Fox said he appreciated that, but that he had accepted a rôle and ought to play it, and Jordan, looking neither happy nor amiable, climbed out and went with him.
Crossing the gravel to a path and following it around a corner of the house, they were led to a flagged terrace with an awning and on it Fox was faced with the fifth surprise of the day. At the outside edge of the terrace, Jeffrey Thorpe stood erect as a sentry with his back towards the house and five paces behind him, her face flushed and her jaw set, Nancy Grant sat in one of the summer chairs.
Jeffrey turned his head enough to see who was coming. “Hello,” he said grumpily. “Hello, Mr. Jordan.”
“Good morning.” Fox included Nancy in it. “Stop in on your way to Westport, Miss Grant?”
“This is not on the way to Westport and you know it,” said Nancy. “Mr. Thorpe’s secretary phoned that he wanted to see Uncle Andy and we came here first.”
“How did he know Andy was at my place?”
“I told him,” said Jeffrey, with his back still turned. “I told Vaughn I was there last evening, and I arranged with him to tell my father that I am in love with Miss Grant and I’m going to marry her if I can, and for the first time in my life I’ve got something to work for and I’m going to work for it. And at it. I don’t care if it takes me twenty years—”
“Will you please tell him,” Nancy demanded, “how comical he is?”
“Tell him yourself.” Fox dropped into a chair and motioned Jordan to one. “Have you stopped speaking to him again? That will get tiresome eventually.”
Jeffrey wheeled to face them. “There’s no use appealing to her,” he declared. “She’s as stubborn as a mule. That’s all right, I knew she had a temper — it was when she flared up that time at the opera that I saw how beautiful she was. I understand what she’s doing — she’s going to keep me on ice until she figures she’s evened up for that. I stopped talking to her just before you came. I was standing that way with my back to her because she said if I spoke to her or looked at her she’d howl for help, and since I had already followed her from the music room to the front terrace and from there here, I was afraid she might. What is it, Bellows?”
The butler had emerged from the house. “May I ask, sir, if any refreshment is desired?”
“Oh, sure. I was preoccupied. What will you have, Miss Grant?”
Nancy violated etiquette by looking directly at the butler to tell him she would like orange juice, Jordan admitted he could use a glass of water, and Fox and Jeffrey asked for highballs. As Jeffrey, with a wary glance at Nancy, moved to a chair not more than two yards from her, Fox asked him:
“Is Grant in the house with Kester now?”
Jeffrey nodded. “I think Vaughn took him into the library to see Father. Or, I don’t know, there’s quite a collection scattered around. Five or six directors and vice-presidents and that kind of muck have shown up, and they’re in there some place, and that rooster what’s-his-name is pacing up and down the front terrace muttering to himself—”
“Derwin?”
“No, the colonel with the chest. Briss something—”
“Oh, Colonel Brissenden.”
“Yeah, that’s him. They’ve kept him waiting nearly an hour and he’s as sore as a boil. I beg your pardon. Miss Grant, I see by the face you made that that expression is disgusting to you and I humbly apologize. I humbly apologize.” He gazed at her face a moment and burst out indignantly, “I tell you, when you look like that, it’s inhuman not to let me look at you! Can I help it how I react? I’ll tell you something, my sister has an account at Hartlespoon’s, and she’s going there to look at clothes and I’m going with her, and you’ll model the clothes, and by God I’m going to sit there for hours and look at you and what are you going to do about that? Now, damn it, please... please don’t! I’ll control it!! You haven’t had your orange juice! I’ll talk to Fox.” He turned. “I’ve got a request to make of you anyway. That photograph you took home with you yesterday. You don’t need it any more, do you? I’d a lot rather have her give me one, but that will take time...”
Fox raised the obvious objections, but Jeffrey persisted. It appeared that he really did want the photograph. The refreshments arrived and were distributed, and Jeffrey took a gulp of his highball and pursued his argument to a point where it became probable that he was merely trying to force a contribution to the discussion from Nancy. She sipped her orange juice with an air of aloof indifference that might have been thought slightly unnatural for a girl who was hearing a personable and eligible young man intimate that a picture of her was the most beautiful and desirable inanimate object on the face of the earth. She was doing a good job of it when her ordeal was mercifully ended by a voice from the doorway pronouncing Fox’s name.
Vaughn Kester stood there. “Through this way, Mr. Fox?”
Fox excused himself and entered the house. He was conducted down a side hall, that not being the main entrance, through a room which contained among other things a grand piano elaborately carved and across another hall into a room somewhat larger but less formal. Two of its walls were completely lined with books; a third had French windows, standing open to invite emergence on to a shady lawn made private by a nearby screen of shrubbery; and on its fourth side an enormous fireplace was flanked to the right and left by more books. Cool-looking summer rugs were on the floor, the chairs were cool too with linen covers, and the familiar staccato click came from under the glass dome of a stock ticker, which was at one end of a large flat-topped desk. Standing, fingering the tape, frowning at it, was Ridley Thorpe, shaven, groomed, refreshed, himself. Fox told him good morning. “Good morning.” Thorpe let the tape drop. “I’m sorry you had the trip to town and back. You had already left when Kester phoned your place. May I have that letter from that lunatic?”
Fox took it from his pocket and handed it over. “I doubt if it was written by a lunatic, Mr. Thorpe. I thought perhaps its style and contents had suggested someone to you.”
Thorpe grunted. “Nothing very definite. We’ll go into this later. I have — by the way, I said I’d pay you when your job was successfully completed. Did you make out that check, Vaughn?”
Kester got it from a drawer of a smaller desk and handed it to his employer with a fountain pen. Thorpe glanced at it, signed it, and gave it to Fox. Fox too glanced at it and said, “Thank you very much,” as he put it in his pocket.
“You didn’t earn it,” Thorpe declared. “I should have offered you five thousand, that would have been ample, but I was close to desperate and my head wasn’t working. Not that you didn’t handle it well; you did. It was a perfect job. If you had taken me to White Plains, saying you had found Jordan’s boat and me on it, there would have been a certain amount of suspicion and investigation. The way you did it, leaving me there and letting Luke and Kester be discovered on your boat with you, was good work. I admire it. I want to hire you to find out who killed Arnold. I’m not making any more foolish offers, but I’ll pay you all it’s worth. Unless he is found and taken care of I’ll get killed myself and I doubt very much if the police—”
Fox interrupted. “I’m not sure I can take the job. I understand you sent for Andrew Grant. I’m working for Grant and I can’t undertake—”
“There’ll be no conflict unless Grant killed Arnold and I don’t think he did.”
“What did you send for him for?”
“Because my daughter asked me to. Also because he was there at the bungalow and I wanted to question him myself.”
“All right,” Fox conceded, “I’ll talk it over, anyhow. I already have an idea about that letter you got—”