Arrow Pointing Nowhere (17 page)

“She's a small woman, not in her first youth; but I suppose it wouldn't take much of a push to send the old gentleman out of the window. But you were in the next room all the time.”

“She didn't know that; I don't go up to my own room to wash up if I'm on the second story; I use the bathroom at the end of that hall. I went up tonight because my nails needed a spot of manicuring if I was to play bridge. She was sitting to the left of the fireplace in the sitting room; wouldn't have seen where I went or what I did. She'd be safe until she got right up behind Mott Fenway, and then it was only a matter of seconds for her to shove him out and dash for the back stairs.”

“Risky.”

“Better than having you in the house, listening to what he had to say. But she was safe enough. I heard that yell, and it took me a few seconds to locate it; you know the way you stand gaping. Then I ran through to our bathroom, got the near door open, got his door open, and of course never looked at anything afterwards but the open window—and his body lying down there below. When I first leaned out it was just falling away from the rail.” Craddock put a hand up to his forehead, pushing his hat to the back of his head. “Can't forget it. I've seen worse, but I can't forget it.”

Gamadge rose to his feet, turned up his collar, and pulled on his thick gloves. He said: “I saw him on the snow. I won't forget it either.”

Craddock looked up at him. “Can you do anything?”

“I'll think it over. I'm coming in tomorrow—see you then.”

“Coming back?” Craddock, still seated, gazed at him frowning.

“Yes. I'm bringing a first edition to Mr. Blake Fenway.”

“First…look here! That's no kind of excuse. You won't get past Phillips with it.”

“Perhaps someone will invite me in—as you did tonight.” Gamadge faintly smiled.

G
AMADGE TOOK A CAB
to the drugstore where he had left the books, got his parcel, and drove home. He left all but the book of views in his office; the flat green quarto he took upstairs with him to the library.

His wife and Arline Prady were playing backgammon. Clara sprang up and rushed to him as usual; Arline looked disappointed. “Where's Harold?” she asked.

“In the suburbs.”

“Oh. Then I'll be going.”

This did not mean that Arline only liked to be at the Gamadges' when Harold was there; she always liked to be at the Gamadges', but she had been brought up to think that no man can bear the sight of an extra woman.

“You mustn't go,” said Gamadge. “I have a job for you.”

Arline's face lighted. “Did you say a job?”

“With full operative's pay and expenses. But I can't tell you about it till I've had something to eat. I'm rather hungry.”

Clara dashed for the little elevator; Arline followed. Gamadge mixed himself a highball, and then brought the telephone in and set it down beside the chesterfield. He reclined against pillows and called the Oaktree Inn.

After a long wait Harold's voice addressed him: “You didn't get bopped?”

“No. Somebody else had the accident; the party who expected me.”

There was a pause. Then Harold said: “You don't tell me so.”

“For further details see your morning paper.”

“I don't think you have to worry about anybody up here but central. There's nobody on the switchboard downstairs, the place is dead. The night clerk sends up calls, but he'll be asleep again by this time.”

“No harm in exercising caution.”

“Did you get into the place?”

“Twice; once by the front door, once by the door in the wall. I've been invited back tomorrow by several persons.”

“Then you'll have a chance to get another message.”

“I got it. It was waiting for me in the same place. Weekday section of the timetable, and an arrow; but the arrow points the other way.”

Harold pondered this. “
Away
from the place?”

“Away from the place.”

After another pause Harold said: “I think I get it.”

“Whether we're right or not, we'll have to act on the suggestion.”

“But how can we work it?”

“I'll think that over and call you in the morning. Arline's here; I may send her up.”

“Glad to have company. There's one other resident guest—an old guy that eats dinner in spats and a skullcap.”

Gamadge rang off, and sat up to face a small table which Arline was setting out with biscuits, cheese, and part of a cold chicken. He wondered why she and Harold were not married; perhaps they were, though, and shy about announcing it. Arline was Harold's slave, and Harold guarded his private life jealously.

Clara arrived with a dish of fruit and a pot of instantaneous coffee. Gamadge fell to. After a minute he said: “I begin to feel better. The Fenway house is not a house of peace and light; evil dwells therein, formless as yet but taking shape. Taking shape. I can't tell you about it tonight, it's too late and I'm too confoundedly tired; but you must have a bare outline. Arline, will you be good enough to open that flat green book I put on the table? I shouldn't like to spill coffee on it.”

Arline opened the book of views.

“And turn to a plate with the title: “
Mansion and Grounds of J. Delabar King, Esq
.”

“Here it is,” said Arline. “A very pretty house.”

“Place a marker at the page, and then find
The Classic Home of Colonel Ash
.”

“I have it.”

“Clara, will you get the reading glass from my desk?” Clara obeyed.

“The book,” continued Gamadge somewhat chokingly, since he had had rather a large mouthful of chicken, “once contained a view of Fenbrook, the ancestral home of the Fenways. That home has vanished, and there is a new Fenbrook at Rockliffe-on-Hudson.”

“Here's the piece about it,” said Arline, “but the picture's torn out.”

“The picture of old Fenbrook; it has been removed within the last twenty years—I myself think within the last two weeks—by some party unknown. The book is a book that Mr. Cort Fenway, twenty years deceased, loved to pore upon.
When I pored upon it this afternoon in the Fenway library I thought I saw evidence that Mr. Cort Fenway had used it as a writing block. There are incised marks on the plates Arline found for me, and on their tissue guards; I should say that the marks had come through the tissue guards upon the plates. Will both of you see what you can make of them with the reading glass?”

Arline said: “This Delabar King picture had a letter written on top of it. Clara, can you make out the signature?”

“There's a capital C, and a small v—or is it half a w?—and the tail of a—let's see—a y.”

“But none of the letter part is legible?” asked Gamadge.

They assured him that it was not, and Clara brought him a paper on which she had copied what could be read of the signature. He saw
C w y
, and supplied dots. The result was
C . . . . . . . w. y
.

“There you are,” he said. “
Cort Fenway
. Now try the other plate.”

Clara and Arline labored, and at last Clara brought Gamadge the following reconstruction: .
y.d . . . . st, so 
. .
nx . o.s.
, followed by a plain
Cort
well dug in.

“
My dearest
, and then
so anxious
,” said Clara, “and then the signature.”

“He was at Fenbrook, she was in Europe with their boy. He probably wrote to her at odd moments every day,” said Gamadge, “and often in pencil, as ideas occurred to him. His pencil was sharper at some times than it was at others, and he was quite unconscious of having left these facsimiles of his writing in this treasure of a book. Certainly he would never have laid his thin writing paper on a tissue guard again if he had seen what happened the first time he did so.”

“And all we get,” said Arline, “is that he was fond of his wife.”

“We might have got more from the pages that were torn out. I think they were torn out the day they arrived at Number
24 from Fenbrook, or the next day; for on the next day, Friday the twenty-second, my client threw the message to me out of the window. Four more messages were sent before I received the one Schenck brought me yesterday.”

“Are you to find the picture?” asked Clara.

“My client doesn't want me to find it, but certain other people do, and one did; Mott Fenway.”

“Did?”

“He doesn't want me to find it any more, because he died a few hours ago—just before I got to the house.”

Clara and Arline gazed at him.

“He was killed, of course,” said Gamadge, “so that he shouldn't set me to finding it.”

“Henry—” Clara's eyes were fixed on him imploringly. “Don't go back to that house!”

“I shan't go back to find the picture.”

“But if your client doesn't want it found, what does your client want you to do?” demanded Arline.

“I'm making a guess, and Harold, I think, has made the same one. I'm to get a young lady named Hilda Grove away from Fenbrook. She's a niece-by-marriage of Mrs. Fenway's companion and old school friend.”

“Get her away! For how long?”

“I don't know; if I'm right at all about the case, an hour or so. But how does one persuade a young lady—an employee by the way—to leave a house without consulting her employers, without arousing comment on the part of two servants who are devoted to her, and without coercing or alarming her? Can you tell me?”

Arline said: “It doesn't seem such a hard kind of thing to do.”

“Doesn't it? It's harder than you think. Harold is in the neighborhood, and he'll have to manage it tomorrow. He can't take her for a car ride, and have a breakdown, because there are no cars—pleasure driving is out. He can't lure her away
on the pretext that somebody is hurt or ill, because she or the servants would communicate first with the Fenways. Harold and I met her this evening for the first time—”

“You've been up there?” exclaimed Clara.

“We have; and while she seemed to like us both very much she knows me at second hand and doesn't know anything about Harold at all, except that he's a Marine. He can't ask her to go for a walk in the snow; she wouldn't accept. If there were some outdoor sport to be used as an excuse, yes; a walk, no. Besides, a walk wouldn't last long enough. Nobody wants to walk in such weather. It's too cold.”

They all sat in silence. Gamadge finished an apple, lighted a cigarette, and sank back against cushions, with his eyes shut. After an interval for thought Arline asked doubtfully: “Could I be a friend of an old school friend, and ask her to lunch somewhere?”

Gamadge replied gently, without opening his eyes: “No, Arline, you couldn't.” He added: “Harold and I are the only new acquaintances she'll be able to assimilate for some time.”

“Then what
am
I to do?”

“Er—liaison officer.”

“Where?”

“The Oaktree Inn, half a mile this side of Fenbrook.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow, if we ever succeed in getting Harold into that house up there.”

Clara and Arline exchanged a blank look; but Gamadge suddenly rose to his feet, his eyes gleaming and a smile on his lips. He said: “Let's all go down to the cellar.”

They followed him nonplussed; into the hall, down by the elevator, to the kitchen precincts, and by an enclosed stairway to the furnace room. Gamadge turned on a light and paused to look with a jealous and appraising eye at his stock
of coal; then he led them into a neat, dry, back cellar which was stacked with window screens and awnings, crates, and a collection of lumber. He opened a cupboard door.

“Things I am saving for my heirs,” he said

They saw skates, hockey sticks, a baseball bat, and a sled of the type known as a Flexible Flyer.

“Miss Grove has spent a considerable part of her youth in Switzerland,” he continued. “There are snow-covered slopes in the vicinity of Fenbrook.”

Clara was delighted. “Harold's going to ask her to go coasting?”

“If he can tempt her.”

“He could tempt
me
!”

“Operative Prady,” said Gamadge, “will take this thing up to the Oaktree Inn tomorrow morning; not too irksome a task, I hope, and one which she will find easier if she tips liberally. She must spare no expense. She will deliver the flyer to Operative Bantz, who will take it to Fenbrook. She herself will register at the Oaktree Inn, and remain there until further notice. She will treat herself to the best the house affords.”