Arrow Pointing Nowhere (3 page)

“Like that, was he?”

“Oh, always. Belle and he were married in France, most romantic war wedding, and only came home in 1918 so that poor little Alden could be born here.”

“Poor little Alden?”

Miss Vauregard paid no attention to the question, but rattled on: “Then Belle took him back to Europe when he was four, and she and Cort settled there; but Cort died in this country a year later. Belle was very comfortable over there; old Mr. Fenway was dead, and poor Alden had his share of the money. With guardians, of course; Blake Fenway is one of them. Belle would never have come back to America if it hadn't been for this awful war; and she was hurt getting on the awful boat they had to come home on.”

“You keep saying ‘poor' Alden.”

“Such a tragedy! He was the loveliest baby, but when he was four they discovered that he would never develop
mentally. Belle took him to all the foreign specialists, though, and she says they were wonderful; he's now as intelligent in some ways as a child of six or seven. She says that until you try to talk to him he seems quite normal, and that he's very handsome. Just a quiet, gentle creature, very well-behaved. You mustn't breathe a word of all this, Henry; hardly anybody knows it except the family and the doctors.”

Gamadge was aware that Clara was looking at him with a certain anxiety. He asked: “Have you seen him?”

“No, but I've seen Belle. I called at Number 24 in the autumn of 1940, when I heard that she was at home. I'm ashamed to say that I haven't been back again, but you know what it's like in New York, and now there's all the war work. I'm on at least four committees, and I never do anything else. Blake Fenway was an angel to them, Belle said; wouldn't hear of her taking Alden to a hotel. Of course she can't run a house or an apartment while she's tied to a wheel chair, and she wouldn't dream of putting Alden in an institution, even the best private one. She's never been parted from him since he was born.”

“How badly hurt is she? Can she get about on crutches?”

“Not yet; the injury was partly to her back, and some nerves were involved. But she's much better; she's had regular surgical treatment and massage, and of course their old family doctor, Thurley, takes the best care of her. He brought Alden into the world. He says she'll be walking in another year or less; he told me so himself when I met him at the movies only a month ago.”

“The boy has an attendant of some kind, I suppose?”

“Belle was very lucky about that. While they were trying to get to Marseilles—such an awful experience—ghastly—an old school friend of ours turned up; when I knew her she was Alice Horton. She's a widow now, Alice Grove. She had a young niece in tow, or rather her husband's niece, who'd
been at school in Switzerland. Alice's money was all tied up in Paris, so Belle instantly took her on as courier and companion. Most fortunately; because Belle was injured before they ever left the dock at Marseilles. Alice Grove took care of her on the voyage, and takes care of her now; she doesn't need a nurse any more.”

“What became of the niece?”

“She's at Number 24 too, doing some kind of secretarial work for Blake Fenway; or didn't they say that she was very outdoor, and spends her time up at Fenbrook? Well; who should turn up on the dock but a young fellow named Craddock, whom Alice knew. His parents were old friends of her husband's. He was a newspaperman in China, and he was going home because he'd acquired some obscure kind of germ, and had intermittent fever. He was the perfect companion for Alden, Belle says he's wonderful with him. She dreads the time when he'll be well enough to be drafted.”

“And
he's
at Number 24?”

“Oh, yes; a fixture.”

“And this Mr. Mott Fenway—”

“He's always been there, or at Fenbrook. He failed in business when he was a young man, and he's lived with his cousin Blake ever since. I believe he does estate work and accounts for him.”

“The household consists, then, of Mr. Blake Fenway, from whom all blessings flow; his daughter Caroline, whom Clara thinks sarcastic, and who may have some reason for being so; Mr. Mott Fenway, an elderly dependent; Mrs. Cort Fenway, crippled and tied to an invalid chair; her son, a mental invalid; his attendant, a semi-invalid with recurrent fever; her companion and the companion's niece, indigent.”

“You sound so grim, Henry!”

“It can't be a jolly house, now can it?”

“But the Fenways never think of Mott as a poor relation,
they love having him there; and the Fenway sense of family obligation is very great—of course they'd have Belle and Alden. They're as well off as Blake, you know; probably better off than he is, because they haven't his expenses. And Alden is no trouble; I told you he'd had all those specialists—Viborg here, until he was four, and then
everybody
in Europe. Belle said he had the best men in Austria, and Fagon in Paris. She was with him at the most wonderful sanatoria. And then this fearful war came, and it set him back. The travelling and the hardships were bad for him. He's more silent now.”

“Still, he's a liability in a household.”

“Belle insists not. And young Craddock is getting well. And the Groves earn their salaries, I suppose.”

“Is there any record of mental disease in the Fenway family—or on the Kane side of the connection?”

“Not that I ever heard of. The only neurotic I ever knew about was Mrs. Kane, and with her it was only hysterics and bad temper.”

“Why on earth didn't she allow her daughter to marry Cort Fenway in the beginning?”

“He wasn't a catch then. Mrs. Kane wouldn't care anything about family or distinction, she only wanted money to be kept in luxury on. Cort didn't have much until his father died.”

“Did the old gentleman know that Alden Fenway was mentally deficient when he left him the capital of half his property?”

“Good Heavens, no! He died when the poor child was only two. I don't think he and old Mrs. Fenway approved of that match, you know; they detested Mrs. Kane. But they had a horror of family dissension, and they were so fond of Cort, and Belle was supposed to have settled down; then Mrs. Kane died, and Cort was given a nice income. It's so sad—he didn't live to enjoy it more than two or three years.”

“And the name of Fenway dies with the unfortunate Alden. How about old Mrs. Fenway, Cort's mother? When did she depart?”

“Just before old Mr. Fenway did.”

Gamadge passed cigarettes to Miss Vauregard, took one himself, and lighted hers and his own. He asked: “Did you see this Mrs. Grove when you called on Mrs. Cort Fenway two years ago?”

“Yes. It's extraordinary how little changed she is since boarding school. She must be fifty-five at least, she was a year or so older than Belle; but she's the same quiet, determined little thing, only drier and cooler. She had a lot of moral influence, you know, and a will of iron. I thought Belle seemed very meek with her even now; she was laying down the law to poor Belle about their fancywork. They're doing an immense job of needle point for the drawing-room furniture.”

“You didn't see young Craddock or the Grove girl?”

“No, he was out walking with Alden, and I think the girl was up at Fenbrook. She was going over the books up there for Blake, and Belle said some of them were turning out to be quite valuable. They had book catalogues on the table; quite keen they were.”

“I ought to get on with the whole family—when you've given me that letter of introduction to Mr. Blake Fenway.”

“Henry, if I'm to introduce you I must know why!”

“It's part of an enquiry on behalf of a client who wishes to remain anonymous.”

“Please do it, Aunt Robbie,” begged Clara. “You know Henry wouldn't ask you unless it was very important.”

“Well, I suppose I can oblige with a clear conscience; there can't be anything wrong at Number 24.”

Clara's chow stepped into the room. He paused to convince himself that there was no feline presence on the hearth, and then walked over and lay down in front of the fire.

Gamadge said, smiling at Miss Vauregard: “We have two tawny animals in the house. They belong to races that don't as a rule get on, but they get on very well; if they didn't, one of them would have to go, and they know it as well as Clara and I do.”

“Yes, but Henry, these are animals!” When he said nothing, but continued to smoke and to look at her smilingly, she waved her hands, expressing surrender. “Very well, but you'll have to tell me what to say.”

“I'd like to call you up after I've seen a bookseller named Hall. Blake Fenway has dealings with him, and he may give us a lead.”

Gamadge rose. “It's Saturday, but I don't think he'll have left his office; he practically lives there. I'll call him.”

The telephone conversation took only a couple of minutes. When he came back, Gamadge said: “He'll be in the office. When I've seen him I'll call you. Do you think you could send the note around to Mr. Fenway afterwards by hand?”

“Of course; but you seem to be in a dreadful hurry.”

“I am; and I'm more grateful to you than I can ever—”

Miss Vauregard would not listen. “It's nothing, nothing at all. Good gracious Heavens, can it be three o'clock?”

“We didn't finish our cocktails,” said Clara, “till after two.”

“So we didn't. I must run.”

Half an hour later Harold strolled into the library.

“I hung around Number 24 from two-thirty on,” he said, “but nobody threw anything out of a window.”

“The postman doesn't call on Saturday afternoon. Of course there was no paper ball.”

“The old man came around at three-fifteen and went over the premises with a microscope; picked up everything in sight, and dusted snow off the steps and sidewalk. Snow kept on coming down, so he finally gave it up. The paper
ball didn't come out of any of the basement windows, they're icebound; those on the front, I mean. The ones on the avenue are clear, and one was partly open; kitchen, I suppose. I don't think the paper was thrown from the top story, it wouldn't have cleared the roof of the bay window without falling outside the railings. It came from the middle bay window on the second or third floor.”

Clara said: “Alden Fenway didn't throw it out; nobody with a six- or seven-year-old brain made up that message.”

“Somebody might get him to throw it out for them,” suggested Harold. Then he stared at her. “Do you mean he's a child of six or seven?”

“He's twenty-five; mentally retarded,” said Gamadge.

Harold asked, after a pause: “Could he be trusted to throw a message out of a window without letting anybody see him do it?”

“Could be, perhaps; I don't know. Wouldn't be, if discovery of the message meant serious consequences to the sender.”

Harold frowned. “We don't know how crazy he is. He may not be as crazy as they think. Suppose Mr. Schenck is right, and he has lucid spells, and is trying to get some information to you while the spell lasts?”

“Alden Fenway was pronounced mentally incurable when he was four years old, by a great authority on brain disease. His mind developed a little, but it could never develop into a mature mind. He wouldn't have lucid spells; he'd always be on the same low level of intelligence, if he didn't eventually sink lower.”

“What do you think of this, then? At three-five a young fellow came down the left-hand steps—it's a double flight—and hailed a cab; big light-haired feller, quite handsome, stoops a little. Just as the cab came along to the curb he crumpled up a piece of paper and threw it away.”

Clara's voice was almost a shriek: “Threw away a piece of paper?”

Harold continued stolidly: “White paper. Then he turned and looked around at another young feller who came out of the house and ran down the steps. Thin guy, pale, black hair, homely face, old belted mackintosh. This feller picked up the paper, looked at it, and went to the corner rubbish basket and chucked it in. Then he came back and took the big teller by the arm; helped him into the cab.”

“Harold,” gasped Clara, “didn't you get that piece of paper out of that rubbish basket?”

Harold produced a crushed scrap. “Here it is.”

Clara seized and unfolded it. “Well,” she said, “we know one thing; Alden Fenway can play tit-tat-toe.”

Gamadge looked at the untidy squares and the noughts and crosses. He said: “Perhaps he had help, perhaps he always gets beaten. But if those two young men were Alden Fenway and the Mr. Craddock who looks after him, we know something else—neither of them is my client; they both have too much liberty to be forced into throwing messages out of a window.”

Harold said: “Young Fenway hasn't much liberty; Craddock was after him like lightning.”

“But he got out of the house alone, and he had time to slip a note to the cabdriver; hadn't he?”