The Book of the Dead (10 page)

Geegan said: “Mr. Gamadge, glad to see you. This is Mr. Toomey and this is Mr. Indus. These boys have never let me down in their lives—they're absolutely confidential, and there's nothing they don't know about their job. But they ain't so certain that a subject couldn't get away from them nowadays—not if he wanted to run.”

Gamadge sat down and passed cigarettes. “I don't think Dr. Billig will run,” he said. “I don't think it will be too hard to keep up with him. He isn't going to quit and leave town; and if he doesn't, he'll have to stick to his routine. If he saw me following him around he might be scared away, though; and he probably would see me, because I know nothing whatever about shadowing people.

“All I want is to know what he does outside of office hours; and I'll cover the chance of his pulling up stakes by leaving enough money with Mr. Geegan to pay expenses if either of you should have to follow him out of the city.

“To make things easier, I suggest that you move into a rooming house opposite his apartment. There's a ‘vacant' sign hanging out, I think the vacancy is on the second floor front; those windows are shut, in spite of the weather, and there are no curtains in them.”

“Furnished room?” asked Toomey, who was the tall operative.

“Furnished room. And the doctor keeps office hours from twelve noon until one, and from eight to ten in the evenings. I dare say he does a lot of work of one kind or another at St. Damian's hospital. He's a big, heavy man, not young; but he has a car. You'll have to depend on cabs, and I'm prepared to pay for them if you have to keep them waiting.”

Indus said that they probably would; there weren't so many cabs around in the streets now.

“Get one before you need one, if necessary,” said Gamadge.

Geegan asked: “Is he one of these crime doctors? Don't sound like it. Is he dangerous?”

“If I had proof of that, Mr. Geegan,” said Gamadge, smiling, “I'd be talking to the police, not to you.”

“I've been telling these boys that you follow your hunches.”

“Something a little better than a hunch, Mr. Geegan. I wouldn't engage Mr. Toomey and Mr. Indus on a hunch.”

“I mean you build up a case. Is it narcotic drugs?”

“I don't know. Dr. Florian Billig is a mystery.”

“There won't be much mystery about him after Toomey and Indus get done with him. Toomey wants the night work; he'll report at eight in the mornings. Indus will report at eight P.M. They'll telephone you if necessary, and keep in touch with me.”

“Call me at any hour of the day or night. I'm only sorry that I won't be able to get into communication with that rooming house; I don't believe that there's a telephone in the place. And now for the financial end of it.” Gamadge got out his wallet.

From Geegan's office he went to a subway station. He rode to 86th Street and Lexington, walked to Park, and up to Crenshaw's apartment house. He went into the white lobby, where a doorman in a dark-blue uniform advanced to meet him.

Gamadge produced the newspaper clipping which Idelia had found in the coal-scuttle. “I came in to see whether this sublet is still available,” he said.

The doorman looked at it, looked at Gamadge, and said he'd find out. He walked past the elevators into an inner lobby, and presently returned with a youngish man in conservative clothes, who looked rather bemused; he held the clipping in his hand as if it were burning his fingers.

“You wanted to rent this apartment for the remainder of the summer, sir?”

“If it's reasonable, and not too big. My name's Gamadge. We're having some decorating done in our house, and my wife and I thought we might be more comfortable here than in a hotel.”

“I'm not quite sure whether it
is
available.”

“Not? I understood that the party had died.”

“You were a friend, Mr. Gamadge?”

“Friend of a friend,” said Gamadge, feeling as though he had uttered the phrase at least fifty times in the last twenty hours.

“I'm not quite sure what Mrs. Crenshaw's plans are.”

Gamadge was unable to suppress the beginnings of a start, but he did his best to recover himself. He said after a moment: “I had no idea that Mrs. Crenshaw was here.”

“She flew from California as soon as she was notified of Mr. Crenshaw's death.”

“Distance doesn't mean much nowadays, does it?”

“It certainly doesn't.”

“What a shock for her.”

The manager looked as if the shock had been for him. He said: “We had no idea Mrs. Crenshaw was coming. She's here with a niece, and at first she thought she might be staying on in the apartment—it's leased to Mr. Crenshaw until the first of October. She thought she might have a good deal of business to attend to, but now she finds that there won't be so much after all. I'll consult her and let you know.”

“Fellow needs a friend,” Gamadge told himself. He gave the manager his card. “I'm afraid I may disappoint you—and her,” he said. “Your handsome place looks too good for the likes of me.”

“The terms might be very reasonable,” said the manager, in tones of more than doubt.

“Well, I've written down my telephone number. You might call me. Thank you very much.”

Gamadge walked forth, somewhat dazed himself, into the hot brightness of the street. He stood for a moment or two, his hat forgotten in his hand, under the smart awning; then he beckoned a cab and drove home. He was none too soon; the telephone began to ring when he was half way up the stairs to the library. He took the rest of the flight in leaps, and arrived at the telephone panting.

“Yes?” he gasped.

“Mr. Gabbage? This is Mrs. Howard Crenshaw.”

“Gamadge. Yes. Excuse me for being out of breath, Mrs. Crenshaw; I was catching the cat.”

Although this frivolous explanation was intended to persuade Mrs. Crenshaw that Gamadge was in no desperate hurry to answer the telephone, he would not have made it if she had sounded like a sorrowing widow; but the high, muted, disagreeable voice in which she had mispronounced his name was not the voice of the griefstricken. Nor did its owner seem to be either civil or urbane; her response to his remark was a long, blank silence.

“Thickwitted,” Gamadge told himself.

After a pause for a readjustment of her faculties she went on: “They tell me that you called about the apartment.”

“I did, but I'm afraid—”

“I'd like to see you anyway, Mr. Gamadge. They seem to think that you knew my husband.”

“I know somebody who knew him—slightly.”

“That Miss Fisher? Did you call at the hospital with her last night?”

“Yes.”

“Naturally I should like to talk to her, but I have so little time. I have reservations on the Chicago Limited this evening; it goes at six. I thought if I saw you, I might not have to call her up. I don't want to see more people than I can help. Naturally.”

“You're going back so soon, Mrs. Crenshaw?”

“There's a great deal for me to attend to at home, and not much here; and it was only by the greatest piece of luck that I got that cancellation for the Limited.”

“But how tiring for you.”

“It isn't so bad by plane. After the Western Merchants Bank in San Francisco telephoned me yesterday morning I caught the 1:17. I got here at 1:55 today. The manager of the Western Merchants branch here is with me now. If you could come up I should be very much obliged.” She added: “I don't know anybody in New York. I haven't been East in years. I didn't know my husband was ill; I'm rather bewildered.”

“Have you talked to his doctor, and the people at St. Damian's hospital?”

“I've talked to the hospital; they told me about this Miss Fisher. I want to know about my husband's stay in Stonehill—and about this man Pike.”

“I'll be with you in a few minutes.”

There was every reason for Mrs. Crenshaw to be bewildered—bewildered to the point of delirium; but her lifeless voice had sounded cool enough. Was she thickwitted? Gamadge didn't know.

A
S GAMADGE LEFT THE HOUSE
he stopped to look with a burglar-conscious eye at the broad window-ledge that jutted out to the left of the front steps; it was no more than a short stride from the iron hand-rail, and there was a convenient hold in the brickwork above; one of a pair of little wall-fountains, lions' masks and shell-shaped reservoirs, that he had brought back from Europe long before. Clara had had them put up on either side of the front door, and used them for plants or ivy. They were now full of geraniums; the fluted lip of the left-hand one would help anybody, even a not very agile person, from rail to ledge.

I'm glad he didn't pull the thing out of the wall and smash it, thought Gamadge. I won't say a word to Clara. He had mentioned none of yesterday's events to her when he talked to her that morning on the telephone.

By half past three he was once more in the lobby of the apartment house; this time he was sent immediately up to the tenth floor. The house manager, an inscrutable expression on his face, stood waiting for him in an open doorway; he seemed to think that he and Gamadge were now comrades, and on confidential terms. He murmured: “Whatever you do, get it down in writing,” and led the way into a large lobby and through a doorway on the right. Gamadge found himself in a big, dim, well-furnished sitting-room, with bright glazed chintz on the upholstery, and awnings in the windows. There were windowboxes full of flowers, and the rugs or carpet had been replaced for the summer by matting. A pleasant room.

A woman sat on the sofa with her back to the light; a man stood beside her. His hat and brief case were on a table near the straight chair from which he had evidently just risen. He came forward.

“Mr. Gamadge? I'm Watt, from the Western Merchants Bank. May I introduce you?”

Gamadge, shaking hands, said he might.

“Mrs. Crenshaw, this is Mr. Gamadge. Mr. Gamadge,” said Watt, smiling, “is well-known to us in New York as an author and an—er—expert. You may safely follow his advice.”

Gamadge murmured something.

“Thanks for coming up,” said Mrs. Crenshaw. “Won't you sit down, Mr. Gamadge?”

Gamadge sat down; the apartment manager hovered in the rear.

“I hope you like what you've seen of the apartment,” said Mrs. Crenshaw. “There's a big bedroom, and a fair-sized dining-room, and a kitchen and maid's room across the lobby. No guest room.”

While she spoke Gamadge absorbed first impressions: a quiet woman—she sat motionless, her hands crossed on the handbag in her lap. A conventional woman—she could not have had many hours on the surface of the earth since receiving the sudden news that she was a widow, but she had already acquired the outward signs of mourning; not, of course, her black suit and hat, her black shoes, but her fine black stockings and short, black-bordered veil. A woman of perhaps forty, who was still handsome—very handsome, with a thin, unlined, unpainted face, dark hair too tightly waved, dark eyes, a thin mouth, a slightly upturned nose and a long upper lip. She had the kind of face that is closed against the world; what, he wondered, goes on behind those faces? Nothing? Or a coil of secret, pullulating thoughts?

She was self-possessed, but there was tension in her attitude; the tension of a woman who has always been dominant in her own small world, but is unsure of herself out of it. And as she talked on, she revealed herself still further; for she was garrulous about her affairs.

Been sheltered all her life, thought Gamadge. Knows nothing about business, has always depended on men. She's stunned; she's taking refuge under the nearest umbrella. Give a man a reference, and she'll take him on trust. Or does she want us to think so?

“It would be quite a bargain,” she had gone on to say. “My husband didn't get it at a bargain, or at least I don't think so, but I could let you have it for less than he paid. He took it to the first of October, and they tell me that his estate is responsible. That means me; and I simply don't understand why I should have to abide by the lease, since I didn't even know he was renting an apartment.”

Mr. Watt said gently: “Mr. Humbert has explained.”

Mr. Humbert, the manager, now fluttered papers in his hand. “We're responsible to our tenants, Mrs. Crenshaw. It's only a sublet. They went to great expense to get it ready for summer renting.”

“Yes, but I don't understand why he should have paid in advance for June and July.”

“It's usual, Mrs. Crenshaw.” Humbert's expression said that the present conversation showed why it was usual. “We get half the summer rent in advance, especially when there are no social references.”

“Social references! He had social references at home.” To this there could be no reply; and she went quickly on: “Why on earth did he take the apartment for June, since he wasn't to be here at all until July? He knew he was going up to Vermont. That was why he came East—to settle that estate in Stonehill.”

Mr. Humbert fluttered his papers again. “Mr. Crenshaw wanted a place in New York to come back to; we are rather crowded in the city just now. It isn't easy to get an apartment at all.”

“Perhaps that's why he took such a big one. Much too big!”

“He said he liked space; and the bigger the cooler, Mrs. Crenshaw. He came in and engaged it on May twenty-eighth, and we didn't hear from him again until the fifth of July. I have his letter here.”

Gamadge, eyeing it, thought again of the Crenshaw coal-scuttle.

“It was written on the third,” continued Mr. Humbert. “It says that he and his man are coming on the sixth, and asks to have the apartment ready. It says that Mr. Crenshaw was delayed in Stonehill by illness. We opened the apartment; it was in perfect order, with all the linen and silver left by our tenants. Fully stocked with everything, and all of the best. We engaged a cleaning woman; but after Mr. Crenshaw arrived his man did everything for him. The place is in apple-pie condition, and I'm only sorry, Mrs. Crenshaw, that you won't reconsider and stay on till the lease is up.”