Free Rex Stout by Red Threads Page A

it?”
    “Not was. Is. He’s out in the big room, said he’d like to see the looms going. He’s been here since ten o’clock. It’s your Indian.”
    “My—You don’t mean Guy Carew?”
    “Right.”
    “What—” Jean stared. “What does he want?”
    “I didn’t ask him. I presume his collar is choking him and he wants help.”
    Jean slowly got on to the stool, rested her elbows on the table and her forehead on her fists, and closed her eyes. After a silence she said without moving, “Send him in here. Please?”
    Miss Delaney looked at her partner, opened her mouth and shut it again, and went.
    When the caller entered two minutes later, Jean was quite busy. Squared paper was in front of her, a crayon in one hand and colour cards in the other, and she was obviously buried in calculation. But in a couple of seconds she looked up:
    “Oh, good-morning. Miss Delaney tells me you’ve been here since ten o’clock. I’m sorry you had to wait.”
    “So am I.” He came to the end of the table and stood, gazing at her face. “You got hurt.”
    “Yes. Moderately. Apparently it takes quite a blow to crack a skull open.”
    “I know it does. That’s what happened to my father. Have you had a doctor?”
    “No, I don’t need one. I just have a sore head.”
    “That’s silly.” He stepped forward briskly. “There might be a minor fracture. Let me see.” He had his fingers on her head before she knew what he was doing. “Which side? Oh. Not much of a bruise. Hold still.”
    “Stop, damn it! That hurts! Will you please let me alone?”
    He stepped back, cast a glance around, went to a chair and removed from its seat various miscellaneous items, and sat down. “It’s silly not to have a doctor look at it,” he declared. “Why is it that some women can’t be kept away from doctors, and others won’t go to them at all? It seems to be universal, because Indian women are that way too.”
    Jean had the attitude of a person, momentarily interrupted, who expects to be immersed in her work again as soon as possible. “I don’t suppose,” she observed, “that you have been waiting two hours in order to establish a universal fact about women.”
    Guy Carew frowned, and with a deliberate forefinger rubbed the bridge of his nose. “You can imagine,” he said at length, “how I have been … that I’ve been a good deal upset. I telephoned your apartment last night and got no answer. I phoned this morning and gave my name and was told that you were sleeping. I called there at 9.30 this morning and was told that you didn’t feel like seeing any one. Now that I see you … I told you the other day, last Saturday, that you made me think of a Kiowan phrase, ‘Your eyes are open to me.’ But yesterday afternoon … and now … I don’t know how to say what I want to.”
    “Go ahead and say it. Because I’m pretty busy …”
    His gaze was concentrated at her, his black eyes narrowed a little. “There’s another saying,” he declared. “This one is in Caddoan. ‘When a woman grinds the corn with one hand, don’t let it in your belly.’ I’m not sure, but I think it means: ‘Don’t take a capricious woman for a wife.’”
    “It seems to me,” said Jean without smiling, “that you’re wasting a lot of folklore. I am not capricious, and I don’t
think
I’ve applied to any one for a position as wife. But if I did, and you’re trying to tell me that you’re sorry, I can’t have the job—”
    “Miss Farris! Please! You know very well what I’m trying to say. I thought we were pretty good friends. If your eyes were open to me, it’s quite obvious that they aren’t now. I want—I needed very much to see you and ask you some things—but I can’t very well ask favours of an enemy.”
    Jean’s brows went up. “Me an enemy?”
    “Certainly. Your manner and your tone of voice—you might as well be wearing a war bonnet. So that’s my first question. Why?”
    “Well. Since you ask it—in the