Deadly Nightshade (26 page)

Loring burst into a high, gasping laugh. “The gypsies!”

“You were sure they wouldn't give you away about the little boy, and you were right. They haven't, even yet. When they make a promise like that, they keep it. They were glad to harbor him for a few days, until Bartram should pretend to be persuaded into adopting him; I suppose you told them that his cruel and irresponsible parents mustn't know where he was, and that he'd been ill, and needed treatment. What did you give him, by the way, to keep him just not quite awake?”

“Let me tell you that I was taking no chances with Bartram's boy! I gave him a hypodermic three times a day—half a grain of luminal, plus an eighth of codeine; and an infernal nuisance it was. Bartram had me nearly crazy, worrying me about him.”

“You kept Bartram pretty well drugged, too, didn't you?”

“Had to; stimulants in the daytime, sedatives at night. He came through it all better than we had expected him to.”

“And the gypsies didn't know they were going to be involved in the nightshade case. They never connected little Elias with the case at all. So far as they knew, there was no little
boy
missing. They took your word for the whole thing, and they gave you their solemn word they wouldn't say you'd brought him. Wonderful to be able to do a favor for a Bartram, wonderful to be able to oblige Doctor Robert Loring, whose position gave him power almost of life and death over such as they. They're terrified of you.”

“I'm sure I don't see why they should be.”

“Extra-sensory perception, no doubt. Unfortunately for you, there was another matter that you would have been very glad to ask them to keep quiet about; but you simply didn't dare. Even your exalted powers were not strong enough to count on, when it was a question of murder—the murder of one of their friends. These state policemen aren't Cossacks in the eyes of the gypsies; they are protectors and allies. You couldn't ask them not to say that you had ridden into the short cut with Trainor. So when Mitchell and the sheriff went down to see them this afternoon, and told them the whole story—that was the advantage, you see, that they were able to tell them the whole story—”

“Which I suppose you had told them,” said Loring, with his fixed smile.

“Suppose so, if you like. They could tell them—and this is the point—that whatever they did or didn't tell, Doctor Loring was inevitably going to prison; and that they needn't be afraid of him any more. So Mrs. Stuart saw no reason, as they had made you no promises on the subject, why she shouldn't say that Trainor had come along and seen little Elias deposited in the camp, and that he had ridden behind you into the short cut. She merely stipulated—since their respect for you died hard—that they should be allowed to move. They did so at about seven thirty tonight. We were afraid you might hear about it, so I wangled Annie out of this house for the evening. You're so impetuous; I was afraid you might go berserk again, as you did last night.”

“If we had had any hint of your activities we should have decamped; nothing more drastic.”

“I was a little nervous.”

“You're a nervous type, aren't you? I should be glad to know how you got an exhumation order through in less than a day, and on Sunday, too.”

“It took some doing; but the powers were annoyed with you all. Now, Doctor Loring:” Gamadge sat swinging a leg, and regarding the other with intentness: “I've given you our case—the worst of it; and, as you have been aware since the beginning of this interview, I am giving you another break, which you best know the value of. Shall I now proceed to regularize the proceedings, or will you oblige me with a piece of information? You'll have to decide immediately; we haven't much time.”

Loring said: “Know it all, don't you? I thought I was stalling you along. What do you want?”

“The motive, of course. What did old Mr. Bartram invest his four hundred thousand in?”

“Russian jewelry. It was in this country when he bought it, and the deal was a dead secret. White Russians were selling it, but there was something about a cut going to some of the Reds. Dangerous business for both.”

“Heaps of diamonds and rubies, ropes of pearls?”

“Not forgetting the sapphires and the emeralds.”

“I see. Thanks very much.”

There was a commotion outside—cars driving up, motorcycle engines popping. Feet hurried up the flagged walk, and the doorbell rang. The sound of it seemed to set off an explosion, so instantly did a deafening roar answer it from upstairs. Miss Ridgeman screamed, her hands over her ears, and slid sideways in her chair. Hoskins and Schenck dashed for the hall; a crowd of people poured in, and made for the second floor.

Loring, his eyes on the ceiling, poured himself the last of the whisky. “I thought that shot would never come,” he said.

“I thought so too,” said Gamadge. “He waited a long time.”

The Queen Elizabeth Legend

“Y
OU AND HOSKINS
beat all.” Mitchell addressed Gamadge more in sorrow than in anger. He was facing him across the golden-oak table in Doctor Cogswell's dining room, on the glassy surface of which Mrs. Cogswell had set out coffee, a platter of homemade cookies, and a large dish of peaches. Cogswell was sitting at one end of the table, red with a day-long indignation; the lean, disillusioned sheriff was at his right, and Gamadge on his left. Mr. Schenck, still bemused, sat opposite Harold Bantz, who had his notebook open before him.

Hoskins spoke feebly, but he was loyal. “I thought I was supposed to watch Loring.”

“Four of you in the house, and one of you a deputy; and you leave Bartram alone upstairs till he gets good and ready to shoot himself!”

Gamadge took a hot swallow of coffee before he answered: “The idea was that if I had half an hour with Loring I'd get him to give me what you wanted—their motive. I got it for you.”

“Yes, but I didn't say you could bargain for it by letting Bartram kill himself!”

“The bargain was a tacit one. Loring thought that by telling us what we knew already he was giving his friend time to leave this earthly scene; I thought that you preferred the motive to Bartram. Was I wrong?”

“I can't understand why Loring wanted him dead.”

“Bartram would have gone on the stand and sworn to the truth, that the whole plan was Loring's, from beginning to end; and that Loring engineered it for the sake of a third of the loot. I'm certain it's thirds. We might never have known for certain about that Russian jewelry; now we can hunt for it.”

The sheriff drew slowly on his cigar. “It's better for Bartram's folks, this way,” he said, “and better for his boy.”

Cogswell poured himself another cup of coffee. “Speakin' for myself,” he said, “I'll be glad to let Gamadge off with a warning. He says he ain't goin' to appear in the case at all; if we take advantage of his kind offer of all the evidence, we'll save part of our reputations. It's owin' to him that we have some of our credit left, as it is. When I think—”

“You forget about that, Cog. Nobody's going to blame you,” said Mitchell.

“They fooled me into thinkin' I was bein' so darned hard on 'em. Oh, well. You know, I'm sorry for George Bartram. He's a mighty nice kind of feller; with all this trouble comin' down on top of him, all he worries about is that poor kid. I left him in the nursery, up there. The rumpus had waked the little feller, and he was settin' up on Adelaide Gibbons' lap, playin' with Bartram's watch chain. Bartram's hired her to go to New York with them tomorrow.”

“I hope she won't call Mrs. Bartram by her first name—not for a week or two, anyway,” said Gamadge.

“You bound and determined to go on to Boston tonight?” asked the sheriff.

“Yes, we all have to be in New York tomorrow morning.”

“Hoskins will drive you as far as Boston.”

“That's good of you. We'll take a train, or a plane, or something, and have a nice nap on it.”

“I guess you don't feel like giving us the whole story now, before you start? I don't know the ins and outs of it yet.”

“Glad to; it won't take long. Harold can write it down in shorthand, and he'll send you a draft tomorrow. Ready, Harold? All right. Let's see.” Gamadge leaned back in his chair, crossed his legs, lighted a cigarette, and said composedly: “There was a story about Queen Elizabeth.”

This opening was received in polite silence, and Harold transferred it to paper with a long-suffering air.

“Some people thought,” continued Gamadge, “and for all I know some people still think, that she died young, was buried secretly by her terrified personnel, and impersonated thereafter by a boy. The boy was supposed eventually to rule all England, avoiding marriage, as you know, and exhibiting many unwomanly qualities during his long and successful reign. The whole thing was of course put over, according to the legend, because if King Henry the Eighth had been informed of his daughter's death he would have had the heads off her entourage. They had to produce a daughter for him.

“Yesterday morning, when I heard at the Bartrams' that old Mrs. Bartram required a female heir to inherit that jewelry of hers, I was vaguely reminded of the Queen Elizabeth story. But the Bartram jewels didn't seem worth committing a fraud for—they consisted of a bunch of picturesque junk, which might perhaps bring a few hundreds in cash. George Bartram knew all about them, and had seen them often.

“He didn't know, however, that a fabulous addition had been made to them. Old Mr. Bartram, badly hit in the war of 1914, and aware of what could happen to the most firmly established family business, had invested his savings in a princely collection of Russian jewels. I say princely; they may have been monarchical. The deal was a sort of international affair, and conducted with the utmost of secrecy; in fact, Mr. Bartram told nobody about it but his wife. When he died she annexed them—they were hers, her husband's provision for her—and placed them in a wall safe which she had installed in her bedroom.

“You will note that neither parent seems to have put much trust in the sons. George had offended by going off on his own; Carroll, by faults of character which we can only guess at. Note that old Mr. Bartram took the part of his son's enemy when that row occurred at the school, and afterwards made Ormiston his protégé; I considered the fact significant.

“The old lady probably confided her secret to Carroll Bartram after she had had her first stroke. He had settled down by that time, married the right sort of girl, and become very attentive to his mother. He, in his turn, no doubt confided in his broad-minded friend Doctor Robert Loring; and I am sure that they had many a discussion about the matter. George was married; which of the sons would provide Mrs. Bartram senior with the first granddaughter?

“We arrive at that spring evening, seven years ago, when they are all at the old house; Miss Ridgeman, Loring's choice as a nurse, is unpacking her bags, and there is no other resident servant but Annie, the old, lame, devoted cook. Loring gave us a highly dramatic account of what happened; he didn't care to have us find out the details, piecemeal, and ask a lot of questions. You know the events of that night; old Mrs. Bartram had her second stroke, a boy was born to the Carrolls, and Mrs. Carroll died. Confusion, tragedy, distress.

“Loring goes to his friend, with arguments all prepared; they must have gone something like this: ‘Your child is a boy, old man; but that won't matter, if your mother only dies without regaining consciousness—in that case you simply take the jewelry, and nobody will ever be the wiser. But unfortunately we don't know whether she
will
die without regaining consciousness, and we can't wait to find out. Because, if she once hears that the baby's a boy, she'll get into communication with George.

“‘My suggestion is this: tell everybody that the boy is a girl. You and Ridgeman and I can easily put it over—the place is isolated, the nursery is upstairs, Annie can't go up, and it's nobody's business to leave your mother and explore. You couldn't do it if you hadn't a doctor and a nurse at your disposal, and you couldn't do it if the Georges weren't settled in Europe—forever, so they say; as it is, the thing's easy. The moment your mother dies the four of us clear out for Europe, where you lose a daughter and adopt a son. What about it? Your mother probably won't live a week.'

“Carroll Bartram wanted that money—wanted it badly; and he didn't want George to have it. He made his decision; and for the next seven years he and Loring and the nurse were the slaves of their own invention; because old Mrs. Bartram didn't die—she lived on, bedridden, competent, and exacting; and the George Bartrams produced a girl.

“You know, I can almost find it in my heart to pity those three. They were tied to the place, haunted by the fear of accident, illness, death; vulnerable to all sorts of danger. They had to take the boy to Boston periodically and present him to his grandmother; though I imagine the visits grew less frequent as the years went on. They couldn't see their friends, go anywhere, call their souls their own. When the old lady died, in June, they must have swooned, almost, with relief. But their troubles weren't over. The situation in Europe made their first plan very difficult, if not impossible; they had to devise something else. Whatever it was, they were on the point of carrying it out; and then the Georges descended on them, at two days' notice.

“Well, they hadn't lived through all that without formulating some scheme or other, to be used in a crisis; they had their eye on a little girl up the road named Beasley, the same age as the Bartram boy, who could easily pass for a Bartram. They decided that it would look very odd if they removed little ‘Julia' for those few hours on Tuesday; and they didn't want George Bartram to think them odd. They made up their minds to borrow Sarah Beasley.