.”

“Run away?” Dol’s brows went up. “From you?”

Storrs nodded. “Pique. Resentment. I suppose Sylvia came here from my office this morning. Naturally you’re in a tantrum.”

Dol laughed a little. “I’m not much on tantrums. I think you have interfered in something that was none of your business, but that seems—”

“That thing in the Gazette was none of my business?” Storrs showed a little color. “That outrageous—” He
stopped himself abruptly. “But here now. That’s a waste of time. I came here for something else.”

Dol observed sweetly. “You started it. Temperament, tantrums, pique …”

“Forget it. I didn’t come here to quarrel, and I didn’t come to apologize. But my attitude toward Sylvia, and toward that infamous newspaper article, has nothing to do with my admiration of your abilities. I’ve seen enough of you to realize that you are a very competent person. I can use that competence. I want to hire you to do a job.”

“A job?” Dol sounded surprised. “I’m a detective.”

“This is a detective job. A confidential and difficult one.”

Dol looked at him suspiciously. “I think not.” She shook her head. “It’s pretty transparent, Mr. Storrs. Congratulations on your kind heart, but if you think you’ve been tough on a poor young girl trying to get along in the world and want to make up for it—no, thanks. It isn’t necessary. I don’t despise charity for those who have to have it, but I certainly despise it for myself.” She smiled at him and finished briskly. “Thank you very much.”

“Don’t thank me.” Storrs rewarded her smile with a scowl. “And don’t jump ahead like that. Your mind needs discipline. I have no notion of making anything up to you. Even if I were inclined that way, at present I am too damned busy trying to make things up to myself. I have never done any talking to anyone about my personal affairs, maybe I should have. I might have saved myself some shocks—and others too. I think it’s about time for me to do a little blurting—and at that, I doubt if there’s much secret to it. For example, do you happen to know that my wife is an utter fool?”

Dol calmly nodded. “Certainly. It’s obvious.”

“The devil.” Storrs shut his lips tight. He opened them again: “I suppose it is. I like your directness. I have judged that you have discretion. Without regard to any charity, I want you to do a job for me. May I ask a few questions?”

She nodded. He demanded: “What do you know about the League of the Occidental Sakti?”

“A little.” Dol summoned her memory. “The worship of Sakti concerns the active producing principle of one of the goddess wives of Siva. They have lovely names: Durga,
Kali, Parvati. Siva is a god of the supreme triad, and represents the principle of destruction, and also the reproductive or restoring power, because destruction involves restoration as a consequence. He is also god of the arts, especially dancing. Of course that’s all old Oriental stuff; for the League of the Occidental Sakti it has been pepped up a good deal by a man called George Leo Ranth. You know Mr. Ranth.”

“Yes.” Storrs sounded grim. “I know him. I don’t know if you’ll do for this, Miss Bonner. It sounds as if you’ve got it too.”

“No, I haven’t got it. I’ve seen Mr. Ranth only at your home, and once I heard him explaining life and the universe and so on.”

“Are you completely free of his influence?”

“Good heavens, yes.” She shivered delicately.

“When I say I want to hire you for a job, I don’t mean bums that work for you, I mean you. Will you work on this yourself?”

“If I accept the job, and if the pay is appropriate.”

“It will be. Do you regard the confidences of your clients as inviolable?”

Her brows went up. “Mr. Storrs … really!” She shrugged. “Yes.”

“Good. I may as well tell you, something exploded in my face today. Something incredible. It made me consider things. It struck me that while I was cleaning up that debris I might as well make a clean sweep. I’ve been pretty well jolted. I’m going to do some jolting myself. Here’s your part of it. In the past year this George Leo Ranth has got around $30,000 out of my wife for his damned league. She has swallowed the hook and there’s no way of getting it out of her except to cut her open. I told her a week ago that her bank account is closed and she gets no more cash and I’ll pay the bills, but a man can’t live like that with the woman he’s married to—damn it, there are plenty of women worse than my wife if she would only learn to keep her nose out of the cosmos! I haven’t ordered Ranth to keep away from my place, because if I did she would only go and listen to him somewhere else; he has others on the string and he holds meetings. She told me yesterday that unless she can give
money to the league she will have to be a pilgrim and dress in a burlap shawl and take long walks to places hundreds of miles off, and it wouldn’t surprise me an iota if she had the thing made at Bergdorf Goodman and put on the account. Do you know her well enough to know that?”

Dol nodded. “Yes, I think I know her that well.”

“All right. But that’s only half of it—” Storrs cut himself off abruptly. He stabbed at Dol with his eyes, with his chin out, and then went on more deliberately, “I’m staking a lot on your discretion, Miss Bonner. Ranth intends to marry my daughter Janet. My wife threatened me with it yesterday. Threatened me!”

“Yes?”

“Yes. I suppose I was a fool, but I hadn’t expected
that
. As if it wasn’t bad enough already … and to find that when it comes right down to it I’m absolutely helpless.…”

“Have you spoken to Janet about it?”