“That’s fine. Be a big help to me. Just now there isn’t much doing, but a little later on”—Gamadge went over to his office desk—“we’ll be swamped. Big collection from an estate, and the deceased seems to have bought everything in sight. We fear he didn’t take advice. Let’s see now, about terms.”
Welsh came forward, and they settled that. “Want to start as of now?” asked Gamadge.
“If I can.”
“Good.” They went into the laboratory, where Welsh had been unshrouding apparatus. He said: “Nice place.”
“Hope you’ll feel at home here. Later on, when you give up the hospital job and go back to Columbia, you can work here in the evenings if you like. They’ll certainly make some arrangement for you, you know.”
Welsh said, adjusting the screws of a microscope: “Suppose I’m never able to make a living.”
“You’re doing that now.” Gamadge was looking through papers in a drawer. “Do you type?”
“Yes.”
“That’ll be a help, too. You understand how to enlarge photographs?”
“I can do it.”
“These things have to be photographed and enlarged.”
Welsh was interested. “What are they?” He picked up a mounted letter carefully.
“This is a letter by a seventeenth-century divine, who has suddenly become fashionable enough to be faked. This is the possible fake. We have to compare them in every way.”
“How do you know which is the real McCoy?” asked Welsh, looking closely at them both.
“This one has been in recipient’s family ever since it was written, when nobody would have bothered to fake it.”
“Ever since…”
“They wanted money and sold their stuff. If you’re going to work in here you ought to have an overall. There isn’t a blouse in the place that would go on you; Theodore can let you have something to keep your clean slacks from getting smeared up.”
Welsh laid the letters down, and turned to the big camera. He said: “Youmans is a nice guy, isn’t he?”
“Yes. I wanted you to meet him. That’s why I—but you probably realized it.”
“I don’t care where I eat.”
“If you want to ask me anything, I’ll be in the office out there. Here’s the telephone, and there’s the dark-room. It used to be a pantry, and this was the dining-room. We’re not particular either.”
Welsh laughed. Gamadge said: “You know you’re a lucky devil.” The other raised his dark eyes, and Gamadge went on: “To have a friend like Sally Orme.”
“Some people wouldn’t see it.”
“Some people are fools. What a disposition. What a smile.”
“She thinks a lot of you, too.”
“I’m glad she made up her mind so soon.”
Welsh leaned against a corner of a table. He said: “You’re way off about Vera—Mrs. Bradlock.”
“That so?”
“She told me about that money. She explained the whole business. She didn’t want a lot of questions asked about that manuscript or whatever it was. I don’t blame her. She says Bradlock came by it honestly, she made inquiries and nothing’s been stolen. She needed the cash. She’s making plans to go away, West, and get into a business with a friend.”
“Is she?”
“She figures Bradlock owed her the chance to take a rest and look around, and so do I.” He turned away, and then came back. “I meant to ask you—you were in the papers this morning. Any reason you’d rather I didn’t talk about it?”
“Talk away, why not.”
“It’s just that you didn’t mention it before, that’s all.”
“Never occurred to me to mention it.”
“Did they grill you?”
“Grill me? Why should they?”
“Well, you were there just before and after.”
“It’s supposed to be a suicide.”
“Was it really something you talked about?”
Gamadge said: “I didn’t think Mrs. Wakes seemed particularly depressed when I left. I was astounded when I found her dead.”
“Vera—I showed her the paper. She’d already seen the item. She says her husband may have known Mrs. Wakes in Paris, but she didn’t.” Welsh looked up at Gamadge. “Would you do that?”
“Kill myself?” Gamadge was lighting a cigarette. When it was burning, he took it out of his mouth and answered: “None of us knows that answer. I’d have to be in a bad way, though, not to wait for tomorrow. I’m convinced of that much.”
After a long pause Welsh said: “So would I.”
The chow, Sun, walked in, sauntered up to Welsh and delicately touched his nose to the young man’s outstretched hand.
“I see you know the approach,” said Gamadge.
“Sure, let them see what they’re up against before you start pawing them. You have a nice dog there.”
“He’s my wife’s. The cats are mine.”
“Get along together?”
“Very well indeed.”
Welsh turned to the camera. Gamadge went back to the office, closing the door after him. He found Malcolm, coat on and hat in hand, in the hall doorway.
Gamadge said: “He’s hired.”
“Seems all right to me. But—”
“He wasn’t here under orders to get the job at all costs. Couldn’t you see that?”
“Well, I did think so.”
“He’s too big to be an accomplice. Might as well send a water buffalo around tampering with evidence. Can’t you find him a room? You know real-estate people.”
“I’ll ring them.”
“Two rooms,” said Gamadge. “One for Miss Orme.”
Malcolm, laughing, went away. Gamadge sat down at his desk and rang Indus.
Indus answered: “Did it go all right?”
“Couldn’t have been more of a success. Now I want to talk to the lady of the house. I think the two young people will be otherwise engaged until dinner time. Would you go up there and see if the coast is clear, and meet me at the gates, say at six o’clock?”
“Don’t you want my report first?”
“Have you one?”
“I was interested. Funny layout, I wanted to see it in the daytime. I went up there around nine o’clock this morning. She started out from the annex at nine thirty, morning paper under her arm.”
“Did she look as if she’d had a shock?”
“What can you tell from a face like that? Had on a dowdy rig, old tweed suit and pull-on felt. She made a beeline down town by bus for that walk-up in the Fifties—where the Iverson guy lives.”
“She’d want to talk to him.”
“She was there best part of an hour, and he came out on the street with her afterwards. He looked mighty bad.”
“That’s good news.”
“And her face was all screwed up. I don’t think they had much fun out of the visit. By the time they parted he was mad clear through. He went back in the walk-up, and she hailed a cab. I got one just behind, and we went down by the East Side Drive to William Street, and she went into the City and Seaboard Trust Company.”
“No!”
“Did I do right to take the cab down? You didn’t give me no assignment for to-day.”
“That’s because I was afraid you’d tire yourself out for nothing.”
“This kind of thing don’t tire me. I kept the cab, because they don’t come easy down there. She was in the bank some time, came out with her big handbag under her arm and hanging on to it with both hands too, the way the women do when they’ve got something valuable in tow.”
“Perhaps that hundred thousand isn’t salted away in an annuity after all.”
“What?”
“Never mind. Go ahead, I’m all ears.”
“I couldn’t find out of course if she cashed a cheque, or got something out of deposit, or what. I’d have lost my cab.”
“We’ll have to use our imaginations.”
“She rode right home, and then she came
out again and went down town to Fifth Avenue and had a shopping tour. Bought the stores out, she was loaded down with boxes.”
“She’s getting ready for a trip.”
“I saw her home, and she looked so dog-tired that I thought she’d probably stay there. Anyway, I called it a day and had lunch.”
“Indus, I don’t know what to say.”
“I enjoyed it.”
“Will you meet me up there at six o’clock?”
“Tell you what, I’ll be down in that service alley beside the apartment house. Nobody can see me there from the annex, that great high wall with the spiked railing runs all the way through to the next street. If anybody comes out of the annex I can be walking through to the next street.”
“Good idea. I’d like to catch her alone. Watch out for Iverson.”
Gamadge put down the telephone. It rang immediately, and he picked it up again. Avery Bradlock’s voice came to him clearly:
“Mr. Gamadge? This is Avery Bradlock.”
“Yes, Mr. Bradlock.”
“This morning I saw that paragraph in the paper about a Mrs. Wakes; and your being there just before and after—”
“Yes. I was there.”
“I think my brother knew these people, in Paris. Most extraordinary thing, what on earth could have induced her to—did you foresee it at all? Was she—”
“I was dumbfounded when I found her dead. Couldn’t believe it.”
“Must have been upsetting for you.”
“Well, it was, rather.”
“Vera—my sister-in-law—said she had never met Mrs. Wakes or her husband. At first I wondered whether you had gone there on account of something that was said at dinner the other night.”
“To be quite frank, I did get to thinking about your brother’s Paris friends, and all that circle.”
“I’d like very much to talk to you about it. There’s a lot of business at the office just now; I play bridge regularly at the club every day until about seven, but if I might call in before that… Or would you find it too inconvenient to drop in at the house for a cocktail?”
“As a matter of fact, I’ll be in that neighbourhood.”
“That’s most kind of you. If you get there before I do, my wife will entertain you for me. Thank you very much.”
Gamadge replaced the telephone and went upstairs; he told Clara that within the next two hours, for reasons strategical as well as humane, he must have a housing list for Thomas Welsh and if possible for Miss Orme.
From that moment there was feverish activity upstairs and down. While Thomas Welsh—oblivious of the hell popping on his behalf all around him—worked quietly behind his closed doors and in the dark-room, Gamadge and Clara looked up numbers and called them. They called welfare centres, housing bureaux, Clara’s relatives and all their available friends. Youmans was sent out to consult with neighbourhood tradesmen and with the patrolman on the beat. Theodore, and Athalie the cook, came to the library with reminders of distant rooming houses and model tenements which had sheltered Gamadge’s assistants in the past.
By half-past four Gamadge had several addresses. Clara’s aunt Vauregard had supplied that of a former housekeeper in Queens, who wanted a respectable young man for her spare bedroom who would be quiet at night. (Welsh filled requirements there, as few other young men could.) Somebody else knew of some young people in Jackson Heights who had clubbed together to buy a house, and hadn’t filled the top story. Elena Malcolm came through with a lively suggestion from a Brooklyn matron whose son was willing to enter into a kind of Box and Cox arrangement with Welsh—Welsh to occupy the young man’s bedroom from morn till eve, while the son was working like everybody else at the normal hours. There was a couple in the Bronx with two rooms and a bath just vacated by a couple who had moved up in the income brackets and down in the residential areas; they wanted another couple, but frankly preferred them married.
Throughout the campaign, Malcolm’s real-estate friends naturally preserved a dignified silence.
At twenty minutes to five Gamadge pronounced himself satisfied. At a quarter to five Theodore came up and said a young lady was calling. “And tea is on the way.”
“Good. Bring her up,” said Gamadge, “and tell Mr. Welsh to knock off for refreshments.”
Miss Sally Orme entered the library shyly, was greeted by Clara, and introduced to the animals. Welsh appeared, followed by Theodore and the tea tray.
“And all we need,” observed Gamadge, as they sat around Clara’s gate-leg table, “is that nice young man that works in the bank.”
The young man who worked in the bank provided facetious small talk until the party had settled down comfortably to a solid meal of tea and toast, thin sandwiches and cakes. Theodore said that there were some buns coming. Athalie just had them out of the oven.
The housing list was exhibited. Clara thought that the place in the Bronx was the best proposition of the lot, wasn’t it possible? Welsh said it was all right as far as he was concerned. Gamadge imagined that the landlords might be satisfied with an engagement, if they had it in writing. Youmans appeared in the doorway, chewing, with a belated offer from a seaman friend to share his folks’ living-room, put another cot in, but the consensus of opinion in the library was that Welsh’s hours might not entirely fit the seaman’s folks’ household arrangements.
Young Henry, brought in by his nurse, leaned against his father’s knee and ate toast. The animals lay about, leaving it up to the human race not to step on them.
Sally Orme said they’d better not stay too long, with all these places to look at. “And if I did find a place, too, it would be all right; because Vera’s going away.”
“Is she really?” Gamadge avoided his wife’s eye. He passed cake. “Mr. Welsh said something, but I didn’t know it was settled.”
“Tom doesn’t know either. She just got a telegram from her friend in Los Angeles. The friend has a florist’s store, and Vera can buy into it with that thousand dollars she got for those letters.”
Welsh sat quietly busy with his second cup of tea; he bent down and picked up a piece of toast which young Henry had dropped on the floor.
“She’ll be a partner,” said Sally. “She’s all excited, and she’s packing now. I wish Tom was there to help her get her things out of the attic, but we ought to find somewhere to live.”
“Yes,” said Welsh. “Seems so.”
“Anyway, she hasn’t much to pack, everything there belongs to the Avery Bradlocks.”
Welsh sat back on the chesterfield. “Guess she just can’t help keeping her business to herself,” he said. “I had a taste of what she went through, that night her husband nearly broke the Avery Bradlocks’ bow window. Remember, Sally?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Hated them—Paul Bradlock did. Well, Avery kept him pretty short of cash.” He turned to Sally and put a hand on hers and smiled. “It’s all over now.”
“And the agency is going to get me a position in an office.”
Clara detached young Henry from the group and took him away. At the door she said: “I’m rather sorry Dave Malcolm went home. He would have been so interested.”
Sally rose. “We ought to go, Tom.”
“But I haven’t finished my trick downstairs.”
“Don’t worry about that,” said Gamadge. “First day and all. The important thing is for you both to get somewhere to live.”
They took the list and went away. Gamadge accompanied them to the door; when he closed it after them the telephone in the office was ringing. It was Indus jubilant:
“She’s in there alone, Mr. Gamadge. The kid left, and she went out herself to post letters, and now she’s back in there. I couldn’t swear to it, but I’d say she was in there alone.”
“Be up in a few minutes, Indus.”
“I’ll be down in that service alley. Then if anybody did go in the annex, I could duck out and warn you.”
“Thanks. I’ll see you.”
Gamad
ge hurried to the second floor. He told Clara that he was going out to a cocktail party at the Bradlocks’. “And you’re still not asked.”
“Henry,” she said, as he hastily prepared himself for his outing, “those little things are all right.”
“Even Tiny Tom?”
“I like him. I’m so glad they’re getting away. If you never do anything more in this case, you did that.”
“Well, it does look a little that way.” He laughed, kissed her, and ran downstairs. At the corner of the street he took a cab.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Informal
GAMADGE DISMISSED the cab at the Bradlocks’ corner. He walked past the apartment house slowly, getting out a cigarette. At the top of the service steps he paused to light it.
Indus remained below. He said: “Nobody went in, nobody came out.” Turning, he squinted up at the side wall of the studio; almost flush with the wall and railing, it showed two narrow and tall windows and a higher, smaller one beyond. Indus said: “It’s a kind of an ugly little place, squatting there.”
“Vampires might live in it.”
“That’s so.”
“Come up a minute.”
Indus, on the top step, took a light from Gamadge, while the latter talked low. Indus nodded, nodded again, grinned, threw away his cigarette unsmoked, and after a few more words from Gamadge came up to the street level. Gamadge, after a glance around him, went back a little way towards the corner. Indus walked through the iron gates and along the flagged path to the studio door. An insignificant little figure, frail and ageing, he yet looked businesslike and full of assurance. He had some papers in his hand, and he took a pencil out of his pocket and inserted it behind his ear.
He rang at the studio door. After a wait, Mrs. Paul Bradlock opened it. She looked impatient and preoccupied. Her hair was done up in a cotton bandanna, and she wore a pink overall apron, creased and dusty.
Her hand on the knob, she asked shortly: “What is it?”
“Mr. Welsh in?”
“No.”
“I’m calling about that metallographic and petrographic microscope.”
“The what?”
“Mr. Welsh ordered it on approval.” Indus fumbled among papers.
The Book of the Lion Page 13
