Arrow Pointing Nowhere (20 page)

“Certainly she's there,” he insisted. “Page her.”

“She went out a little while ago.”

Harold slammed the receiver down, picked it up, and ordered a taxi for the next down train. “I'll have to chance it,” he said to himself. “Liaison's busted, and something's evidently breaking down there; but I'll have to chance somebody coming up here in the next couple of hours or sending a telegram.”

He went into the dining room, but the sight of food did not allure him; he would have liked a drink, and was sorry to infer that Hilda did not think it proper to supply her own private guests with Fenway whiskey. He longed to blow the thing to her, but he could not; somehow, he furiously hoped, she might be spared the knowledge of that trap in the attic. He hoped she might never know about it at all.

The doorbell rang, and Harold leapt from his chair. He was in the hall before Mrs. Dobson had come out of the kitchen, and flung the door open; he was quite ready to receive Mr. Craddock, but it was not Craddock who stood in the dark of the porch.

A
T APPROXIMATELY
four minutes past four o'clock that afternoon Gamadge turned from the telephone to address a small man in dark spectacles. The office was a cubbyhole, part of a series on the twentieth floor of a building that overlooked Bowling Green.

“Well,” he said, “that's settled then. You people won't send any more letters to our friend, or any letters through that route at all.”

The small man looked anxious. “I hope he is in no serious trouble.”

“He may have been transferred before they decoded us.” The small man shook his head.

“Anyhow,” and Gamadge handed a folder across his desk, “you can tell them definitely in Room 7 that Doumets didn't write this. There's no tremor, they couldn't reproduce that even if they knew it was there.”

“They might have known it would be there!”

“They couldn't reproduce it; otherwise the forgery's almost perfect. You were very clever to suspect it.”

“There was something in the tone of it.”

“They couldn't reproduce that, either—the incalculable factor. I've put the enlarged photographs in the folder too. Room 7 will take charge. I'm awfully sorry, Georges.”

The small man rose. “What your office has saved in lives! But not this one, I am afraid, Mr. Gamadge; not this one.”

“I don't feel very effective, sometimes, in an office.”

“No; but all of us cannot act. We must do what we can.” They shook hands, and Gamadge conducted him to the door. Then he put on his hat and coat, took the real right
Elsie Venner
and the book of views under his arm, and went into action himself.

The subway took him to within a few blocks of the Fenway house. He arrived there on foot, went up the front steps, and rang. No outmoded wreath or crêpe was on the door, none was needed; everybody knew by this time what had happened here last night.

Phillips, very mournful, said that Miss Fenway expected Mr. Gamadge, and was allowed to take
Elsie Venner
from him for careful disposition in the library; Gamadge retained the other book, and waited for Caroline in the drawing room.

He stood in front of the high mantel, looking up at a full-length portrait of some lady, probably Blake Fenway's mother. Her exquisite face looked down at him with the suggestion of a smile, but it was only a polite smile. Her elbows were close to her sides in what was certainly a characteristic pose; her hands held a tiny fan. She rose from the waist out of a billowing surge of stiff pearl-colored satin, her neck rose from a standing ruche like frozen foam. Her head was drawn back a little; reserved she was, not timid: he did not think she had liked sitting for her portrait.

Caroline said behind him from the doorway: “How do you like Grandmamma Fenway, Mr. Gamadge?”

He turned. “Better than she would have liked me.”

“I believe that she was rather difficult to live up to. I gather that she was formidable, but what a beauty! You ought to see the picture of the girl she is said to have wanted for Uncle Cort.”

“Not the kind of girl he chose for himself?”

“Oh, never anything but white-muslin party dresses until she came out, and black shoes.
She
had no matchmaking mamma, so she withered on the parent stem. What's that you have? The book of views?”

“Yes. It's most interesting, even in its present faulty condition. Shall we look at it?”

They went into the back drawing room, and Caroline bent over the marked pages. “What on earth, Mr. Gamadge?”

“Indecipherable, almost, without a reading glass, but I think you will be able to make out your Uncle Cort's signature.”

“Yes, here it is, quite plain. How extraordinary. He wrote a letter and it came through.”

“Valid, I should think, in a court of law, but I should like counsel's opinion. It's a nice point, isn't it?”

“It's very like him to have marked up a book in this way through pure absent-mindedness. So kind and considerate, you know, but very casual and easy-going. I remember him so well. He'd never knowingly deface a book, of course. He'd…” she looked up, suddenly startled. “Good gracious.”

“What is it?” Gamadge smiled at her.

“
I've
thought of a nice point! Suppose that he wrote a letter which for some reason he afterwards decided not to send after all; something he couldn't send, and tore up; and then suppose he found marks on the book, and knew they wouldn't rub out!”

“Quite a dilemma for him.”

“He must have been frightfully tempted to tear the page
out, but I can't imagine him doing it without telling Father. And Uncle Cort wouldn't have torn out the picture and then preserved it.”

“But if it is in existence, who doesn't want me to find it?”

She stood perplexed and rather frightened. “Aunt Belle certainly isn't hunting for it; she can't get about except in that wheel chair. And she couldn't make Alden understand how to look for it and what to look for. Mr. Gamadge—these marks put a different complexion on the whole thing. Have I been wrong about Alden?”

“I never thought that Alden Fenway tore out the picture; I never thought it the act of a mental deficient.”

“He wouldn't have understood these marks.”

“No.”

“But if I've been wrong about Alden, I may have been wrong about Cousin Mott's death too. Could it have been an accident after all?”

Gamadge said nothing.

“Uncle Mott and I were so frightfully prejudiced. I should hate to think that we…Mr. Gamadge!”

“Yes?” Gamadge smiled at her.

“Perhaps we'd better drop the whole thing.”

“People are always doing this to me, Miss Fenway.”

“Doing what?”

“Asking me to find something out for them, and then regretting the impulse.”

“It's only that these marks make it all look so different.”

“Your father wouldn't have called my attention to the missing picture if he'd torn it out himself, you know.”

“Torn it out himself? Ridiculous!” Caroline's dark eyes tried to meet his squarely.

“I thought you might be wondering how far he'd go to preserve his brother's posthumous reputation.”

For the first time he could see a resemblance in her to her grandmother Fenway; the withdrawn look, the poise of the head as she drew in her chin to glance upwards at him. “He'd do nothing wrong for any reason. I thought you might have some wild idea—”

“I never have them; it's you who had the wild idea, and you must abandon it.”

“I never had it. Fenways aren't capable of lying and cheating to preserve the family reputation!”

Gamadge privately thought that Grandmother Fenway had probably been capable of almost anything; he had a shocking mental picture of that lady taking a slim hand from her fan to push a troublesome relative-by-marriage out of a window. But she of course was not by blood a Fenway. He said: “Let me assure you that I have no dark suspicions of your father. When he and I discussed the lost picture he did so without knowing that there was a present mystery connected with it. He certainly didn't know that Mr. Mott Fenway was going to consult me about it later, or that you were going to do so.”

She stood with her eyes on the mansion of J. Delabar King. “It will upset him, all this about Uncle Cort writing these letters and leaving these marks. I wish he needn't know.”

“Don't you shelter him too much?”

“You needn't laugh at me.”

“I'm not laughing.”

“It's his own fault if I do, poor darling, he's so sensitive. Mr. Gamadge, I've had another thought.”

“A pleasant one?”

“A perfectly horrible one, but at least it doesn't involve
us
. I mean it's nothing Father would
die
of. Suppose Mrs. Grove found the marks, and read them, and tore the picture and the tissue out? And is blackmailing Aunt Belle?”

“What could Mr. Cort Fenway have written that his widow can be blackmailed about?”

“Something he discovered, something she'd done. But then he couldn't bear to send the letter, he decided to wait until he saw her again. But he never did see her again—he died.”

“I thought they were devoted.”

“It must have been something she did before they were married.”

“No chance afterwards?”

“Oh, no; they were inseparable until he had to leave her with Alden and come to America on business. Even I admit that she loved him.”

“Mrs. Grove isn't blackmailing her about Alden, then, but about her own past? Mrs. Fenway's past?”

“It's all I can think of, if you're right about a letter of Uncle Cort's having been on the picture.”

“You think that rather than have her blackmailing game spoiled, rather than have the picture found, Mrs. Grove pushed your cousin Mott Fenway out of the window?”

Caroline was again shocked and startled. “Deliberate murder? I never thought it was that!”

“Your father wouldn't like it to come out, would he?” Gamadge looked at her with enquiry in his eye.

“If it was deliberate murder of course it must come out!”

Was there so much of Grandmother Fenway in Caroline, after all? Grandmother Fenway would certainly have hushed up a family murder. Blake Fenway, Gamadge thought, would be strongly tempted to hush one up. Was Caroline not even tempted? The old tradition seemed to be waning.

He picked up the book of views. “I'll just put this back in the coffer,” he said, “and then we can go upstairs and proceed with our investigation.”

“You'll find out nothing from Aunt Belle or Mrs. Grove; they're quite themselves again.”

“I shall be interested in seeing them, though.”

They crossed to the library, and Gamadge replaced the book of views in the inlaid casket. Caroline glanced about her. She asked: “Are you going to try to find the picture?”

“I must admit that I'm getting a better notion of where to look for it.”

“It will be easier to find if Alden didn't hide it; a child's mind works so illogically. Mr. Gamadge—are you going to look here? An endless job, I should think, with all these books!”

“To tell you the truth, I'd much rather your father found it for himself.”

She said quietly: “That's nice of you. But you'll tell him where to look?”

“Perhaps it won't be necessary for me even to do that. I wonder if you would try to give me the run of the house after we leave the sitting room? Would it seem too strange to Phillips or another servant if I were discovered mooning about on the stairs?”

“I'm not to be with you?”

“Well, no; I shan't involve you in my activities, Miss Fenway. Wash your hands of me. Play the piano.”

“Play the piano? You mean it?”

“I'll listen for the notes of that Bach fugue I saw on the rack last night.”

Caroline looked at him wonderingly. “I feel rather as I did at the children's party when the conjuror told me to look at the card in his hand, and then took it out of my pocket.”

“My sleeves are rolled up too, I assure you.”

“There is something a little tense about you.”

“Is there? I'm sorry I show it.”

They came out of the library, went along the hall, and mounted the stairs. Gamadge said: “It's a quiet house. Absorbs sound.”

“I've begun to hate it. I should look forward to getting out of it, except that when I do my father will be dead.”

They reached the square landing over which Psyche presided in her niche, and stepped from it to the wide upper hall. The house did absorb sound; hardly a murmur of voices came from the open doorway of the sitting room, although when they entered they found five people there. A tea table was set out at the far end of the hearth, and Phillips in Caroline's absence was dispensing tea and cakes. Mrs. Grove sat beside the tray, Alden next her behind the round work-table, and Mrs. Fenway in her wheel chair just within the doorway. The extension of the chair had been folded in, and the end of it formed a step for her feet. The silk robe lay across her knees.