THE BOOK OF THE LION
Elizabeth Daly
FELONY & MAYHEM PRESS • NEW YORK
Contents
CHAPTER ONE Life and Letters
CHAPTER TWO Emissary
CHAPTER THREE Back ground
CHAPTER FOUR Down Payment
CHAPTER FIVE The Other Place
CHAPTER SIX Gamadge Wants to Know
CHAPTER SEVEN Offensive
CHAPTER EIGHT Research
CHAPTER NINE A Ghost
CHAPTER TEN The Book of the Lion
CHAPTER ELEVEN Return
CHAPTER TWELVE Half a Pint
CHAPTER THIRTEEN Night Life
CHAPTER FOURTEEN Graveyard Stretch
CHAPTER FIFTEEN Expert
CHAPTER SIXTEEN Appointments
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Informal
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Cocktail Party
CHAPTER NINETEEN Accident
CHAPTER TWENTY Money’s Worth
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE Autograph Letter Signed
CHAPTER ONE Interior
CHAPTER TWO Bargains
CHAPTER ONE
Life and Letters
THE TELEPHONE RANG, and Gamadge leaned forward across his desk blotter—and across his yellow cat Martin—to pick up the receiver. Martin, lying stretched out on his side, asleep, did not open his eyes. He paid no attention to telephone bells. He was old, so old that nobody disturbed him any more.
As Gamadge leaned back again, receiver at his ear, Martin half awoke, and caught at Gamadge’s sleeve with a languid claw. As the sleeve receded, the claw disentangled itself and dropped away.
“Take it easy,” said Gamadge, and addressed the telephone: “Gamadge speaking.”
He was sleepy himself. He had been looking up the sales history of an old book in old catalogues, and there was nothing about the job to keep him wakeful. Nothing in his surroundings, either—the quiet of the office, the low fire in the grate, the timelessness of a rainy day. It was Monday, the fifth of May, 1947; and so far the Spring of 1947 had been moist and chill.
A businesslike feminine voice at the other end of the wire prodded him back to actuality: “This is Mr. Henry Gamadge?”
“Yes.”
“One moment, please.”
Gamadge sat well down on the end of his spine, legs stretched out, eyes vacant.
Another feminine voice, clear and refined, came on the wire: “Mr. Henry Gamadge?”
“Right here.”
“One moment, please.”
Gamadge was annoyed. Not having anybody at the moment to do this for him to other people, he didn’t like other people to do it to him. He said: “Be here when you want me,” stretched across Martin, and replaced the telephone. Martin, eyes half open, lifted his paw, decided against effort, and let the paw fall.
Gamadge remained sitting forward, his eyes on a catalogue, a pencil in his fingers. The telephone rang.
“Mr. Gamadge?”
“Still here.”
“We were cut off.”
“Too bad.”
“I am speaking for Mr. Avery Bradlock, of Ferris, Bradlock and Charles. Investment securities.”
This ancient and honourable company had not only weathered all storms in the past, but had almost given the impression of ignoring them. Gamadge said: “Oh, yes.”
“Mr. Bradlock would be very glad if you would make an appointment to come down and see him, Mr. Gamadge. Tomorrow, if possible. Unless you could make it to-day? The Wall Street office, you know.”
Gamadge asked: “What does Mr. Bradlock want to see me about?”
The voice rebuked him coldly: “Mr. Bradlock will tell you that.”
“You don’t know?”
“Of course I do not know.”
“I’m not a client. Will you find out whether Mr. Bradlock wishes to consult me professionally?”
“He does, of course.”
“Well—er—in that case, I have an office too.”
Silence.
“And a laboratory, you know. Much more convenient for clients to come here. Not much point in taking the dentist away from the drill, is there?”
“I beg your pardon?”
Gamadge decided to let it go. He scratched a match one-handed on the box, and holding it between two fingers, managed to get a cigarette into his mouth. He lighted the cigarette.
After a pause the voice said briskly: “I’ll put Mr. Bradlock on.”
“Good.”
Gamadge put the match in an ashtray, picked up his pencil, and gently ran it along Martin’s head. Martin growled softly. After a minute a masculine voice, pleasant, but showing the effect of long habits of authority, spoke in Gamadge’s ear. The voice held a note of perplexity:
“This is Avery Bradlock, Mr. Gamadge.”
“Yes, Mr. Bradlock, what can I do for you?”
“I was under the impression—I’ve just had lunch with a client of mine, an old friend, and in the course of conversation he said—I thought he said that you were—that you went about appraising books and manuscripts, with a view to purchasing, or arranging for sales. There seems to have been an article of yours in the University Review—”
“I can see how the error has arisen, Mr. Bradlock. Quite natural, my article may have sounded that way. I’m not a dealer, though, and I’m not qualified to appraise libraries.”
“You’re not?”
Bradlock sounded so unconvinced that Gamadge laughed. “I know that dealers don’t always own up to their profession, but this time it’s really true. Anybody in the trade will tell you.”
“I must confess that I don’t know a thing about it, Mr. Gamadge. I’m so ignorant on the subject that—as you see—I don’t even know how to approach it.” He laughed too.
“People don’t ask me to look at books or manuscripts,” said Gamadge, “unless they think something’s wrong with them. That’s why I have a laboratory—so that I can find out.”
“But you must know a great deal about the subject, and this article of yours—my friend was impressed. He seemed to think you’d be the very person.”
“The very person for what, Mr. Bradlock?”
“To look at my brother’s papers; that is, unless—perhaps you could tell me: my friend says he knows of a case when a celebrity’s correspondence was sold to a collector, sight unseen, for a thousand dollars. Can that be true?”
“It could happen, yes. It wouldn’t be extraordinary, if the correspondence was likely to be very interesting, or historically important, or something of the kind.”
“It seems incredible.”
“Well, the purchaser of such a collection would have a pretty good idea of what he was likely to get.” Gamadge, filled with curiosity, asked: “Did you say these papers were your brother’s, Mr. Bradlock?”
“Yes. Paul Bradlock.”
Gamadge, dumbfounded, sat up in his chair. He had never known that Paul Bradlock was connected with Avery Bradlock of the firm of Ferris, Bradlock and Charles; but then he had never known anything about Avery Bradlock, and very little about the late Paul. And he had been in Europe at the time of Paul Bradlock’s death, some two years before. But the relationship did seem almost unthinkable. He asked after a pause: “Is your brother’s correspondence for sale, then, Mr. Bradlock?”
“Well, if we could get a thousand dollars for it—it belongs to Paul’s wife—we’d be very glad indeed to sell it. But could we?” Bradlock added: “I’m assuming that my sister-in-law would approve. I’m sure she would. I understand”—he hesitated—“my friend seemed to think that such letters couldn’t be published without the consent of the writers?”
“They couldn’t.”
“That of course makes all the difference. What I had i
n mind was a sale to a collector through some dealer, the usual thing, after somebody had looked the letters over and given us some idea of their value. I was very much afraid it wouldn’t be great. My friend said modern autographs don’t bring much money. But if we could sell the whole correspondence—do you think we have a chance, Mr. Gamadge?”
Gamadge said: “Impossible to tell. It’s all a question of finding your purchaser. Might take years. But if the collection is intact”—Gamadge, recalling what he did know of Paul Bradlock, his life, works and death, proceeded carefully—“people are greatly interested always in the lives of literary men. No, I can easily imagine somebody paying a thousand dollars. Association value, literary history, all that kind of thing.”
Bradlock said: “My sister-in-law has of course seen the papers. She used them in writing my brother’s life. It came out not so long ago. Most intelligent woman. But the book didn’t make money for her—in fact, it lost money. The publisher said that was normal.” He laughed.
“Well, I should have thought it would sell. But you can’t tell about such things,” said Gamadge, reflecting that official lives could be horribly dull, no matter who the subject.
“We liked it,” said Bradlock, a little dryly. “Hastily done, of course; but we didn’t want other people doing it. We went to his own publishers—he’d had only a play published of late years, you know—and Mr. Meriden was very kind. Brought the book out in a hurry, and he warned us it wouldn’t—but never mind that. The important thing is that my sister-in-law should get full value for her property. I know nothing about such things, as I said, but to-day when this man told me about you at lunch, I really thought I’d found the right person to look at those letters.”
Gamadge said after a pause: “I could give you some idea of what they might bring in the regular market. I don’t think I’d miss anything of special value. These are not your brother’s own letters, are they? Or did his wife manage to get hold of any considerable number of them for her book, and will the owners let her have them to sell?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know at all; I mean I don’t know whether she has any of Paul’s. She didn’t use them. I’ve never seen the collection—not the kind of thing I understand. I’m very glad indeed that you’ll look at it, Mr. Gamadge. I’m quite sure we can trust your judgement. I must consult Vera, of course; speak to her as soon as I get home. As I said, I never had an idea that the papers could be worth anything considerable until Williamson suggested it at lunch.”
“I wouldn’t take the job on professionally, you know, Mr. Bradlock—not being really qualified. It would be just my opinion, you ought to check on it afterwards.”
“Quite out of the question,” protested Bradlock, all his instincts offended.
“I mustn’t set up as an expert out of my own line, you know. You’d understand that point of view, Mr. Bradlock.”
Gamadge could see Bradlock’s somewhat amused reaction to such a comparison; it showed in his voice when he replied: “At least people in your line of business don’t seem to be obliged to stick to the ledger. Or are you an exception, Mr. Gamadge?”
“I shouldn’t think so. If your sister-in-law cares to send the letters along, I’ll go through them in my own time. Is it a large collection?”
“I really don’t know. I haven’t seen them. She spoke as if there were a good many letters—when she first offered to do the biography, after my brother’s death. This is extremely kind of you, Mr. Gamadge. I’ll consult her.” Bradlock hesitated again. “It wouldn’t be more convenient for you to look through them on the premises? Where you could confer with her? She might prefer it. She lives practically with us, in a studio annex back of our house up town; she and my brother settled there as soon as they came back from Paris in nineteen hundred and thirty. You’d be quiet and private there.”
Gamadge thought that in the circumstances he ought to be allowed to dictate his own terms. “I think not,” he said. “It may be a long job. If she likes the idea of my examining the correspondence I think she’d better send it along.”
“Well, I’ll consult her. I’m sure she’ll like the suggestion. But your time is valuable, and I must insist—there ought to be some way of getting around those scruples of yours, Mr. Gamadge.”
Gamadge laughed. “People are always interested in literary correspondence, Mr. Bradlock, as I said. Take it that I’m getting my money’s worth in a first look at the Paul Bradlock papers.”
“Well”—Bradlock’s tone was dry again—“something in that. Thank you very much. I’ll call you again.”
Gamadge put down the receiver. In June of 1945, when Paul Bradlock died, he and the rest of the world were interested in other things than the death of a poet and playwright, no matter how sensational that death. He had missed all the headlines. What did he know? That Paul Bradlock had had an eerie gift of words, that he had written little for years, that his early promise had not been fulfilled—he was a man of the twenties, whose inspiration had seemed to die after he left Paris with the other exiles after the crash in 1929—and that he had died violently. A hold-up, was it? A drunken brawl? Gamadge seemed to remember that Paul Bradlock’s last years had been devoted to alcohol.
But there had been a play, and it had had a success of esteem. Too macabre for the general taste.
Gamadge telephoned to a bookstore. They had the Paul Bradlock Life, they didn’t have the play. It had been in stock, but was out of print.
Gamadge rang for his old coloured servant Theodore, and asked him to take a cab and a note down to the bookstore. When he had gone, grumbling, Gamadge settled back to his work. The fire hissed, Martin stretched and yawned. Once the folding doors were pushed open a little and a much bundled-up child peered in and waved. Gamadge waved back at him. A starched white arm withdrew him into the hall. Gamadge looked through the window on his left, and realized that the rain had stopped and that there was a blue rift in the cloudy sky.
The clock said three when Theodore came back with the thin parcel. A nice-looking little book, conservatively bound. Good paper, large type. Paul Bradlock, by Vera Bradlock.
Gamadge went through it. Paul Bradlock had been born in 1899, had been a brilliant child and a wonderful boy, had gone to Paris to write in the early twenties, had written poetry there and published a volume of verse there: Spirals. It was part of a movement, of a literary revolution. Paul Bradlock had evidently been slightly in front of the van—there were long quotations.
He had married Vera Larkin in Paris, another expatriate. Long account here of café life on the Left Bank, nothing that could not be found elsewhere, better done; for the personalities and anecdotes were common property now and if Paul Bradlock had had a private life among friends of his own the Life didn’t say so.
He had been a charming, gifted, elvish spirit according to Mrs. Paul Bradlock, and when he had been forced home for the usual reason of financial pressure in 1930 he had adjusted himself to his changed surroundings by abandoning his muse and writing plays. One of them, Getting Out, had been produced in New York in 1937 for a short run, and afterwards published. It had had some critical acclaim, according to Mrs. Bradlock, but—reading between the lines—Gamadge inferred that it had been too queer to live. He had some faint memory of a revival since Bradlock’s death.
According to Mrs. Bradlock, Paul Bradlock had been crushed by discouragement during the war, and had not recovered his spirits by the time he met what she reservedly described as his tragic death. There was a summing up; Paul Bradlock was one of those doomed souls, doomed by an unearthly temperament to frustration and despair. All detail that might have made the Life an interesting case history was (understandably) lacking; and all detail that might have made him anything more than a type was suppressed. He might never have had a friend; even his wife seemed nebulous, in the book, as if she had drawn herself from a reflection in a cloudy glass.
Her attempt at a critical appreciation of his work was quite valueless; probably built up from cont
emporary description of the “movement” in Paris, and from newspaper comment. The style of the book wasn’t bad, Mrs. Bradlock was evidently an educated woman who had read much. But she had written a dull, dry book about a man who deserved a little better of her, even if she did overrate his talent, and perhaps his character.
No wonder the publishers, Meriden & Co., had warned the Bradlocks that this family manifesto wouldn’t sell.
Gamadge picked up the telephone and called his friend Malcolm.
“Dave? Look here, you’re a poet and you lived in France. Do you know anything about Paul Bradlock?… I know, you’re another generation entirely and years younger, you probably got to Paris after he left. But I thought you might… Just a fading memory, was he? Well, come down and tell me what you do remember. And do you know whether his book of poems was ever published in this country?… Wasn’t? Never mind then… Oh, you saw his play? Good. Come on down and bring Ena.”
Malcolm said that his wife wasn’t in, but that he himself would come as soon as he got his piece written. He was employed on a magazine.
As Gamadge put down the receiver, the front doorbell rang. Martin, always interested in the outer world, started and raised his head.
Since the Gamadges had no reception room on the first floor, it was Gamadge’s custom in such circumstances as these to retreat into the laboratory, until Theodore should come and tell him whether the caller was for him, and if so who it was. But it was getting late in the afternoon and Gamadge expected no one. He did not move. Theodore opened the folding doors after an interval, looked in, gave his employer the reproachful glance of one who has done his duty in vain, and held out a tray with a card on it. A tall and slender woman stood just behind him.
Gamadge could only advance to meet her. She said: “I’m Mrs. Avery Bradlock. Is this Mr. Gamadge?”
“Yes. Do come in.”
“I ought to have telephoned, but it really wasn’t a matter for telephoning. I just got in the car and came.”
“Good.”
Theodore retreated, pushing the doors to; Gamadge took Mrs. Bradlock’s fur from her, and advanced one of the two comfortable leather chairs. She stood looking at him quietly, with a certain interest. “The truth is, Mr. Gamadge, that my husband telephoned and asked me to come and apologize. He says he’s completely bungled the whole thing.”
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