The Removal Company

by S. T. Joshi

  I had to think through the matter systematically—and I had plenty of time to do that on the long boat ride back to New York. What I now knew, with tolerable certainty, was this:

  There really had been some sort of “suicide pipeline” involving Grabhorn, the maid María Rivera, and Sanderson—and perhaps many others. Was Sanderson really behind it? The odds were good that he was.

  Elena Cavalieri—the original Elena Cavalieri—was probably dead. When I returned to Rimini I checked that city’s leading paper for the period in question and found a brief report on the accident, and it listed three fatalities, not just two. So the woman posing as Elena Cavalieri—now Mrs. Harry Greenway—was not who she said she was. And yet, she was pretty convincing, at least superficially: she could recall her youth and adolescence in the village, knew what had happened to her parents, and had an account of her voyage here that was verifiable—as that Ellis Island immigration record proved.

  So who was she? Was she really Katharine Vance? If so, how did she take on the personality of Elena Cavalieri?

  I realized that the true crux of the matter was this:

  What really happened to Dr. Sanderson’s “clients” in that bizarre office of the Removal Company?

  That was now the heart of the case, and that was what I had to devote all my attention to investigating when I came home.

  But events forced me to take a different turn.

  * * * *

  I had returned to New York late on the evening of March 31. Exhausted, I went to bed immediately. Numerous errands—not the least of which was the rapid development of those photographs I had taken in Italy—occupied much of the next day, and I didn’t get back into my office until late in the afternoon.

  I had scarcely taken off my hat when the phone rang.

  “Scintilla,” I said.

  “Thank God you’re back!”

  It was Vance. I had written him about my expected date of arrival, but had not told him what I had found in Italy.

  “Vance, is that you?” I said. “Where are you calling from?”

  There was a curious silence on the other end.

  “I can’t tell you that, Scintilla.... Listen, you have to help me....”

  What new scrape had this bird gotten himself into? I thought.

  “What’s the matter? Where are you? Why are you talking so funny?”

  “Listen, Scintilla...I’ve— You see....”

  “Christ, man, get it out!” I was rapidly losing patience.

  Then Vance said: “Is this phone tapped?”

  I closed my eyes for a moment. “Vance, what is this? What are you trying to pull?”

  “Just answer me!” He sounded harried, desperate—almost out of control. “Please...is your phone tapped?”

  “How the hell should I know?” I thundered. “Not that I know of....”

  “Well,” Vance said in a kind of conspiratorial whisper, “we have to assume that it might be. We have to meet, Scintilla.”

  “And how do you propose to do that?” I wasn’t whispering. “You want me to fly across the country yet again?”

  “I’m not in San Marino...I—I’m in New York.”

  “You’re what?” I almost shouted. “Vance, you’re still under indictment—you’re not supposed to leave California.”

  “I know that—that’s not important now....”

  “Not important! I don’t think you quite grasp—”

  He cut me off. “Scintilla, listen to me! I’ve kidnapped Elena Greenway.”

  There was a silence. I could feel the blood rushing through my temples, hear my heart pounding. For a fleeting moment I thought I heard Vance’s as well.

  “You crazy fool!” I exploded. “What...how...?” I was spluttering with rage and bafflement.

  “Look, Scintilla, we have to get together!” Vance said. “You know where I said I was staying when I first came to you? Do you remember?”

  “Yes,” I said quietly.

  “Meet me there. Please—as fast as you can.”

  I hung up without saying anything more. Within a minute I had left the office and was making my way to 144 East 62nd Street.

  * * * *

  It was Vance’s uncle’s place, I knew. The building was a four-story brick townhouse off Lexington Avenue, with entrance directly facing the sidewalk and large, arched windows on the second story. I had little doubt that Vance’s uncle owned the entire place.

  My brain was in a whirl. I felt both foolish and dazed as I rang the bell, as if I were coming to late afternoon tea. Within seconds I could see a head peering up through the panes set high in the door; then the door opened quickly.

  It wasn’t who I expected to see. I was met by Gene Merriwether.

  “What on earth are you—?” I started.

  “Never mind that,” Merriwether whispered as he barely allowed me enough leeway to enter. “Just come on up.”

  I was in a narrow lobby with a staircase on the right. I mounted it. At the top I encountered a set of double doors, closed and—as I learned when I tried the knob—locked.

  “Vance, are you in there?” I said sharply. “It’s Scintilla; let me in.”

  The doors flung open and Vance stood there. He grabbed my lapel and saying, “Jesus, Scintilla, keep your voice down!” thrust me in, almost closing the double doors on Merriwether, who had marched up right behind me.

  I stood facing a man who had undergone the effects of a prolonged rush of adrenalin: haggard, hair tousled, eyes glazed, sweat beading his forehead and upper lip, breathing stertorously, and seemingly ready to collapse of nervous exhaustion at any moment.

  But that wasn’t all I took in as I entered the large, tastefully furnished room. On a sofa sat—again to my surprise—Marge Schaeffer. On a wooden chair, evidently taken from the dining room table, sat Elena Greenway. She was disheveled, frightened, and bewildered; her hands were tied behind her, and her ankles were tied to the legs of the chair.

  “For God’s sake, Vance!” I shouted. “Untie that woman! Have you gone absolutely mad? What the bloody hell is the meaning of all this?”

  Vance was slow to respond, so Elena filled in the silence. “Oh, thank the Lord!” she said in her Italian accent. “Mr. O’Connell...maybe that is not your real name...please, sir, you must help me! Please let me go back to my husband! He’ll pay you anything you want! This madman—”

  That got Vance going. “I’m your husband, Katharine! I am! You’re my wife!”

  Elena winced and tried as far as possible to move away from him. She didn’t get very far.

  I felt like throttling everyone in sight, but tried to regain composure.

  “Vance,” I said softly, “please tell me what is going on. What have you done?—and why? First, how did you get out of California?”

  Vance actually smirked at the question. “Scintilla, do you really think I was going to stay cooped up in my house doing nothing? Getting out was the easiest part. There was no surveillance on me: the police know me and my family, and I’ll go back anytime they want. All I did was to hire a private plane to take me to Phoenix, and from there I just stepped on Pan Am 647 and came here.”

  I paused in thought. Looking around at each occupant of the place—the frazzled Vance, the terrified Elena, the sheepish Merriwether, and the strangely demure Marge—I turned my attention back to Vance and said, in a quiet but threatening voice:

  “You deliberately sent me to Italy to get me out of the way, didn’t you?”

  In rage I lunged at him, grabbing him by the collar. “Didn’t you?”

  Vance was taken aback; didn’t know what to do. Merriwether came to his aid and tried to pull me off. But I wasn’t letting go.

  “Scintilla,” Vance said in a choking voice, “you got it all wrong! That wasn’t it at all! I mean, you wrote you found something in Italy, didn’t you? I just got tired of doing nothing.... I was going mad, Scintilla!”

  I let him go, grudgingly. “Well, you’ve certainly done that.”


  Marge chimed in: “Please, Mr. Scintilla, take it easy on him. He’s been through a lot....”

  “He has!” I exploded. “What about her?”—pointing to Elena.

  Marge winced, but said nothing.

  “Vance,” I resumed, “tell me the meaning of this. First of all, how the hell did you pull it off? Surely you didn’t just walk into the Greenway home and take her away.”

  Vance chuckled. “Well, Scintilla, that’s exactly what I did! The police still have my gun, so I went to Chinatown, bought another one”—he gestured with incredible nonchalance at an immense revolver lying on the dining room table, something that might have come out of a cowboy movie—“and, yes, then I just walked into the Greenway home and took her away!”

  He beamed at me in pride. I could not utter, so he continued:

  “It was easy! Nobody there had any weapons—anyway, there was only that butler and Mr. Greenway. I just told Elena—er, Katharine—to pack a few things, and then I walked out.

  “Now listen to this, Scintilla. That was three days ago. Since that time the police have not been notified, and there has been nothing published in the papers about this kidnapping. Doesn’t that tell you something?”

  He had something there. “Yes, it does—but I’m not sure what.”

  “Don’t you see?” Vance almost shouted. “They’re afraid! We have them on the run! They don’t dare say anything to anyone, because the whole thing will unravel.”

  “Who exactly is ‘they’?” I asked.

  “Why,” Vance said, a little uneasily, “Sanderson of course! And Greenway, too, probably—they’re all in it. I’m sure of it!”

  I let that pass. Vance could be right, or he could merely be getting paranoid.

  All I said was: “So what happens now?”

  There was complete silence for several moments. Vance looked around to his two compatriots—he didn’t seem keen on looking at Elena—but found no answers there: they merely looked back at him inquiringly, and rather nervously.

  “I’m not sure,” Vance finally said, slowly. “We have to force their hand somehow....” He began to pace about, as if that might help his brain work.

  “Vance,” I said, tiredly, “you’ve made things a lot more difficult. I told you I’m on to something. You should have let me handle this. You’ve gotten yourself into deep trouble, and there may be no way to get you out of it.”

  Vance looked at me in wide-eyed desperation. “My God, Scintilla, you’ve got to help me! We’re so close...aren’t we? We have to do something....”

  “The first thing we do,” I said forcefully, “is to untie this woman.” When no one moved, I shouted: “Untie her! Now!”

  After a moment Marge Schaeffer leaped up and did as I had commanded. Both Vance and Merriwether momentarily thought of trying to stop her, but a glare from me brought them up short.

  Marge freed Elena in moments—the knots had not been tied very tight. Nevertheless, Elena rubbed her wrists and ankles briskly, whimpering a little and still looking petrified.

  I went up to her. “Can you get up, ma’am?” I said.

  “Yes,” she said in a small voice, “I think so.”

  “Scintilla, what are you doing?” Vance said in alarm.

  “Butt out of this, Vance,” I snapped back. I looked around at the several doors in the room. “Is there a place where this woman can lie down?”

  Vance almost sprang to one of the doors, opening it wide. “Yes,” he said, “my uncle’s bedroom. He’s away on a cruise—won’t be back for several weeks.”

  “Fine.” I led Elena to the room. When Vance made an effort to go in with me, I stopped him with a hand on his chest. “No, Vance.”

  He began to sputter. “What...what are you going to do with her?”

  “I have to talk to her alone. I mean that—alone.”

  Reluctantly he let me close the door in his face.

  I turned back to Elena Greenway, who was standing irresolute in the middle of the room. She looked a little less scared, but still apprehensive. Clearly I had not won her trust, and doubted that I ever would.

  “Ma’am,” I said, “maybe you’d just better rest for a while. Nothing is going to happen to you. You’ll be all right. But just rest now.”

  I wasn’t very good at this sort of thing, but it seemed to work: she mutely did as I said.

  I think she may actually have slept for about half an hour. After that, with a little moan, she awoke, then almost sprang from the bed, looking terrified again.

  I placed my hand gently on her arm. “It’s all right. Take it easy, it’s all right.”

  She slowly fell back on the bed.

  I turned on the light. It was a bit too bright, and both of us squinted at the sudden illumination.

  “Do you mind,” I said, “if I ask you some questions?”

  “No,” she replied, still in that small voice.

  “All right.”

  I had no idea how she would respond to what I was about to ask her, but I knew that her answers would be vital in solving this case.

  I first took out a photo of the house where Elena Cavalieri had supposedly grown up, and placed it in her hand.

  “Do you recognize that place?”

  She looked puzzled, then almost angry. “No. No, I do not. What is it?”

  She made as if to hand it back to me, but I gently pressed her to look at it again.

  “Are you sure? Absolutely sure?”

  “Yes, of course. I have not seen that place. Never!”

  I took the picture back from her. “All right.” I gave her a photo of the church of San Antonio. “How about this?”

  She scarcely glanced at the picture. “No. I do not know this place either. Is this Italy? There are many churches in Italy!” She almost chuckled at her witticism.

  There was something extremely strange going on here. Her responses were, in several ways, not what I had expected. If she was Elena Cavalieri, she would have recognized the photos instantly. If she were merely an actress who had been coached to pretend that she was Elena, then she should at least have made a pretense of recognizing the photos. But instead, she absolutely denied any recognition, and seemed entirely sincere and guileless in doing so.

  I felt I had to go the distance.

  “How about this?”

  It was the photo of the graves of her parents.

  “No...ah, yes! Oh, my God, my parents! Yes, yes, of course I know this!”

  But she hadn’t at first. Only when she saw the names on the tombstones did she claim any remembrance.

  “Now about this.”

  It was the photo of Elena Cavalieri’s gravestone.

  For a moment she peered squintingly at the photograph. Then an instant of comprehension.

  She shrieked, then fell in a dead faint.

  * * * *

  The door burst open, and all three of the other occupants of the place rushed in. Vance looked at me ferociously, but I shrugged that off and told him to call his doctor and have him come here immediately. Looking sharply between me and the woman on the bed, he grudgingly followed my orders.

  Dr. Williamson—Vance’s uncle’s personal doctor—came within fifteen minutes. He took one glance at the prostrate woman and flashed a look of utter bewilderment, almost of horror, at Vance and the rest of us. I think he had recognized someone.

  A cold compress and gentle applications of smelling-salts did the trick. The woman’s eyes fluttered, then opened wide.

  Vance dashed to her side, took up her hand, and said, pleadingly: “Katharine...Katharine, is that you?”

  She looked puzzled, but not at the man she was looking at.

  “Arthur...Arthur, what am I doing here? Where am I?” There was no longer any Italian accent.

  Vance’s voice quivered. “You’re safe, Katharine. Safe.”

  Katharine Vance had, after a fashion, come home.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  I was sitting at dinner with Marge Schaeffer. I
t wasn’t Delmonico’s, but it was a nice place.

  The turmoil following Katharine Vance’s “return” to herself would be difficult to imagine. I think Arthur wanted to let out a whoop of triumph, but out of consideration for his still shaken wife he restrained himself, giving me merely a silent glance of satisfaction. I didn’t begrudge him his victory: he had been proven right.

  And yet—as I told him after pulling him away from the others—our problems were far from over. Not only did we still need to figure out what exactly had happened to Katharine—and given her present condition, we weren’t likely to know anytime soon, if at all—but we still needed to track down Dr. Sanderson, the presumable culprit behind all the incredible events of the past year and a half. Also, Katharine was still married—at least in the eyes of the law—to Harry Greenway, and it would require some mighty tall talking to establish that the marriage was bigamous.

  But Sanderson was our man now. We had to get him. And as yet we hadn’t even the faintest hope of doing so.

  Katharine Vance, meanwhile, had been sedated, and Dr. Williamson quickly arranged to have several nurses provide round-the-clock care. She would be out of commission for a long time.

  What exactly had happened to her? My immediate thought was some kind of hypnosis. She had been tutored to absorb the basic facts of Elena Cavalieri’s life—had even been given an Italian accent. But there had been a flaw in the plan: she had merely been told that she had been born in Cattolica, and had never been taken there, or seen photographs of her own supposed home, or the gravesite of her parents. That’s why she honestly didn’t recognize the photos of these sites that I had shown her.

  It was a bad slip-up. And it showed me that Sanderson was capable of making mistakes. Were there others?—others that would allow us to beard him in his lair?