Arrow Pointing Nowhere

ARROW POINTING NOWHERE

Elizabeth Daly

F
ELONY
& M
AYHEM
P
RESS
•
N
EW
Y
ORK

S
CHENCK PUSHED
the ball of crumpled paper across the table. “The trouble is,” he said, “you don't get your mail.”

Gamadge picked the thing up and smoothed it out. It proved to be a buff-colored envelope of good quality, addressed in neat typing to Blake Fenway, Esq., in the east seventies. A business address was printed in the upper left-hand corner:
J. Hall. Rare Books
. In the upper right-hand corner was a cancelled stamp; the postmark was dated January 29th.

After a glance at Schenck's face, which wore a peculiar smile, Gamadge turned the envelope over. It had been opened, and J. Hall's bill or circular removed; then, apparently, it had been crushed up and thrown into a wastebasket. But first—or afterwards—somebody had printed Gamadge's name and address below the flap, untidily and with a pencil. Gamadge again looked enquiry at Schenck, looked down at the envelope, put two fingers into it, and withdrew a scrap of glazed white paper. It looked as though it had been torn from
the margin of a magazine. A pencilled line of print staggered across it:

RECOMMEND EARLY VISIT TO INSPECT INTERESTING CURIOSA. DISCRETION.

Gamadge studied this with surprise. Schenck permitted himself a cackling laugh, and his eyes glittered profanely. He was no longer the natty and ultrafashionable insurance investigator of other days; now a member in good standing of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, he wore the inconspicuous and somber dress of the ordinary citizen. But at present he looked his foxiest.

Gamadge asked: “Who's been compromising me and J.
Hall and Mr. Blake Fenway in this manner?”

“I don't know.”

“Did you people get this out of an ash can? Did you intercede for me with your colleagues?”

“You're not far wrong.” But Schenck's face lost its merriment as he extended a finger to point at the exhibits on the table: “There's proof that even a postman can be jounced out of his routine by sheer weight of accumulated evidence. But I don't know how many of those paper balls have been lost; the Fenway postman didn't notice any until a week ago yesterday, but he's seen five of them since. Never in the morning, always in the afternoon about three o'clock, when he makes his last delivery. Always in the same place, inside the railings, between the front steps and the service door. You know the old Fenway corner house?”

“Of course. It's completely detached, with grassplots between it and the street, and a big lawn to the south.”

“And it fronts on the side street, and a ten-foot wall runs between it and the next house. They used to have their private stable behind the wall there, but the postman says
that now it's a yard, running through to the garden and lawn. You go through a gate in the railing, along a flagged path, and through the service door, which is kept unlocked in the daytime. The grassplots around the house are nine or ten feet deep, and the railing is about four feet high. But when it reaches the lawn it shoots to ten feet, and there's a gate there too. Remember?”

“I remember.”

“On Friday, January 22nd, the postman saw the first ball of paper; he was going along the flagged walk to the service door. It was lying about halfway between the door and the front steps, and about a yard inside the railing. A two-story bay window juts out above and behind where it lay. He thought casually that the ashmen must have let it fall out of the can on their way to the street, and that the wind had blown it to the right. He also thought casually that it was funny the outdoor man had let it stay there; the Fenway place is kept as neat as a pin.

“There's no afternoon delivery on Saturday, so he didn't see the next ball until Monday. Tuesday he saw another, Wednesday he saw another. Thursday came the big storm, and he was a little late; but there was one of those balls sitting in the exact spot, with the snow beginning to cover it. If it had been there more than a minute or two it would have been covered, but that east wind we had kept blowing the snow off it; it was good stiff paper like this one.

“He stood there with the storm whistling round his ears, and he wondered whether the things were there for him, and only for him; because the old Irishman that takes care of the place goes by clockwork, and cleans up the front of the premises at three-fifteen every afternoon; the postman met him at it when the delivery was late. Thursday was a near-blizzard, and perhaps the old fellow had quit entirely for the day. But on other days he'd be right along after the postman left,
and he'd pick up any waste paper that happened to be lying around. Happened? The postman was beginning to think that there were too many coincidences happening around the Fenway house. He leaned over, bag and umbrella and all, and picked up the paper ball. It was blue.”

“Not this one.”

“No—there was a slight hitch in the proceedings; you can't expect too much cerebration from a postman making deliveries in a storm like that. It was nothing but an old envelope, business envelope, he thinks from a bookstore.”

Gamadge whistled.

“It seemed to be empty, and it was scrawled up with pencil marks; so he threw it away. He says he put it in the rubbish basket on the corner, but in a storm like that I shouldn't have bothered with rubbish baskets myself; he threw it away.

“Came yesterday, snow gone, sun out; postman walks through the gate in the railing at three o'clock sharp, and there's his ball of paper waiting for him; and this time he's sure it's for him. He grabs it up, but afterwards he looks up at the bow window. He has a look above it, to the top story. He wonders whether some child isn't trying to have some fun with him; his own kids like to throw things out of windows. But the curtains are all in place, layers of 'em; nobody ever looks out of a window in a house like the Fenways'.

“He looks at the basement window under the bay. The basement's on ground level, windows barred; and they're all snowed up.

“He puts the envelope in his pocket, and goes through to the kitchen door, and delivers the mail. Mind you, he doesn't show what he's picked up to the maid that takes in the letters; he's pretty well convinced by now that the paper balls weren't meant to be seen by anybody but him, certainly not by anybody in the Fenway house.

“When he's on the street again he reads your address on the back of the envelope, and he finds the enclosure. They don't mean a thing to him, but he takes them along with him to his branch post office, and shows them to one of the sorters there, and tells the story. That,” said Schenck, leaning slightly forward and rapping the edge of the table, “was what he was meant to do. A long shot, but did you ever know anything slicker?”

Gamadge met his eye.

“Hardly ever.”

“
Curiosa
. That's the magic word. The sorter didn't know what it implied, either; but he thought the whole thing was queer enough to be shown to the assistant postmaster.
He
knew what
curiosa
meant, all right, it's a word the post office is always on the lookout for, they're always watching for deleterious matter sent through the mails.

“He was in a quandary, though; that scrap of paper there didn't look as if it had been meant to go through the mails, it looked like a jotting or a memorandum or a rough draft of something J. Hall intended for his typist or his printer. Something to go into a circular or a special catalogue. And your name and address on the back of the envelope looked as if it had been meant for you. Well, he didn't know you, or J. Hall either; but he knew all about the Fenways. If Blake Fenway was going to be involved in this, the assistant postmaster wasn't going to start the wheels turning until he'd had advice; especially after he heard that Thursday's envelope was blue. Another bookseller? He was in a fog. What he did was to call up a man he knows in our office here, and fix an appointment for the evening, and show him the exhibit.

“The man knows me, and knows I know you. He passed it along to me this morning, and here it is.”

Gamadge was studying the scrap of paper again. He said: “Thanks.”

“You wouldn't say it was all a mare's nest? Can J. Hall really have made that notation after all?”

“Most unlikely. I'm an old customer, and though I can't answer for Hall's morals, I know his ways. I don't think he ever in his life made a memorandum on a scrap like this, and I never saw him print anything. He writes a small, crabbed hand, and the printer can decipher it or go to the devil. His clerk doesn't make rough drafts; he types Hall's. And I should think yesterday's blue envelope settled that, anyway; the sender of this message only wanted a rare-book man, any rare-book man, as camouflage.”

“In case one of the paper balls was found by the wrong party?”

“I'm afraid so.”

“It does look as if somebody in that house was trying to communicate, and making heavy weather of it.”

“It does. You and your colleague and the assistant postmaster and the sorter and the Fenway postman have all been very intelligent and discreet.”

“I told them you'd probably be willing to look into it. But you're a busy man these days. I wasn't sure you'd have time for extra work.”

“I always answer my letters.”

“I guess it's meant for you, all right. The wonder is that it ever got to you.”

“Well, I don't know; if J. Hall had been tackled, as he would have been in the ordinary course of things, he'd have tackled me—with ferocity.”

“What do you make of it?” Schenck sat back to watch his friend, who was now inspecting the creased envelope.

“What anybody would. This was in a Fenway wastebasket; Fenway's undoubtedly a customer of J. Hall's, and since he received it so late in the month, it probably contained what mine contained; for I got one yesterday morning myself—a prestatement of next month's rarities. I must try to find my envelope; I'd like to answer this letter,” said Gamadge, smiling, “and a Hall envelope would be the perfect envelope to use. This one was retrieved from the wastebasket by somebody who hadn't access to stationery, pens, or ink. It was addressed to me in a hurry and in the dark, or under the edge of a table; certainly the enclosed message was written in those circumstances, or others not unlike them. The writer's eye wasn't on it.

“And in such circumstances print is even more difficult than handwriting. But the writer used print because he or she couldn't afford to be identified by handwriting. The writer hoped that if this were found, it would be attributed to J. Hall and thrown away.”

“And the writer can't get out of the house and get to a mailbox. How about the finder tackling J. Hall about it?”

“Same result as the present one; J. Hall would indignantly deny all knowledge of it, and pass it on to me.”

“I suppose you'll see Hall, though?”

“Oh, yes. I'll have a word with him. He may be my hope of meeting Mr. Fenway.”

Schenck wrinkled up his forehead. “We're getting on; perhaps you don't know what we're heading into. You're making this out a kind of an affair that might be going on in some gangster's hideout; not too easy to pull off in some cellar or garage.”