Arrow Pointing Nowhere (25 page)

Nordhall gazed about him; then he rose and followed Gamadge to the buhl table.

“Give me a hand,” said Gamadge, his fingers under one end of the inlaid coffer. “This thing weighs a lot—it's ivory on old brass; and servants wouldn't be allowed to shove it around on that buhl, and if it's tipped the lid will fall open. It doesn't clear the table by more than an inch, and if it's ever moved at all, which I doubt—” they had raised the coffer, to disclose a thick layer of dust—“it's lifted as we're lifting it now.”

They moved the thing to the edge of a solid table, where Gamadge balanced it while Nordhall bent to peer upwards. He gave an exclamation, and ripped something from beneath the coffer. When he rose he held in his fingers a large manila envelope smeared in patches with dried paste.

“Neat,” said Gamadge. “She could just get her fingers under far enough to hold the envelope against the brass till it stuck. Very neat. A most intelligent woman.”

Nordhall gazed at him. “Why did you think it was here?”

“Well, there didn't seem to be much reason for it to be anywhere else. Let's see old Fenbrook.”

Nordhall drew a picture from the envelope; a delicately colored view of a white house on a hill, surrounded by trees. A thin leaf of tissue fluttered after it, to be caught on Gamadge's open hand. Nordhall took it from him; then he laid the thick leaf and the thin aside, and helped Gamadge to replace the inlaid casket.

He turned on a reading lamp, got the magnifying glass from the desk, and put the two sheets side by side. Gamadge watched while he stood bent and peering. Suddenly he cried aloud: “For God's sake.”

Gamadge said nothing; hands in pockets, he waited.

Nordhall again studied and compared the picture and its guard. When he at last stood up straight his whole body was tense, the lines of his face rigid. He handed the reading glass to Gamadge, and waited. Gamadge bent to the exhibits on the table. When he in turn straightened, Nordhall spoke sharply: “You expected this.”

“Something like it.”

“That poor woman upstairs sent you the anonymous messages.”

“Yes. I'll tell you the whole story—afterwards.”

“Take care of that.” Nordhall gestured violently at the evidence, and plunged across the room. He dragged the door
open, left it open, and disappeared into the hall. He could be heard thundering up the stairs.

Gamadge stood in an attitude of listening, his face raised. He heard voices, a sudden sound of trampling, a shout like a warning. It was answered by the flat, muffled noise of a pistol shot. Gamadge relaxed against the edge of the table; he was smiling.

Presently Blake Fenway appeared in the doorway. He said: “There's a policeman on the stairs with a gun in his hand; he says I'm not to go up. He won't tell me who was shot, or what's happened. Do you understand this?” His face had altered; it resembled that of the portrait over the mantel, even to the severity of the mouth and eyes.

Gamadge said: “I think I know pretty much what occurred upstairs, Mr. Fenway, and why it occurred.” He pointed to the view of Fenbrook. “I found your picture.”

“My picture?” Fenway did not seem to know what he meant. Then, glancing at it, he said in a voice of sudden bewilderment: “What has the picture to do with all this?”

“Will you look at it, sir?”

Fenway came slowly across the room to look down at his picture; he said almost with indifference: “There are marks on it.”

“They are the tracings of your brother's pencil.”

“My brother's…what do you mean?”

“Mr. Cort Fenway wrote a letter on thin paper, and the marks of his pencil came through. You can read what he wrote through your glass.”

He offered the glass to Fenway; but Fenway shook his head.

“You've read it?” he asked.

“I have read it, and Nordhall has read it.”

“Then tell me what it says.”

“You wouldn't rather look at it first yourself?”

“Why should I? It is no longer a private document.”

“It's not a document at all, sir, in the accepted sense of the word. It's the impression of a document, graven indelibly on these two sheets of paper, and signed with your brother's signature. There are other such impressions in the book of views, also signed by him, but they're fragmentary. This is practically whole.”

“If—as you seem to suggest it alleges anything against my brother, it's a forgery.”

Gamadge looked at the other in surprise. “Against him? It's much to his credit; it bears out all that I've heard or gathered about your brother. I'll read it to you, Mr. Fenway, but only if you'll sit down to listen.”

Fenway went over to the fire and sank into his chair.
Gamadge could not see his face; he read:

There was absolute silence in the library. When at last Gamadge reluctantly and slowly raised his eyes, he saw that Fenway had turned his head and was looking at him. “Does it mean,” asked a voice that was Fenway's and yet not his own, “that that young man upstairs—”

“He is nothing to you, sir.”

“Then he's not—if he's not Alden, he's sane.”

“Yes.”

“Belle has been cheating us all these years.” After a pause he added: “And her son has been malingering all his life.”

“I dare say he never had much occasion to play his part until the voyage home, after he and his mother met Mrs. Grove. I suppose all the talk of specialists and sanatoria in Europe was pure invention; we can't check up on them, you know. And he's never had tests made by specialists here, has he? Wasn't he protected from them by Thurley, who never doubted him at all? Why should he have doubted him? That's why they stayed with you, you know; to avoid the draft tests and enquiries. Thurley would protect him there.”

“Caroline was afraid of him.”

“She must have seen him off guard once or twice, and realized unconsciously that he was sane.”

“In God's name why did they do it?”

Gamadge, looking down at the view of Fenbrook, asked a question in his turn: “What was to become of that half of the Fenway property if your brother died childless?”

Fenway twisted in his chair to look at the questioner.
Gamadge came and sat opposite him.

Fenway said: “It returned to the estate; it would eventually go to Caroline.”

“So I thought, from what little I heard about it. I think Alden died before your brother did, Mr. Fenway.”

“What!”

“He died in this country; Alden was alone with his mother abroad.”

“The villa was isolated, and her servants didn't sleep on the place. Cort was anxious about her, but she liked to be free of them at night. She was fearless, fearless.”

“Did you cable her when he was taken ill?”

“Immediately.”

“She made plans then; she saw how she could retain the fortune for herself and her own son. I suppose he can't be much older than Alden would have been if he had lived, two or three years. There wasn't any rumor or scandal about her, I suppose?”

“No, or my father and mother wouldn't have allowed the marriage.” He added: “I mean they wouldn't have financed it. She was very lively and gay, and her mother would have concealed anything; got her to Europe in spite of the other war. Cort was there of course, almost from the first; as a volunteer in France, and then with our army. He would have helped her—it was like him. Yes; that romantic marriage was protection for her; and of course my brother would befriend her boy.”

“Allow her her virtues,” said Gamadge. “If your brother loved her, she loved her eldest son—passionately.”

“Is that virtue?” Fenway's voice was dry. He went on: “What kind of creature can he be? How can he have carried on such a deception, day and night? I should think he would have gone mad.”

“I think he lived his own life at night, Mr. Fenway. I think he was often out of this house, and that when your daughter brought her dog here he killed it, so that it wouldn't bark when he went and came.”

“Monstrous!”

“And when the draft menace was over, he and his mother would have gone away together, and he would have dropped
his mask. They would have worked out some arrangement by which he might safely have drawn his income after her death. Keep your mind on that income, Mr. Fenway; it was worth everything to them, worth a lot of risk.”

Fenway suddenly looked up. “Mrs. Grove…”

“With Mrs. Grove we arrive at tragedy. Last Thursday afternoon she was in this library, she was interested in the last consignment which her niece had sent down from Fenbrook; the poor woman was very much interested indeed in the book of views, in all things pertaining to you and your family. She found the picture of old Fenbrook; no doubt she had heard of it from you. She found those marks on it, deciphered them, and went directly upstairs to Mrs. Fenway. She insisted on full confession of the conspiracy to you, which meant the loss of what they had risked so much to keep; half the Fenway fortune. She acted without due thought; she couldn't realize in a moment that the old friend over whom she had once had so much influence, that the young man who had long been to her a nonentity, would commit murder. She confronted two tigers.

“They have been looking for the picture; meanwhile, they have been keeping her as much a prisoner as if she had been in a condemned cell. She was in one; she could only have escaped alive by confiding fully in me. She wouldn't; do you know why?”

Fenway shook his head.

“Sublime folly! She wouldn't confide this family secret to anyone but you; her devotion to you and yours cost her her life. But I was wrong a moment ago; she might have saved it this afternoon if she had waited to speak until you were actually there. She didn't know that they had a prearranged plan for an emergency. The moment they knew that she was going to speak they killed her, and the fellow shot his mother through the arm. I'm sure they'd rehearsed it.”

After a pause Fenway spoke slowly: “I liked her. Caroline didn't; but I always liked her.”

“Her loyalty to you was absolute, and her affection for her niece Hilda was very great. If it hadn't been, those two couldn't have kept her helpless and silent by telling her that there was a trap at Fenbrook.”

“There actually is one?”

“There is one, and it was not made only to frighten her; it would have been used as evidence against her after her death. It was the fear of the trap that made her call me in, God help her.”

“Called you in?”

“By means of a scrap of paper thrown out of a window. The message was vague—it had to be. Imagine her position, hemmed in by those two desperate creatures; and she had nearly two weeks of it! But they couldn't budge her, and she couldn't move until I was able to tell her that I had read her instructions correctly and removed Hilda from Fenbrook. Then she acted—half a minute too soon; and then
they
acted—as they had planned to act if worst came to worst. They could do nothing else; they had to let the picture go; they hoped that if they hadn't been able to find it it wouldn't be found.”

Fenway asked: “They meant to kill her even if she gave up the picture to them?”

“I don't doubt it. They didn't hesitate to kill Mr. Mott Fenway.”

“They killed Mott!”

“Because he had invited me to come here and look for the lost view. He was against them, and they were afraid of him.”

Fenway's hand clenched. Gamadge went on: “Your house has been haunted by a sane, intelligent, ruthless man and a woman who would have died for him. Mrs. Grove stood like a rock between them and the ultimate success of the most
cynical and heartless imposture I ever heard of. She has accomplished her purpose, and I don't think she would have grudged the cost to herself. And I tried as best I could to help her accomplish that purpose; for I didn't look for the picture, and invade the Fenway privacy—” he smiled a little—“until she was no longer able to expose the conspiracy. But I wish she had let me save her.”

“Great Heaven, if she only had!”