Unexpected Night (11 page)

“Lunch,” replied Gamadge, in whom rudeness invariably begot brevity.

“Oh. Carrie!” The dour young man shouted the name at the top of his lungs, and a little woman with thin blond hair, a pince-nez attached to a gold chain, and an overall decorated with animals, came in through a door lower down.

“Three lunches, please,” said Gamadge.

“Three chicken and waffle dinners,” the little woman corrected him briskly.

“That's right.”

“We serve coffee and raspberries with them.”

“Perfect.”

She went out again. The dour young man had turned and was about to butt his way through the bead portière when Mitchell addressed him:

“Say, young feller. You take messages here for Seal Cove?”

The artist swung around, rage in his eye. “You can go down there yourself, and deliver your message,” he said furiously.

“Oh, I'm going. I didn't ask you to take one,” explained Mitchell. “I asked you if you did take 'em.”

“If we'd known it was going to be a whole week, instead of a day or so, we shouldn't have agreed to do it at all. Perfect nuisance,” scolded the young man. “I was glad to oblige Callaghan; we have friends in the outfit, and we're doing some of his scenic designing for him. But really, what with the telephone calls and the telegrams, we haven't had a minute's peace. We take the receiver off the hook, now, at night. If we didn't—”

Another youth, short, and with a bumpy forehead and thick tow-coloured hair, appeared in the doorway. He was dressed like his colleague; in fact, exactly like him; but, instead of a palette and brush, he carried a roll of gilt paper and a pair of scissors.

“What's the trouble?” he enquired.

“No trouble, I hope.” Mitchell was ominously mild. “I wanted some information. Perhaps you'll furnish it; any reference to telephone messages for the Cove seems to send this friend of yours right off his head.”

“You wouldn't be surprised at that, if you knew what it's been like. Now the audience is beginning to call up, asking us what the plays are, and all sorts of things. We don't know what they are,” squeaked the tow-headed artist, indignantly. “Callaghan won't say.”

“Rather hard on a scenic designer, I should think,” murmured Gamadge.

“You don't know that Irishman. ‘Atmosphere!' he yells. ‘Don't you worry yourselves about atmosphere. There's more atmosphere down on that pier than we can make use of. You just paint me a flight of stairs in perspective, and we'll put the atmosphere in.'”

“Trying.”

“All I want to know,” persisted Mitchell, “is about that telephone message from the Harbour Inn at Portsmouth, last evening. What time would you say it must have come, Mr. Sanderson?”

“Let's see; about eight, I should think. He was alone, then, for a few minutes. I thought he was asleep. How he ever got the strength, I don't know.”

“A telephone call from Portsmouth, about eight o'clock. For Mr. Arthur Atwood.”

The taller artist exclaimed, violently: “Do you suppose we remember the things? We've had hundreds—”

“Thousands,” said the short one.

“Stuff and nonsense. You had to write messages down, if you meant to deliver 'em. Is Callaghan paying you for the job?”

“Naturally, we are being compensated. The recipients pay him, and he pays us.” The dour young man glared at Mitchell. “Of course we deliver the messages.”

“How?”

“Send down. They can't expect to get the things in five minutes; but they do, sometimes.”

“Well, anyway, you must keep a record. If you'd rather not go into your files now, you can come down to the Centre to-morrow, and give evidence at the inquest. I thought I'd save you the trouble.”

“What inquest? What are you talking about?”

“Now, Bobbie!” His tow-headed friend seized him by the arm. “Let me handle this. Who's dead, Mr.—er—”

“Mitchell. The young fellow that put in the telephone call died suddenly, and we want to check up on the message.”

“Oh, I see; or rather, I don't. Anyhow, we were both out for supper last night, and there was a dance afterwards at the Sunflower Studio. Bob's still feeling the effects, as you may have noticed. Carrie Gootch stayed on to answer the telephone. Here, Carrie!”

Miss or Mrs. Gootch trotted out of the kitchen, tray in hand. She placed it on one of the tables, and began to distribute cups and plates. Sanderson watched her hungrily.

“Carrie, these people want to know about a telephone call that came in about eight o'clock last night from—where did you say, Mr. Mitchell?”

“Harbour Inn, Portsmouth.”

Carrie advanced down the length of the barn. “I sent it along down,” she said, peering through her glasses.

Mitchell gave a deep sigh. “So that's that. Now, ma'am, I'd be obliged if you'd give me an idea what he said.”

“What did he say?” she meditated, while tension gripped the ‘Pottery Pig.'

“You write 'em down, don't you?” Mitchell restrained himself with difficulty from leading the witness. “Think. Young feller in a hotel, trying to get a message—important message—to Mr. Arthur Atwood.”

“It wasn't so very important. Let's see. I and the help had washed up, and she had went home; we both live down the street. I fooled around, dusted the china animals and the pig, and sat down to read and wait for ten o'clock.”

“You were leaving the place at ten?”

“We take the receiver off the hook then, and don't it make the Oakport operator mad! Well, about eight, the bell rung.”

Everybody, including the two painters, held their breath.

“Young feller says: ‘This where they take calls for Seal Cove?' I sez: ‘Yes, it is.' He says: ‘It has to git there to-night.' I sez: ‘It will if I can find a boy.' He sez: ‘I'll hold the line till you find one.' So I went out back and hollered to Mis' Brown at the ‘Jolly Little Shop.' Her boy come running. He does all the odd jobs for us round here, and he takes stuff down to the Cove. I sez to the feller on the phone: ‘Here's the boy; now what?' He says: ‘Write it down. It's for Arthur Atwood, from Amberley Cowden.' And he spelled it all out for me.”

“Too good to be true,” said Gamadge to the roof beams. “Things don't happen like this. There's a catch in it, somewhere. It wasn't in code, or anything, was it, Miss—er—Mrs.—”

“Mrs. Carrie Gootch. There wasn't no code, and there wasn't no catch.”

Mitchell was jubilant. “Go right ahead and tell us what it said, ma'am. This young feller here has codes on the brain.”

“‘Mis' Gootch,' he sez. ‘Tell him Amberley Cowden's been sick, and we're layin' up for a couple of hours at the Harbour Inn, Portsmouth. Tell him we're goin' to start not later than ten, and we'll git to Ford's Beach to-night. Tell him, plans unchanged.'”

There was a long and painful silence, made still more painful by Gamadge's attempt to hum. At last Mitchell enquired anxiously: “You sure that was all?”

“Every last word.”

“But you couldn't be expected to remember it all. If you thought it over—”

“I don't have to think it over. He spelled out most every other word, like as if I was deaf, or something; and I had to repeat it back to him twice.”

“Not a thing about what those plans were, that he wasn't going to change?”

“Not a thing.”

“All right. Thanks.”

“Your dinner's ready. You ain't goin' to let them waffles cool off, be you?”

“No. Think you can get hold of that Brown boy for us?”

“I kin try.” She left by the side door, and the party sat down at their table. Conversation lapsed while they consumed food and coffee, Gamadge merely observing gloomily: “There certainly was a catch, and there may have been a code, after all.”

“I don't believe there was a code.” Sanderson gulped coffee, and went on: “I think he was just checking up on his plan, as I told you this morning. He'd want to keep Atwood posted right up to date—about his being sick, and being late, and all the rest of it. For all I know, that second call at the Ocean House may not have been camouflage at all; it may just have been another attempt to O.K. the arrangements as made. Of course he'd pretend he didn't know how to get through by way of Tucon.” Sanderson drank some more coffee, and added: “He liked to feel that he was behaving in a sophisticated way, you know. I think he would have thought a code silly.”

“And that's for you, Mr. Gamadge,” Mitchell sputtered.

“Yes. Thanks. Well, your tip worked out, Sanderson; even if it doesn't help much. We know Atwood got a message, and that's the important thing. What's more,” said Gamadge, “that fact shifts the whole business to the Cove, and to Atwood.”

“Gives us something to tackle him about,” agreed Mitchell.

A boy of fourteen jounced across the hand-mown stubble on his bicycle, stopped in front of the doorway, and supported himself with one foot on the sill.

“I couldn't help it, I couldn't help it,” he shouted. “Mr. Callaghan took it away from me. Mom says you can't do anything to me.”

“What's the trouble, son?” enquired Mitchell.

“Mrs. Gootch says the telephone company is after me for not delivering that telephone message personal.”

“You didn't give it to Atwood himself?”

“No, but he got it. I went out on the pier, and Callaghan stopped me at the door. He said Mr. Atwood was busy, and I couldn't go inside. So I just gave him the paper.”

“And then what?”

“He went in, and I waited to see if there was an answer. I always do. I heard him say ‘Here's a message,' or something like that, and Mr. Atwood said: ‘Now what?' And then he said: ‘The boy's been sick. He means to come on to-morrow, but I wonder if he'll make it.' Something like that… ”

“It was Atwood talking, was it?”

“Yes, it was. I called out, ‘Any answer?' And he called back, ‘No, I won't bother. All right, kid. Thanks.' Only of course I can't just remember the exact words.”

“You're doing fine. Didn't you try to see indoors?”

“No. I've seen inside that theatre lots of times. Nothing to see. It's only an old fish-house.”

“And then you left, did you?”

“Mr. Callaghan came out and paid me, and asked me if the fog was bad in the lane yet. I said it was, but my lamp's a good new one, and I could see good enough. I started down the gangway, and Mr. Callaghan stood in the door. He called back inside: ‘Don't you think you ought to try and get in touch with him?' And I heard Mr. Atwood call back: ‘No, let it stay right there on the knees of the gods.' I've taken lots of messages down to him; I'd know his voice any place.”

“Is he given to classical allusion?” asked Gamadge, amused.

“Yes, he's always funny.”

Mrs. Gootch came up, disapproval gleaming through her pince-nez. “I say you hadn't ought to have delivered that paper to anybody but the feller himself, Lefty Brown,” she declared. “Suppose it had been a private message, and this manager had read it? That ain't right. The telephone company—”

“Let's forget the telephone company, Miss Gootch,” said Mitchell. “They haven't any more to do with this than that pig in the window. The responsibility, if there is any, rests with you people here. If you want personal delivery insured, you send a man down. This boy did the best he could.”

Lefty, who seemed more relieved than triumphant, turned his bicycle and careened off toward the ‘Jolly Little Shop.' Mrs. Gootch cleared away the plates, removed them to the kitchen, and returned with saucers of raspberries and wedges of chocolate cake.

“She may be confused in her ideas,” said Mitchell, after an interval, “but there isn't a thing the matter with her cooking.”

“I feel like another person.” Sanderson finished his third cup of coffee, and leaned backwards against the barn wall. “You're right; I was starving.”

“Too bad not to sit here and digest that dinner. I certainly enjoyed it, Mr. Gamadge,” said Mitchell. “But we got to be going.”

Gamadge found Mrs. Gootch, paid and tipped her, and assured her that he would come again. Then he followed the others to the car.

“Easy, now,” begged Mitchell, as they turned into the lane. “This road's a terror, always was. Watch the bends.”

The sandy track, hedged in by crowding pines and birches, wound steeply downhill. It was unfurnished with lamps, and in every turn it seemed to be provided with a shoulder of bare rock.

“Is this really the only way out to the Cove?” asked Sanderson.

“Yes, it is,” replied Mitchell.

“The whole thing strikes me more and more as a singularly desperate theatrical enterprise,” said Gamadge.