Read Online Rex Stout_Tecumseh Fox 01 by Double for Death - Free Book Online Page A

elsewhere?”
    “Yes. There had been attempts—but that’s irrelevant. There seemed to be not the slightest chance of discovery. Arnold was well paid and was absolutely reliable. Luke was always there with him. No one except Kester was ever permitted to go there—never had been. When I had spent weekends there I had refused to talk on the telephone; all communications, if any were necessary, were through Kester. There appeared to be no chance whatever of its being known. And now this! Now the front page of every newspaper in America says that I’ve been murdered!”
    “But you haven’t,” said Fox dryly. “You can prove that easy enough. Only what about the certain activities you were following?”
    “That’s exactly it! They must not be known!”
    “But if you suddenly appear and announce: ‘Here I am!’ a great many people, including a lot of newspapers and police who are investigating your murder, will want to know: ‘Where were you?’”
    “Yes. They will.”
    “They sure will. And I’m afraid you’ll have to tell, for under the peculiar circumstances—even thoughyou’re Ridley Thorpe—any explanation you give is going to be run through a meat grinder.”
    Kester offered from the front seat: “My advice has been to refuse to give any explanation.”
    Fox shook his head. “You might try it, but.” Enough dawn had sifted through the leaves so that he could easily have recognized all three faces from the pictures in the newspapers. “Very doubtful. The police are after a murderer. Not to mention such items as the angry clamor of the folks who have dumped Thorpe Control at 30 in the effort to keep a shirt, and the fact that you’ve waited a day and two nights to reveal yourself. If you were going to do that you should have done it immediately.”
    “I advised it first thing—”
    “Quiet, Vaughn! It wouldn’t have worked! Fox agrees that it wouldn’t have worked! Don’t you?”
    “I do. If the police hadn’t traced you, the papers would. Now you’ll have to tell all about it.”
    “I can’t do that.”
    “I wouldn’t say ‘can’t.’ Like the woman on a horse who said: ‘I can’t get off.’ The horse reared and she fell off. So she was wrong. So are you.”
    “No, I’m not wrong.” Thorpe was peering at him. “That’s the job I have for you. I want you to arrange an explanation for me that will stand investigation. I want an alibi that will stand up. Kester and Luke and I have been discussing it all day and got nowhere. We’re handicapped because none of us dares to make an appearance, even on the telephone. That’s the job I’ll pay you fifty thousand dollars for, and it has to be done in a hurry. I want it done before the stock market opens in the morning. Will you do it? Can you do it?”
    “I’m working for Andrew Grant.”
    “This won’t interfere. You said yourself that Grant will be clear as soon as I reappear.”
    “But there will still be a murder. To arrange a false alibi—”
    “Not for a murder. I had nothing to do with that. I was … nowhere near the bungalow.”
    “That’s good. Where were you?”
    “I was in the woods, walking. The pinewoods in New Jersey. I often do that, with a rucksack, alone, and sleep on the needles, under the stars, the summer nights—”
    “Don’t waste it.” Fox sounded disgusted. “Where were you?”
    “I tell you I was in the woods, walking—”
    “No, no. That must be one of the explanations you and Kester invented and discarded; and it sounds like the poorest of the bunch. Don’t forget, Mr. Thorpe, that your activity was one which you were, and are, determined to keep secret. I have to know what it was and you have to satisfy me on it. Don’t waste time like that. Where were you?”
    Silence, except for a faint noise the source of which was now visible in the unfolding light. It came from the suction of the gums of the colored man against his teeth as he nervously and monotonously worked his lips. Vaughn