The House without the Door (20 page)

"If I can catch the train."

Gamadge drew up in front of the rooming-house but did not allow Schenck to get out of the car. He himself assisted Miss Prady to the pavement, and accompanied her up the steps and into the vestibule. They conversed in low tones while she got out her key. Schenck leaned over the back of his seat.

"What's he going to Utica for?" he asked.

"I didn't know he even thought of going. It's all so strange."

"You married a strange character."

"Yes, but since Tuesday he hasn't been a bit like himself. What's the matter with him? Talk about Mr. Belden being nervous! Henry's so nervous he's half sick."

"I must admit I've never known him to go on this way before. I can't make any sense of it."

The front door of the rooming-house closed behind Miss Prady, and Gamadge came back to the car. When they reached the Gamadge house Schenck was about to open his door; Gamadge again restrained him.

"Did you think we'd dump you?" he asked. "After the pal you've been tonight?"

"I thought you were in a hurry to go to Utica."

"So I am. Will you drive yourself home, and call up our garage, and get a man to put the car away?"

"I'll drive to the garage, you maniac. I know where it is."

"That's asking too much."

"Is it?" laughed Schenck.

"Well, I must dash."

"Call them up; that train may go a minute or so before midnight. In any case, you have plenty of time."

Schenck watched the Gamadges into their house, shook his head, and drove away. Gamadge rushed upstairs, followed by Clara. He began to change into day clothes, shouting directions to his wife while she packed a bag for him.

"Just for overnight, you know, but don't forget my razor blades. Call the station, will you, darling?…11.59, is it? I'll make it, easy. How much money have you in the house? I want all of it, and all mine. Look in my desk."

"When will you be back? Tomorrow?" Clara scurried from one errand to another.

"I'll telephone. Expect me when you see me."

"You said overnight."

"I hope that's all it will be."

Clara jammed a toilet-case into the bag. "Will the police ask us all questions?" she inquired. "Everybody who was at the party this evening?"

"Don't know why they should be interested in the party."

"Eight people, including me, know about my finding that pistol! Eight is an awful lot of people to keep a secret."

"Eight hundred can keep a secret if each one of them is determined to keep it."

"Will Miss Prady keep it?"

"Yes, she will."

"Your bag's ready, Henry."

"And I have nineteen minutes." He picked up the bag, and they went downstairs. Gamadge put on his coat and hat, and then seized his wife in his arms. She said: "I wish I knew how I could find you tomorrow."

"I don't want you to know. If Durfee should call up, tell him you have no idea. Tell him I'm doing his job for him. I'll never forget what a sport you were tonight, Clara. I wouldn't have asked you to do it, but I was in a jam, and I had no time."

"It's all right."

"Never again."

Gamadge picked up his bag and ran. He caught the South Shore Express with a minute to spare.

A
T EIGHT O'CLOCK
on the following morning—Friday, November 28th—Gamadge found the city of Utica bathed in sunshine. He found a restaurant, had a comfortable breakfast, and then went to a garage and hired a car. He reached the uninteresting little town of Omega at half-past nine.

He inquired his way to a brick-faced building on Main Street, and climbed a flight of uncarpeted stairs to the second, and top, floor; there was a sign directing him to the office of the
Omega Times
. He found the editor and proprietor, a sweater over his shirt sleeves, reading a copy of his own newspaper at a desk in front of the window. A stove burned redly in one corner.

"Good morning," said Gamadge. "My name's Henry Gamadge; I came up from New York last night to call on you, if you're the editor of the
Times
."

"That's who I am, name's Davis." Mr. Davis pushed back his spectacles and took in the well-dressed caller, who would have looked even better dressed if he had held himself properly. As it was, he stood with one shoulder slightly higher than the other; and he had the stoop that comes from poring over papers.

"I wanted a little information about some of your Omega residents—or ex-residents; and I thought that this was the place to apply—if you'll be kind enough to give me a few minutes of your time. Er—is the paper a daily, Mr. Davis?"

"We come out regular once a week. Sit down, Mr. Gamadge." Davis waved a freckled and ink-stained hand towards a chair.

"Thanks very much." But Gamadge chose a corner of a pine table. He slid his coat from his shoulders, and laid his hat beside him. Davis stroked his chin, which needed a shave.

"You a newspaper man yourself?" he asked.

"No, I examine documents; handwriting, that sort of thing. But I do a little writing on the side. I've published several books on forged writings and so on. If you want credentials I'll be only too delighted to foot the bill for a long-distance call to my publishers in New York."

Davis said: "You looking up evidence about forged writings in Omega?" He really said "Omegy"; the upstate terminal
y
-sound fell pleasantly on Gamadge's ears; Gamadge had spent the summers of his childhood near Cooperstown.

"No, I'm interested in an old murder case."

Davis said: "We only had one of those."

"I know."

"It's been written up about a hundred times."

"You'd be surprised how popular a certain kind of write-up would still be; a new slant, you know, Mr. Davis. New point of view, new treatment of the background."

"We had fellers up here from New York, Albany, Philadelphia; we had a man from Boston."

"Naturally—looking up stuff about Mrs. Gregson; looking up the Voories background. That was before the trial, Mr. Davis, wasn't it? They were concentrating on Mrs. Gregson, weren't they?"

Davis said nothing; he regarded Gamadge steadily.

"But I thought of doing something about the other people in the case; new material there, Mr. Davis."

Davis said nothing.

"For instance, Miss Warren emerged as an interesting personality—almost as interesting as Mrs. Gregson herself."

Davis said ironically that she certainly did.

"But her background didn't emerge. By the time Gregson died, she really had none; she'd been away from Omega for years, her mother had died twenty-odd years before, her father seven."

"That's so."

"There's a human interest angle to it. I understand that the father sent her to a good school, and that she was a promising kind of girl; then she goes down to Bellfield, Connecticut, to live with her rich relations—"

"Gregson wasn't supposed to be more than well-to-do."

"But he really was a little better than well-to-do, after all. Miss Warren was put into a business school, and became a typist and stenographer. If the Gregsons couldn't do better for her than that, why should she have left Omega at all? She could have got a job in Utica, I suppose; lived at home, and helped her father. Even if he'd lost all his money—"

"Spent it," said Davis. "He had just enough left to keep himself, and pay the man that looked after him."

"He must have spent a lot of it on her. But she never came back here, not even when he was dying; not even when he died."

Davis chewed a red moustache. Then he said: "I understood he went to pieces after his wife died, and never came together again."

"How? Drink?"

"Not in Omega, he didn't drink; that's something the folks in a place like this can check up on, no matter how secluded a man lives. The Warren house is off by itself; but in a dry town people know whether a man has a bootlegger or not."

"What was the matter with him that he couldn't have his daughter at home? I understood it was drink."

"Nobody around town knew exactly what was the matter with him. His mind went towards the last, and then his heart gave out. He was in the best hospital in Utica for a couple of months before he died."

"What did your obituary notice say?"

"Heart trouble was what Dr. Lamb gave us. I didn't hear there were any complications."

"Except that he'd gone out of his head."

"That was the general impression around town; but the house is pretty far out, as I said, and no close neighbours. The Warrens never mixed much with us Omegans; Warren's practice was in Uticy."

"This Dr. Lamb—is he still in practice here?"

"Right on Elm Street." Davis squinted up at Gamadge. "I wouldn't exactly care to send you to him about this. I wouldn't care to be quoted on it."

"You haven't told me anything I couldn't get from anybody; you've just been kind enough to save me some steps," said Gamadge, looking much surprised.

"The way the trial went, I wouldn't care to turn any kind of a spotlight on Cecilia Warren.
She
didn't get acquitted of murdering Gregson."

"Don't you go putting ideas into my head!" Gamadge smiled at him as if amused.

"I'll try not to." Davis was evidently puzzled. He continued to look up at Gamadge with his head on one side.

"Would it be against your principles to tell me something about the man Miss Warren intends to marry?"

"Who's that?"

"Mr. Paul Belden, of Amsterdam."

"Going to marry him, is she?"

"So I believe."

"I don't know anything about her, haven't known any thing for years, except what I read when the papers ran the murder and the trial."

"You Omegans were agreed on murder, were you?"

"Most of us thought it must be murder. I never even saw this Paul Belden, but I understood that he was quite a cut-up here and in Amsterdam. With the girls, you know. There was quite some talk about a girl like Cecilia Warren going with him. You can imagine that people raked up all kinds of old stories when the papers began to run the case." He added: "I wouldn't care to be quoted on it."

Gamadge's smile was quizzical. "But if new light were ever thrown on the Gregson case I suppose your paper wouldn't absolutely refuse to print the facts?"

"We absolutely print anything, except libel."

"I shouldn't care to dabble in libel myself. I don't know what's worrying you so much, Mr. Davis. The Gregson case is still news."

"If some city snooper dug around and found out that Warren was crazy," said Davis, with sufficient good nature to rob his words of offence, "people might wonder if the girl wasn't loony herself; loony enough to kill Gregson without motive. It always sounded kind of loony to me—that story about hearing Gregson laugh."

"I should think that that
would
have come out-—Warren being crazy."

"People had it that he used to run around at night—run wild. But most of the talking about him came later, as I said— after the trial had got a good start. People were good and mad about that evidence—Gregson laughing, you know. The Voories family was always well liked here."

"Better than the Warren family?"

"Cecilia Warren was a stiff kind of girl, they tell me; little too good for Omega."

Gamadge slid off his corner of the table, and pulled on his coat. He said: "I can't say how much obliged I am to you for giving me so much of your time. I wish I could express my gratitude in some way. Do you smoke cigars, Mr. Davis?"

"Too many." Davis rose.

"That's something for me to remember." Gamadge shook hands with him across the scarred desk.

He did not think that Mr. Davis would carry his scrupulousness so far as to telephone and warn Dr. Lamb, but he lost no time in getting himself to Elm Street. A brass sign beside the front door of a neat, pumpkin-coloured frame house encouraged him to stop the hired car.

The middle-aged woman in the checked apron who answered his ring said that the doctor was on his rounds, and wouldn't be in the office till noon. Gamadge left word that he would be back at that hour, and drove to a drugstore. He entered its telephone booth and called Five Acres.

Harold informed him that the patient was fine. "She got over the news about Locke; she eats and sleeps and takes walks."

"Stick right with her from now on."

"How often do you think you have to tell me that?"

"I mean
right
with her. Unless you're sure she's safe in her room, string along; keep awake at night."

"How long am I to go without sleep?"

"Till tomorrow. I'll be back by then; I'm in Omega, N.Y."

"For gosh sakes!"

"Nice town, reminds me of Fourth of July parades and raffles for the benefit of the church carpet."

"Mr. Colby called up this morning."

"Damn. Why can't he let her alone?"

"She wasn't in."

"Put her telephone out of order."

"What?"

"Bust her telephone."

"Tully—"

"Never mind Tully."

"She'll use the booth down here."

"No, she won't. If he comes up, tell Tully to tell him Mrs. Greer can't be disturbed. I won't have him upsetting her," shouted Gamadge.

"The message was that he couldn't come up, but that he'd try to make it during the week-end."

Gamadge muttered something, and rang off.

He got back into the car, and drove himself on a tour of inspection through the village of Omega, admiring first the old Voories homestead among its now all but leafless maples; it was occupied, so a passing native told him, by people from Rochester named Brant. He then travelled out to the edge of town and contemplated a desolate white house with a pillared porch; it was so far back from the road, so screened by evergreens, that only one dark window stared at him through the branches like a malevolent eye. A sign on the picket fence said that the property was for sale.

Ten years had broken one of the pillars and had turned the sloping lawn into a wilderness. Gamadge's inner eye projected an odd and disquieting picture upon that back ground—a moving picture of a man in a floating red bathrobe flitting among the firs, pursued by a questionable shape in white; which turned out to be a male nurse or orderly. Why his imagination should clothe Warren in red, or give him a flying red belt with tassels, Gamadge did not know.