The Wrong Way Down (13 page)

Gamadge used this gate tonight. He garaged his car in the private building adjoining the clubhouse, and retaining his keys in his hand, went up the white front steps. The night porter let him in—a grandfatherly person in dark blue.

“I'm just taking the short cut home, Parsons.”

“Yes, sir.” Parsons never even
thought
questions about a member's activities—much less asked them.

He saw Gamadge along the black-and-white marble pavement of the hall, through to the terrace, and watched him down the steps and past the bare shrubs and trimmed evergreens to the green gate in the white fence.

“Got your key, sir?”

“I always have my key.” It was the only one. Gamadge would have been as likely to lose his car key, his latchkey, or the key to his safe deposit box.

“Good night, sir.”

“Good night, Parsons. Thank you.”

“
'kyou
, sir.” Parsons had come from the land of good clubs, and knew how to talk.

Gamadge went through into his wintry garden, locked the gate after him, and found his way to the basement door. He had no key to this, and was forced to pound on it.

Old Theodore, sketchily clad, peeped out at him and then grudgingly opened the door just wide enough for Gamadge to come in.

“You didn't tell me you're goin' play cards all night,” grumbled Theodore. “What's the use of a gate key and no door key?”

“I didn't know I was going to play cards all night.” Gamadge climbed the stairs to the first floor. Harold met him at the door of the laboratory.

“Hello,” he said. “Back way?”

“Well, after all, somebody did show signs of wanting my blood.”

“That's so.”

“
I
don't want any more shooting.”

“Regular war, is it?”

“To the knife, I should say. Shouldn't you?”

They went into the laboratory and sat down at the table where Harold had been working at some mathematical formulae. Gamadge described the events of the night since they had parted two hours earlier. It was now ten minutes of two.

When he had finished, Harold said: “Bowles and Spiker on the loose. Why shoot you? Why shoot
you
?”

“Did we ever know?”

“Of course without you there'd be no first-hand witness to what Miss Paxton said about the picture.”

“There's that.”

“It always goes back to the picture.” Harold smiled. “I put it up on the mantelpiece in the library. Like to look at it.”

“It's a nice thing.”

“Funny case. Funny collection of people.”

“Yes. Know how I feel about it?”

“Stumped.”

“I feel as if every step I took was a step down. The only way to go is down. And the farther down, the harder it is to breathe the air.”

“I'm not much on these allegories,” said Harold, “but I've been down in old cellars myself.”

“Damp ones,” said Gamadge. “Dirt floor, anything you find there covered with mold.”

“Plenty of rats, too.”

“Rats, of course. Nordhall is trying to scare something out of those three; he won't do it. He'll never do it.”

“Don't they scare?”

“They're all terrified. Won't do Nordhall any good.”

Harold reflected. Then he said: “Trouble is, a hundred thousand dollars doesn't cut so good six ways. Wait a minute—Vance and young Ashbury would count as one. Five ways. But twenty thousand isn't so much for people like that to commit a murder like that for. Of course Bowles and Spiker both could be on salary, but if they're going to risk taking the rap I should think they'd come high.”

There was a ring at the front door, faintly heard from the back of the house. Gamadge rose. “I'll spare Theodore's feelings,” he said. “You shout down if he comes and tell him to go back to bed.”

“Would that be Nordhall?”

“Don't know.”

“Hadn't I better take it?”

“I'll keep the chain on.”

Gamadge opened the door to the extent of the chain, kept behind it, and asked: “Who is it this time of night?”

“Misther Gamadge…”

“It's you, Connell?” Gamadge took the chain off and opened the door wide. The patrolman on the beat stood there, a vast officer well known to Gamadge. His red face wore such a strange expression that the other was startled. “What's the trouble, Connell? Aren't you well?”

Connell did not reply, but he closed immense fingers on Gamadge's upper arm and drew him out into the cold and dark of the night. The grip was meant to be a friendly one; it felt like the clasp of half a pair of ice tongs.

“What's wrong?” Gamadge searched the face of Connell, which was still distorted into a grimace.

“Take a luk.”

Propelled to the railing, Gamadge obediently looked down into the area. At first glance he might have thought it was some large, furry animal that crouched for shelter or safety against the basement gate; but Connell put on his torch.

“My God.” Gamadge, hands on the rail, stared down. It was a woman in a fur coat, and half of her face was a dark mask, glistening wet.

“She's dead, sir. Will you go down there and wait while I put in the call?”

“Yes; but—”

“Just found her, one minute after two o'clock. She might have run in to get away from somebody.” He added: “I think she's shot. You wouldn't have heard it?”

“Bantz and I were back in the laboratory.”

Connell and Gamadge went down to the street. Connell lumbered to the corner, Gamadge went down and stood in the area in front of Mrs. Spiker. She had lost her fancy hat—no, it was half under her.

Harold looked out, peered over the rail. He met Gamadge's eyes in silence. Then he said: “Wasn't here when I came home—about one-twenty.”

Gamadge said: “She didn't quite make it. It's the Spiker woman.”

“Somebody waiting here for you, got her instead?”

“Looks that way.”

“She was getting out from under?”

“Looks that way.”

“Don't stand out here like a dummy with Bowles perhaps in the next area.”

“I have your gun. Go and telephone Nordhall, stay there till you get him.”

Harold disappeared into the house; Gamadge stood beside the dead woman, facing the street. Now and then he glanced down at the dabbled, brassy hair, the glimpse of painted cheek, the bright earring. Poor woman, he thought, she must have been clear of the murder or she'd never have tried to come to me…As soon as she heard from the Ashburys—that Miss Paxton was dead—she decided to quit. Went somewhere—all-night checking office or station locker—and got rid of her luggage, then came up here.

Connell came back, the squad cars came, and Nordhall came in their wake. For the next two hours Gamadge's office and laboratory became temporary headquarters for Homicide detail; never in their official lives had such a convenience been theirs, and they took full advantage of it.

The mortal remains of Mrs. Miriam Spiker—if that was her name—were placed under a bright light on a laboratory work table, where the medical examiner conducted a pre-autopsy examination. Old Theodore, fully dressed and trembling with indignation, came up from his basement to protest. Two bullets from a .32 gun were extracted and put under the microscope. The body was fingerprinted. An urgent general call went out for a Mr. Bowles, redescribed by Gamadge. The Hambledon Hotel was able to say only that Mrs. Spiker had checked in on Tuesday, the week before, and had left that night with a suitcase. She had carried it herself, and nobody had seen her take a cab. Miss Iris Vance, called to the telephone, but not informed of Mrs. Spiker's death, confessed that she had taken Mrs. Spiker more or less on trust. She had met her at a big advertiser's convention, where anybody might go, and had never heard of the cosmetics firm—Jones & Jones—which Mrs. Spiker had given out as her employers.

“And nobody else ever heard of them, either,” said Nordhall. “Vance ought to be in a cell. She's told more lies this evening than all the rest of them put together.”

But Nordhall only said that because he was annoyed; Mrs. Spiker's handbag had disappeared.

A final unearthly touch was supplied to the proceedings by Gamadge's cat Martin, who ran back and forth between office and laboratory, as if on some urgent business of his own, getting under everybody's feet and paying no attention to anyone.

The Press got in. They were told that the deceased was a Mrs. Miriam Spiker, supposed to be a cosmetics agent, and that she had probably been followed away from some bar and killed and robbed. Nobody intimated that anything but blind chance had placed her in Gamadge's areaway; nobody but one young man, a newsman acquainted with Gamadge, who cornered the latter in his library to suggest—in sarcasm—that Gamadge had become a Mad Scientist in the best tradition, and had taken to supplying himself with cases for criminological investigation. Gamadge supplied him with what he came for—a drink—and got rid of him.

At something after three o'clock Nordhall joined Gamadge and Harold in the library. He told them that Mrs. Spiker had been shot twice at close range, both bullets lodging in the skull; and the bullets had come from the gun that had been aimed at Gamadge over the stair rail.

“Bantz dug their mate out of the woodwork down there,” he said. “What do you carry around with you, Gamadge, besides an outsize sense of self-preservation? What's your lucky number? Give the rest of us a break.”

“There's no luck to it. Harold went to a lot of trouble nursemaiding me down at Vance's place, and I came home by way of the Club.”

“I know, but damn it, you have Harold and you have that club. As a matter of fact I'm not so sure you're right about that ambush in front. I agree with you that Spiker was coming to see you for ratting purposes, and I'm inclined to agree with you about that letting her out as a principal in the Paxton murder. If she came to see you, she thought you could help her out from under; she must have known you couldn't and wouldn't do it if she confessed to a murder job.”

“She took the whole thing more lightly than the rest of them did this evening—when I called on Miss Vance with the picture. That's one of the things that's been puzzling me so much—how she could have taken it as she did if she knew Miss Paxton was lying dead uptown.”

“I'll give you all that; but why couldn't she have gone somewhere and called Bowles up from a pay station after she left the Hambledon, talked things over with him? Then he got some idea she was getting out, and trailed her up here and caught up with her? He'd have found out where you lived.”

“She didn't have much time.”

“She had an hour. You're counting in the time it took her to get rid of her bag, but suppose she left it with Bowles?”

“She might have done that.”

“Come to think of it, it doesn't seem likely that she'd go and talk to a killer like Bowles if she meant to blow the whole thing. And my idea is that when that shooting went wrong on the Vance stairs it knocked all their plans out; if she was packing to quit the Hambledon, Bowles was checking out of his place too. How would she get in touch with him unless she knew he had another hideaway? He didn't call her at the Hambledon—they say she only had one call this evening, and that was from the Ashburys.”

“But they didn't listen in on it, I gather.”

“No, and even if they had what good would that do us? Those people must have a code, they couldn't work without one, not long distance from San Francisco. We'll check on James Ashbury's call to them tomorrow. And I may have something more on him—the Commissioner has friends on a San Francisco paper. See you in the morning.” Nordhall rose.

“If you come before noon you'll have to break in,” said Gamadge.

“Noon suits me. Thanks for everything; you treated the boys right.”

“I only wish I could have kept that unfortunate woman here and given her a funeral. I rather liked her,” said Gamadge gloomily.

“She darn near helped fix up a funeral for you.”

Nordhall went home. Harold, on his way up to bed, paused to ask: “Another step down?”

“Another long step down.”

“Only Bowles probably took things into his own hands this time. I don't believe,” said Harold, in the doorway, “that he called up headquarters for permission to rub out Mrs. Spiker. That's the trouble with hiring gunmen, they think there's only one answer to a problem.”

“Don't you suppose that the Ashburys will cover up for this murder too?”

“That's so. The air is getting thicker, isn't it? And nothing you could call evidence yet.”

“Nothing you could call proof, anyway.”