“Hell,” Cliff said. “Your sandwich—I’d forgotten about it.”
“I hadn’t.”
“Ms. Whitten, will you take the other coffee, please?”
“Certainly not. Anyway, I much prefer tea.”
Cliff extended a ten. “Bud, you think you could get the lady a pot of hot tea, fast?”
“Quite so,” the Christie fan said, taking the ten. “I should be delighted.”
Stubb was already chewing a bite of beef and bread. He swallowed as the door closed. “What time, Cliff? When’d you find him?”
“This afternoon, around two.”
“Where?”
“The basement of his house, by the stairs. You know where the house was—you were staying there with him until last night.”
“I also went back this morning and checked over the house. He wasn’t there.”
“Including the basement?”
“Including the basement.”
“That’s worth knowing. Was this for the other client, Jim?”
“Let’s say it was for me. I was worried about him. He was an old man, we had liked him, and we thought nobody knew where he was.”
“You thought?”
“Somebody knew. Somebody took him back there and wasted him after I left. You want my guess about it?”
“Hell yes, if you’ve got one.”
“Somebody was looking for whatever it was Free had. Call it the McGuffin. They got hold of him sometime yesterday, slapped him around. He said, okay, take me back to my house, I’ll show you where it is. That basement was dark as hell—I had to light matches, and they probably hadn’t known to bring a flashlight. Free made a break for it. When he got close to the steps there would have been a little light, and somebody panicked and shot him.”
Cliff looked dubious. “An old guy like that?”
“Yeah, an old guy like him.”
“Jim, I can’t buy it.” Cliff looked at Kip, but Kip did not return the look; she was watching Stubb, her piquant face expressionless.
Cliff said, “Sure, amateurs get panicky, but just the same.”
“I didn’t say it was an amateur. I don’t think it was. You said maybe a forty-five, and that’s not an amateur’s heat. Your mistake is that you think it must have been somebody like you.”
“Get on with it.”
“Free must have been nearly eighty.” Stubb was no longer talking to Cliff, but to Kip. “That would make your daddy close to sixty when you were born, Ms. Whitten—not really impossible, but not likely either. Anyway, he was about eighty, but big, and I’d guess that for an old man he was still pretty strong. Cliff here could have tied him up and put him on a shelf. I could have handled him myself if I had to, and I’m no giant. But I don’t think you could have.”
Kip’s hand was inching toward her purse.
Stubb rose, knocking over his chair, and suddenly held Sergeant Proudy’s gun. “Don’t touch that,” he said.
The hand relaxed.
“That’s better. Now take it by the strap and toss it very gently right at my shoes. I’ve never shot a woman, and I don’t want to start now.”
The purse hit the floor with a thump.
“That’s better. I hate to tell you this, but that was the first thing that gave you away. That big bag didn’t go with the rest of your outfit, so I started wondering what you had in it. Then too, last night I talked to Mrs. Baker, after you and your girlfriend did. She’d been questioned by a couple of proms, not by two society girls.”
Kip said, “Jim, I can explain this.”
Stubb crouched by the purse, opened it one-handed, and whistled. “You must have raided Grandpa’s bureau. A Colt New Service. Looks like it’s been jerked off the deck of a battleship. Cliff, you packing?”
Cliff shook his head and held out his arms so that his jacket hung open.
“Fine. Kip, I won’t ask you what happened down in that basement. Maybe he knocked you down before he tried to run. Maybe he tried to take you, and lost you in the dark. But who are you really?”
There was a tap at the door, and for an instant Stubb turned to look. The carpet flew at his face. When it hit, he did not even feel it.
Blood Money
