by S. T. Joshi
He almost leaped up from his chair in eagerness. “Let’s go!”
Jackson didn’t like it, but I wanted to be alone for this bit of work, so I had Vance do the driving.
The building labeled 1633 proved to be a compact, three-story office building. We quickly learned from the building management that Grabhorn—who had occupied the entire second story of the place—had left just about a year ago. No forwarding address.
That was a little odd.
Vance jumped on it. “There’s something funny here, Scintilla! What’s going on? Where did he vanish to? And why?”
“Vance, calm down. It could mean anything.”
“But it was just after Katharine’s...you know, her....”
“Well, not exactly. It was a good six months after. If he was wanting for some reason to bolt right afterward, surely he wouldn’t have hung around another half-year. By the way, I presume he did in fact know what Katharine was going to do?”
“Oh, yes.” That bitter sneer again. “She called him just before we left for New York last September. He knew.”
“How did he react to it? Do you know?”
“No, I don’t. According to Katharine, he just wanted her to do what she felt in her heart she had to do. He didn’t try to talk her into it, didn’t try to talk her out of it. I guess it didn’t please him that he was going to lose a rich patient...unless”—the idea seized Vance with a sudden fury—“unless, by God, that vile Sanderson fellow was giving him some sort of fee for his referrals...!”
“Vance, you don’t know that. You have no business saying that.”
“But it stands to reason, Scintilla! God, why didn’t I think of it before? Maybe they had this kind of...of suicide channel going on...Jesus, what fiends!” Vance was fuming with rage.
“Arthur, just quiet down. It needn’t be like that. We still don’t know that there’s anything funny anywhere.”
“But where’s Grabhorn, then? Where is he?” He was shouting now.
“We’ll find him.” I turned away and walked out of the building and back to the car. “We’ll find him, by God.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
It was time to hit the books again.
I had Vance take me to the public library on South Hope Street, where in the immense reference room on the main floor we quickly checked the city directories for the past few years. Sure enough, Grabhorn’s office was listed in the directories for 1930 and 1931, but then disappeared. We also discovered his home address for these years—3535 Dahlia Avenue—but this too was dropped from the city directory of 1932. The directory for 1933 had not yet appeared.
I hardly thought it worth the bother to make an investigation of his home address—he had no doubt decamped from there also. Possibly his neighbors might know something, but I doubted it.
I had one more trick up my sleeve. I told Vance:
“Let’s go to the Hall of Records—between First and Court Streets, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Vance said, a frown wrinkling his face. “But what for? What do you expect to find there?”
“Just take me there and you’ll see.”
Twenty minutes later we were pulling up in front of the eleven-story gray sandstone and marble building. A helpful girl at the information desk in the lobby directed me to the place I wanted to go: the office where records of legal changes of name were kept.
When Vance learned where we were headed, he was thunderstruck. “You think Grabhorn has changed his name!” He had started it as a question, but by the end it had become a statement of certainty. “By God, that must be it! I knew there was something fishy about that devil....”
“Wait a minute, Vance,” I cautioned. “This is just a hunch. Maybe it’s right, maybe not. But it’s just an alternative we have to explore and eliminate.”
The clerk in the office—he looked like all clerks in city government: thin, seemingly malnourished, spectacled, and finical—looked at us suspiciously when we entered. I wasted no time stating our business:
“We’d like to look at the file of name changes during the past year or so.”
It wasn’t going to be that easy; I should have guessed it.
“I’m sorry,” he said in a nasal voice, “but that information is not accessible to private individuals. You’ll have to get a letter of permission from the Chief of Police or the Board of Supervisors....”
But I had come prepared.
“Sir, I am Joseph Scintilla, Deputy Sheriff of Westchester County, New York. I am on the hunt for a suspected fugitive. Your coöperation would be greatly appreciated.”
None of this was a lie. So what if my pal Dan Steeger, Sheriff of Yonkers, had given me the badge as a joke while not entirely sober? I made sure not to use it anywhere near its point of origin, but on occasion it came in handy.
It did the trick. With a faintly resentful “Why didn’t you say so in the first place?” the clerk let us walk through the swivel gate and into the office. He momentarily glanced at Vance, perhaps wondering why he hadn’t displayed a badge; but Arthur, after a mercifully short look of astonishment, had gained his composure and looked suitably authoritarian, and we marched in as if we owned the place.
The clerk stopped us in front of a wooden cabinet full of drawers, each of them bulging with index cards. He pointed to two drawers and said:
“That’s what you want. There must be a thousand or so names there. You may be at it a while, so good luck.”
He was about to walk away when I said:
“Say, how are these cards arranged? By the original name of the individual, or the new name?”
Over his shoulder the clerk said: “The new one.”
I was afraid of that. The other way would have been a lot simpler. But there was nothing to do but get started. I pulled out both drawers, brought them to a nearby desk, and shoved one in Vance’s direction.
“Okay, start looking.”
Vance didn’t relish the prospect—no more than I did—but he began dutifully enough.
The cards were all handwritten, and were clearly filled out by the persons who were changing their names. It amazed me that there would be so many. If the cards had been arranged by the date of the application, then we might have been in luck: possibly, if Grabhorn had changed his name at all, he might have done so about the time he ditched his home and office a year ago in March. But the cards were arranged alphabetically by the new name, and there was no option but to look through each and every card, looking only at the space where the individual had supplied his old name.
It was about two hours before we came upon it. But we finally did. I was the lucky one.
“Here it is, Vance.”
Arthur almost dropped the drawer on his lap in his eagerness to look at the card I was holding up.
“You found him? You found Grabhorn?”
“It sure looks like it. Dr. William Grabhorn is now Dr. William Greer, 623 Prospect Street, Pasadena.”
“Pasadena!” Vance almost shrieked. “Why, that’s just next to San Marino!”
“Is it? That’s interesting. Maybe he wanted to be close to some of his customers.”
“But...but why did he change his name? What’s going on?”
“It’s time to find out, isn’t it? Let’s give him a call. Or better yet, let’s go pay him a visit.”
* * * *
We learned from the switchboard girl that Greer’s residence was also his place of business. I thought it best not to call, but instead to give him a surprise call in person. We hit the road without delay, and I was kept busy telling Vance to slow down if we expected to reach the place in one piece.
Prospect Street was well-kept, tree-lined, and bounded on both sides with houses whose quiet prosperity was evident to all. Whether or not Dr. William Greer was doing as good a business as a brain-doctor to the wealthy as Dr. William Grabhorn had done, he was not likely to join the queue to the soup kitchen anytime soon. His house was a dignified two-story affair, with two cars in the driv
eway and one parked on the street in front.
We walked right in. The foyer or lobby was a kind of reception room, and a secretary behind a desk was choosing this idle moment to polish her nails. The nameplate at the front of the desk read: “Lella Cotton.” At our abrupt entrance she jumped a bit, but quickly regained the composure she was expected to maintain.
“May I help you?”
“We’d like see Dr. Greer, please,” I said. I saw behind her a door with the word “PRIVATE” on it. I could barely make out some muttering behind it.
“I’m afraid Dr. Greer is with a patient right now. You don’t have an appointment...?”
I flashed my deputy sheriff’s badge and said that I would really be very grateful if Dr. Greer could make some time for me.
At sight of the badge she jumped again a little, then got up. I guess she felt that something like this wasn’t suitable for discussion over the intercom.
Opening the “PRIVATE” door barely enough to get into it, she closed it quickly and smartly. I looked at Vance with mild irritation; he looked back at me with a kind of frustrated fury, as though he thought Greer might take the opportunity to climb out a window and elude us.
But Miss Cotton came back pretty fast. Keeping the door open, she waited for an elderly lady in pearls and furs to march in high dudgeon out of the office, then said in a tight little voice: “Dr. Greer will see you now.”
I tried not to feel like a patient myself as I walked in, Vance trailing after me.
Dr. William Greer, or Grabhorn, was a big, stocky man—red-faced, bearded, and dressed in a tweed jacket of excellent cut, but which had difficulty embracing his ample girth. He may have been a bit more red-faced than usual, for he was actually huffing with ill-concealed outrage and glaring at us: we could have been some insects that had crawled onto his dinner plate.
“Gentlemen, this is most irregular! I don’t know what you mean by barging in like this.... If you weren’t officers of the law, I’d have a good mind to....”
I ignored him completely and turned to Vance. “Is that him?”
Vance nodded grimly. “That’s him.”
I turned back to the doctor, who was so astounded at our disregard of his undoubted importance that he had stopped speaking. “Are you, or were you once known as, Dr. William Grabhorn?”
At the mention of the name I thought the doctor was about to faint. His red cheeks blanched as if a child had colored them over with a crayon, and he could hardly utter. “Wh—what do you...who are you? What do you want from me?”
I decided to press my advantage by playing my trump card. Reaching into my pocket and pulling out the card for the Removal Company, I said: “Do you recognize this?”
The doctor’s knees gave way and he would have fallen to the floor if his desk chair hadn’t been behind him. “Oh, God...! Why can’t you people leave me alone? What have I done...?” I actually thought he was going to cry, but he pulled out his handkerchief only to mop his moistened brow.
“Doctor, I’m a deputy sheriff from Westchester County, New York. This man is Arthur Vance. I take it you are William Grabhorn. Do you recall treating his wife, Katharine Vance?”
Grabhorn looked up at me with a curious expression—confusion mingled with a kind of relief. “Y-yes...yes, of course. I treated her for several years.”
“Did you send her to this place?”—holding up the card again.
“No!” The doctor was genuinely angered. “I didn’t send her there, and I didn’t tell her to go! My God, but she was in such a bad way!” He gave Vance a quick and apprehensive look. “I tried my best to help her, but it was hopeless! I just thought this might help....”
“Can we see your file on her, doctor?”
At that he stiffened—felt as if he might be able to get the upper hand after all. “You know very well, sheriff, that that file is confidential. You have absolutely no authority—”
“All right, all right,” I interrupted quickly. Grabhorn clearly knew what I could and could not do. “I’d just like to know a bit more about the case. We’re not accusing you of doing anything wrong. You have committed no crime, so far as we know. But we’d just like to have some information.”
Grabhorn was quickly regaining his composure. “All right...although I’m not sure what I can tell you that you probably don’t know already.” He looked at Vance again. “But sheriff, I really think it best if we talk about this alone. I’m sorry, sir, but—”
Vance exploded. “Not on your life! I’m staying here! She was—is—my wife and I have the right to know! You’re going to tell all you can, or—” I thought Vance was going to throttle the doctor, and I quickly grabbed his arm.
“Vance, settle down.” He still resisted. “Settle down, man. This isn’t helping. Maybe the doctor’s right.”
“I’m just trying to save you some grief, Mr. Vance,” Grabhorn said earnestly. “It will be painful....”
Vance’s face crumpled into a kind of painful grimace, but he said nothing.
“Vance,” I said, “I’ll tell you anything of importance that the doctor says. Trust me. You’ll know everything that you need to know.”
Looking at Grabhorn and me in turn, with a harried, hunted look, Vance abruptly turned on his heel and walked out of the room, slamming the door.
Grabhorn continued the mopping up operations on his face. “He’s...he’s a bit excitable, isn’t he?”
“Perhaps he has reason to be,” I said.
“Perhaps.”
Grabhorn reached over into a cabinet and took out a bottle of scotch. “Drink?”
“That might be a good idea.”
He poured out the liquor—quite a bit of it—into two glasses brimming with ice, then handed me one.
“So what do you want to know?”
“Everything...everything about Katharine Vance, and everything you know about the Removal Company.”
Grabhorn rubbed his chin in a gesture strangely reminiscent of Vance himself. “As I said, I’m not sure I have all that much to tell. But I’ll tell it.”
This is what he said.
CHAPTER NINE
Katharine Vance was one of my most perplexing cases. I never knew a woman so determined to be unhappy. Perhaps it would be best to say that, even when she should have been happy, she had a knack of seeing the depressing side of things. Although, unlike you or me, she never had to work a day in her life, she didn’t find any comfort in her privileged status—in fact, she came to feel strangely ashamed of it.
I never got to know much about her childhood, even though I asked her repeatedly to tell me of it. She was very reticent on some subjects. All I could glean was that from infancy she idolized her father—as only a little girl can idolize a successful and self-confident parent. I don’t say that she in any way disliked her mother; she was quite close to her, but that was largely because (so it seemed to me) the two of them both shared this reverence for Mr. Hawley.
Anyway, she seemed to be a lonely child, made friends with difficulty, and spent much of her time wandering by herself on her estate. Throughout her life she never found any compelling interest: various enthusiasms would come and go, but nothing would stick. She was somehow overwhelmed by the futility of her existence—perhaps of all human existence. Everything seemed so pointless to her.
The death of her father was the central, and catastrophic, event of her life. It was, of course, shortly afterward that she was brought in to see me. Mr. Hawley had been forced into speculation in stocks as a result of the increasing extravagance of his family’s lifestyle, and he lost pretty much everything in the crash—all except the property on his estate, which was indeed considerable. And yet, having to sell the property and move into a smaller (but still, by any normal person’s standards, quite comfortable) quarters was a blow to the entire family, and especially to Katharine. It was not that she missed the luxury; in fact, she had always felt that she didn’t deserve it. And now that it was largely gone, she came to believe that it
was some kind of punishment for “living off of others,” as she called it.
As you are no doubt aware, she marred Arthur Vance not long after that. I don’t doubt that she cared for him—he had been a family friend from way back—but the rather hastily arranged union was a further blow to her self-esteem. She felt as if she were some kind of property that was being hawked about from one party to another. It was of course an “advantageous match,” but that’s exactly what was wrong with it, from Katharine’s point of view.
I’ll be honest with you, Mr. Scintilla, and say that I’m not entirely sure that Arthur Vance was the right husband for her. Oh, of course he loved her—rather desperately, it seems—but he never understood her. He never realized that Katharine needed to be left alone at times; I think he smothered her with affection, and actually deepened her depression. No doubt that was partly why she had her affair.
Yes, that’s right—she had an affair, scarcely less than a year after she was married. You’ll of course understand if I don’t mention the other man—he was merely another member of their social circle, and he was married also. Katharine told me all about it: told me, in fact, before it began that she was resolved to do something of the kind. It didn’t seem to matter with whom it was to be done; it was just something to do. Perhaps she felt that the covertness, the secrecy, the forbiddenness of the thing would appeal to her, lend her some interest in life. Well, it did—for a while. But as you know, these things rapidly become merely cheap, tawdry, and—worst of all—boring and repetitive. It was, in fact, not very difficult for her to conduct the affair, since Arthur was at this time working long hours at his father’s office, learning the ropes for his eventual succession to the control of the firm. There was no challenge in it for Katharine—it was too easy, and therefore not a thrill. Frankly, I never chastised her for it—that wasn’t my rôle in any case—and I knew it would end soon. It did.
So there it was. I’ll admit that Katharine Vance was one of my genuine failures—you mustn’t assume that I want all my patients to end as she did! The fundamental point, though, is that I never seemed to have any effect on her. Sometimes she felt tolerably well, other times (most of the time, in all honesty) not; but my counseling seemed to make no difference one way or the other. It was most perplexing—I don’t even know why she kept on seeing me. In fact, I even told her point-blank that perhaps she should stop doing so, as I didn’t seem to be helping her appreciably—but she reacted with such alarm and even fear that I quickly backed off from the suggestion.