Gentleman Called Read online

  Mrs. Norris managed to get to her feet. She excused herself and trundled off in the direction of the powder room. But finding first a door to the park, she stepped outside and thanked the good Lord she was a woman who kept her coat on everywhere; it was still about her shoulders. She was all in a piece. She fled along the walk toward Central Park West, and thought she had never seen so lovely a sight as the first empty taxi.

  How close she had come to making an utter fool of herself no one must ever know, she thought, except Mr. Adkins, who would in time come to see his share in the proposed folly. She would seek him out in daylight and give him back his jewelry. If she had behaved cowardly tonight, it was to be atoned with at least that much courage on the morrow.

  Near home, she treated herself to a strong cup of tea and some toast at a Schrafft’s on Madison Avenue. She preferred, reaching home to take the shame she could not quite keep down, directly to her own room.

  Ah, but a welcome sight was Mr. Jamie, despite the scowl with which he greeted her. He was still in the black mood, and that was all right, she thought. It was a great relief after the giddy, grinning Romeo from whom she had fled.

  “Your dentist called,” Jimmie said with a considerable edge to his voice.

  “My dentist,” she repeated, managing at the last second to keep the wonder from her voice, and added lamely: “I have a bad tooth.”

  “Three times within the hour,” he said. “Have you that many bad teeth?”

  36

  MONDAY MORNING FOUND JASPER Tully making out a library call-slip for The Sando Bugle.

  It was the rare librarian who made an editorial comment, but Tully got one. “Getting homesick, are you?” the man said, taking the detective for an outlander.

  Tully was pleased, somehow, that the brand of New York City wasn’t on him. “Yeah,” he drawled, “I guess I am. Anybody else coming here to read The Bugle?”

  “Sure, lots of people. Everybody comes to New York.”

  “That’s a damn lie,” Tully said, and stalked across the room to the table where he waited for The Bugle to be delivered to him. He learned two things from his morning’s reading which he thought concerned him: the murderer had been able to check Murdock the Mighty’s itinerary in The Bugle, and thereby set up his alibi when Ellie True was killed. And in a few issues of the earlier year, the magician’s advertisements had appeared alongside the account of the murder of Mrs. Bellowes.

  And Tully learned one thing which he did not think concerned him, the Sando activity Joe had mentioned: the valley coal mines going over to the ownership of the Tripp Gold Mining Company.

  It might concern him at that, Tully realized, inasmuch as it might account for the amount of cash the Widow Bellowes had available when her phony doctor showed up a few months later.

  And still he didn’t have what took the murderer to Sando in the first place. Or did he? Back at the office he again called the Sando police.

  “What I’d like for you to get me, Joe—the names of all the strangers who came down to Sando on that Bellowes Mine deal. And here’s the big thing—are you listening?—I want to know if the Widow Bellowes did any entertaining of them, and just who she entertained if she did.”

  “I’ll get it if it’s gettable,” Joe said. “Don’t suppose you could send for me to come to New York if I get something good?”

  “Maybe it could be arranged,” Tully said.

  “I don’t want to fly. I want to come into…Grand Central Station!”

  “Sure, Joe,” Tully said. He didn’t have the heart to tell him that coming from Southern Ohio, he was going to land in the Pennsylvania Station.

  37

  JIMMIE WAS WAITING AT Mr. Wiggam’s door when the older man arrived at the office.

  “I want to see you,” Wiggam said, as though Jimmie were there for some other purpose.

  Once in the door, however, Jimmie took the offensive. “I think we should drop the Adkins case, sir. But if I can’t convince you of that, I feel I must insist that you take an equal share in its preparation with me.”

  “Interesting,” Wiggam said, eyeing his calendar.

  “I think our Mr. Theodore Adkins is schizoid.”

  Wiggam made his usual impatient gesture with the lingo of psychiatry.

  Jimmie plunged on. “Just how far gone he is, I don’t know.”

  “Surely you don’t mean he’s dangerous?”

  “I’m not prepared to say that at all, sir. And I don’t think it’s our concern at the moment.”

  “I’m glad to hear you say that.”

  “What I do think concerns us—how do you try a case in which you cannot know beforehand where you stand? This man is unknowable, at least to non-medicos, and I’m fairly sure to himself as well. He may be acting in good faith with us—though I have my doubts of that. But just how he behaved with this Thayer woman we have no way of knowing in advance of public hearing…”

  Mr. Wiggam held up his hand. “You can stop spouting, Jim. I’m not displeased to see this streak of Puritanism in you…”

  Jimmie swore a most unpuritanical oath under his breath.

  “But it so happens,” Wiggam went on, “I spent last evening with Mrs. Adkins myself. She and her son have decided they will settle the suit outside of court after all.”

  “How nice,” Jimmie said, the anger following last upon relief. “Lack of confidence in their legal representation, I presume.”

  “I doubt that has anything to do with it. They rather liked you.”

  “Thanks,” Jimmie said.

  “Theodore is going to marry—with this thing out of the way.”

  “Not Miss Thayer then,” Jimmie said with thin sarcasm.

  “An older woman, and according to his mother, a woman of independent means. It is understandable that financial independence should be mentioned in this instance. The important thing to Georgianna—that her boy settle down. She considers it inevitable that he marry someone a few years his senior, his having been the baby of the family…”

  “For fifty-five years,” Jimmie said.

  “Mmm, yes.” It surprised Wiggam every time he thought of it, too. “It does make one wonder about the ‘older’ woman, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “No doubt you’re right about him,” Wiggam said then. “The quicker this other affair is settled the better for us. You are authorized to pay up to one hundred thousand dollars.”

  Just like that, Jimmie thought, quite as though Teddy had fathered the little bastard. “May I ask, sir, where the money will come from?”

  “The estate; out of capital, I’m afraid.”

  “As a broker, does Teddy handle any part of the estate?”

  “Good heavens, no.”

  “By which you mean he’s not a good business man,” Jimmie suggested.

  “Not…orthodox. I suppose that’s the best word. A few years ago he was nominal manager of the estate. He came very near ruining it, trying to buy up coal mines all over the country—to balance the gold mine stock in the family. I forget just how he explained his theory: ingenious presentation—male and female, gold and coal. Utter nonsense, of course. We got out of it without too much loss.”

  “I suppose the coal was female in his theory?” Jimmie mused aloud.

  “Naturally,” Wiggam said, and in a way that suggested a certain sympathy with that aspect of Adkins’ theory.

  38

  AS SOON AS MRS. Norris finished the most essential of chores that morning, she dressed herself in her black suit, and transferred the contents of her blue purse to her black one, including the lover’s knot. She had put her hand into the purse, half-hoping that it would not be there, that the whole business with Mr. Adkins had occurred in the night’s dreaming. But it was there: she felt the bow shape of it within the handkerchief. She would as soon have looked upon a tarantula.

  Finding Mr. Adkins’ Wall Street address in the phone book, she decided to go directly to his office. It would be easier to face him t
here, where presumably secretaries and clerks would be within earshot of any too-loud protests.

  She rode downtown on the Lexington subway, got off at Broadway, and walked thence to the office building. She did love this part of the city, its narrow streets, its sudden reversions to olden landmarks amid the skyscrapers. How she would enjoy it, this dread mission accomplished. Really he had behaved impossibly. He must be a bit off.

  And what about herself?

  Well. She was through the “A’s” without finding an Adkins in the building directory.

  Now that was very curious. She went to the elevator starter. He had not heard of such a tenant in the building. But there were several brokerages. She might try them. Mrs. Norris did—without turning up Mr. Theodore Adkins, though a few people thought they had heard the name.

  Mrs. Norris went down to the public telephones and again looked up the address. It was given as she had taken it. She wrote down the phone number also. Then she called it. After two rings a woman answered:

  “Where are you?” Mrs. Norris asked.

  “This is Mr. Adkins’ answering service. Mr. Adkins is not in his office at the moment. Can I have him call you?”

  “But where is his office?” Mrs. Norris demanded.

  “I cannot tell you, madam.”

  “And why not?”

  “I do not know where it is. One moment, please.” She came back on the phone a few seconds later and gave Mrs. Norris the Wall Street address where she now was.

  “Thank you,” she said and hung up. A perfect circle. She had no choice herself but to turn tail and go home to her work, and some cogitation.

  By the time she got back to the apartment, however, she had decided on another, bolder tack. She called the business office of the telephone company.

  “I’m calling for Jasper Tully of the District Attorney’s office,” she said, for she knew that as a private citizen she would get precious little information. “I want the address of this phone listing. I want to know where you send the bill.”

  She gave the Whitehall number and waited, and heard her own heartbeat mark the long wait.

  The operator returned. “The bill is sent to Mr. Theodore Adkins, Box Z-22, Wall Street Station.”

  “Why is the number listed in the phone book to a Wall Street office address?”

  “It would be the address the customer gave us, madam. Do you wish to speak to the supervisor?”

  “I do,” Mrs. Norris said. An answering service, she reasoned, answered only when you didn’t answer yourself after a given number of rings. She again identified herself as Tully’s assistant. “Whitehall 9-7150,” she said then, “I want to know where it rings.”

  A few seconds later the supervisor returned and gave her the Wall Street address. Then she added: “The phone also rings at an unlisted address—732 East 61st Street.”

  “Thank you,” Mrs. Norris said with authority.

  She had no more than hung up and looked at the clock to see that it was ten minutes to eleven than the musicless bray of the house phone quivered the stillness. It was the doorman.

  “Your boy friend is on the way up,” he said.

  “Did you tell him I’m home?”

  “He didn’t ask.”

  “I’m too busy to let anyone in,” she said. “I won’t answer the door.”

  “’Atta girl.”

  Mrs. Norris listened out the buzzing of the hall door. And she thought all the long painful seconds how silly it was not to open the door enough to at least hand through his jewel to him. But she somehow knew that he would get in, and that she would not persuade him here. It was better to seek him out in his own lair. There she could leave when she was ready. What a situation. And him a client of Mr. James’!

  Once more the house phone rang. She did not answer it. Some moments later she heard a tap on the door and the doorman called in: “He’s gone. Left a note for you I’m tucking under the door.”

  Mrs. Norris came out from the kitchen and got it after the man was gone. She wanted no conversation with him either.

  Mr. Adkins had written a page as neat as the face of a clock:

  Dearest one,

  Do not avoid me, but if you must until your heart tells you, I await your word. Call me at Whitehall 9-7150. You may leave a discreet message with my office. I will come.

  Bless you, my jewel.

  Treasure the lover’s knot I gave you. My life is bond for it.

  T.A.

  39

  “I DON’T THINK I should even talk to you without my lawyer, Mr. Jarvis.”

  Daisy Thayer was batting her jewel-trimmed eyes at him. Jimmie knew she was going to talk to him, and by her own preference without a third party present. “I’ll go over all the legal aspects of the matter with him, Miss Thayer,” he said.

  “You’re sweet,” she said. “I always knew my friend had good taste, but I didn’t know it got as far as picking out a lawyer.”

  Jimmie felt like something on a bargain counter.

  “Mr. Jarvis, I feel terribly conspicuous sitting here…” They were in the public lounge of Mark Stewart’s department store. “Couldn’t we go somewhere else to talk?”

  “Certainly,” Jimmie said.

  “Will you take me to lunch?”

  “I’ll buy you a drink,” Jimmie said. “I’m sorry but I have an engagement for lunch.”

  Daisy got up by degrees, leaving her fingers to the last moment on Jimmie’s arm. “You aren’t a bit sorry, sugar,” she said. “But meet me at Purple Pete’s on 35th Street. You can see it from the corner.”

  Jimmie watched her out of sight. She was scarcely real, but she was about to get a very real sum of money—on which she had probably been counting since the age of sixteen. Jimmie lit a cigarette and thought about Miranda and her theory: that Teddy had connived with this woman to the purpose of breaking the old lady’s hold on his inheritance. Seeing Daisy, Jimmie thought it not nearly so far-fetched. Nobody, not even Teddy Adkins, could enter any sort of relationship with Daisy Thayer without knowing what she was up to…gold and coal…ha!

  Teddy had not “fallen for her,” as tradition understood the phrase. Of that Jimmie was sure. He, too, had gone into the affair with calculation. Perhaps the “older woman” suddenly brought forth now had been waiting all the while in the wings, just waiting for this little curtain raiser to be rung down—for The Cracking of Mama’s Safe.

  It was going to be fun—as soon as he got offstage himself—to sit back and watch the major drama, Jimmie decided. Reluctantly he put out his cigarette and forsook the public lounge. He was very fond of public places for private thinking—Forty-second Street, Grand Central Station, Herald Square. He paused there to watch the clock strike and then hastened on to Purple Pete’s where Daisy was already waiting for him.

  “A rendezvous,” Jimmie said, crawling into the booth opposite her.

  “I always feel wicked having a drink at noon,” Daisy said.

  “You should never do anything more wicked,” Jimmie said. “Miss Thayer, I’m prepared to offer quite a sum of money on behalf of my client—if you agree that it should not be a matter for public arbitration.”

  There was not a bat to her eye now. “That’s entirely up to my lawyer, Mr. Jarvis. I don’t think it’s proper of you even to come to me about it.”

  “I’m not an altogether proper fellow,” Jimmie said.

  “You would be with a girl like me,” Daisy said deep in her throat.

  Jimmie laughed, and not entirely in merriment. “I intend to put it up to your lawyer, Miss Thayer, but it occurred to me there might be certain aspects to the whole thing which he might not be familiar with.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, I might say your sentimental attachment to my client’s army identification tag—and all that charity work you did for the blood bank a while back.”

  “My own inclination would be to settle,” Daisy said, “for my son’s sake…”

  “Naturally,” Jimm
ie said.

  “Don’t you be so ‘natural,’ Mr. Jarvis. I could say plenty about that client of yours. He was a deceiving man, as well as breaking his promises to me.”

  “Did he promise to marry you, Miss Thayer?”

  “If he hadn’t—I wouldn’t have done the things…I did.”

  “And yet,” Jimmie said quietly, “you knew all the time that he was deceiving you.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Daisy said.

  “Cardova—wasn’t that the name he gave you?”

  “I don’t know whatever you’re talking about, Mr. Jarvis.”

  Jimmie turned his glass around. There was no reason for the girl from the Credit Department to have made up that story. Daisy was lying. “Drink up,” he said. “It’s time to go and see a lawyer, yours.”

  Daisy moistened her lips. “Wherever did you hear a story like that, Mr. Jarvis?”

  “I didn’t make it up,” Jimmie said. “But I’ll tell it to your attorney. Let’s go.”

  “I have to go back to Mark Stewart’s,” Daisy protested.

  “Honey, you aren’t ever going back to Mark Stewart’s and you know it.”

  40

  TOMMY BASSETT COULDN’T GET back to the office fast enough. Tully had assigned him the chore of looking up Tripp Gold Mines. He had something and he knew it.

  “Hey, Mr. Tully,” he started spouting at the door, “do you know who owns all that stock—the T. H. Adkins estate.”

  Tully leaned back and groped for his empty pipe. It was his one gesture of excitement. “Adkins…the philanthropist who broke down the Ellie True case. I don’t suppose you got a picture of him, Tommy?”

  “No, sir, but I’ll go and look.”

  “Not now, lad. I may need you here. Any other information on him?”

  “It’s just the financial records I looked up, stuff on the estate.” He consulted his notes. “It’s administered by the legal firm of Johnson, Wiggam and Jarvis.”