“What have Wheer and Kester got to do with it?”
“You’ll hear that in their presence. Otherwise, from me, nothing. Nor from them, either, on a bet. Send for them.”
Derwin, with the sweat trickling down the side of his neck, gazed at him truculently. But he gave in. He finally looked at the trooper and ordered, “Get Wheer and Kester.”
The trooper went. Fox said, “You’ll waste time if you start in on them. That’s straight. Let me do it, if you really want to get this out of the way. You can always stop me.”
“You’re damned right I can,” Derwin growled.
When the valet and secretary entered, after a short wait, Fox gave them a sharp glance to see what he had to deal with. He was moderately satisfied. Kester’s pale cold eyes showed no signs of panic or surrender as their focus crossed his own and Luke’s firm jaw promised all the stubbornness required. Fox started speaking as they crossed the room, the trooper behind them:
“I asked Mr. Derwin to send for you fellows and he kindly consented. A matter has come up that you know about. He has found the stub of a check which Mr. Thorpe gave me this morning.”
“I know he has,” Kester said. His voice was squeaky with strain. “He showed me the stub, in my writing, and I told him I made the check out as ordered by Mr. Thorpe and gave it to him. Beyond that I know nothing about it.”
Fox shook his head. “I’m afraid that won’t do, Mr. Kester. The trouble is that Derwin insists that I tell him what the check was in payment of, which is understandable when you consider that Thorpe was murdered within two hours after he gave it to me and that I had just got through denying that Thorpe had ever paid me anything. He suspects that there is some connection between the check and the murder, and you can’t blame him. We’ll have to clear it up, for two reasons. First, if we don’t, he’ll fuss around with us on that and won’t get his job done, which is finding a murderer; and second, he’ll do things to me that I’ll regret immediately and he’ll regret later.”
Kester’s eyes on Fox were hostile and menacing. “If you mean you’re going to clear it up by—”
“Come to the point!” Derwin blurted.
“I’m there now.” Fox turned to him. “Thorpe gave me that check to pay for a job I did for him. The job was legal, proper, involved no moral turpitude and had no bearing whatever on either of the two murders you’re investigating. I asked you to send for Wheer and Kester because I know you wouldn’t accept that statement from me without corroboration. They both know the statement is true. They know what the job was, they know that Thorpe agreed to pay me fifty thousand dollars if I performed it satisfactorily, and they know that I did so perform it.”
“Come to the point! What was it?”
Fox shook his head. “No, Mr. Derwin. I’m pretty sure that neither Wheer nor Kester will tell you that and I’m darned sure I won’t. And with them to confirm me that I did nothing actionable and nothing that would help you solve a crime, I don’t see what you can do about it.”
“I can have you committed—”
“Sure, I know, you can fiddle around and make me pay for a bond and all that gets you is the assurance that I probably won’t skip the jurisdiction, and what good will that do when you couldn’t drag me away from Westchester County right now with a five-ton truck? Let me make a suggestion: if you think there is any chance of prying out of Wheer or Kester or me any information about the job Thorpe paid me for, which there isn’t, turn us over to three of your subordinates and you go on with your business.”
Luke Wheer said with explosive approval, “That’s telling him, Mr. Fox!”
Vaughn Kester observed, his eyes merely frosty again, “You had me worried. If Mr. Thorpe were alive, he would feel that his judgment of men had once more been confirmed—”
“Get them out of here!” Derwin barked at the trooper. The trooper opened the door, and they about-faced and tramped out.
Fox unfolded his arms and stretched. “I apologize,” he said courteously. “I’ve been sitting too long. I have another suggestion to offer: I’ll swap a couple of ideas for a little information. Such as whether the shot was fired from outdoors, through those open windows, or from inside the house. I suspect the former. I couldn’t detect any smell in here. Also, the fact that Miss Grant, sitting on the side terrace, guessed that the shot came from the direction of the swimming pool, is quite understandable if the shot was fired outdoors, otherwise less so. Of course anyone who was in the house could have slipped out by the hall entrance, fired through the windows and slipped back in again. But if the shot was fired outdoors, how did the gun get in here on the floor? Thrown in, do you think? Pretty slick. It’s an extraordinarily fine problem, if it’s still open, and I suppose it is or you wouldn’t be fooling with me. How did Miss Grant’s scarf get in here? Did the murderer use it to cover his hand? I suspect so, since the examination we let you make apparently didn’t get any results. In that case, it was someone who had an opportunity to get it from the seat of the car where she left it. Does that eliminate anybody? I suppose not. And who has an alibi and who hasn’t? With the authority you have to drag them in—”
“Shut up!” said Derwin savagely. “You’re making a mistake not telling me about that check.”
“No. I’m not. Even if it were a mistake I’d have to make it, because a part of the job was the pledge of secrecy that went with it. What about the swap I suggested?”
“Swap? If you have any information regarding—”
“I didn’t say information, I said ideas. For export, to be balanced by imports. I’d like very much to examine Miss Grant’s scarf. Also to know whether it was the same gun as the one that fired the bullet that killed Arnold Sunday night. You must have sent it to a microscope. Information is what I want.”
“You won’t get it from me.”
“I’m sorry.” Fox stood up. “Are we through?”
“We are for now.”
“I suppose I’m to stick around?”
“No. I can get you if I want you. I don’t want you around this house. You talk too much.”
“The devil you say.” Fox frowned. “You can’t put a guest out, you know. I was invited here by the owner.”
“The owner is dead.”
“The previous owner is dead. The present one is alive. Property rights hate a vacuum as much as nature does. You say I talk too much. I hereby inform you that I am now going to have a private talk with Mrs. Pemberton.”
Derwin looked him in the eye. “You will leave this place within an hour. If it’s necessary to escort you, I’ll provide the escort.” He turned to the trooper. “Bring in Henry Jordan and ask Colonel Brissenden to step in here a moment.”
Chapter 16
In the side hall between the library and the music room, two men in unpressed summer-weight suits with straw hats on the back of their heads were having a muttered conversation. Fox pushed past them to get at the door which was an exit to the side of the house which had the French windows, but all he saw out there was two state troopers and a bareheaded man in shirt sleeves going over the lawn and shrubbery inch by inch. Fox re-entered the house, approached a man standing on guard at the door of the music room and said, “If you please. Is Andrew Grant still in there with Colonel Brissenden?” The man nodded without speaking.
Fox detoured through another room to reach the hall which led to the terrace at the other side of the house, but found no one visible except a trooper seated in the hall, and on the terrace a Bascom uniformed guard trying to take something out of the eye of a muscular giant whom Fox recognized as Lem Corbett, a county detective. Fox went on by and took to the lawn. As he rounded the far corner of the house he heard voices and found their source when he reached the front terrace. It was a sufficiently curiously assorted quartet to cause him to send them a second glance, but he was going on without halting when one of them called: