Bad for Business

Chapter 17

Philip Tingley stood, swaying, clinging to the rim of the gas stove. He tried to open his mouth, grimaced, mumbled something hoarse and unintelligible, and gave it up.

“Here, take a sip of water.” Damon proffered a glass. Phil obediently tried it, and swallowed some, went to clear his throat, and winced.

“Bring him inside,” Damon said, and led the way to the room at the end of the little hall. Phil followed him, walking none too steadily but prodded on by Fox from the rear. Damon arranged the three chairs so that the light would be full on Phil’s face — not, certainly, because it was pleasant to look at — and they sat.

But Damon immediately got up again. “I’m going to get that bag. And have a phone call made.” He eyed Fox. “If you try something like taking him down the fire escape and putting him in the furnace—”

He strode out.

Phil’s eyes flashed at Fox from beneath their jutting ledges, and he articulated harshly, “You’re stronger than I am. I know that.” His hands twitched. “If you weren’t—”

“Forget it,” said Fox unfeelingily. “What do you expect me to do, hold my hands behind my back and let you take three shots? Anyway, you’ve got a jaw like an alligator.”

“She came.” There was a quiver under Phil’s harshness. “She came, and you — what did you do? Take her to the police?”

“Wait till the inspector comes. He’ll be here in a minute.”

Phil uttered a sound, half growl and half moan, raised his hand to his swollen jaw, and began a series of cautiously experimental touches and pressures, Fox watching interestedly. That pantomime was still in progress when Damon came tramping in carrying the leather bag, which he deposited on the floor beside his chair.

Fox suggested to him, “If that driver of yours does shorthand—”

“No, thanks,” said Damon dryly. “There’s enough high explosive in this damn thing to blow me to Staten Island. The district attorney will be here in half an hour, and if he wants to bring in a stenographer he can.” He gazed at Phil with unconcealed disfavor. “Fox here says it was him that operated on you and tied you up. Tell me about it.”

“If you start it like that,” Fox objected, “we’ll be here all night. I can give you a brief synopsis—”

“Let’s hear it.”

“Well,” Fox cocked his head, “where’ll I start? With a paradox. Philip didn’t like the kind of money we have, so he wanted to get hold of a lot of it, to be used for the purpose of proving that it’s no good. His foster father, not liking Philip’s dislike of money, refused to let him have any, and went so far as to disinherit him, practically, and showed him the will in which he did that. Philip’s curiosity was aroused by a bequest to Guthrie Judd of a certain box, and the first time he found himself alone in his father’s office with the safe unlocked, he explored and found the box and swiped it. He busted it open and examined the contents — what’s the matter?”

Phil was making noises. “That’s a lie!” he blurted.

“What’s a lie? That you busted it open? Show him the box, Inspector. Why not?”

Damon, after a momentary hesitation, unfastened the bag and produced the box. Phil, gazing at it fascinated, emitted an ejaculation, started up, and was apparently going for it; but it was merely such an involuntary movement as a devoted mother might make at sight of a beloved child restored from danger. He sank back into his chair, still gazing at it.

“We might as well,” said Fox, “clean up as we go along. What was the lie?”

“You’ve got it,” Phil mumbled, dazed.

“We sure have. What was the lie?”

“I didn’t bust it open.”

“No?” Fox stretched to point at the lock. “Look. Metal gouged and twisted. The lock bar wrenched up—”

“I can’t help that. I didn’t do it. I took it to a locksmith and told him I had lost my key and had him make one that would open it.”

“What locksmith? Where?”

“Over on Second Avenue, near 30th. I don’t remember the name.”

“All right, we’ll pass that for the present. Resuming the synopsis. Stop me at lies. Philip discovered his mother’s name was Martha Judd, and since the will and the inscription on the envelope both mentioned Guthrie Judd, and it was easy to learn that he had a sister named Martha, that was that. It was also easy to get a folder of the bank of which Judd was president and learn that its resources were over half a billion dollars of no-good money.” Fox looked at Phil approvingly. “I like that little touch. Shows a good head for detail.”

Damon grumbled, “You were going to be brief.”

“I apologize. On Monday, just three days ago, Philip went to see Judd, demanded a million dollars, that being only one six hundred and thirtieth of the total resources, and said if he didn’t get it he would sue him and his sister for damages, they having deserted him in infancy. Judd stalled him by giving him ten thousand cash, and squawked to Arthur Tingley. He went to Tingley’s office at ten o’clock Tuesday morning—”

“No,” Damon put in. “That man’s name was Brown.”

“For that occasion. It was Judd. Tingley was furious at his adopted son and agreed to help squash him. It was arranged that the three of them should meet at 7:30 that evening in Tingley’s office and have it out. At five o’clock—”

“You told me to stop you for lies.” Phil’s tone was surly. “We were to meet Wednesday morning.”

Fox shook his head. “That’s washed up. The inspector and I have just had a talk with Judd. That’s where I went with — Miss Martha Judd. At five Tuesday afternoon Tingley had a session with Philip and told him to be there at 7:30. But he thought he might need help, so he phoned Amy Duncan, his niece, and asked her to come at seven. So much for Tuesday. Between then and now I have been floundering in a swamp, and still am. But this evening I had a break. I came here to pry something loose from Philip, and had just finished preparing him for prying, when Miss Judd arrived and asked me if I was Philip Tingley and I told her yes. We had an informative talk, and I suggested that we go together to discuss it with Judd. He resented her taking me for Philip and shooed her upstairs, and he and I were still at it when you arrived.”

“Some day,” said Damon as if he meant it, “I hope you sink in a swamp and stay sunk. What I want—”

“Excuse me,” said Fox quickly. “Milk me dry before you sell me to the butcher. Remember all I’ve got out of Philip so far is growls and dirty looks. Remind me some time to tell you what happened when I took him to Judd’s office this afternoon. I don’t mind it so much now. Tuesday evening, Judd arrived at the Tingley building at 7:30, went inside, and came out in five minutes. Philip arrived at 7:40, went in, and stayed eight minutes. I suggest that Philip had better tell us what he saw and did in there, and I can compare it with what Judd told me.”

Damon grunted. Phil said sneeringly:

“That’s a good trick.”

“No, my boy.” Fox surveyed him. “Even if you killed Tingley, the time has come to leave that hole and try another one. If you didn’t kill him, the truth will do fine. If you did, make up something. After what Judd told me, the spot you’re on is so hot you’re sizzling. He doesn’t like you, you know. Is it true that you went there and found that Tingley and Judd had decided not to deal with you, to prosecute you for blackmail? Did you lose your temper and pick up that weight and crack him on the head, and then—”

“No! I didn’t!”

“And then decide you’d better finish it, and go for a knife—”

“No! The filthy liar! He did it! Judd did it! He was dead when I got there — lying there dead—”

“He was? Was Amy Duncan there too?”

“Yes! On the floor unconscious — not far from him — and Judd had just been there — I didn’t know that then but I knew he was going to be there — and I know now—”

Phil was trembling all over. Fox’s eyes probed at him, tried to appraise him; for if it was true that Arthur Tingley had been dead at 7:40, he could not very well have been talking on the telephone at eight o’clock.

“Calm down a little,” Fox said. “If you’re guilty you ought to manage a better show, and if you’re innocent you ought to be ashamed of yourself. Did you see anyone else anywhere in the building?”

“No.” Phil was trying to stop his trembling.

“Hear anyone or anything?”

“No. It was — very quiet.”

“Where did you go besides Tingley’s office?”

“Nowhere. I went straight there and straight out.”

“You were in there eight minutes. What did you do?”

“I... I felt Amy’s pulse. I wanted to get her — out of there — but I didn’t dare — and she was breathing all right and her pulse was pretty good. Then I—” Phil stopped.

“Yes? You what?”

“I looked for the box. The safe door was standing open, but it wasn’t in there. I looked a few other places, and then I heard Amy move, or thought I did, and I left. Anyway, I thought Judd had been there and killed him and taken the box, so I didn’t hope to find it. So I left.”

“One thing sure,” Damon muttered pessimistically, “you’re either a murderer or the best damn specimen of a coward I’ve ever run across.”

But Fox’s intent frown did not come from moral condemnation. “Are you aware,” he demanded of Phil, “of what you’re saying? You had previously stolen the box from the safe and had it in your possession. How the devil could you have been looking for it?”

“I didn’t have it in my possession.”

“Oh, come. Don’t be ass enough—”

“I had had it. I didn’t have it then. He came here and found it and took it.”

“Who did? When?”

“My father. I mean my brother.” Phil laughed shortly and bitterly. “He told me that Tuesday afternoon, that Thomas Tingley was my father. His father. That makes me half Tingley and half Judd, so I ought to be good. He had the box here in the safe, he showed it to me. He had come here that day, I don’t know how he got in, and found it and took it.”

Fox’s frown had deepened. “Are you telling me that at five o’clock Tuesday afternoon — at 5:40, when you left — that box was in Tingley’s safe in his office?”

“I am.”

“And two hours later, when you returned at 7:40 and found him dead, the box was gone?”

“It was.”

“By God,” said Damon in utter disgust. “If this is true, it was Guthrie Judd and it’s absolutely hopeless. I’m going to have to spend the night with this bony hero — There’s Skinner.” He got up and started for the front, muttering, “If he didn’t like it before, how will he like it now?”

He returned a moment later, bringing with him a thinnish man in a dinner jacket with a skeptical mouth and darting impatient eyes. Fox was on his feet.

“Tecumseh Fox,” said Damon, not graciously. “He plays with firecrackers—”

“I know him,” said Skinner irritably.

“So you do. Philip Tingley. This is the district attorney — hey, what’s the idea?”

“I’ve got an errand,” Fox declared, getting his other arm into his coat sleeve. “I’ll be back—”

“No no.” Damon snorted scornfully. “You’ll stay right here.”

Fox put on his hat and looked the inspector in the eye. “Okay,” he acquiesced calmly, “if you say so, naturally I stay. But in spite of that synopsis I just gave you, I still know five or six things you don’t know. I’ve got an important errand to do and I’ll come back. If you think you and the district attorney can’t get along without me for half an hour or so—”

Damon met his gaze, hesitated, and finally nodded. “If this is another of your—”

Fox, not waiting for the rest, turned on his heel and was gone. The door to the hall was open. He left it that way, descended the four flights of stairs, dashed across the sidewalk through the rain to his car, and was pulling the door to when its swing was stopped by the man in the raincoat who had jumped for it.

“Where you going, buddy?”

“Go up and ask the inspector. If he won’t tell you, report him. Shut the door, please.”

“You don’t need to be so damn witty—”

But Fox, having got the engine started and the gear in, didn’t wait for that either. The car slid away, gathered speed, and shot off to the west. The clock on the dash said a quarter past eleven. At that hour of the night and in that part of town, despite the rain, it took only a few minutes to make Seventh Avenue and twenty blocks south and around a couple of corners to 320 Grove Street. The pavement there was deserted. Fox stopped directly in front, hopped out and dived through the rain for the vestibule, and, since Olson the watchdog was not at his post, pushed the button above the name “Duncan.”

There was no answering click. He tried it again, and then again, with silent intervals between, the third time making it an insistent and importunate series, meanwhile muttering inelegant but expressive imprecations. He was just ready to make a dash through the downpour for a lunchroom at the corner, in search of a phone booth, when a woman came backing into the vestibule from outside — backing in, because she was collapsing an umbrella to get it through the door. That accomplished, she turned, and with a start of surprise saw Fox.

“Lucky again,” he observed. “I came for a brief chat with you. No escort at this time of night?”

Amy Duncan’s eyes were without sparkle and her skin without bloom. “I went to bed,” she said, “and couldn’t sleep. So I got up and dressed and went for a walk.” She got a key from her bag.

“Didn’t Mr. Cliff stick around awhile?”

“No. He went soon after you did. As soon as he had made a few — remarks.” She had the door open. “After you — after what you — but I asked you to help me and I suppose I have no right to resent anything. Are you coming up?”

“If I may. I’d like to ask you a couple of questions.”

She made no reply, and Fox followed her in and up the stairs. Another key opened the door, and they were in the living room. She turned on the lights.

“Excuse me while I deposit this,” she said with dreary politeness, and with the dripping umbrella in her hand crossed and opened another door. Fox, with a sudden unaccountable frown creasing his forehead, stepped forward to get the room she was entering within his range of vision. It was the bathroom, and she was standing the umbrella in the tub to drain. That done, she came out and unbuttoned her coat.

“Blister my belly!” Fox said.

At his tone, she jerked her head up to look at him, and, seeing his face, she goggled. “What... what’s the matter?”

“Excuse me,” said Fox. “I apologize. I have just been struck by lightning. Rain usually follows lightning, but in this case it preceded it. I no longer need to ask you any questions. You are a beautiful and enchanting creature, and whereas I loved you before I now adore you. Good night and happy dreams.”

She was still goggling when the door had closed behind his exit.

Fox did not descend the stairs rapidly. He went down, and out to his car, slowly and deliberately, like a man whose head is so completely engrossed with other matters that his feet, in their wisdom, are quite aware that the detail of locomotion is being left to them with no assistance from above. In the car behind the wheel, he sat a long time without moving, staring at the globules dancing down the windshield with a concentration that could not have been surpassed by his eighteenth century namesake, the statesman Charles James Fox, when he wagered fifty thousand pounds with Richard Brinsley Sheridan on a raindrop race down a club window. Finally, still deliberately, he turned the ignition key; and it took him twice as long to retrace the route to 914 East 29th Street as it had taken him to come.

He exchanged nods with the man in the raincoat, who seemed relieved to see him back, pressed the button and opened the door on the click, and mounted the four flights for the fourth time that day. The door above was open, and Inspector Damon, standing there, rumbled at sight of him:

“It’s about time. Come on in here. The D.A. wants to hear—”

“Let him wait.” Fox, no longer deliberate, was crisp. He pushed by and entered the kitchen. “The place for a D.A. is a courtroom. Come in here instead, and shut the door. I’ve got it.”

Damon, being fairly well acquainted with Fox’s tones of voice and manners of speech, after one sharp glance at him, stepped inside the kitchen and quietly closed the door.

“All right,” he said, “I’ll bite. What have you got?”

“I think I have,” Fox amended. “Do me a favor. Bring that box here.”

The inspector regarded him. “I don’t know. I’m aware that you pick up a lot of gossip, but—”

“Now come. Just bring it here, huh?”

Damon went, and in a moment he was back with the leather bag. He placed it on the table and removed the box and handed it to Fox. Then he stood in readiness to take appropriate action in the remote event that Fox had gone crazy.

It did in fact appear that Fox’s mind was touched, though not in a way that justified restraint by force, for instead of opening the box, he grasped it firmly in both hands and shook it violently from side to side. His attitude suggested that he was listening for something, but the banging of the shoes against the metal sides of the box was all there was to hear. He stopped and gazed at the box a moment with his lips screwed up, waggled it again as before but more gently, returned it to the bag, and looked at the inspector with a nod of satisfaction.

“That’s all right,” he declared. “I’ve got it. I know who killed Tingley.”

“That’s fine,” said Damon sarcastically. “That’s just fine. Name and address?”

Fox shook his head. “Not yet. And for God’s sake don’t start shoving, because it’ll only lead to an argument and you can’t win it.”

“I can if—”

“No, you can’t. You’ve got nothing to open me with because you haven’t the faintest idea where the joker is. You admitted in there that as far as you can see it’s Guthrie Judd and it’s hopeless. I’m not sticking out my tongue at you, I’m just stating a fact. If you’ll just tell me one or two things — for instance, were there any prints on the box?”

“Ha, by God. I’m to tell you.”

Fox upturned his palms. “Be reasonable. Will it stop your circulation to tell me if there were prints on the box?”

“No. There weren’t any. It had been wiped.”

“Any on the stuff inside?”

“Yes. Plenty. Tingley’s and Philip’s and a mess of old ones.”

“Much obliged. That fits. Have you still got a man in Tingley’s office?”

“I’ve got two men. Six men on three shifts. We couldn’t seal the room because they needed things.”

“Fine. Have you removed anything from the room?”

“Certainly we have.”

“What?”

Damon shifted, went closer, so that his eyes, straight into Fox’s, were only inches away. “You know,” he said in a hard tone, “if there is any chance, any chance at all, that this is a ride around the block—”

“There isn’t. I have more sense. What was taken from the room?”

“The corpse. Two bloody towels. The knife and the weight and Miss Duncan’s bag. Five small jars with some stuff in them which we found in a drawer of Tingley’s desk. We had the stuff analyzed for quinine and there wasn’t any. We were told they were just routine samples.”

“That’s all?”

“Yes.”

“No other sample jars were found?”

“No. I didn’t do the searching myself, but those five were brought to me, and if any others had been there they would have been brought too.”

“Then it’s still there. It ought to be. It must be. Get your hat and coat and let’s go see.”

Damon, showing no inclination to move, demanded, “What and where?”

“I’ll show you. Tingley’s office. I swear by heaven, if you balk on me I’ll spill it to the D.A. and get him to go with me, and leave you to chew the rag with that bony wonder in there. Well?”

Damon, scowling, said, “You wait here,” picked up the leather bag, and stalked off in the direction of the inner room. Fox heard him speaking with Skinner, and then he reappeared and gestured to Fox to go ahead, and they left the apartment. Downstairs in the vestibule the man in the raincoat was instructed to go up and stay with the district attorney, and he went. There ensued a brief argument about cars, which Fox won: he would drive his own, and the inspector would follow in the police car.

To the old Tingley landmark on 26th Street it was even a shorter distance than it had been to 320 Grove Street, and within a few minutes the cars came to a stop again at the curb, nose to tail, and the two men joined company again at the stone steps and entered together, Damon opening the door with a key. Inside it was pitch-dark. The inspector produced a flashlight, and with the aid of its beam they mounted the stairs and threaded their way through the maze of doors and partitions, not bothering to turn on any lights. When they got to the door bearing the ancient legend, THOMAS TINGLEY, they found it wide open, and a large man with a slight strabismus in his left eye was standing just outside with an automatic in his hand. At sight of them he looked simultaneously relieved and disappointed.

“Hello, Drucker.”

“Good evening, Inspector.” The man moved aside to let them enter.

The table and chairs which had been in the middle of the room for the afternoon meeting of the trustees were no longer there; the table was now at the far end near a window, littered with newspapers and a deck of playing cards, and standing beside it, just up from a chair, was a man with a thin little mouth in a big face.

Damon tossed him a nod. “Hello, Bowen.” His head pivoted slowly, to the right and then to the left, taking in everything. He ended with Drucker, who had followed them in. “Nothing to report?”

“No, sir. Nothing but monotony.”

Damon transferred to Fox. “Well? Show me.”

Fox walked to the safe and grasped the lever of the door, but it wouldn’t budge.

“They keep things in there,” said Drucker. “Checks and things. They open it in the morning and close it in the afternoon.”

Fox frowned. “That sounds pretty loose to me.”

“Stalling?” The inspector snorted. “I told you why we didn’t seal it. Everything that goes out, and everything that comes in, is handled and checked. Perhaps you’d like to prepare a new set of regulations?”

“No, thanks, Inspector. Don’t bristle. Cooperate. If you have the combination of the safe—”

“I haven’t. But I say you’re stalling. That safe was searched by Lieutenant Rowcliff Tuesday night, and he never yet let a cubic millimeter get by.”

“Did Rowcliff do this room?”

“He did. With assistance.”

“Mmm.” Fox shook his head and bit his lower lip. “Then the safe’s out. So is the desk, and everything else that can be ruled and calipered.” He slowly surveyed the room, the shelves and cabinets, the photographs on the walls, the piles of trade journals, the desk, Tingley’s coat on its hanger and the hat on the little shelf above, the screen and wash basin.

“It looks like a job,” he admitted. “I’m not stalling. I think it’s here. I hope to heaven it’s here. But it looks like an all-night job. There is, of course, one chance. A squad of scientific searchers might possibly be too scientific. I mean they might overlook something so obvious that science would sneer at it.” He glanced around. “For instance, take that hat there on the shelf. What if Tingley simply stuck it under his hat?” He crossed the room and reached up for the hat. “Not that I’m expecting—”

He stopped short, with his voice, but not with his hand.

The next thirty seconds were comic relief. When Damon and Drucker saw, as they did, that an object on the shelf had been concealed under the hat and that Fox was grabbing it, they made for him. Fox, seizing it, held it in the air out of their reach, and they attacked him, jumped for it, pulled at him. It was like a boy protecting an apple against the raid of hungry and covetous pals.

“Prints, you damned fool!” Drucker screamed.

“Let go! Cut it out!” Fox shook them off and back-stepped away. “To hell with prints! I’m not interested in prints.” They stood and glared at him as he raised the object — a little glass jar with no cover — to his nose and sniffed at it. “I’m interested in something else. Who found it, anyhow? Let me alone.” He got a penknife from his pocket and opened a blade, with its tip dug out a little of the stuff in the jar, and conveyed it to his mouth. While his lips and cheeks moved to facilitate dissolution in that primitive laboratory retort, the others watched in silent fascination.

“Brrr,” he said, and made a horrible face, holding the jar out to Damon. “Grand for a febrifuge. Have a little.”

The inspector took the jar. “And you knew it was under the hat,” he said grimly. “And you either put it there yourself Tuesday night, expecting us to find it, or you—”

“You’re a tadpole,” said Fox, loud enough to stop him. “You make me sick, and if you’ll send your subordinates from the room I’ll tell you what else you make me. Also it’s midnight and I’m going home. It takes me over an hour to get there, and during that time I’ll be trying to tidy up the inside of my head. I’ll be back here at ten in the morning, and I respectfully request you to meet me here with the box, the jar, Miss Duncan, Mr. Cliff, Philip, and Guthrie Judd. If you want me to bring Judd, phone me before I leave home, which will be at 8:40. I presume that Miss Murphy and Miss Yates and Mr. Fry will be on the premises. I did not know that the jar was under the hat, and it was a moment I shall never forget.”