The Book of the Lion

by Elizabeth Daly

“She thinks a lot of Tommy. Once when we were there—before Mr. Bradlock died—” She broke off to look up at Gamadge. “Do you know about Mr. Bradlock, Mr. Gamadge?”

  “I know a good deal, yes.”

  “We never went to the studio to see Vera when he was at home. He was always out in the evenings, you know; he came back very late.”

  “So I understand.”

  “Once he came back early, and we heard him—” She paused, as if overwhelmed by memory. “We heard him coming along the flagged walk. Vera jumped up, we could hear him laughing and shouting and singing. Tom went out, and found him lying—lying—” She went hurriedly on: “Tom got him in, and it was terrible. Terrible. And Vera might have been alone, she often was. I don’t know how she lived. Tom said he was dangerous.”

  “I suppose Mrs. Paul knew how to handle it, or she couldn’t have gone on with it.”

  “After that, once or twice, she called Tommy and he went out with her and looked for Mr. Bradlock and brought him home. They knew just where to go.”

  “That was something, anyhow.”

  She stopped as they reached a basement bar and grill, down a flight of steps from the pavement. “Here we are.”

  It was a clean, neat place, lighted by a bleak bluish glare. A radio moaned quietly to itself, invisible. There were no other customers; the barman greeted Miss Orme condescendingly, as an old acquaintance. He cast a sly glance at Gamadge.

  “It’s all right,” Gamadge told him. “I’m just a stand-in.”

  “I wondered where the boy-friend was.”

  “I guess I can have more than one,” said Miss Orme, pleased with this humour. “I met an awfully nice boy at business school,” she informed Gamadge. “He has a very good position in a bank now.”

  “More the better,” said the barman. “Do ’em good.”

  They sat at a table below the window, where they could look out at the dark and quiet avenue. Now and then a bus went by, now and then a cab. The barman placed their order—beer and cheese sandwiches, Miss Orme’s choice—on the checked cloth.

  “Isn’t it nice here?” She was in high spirits.

  “Very cheerful. I’m glad you got over your cold. Is it pretty damp in that studio?”

  “Well, it is, when the furnace isn’t on. It’s heated from the other house, and I don’t think it ever was very warm in the annex. It wasn’t meant to be lived in, you know.”

  “I should think Mrs. Bradlock would have fires; keep the cook-general on her feet.” Gamadge took a bite of fluffy bread and processed cheese. He washed it down with beer.

  “Well, we do have fires in the evening if it’s cold.”

  “And Mr. Welsh is tucked up in bed.”

  “He isn’t there half long enough, I think.”

  Miss Orme was working on her sandwich with every indication of enjoyment. Gamadge asked: “What’s the layout of the place?”

  “Just two little bedrooms upstairs off the gallery, they used to be cloakrooms, and a bath. There’s a kitchen and another bathroom downstairs off the living-room. Vera sleeps down there on the couch. She likes it—she says it’s airier.”

  “And it must have been more convenient, when Bradlock was alive.”

  “Poor Vera.”

  “Where do you go when they have a business conference and throw you out—as they did last night and this afternoon?”

  She laughed. “I just take a walk or do shopping or go to the movies.”

  “Why not up to your room for a rest?”

  “Those rooms are so small and stuffy.”

  “Just holes to crawl into. No back door to dive out of in an emergency?”

  “Oh, no.”

  “What’s it like in the back? I couldn’t see from the street. Somebody’s garden?”

  “I don’t know. There aren’t any windows in the back. Our bedroom windows look out on the wall of the house next door.”

  “Alley there?”

  “No, it’s just a space, closed off.”

  “Well, you’re very snug.” Gamadge’s sandwich was already lying heavy on his chest. He asked: “You never really met the Avery Bradlocks until last night? There’s a wonderful-looking woman!”

  “Oh, isn’t she? But she looks so frozen. No, I never met them before. They never come.” She puzzled over this, her eyes on her glass of beer, her hand clasping it.

  “And you never go.”

  “They ask Vera to dinner sometimes; Christmas and Easter. I don’t think relatives by marriage always do care much about one another, do you, Mr. Gamadge?” Her eyes questioned him candidly.

  “Cousins don’t either.”

  After a moment she said: “Vera’s very nice to get on with. I didn’t think I spoke as if I didn’t like her.”

  “You didn’t. She doesn’t impress me as your type, that’s all.”

  “Tom likes her.”

  “That’s lucky. Isn’t there a friend of Mrs. Bradlock’s that she sees a good deal of—a Mrs. Wakes, Weekes?”

  “I don’t think I ever heard of her. Vera never knew many people here in New York. She couldn’t.”

  “I suppose not. Bradlock would break up any party, I should think.”

  “She couldn’t go anywhere.”

  They smoked a cigarette, and then Gamadge paid and they went out into the bleakness of the street. This time Gamadge hailed a cab, and they rode home in style. Once, turning to Gamadge, that radiant smile on her face, she said: “I love to ride.”

  “That’s good.”

  “I enjoyed the evening so much.”

  “It would be nice to meet again. My wife would like to make your acquaintance, Sally. Would you have time to drop in some day?”

  “Oh, I’d love to. I’d love to come.”

  “Here’s the address. Any day, the sooner the better. We have tea in the afternoons. Mr. Iverson thinks it’s rather sissy, but I always slop mine in the saucer—if that makes it less so.”

  “I love tea.”

  “Like cats? We have a couple, and a dog. There’s a little boy, but he isn’t allowed to pester visitors.”

  “I don’t know any families. I’d love to come.”

  They turned into the Bradlocks’ street, and Gamadge had the driver stop at the iron gates. He got out, kept the cab, and walked down the flagged yard with Sally. He could see Paul Bradlock staggering home over those flags, past the windows of his brother’s house.

  She opened the door with her key and went in. Gamadge returned to his cab and gave an address. They passed a handsome car stopping at the Bradlocks’; within it Gamadge caught a glimpse of Avery Bradlock in a white tie, and Mrs. Avery Bradlock, beautiful and pale, beside him. Another life, another world.

  Well, he was travelling now with a certainty; the little typist who “loved to ride,” who had greeted him so radiantly in the Translux Theatre, had not been sent on that errand to the Wakes apartment at five o’clock that afternoon. Sally Orme had nothing on her mind but the struggle for existence, and the problems of her friends.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Graveyard Stretch

  THE MEDICAL AND SURGICAL HOSPITAL spreads its great bulk over a city block, new brick and stone buildings stemming out from old. Gamadge paid off the cab and walked up broad steps between bronze lanterns. He pushed open a bronze door and then a glass one that led from the vestibule into the great white corridor.

  An office window on his right was empty. He pushed a muted bell, and the receptionist came out of her inner sanctum and looked at him. She was a tall dark girl, who had not bothered to make up for the long hours of the night.

  Gamadge leaned on the window ledge, all humility. “I don’t know whether I’m asking too much,” he said. “If there’s a rule, tell me.”

  The young lady looked as if there were a good many rules, if she cared to remember them. She asked: “What was it?”

  “You have an orderly here on night duty, man named Welsh. Do you think I could speak to him?”

  The receptionist lo
oked blank.

  “Tell you how it is,” said Gamadge. “I didn’t know how to get hold of him any other way—this is the only address I have. It’s about a job for him. You know his history, of course—he was a patient here. War hero.”

  “I know him.”

  “Well, we all want to give him a hand. A part-time job, morning or afternoon, in his own line of work—it might help out, till he’s ready to go on with his work at the University.”

  “I don’t know whether he’s available. You might go and sit down in the waiting-room over there, while I inquire.”

  “Mighty nice of you. Here’s my card.”

  Gamadge crossed to the waiting-room, and sat in a wooden armchair beside a table. After a wait, a man in a business suit came to the door and looked at him. He said: “Mr. Gamadge? I’m the night supervisor.”

  Gamadge rose. “Oh yes. About Mr. Welsh?”

  The supervisor came into the waiting-room, Gamadge’s card in his hand. He looked at it. “We’d like to know something about this job, Mr. Gamadge. Welsh—being our patient, we ought to know what he’d be getting into.”

  Gamadge explained himself and his work. “It just struck me that a little laboratory work with me might be the very thing for this boy. No responsibility, and surroundings he’d feel at home in. I wouldn’t suggest it, but I understand he is doing some daytime work, perhaps not entirely congenial. I could give you references. Dr. Ethelbert Hamish, and others.”

  The supervisor said: “It sounds as if it might be what he needs—get him into line again. He’s not a psychoneurotic case, Mr. Gamadge. He was under a long nervous strain, and it’s left him with a certain lack of self-confidence. That’s all. He’s been afraid to tackle anything that entails—afraid to fail, you know.” The supervisor’s spectacles glinted in the bare light.

  “I understand perfectly. I’d do the paper work. Could I see him?”

  “Well, I’d better speak to him first. Are you prepared to wait until he’s at liberty? And there might be a call for him at any moment. He’s on duty for ambulance cases tonight.”

  “Glad to wait, of course.”

  The supervisor went away. Gamadge sat down again and lighted a cigarette. In perhaps ten minutes Welsh appeared in the doorway, looking very big, clumsy, and dark in his whites. He stood for a moment glowering; then he said: “I ought to sock you.”

  “Sock me? For offering you this job?”

  “Vera’s been telling me,” said Welsh in an angry voice.

  “Telling you to sock me? Well, I’m not entirely surprised at that,” said Gamadge.

  Welsh came forward and stood looking down at Gamadge, his big hands clenched. He said: “You think it’s so unethical for her to put up that game on Avery Bradlock—about those letters. I carried them down to Iverson’s place and up to his room, and let me tell you I’d have been tickled to death to do it if I’d known the box was full of old newspapers. Glad she was smart enough to do it, and it was none of your damn business.”

  Gamadge said mildly: “Not knowing the parties well, I can’t be blamed for wondering whether Mr. Iverson mightn’t be putting something over on her. Or can I?”

  Welsh, taken aback, gazed at him frowning. Then he said: “I didn’t get the impression you were on her side. My God, when I think of those Bradlocks in their house—guzzling and swilling.”

  Gamadge raised his eyebrows. “You’ve seen them at it?”

  “I don’t have to.”

  “Mr. Avery Bradlock can hardly be blamed for eating and drinking under his own roof. Does he ration you?”

  Welsh, rigid, his head a little forward, colour coming up on his cheekbones, was silent.

  “Sorry for the allusion,” said Gamadge amiably, “but I don’t understand this resentment against Mr. Bradlock, just because he pays the bills. If he covers the expenses of three people instead of merely his sister-in-law’s, that’s his business. He knows what they are.”

  Welsh said with repressed fury: “I eat out.”

  “No doubt you do. You’re quite justified in feeling sympathy for Mrs. Paul Bradlock, Mr. Welsh, and for excusing her little game about the letters. Would you feel as sympathetic if you knew that she had sold property of her husband’s soon after his death, and that she is now enjoying an income from the proceeds—an income on one hundred thousand dollars?”

  Welsh stared. “Who told you so?”

  “She did. Iverson did. I’m not surprised that they didn’t tell you about The Book of the Lion.”

  “The what?”

  Gamadge laughed. “A fable. I had the pleasure of a short visit with your friend Miss Orme this evening.” He looked Welsh in the eye. “Get her out of there.”

  “What?”

  “Get her out of that place, Welsh.”

  The young man, looking bewildered, came up and leaned against the table; he said: “I don’t know what you mean. We owe Vera—”

  “You don’t owe her a damned thing.”

  “How can I—why should I get Sally away from Vera Bradlock?”

  “Because she doesn’t belong there. You think it’s all right for Mrs. Paul Bradlock to lie herself out of the holes she gets into, and play these tricks on her brother-in-law; can you imagine Sally Orme doing it?

  “If you call her a little woman,” said Gamadge violently, “I’ll sock you. And I could last several rounds, believe it or not.”

  Welsh, completely bemused, glanced at Gamadge’s length and build and said nothing.

  “Sally Orme,” continued Gamadge, “is a rare type—candid and kind. Do you like Iverson?”

  “Just a city feller,” muttered Welsh.

  “So am I; do I remind you of him?”

  There was a silence. Then Welsh said: “I couldn’t even take care of her.”

  “She could take care of herself. She’s staying at the studio because she thinks she’s needed; she’d get full-time work tomorrow. As for you, I’m offering you the chance to get a room of your own.”

  Welsh asked: “You know I’m not even a chemist yet?”

  “You’ll do. I have a queer profession, Mr. Welsh, as you probably know, and I don’t punch clocks on my assistants. There’s a lot of photographic enlargement involved in the work I do, analysis of inks and paper, that kind of thing. You’d soon get the idea. If I need highly expert work I get it from a regular technician. Most men in your field are full-time workers, and I don’t need that. I want somebody who can find his way around a laboratory, and can use apparatus.”

  Welsh said after a pause: “I’d like the job, if—” He put his hand up and rubbed the back of his head. “Have to look it over.”

  “It’ll pay your rent, at least, and you can work it in with this job for the time being.”

  “I catch up on sleep in the mornings, if I can.”

  “Suits me. How about coming in tomorrow afternoon, just after lunch? And you might ask Miss Orme to drop in for tea. She’s already accepted the invitation for some day unspecified.”

  Welsh’s eyes roved around the white room. “I’d have to speak to Vera Bradlock.”

  “Naturally. Did they give you that card of mine? No? Well, here’s another, and here”—Gamadge scribbled on it—“is my telephone number.” He rose. “Think it over.”

  Welsh said slowly: “Thanks.”

  Gamadge left him standing with the card in his hand, and went out and through the bronze doors to the front steps. He decided to walk the half mile home.

  This might be the last night for some time that he would feel entirely free to walk deserted streets so late. He smiled. The deadline! Tomorrow morning there would be the news in the papers that he had been trespassing again. Too bad that young Mr. Welsh couldn’t be hired as a bodyguard.

  Gamadge was now approaching a stretch on Lexington, opposite the old Armory, that is peculiarly dark and quiet at night, almost utterly so in the small hours. It was on this stretch that he first asked himself exactly why he thought he could set a deadline for Mrs. Paul
Bradlock and Mr. Hilliard Iverson. They hadn’t waited for him to find Mrs. Wakes before they killed her; they hadn’t waited until he knew she was dead, to inform him by implication that they couldn’t be responsible. Why should they wait for the morning papers before making a try at eliminating the only human being who seemed likely to be in the slightest degree dangerous to them? Since they had seen him in the afternoon he had had private talk with Sally Orme, and she might easily have reported it. He had had private talk of a most explosive character with Thomas Welsh, and he might not wait until morning before reporting to Vera Bradlock—there were certainly telephones at the hospital. What more likely? Loyal young people both.

  And if Welsh had reported, Iverson—or Mrs. Bradlock, for that matter, Gamadge wouldn’t put it past her—could get to his street before he did. A dark, quiet residential street, with plenty of cover for all.

  No cabs anywhere. By the time Gamadge reached his corner he was entirely convinced that some deep area-way contained somebody with a blunt instrument. They wouldn’t shoot, they hated a noise. Damn it all, he thought, annoyed with himself for this onslaught of nerves, he couldn’t run.

  He swung into the block. There were the two rows of unlighted private houses, the wells of darkness between. Trees to make it more shadowy, a tree in fact obscuring the one street light. Half-way down the block a figure moved—two figures, one of them curiously dwarfed. Something a little like a lion? He recognized his wife Clara, hatless and in her topcoat, walking her chow.

  Gamadge, smiling, stopped to contemplate this heartening vision. Once he had seen a man fall to his death before the rush of that tawny catapult. He laughed, walking forward. There was a deafening bark, and Clara turned, waved, slipped the leash. Sun leapt to meet him, stood up and put his paws on Gamadge’s shoulders. Gamadge embraced the huge furry head; he greeted Clara as sternly as he could:

  “May I ask what you mean by being out on the streets at this hour?”

  “You know I’m all right with Sun. I thought I’d wait up, and why shouldn’t we come out for a breath of air?”

  Sun, who had dropped to four feet, looked up at Gamadge with his black tongue hanging out. Gamadge said: “Why shouldn’t you? Any prowlers?”