The House without the Door (21 page)

He turned the car, and drove slowly back to Dr. Lamb's. The doctor was in this time, and would see him; Gamadge was ushered into a combination sitting-room and office, very snug, where a man of sixty-something with a grey beard sat in a Morris chair and read a medical journal. At Gamadge's entrance he got up, looking pleased and inquisitive.

"I saw by your card that you've come all the way from New York, Mr. Gamadge," he said, shaking hands with the visitor."

"Yes. I hope I'm not delaying your patients, Doctor, or your lunch?"

"Not at all." Lamb's eyes roved from Gamadge's head to his feet, and back to his face again. "As for lunch, I hope you'll join us for it. My wife would be pleased."

"Awfully good of you, but I hope to catch the early afternoon train from Utica."

"Well, sit down and let's see what I can do for you. I don't suppose you're here for a diagnosis?" He smiled. "I understand that there are some competent men down your way."

Gamadge admitted that he had not come for a diagnosis. He sat down in the comfortable chair designated by his host, but he himself felt far from comfortable. He said: "I do research work on manuscripts, documents, old books. I've written some things, for the most part on literary forgeries. I mention them because they and my job have somehow led me into the field of criminological investigation. I'm an amateur, but I have worked with the police."

Lamb's cheerful face had altered. He said slowly: "That must be interesting."

"It's interesting enough, but in the course of research I find myself occasionally forced to ask embarrassing questions of total strangers."

"We doctors are forced to ask embarrassing questions in the course of research." Lamb, now definitely uneasy, maintained a smile.

"I hoped you would be willing to help me in getting to the truth of a matter of some importance. Let me beg you to believe that my motives in asking you for your assistance are high; mixed, you know, as human motives are so apt to be; but on the whole, high."

Lamb's smile had faded.

"I may say," continued Gamadge, "that I shall not publish the results of my investigation unless I should be absolutely forced, in the interests of common justice, to do so; I don't think I shall be. I need facts, Doctor, and I need them quickly. The only person who can give them to me without delay is yourself."

Lamb said: "I don't know what you can possibly want of me in the way of facts."

"I'll put my business in the form of a statement, which we can discuss later. Cecil Warren, when he died, had been a morphia addict for more than twenty years. He died in a Utica hospital of heart trouble, whether induced or aggravated by morphia does not matter to me; and the hospital records can and, if necessary, will be produced to show what his condition was when he went there. I don't want to waste time over the procedure involved in the production of hospital records; and the last thing I want is to go to the police. I intend to keep this whole investigation private—if I can.

"Morphia was the reason why Cecil Warren sent his daughter away from him and kept her away. Whether or not he knew that he was dying, he wouldn't even have her sent for by the hospital. He had chosen, once and for all, between her and his drug, and he stuck heroically to his choice—he gave her up."

The Morris chair creaked as Lamb's strong hands grasped the arms of it. He said nothing.

"The tube of morphia which was produced at the Gregson trial," continued Gamadge, "was more than twenty years old. You of course knew, Doctor, where it had come from."

"Knew? Knew?" Lamb glared at him.

"Had you really any doubts?"

"If you suppose that I, as a physician, would have been justified in coming forward with guesswork—"

"Well; Mrs. Gregson was on trial for her life."

"I knew they'd never convict!" Lamb pounded the arms of his chair. "They had only to look at Vina Gregson."

"You should see her now."

Lamb frowned heavily. He said: "I suppose you're going to try to reopen the Gregson case; I suppose you're out to ruin that girl." He laughed. "Do you know that when tubes of morphia were knocking about in the Warren house she wasn't seven years old?"

"We don't know how long that particular tube had been in the Warren house. She didn't leave home for good until she was sixteen or seventeen. What would you have done, Doctor, if Mrs. Gregson had been convicted?"

"Don't remind me of the possibility." Lamb threw him self back in his chair. "I have nightmares about it yet."

"I don't wonder."

"If I'd come forward at that trial and talked about that tube of morphia, there'd have been a miscarriage of justice."

"I don't know Miss Warren."

"Handsome girl; brilliant girl; and her father was one of the most brilliant men I ever knew in my life. His wife and I had him cured three times—or thought we had. She died of it at last. And when he really began to go under for good, the house wasn't a fit place for a girl to live in. Cecilia Warren's childhood was a tragedy. For years, no outsider knew that anything was the matter with Warren; and then he was supposed to be drinking, or out of his head. Nobody ever guessed drugs, and only about six people ever knew he took morphia. Three of them are at the hospital—one doctor and two nurses."

"You kept the secret very well."

"I promised his wife I'd keep it. We didn't keep it well enough," said Lamb morosely, "if you got hold of it. That poor girl—she made friends with a young fellow named Belden; talky, irresponsible kind of lad from out of town. He made a tomboy of her, kept her away from the kind of friends she ought to have had. Of course it came to nothing."

"They're now engaged to be married."

"I'm sorry to hear it. Well, I've given you a notion of what she grew up with; I take my hat off to the way she pitched in and went to work afterwards."

"Very strong character."

"Why was I to suppose she'd have any of that morphia in her possession after all that time?"

"She might have found the tube among her mother's effects. I dare say Mrs. Warren had a supply, if she was helping you with her husband's cure; I dare say he hid his own supply in all sorts of places."

"All over the house. Look here—I've always argued that Gregson's death wasn't murder. If that tube was among Cecilia's traps—if she really did keep it—he found it, and took an overdose. Accidentally or not, who can say?"

Gamadge met Lamb's almost pleading look with a smile. "Well, Doctor, you know what juries are."

"I know I wasn't prepared to trust one of 'em with Cecilia Warren's life."

"That celebrated tube of morphia must have weighed heavily on you, during these last three years."

"I thought I intimated as much." Lamb spoke with exasperation.

"More heavily than you have intimated. Do you know, I think you could have identified it, Doctor; I think you could identify it still."

Lamb's face looked greyish in the sunlight. He said: "Nonsense."

Gamadge faced him gravely. "I said I wouldn't use this information about the morphia unless I absolutely had to use it. Now I'll say more. I needed it, and I need your positive identification of that tube of morphia, to establish a working theory of this case. I give you my word that I won't go to the police with it, and I'll never publish a word of it in any form. You'll never hear of it, you'll never be involved, and all you will have done is to help me right a wrong and perhaps prevent a crime."

They exchanged a long look. Gamadge added gently: "And that tube of morphia needn't trouble your dreams any more."

Lamb silently interrogated the blunt features and the clear gaze of his remarkable guest. Then he said: "Warren got a batch of tubes from some medical quack or malpractitioner. The serial numbers had been torn off the labels to protect the man who was selling them. I always thought it was some scoundrel of a doctor."

"I imagined so." Gamadge rose, and stood looking down into Lamb's woeful face. "Set your mind at rest."

"There's more to my side of it than you know about. If I could explain, you might exonerate me in the matter."

"I think I do know your side of it."

"That's more than I can believe."

"Do you take me for a fool?"

They exchanged another long look. The doctor rose, and slowly put out his hand; Gamadge took it. "In your position," he said, "hanged if I know what I should have done myself."

He drove back to Utica, turned in the car, and had some lunch. By the time he had bought a paper-covered book and a magazine the south-bound express came in; he boarded it with the presumption that as usual he would have no trouble in killing time. But the five-hour trip strained his mental resources beyond their capacity. He sat turning the case over in his mind until he found to his horror that he was getting a nervous headache; this he remedied with a cup of almost boiling tea in the club car, and a period of grim inactivity with the shade pulled down behind him and his eyes closed. When he could stand no more of it, he tried the book, tried the magazine, tried a crossword puzzle—in vain. He got a pack of cards from the porter, but his game—a last stand against nervous irritation—was interrupted by a little grey-faced man in the next chair, who wanted to talk about woollens and war. It seemed that he had conscientious objections to manufacturing army blankets.

Gamadge couldn't tackle it. "A moral problem's a personal thing," he said. "I don't feel competent to offer an opinion."

"But this is an economic problem, too. I have a family."

"Can't help it, it's a thing you must settle for yourself," said Gamadge, refraining from the observation that it would probably soon be taken out of the little man's hands and settled for him.

"Would you sacrifice
your
family to an ideal?"

"Can't say off-hand. Would you sacrifice yours to a mixed indignation?"

"A…"

"That's what I did, last night."

The little man stared. Gamadge went into the dim and swaying vestibule; he remained there, feeling stuffy and confused, until the train crawled into the tunnel at exactly seven twenty-five p.m.

A
SUCCESSION OF PORTERS
escorted Gamadge and his bag into the lobby of the Hotel Biltmore, and a pageboy led him to the desk. He engaged two rooms and a bath, explained that his friend might or might not arrive by a late train, and was taken up in the elevator. Once in his room, he made as careful a toilet as the contents of his bag allowed; he then dined in the grill.

Afterwards he took a cab to his garage. He seemed rather anxious about the weather, and consulted the taxi driver. "I don't think it's going to rain," he said.

"I don't, too."

Gamadge transferred himself to his own car and drove uptown. He stopped several doors east of the Smiles apartment, got out, and walked slowly along towards the columned doorway, his head in the air; he was contemplating the balcony which jutted out, not so far above him, from the second floor. It tantalized him almost beyond endurance, but he hadn't the courage to attempt operations by means of a step-ladder and the house porter.

He went in, strolled to the elevator, and asked for the second floor. When he reached it he walked confidently to the left and rang a bell. A well-turned-out maid answered it.

Gamadge produced a card. "I'm awfully sorry," he said, "but I'm in a silly predicament, and I should be very much obliged if you'd give my card to the lady or the gentleman of the house. Perhaps they'd see me for a minute."

The maid was not in her first youth, and looked capable of dealing promptly with strangers who were not expected and did not state their business. She looked at Gamadge, made no gesture towards accepting the card, and said she didn't think anybody was at home.

"I'm sorry for that. Perhaps you'll see whether they are or not. You can leave me out in the hall, you know."

"Would you mind saying what your business is?" Gamadge plainly baffled her.

"I lost something on their balcony."

The maid gave it up, shut Gamadge out into the hall, and then opened the door again to take his card from him. Gamadge waited for some time. At last she reappeared, said that he was to come in, and led him to a long and high drawing-room. She waited in the doorway.

Gamadge's eyes turned first to the big glass windows, reinforced by wrought-iron arabesques and huge locks and handles, which gave on the street. They looked capable of withstanding the assaults of a maddened proletariat. When he glanced away from them he met the protruding stare of a little man in dinner clothes, carefully manicured and massaged, who stood beside a table with one hand on a telephone. A tray on the table contained two cups of coffee, a silver pot, a silver sugar bowl, a little glass-and-silver decanter, and two small glasses.

"I do most sincerely beg your pardon for intruding on you like this." Gamadge stood discreetly just within the door. "And I solemnly assure you that I am not a stick-up man."

The small gentleman in dinner clothes smiled, took his hand away from the telephone, and said: "Evidently not. You can go, Mabel."

The maid backed slowly into the hall; a faint whisper of sound told Gamadge that she had departed. He said: "I don't blame you for taking precautions. Might I know to whom I'm indebted for this extreme courtesy?"

"Well—my name's Bulliter."

"Mr. Bulliter, I'm in the stupidest quandary you ever heard of, but please don't look horrified—I don't want to borrow money of you."

Mr. Bulliter ceased to look horrified; he looked mystified instead.

"As you see," said Gamadge, "I live not far away. I was on my way home, just now, and I may tell you that I'm in a devil of a hurry to get there; but I have a most unfortunate habit of throwing things up in the air and then catching them."

Mr. Bulliter considered this, his prominent eyes blank as those of a crab.

"Like a fool," said Gamadge, "I threw my cigarette case— family thing, old as the hills—I threw it up into the air in my idiotic way, just as I passed under your balcony; and this time I didn't catch it. It fell among the flower pots."