The House without the Door (18 page)

"Miss Warren," said Gamage, "mourns him in red."

"I hope she'll mourn me in red. No reason why she should mourn him at all."

Gamadge's eyes rested on the slim red figure, and moved to Cecilia Warren's impassive face. He said: "She is affected by the event."

"Very sensitive girl."

Dinner was announced; Mrs. Smiles laboured to her feet. They all moved into the dining-room, Gamadge beside his hostess. She said: "We'll have our dinner in peace, and you men will have your coffee with us afterwards; then we can talk about poor Mr. Locke."

"Much the best plan."

The long, low dining-room, panelled with brocades that had been made three centuries before in Venice, was lighted by candles in carved Italian sconces. A bed of crimson roses ran down the middle of the table, which was covered by a lace cloth. Mrs. Smiles evidently liked her little dinners to resemble little banquets. She placed Gamadge on her right and Colby on her left; Miss Warren sat at the foot of the table, with Belden and Schenck at her left and right. Miss Prady was between Gamadge and Belden, Clara between Colby and Schenck.

"People must eat," Mrs. Smiles told Gamadge, "and they can't eat while they're thinking. Poor Miss Prady—she's very thin."

"And nervous." Miss Prady was fumbling at her white evening bag, which had lost many of its beads.

"She is so anxious to hear what we all think about Benton Locke's sad passing."

Gamadge did not care for euphemisms but he realized that Mrs. Smiles used them naturally; she was incapable of using stark words. She used many others, however, and engrossed Gamadge during two courses with a description of something she called the Pattern of Life. Gamadge learned that it taught Acceptance, and spent a good deal of time persuading Mrs. Smiles to admit that the theory had not been formed to embrace insect pests, colds in the head, or burglars. Murder seemed to be on the border-line. Woolly on the edges as the system appeared to be, he thought it not a bad one for the widow of a scoundrel to live by.

"The thing is," she informed him, "to interfere only when interference seems definitely indicated by the Weaver."

Game arrived on gold plates; and Gamadge was at last allowed to turn to Miss Prady. She had had champagne, and looked feverish.

"Where do you dance, Miss Prady?" he asked.

"I'm just learning. I won a competition, and the Ballet is giving me lessons free."

"You must have what it takes to get ahead like that."

"Benny got me into the competition." Her face grew tragic.

"He was a good friend."

Miss Prady's eyes turned to Mrs. Smiles. "
I
don't accept things like that," she said. "Like people killing people."

"Nor do I. We must humour our hostess."

"That policeman, or whatever he was, wanted to know who Benny had been quarrelling with. I couldn't tell him anything; I don't know Benny's friends, except some dancers—I hardly know anybody in New York."

"Had you been engaged to him long, Miss Prady?"

"It wasn't announced," she said, with what Gamadge thought infinite pathos.

"I'm going to find out who did for him—if I can. Will you back me?"

She looked at him, doubtful and moody. "I didn't think you were on his side."

"I am, though."

"I didn't think anybody was." She glanced round the gleaming table, and Gamadge followed her glance. Colby was talking busily to Clara about the eighth hole on the Bellfield golf course, and the means he took to conquer it. Schenck was asking Miss Warren if she had seen
Kick Off
. Belden sat listening to them, in a state of latent jollity; but his eyes also were wandering. Cecilia Warren might have been half-drugged; she listened and answered, turning her head slightly from one man to the other, as if in a dream.

When the ices came, Gamadge returned to Mrs. Smiles and the Pattern of Life. Luckily for his reason, the end of the dinner came quickly; Mrs. Smiles ceased to murmur with closed eyes, "Accept, accept," and permitted him to help her out of her chair.

"Now we're all going into the other room," she said, with more gaiety than seemed quite appropriate to the occasion, "and I warn you that I have a surprise for you."

They streamed through the dining-room doors; Clara, with some embarrassment, flitted away; Gamadge took his coffee cup into the lobby, where he studied a worm-eaten and precious tapestry; and Schenck planted himself solidly in the middle of the drawing-room, half-way between the entrance and the hearth. He gazed about him, over walls and ceiling, until Belden came up and assisted him in his survey with a semi-jocular dissertation on Jacobean Gothic, as applied to living-rooms in apartment houses. Schenck's eye returned, ever and anon, to Miss Prady; but she made no move to follow Clara, and Gamadge hoped that Schenck would not be forced into physical encounter with her.

Minutes dragged while coffee and liqueurs were passed from guest to guest. Gamadge felt perspiration destroying his collar, and he would not meet Schenck's increasingly truculent stare. At last he could bear it no longer. He went to the foot of the little staircase and whistled. "Clara," he called, "what's keeping you?"

"Coming." She appeared in the doorway above, and began to descend. Her jacket was over her arm.

"In the closet," she murmured, as she reached him. "On the top shelf, under a summer hat."

He took the jacket from her, grasping the hard and bulky object through its covering of satin and fur. They went into the drawing-room and joined the others round the fire. Clara said apologetically to Cecilia Warren: "I just needed a safety pin."

"My dear child, why didn't you ring?" Mrs. Smiles was apologetic too. "But sit down beside your husband, now; there's a nice little table for you both, and there's your coffee and your cognac waiting. I don't know whether you take cognac; if not, you can have whatever else you like."

Clara downed the cognac, as Gamadge afterwards told her, like a bar fly. He sat beside her, the jacket lying on the settee between them, and toyed with his own brandy in a gentlemanly manner. The company had formed a rough semicircle in front of the fireplace.

"Blatchford," said Mrs. Smiles, "you may clear away, and if I want anything I shall ring."

There was silence until the major-domo departed with his tray, and closed the dining-room doors behind him.

"Now," said Mrs. Smiles. She glanced about her complacently. "My idea was to compare notes on this sad event— poor Benny Locke's passing—and submit our results to the proper authorities. I only wish that poor Mrs. Gregson were here with us tonight, but she still shrinks from new faces. Miss Prady welcomes our little investigation; she says she won't let it upset her. She says she'll be brave."

Miss Prady, on her low chair beside Mrs. Smiles, had begun to react unfavourably to her cocktails, her champagne, and her cognac. Her mouth drooped. She looked very sullen, and her fingers played with the white bag.

"Have you all cigars and cigarettes?" asked Mrs. Smiles. "Aren't you smoking, Mr. Colby?"

At the sound of his name Colby started violently, and smiled. He got out his cigarette case.

"You won't have one of these? Well, then; we seem to be all ready. Of course everyday people like ourselves can't pretend to know how to approach dreadful affairs like this; we are not trained to marshal facts and to weigh evidence. Are those the correct phrases?"

She looked about her. Paul Belden took his cigar out of his mouth to answer her: "You're doing fine, ma'am, but where are you heading for?" Cecilia Warren, beside him, sat motionless; her hands folded in her lap, her eyes cast down. Gamadge thought: This is driving the girl mad; but she couldn't stop the old lady from doing it.

"Why, Paul," answered Mrs. Smiles, "that's the surprise! We all know by this time that Mr. Gamadge is a document expert whose hobby is criminology and that he investigates cases for his friends; but he's solved three celebrated cases himself, and he's consulted by the police! They think the world of him!"

Mrs. Smiles' announcement fell flat; nobody responded to it, but she did not seem to observe their apathy; she went on, jubilant:

"So this is to be a little court of inquiry. Mr. Gamadge, who knows just what to do, will question us all, and we must tell him everything we know. Then he can take the results to the police. It will be so interesting to watch his methods."

Gamadge sat back on his settee, smoking, and looking at his hostess with a smile. He felt no annoyance at being asked to perform; he realized that this was indeed no more than a parlour game to Mrs. Smiles, and that she meant to flatter him by making him the master of ceremonies.

"Well," he said easily, "I see no objection to talking things over; but it's impossible for me to proceed as you suggest; impossible for more than one reason."

"Oh, but why?" Mrs. Smiles looked ready to shed tears of disappointment.

"I'm not connected with the police, I'm a mere amateur; I never present them with anything unless I'm sure they'll know what to do with it. I shouldn't dream of offering them hints and conjectures."

"But evidence? You'd not withhold evidence of a crime, Mr. Gamadge—if you came across it in the course of an investigation?"

"I shouldn't offer the police anything less than proof which would stand up in a court of law. They must act on their information, you know, whether it gets innocent people into trouble or not. And then these hints and guesses get into the newspapers, you know, and that's convenient for the guilty and wretched for the innocent. Police procedure and legal procedure must run their appointed course, or we should have no law and no justice at all; but a private individual can use his own judgment."

"You don't seem very sound on your duty as a citizen, I must say." Belden surveyed him humorously.

"Well, I really am; all I mean is that I don't go dashing to the police with the wrong things."

"Then we must all take a vow," said Mrs. Smiles comfortably, "not to repeat anything that goes on here tonight."

"That might help," agreed Gamadge, "in getting us over my second difficulty. Any investigation of this kind, Mrs. Smiles, no matter who conducts it or how it's conducted, is bound to hurt people's feelings, shock them, distress them, and make them furious. Nobody likes impertinent questions, and nobody answers them. The inquiry would turn out to be painful and futile."

"Shall we risk it?" Mrs. Smiles turned her face from guest to guest. "Shall we allow Mr. Gamadge to do his worst?"

Nobody spoke, to assent or to protest; until Miss Prady suddenly astonished everybody by saying in a loud and angry tone: "I say go ahead."

Mrs. Smiles turned to gaze at her in surprise.

"I say go ahead and ask questions," repeated Miss Prady, "and put them in the papers. I want to know who killed Benny Locke."

"Any objections?" Gamadge questioned each set and mask-like face in the semi-circle. When he came to Colby's, the latter said brusquely: "Watch your step, Gamadge."

"I'll try to be discreet."

He became suddenly very business-like; pulled the little table up in front of him and Clara, found a gold pencil in his waistcoat pocket, and asked for paper. "I must take notes, you know," he said. "That's part of the game."

Mrs. Smiles opened her mesh bag, and produced there-from a little pad with gold corners. She handed it to him, chuckling.

"Thanks very much. Now: we must have closed doors. This is in camera, you know, and it's highly important that we shouldn't be overheard or seen."

Belden went to the dining-room doors, opened them, and looked between them. He said: "They've cleared away, the place is dark." He closed the doors again, fastened them, and went to the hall. He moved chairs from in front of the big glass doors, and closed them, too.

"There's a door from the writing-room into the lobby," said Mrs. Smiles. Belden went into the writing-room, and came back to report that he had locked that one.

"Now for it." Gamadge fixed Mrs. Smiles with a bland look. "I'm to give a demonstration of my methods, the more sensational the better. Is that what you want, Mrs. Smiles?"

"That's just what we want!"

"Something a little more spectacular than trying to dig a lot of probably useless information out of a lot of people who don't want to part with it. Well, I can oblige you; I have an exhibit." He lifted Clara's pink satin coat, unrolled it, and laid the automatic pistol on the pale, shining surface of the table. Against that background it looked very big, very black, and curiously formless.

There was not a sound in the room; Clara had a glimpse of Colby's staring blue eyes, of Cecilia Warren's bloodless, parted lips.

"I have every reason to believe," continued Gamadge, "that this is the gun that killed Benton Locke. It's a .38 Colt, and my wife happened on it while she was looking for that safety pin in Miss Warren's bedroom."

Miss Prady was leaning forward, her face, under its mass of curls, strongly reminiscent of a Medusa's head. She pointed at the gun, and shrieked: "That's Benny's pistol! It's the one he always carried in his car!"

"W
ELL, MISS PRADY."
Gamadge's expression as he looked at her was almost affectionate. "We seem to be making progress, we really do; but how can you tell that this is Mr. Locke's pistol?"

Miss Prady cast an intense look at him, and then back at the incongruous object lying on the satinwood table. She rose and advanced slowly towards it; her hand was nearly upon it when Gamadge put out his own.

"I wouldn't touch it, if I were you," he said. "Probably there are no fingerprints on it except my wife's; still, I wouldn't touch it."

Belden had also got to his feet; there was even now a smile on his lips, but otherwise his face had taken on a resemblance to the gargoyle mask which Gamadge had caught a glimpse of the day before. He asked, his eyes on Gamadge: "Shall I turn these people out for you, Mrs. Smiles?"

Mrs. Smiles was also gazing at her guest of honour, with very much the expression of one who has been stroking a catlike animal and suddenly discovers it to be a cheetah. She made no reply.