Rex Stout_Tecumseh Fox 02 Read Online Free Page B

can’t just go ahead with it as if I thought it was on the square. Miss Bonner pays me, but the money comes from Tingley’s Titbits, and while I may not be a saint I hope I have my share of plain ordinary honesty. Just after I phoned her this morning, before I stopped to think I called up—the vice-president and canceled two dates I had with him. That was silly, because it didn’t really settle anything. Then I—excuse me—”
    The telephone was ringing. She went to it, at a corner of the table, and spoke:
    “Hello … Oh, hello … No, I haven’t … No, really … I’m sorry, but I can’t help it if you misunderstood….”
    After several more phrases, equally unrevealing, she hung up and returned to her chair. Incautiously she met Fox’s gaze, and again the compelling expectancy in his eyes caused her to speak without meaning to.
    “That was the P. & B. vice-president,” she said.
    Fox smiled at her and inquired pleasantly. “About the canceled dates? By the way, what’s wrong with his name?”
    “Nothing that I know of.”
    “I just wondered. You keep calling him the vice-president, but surely you know his name, don’t you?”
    “Certainly. Leonard Cliff.”
    “Thanks. You were saying …”
    “I was going to say that I went to see my uncle.”
    “Today?”
    “Yes, right after lunch. I hated to lose my job, andI decided to tell him the facts and try to persuade him to take the case away from Bonner & Raffray without giving a reason, and turn it over to some other agency. I was going to offer to return to him my pay for the three weeks I had been working on it. It seemed to me that was a fair thing to do. But the minute he saw me he began yelling about how he had told Miss Bonner he didn’t trust me and didn’t want me working on it, and if I had told him what I intended to he would instantly have phoned Miss Bonner about it, which I might have known anyhow if I had used my head. So I got mad and called him an ape, only I said troglodyte, and left.”
    She stopped. Fox prodded her, “Go ahead.”
    “That’s all. I started to walk home, and before I got here I walked into your car.”
    “But you said you’re in a jam.”
    Amy stared. “Well, good heavens, aren’t I?”
    “Not that I can see. Unless you’ve left something out.”
    “Then you must have an exalted idea of a jam,” Amy declared indignantly. “The least that can happen is that I lose my job. That may seem very picayune to you, with your ten-thousand-dollar fees, but it’s darned important to me. And anyway, if I just quit and let it go at that, how about the double-cross they’re putting over on my uncle? I may dislike him, in fact I do, but that’s all the more reason why I don’t want to have a hand in a game to cheat him.”
    “You won’t have a hand in it if you quit your job.”
    “But I don’t want to quit!”
    “I suppose not. And that’s all? That’s the jam you’re in?”
    “Yes.”
    Fox regarded her a moment, and said quietly, “I think you’re lying.”
    She stared, gulped, and demanded, “I’m lying?”
    “I think so.”
    Her eyes flashed. “Oh, well,” she said, and rose to her feet.
    “Now wait a minute.” Fox, otherwise not moving, was smiling up at her. “You’ve asked for some professional courtesy, so you’re going to get it. You may not know you’re lying, or let’s say misrepresenting; it may be only that something is interfering with your mental processes. Some uncontrollable emotion. There are two things wrong with your story. First, your unwarranted assumption that because you saw Miss Bonner talking with the vice-president—there, I caught it from you—she is double-crossing Tingley. There are any number of possible explanations besides that. Second, the obvious thing to do is to tell Miss Bonner that by accident you saw her with Leonard Cliff. Just tell her that, of course without any intimation that you suspect her of skulduggery. She may give an explanation that will