Free Death Times Three SSC by Rex Stout

it's ridiculous." I sent him back his glare. "I know what you're doing, and so do you! You're letting it slide! Your performance with those two women I brought here was pitiful! I've got legs and I'm using them. You've got a brain and where is it? You're sore at Tingley because he got killed before you could shake your finger at him and tell him to keep quinine out of his liver pate. You're sore at Cramer because he offended your dignity. You're sore at me because I didn't get Judd. Now you're sore at Miss Duncan because while she was lying there unconscious she let someone put her prints on that knife."

    I turned to Amy: "You shouldn't permit things like that to happen. They annoy Mr. Wolfe."

    Wolfe shut his eyes. There was a long silence. The tip of his forefinger was making little circles on the arm of his chair. Finally his lids went up halfway, and I was relieved to see that the focus was not me but Amy. He leaned back and clasped his fingers above his breadbasket. "Miss Duncan," he said, "it looks as if we'll have to go all over it. Are you up to answering some questions?"

    "Oh, yes," she declared. "Anything that will--I feel pretty good. I'm all right."

    "You don't look it. I'm going on the assumption that you and Mr. Cliff are telling the truth. I shall abandon it only under necessity. I assume, for instance, that when you left your uncle's employ and later became Mr. Cliffs secretary you were not coming to terms with the enemy."

    "You certainly may," Cliff put in. "We knew she had worked in Tingley's office, but we didn't know she was his niece. That's why I was so surprised when I saw she was going there last evening. I couldn't imagine what she was doing there."

    "Very well. I'll take all that." Wolfe went on with Amy: "What would you say if I told you that Miss Murphy was responsible for the quinine?"

    "Why--" Amy looked astonished. "I wouldn't know what to say. I'd ask you how you knew. I couldn't believe that Carrie would do a thing like that."

    "Did she have a grudge against your uncle?"

    "Not that I know of. No special grudge. Of course, nobody really liked him."

    "What about Miss Yates?"

    "Oh, she's all right. She's a kind of a holy terror with the girls in the factory, but she's certainly competent."

    "Did you and she get along?"

    "Well enough. We didn't have much to do with each other. I was my uncle's stenographer."

    "How were her relations with Tingley?"

    "As good as could be expected. Of course, she was a privileged character; he couldn't possibly have got along without her. He inherited her from my grandfather along with the business."

    Wolfe grunted. "Speaking of inheritance. Do you know anything about your uncle's will? Who will get the business?"

    "I don't know, but I suppose my cousin Philip." "His adopted son?"

    "Yes." Amy hesitated, then offered an amendment by a change of inflection: "I suppose he will. The business has always been handed down from father to son. But, of course, Philip--" She stopped.

    "Is he active in the business?"

    "No. That's just it. He isn't active in anything. Except--" She stopped.

    "Except--?" Wolfe prodded her.

    "I was going to say, except spending money, only for the past year or so he hasn't had any to spend. Since Uncle Arthur kicked him out. I suppose he's been giving him enough to keep him from starving. I thought

    I had an idea, when my uncle phoned and asked me to come to his office yesterday, and he was so urgent about it, that it was something about Philip." "Why did you think that?"

    "Well--because the only other time he ever sent for me it was about Philip. He thought that I could--that I had an influence over him."

    "Did you?"

    "Maybe--a little."

    "When was the other time?"

    "Nearly a year ago."

    "What did he want you to influence Philip to do?"

    "To--well, to settle down. To take an interest in the business. He knew that Philip was--had wanted to marry me. Of course, Philip isn't really my first cousin, since he was adopted. He