“Yes, you are, Andy, I’ve told you that myself.” Fox tossed the photograph on the bureau, pulled a chair around and sat. He smiled at Nancy. “I like you very much. Every time evidence turns up that you’re a liar, you dissolve it with a story out of your past so improbable that no liar could invent it. And you can’t be much over twenty. You should have a marvelous future.”
“Are you kidding me?” Nancy wrinkled her brows at him. “You believe me, don’t you? About the picture?”
“Of course I believe you. I doubt if you could be trained to lie, you’re too conceited— No, we’ll argue that some other time. I want to ask you — I understand that you’re under bond as a material witness?”
“Yes. Mr. Collins—”
“Both of us are,” Grant put in. “Collins arranged it. He drove us here — he suggested it. He said if we went to New York we’d be pestered... we took the liberty of coming here...” He hesitated with embarrassment. “I don’t think I ever properly thanked you for letting me stay here — as your guest — so long that time... and now you’re doing this just because Nancy came and asked you—”
“Forget it.” Fox waved a hand. “I do what everyone else does who can afford it, I do what I like to do. I suppose you’ve heard me say that what keeps my spring wound up is curiosity. I’ve never seen or heard of anything yet that I wasn’t curious about. The things that move are more interesting than the things that stand still and the most interesting moving things that I’ve seen so far are people. All I’m saying, I’m just relieving your mind of the notion that you have anything to thank me for. The fact is, I ought to be thanking you, because I’m collecting a big fat fee out of this. I can’t tell you who from or what for, but I wanted to mention it and tell you that it won’t conflict with the job I undertook—”
There was a knock at the door. He looked at Nancy. She said, “Come in,” and the door swung wide to make room for the broad shoulders of Dan Pavey. To Fox’s inquiring glance he said:
“Mr. Thorpe calling. The young one.”
“On the phone?”
“No, he’s down on the porch. His sister’s with him.”
“Tell them I’ll be down in a few minutes.”
Dan shook his head. “I think it’s just a social call. He asked to see Miss Grant.”
Nancy blurted, “Why... of all the unbelievable nerve—”
“I told him I’d see if you were still up.” Dan eyed her with gloomy scepticism. “He’ll wait if you want to take time to think it over. Now that his old man’s alive and well and his cash has reverted to prospects, if you want to play it different—”
“Play what different?” Nancy demanded. “I’m not playing anything.”
Dan grunted. “Call it work then. I suppose it’s a kind of work at that. Providing for the future — okay, call it work. You can ask Fox and your uncle what they think, but my advice is to stay on that horse. His old man won’t live forever, even if nobody shoots him. You’ve already got him blinded with dust. How would this be? I’ll go down and tell him you refuse to see him, and I’ll keep him there talking, and pretty soon you can come down, pretending you thought he had gone—”
“Are you intimating—” Nancy choked with indignation. “Are you daring to intimate—”
Dan nodded imperturbably. “I sure am. What’s that to get sore about? I’m only being practical. The question is whether it’s time to begin to reel him in, whether I ought to go down and tell him—”
Nancy turned her back on the vice-president, as offensively as possible, and her eyes flashed at Fox. “Will you please tell Mr. Pavey,” she began scathingly, “to tell Mr. Thorpe that unless he stops annoying—”
“No,” said Fox brusquely. “You’ll have to control your personal reactions. If you want me to help your uncle you’ll have to help me too. In the job you asked me to do, getting you people out of a difficulty, Jeffrey Thorpe’s eagerness to converse with — may I say us — is a valuable asset. Hate him and despise him if you want to, that’s all right, but you can do it with him present as well as in his absence. Even better, I should think.” He turned to Dan. “Anyone else on the porch?”
“Oh, just two or three.”
“Anyone in the living room?”
“Leo and Wallenstein are playing chess.”
“Dining room?”
“Crocker’s reading poetry to Mrs. Trimble. Some of his.”
Fox grimaced. “That’s the disadvantage...”
He looked around. “This is a little small and anyway I doubt if Miss Grant would let him in her room. Will you please bring him up to my room?”
Dan said he would and went. Fox invited the Grants to accompany him. Nancy muttered mutinously, but went through the door when it was opened for her and again through another door into the large corner room. Fox got the lights on and some chairs moved, and then returned to the hall to receive the visitors. In a few moments he was back with them. Grant stood up and bowed and answered greetings: Nancy was absorbed in a bulletin of the United States Department of Agriculture which she had picked up from Fox’s desk. That position was untenable, for she would unquestionably have to speak to Miranda, who had been quite decent at the encounter in the courthouse; but before she had worked out a solution of the problem Jeffrey Thorpe marched over, planted himself in front of her and demanded hoarsely:
“Will you marry me?”
“Good heavens,” gasped Miranda and dropped into a chair.
Jeffrey ignored that. “I’m asking you, will you marry me?” He was hunched over at Nancy. “Of course you won’t, not now you won’t, but I wanted to ask that first to get things clear. Next, I want to ask when did you give your photograph to my father and why, and under what circum — hey, now don’t—”
But, popping out of her chair, Nancy slid past him, avoiding his hand outstretched to stop her, circled around Fox like a breeze around a bush, and only after she had the door open turned on the threshold to say to Miranda:
“Good evening, Mrs. Pemberton. I’m glad your father wasn’t murdered.”
Then she went out and pulled the door to behind her.
She headed for her room. At the top of the stairs she paused irresolutely, thinking that outdoor air might cool her off a little, but faint voices came to her from below, evidently from the porch, so she resumed her course along the hall. Because the composition soles of her sport shoes made no noise on the hall floor, postponing the warning of her approach until she flung the door of her room open, her surprised glance showed her not only Dan Pavey sitting in a chair, but also her photograph which he held in both hands as if it were a book he was reading.
“Excuse me,” Nancy said in an astonished voice, leaving the door open and standing there.
“Sure,” Dan nodded. He arose, without haste, facing her. “Mrs. Trimble asked me to come up and see about towels.”
“That’s curious. She told me where to get towels from the cupboard.”
“Oh.” Dan cleared his throat. “Then I guess she didn’t ask me to come up and see about towels.”
“You ought to know.”
“Yes, I ought,” Dan agreed. He tapped the photograph with his finger. “You see, this thing is important evidence. Fox shouldn’t leave it around like this. I happened to remember he had left it in here—”
“It is not evidence,” Nancy asserted stiffly. “I have given Mr. Fox a satisfactory explanation of how Mr. Thorpe got it. Am I supposed to explain to you too?”
“You’re not supposed to, but you can if you want to.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Right.”
“Are you prepared to maintain that Mr. Thorpe’s having my photograph is any of your business?”
“No.”
“Especially since my explanation satisfied Mr. Fox completely?”