Rex Stout_Tecumseh Fox 03 Read Online Free PDF Page B

and she could even make pretty good music. As for Perry, he thought swing was music, which—judging from Diego’s tone—settled him. The only reason he ever set foot inside Carnegie Hall was to keep on the good side of his rich mother, Irene Dunham Pomfret, who was the financial godmother of enough musicians to make up a Bethlehem Festival.Garda Tusar, Jan’s sister, was more his type than Dora Mowbray.
    Were they?…
    No, not that Diego knew of. The dark and tempestuous Garda, as Fox had himself had opportunity to observe, exhibited in her face and figure and movements the authentic ingredients of a seductress, but if she was using them to that end she was being extremely discreet about it. She was in fact somewhat of a mystery. She was supposed to be working at some vague sort of job connected with the fashion world, but if her salary paid for the clothes she wore and the apartment she maintained and her car and chauffeur, it must be a super-job.
    She had been fond of her brother, Fox said.
    Undoubtedly, Diego agreed; but recently there had been a coolness. Only yesterday Jan had told him that Garda was so angry with him that she was not coming to the Carnegie Hall recital, but he had not said what she was angry about. Diego added remorsefully that for the past few months he had not maintained his former close relations with Jan, and that had been wrong because it had been his, Diego’s, fault; he had been envious. In his remorse, and after six or seven drinks, he admitted it. Jan had been preparing for the most important event of his career; it would assuredly be a glorious triumph; and it was a little more than Diego could bear. He had neglected his young friend at the moment of his greatest need, and he would never forgive himself. Now he would do what he could to atone for it. He would avenge the contemptible treachery that had plunged Jan into a false but fatal despair and caused him to take his life. He would, with his friend Fox’s help, discover who it was that had substituted a cracker box with a handle for Jan’s violin andhad taken it away after it had fulfilled its base purpose. He would …
    Ten minutes later he was saying that if any substitution had been made, Jan couldn’t possibly have failed to know it.
    Fox smiled at him. “You can’t have it both ways, Diego. A little while ago you said—”
    “What if I did?” Diego met the smile with sour gloom. “Anyway, I was right. It’s all well enough to say Jan couldn’t have been fooled about that violin, but he was. And I’m going to find out who did it. I’m drunk now, but I won’t be tomorrow, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
    “Well, good luck.” Fox looked at his watch. “I’m sorry I can’t be here to help, but I’m catching a sleeper to Louisville. Two days should be all I need there, so I’ll probably be giving you a ring Thursday morning to ask how you’re making out.”
    But at Louisville a problem regarding a sudden and unaccountable epidemic of stomach-aches in a stable of racehorses, among them a Derby entry, took a day longer than Fox had expected, so it was Friday instead of Thursday when he returned to New York, at two in the afternoon instead of eight in the morning, and at LaGuardia Airport instead of the Pennsylvania Station. He did not, however, need to phone Diego Zorilla to learn how he was making out with his project of atonement and vengeance, because he had talked with him over long distance Thursday evening and already knew. Furthermore, he had received information and a request which now resulted in his eating a hasty lunch in the airport lunchroom, taking a subway to Manhattan, and a taxi to an address on Park Avenue.
    His fatigue after three strenuous days and nights, his pockets bulging with packages—gifts for the Trimbles and others at the Zoo, as his home in the country was popularly called—and the battered suitcase he was carrying, should naturally, he thought, have caused some degree