Arrow Pointing Nowhere (10 page)

“Rockliffe. That's the station for Fenbrook, and Fenbrook is up on top of a hill—and what a hill! I don't believe the snowploughs make it.”

They found an end seat in the last car, behind a party consisting of a hatless woman, a baby, and a boy of six.

“They don't look as if they'd take much interest in our conversation,” said Gamadge, “but we'd better not use names. Names carry, and on these locals you never know; lady in front might be a friend of the wife of a gardener.”

He struggled into his arctics, and the train moved. Harold asked: “You've seen this place?”

“No, only the front entrance to it, which is on the Albany road. The house is buried in trees.”

“Does the family climb that hill you were telling about every time they go up for a weekend?”

“Oh, no; they get out at the next station this side of Rockliffe, and drive—or taxi. We're going informally, leaving no trail behind us; straight as the goat climbs from Rockliffe station, I think. There used to be a private road, I remember seeing it from the trains. That was before the station was called Rockliffe, you know; it used to be Fenway Landing, with a private boathouse and a pier. The Fenway property went down to the river; I often used to see the old piles and timbers of the landing, rotting away. But the lower land was sold, the Fenways lost their local importance, and the new station was called Rockliffe after a political chateau on the heights.”

“What are we going for?”

“I don't know; I'm following instructions.” Gamadge handed the marked timetable to Harold. “Sunday section—that meant that I was to take the trip today, come wind come weather.”

“The client slipped you this?”

Gamadge told Harold the story of the afternoon in detail; when he had finished they had passed Morris Heights.

Harold said: “Not much doubt who the client is. What a setup! Crippled woman, and her son can't even be trusted to carry messages for her. You think she could slip her hand out of that open middle window, and drop the paper ball, without the other woman seeing her do it?”

“Easily. The table's between, and they'd lean over to get the light on their work; hundreds of colors to match, some of them off-whites and grays. And that needle-point work—you ever see it being done? They put their hands under when they bring the needle up for the next stitch. Big squares of canvas—perfect cover.”

“What a setup. She was all ready for you.”

“She might have another message for me if she only knew I was going back there tonight.”

Harold smiled. “That's why you are going back—not to look for any picture.”

“I'm going to try to report on this trip. It's a godsend—this chance to get into the house.”

“Just so long as the old gentleman is O.K.”

“What do you mean, O.K.?”

Harold, after a pause, asked a question instead of answering Gamadge's. “You're sure you didn't leave anything out? Gave me the whole thing just as it happened?”

“You know as much as I do; you can get what I got,” said Gamadge, “if your mind works the way mine does.”

“You did get something?”

“Nothing to talk about yet. How about you? You look as if you had ideas.”

“I'm thinking about motive.”

“I wasn't, but I'd be glad to have your opinion on the subject.”

“The companion, with the young feller she got hold of to look after young F.—they're blackmailing Mrs. F. about something the boy's done; something a darned sight more
serious than tearing a picture out of a book. He did tear it out, but the blackmail is about something that would create a big scandal, perhaps bring the police in.”

Gamadge looked interested.

“It's the only explanation,” continued Harold. “It all fits in. They're bleeding Mrs. F. of every cent she gets paid by the estate for her upkeep and the boy's; that's why she can't leave Number 24. She hasn't anything left to live on.”

“How about the lost picture? Miss F. noticed signs of unrest up in that sitting room shortly after the book of views came into the house; the first message the client threw out of the window seems to have been thrown out the day after the book came. That lost picture is what started all the trouble.”

“The boy did tear it out, and if it's found it's more evidence against him. Mrs. G. and C. are holding it over the client's head; she doesn't want you to find it. She's never given you any instructions about finding a picture. Naturally the blackmailers won't want you to find it—it would bust up the game. They're using it to put the screws on her; she can't raise enough money for them, and she's desperate.”

“Desperate indeed.” Gamadge looked out of the window at the dark river flowing between its icy banks. “Why was I called in?”

“Well, that's the catch.”

“It is indeed. What am I to do for my client?”

“She hasn't let you in on the blackmail scheme because she thinks you might not want to help her about this bad break the son made.”

“She's running a risk; she must know that I may find out about it.”

“Perhaps she thinks you'd keep quiet; it may be something that would look worse to the family and the law than it would to you.”

“Hopes I'd condone it?”

“The poor guy didn't mean any harm.”

“Let's say she thinks I won't find out about that. What, I repeat, does she want me to do up at this house we're going to?”

“Well, in the first place, the girl's kept up there by the aunt so she won't catch on to what's happening at Number 24. She's a nice kind of girl, by what they all say. Didn't you tell me the client seemed more interested in her than the aunt was?”

“The aunt showed very little interest.”

“If the girl was at Number 24, she'd be right on top of them, much closer than Miss F. is, and even Miss F. noticed that something was wrong. Perhaps you're being sent up to get something from Miss G. that would show up Mrs. G. and young C.—make them clear out in a hurry.”

“The girl and Mr. C. are supposed to be fond of each other.”

“But he's the fondest, isn't he? That's what I gathered from what you said. Anyway, this girl may not know she knows anything. You're to draw the conclusions.”

“Even my trusting client can't expect me to work in a void.”

“I don't know how it could be more of a void than it is now.” Harold frowned. “In your place I couldn't have helped busting the show up this afternoon.”

“My client doesn't want it busted up. She's in a vise, and if I turn the wrong screw I may destroy her.”

“How are you to turn any screw at all? How are you even going to get into the house up here? How are you going to keep the visit a secret from the other people at Number 24? The first time they telephone, or the girl telephones, she'll tell them we came.” He added morosely: “Unless we're climbing in through a window, and I don't want to do that much; I'm in uniform.”

“We'll ring the bell. I'm to be a Mr. Hendrix, and the old gentleman will back me up.”

“Yes, and that's where I get back to my original question. Is he O.K., or is he a member of the gang?”

Gamadge stared. “A member of the gang?”

“He hasn't got a cent, and all this talk of his about being so grateful—”

“He meant every word of it.”

“Just keep your mind open about the people in that house. Say he's one of the blackmailers, and thought it was funny you turned up just now; he's a bright old guy, you say; he's realized you practically invited yourself. He knows you've investigated crimes. Suppose he kept his eye on you this afternoon, and saw you pick that timetable out of the wastebasket. He knew what you meant by those signals—
Men Working
and all the rest of it. When you accepted his invitation for this evening, which was nothing but a test, he knew you were after something.”

Gamadge shook his head. “Nobody in the house except my client knows why I went there today. Take that as fact.”

“In your place I wouldn't go through that door in the wall tonight or any other night. How about if you were knocked on the head the way that dog was? You'd be thrown in the street, another dim-out fatality.”

“I should be more worried about Mott than about myself if we'd had a chance of being overheard while we discussed Mr. Hendrix in the library. The old gentleman's inclined to underrate the opposition, and I couldn't base any warning on my special knowledge of the case. I didn't dare; my first duty is to my client. But I made certain that we shouldn't be overheard. I stood in the doorway. Nobody came down after we did; I had a good view of the stairs, and of the door at the end of the hall that cuts off the back stairs. I'm afraid I did startle the old thing by suggesting that Mr. Hendrix might pursue other lines of enquiry.”

“Come up here, you mean? You hadn't seen the arrow on the timetable when you talked to him.”

“I should have come up here in any case. The young lady we're calling on is the only member of the household I hadn't met; of course I meant to get a look at her and at her surroundings.”

Harold said after a moment: “I don't think much of Miss F. Her aunt gets turned out of her home in Europe, half-witted son to take care of, gets injured—perhaps for life. You'd think Miss F. would be willing to put up with the situation for a while.”

“I can see her point of view.”

“Her father's point of view strikes me as the right one. He must be an unusual kind of feller.”

“He is. I'd like him to get his picture back.”

“You won't find it.”

“Not without information from Miss Grove,” said Gamadge, as the opened door behind them let in a covering blast of sound, as well as a blast of icy air. The brakeman wailed: “Rockliffe.”

It was a tiny station, landscape-gardened in summer, but now swept by all the freezing winds from the northwest. Stars were out in an indigo sky, a yellow afterglow was fading along the black rampart of the Palisades. Gamadge and his assistant climbed the road from the station to a broad and deserted thoroughfare; trolley rails lay like dark threads on the snow.

“Funny without any traffic,” said Harold.

They crossed the River Road and attacked the steep grade of what looked like a forest trail. The deep snow, hardly rutted, was banked in high drifts to right and left; shrouded evergreens hid any view of the hillside. At first lights blinked from invisible dwellings, then dusk invaded the lane. Harold got out his torch.

They ploughed on and up in silence. At last Harold's torch showed a thinning of trees, and beyond them a ravine; the road curved to the left and forked.

“We'll try the left branch,” said Gamadge. “The other one probably goes straight on to the Albany Road.”

The left branch looked like a private way. It led them, between thickly planted trees, to the untrodden wastes of lawn and garden; no path was distinguishable. They found a route among trees to a semicircular driveway, and stood looking up at the tall front of a brick house painted gray. Pointed trees crowded behind it, and no light showed.

“So this is Fenbrook?” Harold spoke in muted tones, without pleasure.

“It must be; anyhow, I see brackets.” Gamadge surveyed the square porch and its ornamental woodwork. “It's terrible.”

“Think so? It's the other chromo—
Life in The Country
. It needs lighted windows.”

“We'll never see lights in these windows. The people in there all froze to death a week ago.”

But Gamadge mounted two steps and rang an old-fashioned bell. Presently the fanlight and sidelights of the gray door showed yellow, and the door opened. A cheerful-looking fat woman in a cardigan sweater peeped out.

“Is Mr. Mott Fenway at home?” asked Gamadge.

“Oh dear! The family's in New York, sir.” The fat woman looked at Gamadge's galoshes, and then past him for a conveyance.

She said: “I'm afraid you've had your walk for nothing.”

“And what a walk.”

“You didn't come up from Rockliffe station, sir? Oh dear.”

“I'm afraid Sergeant Bantz and I have been rather stupid, Mrs.—this
is
Mrs. Dobson?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Of course I've heard of you; my name's Hendrix, and I promised Mr. Mott Fenway that I'd drop in sometime when I was in the neighborhood. I happened to be more or less in the neighborhood, and the sergeant is bound for the Oaktree Inn. He thinks it's open.”

“Oh yes, sir; and it's only half a mile down the road.”

“We found ourselves on Rockliffe Station, which is no place at present to wait for a train. Of course we realize now that we ought to have waited and got out at the next stop, and taxied back. I thought the sergeant might be allowed to telephone for a taxi here, but now I'll call one for us both, if you'll allow me. I'll go on to New York.”