I had almost finished typing my report when Ada Mondora called and said I could come up now. I put on my jacket, went into the men’s room to make myself presentable, then climbed the stairs to the second floor.
“Hi, Josh,” Ada said in her bass rumble. She was pushing fifty and sounded as if she had smoked Coronas all her life. “He’s been trying to reach you all day. You can go right in.”
“Thank you, Ada.”
I went through the approved drill: knocked once, opened the door, stepped in, closed the door gently behind me.
Ignatz Teitelbaum was six years older than the day he hired me, but you’d never know it. Apparently he had reached a plateau, a certain number of years (seventy? seventy-five?), and then just didn’t age anymore. He would go to his grave looking exactly as he did at that moment, the skin leathery, the blue eyes bright, the voice vigorous.
“Sit down, young man,” he said to me.
I chose the club chair closest to the desk. The light from the student’s lamp fell on me, but his face was in shadow.
“A client,” he said abruptly. “Yale Stonehouse. Professor Yale Stonehouse. A very litigious man. You are familiar with the term?”
I murmured wisely.
“Well,” he said. “Professor Stonehouse would sue, at any time, for any reason—or none at all. He sued plumbers and electricians who did repair work in his apartment. He sued his landlord. He sued department stores. He sued cabdrivers and the companies that employed them. He sued newspapers, magazines, manufacturers, hotels, the bus company, the telephone company, Consolidated Edison, the City of New York, the Boy Scouts of America, the makers of Tootsie Rolls, and a poor fellow who had the misfortune to jostle him accidentally on the street. On one occasion, Professor Stonehouse sued the United States of America.”
“Did he ever win, sir?” I asked.
“Rarely,” Mr. Teitelbaum said with a wintry smile. “And when he did, the damages granted were never sufficient to cover the cost of bringing the suit. In one case I recall, the bench awarded him one cent. But Professor Stonehouse didn’t care—or said he didn’t. He insisted the principle involved was all that counted.” Mr. Teitelbaum paused to sigh heavily. “I am not certain Professor Stonehouse was completely sane. He was eccentric, certainly.”
“Was?” I repeated. “Is the gentleman no longer our client? Or is he deceased?”
Mr. Teitelbaum ignored my questions and continued:
“As I said, we attempted to dissuade him from this unwarranted litigation, but he insisted. His suits, ah, provided good experience for some of the younger, newer members of the firm. In addition to the suits, we also handled the legal end of several investments Professor Stonehouse made in real estate and certain other properties. He was, I would say, well-to-do. Exactly how prosperous he was I had no way of knowing, since this firm did not prepare his will nor play any part in his general investments and estate planning. On the one occasion when I asked him if he had executed a will, he replied in hostile tones that it had been taken care of. His reaction to my question was such that I never cared to pursue the matter further. I merely assumed he had a will prepared by another attorney, a not uncommon practice.”
Then he was silent. And I was silent, wondering where all this was leading.
Ignatz Teitelbaum laced his crinkled little fingers on the desktop. He looked down at them, and wiggled one at a time. He seemed surprised that they could still move. Staring at his hands, he continued his story in a quiet, dreamy voice…
“Yesterday, Professor Stonehouse’s wife came to see me. She informed me that her husband had, after dinner one evening, simply walked out of their apartment without saying where he was going and never returned. Not to this date, he hasn’t.”
“Did he leave a note, sir? Did he take any clothes with him? Had he withdrawn any large amounts from his bank accounts? Did he give any hint of his intention to leave?”
Mr. Teitelbaum raised his head slowly to stare at me.
“I asked Mrs. Stonehouse those same questions. Her answers to all were negative.”
“Mrs. Stonehouse went to the police, I presume?”
“Of course. They checked hospitals and the morgue, accident reports, things of that nature. They spoke to the Professor’s associates at New York University. Stonehouse was retired, but was sometimes invited as a guest lecturer. His specialty was British maritime history of the seventeenth century. No one at the University had seen him or heard from him for months. The New York Police Department has listed Professor Yale Stonehouse as a Missing Person. I have some, ah, contacts in the Department and was able to speak to the investigating officer. It is his opinion that the Professor disappeared of his own free will and will reappear eventually for reasons of his own.”
“Does the investigating officer have any evidence for that belief, sir?”
“Not that I was able to determine. Apparently the officer was basing his judgment on his experience and percentages in the analysis of the behavior of missing persons.”
“Do you know, sir, if the investigating officer checked airport, bus terminals, and railroad stations?”
“He did, yes. No record of reservations in the Professor’s name. But that is hardly conclusive. Reservations could have been made under another name, and tickets can frequently be purchased for cash without any reservations at all, as I am sure you are well aware.”
“Yes, sir.”
“But the investigating officer also showed a photograph of Professor Stonehouse to employees at airports, bus terminals, and railroad stations. No results.”
“Did the Professor own a car, sir?”
“He did. It was still garaged the day after his disappearance.”
I took a deep breath. “Well, sir, that seems to cover it. Can Mrs. Stonehouse offer any reason at all for her husband’s absence?”
Mr. Teitelbaum made a vague gesture.
“She believes the Professor went for a walk and perhaps stumbled and fell or met with an accident that resulted in amnesia, and that he is now wandering the city with no knowledge of his identity.”
“Ummm,” I said. “Possible, sir, but not likely.”
“No,” he said, “not likely.”
“How old was—how old is Professor Stonehouse?”
“Seventy-two.”
“And Mrs. Stonehouse?”
“I would estimate in her late fifties. Perhaps sixty. Their children, a young daughter and young son, are thirty-one and twenty-eight respectively. The Stonehouses were married relatively late in life.”
“Are the children married, sir?”
“No, they are not.”
Then we sat in silence again. I mulled over what I had just heard. I had no ideas about it at all. The Professor’s disappearance was simply inexplicable.
“May I ask a question, sir?” I said finally.
Ignatz Teitelbaum nodded gravely.
“What is our interest in the Professor’s disappearance, sir?”
“Mrs. Ula Stonehouse wishes to retain us as legal counsel,” he said tonelessly. “Her problem is threefold. First, she would like us to employ a private investigator to look further into her husband’s disappearance. I believe I persuaded her that this would be a useless expenditure. I cannot imagine what a private investigator could possibly accomplish that officers of the Missing Persons Bureau have not already done. Do you agree?”
“Yes, sir. Sounds to me like the police have done a thorough job.”
“Precisely. However, I was not able to convince Mrs. Stone-house completely of that, so I assured her that the disappearance of her husband would be examined fully by our own investigation department.”
Four years ago I was a mailroom boy and now I was a department. Success!
Mr. Teitelbaum continued: “Mrs. Stonehouse’s second problem is financial in nature. All her husband’s assets, including his checking and savings accounts, are in his name alone. So Mrs. Stonehouse, with no assets of her own, is, ah, feeling the pinch.”
“I should think so, sir—if he’s been gone a month.”
“Yes. I am having the whole matter of the status of the assets of a missing person researched at the present moment. I believe I will be able to petition the court to grant the family an allowance for living expenses prior to the time her missing husband is declared legally dead—if indeed he is ever so declared.”
“If he is, sir,” I said, “I mean, declared legally dead at some future time, who gets the money? How is the estate divided?”
“The third problem,” Mr. Teitelbaum said somberly. “Mrs. Stonehouse cannot find her husband’s will. It seems to be missing.”
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1979 by Lawrence Sanders
cover design by Jason Gabbert
978-1-4532-9840-4
This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media
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THE COMMANDMENT SERIES
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The Sixth Commandment Page 40
