Rex Stout_Tecumseh Fox 02 Read Online Free PDF Page A

completely relieve your conscience. If she doesn’t, you can then decide what to do. Don’t tell me that anyone with eyes as intelligent as yours hasn’t thought of as obvious a step as that.”
    “But I was scared to. I was too afraid of losing my job to do anything—”
    “Oh, no, you weren’t. You did do something drastic. You canceled two dates with Mr. Cliff. What for? In case there was an innocent reason for the Bonner-Cliff conversation, those dates were an important function of the job you don’t want to lose. You were too befuddled to think straight. Befuddled by what? Well, you canceled the dates with Cliff in a fit of pique. When you were describing him to me you faltered andbroke a sentence off in the middle. You didn’t want to pronounce his name, and when you did pronounce it because I asked for it, your voice changed. When you talked to him on the phone just now, you turned your back on me, but not enough so that I couldn’t see the color in your cheek. You’re in a jam, I admit that, but in the last twenty centuries there have been billions of girls in the kind of jam you’re in. You have acquired a tender sentiment for Mr. Cliff. Is he married?”
    Amy said, in a small voice, “No.” She sat down and looked at Fox’s dark-red necktie, and after a moment lifted her gaze to meet his eyes. “I deny it,” she said aggressively.
    “Why? Why deny it?”
    “Because it isn’t true.”
    Fox shrugged. “You tricked me,” he declared. “What you need isn’t Tecumseh Fox, it’s Dorothy Dix. I suppose what irks you most is that you were nursing a belief that the P. & B. vice-president was inclined to reciprocate in the matter of sentiment, but if he is secretly in cahoots with Miss Bonner he must know that you are merely doing professional work on him and therefore his own apparent reactions are open to suspicion. Of course on that point I can’t help you any, but I should think your feminine intuition—”
    Amy jumped up and made for the bedroom, not hobbling, and from the inside closed the door.
    Fox sat for five seconds, looking at the door, raised brows widening his eyes. Then he sighed, arose, got his hat from the table, and started for the entrance to the hall. Halfway there he stopped abruptly, wheeled, sailed his hat through the air to an accurate landing in the center of the table, went to the bedroom door and opened it, and entered.
    “About the advice you asked for,” he saidbrusquely. “I think you ought to go ahead and tell Bonner you saw her with Cliff, and also tell her that you have become infected with a personal attitude toward him which disqualifies you for this assignment. That way you may keep your job.”
    “I am not infected!” said Amy hotly. She stood facing him. “And I assure you I don’t care—his reactions—what do I care whether—”
    “There’s a bell ringing.”
    “I can hear it, thank you.”
    Fox moved aside to give her free passage to the door, which was standing open. She disappeared from his line of vision, but he heard a pause in her footsteps, a sound which he detected as the punching of a latch button, and her footsteps again; and as he saw her recrossing the living room he called, “Do you want me out of here?”
    Amy replied curtly, “Do as you please,” and continued to the door to the hall, which she opened. On the threshold she stood bracing herself, arranging her muscles and preparing her face obviously not in expectation of the laundry boy; but if by any chance what she did expect was the P. & B. vice-president, her preparation for the encounter was in vain. A woman ascended the stairs to her view and came down the hall—a woman of thirty, smart and compact in a handsome tweed suit and a conventionally perky hat, with yellow-brown alert eyes in a rather narrow but attractive face.
    “Oh,” said Amy in a voice unnecessarily loud. “Good afternoon, Miss Bonner.”
    “Hello, Amy.”
    She entered as Amy made gangway, and circled the