Rex Stout_Tecumseh Fox 03 Read Online Free PDF Page A

aggressive than he had previously used:
    “Is that right? Did you say there were two notes?”
    She nodded with a heavy head. “I guess I did. I thought I saw two—but of course I was wrong. I sawthem when I was standing there and Jan had the gun and Perry was getting closer to him. It was just an impression—it must have been wrong, because Perry says he only saw one. Oh, does it matter?”
    The captain bore down. “Then you are not prepared to state positively that you saw two notes?”
    “Oh, no—there must have been only one—”
    “You saw only one, Mr. Dunham?”
    “Of course.” The youth darted an unfriendly glance at Adolph Koch. The older man ignored it and said in a skeptical tone to the girl:
    “You have very good eyes, Dora.” He looked at the captain: “It really does seem probable that there were two notes and that someone took one of them.”
    The captain demanded testily, “What’s your name?”
    “Adolph Koch. Manufacturer of dresses and suits. Admirer of the arts.”
    “Do you make a point of this? Do you think I’m going to ask these ladies and gentlemen to permit me to search their persons?”
    “By no means.” Koch was unperturbed. “I wouldn’t even permit you to search me. I mentioned the matter only because you asked if anyone had anything to add.”
    “Well, have you anything else?”
    “No.”
    “Has anyone?”
    The expression on the captain’s face did not invite further contributions, but one came. A baritone inquired politely, “May I make a suggestion?”
    Another voice spoke from the rear, “That’s Tecumseh Fox, Captain.”
    “Here as a spectator only,” Fox got in hastily. “I was just going to suggest, before you send us off, doyou think it would be a good plan to have Mr. Beck take a look at that violin? In view of his doubt of its identity?”
    “Certainly, I wasn’t forgetting that, of course—”
    “Before we leave? If you don’t mind?”
    The captain addressed Felix Beck: “Can you identify Tusar’s violin?”
    “Naturally,” Beck replied, as though he had been asked if he could identify his own face in a mirror.
    “All of you please remain a moment,” said the captain, and went to the dressing room and entered, closing the door behind him. There was a cessation of the other muffled sounds from within; voices could be heard, but not words; and then the captain reappeared. He closed the door and turned to confront them, and the scowl on his face was considerably more pronounced than it had been when Koch had raised the question of the notes. He surveyed the audience for a long moment in silence, and when he spoke his tone was one of dry disgust.
    “There’s no violin in there.”
    Ejaculations, gasps, startled movements were the response to that. Felix Beck darted for the dressing-room door, but one of the census takers grabbed him by the arm and held him. Half a dozen people were declaring that it was impossible, they had seen it there, and the captain was lifting a hand to restore the meeting to order when the confusion gained a new recruit from without. The door at the far end burst open and a woman entered—her mink coat flying open, her dark agitated eyes in her pale face seeing none of them, her red lips parted for panting. She rushed across through the lane they made, toward the dressing room, until she was stopped by the captain, who blocked her way.
    Adolph Koch marched toward her, calling sharply, “Garda! You shouldn’t have—”
    She was clawing at the captain. “My brother! Jan! Where is he—”
    Tecumseh Fox quietly retreated to the corner he had pre-empted before.

Chapter 3

    I don’t agree,” Diego Zorilla said with conviction. “I don’t agree at all. It was a sensible thing for Jan to do. I should have done it myself when I lost my fingers. As for the violin, I don’t believe it. If any substitution had been made, Jan couldn’t possibly have failed to know it.” He drank, put the glass down, and shook his head.