Nipped in the Bud Read Free Page A

corrected absently. “Perhaps it was ESP and perhaps it was just that you’re the only person in town who knows where I’m staying.”
    “Okay, okay.” His voice was jumping. “Had dinner yet?”
    “Why, I was just going to order up a tray …”
    “Don’t. Hell’s a-popping. How about meeting me and John Hardesty somewhere for a bowl of soup?”
    “But, Oscar, I’m tired from the trip, and …”
    “This is right up your alley, and we really need your help. That poor girl … But I can’t tell you any more over the phone.”
    Curiosity had always been her besetting sin, and Miss Withers hesitated only a maidenly moment before she said, “Very well. But after months of Los Angeles cooking you’re very much mistaken if you think I’ll settle for anything less than duckling bigarade at La Parisienne or perhaps sauerbraten at the Blue Ribbon.”
    “Anything!” conceded the inspector. “A car will pick you up in ten minutes.”
    So it was that theater-bound Manhattanites that evening were amused by the spectacle of a large and whimsically-plucked French poodle, with a bit of green hair ribbon in his topknot, sitting regally enthroned beside the uniformed driver of a police limousine illegally parked half a block off Times Square. Talleyrand was not in the least bored with the long wait. He listened with interest to the radio as it droned forth interminable lists of the license numbers of stolen cars; he shared with polite enthusiasm the lunch of the embarrassed policeman beside him; hamburgers, onion, pickle and all. Talley was a dog who took things as they came, especially food.
    Inside the pleasant old Bierstube the dog’s mistress had been slowly paying less and less attention to her excellent sweet-and-sour pot roast while she listened to the official tale of woe. “You see, Hildegarde,” the inspector was saying earnestly, “it’s a matter of my personal pride. They’re always saying around town that a rich man can get away with anything, even murder. If Gault goes free the wise-guys will nod and wink and whisper that the fix was on. He’s simply got to be tried and found guilty and take his punishment, or the law and the department and my whole career are just so much dust and ashes. Isn’t that so, John?” His voice trembling faintly, Oscar Piper busied himself with his bratwurst.
    “That’s—that’s right,” John Hardesty agreed, swallowing. He had turned out to be a tall, snub-nosed man in his thirties with unruly hair and large hands, who looked somewhat like a prosperous farmer. “Now, none of what I’m going to tell you must go any farther,” was his cautious beginning.
    Miss Withers tossed her head indignantly. “The inspector here will bear witness that when necessary I can be twice as silent as the grave.”
    Oscar Piper choked suddenly on a bit of sausage, but Hardesty was already outlining the highlights in the Fagan murder, on the surface at least a black-and-white, open-and-shut case if there ever was one. It seemed that at eight-thirty on the evening of December 17 last, Tony Fagan had started his eleventh weekly video program for Gault Foods. While on the air he had said certain unkind things about his sponsors under the thin guise of humor, the barbs particularly aimed at Winston H. Gault, Jr.
    The same evening a little after midnight, Fagan had run into Gault sitting alone at a table in a well-known night club, and had gone over to apologize. Gault had refused to accept the apology and had said something indicating an intention to assault Fagan, but as the younger man was rising from his chair and off-balance, the comedian had swung first and lucky-punched him colder than Kelsey.
    Fagan had then left for his apartment at the Graymar, on East Fifty-fifth, where he was later joined by some friends and business associates, including his divorced wife Ruth, the party breaking up around four. A little after six in the morning Gault had shown up and, when Fagan made the