The Book of the Lion

by Elizabeth Daly

  “I’ll be home myself in half an hour,” said Gamadge. “Ring me any time.”

  He went out and looked down the avenue. A few doors below the drugstore he had noticed a liquor store, and a white-coated clerk or proprietor standing on the street and looking at the Wakes’s apartment across the way. He was still there, still looking. Gamadge approached, paused, and said: “I’d like a fifth of White Label.”

  “Yes, sir.” The clerk followed him into the store and went behind the counter. He was a little pasty man, solemn of face and very polite. He took down a bottle while Gamadge, leaning on the counter, looked at the half pints of brandy ranged on the shelves in front of a mirror.

  The little man wrapped the bottle. “I saw you coming out of that apartment house,” he said, “with the cop.”

  “Yes, I was there. I found her.”

  “You did!”

  “Yes, awfully sad.”

  “Terrible,” said the clerk, his round face cast down. “I wouldn’t have said she’d do that.”

  “Nor I neither.” There was a silence while the clerk wrapped the bottle. Looking up, he asked: “You a writer, too?”

  “Sort of one. I was here earlier this afternoon; did you see me then?”

  “Oh no, normally I wouldn’t notice anybody. All those stores under the building, and that library—people go in and out of there till nine o’clock.”

  “That’s so.” Gamadge took the package and offered a bill. While the clerk made change, he said: “I never could understand why she bought her liquor in half pints.”

  The clerk turned. “Well, I’ll tell you what I think about that. Up to a couple of years ago she drank whisky, bought it in fifths like anybody else, wouldn’t use up a fifth in two weeks. But then she began to drink pretty regular, and she asked for it in half pints.”

  “Why, I wonder?”

  The clerk handed Gamadge his change. “I told her whisky don’t come in half pints. State law. So then she said—you know that tough way she had, only not tough either, she was a lady. I liked Mrs. Weekes,” said the clerk earnestly.

  “Yes.”

  “She said well, she’d lived in France long enough to get used to brandy, and she’d take half pints of brandy. From that time forth, she came in here every evening after supper, and she got her half pint; absolute routine.”

  “Half a pint of brandy a day! That’s plenty.”

  “You’d be surprised. They get a tolerance.”

  “After supper, you say? Then she’d have it to go to sleep on, and perhaps a little left over for tomorrow.”

  “She never took a drop till she quit work and then just a shot or two, the way somebody else would have a cup of tea.”

  “Little stimulant, of course. Did you say you doped out why she made the switch?”

  “I think I did.” The clerk put his elbows on the counter and clasped his hands. He rubbed his thumbs together thoughtfully. “A half pint goes into a lady’s handbag.”

  “So it does.”

  “She could carry it home or anywhere, and after it was empty she could drop it in a rubbish can. A half pint doesn’t show up, full or empty, the way a fifth does. Easy to dispose of. I bet the police didn’t find any empties up there.”

  “No, they didn’t.”

  “Did she—did she take the stuff in brandy?”

  “Yes, she did. Took one shot, or so they think, and there was a little left in the bottle.”

  The clerk nodded sadly. “That would be just about what she’d have left for the afternoon.”

  “She didn’t offer me a drink while I was there.”

  “I bet she didn’t?”

  “Financial reasons?”

  “That, I guess, but also they like to think nobody knows.” He added: “Nobody did know but me. As you said, it was just to go to sleep on.”

  But the superintendent had known. Two years—that was a long time to keep a secret; perhaps the shot in the afternoon gave her away.

  “She was a funny character,” said the clerk. “Full of fight, she’d raise the dickens if she tripped over somebody’s dog or some man tried to get in ahead of her with his order here. But always pleasant to me, and lots to talk about every evening. ‘How’s your business to-day,’ she’d say, ‘mine is rotten.’”

  “She worked hard.”

  “I guess—living alone, business bad—she had some excuse for drinking.”

  “She must have had some excuse, yes.”

  Gamadge took his bottle and rode home.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Night Life

  BY NINE O’CLOCK the Gamadges were nearing the end of their dinner, at the round table beside the window in the library. Malcolm was announced, came in, and said with an avid look at Gamadge that he had come for coffee.

  “Yes, and for news,” said Clara. “Perhaps he’ll give you some. It must be very bad, because he has that gloomy look and won’t open his mouth except to eat.”

  “And drink.” Gamadge swallowed whisky.

  “He’s been drinking whisky right through dinner,” said Clara.

  “To tell you the truth I came for whisky,” said Malcolm, sitting down next to Clara. “I thought you’d be done with dinner long ago.”

  “We never sat down until twenty minutes to nine. I don’t know where he was.”

  Gamadge said: “Tell you all about it later. I may have to go out again, and if anybody rings up and asks questions you can say you don’t know anything about it or where I am.”

  “And how true that will be.”

  “And they’ll know it’s true. The mildest prevarication,” said Gamadge, “and you stammer and stutter.”

  “Can’t you teach her to do better than that?” Malcolm was eyeing Gamadge with ill-concealed impatience.

  “No, she won’t learn.”

  The telephone in the hall rang, and Gamadge took it. The voice of Indus sounded jubilant: “Mr. Gamadge, I got her isolated.”

  “No!”

  “We’re at the movies, Translux at Eighty-fifth and Madison. She and this feller Welsh went to the nine o’clock pictures, they’re lookin’ at it now, and I’m downstairs in the lounge telephoning. The picture lasts till ten-thirty, and you say he has to be at the hospital at eleven. But I thought she might not leave with him, because they missed the newsreel and the cartoon, and she might stay on and see them. It’s a Disney.”

  “Not such a long shot, Indus. I’ll be there.”

  “Even if she did go to the hospital with him—it ain’t much of a walk—she’d have to come home alone afterwards.”

  “That’s so.”

  “I’ll be standing up at the back, where I can keep watching them. I’ll point ’em out when you get here. When he goes you might get a chance at his seat. There’s not such a crowd for the last show.”

  “I’ll be up in good time.”

  “No hurry, it’s a good picture, and they paid for it. They’re set till ten-thirty.”

  Gamadge went back into the library. “I find I do have to go out again in a little while. Dave, what about having that drink in the office?”

  Clara said: “Isn’t he wonderful, the way he saves me worry? Here’s coffee; or do you want yours down in the office too?”

  They had coffee together, and then Gamadge and Malcolm went down in the little elevator, leaving Clara hunched up with a cat on her knee, glumly watching them go.

  Down in the office Malcolm sat listening in consternation while Gamadge related the events of the afternoon. At the end of the recital he composed himself with most of his highball. Then he asked: “You mean Durfee didn’t see any tie-up at all?”

  “It all hangs on the substitution of the flasks, and Durfee didn’t get all the details about the letters and The Book of the Lion into his head.” Gamadge laughed shortly. “Even if he had, he might not have caught the implications.”

  “Why did they get you there this afternoon and tell you that stuff? Just to prove they couldn’t have changed the flasks? As
Durfee said, they didn’t even know you ever heard the name of Wakes, much less Weekes.”

  “I got that police detail about the apartment house; that never was published—they didn’t know the police ever had it.”

  “Well, then, why bother about an alibi for your benefit?”

  “Suppose the papers publish her real name and connect her with Paul Bradlock’s past in France? They may. Then mightn’t I begin to make a nuisance of myself again? But if I did, I’d find out that Mrs. Wakes never took a drink until four o’clock, when Iverson and Mrs. Paul Bradlock were safely holed up in the studio expecting me at any minute. One of them could have doped her own half pint any time to-day; it’s obvious that Iverson or Vera Bradlock—probably Vera Bradlock—knew her well. There must have been a key—stolen?”

  “They knew she didn’t drink until four o’clock… Who’s the accomplice? You don’t send a messenger boy to change brandy flasks, with a woman dead in the room. Who was it?”

  “I’d like to find out.”

  “The cousin? The Welsh boy? Both dependents. Great Moses I’d like to see their reaction when they read the papers tomorrow morning! They’ll get the news that you’d found out who she was and had gone to see her earlier, and that you actually discovered the body. And you hadn’t said a word about her when you were at the studio this afternoon! They’ll hit the ceiling. You were miles ahead of them.”

  “They were miles ahead of me.” Gamadge looked up at Malcolm somberly. “They didn’t wait for me to find her, Dave.”

  “Well, what is it all about? I suppose they did kill Paul Bradlock, for something of value that he got from Mrs. Wakes that evening; it certainly wasn’t on him when he was found dead. Two years later, when they think Mrs. Wakes may be drawn into it and give them away, she’s killed too. That right?”

  “It may be.”

  “Mrs. Wakes took to brandy about the time Bradlock was killed.”

  “There’s that too.”

  “You say Bradlock wasn’t killed for the Chaucer manuscript, because there was no Chaucer manuscript.”

  “No. Tell that story to Avery Bradlock? I wouldn’t tell it as fact to anybody,” said Gamadge. “But they had to tell me something, to account for Mrs. Paul’s financial situation, and I certainly can’t disprove what they said. Nobody could.”

  “They must have cooked it up around Eigenstern’s crash. Fitted right in.”

  Gamadge said: “They sold something of value; if not The Book of the Lion, what was it? They told me she pretended there were letters so that she could stay on at the studio and write a book. She undoubtedly wanted to stay on at the studio, but not for that reason. Whether they killed Paul Bradlock for the equivalent of a fortune, or whether they found the valuable property later, she had it; she didn’t need to stay, and there seems to be no reason why she should have stayed. But she wanted to.”

  “That’s evident.”

  Gamadge stood up and looked down at his friend. “They told me a lot of things, Dave, but one of the things was something they didn’t mean to tell. Now if you’ve finished your drink, I’m sorry, but I have to go.”

  “Where?”

  “To the movies.”

  “All right, I won’t ask any more questions.”

  “I wouldn’t know the answers.”

  On the doorstep, still longing for information, Malcolm hesitated. He said: “I’m glad if you have a line on them. It would be a little too tough to see them get away with two murders and a hundred thousand dollars.”

  “I think so myself. I’m not sure I have a line on them, Dave.”

  “Go and meditate at the movies.”

  Malcolm turned right at Lexington Avenue, Gamadge went on to Madison. The Madison Avenue bus took him slowly, with swoops and halts, jerks and starts, to Eighty-fourth Street. He got out, crossed, and walked up to the Translux.

  The posters outside confirmed his forebodings—his taste and Indus’s taste were not the same. He hoped that the quarry within had not got up and left, disgusted by this preposterous romance, which even Theodore, who was sentimental, had warned him against. He bought a ticket and went in, past the lobby, to darkness. He dropped his ticket in the box, and walked on. He found Indus leaning against the rail, submerged in unearthly light.

  They shook hands; Indus muttered: “Down there, tenth row, third and fourth seats in. Big feller; she has some kind of flowers on her head, sort of a hat.”

  “I see them. Thanks, Indus.”

  “There’s an empty seat along this back row.”

  “I see it.”

  “Want me any more?”

  “I’ll call you.”

  “Like old times, ain’t it?” The squirrel face of Indus wore its driest smile.

  “Don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t—”

  “Glad to oblige.”

  Indus melted into the shades. Gamadge went forward, insinuated himself into the empty seat, and was about to close his eyes and slumber, when he realized that he couldn’t do that. Sunk in unutterable gloom he watched the pair in the tenth row, while voices from the screen assaulted his ears and figures loomed and vanished on the edge of his vision.

  At last the screen was blank, and the lights came up. Were those two going? No. Welsh was going, but alone. Sally would get her money’s worth.

  The young man, looking very big in his slacks and sports jacket, lumbered down the aisle and across to an exit door beside the proscenium. Gamadge waited until the lights dimmed, and then sidled into his place. His neighbour, engrossed by coming attractions, paid no attention to him. She had powdered the turned-up nose and put lipstick on her mouth. In her thin suit and little flowery hat she was a wisp.

  Gamadge waited until the newsreel was well on its way. Then he murmured in her ear: “Isn’t it Mrs. Bradlock’s cousin?”

  She turned, and gave him a blank look.

  “My name’s Gamadge. I—”

  Her face was transfigured by a radiant smile—the first he had seen on it. She said: “Of course I remember! It was just that I didn’t know you at first in this light—and it’s such a surprise.”

  “I dropped in for the newsreel, and I saw you down here with an empty seat beside you.”

  “Tom Welsh was with me. He’s just gone.” She seemed delighted by this encounter. “I always like it to have somebody with me at the movies, it’s so much more fun.”

  “Much.”

  “I’m sorry you missed the picture.”

  Somebody shushed her angrily. They exchanged guilty smiles, and concentrated on the screen. She reacted thoroughly to each event, now and then nudging him in the ribs with a thin elbow, once, at a great moment of excitement and noise, even snatching at his hand. Occasionally they exchanged a glance of sympathy or disapproval. The little cousin was not blasé.

  When the reel ended, Gamadge said: “I don’t know how you feel, but I’d like a snack somewhere. Do you absolutely have to see the cartoon?”

  “Oh, I’d rather go with you.”

  They made their way to the aisle, and out by the exit that Welsh had used. Standing in the dark reaches of Eighty-fifth Street, she said: “I come here all the time. Do you?”

  “No, it’s pretty far up town for me. I really don’t know my way about the neighbourhood well. Any place you prefer to go for a sandwich and a beer, or something?”

  “There’s a nice place on Lexington that Tom and I go to.”

  “Fine, we’ll get a cab at the corner.”

  “Oh, we don’t need a cab. It isn’t far.”

  Turning pleased glances up to him, she trotted at his side. They walked east along Eighty-fifth. “You know,” said Gamadge, “it’s ridiculous, but I have no idea what your name is, Miss Sally.”

  “It’s Orme.”

  “That Mrs. Bradlock’s name, too?”

  “No, hers was Larkin. We came from the same place—a little town west of Minneapolis called Summerville. Wasn’t she wonderful to just leave everything and go to Paris?
”

  “Enterprising.”

  “She just wouldn’t stay in Summerville.”

  “Neither would you.”

  “Oh, but I had nobody left there belonging to me. I was all alone, too. So I took what money I had and came here to business school. I copy manuscripts for people now, it’s very interesting. Soon I may be able to support myself entirely. The agency gives me so much to do.”

  “Did you copy manuscript for your distinguished relative Paul Bradlock?”

  “Oh, no; I didn’t come to the studio to live until he was dead.”

  “Your friend Mr. Welsh from the old town, too?”

  “No, I met him when I was working at night in the U.S.O.”

  “And introduced him to your cousin?”

  “Yes, I used to bring him to see Vera sometimes—before Mr. Bradlock died. And then afterwards, when I came there to live, and he was out of hospital, he came too.” She added, looking up at Gamadge: “We don’t just live on her, Mr. Gamadge. We do the work.”

  “All of it?”

  “Oh, yes. For our board. We’re awfully lucky to be there.”

  “Mrs. Bradlock is considerably lucky to have you. A couple comes high these days.”

  “It’s awfully good of her to have us there in that nice house.”

  “Only of course it’s Mr. Avery Bradlock’s, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. I suppose so. I always think of it as Vera’s.”

  “I’m sure he does, too.”

  They crossed Lexington and turned south. She said: “It isn’t as if Tommy could really support himself yet. He was in the merchant service and torpedoed. His father died while he was at sea, and he has no money. He can’t do his own work yet.”

  “What does he want to do?”

  “He was up at Columbia studying to be a metallurgist… He’s very strong physically now, but if he has to work for anything—I mean examinations and tests, you know—he gets so tired.”

  “Do they think he’ll soon be able to try it again?”

  Her face was anxious. “Yes, they hope so. It makes him very restless.”

  “No wonder Mrs. Bradlock is interested in him.”