Free Rex Stout_Tecumseh Fox 02 by Bad for Business

murder.”
    That too was following a hoary tradition, for Mr. Fry and Miss Yates had never been known to agree about anything whatever. The most frequent cause of dispute was the question of where the production department ended and the sales department began, or vice versa, but anything would do, and had, for a third of a century, done. Today, if they were to talk at all, the topic could not very well be anything but the tragedy that had put Tingley’s Titbits in every news broadcast and on the front page of every paper, but that necessity was without effect on the tradition. So they continued to argue until, as Mr. Fry was taking the last potato chip, a voice suddenly startled them:
    “How do you do. Lord, it smells good in here.”
    Fry grunted belligerently. Miss Yates demanded, “Where did you come from?”
    “I’ve been wandering around.” Tecumseh Fox approached sniffing, his hat in his hand. “Never smelled such a smell. Don’t let me interrupt your lunch. Not to annoy the cop out front, I came in at the delivery entrance and up the back way.”
    “What do you want?”
    “Information. Cooperation.” Fox pulled an envelope from his pocket, extracted a sheet of paper, and handed it to Miss Yates. She took it and read it:
    To anyone not unfriendly to me:
This is my friend, Tecumseh
Fox who is trying to help me by
discovering the truth.
    Amy Duncan
    S
he passed it across to Fry and surveyed Fox with a noncommittal stare. “So,” she observed, “it was Amy that sent you here yesterday.”
    “In a way, yes.” Fox pulled a third chair closer and sat down. “Her, plus my impertinent curiosity. But I’m no longer curious about the quinine, unless it appears that there’s some connection between that and Tingley’s death.”
    “I don’t think so,” said Fry.
    “I do,” said Miss Yates. “Why does Amy need your help?”
    “Because of the circumstances, which the police regard as suspicious. She was there—she discovered the body—”
    “Nonsense. Anyone who thinks Amy Duncan could have murdered her uncle—what motive did she have?”
    “That’s the question they’re asking—beyond the fact that she didn’t like him and had quarreled with him. But also, her fingerprints were on the handle of the knife that cut his throat.”
    They both stared. Sol Fry said, “My heavens!” Miss Yates snorted, “Who said so?”
    “Oh, they’re there all right,” Fox asserted. “That’s well outside the limits of police technique in a case like this. Of course they’re aware that there’s more than one way the prints could have got there, but it goes to explain why Miss Duncan needs a little help. Will you folks tell me a few things?”
    “There’s nothing I can tell you,” Fry declared. “This thing is a black mystery.”
    “We’ll brighten it up a bit,” Fox smiled at him, “before we’re through with it. Of course you’ve already told the police where you were yesterday from 5:45 to 8:15 P.M. ”
    “I have.”
    “Would you mind telling me?”
    “I mind it, yes, because I mind everything about it, but I’ll tell you. I left here a few minutes after five and went to 23rd Street and Sixth Avenue to look at a radio I had seen advertised. I listened to it an hour and didn’t like it. Then I walked to the 23rd Street ferry and crossed the river to my home in Jersey City. I got home about a quarter to eight and ate supper alone because my wife is an invalid and had already had hers. I went to bed at ten o’clock and had been asleep nearly two hours when you telephoned—”
    “I’m sorry I woke you up, Mr. Fry. I apologize. I should think the tube would be much faster than the ferry.”
    “The police do too,” Fry growled. “And I don’t care what you think any more than I do what they think. I’ve been taking the ferry for forty-five years and it’s fast enough for me.”
    “That’s the Tingley spirit, all right,” Fox agreed. He turned. “You don’t have to monkey with ferries,