The Book of the Dead (24 page)

“If Idelia was vindictive,” said Gamadge, “she would have been satisfied when she saw the look on Crenshaw's face when that furious little creature leaned across the table at the Crab Apple Inn and screamed at him. And he'd committed murder for her. She was shocked silly, of course; I meant her to be. That's why I let them come down to dinner so complacently—to shock her afterwards into turning against him. But his shock went deeper. He would have shot her first, and then himself; when that didn't come off he was like a dead man. Went off with us without another word, and never looked at her again.”

Billig said, turning away: “Well, I'll be on hand when you want me.”

Gamadge rose. “Don't go yet, Doctor. There's the door bell; a man on business, but he won't stay long. I want to talk something over with you. Look here: I apologize in advance for suggesting such a thing to a man of your qualities, but if the worst should come to the worst, I need a laboratory man badly. Mine's at the wars, and when he comes back he's going to marry and set up for himself. I feel like a fool to offer you such a job, but temporarily—and the lab's quite a nice little hole. You might care to go down now and look at it? Toy with the microspectrograph?”

Billig stood for a few moments looking at nothing. Then he said: “I should like very much to see your laboratory, Mr. Gamadge.”

They went down in the elevator. Gamadge took the doctor into the laboratory by the back way, switched on lights, and pulled covers from groups of apparatus. He said: “Just make yourself at home, Doctor.”

“I am at home.”

W
HEN GAMADGE CAME BACK
upstairs to the library he found Detective-Lieutenant Durfee there, making himself comfortable. His feet were up on the chesterfield, and he had poured himself a drink. He said: “Excuse my not rising.”

Gamadge sat down in the chair his other guest had occupied, and lighted a cigarette. “Durfee,” he said, “what can we do for poor old Billig?”

“Did you offer him the job?”

“He's down there now. It's a frightful shame. He wouldn't have touched the two thousand for himself, there's some indigent sick relative.”

“He was a diagnostician. These specialists charge horrible fees—couldn't he make out that two thousand was usual?”

“Two thousand dollars for an analysis any hospital pathologist will do for five dollars?”

Durfee settled his shoulders into the cushions of the chesterfield. He said: “We know all about Mrs. Dodson and the Jeremiah Wood Home, you know. We know when he put her there.”

Gamadge looked blank.

“That shoplifting charge was dropped long ago,” continued Durfee. “Nobody's going to bother Mrs. Dodson; she was as mad as a hatter when she committed the last theft—costume jewelry to the amount of one dollar and seventy-seven cents. Of course she was a repeater; but we won't bother her now. Where's ‘home'?”

“‘Home'?” Gamadge was staring.

“Where she wants to go.”

“Billig says it was a brick house in the East Thirties, torn down the year after the Hotel Windsor fire. She ran away from it to marry the promising young Dr. Billig, but I think she must have been happy there once.”

“You can tell him not to worry about
her
, anyway.”

“I shall.” Gamadge, still slightly agape, made himself a highball.

“As I make it out,” Durfee went on, thoughtfully gazing at the polychromatic ceiling, “we wouldn't want Billig at all if we didn't need him to establish Pike's presence in New York on the night of July twenty-eighth. He didn't
know
the sick man was a criminal hiding from justice—he only thought so. And nobody thinks less of a doctor because he don't nose around trying to find out his patient's business.”

“That's so.”

“It was only a guess on Billig's part, wasn't it, that Crenshaw had been diagnosed before? Nothing to show for an earlier diagnosis?”

“No.”

“Nothing unethical about letting the patient stay in the apartment until a week before his death? Nothing unethical in not giving him the treatments if he didn't want them?”

“Not a thing.”

“We have the hospital doctors and nurses to swear it was a natural death—from acute leukemia. They'll swear that nothing could have saved the patient. As for the Fisher girl's murder, we have no atom of proof that Billig ever connected it with Pike; and as for the evidence that he gave Pike the girl's address, that's corroborative; it isn't worth a nickel by itself. As for the two thousand dollars,” finished Durfee, “a patient can take a fancy to a doctor and leave him a legacy; why not give it to him beforehand, in cash?”

“Why not?” repeated Gamadge.

“I'm just explaining that we don't think we'll call in Billig; and the other side certainly won't call him—he wouldn't do
them
any good!”

Gamadge's mouth fell open, but he said nothing.

“In the first place,” Durfee went on, “we think we've got Pike placed in New York without the doctor's evidence.”

“You have?”

“We found a little garage in Unionboro where he left his car early on the morning of July twenty-eight before he caught the day express down. We can't place him on it, he travelled by day coach; or that's what we think he did. But the conductor on the 12:01 that night positively identifies him.”

“That's rather too good to be true.”

“I don't know. He was disguised, but the man picked him out.”

“I hope you can make it stick,” said Gamadge. “Those identifications aren't much use in a murder case.”

“Too bad you didn't get a look at him in the hallway downstairs on the famous night,” said Durfee.

“I thought I'd better go on living.”

“You had it settled in your mind that it was Pike, even then?”

“And that Pike was Howard Crenshaw.”

“On account of that book. I always,” said Durfee indulgently, his hands clasped behind his head and one knee over the other, “I always like your rigmaroles.”

“Well, that's what you would have thought it was. I had no case, I had no evidence but the Shakespeare that Crenshaw was Pike. There was nobody I knew of nearer than California who could say that the dead man wasn't Howard Crenshaw, and I didn't know who he was. I had to collect evidence, and I had to keep Howard Crenshaw from getting lost. He was disguised, and he had another personality waiting to be stepped into—I was certain he had. I couldn't risk losing a minute or giving him any thing to suspect.”

“So you tied it in for Schenck.”

“Schenck's satisfied. And little Boucher knew what I was up to the minute he heard the précis of the case.”

“Then along came Mrs. Crenshaw.”

“Who for all I knew was an accomplice in this peculiar game; but when I saw the niece, and heard about how the niece was going to take that night trip up to Vermont just to be at her uncle Howard's funeral, I thought perhaps I'd found the woman in the case.

“I let her go. Perhaps we could catch up with them somewhere when they were feeling quite safe. I would present my case as complete, and perhaps she'd throw Crenshaw over to save her own skin. She didn't hesitate.”

“So why are you looking so discouraged?”

Gamadge clashed ice in his tumbler. “Because we won't convict Crenshaw of killing my client. That's why.”

“He was too smart for us.” Durfee swung his foot, still eyeing the painted ceiling.

“We may prove he was in New York that night, and we may do it without Billig's evidence,” continued Gamadge. “But we won't prove he committed the murder.”

“You're right after him, aren't you?”

“Yes, I am. I never think of him except by his nickname.”

“That's so, somebody did say Pike was a nickname.”

“He was quite proud of it. He told Lucette Daker how he earned it when he and Barton and the gang were boys together in a little town near Omaha.”

“Because when he hung on to something he wouldn't let go?”

“Deadly and remorseless, those fellows, aren't they, hanging on to the bait? When he and Barton came together in late May they decided that Barton should always call him Pike; in case he slipped up and called him by his right name, you know.”

“Thought of everything, didn't he? Pretty smart guy, for an amateur.”

“I wish you wouldn't keep on calling him smart,” said Gamadge with some irritation.

“He was smart. He probably killed the girl with his own pistol—handy kind of blunt instrument to carry around in a pocket—and he must have got a lot of blood on it and on the glove he wore. No bloodstains, though. He must have taken the glove off and wrapped his hand in a handkerchief before he started to empty the handbag—had to empty it so we'd think it was a hold-up. He never left a fingerprint on or in the bag, and there isn't a spot of blood on that suit that was in the bag they packed up for you at the Crab Apple Inn.”

“I know all that.”

“You're not as much interested in these sordid details as we poor old pros are. We love them. He must have crammed all her stuff into his pocket—left-hand pocket, probably, to keep it separate from his own things—and when he got to a good place—up country somewhere?—he threw her things all away. All,” said Durfee, slowly swinging his legs over the side of the chesterfield and sitting up, “but this.”

He took a little wooden box out of his pocket, slid open the cover, and allowed Gamadge to look at a small white object that reposed within, under a protecting layer of glass.

Gamadge looked, and went on looking. The thing was rectangular, about an inch and a half wide by two inches long. It was slightly rolled at one end, and decorated with a large initial or a monogram.

“That stayed in his pocket,” said Durfee. “He thought it was his paper of matches, and he often fingered it; but he never did take it out and open it and throw it away.”

Gamadge said in a faint voice: “She showed it to me. It's her darning kit.”

“She showed it to her landlady, too, and she showed it to the servant at the rooming house. Cute little thing. Nice glossy surface, it's got her fingerprints on it; and it's got his, too.”

Gamadge shouted: “Durfee, you black-hearted something, why didn't you tell me at first?”

Durfee slid the wooden cover back, and replaced the box in his pocket. He said when he could speak: “I would have, but fingerprints bore you.”

It was some time before Durfee, still choking and gasping, took himself off. Gamadge went down to the laboratory.

Dr. Billig turned from contemplation of photographic enlargements, very much as a weary old buffalo turns slowly to look at somebody who has come up to the bars of his pen.

“It's all right, Doctor.”

“All right?”

“The police won't call you as a witness; they won't need you. The other side won't call you, for their own sake. With any luck, you're out of it. And there's no charge out against Mrs. Dodson.”

Billig put a hand behind him and steadied himself. After a pause he said: “Mr. Gamadge.”

“Doctor?”

“I should like to act henceforth as your consultant; if—if—it can be arranged on a friendly basis, no fees.”

“No fees.” Gamadge laughed.

“If I may have the freedom of this laboratory.”

“It's yours, and the freedom of the rest of the house.”

“There is an atmosphere of peace here.”

“You'll like my wife.”

Billig took a roll of bills from his wallet. “May I ask you to return this to Mr. Howard Crenshaw? I can take care of that patient of mine now—in St. Damian's hospital.”

Gamadge stripped off two hundred-dollar bills. “For Heaven's sake, Doctor! You took care of Barton Crenshaw for three weeks.”

Billig accepted the bills. “Perhaps I am entitled to these.”

“I'll send the rest to Crenshaw's lawyer—from an anonymous sympathizer. Crenshaw probably has many such by this time; they always do.”

When the doctor had gone Gamadge returned to the library; a cool, pleasant August evening; one of the first of the cool nights. But after the fifteenth of August it was often cool in New York.

The doorbell rang. He would have refused himself to guests, but when he saw old Theodore's face in the door way he asked instead: “What's the matter? Who is it?”

“Mist' Gamadge.”

“Well?”

“Lady calling.”

“What lady?”

Theodore dumbly extended a card on a tray.

T
HE LIGHT HAD NOT BEEN
turned on in the office. Gamadge went in and put his hand out to a switch, but his visitor said: “Please don't. I asked your butler not to.”

“Won't you sit down, Mrs. Crenshaw?”

“I'm only staying a minute.”

She stood beside the desk, dressed as she had been at their last meeting, except for the little mourning veil. No words passed between them until she said: “I ought to have let him have the divorce. Will it help him if I say so?”

“His lawyer will know, Mrs. Crenshaw.”

“We haven't talked it over yet—what I'm to say. I ought to have listened when he asked me to let him have the divorce. But it was such a shock—and I thought it was a whim; I thought he'd get over it. We didn't quarrel; not even about that. He knew I always meant what I said. I never once thought of Lucette.”

“You mustn't think that it was only Lucette Daker.”

“Wasn't it?” She seemed faintly surprised, but without mental energy to protest.

“He wanted another life—while there was time. It was a frenzy.”

“I hope they'll say so at the trial. He can't be himself even now. Of course he won't see
me
—I didn't expect him to. He won't talk to anybody. I got him that lawyer.”