The Player on the Other Side by Ellery Queen

charge accounts, Robert, and I’ll-squash-you-by-God-like-a-by-God-roach!’
    Robert York looked at Percival York wide-eyed, his yellow-pink skin turning yellow-gray. He glanced, startled, from face to face (Is it possible he’s talking to me?), and finally back to Percival. (He is talking to me!) ‘I don’t know what you mean, Percival.’
    â€˜Don’t add lying to your other talents, you double-crossing two-faced, sneaky-hearted little would-be Napoleon,’ said Percival. ‘You know perfectly well you put her up to it.’
    â€˜Her?’ said Robert, again taking inventory of the familiar faces. (Emily’s was a firm pink, but in his bewilderment Robert was color-blind.)
    â€˜Just don’t you meddle in my private concerns again, that’s all I’m going to tell you. Just don’t, Robert. I warn you. I can do more kinds of damage than your rabbity little brain can imagine, and if this happens once more — anything goes. ’
    â€˜But I don’t know what you mean,’ was all the agitated Robert could find to say.
    Percival showed his unlovely teeth in a wolfish grin, and he rose so suddenly that Robert shrank back. But all Percival did was to snatch up his homburg and stride from the room.
    â€˜But, Percival, what about —?’ Robert mutely lifted the ledger from his lap.
    Percival’s reply was to blam ! the front door.
    Myra York clung hard to Ann Drew’s hands. ‘Who was that ?’
    â€˜Shh, dear. It’s all right,’ Ann whispered.
    Robert surprisingly said, ‘I’m sorry. I’m terribly sorry.’
    â€˜It isn’t your fault,’ said Archer, as consoling in his way as the girl was in hers.
    â€˜It most certainly is not,’ said Emily definitely. She seemed about to say more, but she hesitated and was lost.
    â€˜We’ll get on, then,’ Robert said, wetting his lips — apparently to no purpose, for he had to do it again. ‘Now. We have a bill here for, ah — yes! — lawn fertilizer for the park. This of course will come from the general fund. And … I have a notation of breakage of a gold-trimmed meat platter from the Nathaniel York, Senior, Collection. Although it was broken in Myra’s house by the housekeeper, it really belonged to all of us. So replacement cost should perhaps come from the general fund —’
    â€˜It was a horrible thing,’ snapped Emily, back on safe ground. ‘Good riddance.’
    â€˜Or on the other hand,’ continued Robert, ‘should it come out of the woman’s wages? Archer, what was the inventory value of the platter?’
    â€˜A hundred and eighty dollars, sir.’
    â€˜She really doesn’t break very much,’ said Ann Drew timidly.
    â€˜Good riddance,’ Emily said again. ‘Write it off, Robert.’
    Robert looked from face to face, then made a mark in the ledger. ‘Very well. But naturally this must not continue. Now, ah … yes … Walt reports a broken curbstone in front of Percival’s house. Percival really ought to be here to discuss this,’ he added fretfully. ‘Why on earth do you suppose —?’
    â€˜Forget it and him,’ Emily said hastily. ‘Please, Robert get on with it. It’s late. ’
    So Robert York got on with it — the prorating of a tax charge; the distribution of an insurance refund; the recurrent argument over whether the Family or the Help, who were paid on the first of each month, should stand the loss of the extra day in thirty-one-day months — a standing controversy between Emily York who was staunch for the rights of Labor, and Robert York, who was just as sturdy a defender of the prerogatives of the Employer, with the invariable result of ‘Tabled Until Our Next Meeting.’
    These meetings, they all realized, were more a fussy ritual than a necessity; their business could easily have been taken care of by