The House without the Door (24 page)

"With Locke's gun?"

Gamadge coughed. "Attacked me, jumped into her car and drove it over into this ravine. The gun's in the car, all right."

"If you'd have the plain, ordinary, God-forsaken common sense to tell me these things you dig up, Gamadge, people wouldn't get away from you and get killed. You stampeded her. Wait there—"

"I had to stampede her. I couldn't get proof you could use without stampeding her. Now you have the gun, and Locke's car, and his murderer. What a scoop!"

"This doesn't make good sense. Wait there. I'll be up—"

"Can't wait. I'm leaving."

"Are you crazy?"

"No, and I'm not crazy enough to go home tonight, either. I'll see you tomorrow morning at half-past nine, and not a minute before."

Durfee said in measured accents: "You stay there. You're a material witness. I'll call up and have your car stopped."

"
You're
out of your mind if you so much as mention my name. I'm nothing but information received, you poor idiot. I don't come into it at all." He added: "Did I let you down the other time? I'll see you tomorrow; and don't you go waking Clara up tonight—she hasn't a notion where I am or what I've been doing."

He rang off. As he came out of the booth a pink fury, wide as a door, barred his way.

"You can't do this to us, Gamadge!" Her whisper was ferocious. "You got us into some kind of a mess. You can't go off tonight and leave us battling with a lot of cops."

"I wouldn't go a step, Tully, if I could do a thing for you. Much better for all of us if I go. They won't bother you here— they'll just go over her stuff and quit. You didn't even know who she was."

"You've ruined the place. You sent a murderess to us under a false name."

Miss Lukes, whose dark hair was brushed severely off her face and braided into a short tail, and whose red flannel robe was far from picturesque, now stepped forward and confronted her partner. "We wouldn't have the place at all, Florence Tully," she said, "if Mr. Gamadge hadn't put up all the capital. I guess we can help him out now."

"Don't take that into consideration, Miss Lukes," begged Gamadge. "I'm as sorry as hell about all this. I don't blame Tully for bawling me out."

"I do," said Miss Lukes. "She's acting very selfish. How did this Mrs. Gregson, or Greer, or whoever she was, get hold of a car?"

"You don't know a thing about that, Miss Lukes. Somebody must have driven it up and left it. I don't see why anybody should ask you about that."

"If they don't, we won't mention it."

"You needn't mention Harold, either; he's going back with me tonight, and I don't think any of your guests will miss Mr. Thompson."

"We'll say he left."

"Anything else we can do for you?" Mrs. Tully stood with folded arms, glaring at him; but suddenly she burst out laughing, and gave him a sledge-hammer clap on the shoulder. He staggered under it.

"Get out while the going's good," she advised. "Drive straight up the hill and turn right. You needn't hit the route till you're beyond White Plains."

"Bless you both. I'll telephone." Gamadge fled out of the house, down the drive, and to his car. He found Miss Prady extended on the back seat with a rug over her, and Harold in front, holding the door open. The engine was running. Gamadge sprang in, and they were off.

"Get out the map," he said, "and read me how to get away from this region without hitting any town within ten miles." He drove up the hill, turned right, and struck a high, level road running south. Harold, the map jiggling under his eyes, read out directions that sent the car swerving around corners and into byways, through sleeping settlements, over and down a hill like a switchback at a fair. Miss Prady, extended, with her knees up, her feet braced and her eyes closed, bounced silent in the rear.

But they entered New York City sedately, and first drew up in front of Miss Prady's rooming-house. Gamadge escorted her to the vestibule, and waited while she fumbled for her key; at last he took it away from her and unlocked the door.

"You've been a wonder," he said. "Clara's looking forward to seeing you again and often."

Miss Prady's head lolled. "Wanted to catch her; didn't know what it would be like," she mumbled. Gamadge re stored the key to her bag, gently pushed her into the house, and closed the door after her. He hoped she would not sink to sleep on the stairs.

By the time he had reached the Biltmore and surrendered the car to its personnel he was almost asleep himself. Harold stood blinking beside him in the lobby, uncertain as to his immediate future.

"We're here for the night," said Gamadge. "Let's have a drink."

They had the drink, and then Harold registered and they went up to Gamadge's suite. He felt as if he had been out of it a year. When he got Clara on the telephone, he regretted the impulse that had made him wake her up.

"Darling," she murmured.

"I had to know how you were. I'll be home in the morning."

"For breakfast?"

"No, but Durfee'll be there, or I'm much mistaken. Be nice to him."

"I was—when he called me an hour ago."

"Damn him."

"I told him I didn't know where you were. How was Omega?"

"Horrible. It's sickening of me to have waked you."

"I'm glad you did. I—was—very—much—worried."

"You sound that way. Go back to sleep."

Gamadge rang off, and sat down with a long sigh to take off his shoes. He remembered just before he sank into bed to ring the office and leave a call for eight o'clock.

"L
EAVE THE BAGS HERE
until later," said Gamadge. He and Harold had breakfasted, and now stood in the Biltmore lobby; it was a quarter past nine o'clock. "Go up to the house by subway," continued Gamadge. "Watch your chance, and get in by the basement door. Be in the laboratory; and remember, you haven't been away."

"Won't Theodore spill it?"

"Theodore will say nothing. Durfee isn't interested in your activities and won't ask about them—we hope."

Harold said, rather awkwardly: "You don't have to keep me out of it."

"I have to keep everybody out of it. I'm not doing you any favour."

Harold walked off. Gamadge left by another door, got his car, and drove it to Park Avenue; he went northward and then east, arriving at his house on the stroke of nine-thirty. When he entered it he whistled; the whistle brought Clara flying down the stairs, and Durfee out of the office. Gamadge addressed the latter over Clara's head:

"Excuse reunion ceremonies, will you, old man? I'll be right with you."

Durfee, leaning against the jamb of the door, watched them stonily. At last Clara released the traveller and went upstairs. Gamadge said, getting out of his coat, "Delighted to see you. Where's the other one?"

"What other one?"

Gamadge hung his coat up in the hall closet, and then turned to smile at his visitor. "The one in uniform. The one that's going to help you take me to jail. I won't go quietly."

Durfee cleared his throat. "No harm in talking it over first."

"That's what I thought." Gamadge led the way into the office, pushed up a big chair for Durfee, sat down at his desk, and got out a box of cigars. He offered one to Durfee, and when it was peremptorily refused, lighted it for himself.

Durfee sat forward, his hands clasped. He said: "They got the two cars and the woman out this morning early. Those people at Five Acres identified her by her clothes."

"Bad as that? I thought it would be."

"Stuff in her handbag identified her as Mrs. Curtis Gregson. The automatic, one bullet missing, was in a rear pocket of her car."

Gamadge looked amiable. Durfee studied him; his face never had much colour in it, but this morning it was ashy-looking, and his eyes were dull. But he seemed at ease, leaning back in his chair with his knees crossed, the cigar in his fingers.

"I didn't care for the way you tried to bribe me last night," said Durfee. "I didn't know I'd made that kind of an impression on you."

"My dear man! Such a thing never entered my head."

"Bribing me to keep you out of the case; that's what you were doing."

"I solemnly assure you that all I wanted was to get away from that place last night and get some sleep. I had had a long day."

"You can't stay out of the picture, Gamadge; those two women at Five Acres are telling everybody you sent Mrs. Gregson to their place. It's in the papers—or will be."

"I don't expect to be out of the picture. I kept out of it last night because I'd been running my legs off solving the Gregson case, and I didn't want to sit up all night talking to a lot of small-town officials and state police, and having my photograph taken. I thought you'd do me the favour of letting me have a few hours' sleep. As a matter of fact, though, I really don't understand why I should be pushed into the limelight. I'm a private citizen."

"If you don't like publicity, why do you risk it by going into these cases and getting people killed? Locke—"

"Locke got killed because he tried to acquire a fortune by withholding evidence against Mrs. Gregson three years ago."

"Why not tell me that the day before yesterday?"

"I had no proof of it. There wasn't even any proof that Mrs. Gregson was working up a case against Cecilia Warren. Let's see that letter she sent you people."

Durfee, gazing fixedly at him, drew a grey envelope out of his pocket. Gamadge compared its enclosure with the one Mrs. Gregson had given him. "There you are," he said, "like as two peas. Only this one really means business." He read aloud:

"The murderer of Curtis Gregson is still at large. Ask Miss C. Warren, Care of Mrs. J. Smiles, where the pistol is that killed Benton Locke."

Durfee studied the other communication. He asked: "You say Mrs. Gregson wrote these?"

"Yes. It's certain."

"But the second one clears Miss Warren of writing the first, then. She wouldn't write a letter incriminating herself."

"I think Mrs. Stoner was supposed to be responsible for those letters. They sound rather like the kind of thing a Mrs. Stoner might think up if she were trying to be portentous. Mrs. Gregson intended them to sound so."

"I thought Mrs. Stoner was a friend of Mrs. Gregson's— lived with her all these years."

"I think Mrs. Gregson had cast her in the role of secret persecutor. Not avenger—that was the role Miss Warren was cast for, as you shall hear. Mrs. Stoner was grateful to Gregson, you know; she might be supposed to cherish animus against his wife. She might be supposed to have given Cecilia Warren the idea for several alleged attempts at murdering Mrs. Gregson. Mrs. Stoner's position was dangerous; it would have become more so," said Gamadge, thinking of the stump lot, "if Mrs. Gregson had succeeded in planting evidence at her door."

"But if Mrs. Stoner was supposed to have it in for Mrs. Gregson, why should she supposedly write a letter incriminating Miss Warren?"

"Oh—because Miss Warren had supposedly killed Benton Locke, whom Mrs. Stoner greatly loved."

Durfee got out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead. "Mrs. Gregson was actually hiring you to get up a case against them, drag them both into it?"

"Even Mrs. Stoner, her best friend."

"And you could have saved us from going and searching that apartment, could you?" Durfee's eye was baleful.

"You pretend that I, or anybody except the Commissioner and the District Attorney, could have prevented you from searching the Smiles apartment?"

Durfee said, after a pause: "They were quite polite about it. Mrs. Smiles—peculiar type."

"Very."

"Said we must follow the pattern, whatever that meant, and would we have some coffee."

"And Miss Warren looked over your heads."

"I would have picked her for the person responsible for Gregson's death if I'd seen her at that time. Cold-looking woman."

"Her defence against a rather cold world. I shall now, Durfee, tell you the story of Mrs. Gregson; which includes a flight of cellar stairs, a poisoned mackerel, a gas oven, and a Boone fruit cake with six grains of arsenic in it."

"I'll be glad to hear it."

Gamadge told the story, explained his reactions to it, and recounted his interviews with Locke, Cecilia Warren, and Mrs. Stoner. "But I knew the attempts at murder were fakes," he said, "and I knew she'd killed Gregson. I knew it when she refused to change that will. I knew she was out to rehabilitate herself by incriminating somebody else; and that must be the most promising suspect, her next heir."

"Why did she leave money in her will to Locke and Cecilia Warren? Why did she buy Mrs. Stoner that annuity?"

"She left Miss Warren and Locke money in her will to provide herself with suspects; that was her first and best reason. But she also left them money, and gave Mrs. Stoner the annuity, so that they shouldn't tell the real story of life in the Gregson house; her hatred of Gregson, and the generally unsatisfactory state of things at the time of the murder. That's what I suppose, anyway."

"You supposed a lot of things."

"I didn't
suppose
that Locke knew about that tube of morphia."

"Locke and who else? What did you find out in Omega?"

"That Cecilia Warren's father wasn't a drinking man. Why did he crash, if not from drugs? Why shouldn't Mrs. Gregson have had access to them? She must have been about the Warren house often enough at the time."

"Cecilia Warren—"

"Cecilia Warren was about seven years old when her father owned that tube of morphia with the corner off the label. He owned it more than twenty years ago, Durfee."

"You certainly did a lot of guessing in this case. I don't see how we're ever going to tie these letters up to Mrs. Gregson." Durfee fingered them, scowling.

"Perhaps the income tax people will let you look at her returns. Perhaps there's a plant label, or a luggage tag, at Bellfield. Perhaps there's marked linen at Pine Lots. Any expert will tell you those letters were printed by the same hand. They're identical."

"And she hired you just as a first step to getting her story to the police?"