Rex Stout_Tecumseh Fox 01 by Double for Death Page B

You’re in no position to dictate terms, are you, Mr.
small
or
little?
I’ll handle my part. You be there.”
    Fox slipped out and down the hall, entered a room, grasped a massive shoulder and shook it, said: “Come on, Dan, work to do,” trotted back to his room, dressed in four minutes, put an automatic in a shoulder holster under his arm and another smaller one in his hip pocket, tiptoed back to Dan’s door and whispered explosively: “Come on!”
    “Right,” Dan yawned.
    Three dogs met them in the dark in front of the garage door and saw them off. Fox took the wheel, wound along the drive and was on the highway. The headlights split the summer night at seventy miles an hour; and since it was only fifteen miles or so to the spot on Route 39 where the dirt road offered its narrower and dustier track, the ride wasn’t as long as it was fast. Fox slowed down and swung around the sharp turn on to the dirt. It was uphill the first thousand yards, then leveled out and narrowed still more as the leaves of the trees on either side reached out for space.
    Rounding a bend, there was a car, a long sedan, parked at the roadside in the entrance to a disused wood lane, a branch from a tree scraping its top. Fox drew up behind it, turned off the lights, told Dan to stay there and got out. A man emerged from the sedan and moved towards him in the darkness, all but impenetrable there in the woods. The man spoke:
    “Who are you?”
    “Tecumseh Fox.”
    “I’m Kester. Who’s in your car?”
    Instead of answering, Fox swept past him, found the handle of the rear door of the sedan and flung it open, sent the ray of a flashlight darting within, focused it on a face and uttered a cordial greeting:
    “Good evening, Mr. Ridley Thorpe.”

 Chapter 5 
    T he mouth of the face opened to blurt a command: “Turn that thing off!”
    Fox bent his wrist to aim the light at the front seat and saw a dark-brown face with black eyes popping out. He switched the light off, observed: “Luke Wheer too, pretty good fishing, three on one hook,” climbed in the tonneau and plumped on to the seat. The man outside muttered an ejaculation and was going to follow him in, but Fox pulled the door shut.
    “You can talk through the window, Mr. Kester. I like elbow room. Even though there’s no occasion to use my gun—not to mention the fact that there’s company in my car—”
    “Who is it?”
    “A man that works for me named Dan Pavey. That’s my affair. Think what Dick Barry
might
have said on the radio.”
    A grunt came from Ridley Thorpe. “Does Dick Barry know?”
    “No.”
    “Who knows besides you?”
    “Nobody. But don’t get silly notions. I carry thegun from force of habit. Dan’s back there and if you try any tricks—”
    “We have no intention of trying tricks. How did you know?”
    “I didn’t. I played a probability.” Fox’s eyes were adjusted now for the darkness and he could see faces and hands. “Do you know Andrew Grant?”
    “No. I’ve read the papers.”
    “Of course. Grant said that he looked through the window of the bungalow at ten minutes past eleven and saw you smoking a cigar and listening to the radio play band music. Your son said that was impossible. The most obvious explanation was that Grant was lying, but I had reasons for putting that last. Among other explanations, the one I liked best was that it wasn’t you he saw. It presented difficulties, for instance that your son identified your remains, but I liked it anyway and went fishing with it. I’d call it—”
    “I thought so,” came bitterly from Kester’s face at the window. “It was nothing but a bluff.”
    “Quiet, Vaughn.” It was his master’s voice. “We didn’t dare risk it.”
    “Correct, Mr. Thorpe,” Fox agreed. “If I hadn’t heard from you by noon tomorrow—today—your dentist would have been at White Plains examining teeth and in two minutes—”
    “Yes. Just so. Certainly. And what are you—what do you intend