The Galton Case

by Ross Macdonald

  “If he qualifies for a fortune,” Sable said, “it ought to be some comfort to him. Were his parents legally married, do you know?”

  “It happens that I can answer that question, in the affirmative. John has been making some inquiries. He discovered just last week that a John Brown and a Theodora Gavin were married in Benicia, by civil ceremony, in September 1936. That seems to make him legitimate, by a narrow margin.”

  Sable sat in silence for a minute. He looked at Dineen like a prosecutor trying to weigh the credibility of a witness.

  “Well,” the old man said. “Are you satisfied? I don’t wish to appear inhospitable, but I’m an early riser, and it happens to be my bedtime.”

  “There are one or two other things, if you’ll bear with me, Doctor. I’m wondering, for instance, just how you happen to be so close to the boy’s affairs.”

  “I choose to be,” Dineen said abruptly.

  “Why?”

  The doctor looked at Sable with faint dislike. “My motives are no concern of yours, Counselor. The young man knocked on my door a month ago, looking for some trace of his family. Naturally I did my best to help him. He has a moral right to the protection and support of his family.”

  “If he can prove that he’s a member of it.”

  “There seems to be no question of that. I think you’re being unnecessarily hard on him, and I see no reason why you should continue in that vein. Certainly there’s no indication that he’s an impostor. He has his birth certificate, which proves the facts of his birth. My name is on it as attending physician. It’s why he came to me in the first place.”

  “Birth certificates are easy to get,” I said. “You can write in, pay your money, and take your choice.”

  “I suppose you can, if you’re a cheat and a scoundrel. I resent the implication that this boy is.”

  “Please don’t.” Sable moderated his tone. “As Mrs. Galton’s attorney, it’s my duty to be skeptical of these claims.”

  “John has been making no claims.”

  “Perhaps not yet. He will. And very important interests are involved, human as well as financial. Mrs. Galton is in uncertain health. I don’t intend to present her with a situation that’s likely to blow up in her face.”

  “I don’t believe that’s the case here. You asked me for my opinion, and now you have it. But no human situation is entirely predictable, is it?” The old man leaned forward to get up. His bald scalp gleamed like polished stone in the light from the chandelier. “You’ll be wanting to talk to John, I suppose. I’ll tell him you’re here.”

  He left the room and came back with the boy. John was wearing flannel slacks and a gray sweater over an open-necked shirt. He looked like the recent college graduate that he was supposed to be, but he wasn’t at ease in the situation. His eyes shifted from my face to Sable’s. Dineen stood beside him in an almost protective posture.

  “This is Mr. Sable,” he said in a neutral tone. “Mr. Sable is an attorney from Santa Teresa, and he’s very much interested in you.”

  Sable stepped forward and gave him a brisk handshake. “I’m glad to meet you.”

  “Glad to meet you.” His gray eyes matched Sable’s in watchfulness. “I understand you know who my father is.”

  “Was, John,” I said. “We’ve identified those bones at the station, pretty definitely. They belonged to a man named Anthony Galton. The indications are that he was your father.”

  “But my father’s name was John Brown.”

  “He used that name. It started out as a pen name, apparently.” I looked at the lawyer beside me. “We can take it for granted, can’t we, that Galton and Brown were the same man, and that he was murdered in 1936?”

  “It appears so.” Sable laid a restraining hand on my arm. “I wish you’d let me handle this. There are legal questions involved.”

  He turned to the boy, who looked as if he hadn’t absorbed the fact of his father’s death. The doctor laid an arm across his shoulders:

  “I’m sorry about this, John. I know how much it means to you.”

  “It’s funny, it doesn’t seem to mean a thing. I never knew my father. It’s simply words, about a stranger.”

  “I’d like to talk to you in private,” Sable said. “Where can we do that?”

  “In my room, I suppose. What are we going to talk about?”

  “You.”

  He lived in a workingmen’s boardinghouse on the other side of town. It was a ramshackle frame house standing among others which had known better days. The landlady intercepted us at the front door. She was a large-breasted Portuguese woman with rings in her ears and spice on her breath. Something in the boy’s face made her say:

  “Whatsamatter, Johnny? You in trouble?”

  “Nothing like that, Mrs. Gorgello,” he said with forced lightness. “These men are friends of mine. Is it all right if I take them up to my room?”

  “It’s your room, you pay rent. I cleaned it up today for you, real nice. Come right in, gentlemen,” she said royally.

  Not so royally, she jostled the boy as he passed her in the doorway. “Lift up the long face, Johnny. You look like judgment day.”

  His room was a small bare cubicle on the second floor at the rear. I guessed that it had been a servant’s room in the days when the house was a private residence. Torn places and stains among the faded roses of the wallpaper hinted at a long history of decline.

  The room was furnished with an iron cot covered by an army blanket, a stained pine chest of drawers topped by a clouded mirror, a teetery wardrobe, a kitchen chair standing beside a table. In spite of the books on the table, something about the room reminded me of the dead man Culligan. Perhaps it was the smell, compound of hidden dirt and damp and old grim masculine odors.

  My mind skipped to Mrs. Galton’s grandiose estate. It would be quite a leap from this place to that. I wondered if the boy was going to make it.

  He was standing by the single window, looking at us with a sort of defiance. This was his room, his bearing seemed to say, and we could take it or leave it. He lifted the kitchen chair and turned it away from the table:

  “Sit down if you like. One of you can sit on the bed.”

  “I’d just as soon stand, thanks,” Sable said. “I had a long drive up here, and I’m going to have to drive back tonight.”

  The boy said stiffly: “I’m sorry to put you to all this trouble.”

  “Nonsense. This is my job, and there’s nothing personal about it. Now I understand you have your birth certificate with you. May I have a look at it?”

  “Certainly.”

  He pulled out the top drawer of the chest of drawers and produced a folded document. Sable put on horn-rimmed spectacles to read it. I read it over his shoulder. It stated that John Brown, Jr., had been born on Bluff Road in San Mateo County on December 2, 1936; father, John Brown; mother, Theodora Gavin Brown; attending physician, Dr. George T. Dineen.

  Sable glanced up, snatching off his glasses like a politician:

  “You realize this document means nothing in itself? Anyone can apply for a birth certificate, any birth certificate.”

  “This one happens to be mine, sir.”

  “I notice it was issued only last March. Where were you in March?”

  “I was still in Ann Arbor. I lived there for over five years.”

  “Going to the University all that time?” I asked.

  “Most of it. I attended high school for a year and a half, then I shifted over to the University. I graduated this spring.” He paused, and caught with his teeth at his full lower lip. “I suppose you’ll be checking all this, so I might as well explain that I didn’t go to school under my own name.”

  “Why? Didn’t you know your own name?”

  “Of course I did. I always have. If you want me to go into the circumstances, I will.”

  “I think that’s very much to be desiderated,” Sable said.

  The boy picked up one of the books from the table. Its title was Dr
amas of Modernism. He opened it to the flyleaf and showed us the name “John Lindsay” written in ink there.

  “That was the name I used, John Lindsay. The Christian name was my own, of course. The surname belonged to Mr. Lindsay, the man who took me into his home.”

  “He lived in Ann Arbor?” Sable said.

  “Yes, at 1028 Hill Street.” The boy’s tone was faintly sardonic. “I lived there with him for several years. His full name was Mr. Gabriel R. Lindsay. He was a teacher and counselor at the high school.”

  “Isn’t it rather odd that you used his name?”

  “I didn’t think so, under the circumstances. The circumstances were odd—that’s putting it mildly—and Mr. Lindsay was the one who took a real interest in my case.”

  “Your case?”

  The boy smiled wryly. “I was a case, all right. I’ve come a long way in five years, thanks to Mr. Lindsay. I was a mess when I showed up at that high school—a mess in more ways than one. I’d been two days on the road, and I didn’t have decent clothes, or anything. Naturally they wouldn’t let me in. I didn’t have a school record, and I wouldn’t tell them my name.”

  “Why not?”

  “I was mortally scared that they’d drag me back to Ohio and put me in training-school. They did that to some of the boys who ran away from the orphanage. Besides, the superintendent didn’t like me.”

  “The superintendent of the orphanage?”

  “Yes. His name was Mr. Merriweather.”

  “What was the name of the orphanage?”

  “Crystal Springs. It’s near Cleveland. They didn’t call it an orphanage. They called it a Home. Which didn’t make it any more homelike.”

  “You say your mother put you there?” I said.

  “When I was four.”

  “Do you remember your mother?”

  “Of course. I remember her face, especially. She was very pale and thin, with blue eyes. I think she must have been sick. She had a bad cough. Her voice was husky, very low and soft. I remember the last thing she ever said to me: Your daddy’s name was John Brown, too, and you were born in California.’ I didn’t know what or where California was, but I held on to the word. You can see why I had to come here, finally.” His voice seemed to have the resonance of his life behind it.

  Sable was unimpressed by his emotion. “Where did she say that to you?”

  “In the Superintendent’s office, when she left me there. She promised to come back for me, but she never did. I don’t know what happened to her.”

  “But you remember her words from the age of four?”

  “I was bright for my age,” he answered matter-of-factly. “I’m bright, and I’m not ashamed of it. It stood me in good stead when I was trying to get into the high school in Ann Arbor.”

  “Why did you pick Ann Arbor?”

  “I heard it was a good place to get an education. The teachers in the Home were a couple of ignorant bullies. I wanted an education more than anything. Mr. Lindsay gave me an aptitude test, and he decided that I deserved an education, even if I didn’t have any transcript. He put up quite a battle for me, getting me into the high school. And then he had to fight the welfare people. They wanted to put me in Juvenile, or find a foster-home for me. Mr. Lindsay convinced them that his home would do, even if he didn’t have a wife. He was a widower.”

  “He sounds like a good man,” I said.

  “He was the best, and I ought to know. I lived with him for nearly four years. I looked after the furnace, mowed the lawn in the summer, worked around the house to pay for my board and room. But board and room was the least of what he gave me. I was a little bum when he took me in. He made a decent person out of me.”

  He paused, and his eyes looked past us, thousands of miles. Then they focused on me:

  “I had no right today, to tell you that I never had a father. Gabe Lindsay was a father to me.”

  “I’d like to meet him,” I said.

  “So that you can check up on me?”

  “Not necessarily. Don’t take all this so hard, John. As Mr. Sable said, there’s nothing personal about it. It’s our business to get the facts.”

  “It’s too late to get them from Mr. Lindsay. Mr. Lindsay died the winter before last. He was good to me right up to the end, and past it. He left me enough money to finish my studies.”

  “How much did he leave you?” Sable said.

  “Two thousand dollars. I still have a little of it left.”

  “What did he die of?”

  “Pneumonia. He died in the University Hospital in Ann Arbor. I was with him when he died. You can check that. Next question.”

  His irony was young and vulnerable. It failed to mask his feeling. I thought if his feeling was artificial, he didn’t need the Galton money: he could make his fortune as an actor.

  “What motivated you to come here to Luna Bay?” Sable said. “It couldn’t have been pure coincidence.”

  “Who said it was?” Under the pressure of cross-questioning, the boy’s poise was breaking down. “I had a right to come here. I was born here, wasn’t I?”

  ‘Were you?”

  “You just saw my birth certificate.”

  “How did you get hold of it?”

  “I wrote to Sacramento. Is there anything wrong with that? I gave them my birthdate, and they were able to tell me where I was born.”

  “Why the sudden interest in where you were born?”

  “It wasn’t a sudden interest. Ask any orphan how important it is to him. The only sudden part of it was my bright idea of writing to Sacramento. It hadn’t occurred to me before.”

  “How did you know your birthdate?”

  “My mother must have told the orphanage people. They always gave me a birthday present on December second.” He grinned wryly. “Winter underwear.”

  Sable smiled, too, in spite of himself. He waved his hand in front of his face, as if to dissipate the tension in the room: “Are you satisfied, Archer?”

  “I am for now. We’ve all had a long day. Why don’t you lay over for the night?”

  “I can’t. I have an important probate coming up at ten tomorrow morning. Before that, I have to talk to the Judge in his chambers.” He turned suddenly to the boy: “Do you drive a car?”

  “I don’t have one of my own, but I can drive.”

  “How would you like to drive me to Santa Teresa? Now.”

  “To stay?”

  “If it works out. I think it will. Your grandmother will be eager to see you.”

  “But Mr. Turnell’s counting on me at the station.”

  “He can get himself another boy,” I said. “You better go, John. You’re due for a big change, and this is the beginning of it.”

  “I’ll give you ten minutes to pack,” Sable said.

  The boy seemed dazed for a minute. He looked around the walls of the mean little room as if he hated to leave it. Perhaps he was afraid to make the big leap.

  “Come on,” Sable said. “Snap into it.”

  John shook himself out of his apathy, and dragged an old leather suitcase from the wardrobe. We stood and watched him pack his meager belongings: a suit, a few shirts and socks, shaving gear, a dozen books, his precious birth certificate.

  I wondered if we were doing him a favor. The Galton household had hot and cold running money piped in from an inexhaustible reservoir. But money was never free. Like any other commodity, it had to be paid for.

  chapter 16

  I SAT up late in my motel room, making notes on John Brown’s story. It wasn’t a likely story, on the face of it. His apparent sincerity made it plausible; that, and the fact that it could easily be checked. Some time in the course of the interview I’d made a moral bet with myself that John Brown was telling the truth. John Galton, that is.

  In the morning I mailed my notes to my office in Hollywood. Then I paid a visit to the sheriff’s substation. A young deputy with a crewcut was sitting at Mungan’s desk.

  “Yessir?”

&
nbsp; “Is Deputy Mungan anywhere around?”

  “Sorry, he’s off duty. If you’re Mr. Archer, he left a message for you.”

  He took a long envelope out of a drawer and handed it across the counter. It contained a hurried note written on yellow scratch-pad paper:

  R.C. phoned me some dope on Fred Nelson. Record goes back to S.F. docks in twenties. Assault with intent, nolle-prossed. Lempi gang enforcer 1928 on. Arrested suspicion murder 1930, habeas-corpused. Convicted grand theft 1932, sentenced “Q.” Attempted escape 1933, extended sentence. Escaped December 1936, never apprehended.

  Mungan.

  I walked across the street to the hotel and phoned Roy Lemberg’s hotel, the Sussex Arms. The desk clerk answered: “Sussex Arms. Mr. Farnsworth speaking.”

  “This is Archer. Is Lemberg there?”

  “Who did you say it was?”

  “Archer. I gave you ten dollars yesterday. Is Lemberg there?”

  “Mr. and Mrs. Lemberg both checked out.”

  “When?”

  “Yesterday aft, right after you left.”

  “Why didn’t I see them go?”

  “Maybe because they went out the back way. They didn’t even leave a forwarding address. But Lemberg made a long-distance call before they took off. A call to Reno.”

  “Who did he call in Reno?”

  “Car-dealer name of Generous Joe. Lemberg used to work for him, I think.”

  “And that’s all there is?”

  “That’s all,” Farnsworth said. “I hope it’s what you want.”

  I drove across country to International Airport, turned in my rented car, and caught a plane to Reno. By noon I was parking another rented car in front of Generous Joe’s lot.

  A huge billboard depicted a smiling Santa Claus type scattering silver dollars. The lot had a kiosk on one corner, and a row of late-model cars fronting for half an acre of clunks. A big corrugated metal shed with a Cars Painted sign on the wall stood at the rear of the lot.

  An eager young man with a rawhide tie cantered out of the kiosk almost before I’d brought my car to a halt. He patted and stroked the fender:

  “Nice. Very nice. Beautiful condition, clean inside and out. Depending on your equity, you can trade up and still carry cash away.”