Fox stopped because the door of the room was opening. As he frowned at it, it swung wide enough to admit the breadth of Dan Pavey; then it was closed again, softly. Dan approached, glanced at the little man in the chair, no longer wiry, and announced to Fox:
“Not just a boat.”
“Why not?” Fox demanded. “I’ll handle this, Dan, if you’ll—”
“You can’t handle what I’ve got in my pocket unless you get it out. With this bum arm I can’t get at it — here in my jacket — no, the other side—”
Fox’s fingers, inserted into the inner pocket of Dan’s jacket, came out again clutching a folded sheaf of papers. He unfolded them, fingered through them with a glance at each, screwed up his lips and looked at Dan.
“Where the devil did you get these?”
“On Jordan’s boat.”
“This morning?”
“Sure.” Dan ignored an inarticulate cry of rage from Jordan, behind him. “I thought I might as well look around. They were in a metal box I had to pry open. There’s a box of cartridges there too, a kind I never saw before, in a drawer in the galley. I left them there—”
“It might interest you to know,” Fox said dryly, “that if you had given these to me this morning it would have saved a life.”
“You mean Ridley Thorpe.”
“Yes.”
“You mean there in the rose trellis.”
“Yes.”
“Right. I should have. After you finished laughing. You sent me home before I had a chance—”
“It can’t be helped now.” Fox glanced at the papers again, then returned his gaze to Henry Jordan. “So,” he observed quietly, “it wasn’t just a boat. Thorpe told me he doubted if you profited by the market tips he gave you, but you must have, to get enough capital to swing fifteen thousand shares of Thorpe Control. What in the name of God were you going to do with a million dollars when you got it, at your age? But that’s none of my business. My only purpose in bringing you up here to talk it over was to let you know that Luke and Kester and I will say nothing about Thorpe and your daughter if you don’t. It’s up to you. Your motive for murder is valid without that. Stand up!”
Jordan came up from his chair. Technically, he was standing, but he could scarcely have been called erect. He was shaking all over and his mouth was hanging open. “I d-d-didn’t—” he stammered. “I... I didn’t... you c-c-can’t—”
“He’s going to have hysterics,” Vaughn Kester said icily.
Fox moved until he was directly in front of Jordan, facing him, and stood there frowning down intently at the suddenly grey and flabby face. Abruptly and swiftly his hand swooped up and its palm flattened against Jordan’s cheek-bone with a sharp and staggering smack. Jordan nearly fell, but recovered his balance; and then, slowly and painfully, he straightened. He was erect. A last quiver ran over his body and it was composed. He looked up at Tecumseh Fox and said clearly and firmly:
“Thank you. I’m all right now. What do you want me to do?”
“Go on.” Fox inclined his head to the door. “I’ll follow. To the library to see Derwin.”
As they went out, Jordan with a steady unfaltering step and Fox close behind him, Kester’s pale cold eyes followed them. Luke’s did not. His head was bent and his eyes closed, like a preacher leading his congregation in prayer.
Chapter 22
A man, with brown cheeks almost smoothly shaven and wearing a blue denim shirt still fairly clean because it was milking time Monday afternoon, was chaperoning his herd of Jerseys across the paved road from the pasture side to the barn side. He saw a car coming and cussed. With any driver whatever the car would make his cows nervous; and if bad luck made it a certain kind of weekend driver from New York there was no telling what might happen. He stood in the middle of the road and glared at the approaching demon, then felt easier as he saw it slowing down and still easier when it crept, circling for a six-foot clearance past Jennifer’s indifferent rump. But two other cows rendered the démarche futile, and the car surrendered and came to a full stop directly alongside the man; and, glancing at the two occupants, he recognized the pretty girl who, a week previously, had momentarily taken his mind off of cows. The driver, beside her, was a citified male at least ten years her senior.
She smiled at him through the open window. “Hello! Nice cows.”
He squinted at her; she certainly was a promising heifer. “You don’t look as mad as you did last time,” he observed.
“I wasn’t mad, I was worried.”
“You don’t look worried.”
“I’m not any more.”
The road was clear and the car moved forward. In two minutes, having covered another mile of highway, it turned in at the entrance to the Fox place, known locally as The Zoo, and was guided by the curving lane over the little brook and on to the sweeping circle around the house, ending at the broad graveled space which was bounded in the rear by the enormous old barn which had been converted into a garage. From the right came the sound of voices. As the man and girl climbed out three dogs converged upon them for inspection. A man appeared at a small door at the far corner of the barn, decided in one brief glance that he wasn’t interested and vanished.
Andrew Grant said to his niece, “They’re pitching horseshoes. I didn’t know Thorpe and his sister were to be here.”
“Neither did I,” said Nancy with spots on her cheeks.
Tecumseh Fox, a pair of horseshoes in his left hand, came to greet them, and behind him Jeffrey and Miranda. Dan Pavey returned their salutation from his distance, turned as if to leave the festive scene, then changed his mind and stayed. As Nancy gave Fox her hand she remarked in a tone polite enough but faintly disparaging:
“Oh, I didn’t know it was a party.”
“It isn’t,” Fox declared. “Mr. Thorpe dropped in to negotiate for that photograph and I told him you folks were coming for dinner, and Mrs. Pemberton invited me to dine with her at my house instead of hers.”
Nancy was frowning. “You don’t mean my photograph?”
“That’s the one.”
“He can’t negotiate that from you. It’s mine.”
“He says it is part of his father’s estate. He lays claim to it.”
“Look here, Miss Grant.” Jeffrey was there facing her, looking resolute. “Has your uncle told you about the talk we had yesterday?”
She nodded reluctantly. “He has.”
“Then you know there’s going to be a publishing firm called Grant and Thorpe?”
“I do.”
“Well. Are you going to hamper the firm’s prospects by perpetuating a feud between the junior partner and the senior partner’s niece?”
“Our personal relations have nothing to do—”
“You’ll see whether they have or not. Have you ever pitched horseshoes?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know how hard it is to throw a ringer?”
“It isn’t hard, it’s impossible.”
“That’s right. I have a proposition to make. If I throw a ringer with one toss with this shoe, that photograph is mine, you and I become reconciled immediately and you get kissed. What about it?”
Nancy looked contemptuous. “You mean a ringer on the first toss?”
“Yes.”
She laughed sneeringly. “Go ahead. It will be you perpetuating the feud, not me.”
“Do you accept my proposition?”
“Certainly, why not?”
Jeffrey turned on his heel, marched to the nearest clay box, took position, set his jaw, clutched the horseshoe, glued his eyes to the iron peg forty feet away and let fly. Instead of sailing professionally, the shoe hurtled drunkenly through the air, twisting and wobbling, hit the clay at the extreme corner of the opposite box, staggered across crazily, performed a feeble spin near the center and lazily toppled over into an embrace of the iron peg with its iron arms.