Dan asked, “What is it?”
“Your arm.”
“What about it?”
Her finger nearly touched it. “Does it hurt?”
“Nothing to brag about.”
They stood. Dan’s mouth opened and closed again.
Nancy asked, “What is it?”
“Something I might as well say,” Dan rumbled, his bass pitched lower even than usual. “I’ll get it out. That playboy of yours. I really did think he had shot his father. Since I understand you have alibied him, I was wrong. Congrat—”
“He is not my playboy.”
“Well, your whatever you want to call him. Anyhow, what I want to say, on account of my accusing him in public of being a murderer, I owe you a laugh. I dreamed about you yesterday. I dreamed I was picking flowers for you. Red flowers. With these hands — ouch. Draw any conclusion you want to and you’ll probably be right.”
“But I—” Nancy stopped, then went on, “Whatever conclusion did you draw?”
“I didn’t draw any. I didn’t have to. You wouldn’t either, if you had a dream like that. Picking red flowers and arranging them to look nice. Kindly postpone the laugh until you are out of hearing.”
He strode to the door she had indicated, opened it without knocking, passed through and closed it.
Tecumseh Fox, there alone, faced him and inquired:
“Well?”
The vice-president nodded. “Okay,” he declared. “They wanted me to sign a statement and identify the gun, that’s all. It’s my gun all right. You know, it kind of gives you the creeps to realize that your own gun was used to shoot—”
“It’s not your gun, it’s mine.” Fox compressed his lips. “You know, Dan, this is past the limit. We won’t discuss it now—”
“We might as well. That is, if we’ve got to discuss it at all. It won’t do any good. We’ve been over it all before and what good does it do? You have your ideas and I have mine.”
“It might do some good if I made it impossible for you to put your ideas in practice in my business and with my property.”
Dan shook his head. “You mean kick me out?” He extended an enormous paw in an appeal to reason. “What do you say things like that for? To begin with, you couldn’t kick anybody out. Particularly not me. Six years ago last May, you saved my life. If you hadn’t butted in, that Arizona jury would have hung me higher than a kite, as sure as a duck quacks. If it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t be here. Then in the last analysis, who’s responsible for my actions? You are— All right, I’ve admitted before that I got that argument from Pokorny, but that doesn’t keep it from being a good argument. You saved my life and here I am. Whatever I do, brilliant or the contrary as you seem to think, it’s up to you. As far as that gun is concerned, common sense ought to tell you that if that one hadn’t been handy—”
“I said we won’t discuss it now!”
“We might as well if we’re going to.”
“No. I’m busy.”
“I know you are. You’ve found out who murdered Thorpe. I can tell that by the way your eyes look. But if we’ve got to discuss my lending that gun — I don’t want to be worrying about it all night—”
“You never worried about anything for five minutes in your life. Please go downstairs and ask Vaughn Kester to come up here, and to bring Luke Wheer and Henry Jordan with him.”
Dan stared a second, grunted, rumbled, “I thought it was him all along,” and started for the door; and paused not for Fox’s challenge:
“Wait a minute, I’ll call that! Ten to one you can’t name him—”
The vice-president was gone. Fox made a face at the door, then crossed to an open window and leaned out for a breath of the cooler night air. Apparently Dan was having trouble finding Kester, or Kester was having difficulty locating the other pair, for ten minutes passed before footsteps were heard, muffled on the carpet of the corridor.
Fox faced the door as it opened. Luke Wheer was in the van, his face sullen, his eyes bloodshot. Vaughn Kester’s backbone was stiff and he walked with nervous jerky steps. Henry Jordan looked completely miserable, with the corners of his mouth drooping, his shoulders sagging, his feet dragging. There were only three chairs in the room. Fox invited the others to take them and, for himself, brought over the bench from the dressing table, then spoke to Dan.
“Stay out in the hall, will you, please? By the door. Sit on the floor and don’t go to sleep. If any one comes, give us a tap.”
Dan rumbled, not resentfully, “That’s one thing I’ve never done, I’ve never gone to sleep,” on his way out.
Fox turned to Kester: “Can we be heard in an adjoining room if we keep our voices down?”
The secretary shook his head. “The house is soundproofed. What’s this all about?”
“Murder,” said Fox curtly. “That’s what we’re going to discuss. But the precautions for secrecy are for the purpose of preserving the reputation of Ridley Thorpe. It’s his secret we’re trying to keep. You and Luke want to, I know. Jordan has his own reason for wanting the same thing and so have I. I’d hate to have to return this check to the Thorpe estate. I earned it and I want to keep it.”
“In any event,” Kester observed dryly, “you couldn’t be compelled to return it.”
“Oh, yes, I could, by my scruples — or my vanity. No matter what you call it, it’s the most effective compulsion there is.”
Kester didn’t look impressed. “What is it you want to discuss about the murder?”
Luke Wheer broke in, in a hoarse squeak, “I do not want to discuss any more about murder. I tell you, gentlemen, with all respect, I don’t want to!”
“I don’t blame you, Luke,” Fox sympathized. “But we four share the secret we want to keep and that’s why I asked all of you to come up here.” He turned and said abruptly, “The discussion will be mostly between you and me, Mr. Jordan.”
The wiry little man looked wearily surprised. “I don’t know what you think I can discuss about it,” he declared.
“Well,” Fox conceded, “I expect I’ll do most of the discussing myself. The fact is, I want to apply a test to you. I did it with Kester this afternoon; I built up an inference that he had killed both Arnold and Thorpe, and I did a pretty good job of it. Now I’m going to do the same thing with you.”
Jordan frowned at him. “I don’t understand. What is it you’re going to do?”
“I’m going to build up an inference that you killed Arnold, Sunday night, and Thorpe here today, and see what you think of it.”
The sag left Jordan’s shoulders, his chin stiffened and a flash came from his deep-set grey eyes. His voice was an angry growclass="underline" “I can tell you right now what I think of it.”
“Sure you can,” Fox agreed quietly, “but you’d just have to tell me all over again when I get through. To save time and avoid misunderstanding, I’ll put it this way: you’re going to sit there and listen right through to the end. If you start any motions I don’t like I’ll be on you and don’t think I can’t handle you. If you bust up the discussion, I’ll leave you in charge of Luke and Kester, and I’ll go downstairs and give the district attorney all the information I have, including the detail of Ridley Thorpe’s real weekend.”
“Not that,” Kester snapped.
“Yes, that,” Fox snapped back. “What about it, Jordan?”
“It’s ridiculous.” Jordan wet his lips. “It’s illegal. You can’t force me to sit and listen to this scurrilous—”
“I’m not forcing you. I’m merely telling you what will happen if you don’t.”
Jordan’s deep-set eyes were barely visible behind their ramparts. The palms of his hands slid down his legs and cupped over his knees and gripped there, as though he would hold himself down. “It’s blackmail,” he said. “I’ve suspected you from the beginning. Go ahead. Let me hear it.”