“Quite so,” the Christie fan said, taking the ten. “I should be delighted.”
Stubb was already chewing a bite of beef and bread. He swallowed as the door closed. “What time, Cliff? When’d you find him?”
“This afternoon, around two.”
“Where?”
“The basement of his house, by the stairs. You know where the house was—you were staying there with him until last night.”
“I also went back this morning and checked over the house. He wasn’t there.”
“Including the basement?”
“Including the basement.”
“That’s worth knowing. Was this for the other client, Jim?”
“Let’s say it was for me. I was worried about him. He was an old man, we had liked him, and we thought nobody knew where he was.”
“You thought?”
“Somebody knew. Somebody took him back there and wasted him after I left. You want my guess about it?”
“Hell yes, if you’ve got one.”
“Somebody was looking for whatever it was Free had. Call it the McGuffin. They got hold of him sometime yesterday, slapped him around. He said, okay, take me back to my house, I’ll show you where it is. That basement was dark as hell—I had to light matches, and they probably hadn’t known to bring a flashlight. Free made a break for it. When he got close to the steps there would have been a little light, and somebody panicked and shot him.”
Cliff looked dubious. “An old guy like that?”
“Yeah, an old guy like him.”
“Jim, I can’t buy it.” Cliff looked at Kip, but Kip did not return the look; she was watching Stubb, her piquant face expressionless.
Cliff said, “Sure, amateurs get panicky, but just the same.”
“I didn’t say it was an amateur. I don’t think it was. You said maybe a forty-five, and that’s not an amateur’s heat. Your mistake is that you think it must have been somebody like you.”
“Get on with it.”
“Free must have been nearly eighty.” Stubb was no longer talking to Cliff, but to Kip. “That would make your daddy close to sixty when you were born, Ms. Whitten—not really impossible, but not likely either. Anyway, he was about eighty, but big, and I’d guess that for an old man he was still pretty strong. Cliff here could have tied him up and put him on a shelf. I could have handled him myself if I had to, and I’m no giant. But I don’t think you could have.”
Kip’s hand was inching toward her purse.
Stubb rose, knocking over his chair, and suddenly held Sergeant Proudy’s gun. “Don’t touch that,” he said.
The hand relaxed.
“That’s better. Now take it by the strap and toss it very gently right at my shoes. I’ve never shot a woman, and I don’t want to start now.”
The purse hit the floor with a thump.
“That’s better. I hate to tell you this, but that was the first thing that gave you away. That big bag didn’t go with the rest of your outfit, so I started wondering what you had in it. Then too, last night I talked to Mrs. Baker, after you and your girlfriend did. She’d been questioned by a couple of proms, not by two society girls.”
Kip said, “Jim, I can explain this.”
Stubb crouched by the purse, opened it one-handed, and whistled. “You must have raided Grandpa’s bureau. A Colt New Service. Looks like it’s been jerked off the deck of a battleship. Cliff, you packing?”
Cliff shook his head and held out his arms so that his jacket hung open.
“Fine. Kip, I won’t ask you what happened down in that basement. Maybe he knocked you down before he tried to run. Maybe he tried to take you, and lost you in the dark. But who are you really?”
There was a tap at the door, and for an instant Stubb turned to look. The carpet flew at his face. When it hit, he did not even feel it.
Blood Money
The older man behind the desk nodded. “So you have. It’s the truth.”
Illingworth asked, “Do you require anything further from me?”
“You mean you want to be paid.”
“I would not have put it so crudely.”
The older man chuckled. “You didn’t.”
“But since you yourself have raised the issue …”
“Did she say anything?”
“Very little.” Illingworth took a slender tape recorder from his coat pocket and handed it over.
“Wonderful gizmos,” the old man said. “Just amazing. You didn’t try to pump her?”
“I was instructed not to.”
“Uh huh.” The older man leaned back in his chair, his fingers making a steeple over his vest. (Illingworth noted with approval that he wore a watch chain.) “I’m afraid I’ll have to listen to this before you leave. But first your pay, right. If you want, we can see that the money is deposited in any account you want. Just give me the number.”
“If it is all the same to you, sir,” Illingworth said, “I should prefer cash.”
The older man smiled faintly. “Yes, the income tax.”
“Would cash be convenient?”
“Very.” The older man slid open a drawer and tossed a bundle of money onto his desk. “Count it,” he said. “Should be old bills, mixed numbers.”
“There is no need of that. I have confidence in you, sir.”
“Glad to hear it. Then I can make you a better deal, if you want. This’s five thousand, right?”
“That was the agreed-upon sum, yes.”
“Say the word and we’ll more than double it. You own those two little magazines. Well, it turns out an eccentric millionaire set up a five-thousand-dollar grant in trust, at interest, for them quite some time back. To be paid this year, if they were still being published. A grant to encourage your kind of science. Not taxable, of course. All you’ll have to do is use it for your operations and put the money you’d have used if you hadn’t got it into your pocket.”
“I see.”
“It’s all the same to us.”
“I see,” Illingworth said again. “The grant, I suppose.” He sighed. “There should be a good deal of prestige, too, in the grant.”
“You do have confidence in us. I’m glad to see that.”
“Not really. It’s just that throughout my life I’ve prided myself upon being a civilized man, and this would seem to be some sort of test of it.”
The older man (who was so much younger than Illingworth) chuckled. “You’re right, anyway. If we wanted to chisel you, we could chisel you a dozen different ways, whether we gave you cash or not. We could arrange for a stickup, for example, when you got home.”
“I’d prefer you not do that.”
“Well, chacon à son goût, Mr. Illingworth. Now you wait out there while I run the gizmo. I’ll phone and give somebody the word when you can go.”
Illingworth went out. The younger man was no longer at his desk, and there were noises from outside. The windows were white with frost, but the lights that flashed against them, vanished, then flashed again appeared to proceed from the headlights of automobiles.
The door to the inner office opened, and the older man came out, pulling on a duffel coat. Without nodding to Illingworth or so much as looking in his direction, he hurried out into the cold. For a moment, Illingworth was tempted to reenter his office and take the bundle of money from his desk. Caution and more than thirty years of petty journalism intervened. He went to a window instead and used the heel of his hand to melt a peephole in the frost.
There were several cars and several men with flashlights too. He tried to identify the older man by his duffel coat, but almost any of the crowding figures could have been his.
A car door opened. Rather surprisingly, Illingworth thought, the overhead light came on inside the car. A small man in a trenchcoat was pushed out and fell in the snow, his hands still clasped, as it seemed, behind his back. Two men lifted him to his feet again. Perhaps he said something—Illingworth could not be certain. One of the men struck him hard enough to twist his head around, the sound of the blow coming faintly through the frozen glass. A door in the building opposite opened, and a man led the small man inside.