“Isn’t Miss Duncan at home?”
“She may be and she may not be,” said Mr. Olson. “If she is she ain’t opening the door. There’s been reporters and photographers and God knows what, trying all kinds of dodges to get in, and I’m staying here.”
“Good for you. But you know I’m her friend.”
“I know you was last night, but that don’t mean you are today. She’s in trouble.”
“And I’m getting her out of it. Open the door and I’ll—”
“No.”
The refusal was so utterly adamant and uncompromising that Fox grinned at him. “Mr. Olson,” he said, “unquestionably you are a good-hearted man, kind to your tenants, and well-disposed toward Miss Duncan. But I never heard a more unalterable ‘No.’ That had more behind it than a disinterested desire to defend beauty, youth and innocence from intrusion. What did Mr. Cliff give you, a twenty-dollar bill? Or even fifty? I’ll bet it was fifty. You beat it upstairs in haste and tell Miss Duncan that Mr. Fox wants to see her.” Fox’s hand sought an inside breast pocket. “Or I’ll serve you with a habeas corpus delicti and throw you in the coop.”
Olson had courage, at that. “You stay here,” he growled.
“I’ll tend to me. Trot.”
Olson went. In two minutes he returned, admitted Fox, not too graciously, and stood at the foot of the stairs watching him go up.
“The power of money,” Fox told Amy when he was in the living room and the door was closed, “is enough to scare you. You might think you were Juliet and Olson was the nurse. The P. & B. vice-president bribed him. Did you go to the funeral?”
Amy nodded. She had on a simple dark woolen dress and was without makeup, and her face was pallid and strained. “I went to the services, but not to the cemetery. It was awful — I mean the whole thing. It’s the first awful thing, really, that ever happened to me. My mother’s death was sadder, much sadder than this, but not awful — she died so... so quietly. Yesterday a woman from the Gazette offered me three hundred dollars to let them take a picture of me lying on the floor — unconscious like I was up there. And the way — even there at the funeral this morning—” She shivered.
“They have people with appetites to feed,” said Fox. “Not that I’d expect you to enjoy being an ingredient of the feast.” He stood, not removing his coat. “Anything new from the forces of the law?”
“I’m to meet Mr. Collins at the district attorney’s office at four o’clock.” Amy laughed shortly and self-derisively. “And I thought I wanted to be a detective.” Her hands twisted nervously in her lap. “I’m getting — I guess I must be a coward. The way they look and the questions they ask — and dashing across sidewalks hiding my face — it would be all right if it just made me mad, but I seem to get scared and my knees get weak—”
“It’s not very easy to take.” Fox patted her on the shoulder. “Especially when you started by getting knocked on the head with a chunk of iron and opening your eyes on the sight you did. Was your cousin Phil at the funeral?”
“Yes. That part of it was awful, too. All the faces, some of them people who had known my uncle all his life, and all just stiff and solemn — no real grief or sorrow, not a single one. Certainly he wasn’t a lovable man, but when you’re dead and the people who have known you best meet to bury you—” Amy gestured for the rest. “And right there, while they were putting the coffin in the hearse, Mr. Austin and Mr. Fry and Miss Yates came and asked me to go to some kind of a meeting at two o’clock — they’re the trustees and they’re going to sign papers and they wanted me there because they’re afraid Phil may start a fracas and they thought I would be a restraining influence—”
“It’s two o’clock now.”
“I’m not going.”
“Well, Phil doesn’t throw bombs. Is the meeting at Tingley’s?”
“Yes.”
Fox frowned at her. “You’re piling on the misery. To be under suspicion of murdering your uncle, and what goes with it, is naturally not very pleasant, but there’s nothing revolting about the trustees holding a meeting immediately after the funeral. Quite the contrary. Arthur Tingley may be through with titbits, but those who remain aren’t. You buck up and don’t be morbid, and I’ll kiss you again on your wedding day, one way or another.” Fox took steps toward the door, then turned. “By the way, you told me that you got the phone call from your uncle a little before six Tuesday evening, and then you went to the bedroom and lay down for an hour. How did you know it was raining when you went to the bedroom? Look out the window?”
“I don’t know. I suppose I did. Why, did I say it was raining?”
“You mentioned rain.”
Amy looked uncertain. “But that was when I went outdoors. I don’t remember...”
“You don’t remember that it was raining when you went to the bedroom to lie down?”
“No, I don’t, but of course if I said it — does it make any difference?”
“Probably not. Maybe you didn’t say it — just an impression I got.” Fox had the door open. “Don’t get independent at the district attorney’s office, follow Collins’s instructions. For instance, don’t mention that anonymous letter. We’re saving it as a surprise.”
Chapter 11
The ancient clock on the wall above the ancient roll-top desk said twenty-five minutes past two. Since it was again the eight to four shift, the same two squad men were on duty as at the time of Fox’s visit the preceding afternoon. The plump one was propped against a window sill with his back to the outdoors. The husky one was standing near the safe, gazing dourly at the occupants of the four chairs arranged in a square in the center of the room: Philip Tingley, Sol Fry, G. Yates, and a dapper little man with a bald head and a little gray mustache. This last — Charles R. Austin, attorney-at-law — was responsible for the gathering being located in that room in spite of everything. He had put his foot down. It was in that room that his senior partner, now long deceased, had formally read the will of Arthur Tingley’s father thirty years previously, and it was therefore the only fitting place for the mournful ceremony which duty now compelled him to conduct. So that was where he was conducting it.
At this moment he was bouncing in his chair with resentment. He resented, certainly, the refusal of the policemen to withdraw decently from the scene; but what had started him bouncing a minute ago was the impertinent intrusion of an unannounced and unexpected visitor who had simply opened the door and walked in. Mr. Austin was sputtering:
“Nothing can excuse it! Good God, must you in your greed violate even the threshold of death? I tell you, Mr. Cliff, your generation which at the behest of financial masters and monsters has abandoned all scruples...”
The others let him go on. When he stopped for breath, Miss Yates looked at the intruder and said dryly, “You’re here, so you might as well tell us what you came for.”
Leonard Cliff, from beside Philip Tingley’s chair, bowed to her. “Thank you, Miss Yates. I learned of this meeting — no matter how. You know that in behalf of my company I have been negotiating with Mr. Tingley for some time to buy this business. Ordinarily I would have waited, at least until after the day of the funeral, to resume the negotiations, but under the circumstances I felt that it was dangerous to wait at all. I have learned that Mr. Tingley suspected me of bribing his employees, or one of them, to adulterate his product, and I want to say that that suspicion was utterly unfounded. My company doesn’t do that sort of thing, and certainly I don’t. But I knew of the adulteration—”