Double for Death

Chapter 9

They sat around the desk, except Ben Cook who was against the wall with his chair tilted back and Derwin who was standing, wary and incredulous; and Ridley Thorpe was in command. Unshaven and disheveled and battered as he was, he had not dominated stormy directors’ meetings for twenty years for nothing.

“First,” he told Derwin, “get on the phone and stop meddling at once. Everyone prying into my papers and affairs and belongings. Call them off.”

Derwin shook his head. “Oh, no. That’s not first. First you satisfy me. Do you think I’m going—”

“All right. I’ll satisfy you. I’m Ridley Thorpe. My son and daughter—”

“Your son recognized the remains—”

“Quit interrupting me! My son and daughter recognize me. I used to spend weekends at that bungalow in order to get some privacy, but it became too widely known that I did so and I was annoyed. Three years ago I found a man who closely resembled me and hired him to spend weekends at the bungalow, impersonating me, leaving me free to enjoy genuine privacy at such places and in such activities as might appeal to me. I have done so. I have devoted my weekends to various relaxations and mild amusements, my identity never suspected because it was generally believed that I was at the bungalow — and thanks to my stand-in, I was. Frequently I have taken little trips with my friend Henry Jordan on his boat. I did so last Friday evening. Ordinarily I return Sunday evening or Monday morning, but this time I was worn out and it was hot and I stayed on the water. We anchored at various spots on the sound, fishing, talking, sleeping—”

“Didn’t you go ashore?”

“No. On that boat I can forget the world and give my nerves a rest. We didn’t leave the boat until this afternoon, after the thunderstorm. We were anchored in a little cove on Long Island. When the storm was over we chugged down to Port Jefferson and went ashore — I was intending to get back to business — and the first thing I saw was big headlines about the investigation of my murder. I would have had to wait an hour for a train, so I got the police and told them I wanted a fast car. They didn’t want to believe me and I suppose I can’t blame them. Here I am.”

He looked at his children. “I’m sorry you had this shock, Miranda. You too, Jeffrey. But you’ve had the advantage of reading my will. It treats you fairly, doesn’t it?”

“Perfectly.” Miranda’s gaze hadn’t left him once. “But I knew it would. More than one shock, though. Two. The first one was — shocking. This is shattering.”

“Of course it is. You were a multimillionaire in your own right. Now you have to go back to pestering Vaughn to watch for a good moment to get my consent to an extra twenty thous—”

“I didn’t mean that, Father. I only meant it’s a shattering surprise.”

“It is. Yes,” Jeffrey muttered.

“Yes, my boy, you too. Shattering. Well, I’m not dead. By the way, where in the name of heaven is Vaughn? I read a paper on the way here. And you’re District Attorney Derwin, investigating my murder. Good gracious, it’s a fantastic mess! Have the meddling stopped at once. I don’t want an army of people — Here, give me that phone.”

“Just a minute.” Derwin dropped into his chair and got his hand on the phone. He turned: “Is your name Henry Jordan?”

“Yes, sir.” Jordan’s deep-set grey eyes were level and his tone quiet and composed.

“What’s your occupation?”

“I’m a retired ship’s officer.”

“Where do you live?”

“914 Island Street, City Island.”

“How long have you lived there?”

“Five years. Ever since I retired.”

“Do you corroborate what this man has said?”

“I do.”

“Is he Ridley Thorpe, the financier and corporation executive?”

“He is.”

“How long have you known him?”

“Seven years. I first met him when I was purser on the Cedric and he was a passenger.”

Derwin snapped at Ben Cook, “Send a man to City Island to check it. Got the address?” Cook nodded and tramped out. Derwin turned to Miranda:

“How sure are you that this man is your father?”

“Completely. Of course he is.”

He shifted to Jeffrey. “Are you sure too?”

Jeffrey nodded without taking his eyes from the ghost.

“You are?” Derwin insisted.

“Certainly I am. Wouldn’t I be?”

“I’m asking. You were sure that the body you saw was your father’s.”

“I wasn’t asked if I was sure. I didn’t — there was no reason to doubt it. It looked like him — only — it was a body. This is my father, alive.”

The district attorney regarded him glumly, then slowly transferred the regard, first to his sister, then to Henry Jordan and last to his ghost.

“I would say,” he growled, “that fantastic mess is a damn mild term for it. I’ll want a signed statement from you, Mr. Thorpe, and copies of it will be furnished to the press. From you also, Mr. Jordan. God, what an uproar—” He looked at the phone, his hand still clutching it, in sour distaste, lifted it and clapped it to his ear, and told the transmitter:

“Get Colonel Brissenden. He’s somewhere in New York, probably at the Thorpe residence. Find him. Send in a couple of men, whoever’s out there. As soon as I’m through with Colonel Brissenden I want Joe Bradley...”

Nine minutes later the radio had it. Long waves, short waves, old-fashioned sound waves, undulated and quivering with it. City editors shouted it and telephone wires let it pass, and swift rumor distorted it. From different spots in New York, three newsreel trucks headed north almost simultaneously. At a water-front dock at Port Jefferson a policeman on guard arrested a man for swiping a cushion from the cockpit of the Armada for a souvenir...

In the district attorney’s office at White Plains, Derwin was desperately mopping his face with a wet handkerchief and trying to handle with official calm an utterly preposterous situation, Ridley Thorpe, with his friend Henry Jordan at his elbow, was carefully dictating a statement to a stenographer whose hand was trembling with excitement, Miranda was deliberately and effectively using a compact, and Jeffrey was sunk in his chair, scowling with compressed lips, when the door opened for a state trooper to usher in three men. Vaughn Kester, in front, looked pale, exhausted and tense; Luke Wheer’s eyes were threatening to pop entirely out; Tecumseh Fox’s apparel was untidy and his face exasperated, but his step was still quick and light and might even have been called jaunty.

Derwin jumped up and started to bark at the trooper, “Didn’t I tell — take them outside and—”

But that was beyond his handling too. Bedlam intervened, everyone joining in. Luke and Kester saw their employer and made for him. Miranda exclaimed something at Kester. Jeffrey leaped for Luke and got him by the arm and shouted at him. Fox stood aside, taking it in. Derwin abandoned official calm completely and barked helplessly.

Ridley Thorpe’s voice finally emerged from the confusion: “I tell you we were on the Long Island shore all the time! You should have found us Monday! Inexcusable incompetence—”

Miranda: “But Vaughn, why didn’t you—”

Jeffrey: “What happened, Luke, damn it?

What—”

Kester: “I did my very best, sir—”

Luke: “I told Mr. Kester we ought—”

Derwin: “I tell you I want—”

A baritone claimed the air and got it: “Everybody, please!” Tecumseh Fox, among them, got Kester’s arm and turned him. “Is this Mr. Thorpe?”

“Yes, I’m trying to tell him—”

“Quiet, Vaughn. Who are you?”

“I’m Tecumseh Fox. Kester hired me to help him find you. The district attorney—”

“I want—”

“I know you do, Mr. Derwin. You’ll have to take what you get. From me would be the quickest. Did you take my tip and buy Thorpe Control on the drop?”

“What the devil—”

“All right, I’ll rub it in some other time. Andrew Grant’s statement that he saw Ridley Thorpe listening to band music on the radio at the Dick Barry hour suggested to you that Grant was lying. To me it suggested that it wasn’t Ridley Thorpe he saw, neither then alive nor later dead. I got an item relayed to Dick Barry for his broadcast last night, as bait. I got a nibble from Vaughn Kester. Has Mr. Thorpe explained to you where he was and about his stand-in?”

“I have,” Thorpe cut in, “and you’re not—”

“I’m at bat, Mr. Thorpe — Kester phoned me at three o’clock this morning and I met him, and Luke Wheer was with him. Luke, entrusted with guarding the secret that the man at the bungalow was not really Thorpe, got panicky when the man was murdered and ran. He didn’t even know where Thorpe was. He got in touch with Kester and they hid out to get time to consider the situation. Kester did know that Thorpe was supposed to be somewhere, probably on Long Island Sound, with Henry Jordan in his boat. But he didn’t know precisely where. He didn’t even know positively that it wasn’t Thorpe who had been killed, in spite of Luke’s assurance that it was the stand-in; Kester wasn’t absolutely sure of what had happened and couldn’t be sure until he found Thorpe. He and Luke tried it; they were afraid to hire a boat, so they worked along the shore. Late last night they were on a pier at Huntington when they heard, on a radio on a boat anchored nearby, Dick Barry broadcasting the item I had got to him. That scared them and Kester phoned me, and I met them.”

“All the time—”

“I’ll finish first, Mr. Thorpe. Kester engaged me to help in the search. I hired a boat from Don Carter in South Norwalk and took Luke and Kester on board from a strip of deserted beach. That was around eleven o’clock this morning. All day long we searched the sound, both shores—”

Thorpe snorted. “All afternoon we were anchored in a little cove not far east of Port Jefferson, in plain view—”

“Then we must have missed you in the storm. I apologize. The storm nearly sank us. At six-thirty we tied up at a dock at Southport because I wanted to phone a man who was waiting with my car at South Norwalk. By bad luck a cop spotted me, and then Luke and Kester, and took us.”

“Took you,” Derwin rasped, “in the act of concealing and harboring fugitives from justice!”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” said Fox, disgusted. “Gathering sea shells with a tidal wave headed for you. Luke and Kester are not fugitives from justice. They were frantically trying to find Thorpe, which you might have been doing yourself if you had made a good guess about the radio instead of a bum one. I only wish I had found him myself and brought him here to you; that would have been a real pleasure. But apparently — what did you do, Mr. Thorpe, go ashore somewhere?”

“Yes, at Port Jefferson. And saw a headline — good gracious, what’s that?”

They all jerked around, startled; and as they jerked, it was over. A noise at one of the open windows, a face leering at them, a man’s arm thrust within the room, the hand clutching something that flashed and glittered like a reflection from polished glass — and then the explosion and the blinding glare. Miranda stifled a scream. Luke bounded towards the window. Tecumseh Fox laughed. Derwin shouted at the trooper in fury, “Go out and catch him! Put a man out there! By God, news photographers climbing up the sides of the building like monkeys! Or maybe the fire department lent him a ladder!”

“You’re nervous,” said Fox sympathetically. “You jumped three feet—”

“Oh, I am? I’m nervous, am I?”

“You are and I don’t blame you. You’re going to get a universal horse laugh because you were busy investigating a murder and the murdered man walks into your office. Think how much happier you’d be if you hadn’t got me sore yesterday. Where’s the man I’m working for, Andrew Grant? This frees him doesn’t it?”

“He’s free already. He’s out on bond.” Derwin circled his desk, seated himself, surveyed the group of faces and settled his regard on the perturbed visage of Ridley Thorpe. His jaw muscles twitched; he controlled it. “Mr. Thorpe,” he said, “you are a man of large affairs, of nation-wide — uh — renown. I don’t need to say that I have full respect for your position, your — elevated position. Your sudden appearance here has created an unprecedented situation — as you yourself said, a fantastic mess, but you cannot be held accountable for that. In engaging a man to impersonate you at your bungalow, and yourself seeking privacy and diversion elsewhere as you saw fit, certainly you committed no wrong. I want you to understand that I take full cognizance of your rights and of your eminence in the community. But though I am glad — I am delighted — that you are alive and unharmed, the fact remains that a man has been murdered in the county under my jurisdiction, and as it stands now, I don’t even know the man’s name.”

Thorpe was frowning. “His name was Corey Arnold.”

“Who was he?”

“He was an architect.” Thorpe glanced at the stenographer who had been shorthanding his statement. “You’d better take this down. I investigated Arnold thoroughly when I engaged him three years ago. He was fifty-eight, two years older than me. Born in Zanesville, Ohio. Graduate of Stevens. Father and mother dead. Two brothers, one a druggist in Columbus, Ohio, the other an insurance man in San Francisco. No sisters. Married in Boston in 1909; wife died in 1932. One daughter, married and living in Atlanta; no sons. He lived in a boardinghouse at 643 Archer Street, Brooklyn, when I found him; I paid him well, and for two years he has been living in an apartment at 406 East 38th Street, Manhattan. I got him by advertising for a man to sit for a bust of Gladstone; my skull and facial structure bear a strong resemblance to Gladstone’s. Apparently he was a pretty good architect, but he had had one little job in two years and he needed the money. He was down in weight when I found him, but after a month of proper diet my clothes fitted him almost perfectly. He smoked cigarettes but changed to cigars when impersonating me, drank moderately, was sober-minded, read a great deal of biography and American history — do you want any more?”

“That will do for the moment, thank you.” Derwin screwed up his lips. “What did he do when he wasn’t impersonating you?”

“Enjoyed himself. As I say, I paid him well. He gave me a report each week detailing his activities — naturally I wanted to keep tabs on him. Music and plays in the winter, golf in the summer—”

“Thank you.” Derwin screwed up his lips again. “You see, of course, the first knot in this tangle to be untied. If not the first one, at least a vital one. The person who fired a gun through the window of that bungalow Sunday night — who did he think he was shooting at, Ridley Thorpe or Corey Arnold?”

Thorpe stared. “Why, he thought it was me.”

“I hope so. In that case we have the enormous advantage of being able to consult with the man who was murdered. You realize, Mr. Thorpe, that what I am concerned with, as the district attorney of this county, is the murder. Though naturally you regret the tragic fate of Corey Arnold, with you, and possibly with everyone in this room except me, other aspects of this sensational affair may be paramount — since the victim was only an unsuccessful architect hired by you as a stand-in — but I am chiefly, and in fact exclusively, concerned with the murder. I want to find the guilty man and bring him to justice.”

“Good gracious, so do I.”

“Of course you do. I appreciate — excuse me.” He reached for the phone to answer it. It was a long conversation, his part consisting mostly of grunts, and during it there was talk among the others in low tones. It was continuing after Derwin hung up, but he stopped it:

“Please! I was saying, what I want is the murderer. That’s my job. I want to question your valet,

Luke Wheer—”

“So do I,” Thorpe declared. “I read a paper on the way over here and that’s all I know about it. What in the name of heaven — what happened, Luke?”

“No,” Derwin snapped. “I’ll do the questioning, Mr. Thorpe.” He fastened his eyes on the colored man. “Where were you when the shots were fired?”