“I’m afraid so,” replied Mrs. Paul Bradlock cheerfully. “I haven’t much closet space.”
Mrs. Longridge went on to the grand piano, drew delicate fingers over rings made by wet tumblers, bent to examine a cigarette burn, and clucked disapprovingly.
A small, thin, pale girl with wispy brown hair and a pink-tipped nose came in from a doorway; she was wiping her hands on a paper towel. She stood unsmiling, gazing at the strangers.
“All right, Sally,” said Vera Bradlock. “You can knock off.”
The small girl rolled down the sleeves of her sweater, snatched up a coat from a chair, and hurried across the room to the front door. She sidled hastily out, and the door closed behind her.
“My little cousin,” said Mrs. Paul Bradlock placidly. “She’s been with me since Paul died. Looking for your property, Hill? There it is.”
A rough wooden packing-box, perhaps thirty inches long and a foot wide and high, stood labelled and ready under the stairs. “I thought you might want it sent,” she explained.
“Not a bit of it. I have my car.” Iverson went over and stood looking down at it. He was smiling broadly. “You certainly made a job of it!”
“Oh, Tom Welsh hammered the top on. I’ve had it up in the attic for years. It was just right.”
Gamadge had joined Mrs. Longridge at the piano, which stood near the stairway. He leaned on the scarred top, looking down with interest at the box. “Be heavy, perhaps,” he said.
“Oh, Tom will help him,” said Mrs. Paul Bradlock.
Iverson turned to her. “You declare this,” he said with mock solemnity, “to be the private papers of Paul Bradlock deceased, and you now make them over to me for the sum of one thousand dollars, paid by me in the presence of these witnesses?”
“I do,” said Vera.
Mrs. Avery Bradlock had joined the others at the piano. She asked Gamadge faintly: “What must you think of us?”
“Because your studio shows the passage of time?” He smiled. “I sometimes wish they’d let me have some cracks myself, instead of an endless chain of plasterers and painters.”
“I should die here.”
“You should have been at Longridge, Nannie,” said her mother coolly, “before Avery fixed it up for me. You don’t remember.”
“I remember, Mamma.”
“You can’t remember much, sent away to school by your Uncle Forester till he lost his money, and travellin’ with me till we all lost what was left, and then gettin’ married. All you remember about Longridge is ridin’ around with your cousins, and all the harness mended with pieces of rope.”
“The studio was all right when Paul and Vera came here to live.”
“Fifteen and more years ago!”
Mrs. Avery Bradlock glanced about her. Vera Bradlock and Iverson had moved to the fireplace, that communal ashtray, and were standing with their elbows on the shelf, talking and smoking. Avery Bradlock was still contemplating the sprawl of damp on the ceiling at the other end of the room. Mrs. Avery said very low: “You know how it was, Mother. They lived their own life here, we weren’t welcome; they knew we shouldn’t like their parties. And later—in the last few years—nothing would have induced Avery to see Paul. Nobody could come here then.”
“I don’t like drunken men myself,” said Mrs. Longridge. “But if Vera Bradlock—and I don’t like her either—if she had the full responsibility for lookin’ out for him, you and Avery might have seen to it that she was comfortable.”
“Nobody could interfere. You’re really being very unfair, Mother.”
There was a step on the gallery. Everybody looked up; a heavy-shouldered dark young man in khaki slacks and shirt had come out of one of the upper doors and leaned on the rail, looking down. His eyes wandered incuriously from one group to the other, and across the room to Avery Bradlock. His narrow face was expressionless.
Vera said: “Oh, Tom; I hope we didn’t wake you.” She explained at large: “It’s Sally’s friend, Tom Welsh. He has a temporary night job at a hospital, and he gets his sleep in the daytime.”
Mr. Welsh, running a hand over his thick dark hair, mumbled that it was about time for him to get up, anyway.
“And just in time to help me with my box,” Iverson told him. “If you’ll be so good, Welsh? Help me get it into the back of my car? And how about driving down with me and giving me a hand with it at the other end? My walk-up”—he laughed—“I wouldn’t live any other way, but there’s a certain lack of service.”
Welsh said nothing in reply; but he came down the stairs, dragged the box out from under them, and ignoring Iverson’s half-hearted gesture of assistance, heaved the box to his shoulder. He started off with it to the front door, which he opened with his other hand.
“Good heavens,” said Iverson, watching him go, “I feel as if I’d wound him up. I’d better catch up with him before he rips the cover off the luggage compartment by main force. I’ll just run through and grab my hat and coat.” He went from one to the other of the party, shaking hands. “Good-bye all, and thanks for a delightful evening. I can get through, I suppose? No, don’t bother. Mr. Bradlock, I’m off. Vera, thank you again.”
He waved an arm when he reached the inner door, and disappeared into the connecting passage. The door closed behind him.
“Well!” said Vera after a moment. “That didn’t take long. And what”—she smiled at the others—“shall we do now? A little bridge? I don’t play, but I’m sure Mr. Gamadge does and I know the rest of you are devoted to it. It’s quite early yet.”
Gamadge said that it was after ten, and that he was picking his wife up. He’d better be going along too. “It’s been a great pleasure, Mrs. Bradlock.” He shook hands with Vera. “Quite an event. Glad I was in on it.” He turned to his other hostess. “Most enjoyable evening.”
Avery Bradlock came up. “Wish you’d stay. We could adjourn to the other house.”
“Awfully good of you, but I won’t be sorry to get my wife home early. She’s been overdoing it.”
“I hope very much to meet her soon,” said Avery’s wife.
Old Mrs. Longridge was evidently preoccupied. She had been gazing thoughtfully at the front door ever since it closed behind Welsh and his burden, and now she asked with interest: “Who is that young man, Mrs. Paul?”
“Just a nice boy out of the armed services. He was in the merchant marine, and his ship was sunk. He had a dreadful time. They had him at the Medical and Surgical Hospital for ages, and now they’ve given him this job as orderly. He’s really a chemist, I think, or was going to be.” Mrs. Paul offered this information smilingly.
“Well,” inquired Mrs. Longridge, “why ain’t he a chemist then?”
“Because he isn’t up to brainwork yet.”
“He lives here?”
“Camps here, you might say.”
“You certainly have quite a family.”
“Haven’t I? But housing is so difficult, and Tom Welsh has no money.”
Mrs. Longridge moved towards the passage doorway, which her son-in-law held open for her. She said: “You get Avery to fix up this place for you.”
“Well, it has to be fixed; but not for me—if I go.”
“Go?” Mrs. Longridge gave her a stern look, pausing in her walk to do so. “Who said you were goin’?”
“Nobody,” laughed Vera.
“I should think not.”
The Bradlocks, Mrs. Longridge and Gamadge went through into the passage. Bradlock fastened the door after him. “Safer for both households,” he said. “No use giving sneak thieves a free passage.”
“I don’t know what’s got into you, Mother,” said Mrs. Avery as they all emerged into the dining-room. “Settling Avery’s affairs for him like that. And inviting Vera to stay for ever.”
Bradlock said: “Of course she can stay for ever if she likes. Why in God’s name didn’t she tell me the place was falling down on top of her?”
“I never liked her,” said Mrs. Longridge,
“but I’m beginnin’ to think she’s a nicer woman than I thought she was.”
“Did you know she had all those young people living there with her, Nannie?” Bradlock looked puzzled.
“Of course I didn’t.”
“I hope they get enough to eat,” said Mrs. Longridge. “Your grandfather Longridge used to put up his friends and relations for months, but then we mostly lived off the place.”
Mrs. Avery Bradlock smiled at Gamadge. He said good-bye again, and Bradlock got his coat and hat for him and saw him off; they parted amiably, but Bradlock’s face still wore its puzzled look.
Gamadge, whose expression was not dissimilar, got into his car and drove down to the apartment in the Seventies where the Malcolms lived. It was on a corner of Lexington Avenue; the doorman was out under the canopy taking the air. He greeted Gamadge as an old friend, and took him up in the elevator.
CHAPTER SIX
Gamadge Wants to Know
MALCOLM OPENED THE DOOR, and stood looking at Gamadge in some surprise. “You’re early.”
Gamadge walked past him into the bright green-and-silver lobby. He said: “My services weren’t required, after all.”
“No?” Malcolm closed the door and leaned against it, eyebrows raised, while Gamadge peeled off his coat. “They give you a good dinner?”
“Couldn’t have been better. I’m full up but not uncomfortable.”
“That’s good. Still interested in Paul Bradlock, or did you get what you wanted to know from his family?”
“I’m still interested. Anything for me?” Gamadge dropped his coat and hat on a chair and turned to survey Malcolm alertly.
“Something. I think I can tell you why Mrs. Paul Bradlock didn’t have much to say about Bradlock’s life among the writers of Paris.”
“You can, can you?”
“We might go back to the dining-room. I got a couple over to play bridge, and I’m out this rubber.”
They went along the hall, past the sitting-room, where Clara, Elena Malcolm and the “couple” were so engrossed that they didn’t even raise their heads. In the little dining-room Gamadge sat down at the round table while Malcolm mixed highballs at a buffet. Gamadge said: “This modernistic stuff of yours—it’s very light and bright, I must say.”
“What drives you to this handsome admission?”
“I’ve been wandering in a phantasmagoria. I’ve seen splendours and miseries, solid old elegance next door to dilapidation. I feel a little confused.”
“And a little depressed?” Malcolm looked at him, more and more surprised.
“Not that exactly.”
“Let’s hear about it.” Malcolm brought the tray to the table, and sat down beside his guest.
“After you. Tell me what you dug up.”
Malcolm took a scrawled envelope out of his pocket. “Lazo didn’t know Bradlock, but he called up a couple of other men that had met him around in cafés. But Bradlock was only there to meet other writers in the movement. His personal friends weren’t on the Left Bank; not at all.”
“Weren’t they?” Gamadge lighted a cigarette.
“If Mrs. Paul Bradlock didn’t write about them, it was because they were too dull to write about. The expatriates her husband knew best were the ones that lived in hotels and luxury apartments—I don’t think they ran to palaces—on the Right Bank, all among the tidy rich. If some of them lost money after nineteen hundred and twenty-nine they didn’t lose pittances, they lost fortunes. They ran salons, they gave dinners, they watched the literary revolution from a safe distance and with benevolent detachment. They could always be depended on for a square meal, and I dare say they made good listeners. Some of them were on the fringes of literature themselves. Dilettantes. I have a little list.”
“Good.”
“That fellow, Stark”—Malcolm pointed with his pencil—“he lives there yet. A survivor. Writes little articles in French for reviews. Mrs. Cobway had a salon, took to painting. I think she’s in Italy now; I heard of her myself now and then, a confirmed Florentine. This Jeremy Wakes was a man of family, travelled, spent time in England, where he knew a lot of well-placed people, but had his headquarters in Paris. He wrote little books about curiosities of literature and that kind of thing, they’ve been published over here. Lazo says one met him everywhere.
“His wife was also of good family, and she came up with one pretty good book, a biography of a French eighteenth-century writer; or was it a collection of short lives? Meriden published her. Wakes died in Paris in the thirties, she came back to America.
“This Toller, a fashionable doctor, killed himself after the crash. He used to have literary evenings, went in for foreign nobility, the kind that write memoirs.
“Here’s another fatality—man called Brandon. A scholarly old person, a diner-out. After nineteen hundred and twenty-nine he shot himself.
“Well, that’s all Lazo got.” Malcolm shoved the envelope to Gamadge. “And you can see that the list wouldn’t show up very brilliantly in Bradlock’s Life. Nonentities, they wouldn’t do anything to explain Paul Bradlock’s curious charm.”
“No. Thanks, Dave.” Gamadge put the envelope away. “If I’d had this it might have helped me with Mrs. Paul at dinner.”
“Lazo says his friends say she was an uninteresting little person in a bookshop, pretty but without much charm. What did you think of her?”
“Not pretty, no charm.”
“Lazo says she came to Paris in her teens, one of the horde that wanted a look at the earthly paradise; but she actually did have a job, and went on with it after she and Bradlock married. But it wasn’t enough to support them both after Bradlock’s remittances ceased. They had to go back home. Now tell me what happened tonight. Did they decide against selling the papers?”
Gamadge told him. When he had finished, Malcolm sat looking at him thoughtfully; there was a long silence. At last Malcolm said: “Funny business. Funny set-up, too.”
“Funny any way you look at it.”
“You think this Iverson’s getting away with something?”
“Whether he is or not, something stands out a mile.” Gamadge looked up. “You see it, don’t you?”
“According to you, even Avery Bradlock was uneasy about the circumstances of the sale to Iverson; but he was the one who suggested that kind of sale in the first place, and you back him up on it. You said such things were done.”
“They have been. But the thing that impresses me is the ungodly hurry of it. Look at the timetable.
“Those papers have been lying around for two years, the widow didn’t know they had any commercial value. This afternoon, as soon as Avery Bradlock hears from a friend that such papers have or may have value, he calls me and verifies the information; he verifies the fact that collectors have paid as much as a thousand dollars for a first go at a literary correspondence.
“He calls his wife immediately; say at half past two o’clock. Mrs. Avery rings her sister-in-law—rings her, mind you, the Avery Bradlocks don’t call at the studio. Between a quarter to three and seven—when Bradlock gets home—in less than four hours, presumably a good deal less, Mrs. Paul Bradlock has found a buyer. The thousand dollars are paid down two hours later, and the box of papers, crated up and labelled, are out of the place an hour after that. And,” finished Gamadge, “I don’t have to see the papers at all.”
Malcolm drank some of his highball, put down the glass, and looked at it. He said: “The thing’s plausible. She knew Iverson, they all knew him, and he knew Paul Bradlock. He’d have some idea what the correspondence would consist of. He agrees to keep it out of the open market. He’s willing to pay the exact price mentioned, certainly a fair price, and he’s interested in such things and a friend of Mrs. Paul’s.”
“Plausible, yes. Avery Bradlock couldn’t protest,” said Gamadge. “Even I couldn’t. But the fact is there: as soon as there is any question of those papers being examined by anybody, they’re out of circulation, in a nailed box, sold an
d practically delivered. They’re nailed up out of sight before I arrive. Iverson brings his cheque-book, and hauls them off with him. That thousand dollar cheque blocked Avery Bradlock; he couldn’t resist it. It simply dazzled him. A thousand dollars for a lot of letters!”
“And of course they were his sister-in-law’s property. She was probably dazzled, too. Again I ask—is Iverson getting away with something?”
“You don’t get it at all,” said Gamadge irritably. “She and Iverson were in the deal together. It sticks out a mile. She’s not a fool, and she assured me that she knew what she was doing. I’m sure she did. You know, Malcolm”—Gamadge half closed his eyes—“I can’t convey it, but it was obvious that they were enjoying themselves over it; it was a game. She wouldn’t have let anybody block it.”
“Well, then, what game? That doesn’t make sense, Gamadge. If they’re worth more than a thousand, why should she cheat herself? No reason why she should conceal their value from Avery Bradlock; or”—Malcolm glanced up—“would there be? There’s an idea, and a pleasant one, I must say! These people were living on him, and he must have had all kinds of expenses in connection with Paul Bradlock’s death, and there was that Life he paid for. Would he try to repay himself out of what she made from those letters? Is that why she handed him that cheque in that cynical way?”
Gamadge shook his head. “He’s not like that. If he were, he’d have made the devil’s own fuss about that kind of sale to Iverson. He’d never have suggested such a thing in the first place.” Gamadge thought it over, and shook his head again. “He wanted her to get the money.”
“Well, then it can’t be that the papers were worth more than a thousand.”
Gamadge asked slowly: “What if they were worth less?”
“Less?”
“What if they were worth nothing?”
Malcolm stared. “I don’t—”
“What if they were non-existent?” Gamadge laughed. “Don’t look so blank; that might explain everything.”
The Book of the Lion Page 4
