I went up to her. “Let me take your coat. This isn’t the sort of chair you’re used to, but it’ll have to do.”
She shuddered away from me and glanced nervously around. When she sat she let just enough of her come in contact with the shabby, soiled upholstery to call it sitting. Then she looked at me. I have never regarded myself as a feast for the eye, my attractions run more to the spiritual, but on the other hand I am not a toad, and I resented her expression.
“It seems,” I ventured, “that something about me falls short of expectations.”
She made a contemptuous noise. “I told you on the phone that there can be nothing sentimental about me and never has been.”
“Okay,” I agreed. “I’m not sentimental, either.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to be.” If the breath of her voice had dribbled off the edge of a roof it would have made icicles. “It’s not in you from either side. Neither from your father nor from me. My brother says you’re a blackguard. He also says you’re a coward and a bluffer, but considering where your blood came from, I don’t believe that. I tell you frankly, I think my brother is making a mistake.” She was biting the words off. “That’s why I came. He thinks you’ll take what he has offered, but I don’t. I know I wouldn’t, and half of you came from me.”
I was loping along behind trying to keep up. The best bet seemed to be that I was a blackguard, so I did as well as I could with a sneer. “He thinks I’m a coward, does he?” I emitted an ugly little laugh. “And he thinks I’ll take his offer? I won’t!”
“What will you take?”
“What I said! That’s final!”
“It is not final,” she said sharply. “You’re making a mistake, too. You’re a fool if you think my brother will give you a million dollars.”
“He will, or else.”
“No. He won’t.” She moved on the chair, and I thought she was going to slide off, but she didn’t. “All men are fools,” she said bitterly. “I thought I had a cool head and knew how to take care of myself, but I was doomed to be ruined by men. When I was a pretty little thing in that factory — that finished me with men, I thought — but there are more ways than one. I don’t deny that you have some right to — something; but what you demand is ridiculous. What my brother offers is also ridiculous, I admit that. If I had money of my own but I haven’t. You’re obdurate fools, both of you. He has never learned to compromise, and apparently you haven’t, either. But you’ll have to on this; you both will.”
I kept the sneer working. “He’s a pigheaded blubber-lip.” I asserted. “It takes two to compromise. How about him?”
She opened her mouth and closed it again.
“So,” I said sarcastically. “It strikes me that you’re not any too bright yourself. What good did you expect to do by coming here and reading me the riot act? Do you think I’m boob enough to say, okay, split the difference, and then you run back to him? Now, that would be smart, wouldn’t it?”
“It would at least make—”
“No!” I stood up. “You want this settled. So do I. So does he, and I know it. All right, let’s go see him together. Then you can tell both of us to compromise. Then we’ll find out who’s being ridiculous. Come on.”
She looked startled. “You mean now?”
“I mean now.”
She balked. She had objections. I overruled them. I had the advantage, and I used it. When I put on my coat she just sat and chewed on her lip. Then she got up and came along.
When we got downstairs and out to the sidewalk there was no car there but mine; apparently she had come in a cab. I doubted if Philip Tingley ought to own a car, so I snubbed it and we walked to the corner and flagged a taxi. She shoved clear into her corner and I returned the compliment, after hearing her give an address in the 70’s just east of Fifth Avenue. During the ride she showed no desire for conversation.
She allowed Philip to pay the fare, which seemed to me a little scrubby, under the circumstances. Before the massive ornamental door to the vestibule she stood aside, and I depressed the lever and pushed it open. The inner door swung open without any summons, and she passed through, with me on her heels. A man in uniform closed the door.
She seemed to have shrunk, and she looked pale and peaked. She was scared stiff. She asked the man, “Is Mr. Judd upstairs?”
“Yes, Miss Judd.”
She led me upstairs to a large room with a thousand books and a fireplace and exactly the kind of chairs I like. In one of them was a guy I didn’t like. He turned his head at our entrance.
Her voice came from a constricted throat: “Guthrie, I thought—”
What stopped her was the blaze from his eyes. It was enough to stop anyone.
I walked over and asked him, “Is Aiken around?”
He ignored me. He spoke to his sister as if she had been a spot of grease: “Where did this man come from?”
“It’s a long story,” I said, “but I’ll make it short. She went to Philip Tingley’s flat and I was there and she thought I was him.” I waved a hand. “Mistaken identity.”
“She thought—” He was speechless. That alone was worth the price of admission. His sister was staring at me frozenly.
He picked on her. “Get out!” he said in cold fury. “You incomparable fool!”
She was licked. She went.
I waited till the door had closed behind her and then said, “We had a good, long talk. It’s an interesting situation. Now I can give you an invitation I was going to extend yesterday when you interrupted me. You’re going down to Thirty-fifth Street to call on Nero Wolfe.”
“I’ll talk with you,” he said between his teeth. “Sit down.”
“Oh, no. I invited you first. And I don’t like you. If you do any wriggling and squirming, I swear I’ll sell it to a tabloid and retire on the proceeds.” I pointed to the door. “This way to the egress.”...
Wolfe sat at his desk. I sat at mine, with my notebook open. Guthrie Judd was in the witness box, near Wolfe’s desk.
Wolfe emptied his beer glass, wiped his lips, and leaned back. “You don’t,” he said, “seem to realize that the thing is now completely beyond your control. All you can do is save us a little time, which we would be inclined to appreciate. I make no commitment. We can collect the details without you if we have to, or the police can. The police are clumsy and sometimes not too discreet, but when they’re shown where to dig they do a pretty good job. We know that Philip Tingley is your sister’s son, and that’s the main thing. That’s what you were struggling to conceal. The rest is only to fill in. Who, for instance, is Philip’s father?”
Judd, his eyes narrowed, and his jaw clamped, gazed at him in silence.
“Who is Philip’s father?” Wolfe repeated patiently.
Judd held the pose.
Wolfe shrugged. “Very well.” He turned to me. “Call Inspector Cramer. With the men he has, a thing like this — Did you make a noise, sir?”
“Yes,” Judd snapped. “Damn you. Philip’s father is dead. He was Thomas Tingley. Arthur’s father.”
“I see. Then Arthur was Philip’s brother.”
“Half-brother.” Judd looked as if he would rather say it with bullets than words. “Thomas was married and had two children, a son and a daughter, by his wife. The son was Arthur.”
“Was the wife still alive when—?”
“Yes. My sister went to work in the Tingley factory in 1909. I was then twenty-five years old, just getting a start in life. She was nineteen. Arthur was a year or two younger than me. His father, Thomas, was approaching fifty. In 1911 my sister told me she was pregnant and who was responsible for it. I was making a little more money then, and I sent her to a place in the country. In September of that year the boy was born. My sister hated him without ever seeing him. She refused to look at him. He was placed in a charity home, and was forgotten by her and me. At that time I was occupied with my own affairs to the exclusion of considerations that should have received my attention. Many years later it occurred to me that there might be records at that place which would be better destroyed, and I had inquiries made.”