“No, really?” Fox was sarcastic. “For the present, Miss Duncan, you’d better forget you’re a detective. You have sentiments involved that tend to thwart the inductive process. You’ll never forgive Dol Bonner for drinking a cocktail—”
“That isn’t true!” Amy denied indignantly. “Just because I permitted you to kiss me—”
“Permitted? Ha!”
“Be quiet!” Nat Collins told them. The telephone had buzzed and he was at it. After a short conversation, from his end mostly growls, he hung up and made a face at Fox.
“He’s a trained writer, all right. Fiction writer. There is no OJ55. There’s no OJ at all with less than three figures.”
Chapter 8
They looked at each other. No pertinent comment appeared to be forthcoming.
Finally Collins addressed Amy: “We ought to know if you stumbled on that step or not.”
“She probably did.” Fox tapped his breast over the pocket where he had put the paper. “I’ll fiddle around with this in my spare time. What about Philip Tingley? Did you send for him or is he a volunteer?”
“I sent for him. I prodded Miss Duncan on the probable reason why her uncle phoned to ask her to come to see him. She doesn’t know. She doesn’t see how it could possibly have been in connection with the quinine thing. As a wild guess, the best she can do is that it might have been something about her cousin Phil. Tingley and his adopted son used to have frequent clashes, and Miss Duncan took Phil’s side. She thinks Tingley had an exaggerated idea of her influence with Phil, because he once came down from his perch and appealed to her to use it to make him a better boy. So I got in touch with him and asked him to drop in.”
“All right, let’s take a look at him. May I have the overture?”
“Help yourself.”
Collins used the phone for a message to Miss Larabee, and after a moment Philip Tingley was ushered in. Tall and ungainly and bony, dressed conceivably for a bread line, his hollow cheeks and the sagging corners of his mouth might have been attributed, by one who had never seen him before, to the shock and strain of the current casualty. He greeted Amy composedly, with a piercing glance from his deep-set eyes, allowing Collins and Fox, introduced, to grasp his bony fingers, and lowering himself into the chair that had been vacated by Leonard Cliff.
Amy said nervously, as one impelled to speak without having any specific communication to make, “It’s ghastly, isn’t it, Phil?”
“Not particularly,” declared the last Tingley who was not a Tingley. “The death of one economically useless man, even in such an abhorrent manner, is regrettable only in a very restricted sense. If he had been my father I might feel differently. As it is, I don’t feel.”
“I congratulate you,” said Fox cheerfully. “Not many people ever achieve that philosophic detachment toward death. You’re not faking it, are you?”
“Why the deuce would I fake it?”
“I don’t know. I suppose you wouldn’t; you’d be more apt to fake distress and woe, which is often done. Do you feel equally indifferent to the fate of your cousin?”
“My cousin?” Phil frowned in puzzlement. “Oh — you mean Amy. I do not. I rarely form personal attachments, but she is the only woman I have ever proposed marriage to.”
“Phil!” Amy protested. “You were only talking.”
He shook his head. “No, I meant it. I had decided I wanted to marry you. Of course I’m glad now I didn’t, because it would have interfered.”
“That was some time ago?” Fox inquired.
“That was in May and June, 1935.”
“I see. It was the season of the year that unnerved you. But you are still well-disposed toward her? I ask because she needs a little friendly help. Did you know that your father — your foster father — phoned her yesterday to ask her to come to see him?”
“No. Did he? I don’t think it was mentioned in the Times. I read only the Times.”
“Well, he did. He phoned at a quarter to six, speaking of a problem on which he needed her assistance, and asked her as a family favor to be at his office at seven. That’s why she went there. But the police have only her word as evidence that she received that phone call, and corroboration would help a lot. We have considered the possibility, among others, that the problem he spoke of was connected in some way with you.”
“Why do you assume that?”
“Not assume it. Admit it as a possibility.”
“Very well,” Phil conceded, “it’s a possibility.”
“Thank you. But can’t you make it more than that? Had any — uh — discussion between you and your father recently become acute?”
“Our quarrel was always acute. Chronic and acute both.”
“But did it, between three o’clock Monday and six o’clock yesterday afternoon, reach a new crisis?”
“No.”
“It didn’t?” Fox smiled at him. “The reason I specify those hours is because Miss Duncan called on your father Monday afternoon, and when she left him, about half past three, his attitude was uncompromisingly hostile and certainly didn’t indicate that he was about to ask her a favor. But at a quarter to six Tuesday he did telephone to ask her a favor. It would be helpful if we could establish that in the interim something occurred to account for that. You realize, don’t you, that it would be extremely helpful to your cousin?”
“Yes, I realize that.”
“But you can’t fill it in for us.”
“No, I can’t.”
“Your father sent word for you to go to his office, at five o’clock yesterday, and you went. What was that about?”
Phil compressed his lips, thereby counteracting most of the drooping effect at the corners. “That,” he said. He moved in his chair for an easier position. “You sound like a police parrot. They asked about that too. I understood you were merely defending Amy’s position in this.”
“I am. Protecting the flanks as well as the front and rear. If you’ll tell us what you and your father said to each other yesterday it might give us a peg to hang that phone call on.”
“We said what we always said.”
“With no novel variations?”
“No.” Phil was frowning at the necessity for touching upon a highly distasteful subject. “It was enough without variations. He was chronically enraged at me because I had brains enough to see the criminal futility and cachexia of the orthodox capitalist economy and finance, and because I wouldn’t immolate my brains on the tottering altar of the petty business that bounded his horizon. I was equally enraged, though I controlled it better than he did, because he could easily have afforded to contribute considerable sums to the cause I had embraced, the purification and rejuvenescence of world economy, and he refused. He paid me a mere pittance for my work as a salesman. Forty dollars a week. I live on fifteen and give the remainder to the cause. It pays for printing—”
He broke off abruptly and leveled his eyes at Amy. “By the way. That pamphlet I gave you. You gave it to the police. Did you read it?”
“To the police?” Amy looked bewildered. “But I didn’t— Oh! Of course. It was in my bag — that I left there—”
“May I ask what pamphlet?” Fox got in.
“Womon Bulletin Number Twenty-six.” Phil surveyed him. “I presume you have heard of Womon?”
“I’m sorry, but I haven’t, unless it’s a new pronunciation—”
“No. It’s Womon.” Phil spelled it. “It will remove the world’s economic cancer. It stands for Work-Money. Its central and revolutionary doctrine is that all money must be based on the median potential of man labor calculated by—”
“Excuse me. Is that the cause you are devoted to?”