The Sound of Murder (Alphabet Hicks)

205 Pages·2016·0.85 MB·English

by  Stout Rex

DRIVEN TO MURDER
“Get off the road and stop the car or I’ll stop it for you,” Hicks said.
She obeyed. The car slowed down, bumped onto the grassy roadside,
and stopped.
“Leave the engine on,” Hicks said. “Where is he?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
In the dim light from the dashboard Hicks could see her tight lips and
wide eyes. “I am referring to George Cooper. You know where he is. You
wanted an excuse to leave. You’re going to phone him or you’re going to
see him—”
He stopped abruptly, gazing at her. She made no sound. In a moment
he said softly, “I’ll be doggoned,” opened the door on his side, started to
get out, suddenly turned back, and commanded her: “Get out of the car.”
She didn’t move.
Bantam Books by Rex Stout
Ask your bookseller for the books you have missed BAD FOR BUSINESS
BLACK ORCHIDS
THE BROKEN VASE
DOUBLE FOR DEATH
THE HAND IN THE GLOVE
THE LEAGUE OF FRIGHTENED MEN
THE MOTHER HUNT
THE MOUNTAIN CAT MURDERS
NOT QUITE DEAD ENOUGH
THE PRESIDENT VANISHES
THE RED BOX
RED THREADS
THE RUBBER BAND
SOME BURIED CAESAR
THE SOUND OF MURDER
TOO MANY CLIENTS

THE SOUND OF MURDER
A Bantam Book / published by arrangement with the author
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1941 by Rex Stout.
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by
mimeograph or any other means, without permission.
For information address: Bantam Books, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-30776807-0
Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words
“Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, Inc., 666 Fifth Avenue, New York, New
York 10103.
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Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
About the Author
One
If Judith Dundee had not glanced at the name of the taxi driver, there
before her on the framed identification card attached to the panel, she
might eventually have found some other way out of her trouble. Or she
might not.
What caused her to glance at the name was a little incident that
occurred when the taxi, with her in it, stopped for a red light at 50th
Street and Park Avenue. Three or four pedestrians eyed the cab to make
sure it was going to stop, and the face of one of them, a well-dressed and
dignified gentleman who might have been on his way to a directors’
meeting, lit up with pleased recognition. He stepped from the curb to the
side of the cab, thrust a hand in to the driver for a shake, and offered a
greeting in the tone he would have used to a fellow director:
“Hello, Hicks, how are you?”
That was the first and last appearance of the well-dressed gentleman
in Judith Dundee’s life, but in that brief moment he did her a valuable
service. Her mind jostled momentarily from its concentration on the
stew she was simmering in, she glanced at the framed card on the panel
and saw the name “A. Hicks.” The “A” pushed speculation further and
aroused memory, as the cab started forward and rolled on uptown.
She remembered the yellowish brown eyes which, by their glint and
the configuration of their lids, looked like a cat’s or tiger’s eyes … and
the magazine article she had read about him a year or so ago, a Profile
in the New Yorker … Harvard Law School … his melodramatic
disbarment during his first year of practice … submerged years not
revealed … night watchman … subway guard … the famous Harley
case … the girl with clothespins on her fingers and toes.…
Preoccupied as she had been when she entered the cab at 40th Street,
she had had no glance for the face of its driver. Now, when it stopped in
front of her apartment house in the Seventies on Park Avenue, she did
not step out though the halberdier with no halberd opened the door.
Instead, she leaned forward to the opening:
“Mr. Alphabet Hicks?”
The driver’s head turned, came around to her, and she saw his face—
and the eyes. They were fully as remarkable as she had remembered
them to be. She asked inanely:
“So you’re driving a taxi now?”
“No,” Hicks said.
She laughed nervously. “It was a stupid question.” She shook her head
at the halberdier and he closed the door and retreated across the
sidewalk. She resumed, “Of course you don’t remember me. About a year
ago—you were working for a tree company then—I read that article
about you—I wanted you for the lion at a dinner party and you wouldn’t
come—”
“Dundee,” Hicks said.
“Then you do remember?”
“No, I was just guessing. There’s a car behind that wants to get in
here.”
“Let them—” She glanced back; and the impulse that had been
fluttering in her took control. “Look,” she said decisively, “I want to talk
with you. Not to persuade you to come to a dinner party. I’m in trouble.”
One end of his wide mobile mouth curved upwards and made him
look sardonic. “What kind of trouble?”
“I can’t tell you—it’s a long story. You can park around the corner and
come up to my apartment. Will you? Please?”
“Okay.” He eased the gear in.
Judith Dundee wasn’t forty-five years old, but in a few months she
would be. Whether she looked it or not depended on the time of day or
night, the lighting, the state of her mind and nerves, and who was doing
the looking. As far as physical details were concerned—the smooth well-
kept skin, the large dark eyes, the brown hair still brown, the throat
nicely curving from a chin that was her daintiest feature—she was quite
capable of being taken for under thirty, when the conditions were ideal.
On that Wednesday in September, however, the conditions were
apparently far from ideal. She looked distinctly draggy as she sat on a
divan in a corner of the slightly grandiose living room of her duplex
apartment high above Park Avenue.
“The trouble I’m in,” she said, “is very—intimate.”
The taxi driver merely nodded. There on a chair, he looked less than
ever like a taxi driver, even disregarding the details that his face was too
clean and his clothing not greasy enough.
“I mean,” Judith said, “that I wouldn’t want anyone to know about it.
But I have to get help from somebody. I was thinking of going to a
detective agency this afternoon, but I don’t know any, and it would be so
distasteful—” She made a face. “Not that it isn’t already distasteful. Then
I saw you and remembered what I had read about you … and the
marvelous things you had done … and your eyes were the cleverest I
ever saw.…” She stopped and looked embarrassed.
“You’ll have to make the sale,” Hicks said dryly. “I just accepted your
invitation to come up and listen.”
“I know you did.” She sat and looked at him a moment, then said
abruptly in a new and harsher tone, “My husband has gone crazy.”
Hicks grunted. “I’ve never handled a maniac—”
“No, no,” she said impatiently. “But he has. It’s simply insane. We’ve
been married twenty-five years. Our life together hasn’t been exactly
continuous bliss—for one thing, I’m extravagant, I always have been—
not to mention any of his faults—but we’ve done fairly well. We’ve
raised two children, which is what marriage is for, I believe, and we’ve
never tried to poison each other. I imagine our friends would say that
our marital happiness rating is well above the average. And suddenly
one day last week, Tuesday, a week ago yesterday, he came home from
the office and confronted me with a perfectly terrible look in his eyes
and asked me how often I had been to see Jimmie Vail!”
She halted. Hicks looked uncomfortable. He muttered, “Jimmie Vail?”
“Yes!”
“What’s that, a man?”
“Certainly he’s a man. I was dumfounded. When I could speak I said
that if at my age I went in for clandestine meetings with a man I would
pick a better specimen than Jimmie Vail. With the same eyes and voice
he said, ‘I don’t mean that. You know what I mean. I mean how often
have you been to his office to betray the secrets of my business. I have
proof. You might as well tell me.’ That left me speechless again. Before I
could speak he said, ‘Who did you get it from, Brager? Did you worm it
out of Brager? And did you pay him what he wanted? And how much