“I wouldn’t say sinister. Do you dye your fabrics?”
“Certainly.”
“Aniline dyes?”
“Of course. Everybody does.” Koch’s brow showed a crease. “I guess I’m up with you, but I don’t see the point. If you’re delicately leading up to nitrobenzene, we have gallons of it, and it smells like hydrocyanic, but after all it was hydrocyanic that was put in Perry’s whisky. Wasn’t it?”
“Sure. I told you I’m just fishing. Do you happen to know that nitrobenzene spilled on a man, even on his clothing, can kill him?”
“I don’t ‘happen’ to know it. I do know it. Anyone does who makes aniline dyes.” Koch was frowning. “What the devil is this, anyhow?”
“Nothing. Probably nothing important. A nosey detective asking mysterious questions. That is, it naturally seems mysterious to you...”
“It certainly does.” Koch, still frowning, got up and stepped to the side of the table. “And speaking of mysteries, here’s another one.” He picked up the vase. “Look at that!”
Fox did so, without excessive interest. “It’s pretty,” he conceded. “What about it?”
“Pretty?” Koch stared at him, snorted, and passed caressing finger tips around the lip of the vase. “But I presume there are intelligent people who might call it ‘pretty.’ Do you remember, the other day at Mrs. Pomfret’s, there was talk of a vase, a Wan Li rectangular, that had been stolen from Henry’s collection? This is it!”
“Really?” Fox gawked at it. “That’s interesting. Where did you get it?”
Koch replaced it gently on the table and grunted, “That’s the mystery. It was delivered here this morning, by parcel post. Just as I was about to leave for the office. That’s why you found me still here. I coveted that thing every time I saw it at Pomfret’s, and you can imagine — when Williams brought it and showed it to me — he had already opened the package—”
Fox nodded. “Yes, I can imagine. Especially in view of the peculiar circumstances. What are you going to do with it?”
“Return it to its owner, damn it! I phoned him just before you came, and I’m going to take it up there now. If I kept it here twenty-four hours, the temptation — but you wouldn’t understand. You called it ‘pretty.’ ”
“I apologize,” Fox said mildly, and added in the same tone, “This parcel post gambit is getting a little monotonous. Since you say it’s a mystery, I suppose you don’t know who sent it?”
“No.”
“Was it addressed to you?”
“Certainly. This is my house.” Koch pointed to articles on a chair by the walclass="underline" brown wrapping paper, and a sturdy little fiber carton which had started its career as a container of Dixie Brand Canned Tomatoes. “It came in that.”
“May I take a look at it?” Fox went to the chair. He found it was unnecessary to spread the paper out to inspect the address, for it had been neatly folded so that a small printed label was in the center of the visible surface, as well as the postmark. Picking it up to examine the label more closely, he saw that it wasn’t printed, but expensively and elegantly engraved, with Koch’s name and address. He turned, his raised brows putting a question.
Koch nodded. “The beggar has a nerve, hasn’t he?” He was suave and amused. “That was clipped from the corner of an envelope of my personal stationery and pasted on there. But it doesn’t help much, because I’m pretty lavish with my stationery. Only last week I sent out a thousand invitations to a show of Frank Mitchell’s — a young painter I’m interested in.” He glanced at his watch. “You know, I must be at my office before noon, and I do want to see the look on Pomfret’s face when I hand him this thing. If you want to ask me some more mysterious questions, why don’t you ride up there with me? Unless you’d rather stay and try to get more out of my servants than the police did?”
Was his smile banter, or a challenge, or merely the polite urbanity of a civilized man tolerating unmerited harassment? Fox couldn’t tell; but in any case, it seemed doubtful that the maid was saving any helpful revelation for him. He accepted the invitation to accompany Koch uptown.
It appeared, during the twenty minute ride, that Koch had no revelations either. He could add nothing to what he had told the police and the district attorney. He had regarded Perry Dunham as a bumptious young scatterbrain, but he sympathized with Mrs. Pomfret and would be willing, he said, to undergo serious inconvenience if by doing so he could be of any help in the situation. He would like to know why the devil Fox had asked about nitrobenzene; he would also like to know who had sent him that vase, and why to him; he was in fact, he said, in a vastly better position for asking questions than for answering them.
The effect he produced at Pomfret’s, as registered not only on the husband’s face but also on the wife’s, must have met his extreme expectations, when, after a brief and rather stilted exchange of amenities, he suddenly produced the vase. Pomfret stared at it for five seconds in dazed incredulity, then stretched his mouth from ear to ear in a grin of unalloyed delight, and reached with an eager hand. Mrs. Pomfret, whose lids were even redder and more swollen, and skin more leaden, and shoulders less erect, than before, darted a sharp and suspicious glance at Koch, and one just as sharp, though not as suspicious, at Fox.
“That’s the Wan Li, isn’t it?” Koch inquired.
Pomfret gurgled an ecstatic affirmative.
Koch bowed to Mrs. Pomfret. “I couldn’t resist giving myself the pleasure of delivering it in person. Now I have to rush to my office. Mr. Fox will explain to you.”
He bowed again and was gone. Pomfret didn’t even see him go; he was carefully and lovingly inspecting all sides of his treasure so miraculously returned; and though he presumably listened to Fox’s recital of the circumstances of the vase’s return, he didn’t halt the examination for it. Mrs. Pomfret gave Fox both her ears and her eyes, and when he finished asked bluntly:
“Well, what do you think?”
Fox shrugged and turned up his palms.
“Fish,” she said in weary derision. “There’s no question that the Heath creature took it and he got it from her and mailed it to himself. Or else he took it in the first place and got frightened...” She fluttered a flabby hand. “It doesn’t matter now.” She pointed at the vase in her husband’s hands. “I hate that thing now. I hate everything here. I hate everything. I hate life.”
Pomfret hastily put the vase down and passed an arm around her shoulders. “Now, Irene,” he expostulated gently, “you know very well that’s morbid...”
Her lips tightened to a thin line, she reached for his hand and gripped the fingers till he winced. Fox arose, said he would communicate anything that was worth communicating, and took his departure.
The thing was as chaotic and senseless as a nightmare. As a nightmare, he thought, marching south on the avenue like a man knowing his destination, which he didn’t — as the sort of nightmare Hebe Heath would have. Nothing led anywhere; nothing had any apparent relation to anything else. Take for instance that coin catalogue in Dunham’s apartment. Or Dunham’s going for the violin that day. Why? Granted that he knew the varnish was there, he couldn’t very well have expected to scrape it out. Or take that damned vase; was it connected with the death of Perry Dunham or wasn’t it, and if so, how? It would have been reasonable to suppose that Mrs. Pomfret’s suspicion was sound, that the vase-lifting had been another exploit of the wondrous and unimaginable Hebe — but in that case, how in heaven’s name had it got into Diego’s closet, and why should Diego?...