He got out at the corner and walked west. At Miss Bransome’s building he looked up; her front windows were both wide open, she was getting the coolness before the rain slanted and came in.
He did not rattle the elevator gate this time, but toiled up the four flights of stairs. Her door was closed. He rang. She peered out at him, her smock off and a checked apron on, her hair tied up in a bandanna.
“Here I am again, Miss Brandsome; as I promised. I have news.”
“Oh! What is it?”
She let him go past her, closed the door behind him, and stood gazing up into his face. He said: “Let’s go somewhere and sit down.”
She went in front of him down the hall and into a pleasant bed-sitting-room; it was very arty, with a spatter-dashed floor in several bright colours, chintzes to match, a studio couch in the corner next to the door. There was a wall-kitchen with its Venetian blind rolled up, its sink piled with washed and drying pots and pans.
“I’m interrupting your work,” said Gamadge, “but my news can’t wait.” He pulled up a chair for her, but she sank down on the edge of the divan, so he took the chair himself.
“Now don’t be upset,” he said. “Everything’s under control. They’ve found her.”
“Found her…”
“She isn’t alive.”
“Where? Where?”
“When I left you I went and had a look over that house—the one you followed her to, you know. She wasn’t there to see any young couple; she was there to meet a man who called himself Fuller. He’d somehow persuaded old Mrs. Woodworth to recommend him as a tenant—the owner’s away. He was alone in the place that Friday she disappeared, and over that weekend. He’d had the yard dug up for replanting.”
Miss Bransome was leaning back and back until she half lay against the couch pillows. Her face had a greenish look.
“I pretended to be looking for a vacant flat.” Gamadge was sitting forward, his hands clasped between his knees. “I got the superintendent to show me the yard. There was a sunken place; I think I know what must have happened. He killed her in the apartment on Friday, and that night he went out and dug a foot deeper. Nobody’d see him or notice anything, or if they did, there’d been digging in that yard for a week. He carried her out there and put her in the place he’d dug, and covered her up with the old earth. Then on Monday they came and filled in the beds with the new soil. They planted a lot of flowers.”
She had closed her eyes. He looked around him, got up, and took a little ruby glass decanter and a glass to match it from a wall cabinet. When he removed the pointed stopper he smelled sherry. He filled the little glass and brought it to her.
“You’d better have this.”
She sat up, took the glass from him, and drank the sherry.
“That’s right,” said Gamadge. “Have some more.”
She shook her head. He put the glass and the decanter down on a table at the foot of the couch; she was sitting up very straight now, looking past him at the wall.
After a long pause she said harshly: “If I’d told, they might have caught him.” She turned her eyes on Gamadge. “I suppose he left?”
“He left on the thirty-first of July. He stayed on there, with a good view of that garden, for a week; we’re dealing with a strong character, Miss Bransome. I think anybody might be excused for feeling a little chilled at the thought of Mr. Fuller; don’t you?”
“Why did he do it?”
“I don’t know; let’s worry about more immediate matters first. They won’t find me, I was just a man looking for an apartment; I managed it so that the superintendent saw that sunken area for herself. And we needn’t mind about keeping our own counsel now—we can’t tell them anything that they don’t know—or”—he smiled—“won’t know. They’ll get in touch with the people up at the Woodworth place, and they’ll run into Mr. Fuller there. They’ll be told all about him.”
She asked in a trembling voice, “What did you mean, then—‘worry’?”
Gamadge leaned forward again and spoke earnestly: “The news will be out any minute now; and when it’s out Fuller will have it too. Don’t think he hasn’t been watching and listening for it. He was as sure as mortal could be that she’d never be found—or not until the Scale house and its garden were blasted out for rebuilding; and that won’t happen until Scale is dead, if ever. He won’t miss this news, wherever he is. And what will he think of when he hears it?”
She kept her eyes on him, puzzled and wondering now.
“I’m afraid he’ll think of you, Miss Bransome.”
“Me!”
“How else should Alice Dunbar’s body have been found? If not through you? He won’t think I was a casual flat-hunter; he’ll realize only too well that nobody would have noticed that sunken grave unless they’d been looking for it. Why should they look for it? Why did I look for it? Because you sent me there, and so far as we know you’re the only living soul except Fuller that could send me. She was found through you.”
She sat with her hands clenched together in her lap; rigid.
“You and I know,” continued Gamadge, “that Alice Dunbar would have died before she told you who he was, or even that she was meeting this Fuller, or whatever his name really is; she deceived you and lied to you and kept her secret. But can Fuller be sure of that? I’ll tell you one thing; now that she’s been found, he can’t afford to be sure of anything.
“And we,” he added, smiling at her faintly, “can’t afford to believe that she didn’t—as you phrased it—give you away. I think she did; I think he knew all about you and the painting lessons. It wouldn’t mortify Alice Dunbar to tell him. Miss Bransome, surely you don’t think I’m telling you all this simply to frighten you? I’m telling you so that you’ll realize you mustn’t stay here alone.”
She nodded, her lips pressed tight and her eyes staring.
“You’re alone in the place after business hours, and you can’t keep everybody out because you’re afraid to click your switch and open the front door. I suppose it is locked at night?”
“The man does it when he goes.”
“Our friend Fuller wouldn’t risk it in the daytime. Hanged if I’d like to risk the chance of his getting in somehow, lock or no lock; and that hall door of yours would be so much paper to him. And we can’t very well invoke police protection for you, can we?”
She shook her head violently.
“He mustn’t know where you are, and he mustn’t think you’ve run away on his account, either; if he did we’d never catch him at all.”
“Where can I go?”
“Well, though I’d like to offer you asylum, it wouldn’t do; we mustn’t seem to be connected in any way, and I’m not saying so merely because I don’t want to be knocked off myself—though I’d rather not be.”
She gave him the glimmer of a smile.
“Now I know a nice young couple,” said Gamadge, returning the smile. “They’re in the suburbs, and I’m sure they’d take you in; until you care to make other plans, or can come back.”
She said: “I got myself into this, and I’m not making any fuss about it; but would it be long?”
“The whole police department is working on it, and they have something to work on now. But I can’t say how long they’ll be. Oh, by the way, would you let me have your keys to the place?”
She looked at him sharply.
“I mean,” said Gamadge, “if he did come, it would be a pity to miss him, wouldn’t it?”
“You’re going to catch him!”
“I can’t catch him; the police have to catch him.”
“But if you get them here—they’ll know about me, won’t they?” She added grimly: “Let them. I’ve been such a coward—I never knew I’d act this way.”
“It was tough. I still think you can stay out of it; in fact I’m pretty sure you can, unless he tells on you—and he’d be a fool if he did.”
She got up, found her handbag, and handed him the two keys. “That’s
the front door one.”
“Thanks.” Gamadge, on his feet, smiled down at her. “I’ll telephone, while you pack your bag.”
“Now?”
“The sooner the better; then he won’t be so likely to think you’ve gone on his account.”
Miss Bransome suddenly sprang into activity. She dashed for the wall-kitchen, attacked the pots and dishes and stacked them away. Gamadge, meanwhile, sat down at her telephone. He asked for an out-of-town number. By the time he had it, Miss Bransome was clearing out her icebox.
“Sally?” he asked, when the connection was made. “This is Henry Gamadge… Fine. How are you, and how’s Tom?… As usual, I want something… That’s nice of you. You have a little guest-room, haven’t you?… Well, I have a paying guest for you. Very nice lady, an artist, name of…” He looked at Miss Bransome, who was putting things in a paper bag in the garbage can.
She mouthed: “Vesey. My mother’s—”
“Miss Vesey,” said Gamadge into the telephone. “Could you take her in for a few days, until she can make other arrangements? It’s an emergency, Sally. Truth is, I got her into a kind of an impasse, you know how I am, and she’d like a quiet—Sally, that’s fine of you. Will it be all right with Tom?…”
Miss Bransome mouthed at him again: “I’d do my room and give her a hand with the work.”
“She says she’ll pull her weight, Sally. Now if you’d just look at your timetable, if you have one; she could catch a train in an hour…”
Miss Bransome, galvanized by this last observation, slammed the icebox door and rushed into the hall, returning with a suitcase. She tore off her apron while Gamadge finished at the telephone; he turned to her cheerfully:
“They’re people named Welsh; they have a nice little apartment in Hillville, and Sally’s going to meet your train. And Miss Bransome—I got you into this jam; I’d like you to let me pay your board up there.”
“I’ll pay my way.”
“If you like. It won’t be much, they live very simply. Just starting out in life. Welsh commutes, you won’t have him underfoot much.”
“I can get along with people.”
“That’s the spirit.”
Gamadge carried the garbage can out of the flat, and set it down beside Miss Bransome’s front door. When he came back Miss Bransome was cramming clothes and toilet articles into her suitcase. He lighted a cigarette.
“This Fuller,” he said, “I suppose there’s no chance that he ever saw you?”
She stopped packing to look at him in amazement. “I never met anybody they knew.”
“That’s good. What’s the sister like?”
Miss Bransome shut the suitcase and snapped the locks. “Jazz and men.” She ran for the studio, closed windows, pulled shades.
“Really.” He watched her as she scurried back, panting.
“And not nice men anymore, Alice told me. Very ordinary men.” She added: “It was that wild Richfield Tanner.”
“Introduced her to the wrong sort, did he?”
“Alice said the Air Force didn’t improve him.”
“She didn’t like the men she met at the Stanton?”
“She wasn’t asked to meet men there, you can be sure of that!” Miss Bransome was preparing herself for the journey by pulling on a sort of straw turban and a pair of yellowish gloves. Ignoring the mirror above her chest of drawers, she picked up a tan-coloured coat and said: “I’m ready.”
“All set? Now if you’ll just write a sign to put on your mailbox. Let’s see: Out of town, back tomorrow.”
She glanced at him, went over to her desk, and wrote the message in large block letters on the back of a card. Gamadge took it from her, and picked up the suitcase.
She went over to the windows, closed them, locked them, said as if in surprise: “It’s raining,” and preceded him into the little hall. She opened a closet door, got out an umbrella, and joined him on the landing. She slammed the flat door after her as if finally and forever.
“Now you go down by the elevator, so-called,” said Gamadge, “and I’ll take the stairs. Nobody knows I’ve been here. You’re just off on a country visit. I hate to have you lug this bag, but—”
“I’m used to it.”
“Give me a minute before you shake the gate.”
“You don’t have to bother with me anymore. What’s the train?”
“Three fifty-seven, lower level; but I’ll see you into a cab.”
Gamadge went down the stairs, waited between the first and second flight until he heard the elevator rattling past, and then went out into the vestibule. He fastened Miss Bransome’s card into the slot beside her bell, and walked out and towards the corner. He stopped a cab, and waited with it until Miss Bransome hurried up to him.
“I’ve given our friend here a dollar,” he said, and the driver grinned at him. “Here you go.”
She paused with her foot on the step. “Will you call me?”
“I certainly will. From now on, all you have to do is sit tight and be surprised; just be surprised whatever happens, you don’t know a thing.”
“They might call me?”
“If we have any luck.”
In the cab, waiting for the light to change, she let down the rain-splashed window to ask him with some interest: “Is there a reward?”
“Not for us.”
“I don’t feel so bad now.”
“That’s right.”
The cab lurched away. Gamadge plodded to the corner with his hat over his eyes, crossed the avenue, and plodded on. He ended by plodding all the way home; he seemed to have found the only empty cab in New York for Miss Bransome, and the buses looked full. He was lying on the chesterfield in the library when the music on the radio stopped, and he heard the voice he had been waiting for:
“We interrupt the programme to bring you a flash from our newsroom. A body thought to be that of Alice Dunbar, missing since the twenty-second of July last, has been found by police buried in the backyard of a midtown apartment house. It has been provisionally identified by clothing, and by a hat and a handbag. Police are puzzled by the fact that the remains were wrapped in a red raincoat, which is said not to have belonged to the deceased. Further information will be heard over this station at our regular newscast on the hour.”
CHAPTER TEN
Indescribable
AT HALF PAST six an apparition, still wearing its wet coat and hat, stood unannounced in the doorway of Gamadge’s library and looked at him. He was mixing cocktails, and did not at first see his visitor, who gave the impression of being about to depart at any moment as mysteriously as he had arrived.
Gamadge looked up. “Hello, old man, glad to see you. Come in and have a drink,” he said cordially. “Rotten weather.”
Macloud took off the wet hat and cast it into a chair. Gamadge, shaker in hand, raised his eyebrows.
“Twenty-five years I’ve known this crackbrain,” said Macloud, apparently to the ceiling, “and still he thinks I’m a fool.”
“I don’t think so at all.”
Macloud addressed him loudly: “Do you imagine I think you’re two people?”
“Oh. Well.” Gamadge smiled. “No, I thought you’d remember our conversation on Sunday. I was—”
“Such a nice gentleman,” said Macloud in falsetto, “but it’s rather hard to describe him. We repudiate you,” he continued violently, “so the police say oh well, the nice gentleman was probably a newspaper man looking for a feature story. At the Scale house you were looking for a flat. Tell me one thing—where do you get all the suits?”
“Clara hoards them up in mothballs for me.”
“You have the nerve to refer to our Sunday conversation; you said you weren’t going to touch the case.”
“I said I wasn’t going to make a fool of myself,” replied Gamadge, mildly. “And you said I could use your name.”
Macloud made an angry sound. “You’re withholding vital evidence in an atrocious murder case.”
“My discoveries seem to have seeped through to the police, don’t they?”
“You can stand there and quibble, but I’ve been to the morgue with poor Dunbar, and I had to stand by while Mrs. Dunbar checked the list of those rags her daughter was found in.”
Gamadge walked over to him, dragged his topcoat off him, threw it over the back of a chair, steered him to the chesterfield, and pushed him down on it. He forced a cocktail into his hand, and then went out into the hall. Theodore was hovering at the foot of the stairs, appalled at the sound of Macloud’s voice raised in anger.
“Come up and get Mr. Macloud’s things,” said Gamadge, “and dry them.”
“He pushed right past me, Mist’ Gamadge. What got into Mr. Macloud?”
“He’s upset about the Dunbar case. Wouldn’t you be?”
“Mercy on us. I forgot he was in it.” Theodore came up and took away the hat and coat, casting a glance of pity and awe at Macloud as he left the room.
Gamadge poured himself a cocktail, and sat at the other end of the chesterfield. He said: “You know as well as I do, old boy, that a layman can’t work officially, and wouldn’t get anywhere if he did. And was I to let you in on my activities, which might not have turned out so well, and put you in the well-known uncomfortable position of pleading privilege? Or giving me away? I suppose you haven’t given me away, have you?”
Macloud poured the rest of his cocktail down his throat. When Gamadge had taken the glass from him, and was refilling it, he said ominously: “Not yet. But I won’t be a party to what you’re doing now. I can see, damn it all, how you happened to go up to the Woodworth place; I admit you did talk about the two affairs as if there might be a connection. It sounded absurd to me, and I don’t say I believe it yet. But how did you get to the Scale house?”
Gamadge said, handing him his filled glass, “There does seem to be a slight gap there.”
And Dangerous to Know Page 7
