Arrow Pointing Nowhere (18 page)

Arline received the Flyer from Gamadge, and lifted it. “It isn't heavy. Will they let me take it on the train?”

“Certainly they will. Don't go to Rockliffe, you know; get out at the station below, and take a taxi to the Oaktree.”

Clara spoke casually: “Arline, you'd better wear my thick tweed suit and topcoat. It may be awfully cold.”

“I'll say I'll wear them.”

“The sled is awfully dirty.” Clara went off for dusters, and Gamadge took out his wallet. “Here's expense money now. I can't begin to say how grateful I am to you, Arline; the thing's in your hands now—yours and Harold's. Everything has to synchronize tomorrow, and I'll have to depend absolutely on you two. I'll call Harold up in the morning; let him know
when I can leave my office for the Fenway house. Then he'll have to give me the all clear, and then I'll go up to Number 24 and try to give the all clear to my client.”

“I'll do my part of it, anyway.”

“Harold's job is going to be tough; I don't know how tough.”

“Mr. Gamadge, excuse me for saying so, but you don't seem to know so very much about this case, do you?”

“The trouble is my client can't tell me much. Too dangerous.”

Clara returned with cleaning rags, Gamadge found an oilcan, and they all dusted, polished and lubricated the Flyer until Gamadge pronounced it fit for service. He carried it up to the front hall, where Arline would find it in the morning. Arline then disappeared with Clara; when she came back she wore Clara's suit, topcoat and little tweed hat; Gamadge, closing the front door after her, remarked that she could now if necessary pass as the friend of a friend of Hilda Grove's.

“What's Hilda Grove like, Henry?”

“Inexpressibly lovely without and within.”

“I don't see how she comes into this case at all.” Gamadge, following her slowly up the stairs, said nothing, and she added, after a glance back at him, “I wish it was over.”

“I think it will be over tomorrow.”

T
HE MANAGER OF THE OAKTREE INN
was a little Austrian who had long considered himself immune to surprise; when, therefore, a taxi stopped under the porte-cochere on the morning of February 1st, and disgorged a young woman expensively dressed in English tweeds and hugging a large sled, he advanced to meet her with his accustomed mirthless smile. But another guest, who wore the uniform of a sergeant of Marines, reached the taxi first.

He greeted the wearer of the tweeds with moderate enthusiasm, and obtained permission from the manager to stow the Flexible Flyer in a lobby within a side door of the inn. Miss Prady meanwhile registered and was taken to her room.

The manager leaned on the desk to confide in the day clerk:

“I don't know anything about it any more. That hat and that ensemble came from a big house, but they were not made for her. And yet she is not a lady's maid. She and this Bantz
are plain people, very plain people. Why does he bring her to this hotel? If he is spending his pay, why does he spend it here at this season, when the cafe is closed and there is no band?”

The clerk said sarcastically: “Local winter sports. Best they can do, with snow trains not running.”

“Are they going to spend their time on a sled?”

But Harold and Arline spent their time until half past three o'clock with bourgeois propriety, eating a solid lunch and then sitting torpidly in front of the lounge fire. At half past three Harold was called to the telephone.

“I can start in half an hour,” said Gamadge. “You'd better be on your way. Ring me up from there as soon as you find out whether she'll go. And keep her out for two hours; I want two hours. Be careful when you have the accident—pick a good soft drift. The Flyer's all right—I tested the ropes.”

Harold had never done any coasting in his life; the sight of a sled reminded him of nothing more enjoyable than laborious efforts in his earliest youth to push himself over the black slush of mean streets. He felt that he was being asked to make a fool of himself now in a good cause, did not protest, and said merely that the Flyer looked O.K.

“I've changed my mind since I telephoned you this morning about the isolating proposition. Where's that desk clerk, by the way?”

“Reading a funny paper.”

“I said you'd better isolate as soon as you got there; the only trouble is that the people in the house may try to make a call and find out that something's wrong.”

“No, they won't.”

“Won't what? They might want to call the grocer.”

“They can call anybody they like, but nobody will be able to get
them
. Didn't you know that if a telephone bell's out of order nobody knows it, not even the operator, till somebody
gets mad at never getting an answer, and makes the company send up a repair man?”

“You don't say.”

“They won't find out anything, or get a repair man, in two hours; more likely to be two weeks.”

“Isolate as soon as you get there, then. I want to be able to tip the client off not only that H.G.'s off the place, but that the place is cut off.”

“Half an hour, you'll hear from me.”

Harold got the Flyer out of the inn and towed it up the driveway. The manager watched him go with a lacklustre eye. “Doesn't even take her with him,” he told the desk clerk in colorless tones.

“You might be wrong about them after all.”

“I know nothing about such people; they don't belong in a starred hotel.”

“We ain't in Baedeker now; we're in Rockliffe, N.Y.” Harold towed the Flyer up the great waste of the Albany road; there was no traffic, and no contemptuous faces watched him from windows; the estates to right and left of the highway were placed well back among their own acres. Children of sledding age, he hoped, would not be at large so far from the village; but he did in fact acquire two passengers halfway to Fenbrook, and morosely dragged them and their sled uphill for a quarter of a mile.

A signpost, marked “Rockliffe Station,” indicated the entrance to the narrow side road which had once been the Fenways' private lane. Harold followed the lane until a branch led him to the right; he went along a curving roadway walled in by evergreens, and presently found himself in front of the gray brick house.

Not a cheerful house; remote and cold even in the daylight, with patches of sun on its snowy yard. It was too tall and narrow, too long in the window, too shut away among
its trees for cheerfulness. But Mrs. Dobson was certainly cheerful; she greeted him with a cry of welcome:

“If it ain't the sergeant, and a sled!”

“It was down at the inn; I thought Miss Grove might like to go coasting.”

“She certainly will! Just the thing for her; she feels bad today. You didn't hear we had a bereavement?”

“You did? That's too bad.”

“Mr. Blake called us this morning early; terrible accident. Mr. Mott fell out of his window in New York and was killed.”

“That's a shame.”

“Mr. Hendrix will be upset, won't he?”

“Oh—yes. I guess he will.”

“Such a lovely gentleman. Miss Grove was so fond of him. They used to talk Swiss together. I'll go tell her you're here. Won't you come in?”

Harold left the Flyer on the drive, and waited alone in the cold hall. It was certainly not hard to get into Fenbrook, he told himself, and a minute later he found that it was not hard to get Miss Grove out of Fenbrook. She came running down the stairs in her green dress, flushed and eager.

“Sergeant Bantz, how perfectly wonderful of you! Where did you find that lovely sled?” She opened the front door to peep at it.

“It was at the inn.”

“I'd love to go coasting! I'd adore to go! Only—” her face clouded. “Mrs. Dobson says she told you about Mr. Mott Fenway.”

“Terrible.”

“I wouldn't go coasting today, but he'd hate me to stay indoors. He'd think it was foolish, because I'm not a relation, and I really want to go.”

“He had sense. You'd go for a walk, wouldn't you? I don't think,” said Harold, smiling, “that this will be much different from a walk.”

“If we go the way Bill Craddock took us once on a bobsled you'll think the walk back is rather strenuous,” laughed Hilda. “That was something! There were four of us—Bill, and I, and Miss Fenway and a man friend of hers. We coasted straight from the top of that hill across the Albany road, down the lane and right to the Rockliffe Station! Around all the bends, and across the highways! And it was night. It won't be nearly so exciting today, I'm afraid, because it isn't night, and there's no traffic to be afraid of running into, and it's a small sled. Wait till I get my things on.”

“May I telephone while you're doing it?”

“Of course.”

Before he went into the telephone room Harold seized this opportunity to reconnoitre. He opened the swing-door at the end of the hall, saw the rise of the back stairs, saw another swing-door on the right and heard Mr. Dobson's voice within. That seemed to be the kitchen. There was a laundry on the left, and cellar stairs beyond it were shut off by a door with a bolt on it. He saw that the bolt was shot back; he might need that cellar door later on; Gamadge's instructions had included orders to search the house. After the accident, of course; Harold's accident, which he must have while coasting. His lower lip protruded a little as he walked back to the telephone room. He did not much care to show himself up to Hilda Grove as a man who couldn't stick on a child's sled.

He called Gamadge at an unlisted address.

“O.K.,” he said. “I'll have the subject out of this in ten minutes.” He consulted his watch. “It's three after four.”

“That's what I make it.”

“Last call before I tackle the bell. Anything you want to add to the list?”

“Be sure you try to call me after you've made the search. Try Clara first; she'll relay to me at Number 24. Better for her to ring me there than for you to ring from where you are.”

“You realize that I may not be able to do a thing until they're all tucked up for the night? That may mean breaking and entering. I can't stay myself; if I'm hurt as bad as that they'll send for a doctor.”

“Do the best you can. You certainly ought to be able to make them let you shut yourself up in a bedroom and bath.”

“How long do you think it takes to search a house?”

“Fifteen minutes ought to be enough, if there's anything seriously wrong there.”

“It couldn't be anything but a—”

“No use guessing. I'm off. Good-bye.”

Harold slowly replaced the receiver, and then got out a small tool kit. He extracted a screw driver from it and began to operate on the telephone box.

When he reappeared in the front hall Miss Grove was waiting for him in a skiing costume of unrelieved dark blue; color was provided by red mittens. They walked merrily off towing the Flyer, while Mrs. Dobson waved from the doorway.

They emerged from the lane, crossed the Albany road, and climbed a long, low hill; it was cold, but there was no wind. At the top of the hill they looked beyond treetops to a yellowing sky.

Miss Grove knew how to stow herself economically on a sled; Harold had room to steer, and felt supported but not constricted by the firm grasp of her arms. They were off, and by the time they had shot across the highway and into the lane he had become aware of two things; their descent was going to be sensational, and it was lucky that Miss Grove was a veteran and knew how to use her feet. He wondered for a rushing moment whether the accident was going to be immediate and fatal, instead of later and a fake.

They rounded two turns without his quite knowing how, swept across the River Road, and engaged the last slope without seeming to touch ground at all. He saw no reason to suppose that they would stop short of the Hudson—unless he was unable to steer clear of Rockliffe Station—and wondered if the ice would bear. Hilda murmured in his ear: “Left.”

He obeyed. They curved grandly to the left, ran along the road behind the station, slowed down and ceased to move.

“Wasn't it splendid?” asked Miss Grove.

Harold breathed deeply once or twice, and then looked over his shoulder; she was calm and smiling. “Great,” he said.

“You know, I think a Flyer is more sporting than a bob.”

“I kind of think so myself.”

“That run is worth the walk back, isn't it?”

“You bet.”

On the walk back Harold tried to use his remaining faculties in picking out a place where he might have an accident and yet remain alive. He thought he remembered a high drift on the last turn before the lane entered the River Road; he did not think there was a stone wall under it. There had been no trees near it, either. Yes, there it was.