Deadly Nightshade (23 page)

“I do, Miss Walworth.”

“I always carry a little present or two for such children as I meet on my travels. I got out my bag, and I offered him my little present. The next moment, Mr. Gamadge, there was pandemonium.”

“Pandemonium?”

“That is the only word to describe it. Mrs. Stuart rushed up, chattering, simply chattering, in what I suppose was Romany. Georgina sprang at me and grasped me by the arm. William shouted. Even Martha and the baby appeared, and the baby began to cry. This officer hurried up, allowed me no explanations, and hustled me into my car. He said that he was taking me to Ford's Center; but I told him that I had met you, and that you would speak in my behalf. This gentleman happened to be driving along, and I asked him to come too. Really, I hardly knew what might not happen; the officer seemed to have taken leave of his senses.”

“I'm very glad you thought of me. What
is
all this, Pottle?”

Pottle silently reached into his pocket, and brought out a paper bag. This he offered to Gamadge, who emptied the contents into his hand. Six glossy jet-black globules lay in his palm, which he gazed at for a moment with repulsion. Schenck, peering at them, felt as if the nightshade case had suddenly taken material form under his eyes.

Gamadge picked up one of the black balls, and suddenly popped it into his mouth. After a moment he removed it, tossed it daintily into the bushes, and said, “I haven't tasted a licorice sucker for twenty years, and I find that my taste for them has vanished. I suppose, Miss Walworth, that you didn't realize how much these things resembled the berries of the deadly nightshade.”

“Of course I realized it, Mr. Gamadge.”

“You did?”

“Certainly. It occurred to me, when I bought them, how easy it would be for a criminal to poison people with them. I mean, of course, by putting nightshade berries among them, and giving them to children.”

Pottle asked, grimly, “Don't you think I'd better take her to the Center, Mr. Gamadge?”

“Mitchell isn't there, and I don't believe the sheriff is, either. Miss Walworth, I won't ask you whether you realized that these ghastly things would scare the gypsies, the natives, and even the state police half out of their senses, because if I did you would probably reply that you realized it perfectly, and didn't give a hang.”

“You are joking, Mr. Gamadge; why should a licorice drop frighten anybody? Anybody, of course I mean, who had no sense of guilt upon seeing something that looked like nightshade berries.”

“Well, you
have
scared us to death, Miss Walworth; all of us. Please accept that as a fact, and let me dispose of these horrible things. This gentleman is Mr. Hoskins, and he will be glad to escort you to the Pegram House. I hope you'll stay there, as a favor to me, for the rest of the afternoon. This nightshade case is a mystery, you know; although perhaps it isn't one to you. Like Mrs. Stuart, you may have extra-sensory perception.”

“I lay claim to no occult powers, Mr. Gamadge,” replied Miss Walworth, with dignity.

“Well, you have nerves of steel, at least; but even you must realize that a murderer, in deed if not in intention, is still at large. We'll all feel better if you are not.”

“I shall be glad to oblige you and the authorities; but I cannot understand what all the fuss is about.”

“Allow me to present Mr. Schenck, of New York; he'll drive back with you, too; and I dare say he'll be delighted to play a game of backgammon with you.”

“My Sunday game,” said Miss Walworth, all smiles again, “is Anagrams.”

“He'll get a box of them at the drugstore; and he can buy you another supply of paper handkerchiefs at the same time. Can't you, Schenck?”

Mr. Schenck, in obedience to Gamadge's compelling eye, said that it would be a pleasure. Upon climbing into his car and taking his position at the tail of the parade, he was tantalized almost beyond endurance to hear Mr. Burnside's loud observation from the doorway:

“That feller was on the line again, Mr. Gamadge, and he says to tell you: ‘Absolutely nix.' Dinner's ready.”

Storm

A
LATE BREAKFAST
and a morning of physical inactivity had ill prepared Gamadge for the Burnside Sunday dinner. He ploughed through it under Mrs. Burnside's attentive eye as well as he could, and then declined into a half stupor. Mr. Burnside offered him the use of his extra car, but invisible bonds seemed to keep him within the precincts. He listened to the radio, tried to finish the New York papers, laid out a game of Canfield; but when the Burnsides retired for their Sunday afternoon siesta he succumbed, and followed their example. It would have surprised Mr. Burnside to see him lock the front and back doors, and wedge a chair under the knob of his own, before he turned the key in the lock of it.

His nap was not a success. Anxiety dogged him through a long, confused dream, in which the landscape was green, the skies dark, and none of the people seemed to be more than two feet high. He awoke with difficulty to the sound of wind and rain, and lay for a minute getting his bearings. He decided that Annie and the Little People accounted for the dream, whatever Freud might say about it.

The room was in twilight, and there was a considerable drip and patter of water somewhere; he could hear it above the howling of the gale. He got off the bed, and discovered that the flapping curtains were soaked, and that the floor beneath the window was a puddle. He shut the window, and did some mopping up with a bath towel, before going downstairs. At the foot of them he paused, to stare across the dim lobby to the glass upper half of the front door. A face was pressed up against it, large, flat and pale. He paused for a moment, and then went and let Mr. Ormiston in.

The artist was dripping. He said: “What's the idea of the barricade?” and came over to the fire. Gamadge poked it into life and heaved a log on it.

“There's a doorbell,” he said.

“I didn't want to wake the Burnsides. I suppose they spend Sunday afternoon asleep. So do you, by the look of you.” He laid his knapsack on a table, and peeled off his leather coat, which he hung on a chair. “I wondered if Burnside could lend me a car to get home with.”

“You can have the one he offered to me. It's in the garage; a black Buick. I'll tell him. No need to rout him out now.”

“Thanks.” Ormiston put a hand on the chimney ledge, and held out one sodden boot, and then the other, to the warmth. “I got two nice studies of those trees. The gale came up like a cyclone. I stayed under cover till it calmed down, and then I ran for here. No use trying for a ride to Harper's Rocks—you might as well try to thumb yourself to Ultima Thule. How about driving me up, and bringing the car back? Do you good.”

“I promised Mitchell I wouldn't go out without a cop.”

“You what?”

“Mitchell was going to leave one on the premises, but I said if he'd leave me alone I'd stay in, like a good boy.”

Ormiston flung back his head and roared with laughter. “What does he think will happen to
you?
”

“He thinks I might get shot.”

“Why, for goodness' sake?”

“I'm supposed to know too much. Like the man in the movies.”

“And do you?” Ormiston grinned at him.

“I don't know half enough.”

“Haven't been doing any more of that brilliant constructive work of yours?”

“A fair amount; not very brilliant.”

“It's absurd. That policeman, last night—is that why he was snooping around up at my place?”

“Yes.”

“I don't see why staying at home would save your precious life. You might have a caller.” Ormiston glanced about him. “This place is a trap.”

“Well, Mitchell thought there wasn't much cover around Burnsides, and Burnside or Mrs. Burnside might look out of a window.”

“After you were dead? Consoling thought for you.”

“We still think the party or parties are in their right senses.”

“Well! Good luck to you. I might as well keep that car—no knowing when my wife will get home, and I promised her I'd call on the Bartrams tonight. She says I'm a boor.”

“Oh; she couldn't have meant it.”

“She meant it, all right. So I'll run down and condole, after what I suppose I shall have to call supper. You be there?”

“No, I'm taking the ten o'clock.”

“Scared right off the map. Well, we'll try and struggle along without your expert assistance.”

Gamadge showed a certain alacrity in helping him on with his coat and adjusting the knapsack. He went out with him to the kitchen door, and watched while he backed the Buick out of the garage, and drove away. He was still standing there when Bowles rode up, his sidecar attached to his machine.

“Got it, did you?” Gamadge looked hopefully at the large bundle which the officer dragged out of the sidecar, and carried into the house.

“Yes, sir, we did. How'd you know it would be right near the trail—all of it?”

“Buried?”

“No. Part of it up a tree, the rest stuck behind logs and in bushes.”

Gamadge assisted him to carry the big damp roll, which had been wrapped in a rubber sheet, into the dining room. They laid it on a table, and opened it. Gamadge carefully spread out damp garments.

“Had to be there,” he said, inspecting the black-and-white coat, the tweed skirt, a rubber mackintosh, a white felt hat. “Humphrey must have been in a devil of a hurry to get rid of the things; knew we'd trace the call to Picken's. We had a full description of these clothes since late afternoon, and everybody knew we had it. Whoever it was that laid that trap for us had to be out of the disguise and out of the woods before we had a chance to get hold of Picken's clerk, and you fellows.”

“I suppose she wouldn't risk taking them away with her in her car.”

“No, there was no telling what we'd do, or what might happen. Fatal to be caught with the goods. There might have been an accident, collision, anything.” Gamadge inspected a green skirt, a green sweater, a blond wig. “These and the raincoat were on the dummy. I suppose you didn't find the gloves or the veil.”

“We will, if they're there. This rain makes it harder.”

“The things are cheap, and brand-new. You may trace 'em to the stores, but you won't trace 'em to the purchaser, I'm afraid. However, I don't need to tell you how valuable they are.”

“Mitchell warned us.”

“Get 'em over to the Center as soon as you can, and for heaven's sake don't let anybody talk.”

Gamadge helped him roll up the bundle, and put it back in the sidecar. Again he stood watching while Bowles rode away. He went back through the kitchen and dining room to the lobby, and was lighting a cigarette in front of the fire when Doctor Loring, in rubber coat and sou'wester, dashed up the front steps and came in laughing.

“Whew!” he said. “I bet we're in for three days of this. We'll be calling it the line storm by tonight, in the face of science and the calendar. The Bartrams are driving the little gypsy to his new home; and they dropped me here to say good-bye, for us all.”

“Good of you. Have a drink.” Gamadge got his whisky, and foraged for ice. When he came back Loring was smoking peacefully in front of the fire.

“I had the pleasure of meeting a Mr. Schenck this afternoon,” he said. “Over at the Pegram House. I went there to get a look at Mitchell's lady friend the occultist.”

“Oh. Like her?”

“With Schenck's help I was able to construct a picture. I'm no psychologist, you know; but she's a borderline case, I think. Very garrulous. Likes to meet people, tell them all about herself—all except the important things. She was glad to hear that I was a fellow author, and she'd read every one of my sketches.”

“Did she go into the matter of the revelation?”

“No, she knew I was a doctor, and she kept clear of anything compromising. If Mitchell hadn't warned me, I shouldn't have known a thing about the revelation. Schenck showed me the copy of that prospectus—the descent of Ithuriel, you know. Lots of lonely souls go in for that kind of thing. I shouldn't let it weigh against her, if there were no other evidence. Look here; poor old George. I can tell you why he isn't handing out information about Sunday night. They spent it at an autocamp.”

“I see.”

“Very nice place, I've often stayed in them; but George seems to think it would be the end of him as a solid citizen if it were to come out. He's not as hard up as all that, you know; he's merely frightened. His father was the same way, easily panicked about money. I most sincerely hope that you aren't letting ideas about George lead you astray.”

“No, indeed.”

“Mrs. Ormiston, heaven help her, met me on the road this noon and poured her troubles into my unwilling ear. I like that woman. Did you know that she was a show girl before Ormiston married her, and then an actress in the Charles Street playhouse, and then an artist's model? That's how she met Ormiston. Finally, she was co-proprietress of a Greenwich Village curio shop—‘Breton Broderies, Incorporated'. I'm sorry about the French—it isn't mine.”

“No! Good for her.”

“American womanhood is full of surprises. Take Irma's mother, for instance. Wouldn't you have sworn that that little thing was a product of the middle-Western bourgeoisie, solid tradespeople, with a long tradition of comfortable incomes and cultural advantages, as they'd call them? Well, her father was a bricklayer, and nobody ever could find out what her mother was. Beyond them, the family disintegrates into the realm of myth.”

“I knew Irma couldn't be the scion of stodginess.”

“Mrs. Bartram was typist on that famous cruise—The House In the Bush, you know.”

“I know.”

“Fortunately for George, who needed a typist. She worked for him six weeks, and then they were married.”