Fox, however, looked at none of these, but at the young woman in a chair at a corner of the desk. He frowned at her and demanded:
“What’s the idea? What did you leave the hospital for?”
Amy Duncan had not only left the hospital, but also had obviously been down to Grove Street. She was wearing a tweed suit instead of the blue dress she didn’t like, a handbag of the same material as the suit, and a little cockeyed felt hat. Her face, though, with a general weariness and puffiness around the eyes, displayed no corresponding rejuvenation. She looked up at Fox and would have spoken, but the man forestalled her:
“She’s having an attack of autonomy. She doesn’t want me to make a living. She thinks he’s armed without that’s innocent within. She believes that virtue needs no weapon and grows its own armor like a turtle. I’m fired.”
Fox tossed his coat and hat across to a chair, propped his fundament against the edge of the desk, folded his arms, and gazed down at her. “What’s the matter?”
“Why... nothing.” Amy met his gaze. “Only my head’s reasonably clear again, and I see no reason why you should — I mean especially engaging Mr. Collins — I never could afford to pay him anything like—”
“I hired him.”
“I know, but how can I... I can’t possibly accept—”
“Oh, you can’t.” Fox’s tone was grim. “I don’t know whether you’re scared because there are things you know Collins and I will find out, or you’re simply a bum sport—”
“Neither one!” she denied hotly. “I’m not scared and I’m not a bum sport!”
“No? Say you’re not scared, then it’s like this. You walk into my car and get knocked down and have me take you home. You request free advice as from a brother detective. You let me look at your eyes from various angles and in various lights, knowing the probable effect on an observant and discriminating man. Confronted by a new and more urgent emergency, you yell for me through sixty miles of November rain. You let me get involved and committed to the point where I as good as tell Inspector Damon that the wraps are off. And now you begin whining about what you can’t afford and what you can’t accept—”
“I am not whining!”
“That’s the impression you achieve, madam. Regarding the money to pay Collins, I’ve just sold a thousand shares of Vollmer Aircraft because I didn’t want to make any more profit out of things that kill people, having already made too much. Collins doesn’t care where his money comes from; he’ll take it out of that. Regarding my time and effort, don’t flatter yourself, in spite of your eyes. I’m an Arapaho on a trail, and I’m not eating or sleeping. Except at the usual times.”
Collins laughed. Amy fluttered a hand. “I assure you — I know I asked you to help me, but I don’t want you to think—”
“All right, I won’t. Inspector Damon tells me that there’s a set of your fingerprints on the handle of that knife.”
“Yes, he—”
“And that you haven’t any idea how they got there.”
“I haven’t.”
“In my opinion,” said Collins, “as I have told Miss Duncan, the person who put them there did so in a fit of acute imbecility. I would use it on defense if the state didn’t.”
Fox nodded. “That part of it’s all right,” he agreed, “but it makes one thing certain—”
He stopped to let Nat Collins answer the phone. After a moment Collins told the transmitter. “Wait a minute,” and turned to the others:
“This seems to be a cat in our alley. A man named Leonard Cliff is here to see me. I’ll take him to another room—”
“Excuse me,” said Fox, “but I’d like to see him myself. Let’s all see him.”
“Oh, no,” Amy stammered, “it wouldn’t be — I don’t want—”
They looked at her face. “Your color’s better,” said Fox.
“Much better,” said Collins. He spoke again to the transmitter:
“Send Mr. Cliff in here.”
Chapter 7
As the door opened and the visitor entered the room, he was — in appearance, bearing and manner — typically one of the younger set of top-flight New York business executives, soberly primed for an important interview. But four paces in he underwent a sudden metamorphosis. He halted abruptly, blood receded from his face, and his mouth opened and closed again without the emission of any sound. Then he started forward again, exclaimed, “Amy!” in a half-strangled tone in which distress and joy were mingled, and in that spurt reached the far corner of the desk, where he brought up with a second transformation, apparently caused by something he saw or didn’t see in Amy’s face, since he was looking nowhere else. He blushed furiously and looked derailed.
Fox went to the rescue with a hand outstretched for a shake. “Mr. Cliff? I’m Tecumseh Fox. That sitting in the hand-carved monstrosity is Nat Collins.”
The caller recovered enough aplomb to acknowledge the greetings passably, and addressed Amy:
“I thought you were in the hospital — I thought — I went there and they said you had gone home and I went there—” He moved some six inches nearer, which was about one tenth of the space between them. “I thought you — are you all right?”
“I’m perfectly all right, thank you,” said Amy brightly.
“Well, that—” He stopped, the blush slowly receding, and then added in a weak and foolish tone better suited to a nitwit than an executive. “That’s fine.”
Fox helped out again. “Miss Duncan got a nasty crack, but suffered no serious injury. Did you come here to see her?”
“No, I... I didn’t know she was here.” Mr. Cliff was more of a man, talking to a man. “I came to see Mr. Collins. I intended to ask him where Miss Duncan was, but also I wanted to talk to him.”
“Sit down,” the lawyer invited, “and shoot.”
“But I—” Cliff looked from him to Fox and back again, in obvious embarrassment. “It’s rather confidential—”
“We’re willing to remove ourselves,” Fox offered. “Aren’t we, Miss Duncan?”
“Certainly we are.” Amy’s tone, as she arose, indicated that she would like nothing better than to remove herself. “I certainly — Mr. Cliff’s confidential affairs — certainly—”
“No!” The executive caught Fox’s arm. “I didn’t know I was interrupting — I don’t want to interrupt — there’s no reason—” Seeing he had Fox stopped, he moved to the chair at the other corner of the desk, sat, and said abruptly:
“I want to retain you, Mr. Collins.”
Nat Collins beamed at him approvingly. “To a lawyer that phrase is poetry way above Keats or Shakespeare. May I ask to do what?”
“To defend me — uh — not defend me exactly. The police have questioned me in connection with the death of Arthur Tingley. I am not of course suspected of murder, but they have learned that I was negotiating with him to buy his business for my company — I’m a vice-president of the Provisions and Beverages Corporation. Also they have asked me if I had knowledge of a recent attempt to damage the Tingley business by adulteration of its product. I did have knowledge of it, because the news had got around in the trade — by rumor as well as by channels of information of the sort that every large corporation keeps open. I knew no more about it, and certainly nothing of the murder. But even to be questioned by the police in such a connection is a little — disturbing. In the interest of my company as well as my own, I want — well, I want the advice and services if necessary of a good lawyer. I’d like to retain you for that.”