“Well, he mustn’t say any more things like that just now,” said her daughter. “He must meet Vera and Mr. Iverson.”
Mrs. Longridge took a sip of her cocktail. Her face showed entire lack of interest in Mrs. Paul Bradlock and in Iverson; they had probably never bothered to make her feel homesick. Gamadge followed his hostess across the room to the couple who stood talking together at one end of the fireplace. They looked up, cocktail glasses in hand.
“My sister-in-law, Mrs. Paul Bradlock,” said Mrs. Avery Bradlock. “And Mr. Iverson. Mr. Gamadge, who so kindly said he’d look at the letters, Vera.”
“I know,” said Mrs. Paul Bradlock. “It was awfully nice of you, Mr. Gamadge. I’m glad Hill Iverson saved you the trouble. Wasn’t it lucky?”
“The luck,” said Iverson, “was all mine. Have a cocktail.”
The tray was at Gamadge’s elbow. He took a cocktail and a little sausage on a stick, and faced the others smiling.
CHAPTER FOUR
Down Payment
MRS. PAUL BRADLOCK was a small, very blonde woman; small boned, small featured, with a small, clear voice. She was one of those pale blondes whose colouring seems to acquire a kind of dinginess after early youth. If anything can be done to combat this effect, Mrs. Paul Bradlock had not done it—her hair, smooth and loosely knotted, was faded; her light eyes were without sparkle; her skin was without life.
She was almost shabby. Her mauve dress looked as though it might have been made in one piece and belted in—it too had a faded look. But compared with her sister-in-law she was animated. She smiled at Gamadge with lips that were unacquainted with lipstick, and talked steadily and quite gaily.
“They were so afraid you wouldn’t come, they refused to let you know!”
“That you’d disposed of your property, Mrs. Bradlock?” Gamadge smiled from her to Iverson.
“It never entered my head that I could sell letters. I didn’t know the rules at all.” She laughed. “Hill Iverson thinks I’m a ninny, don’t you, Hill? I knew I couldn’t publish them—not without permission; Mr. Meriden explained that to me when we first talked about Paul’s biography. But he never said I could sell them! And I wouldn’t put them into an auction, of course, or a public sale. Hill won’t do that either. Isn’t it wonderful that I remembered hearing him say he sometimes bought such things?”
While the clear little voice went on, Gamadge had from time to time exchanged amused or sympathetic glances with Iverson. He had seen him once before, playing in a bridge tournament; and somebody had said that he had been a stockbroker, good old mercantile family, had retired on pre-crash gains, and went around a lot—an eligible bachelor.
He was apparently in his fifties now, a short sturdily-built man with light hair and prominent blue eyes. The eyelids drooped at their outer corners, the droop corresponding to that of his lips. It gave his full, smooth face a semi-cynical, semi-humorous expression. Gamadge had seen a good many people who looked like Iverson, it was almost a type; but what type? One of the people had been a gambler, one an actor, one a lawyer. At any rate, Iverson by the look of him might very well play first-class bridge and make and save money out of a career on the stock market.
Gamadge asked: “Are you a collector, then, Mr. Iverson?”
“Oh, you couldn’t dignify me by any such name as that. Never had what it takes for that.” Iverson laughed. “I like a flyer now and then. Sometimes it’s a lot of books, somebody’s library. Sometimes it’s a little stock in a play. Sometimes I get the idea that some new artist is going to make good—I bet on him to the extent of buying a few pictures. Just hobbies. I like the element of chance. These letters”—he cast a patronizing, half-affectionate look at Vera Bradlock—“Vera doesn’t think much of them, and Paul’s friends were duds, most of them; but one or two—fashions change. You never can tell. Whatever I do with them, there won’t be a big splash made in the market.” He took another cocktail from the parlourmaid’s tray. “Glad Vera called me.”
“Great fun to be able to indulge one’s curiosity in that way,” said Gamadge. “I envy you.”
“You don’t collect at all, Mr. Gamadge?” Vera Bradlock smiled up at him.
“No, just buy a book now and then with the help and advice of my bookseller. Buy it for keeps.”
The maid announced dinner. They all went through an archway into a dining-room that must have run half across the rear of the house. A bronze chandelier with frosted globes hung low above a long table. Gamadge found himself placed between his hostess and Mrs. Paul Bradlock, and found the latter prepared to talk about her husband’s work.
“I’ve read your book,” he said, “of course. And some of his poetry.”
“Oh, he was so very young then; he wrote his poetry before we had even met. I didn’t say what I’m going to say now in my book, people misunderstand so—and I do think his poetry was wonderful. But to a certain extent it was no more than a reflection of all that he was surrounded by in Paris, and so strongly believed in. It didn’t have the pure originality of his plays.”
Mrs. Paul Bradlock was very glib. Gamadge said respectfully: “I only know Getting Out.”
“The critics didn’t know what to make of it when it first appeared, ten years ago. They weren’t ready for it,” said Mrs. Bradlock, her small features pinched with severity. “They said it was Russian, and French, and German!” She laughed bitterly. “It was Paul Bradlock! And they practically ignored the revival last year, because it was so hastily and badly done.”
“I agree with you fully about its originality,” said Gamadge. “That idea of having the room completely empty you know. Shattering.”
She looked to him in frowning surprise. “Why, exactly?”
“Well, most playwrights would have left something in the room—rags of the outworn past. But your husband implied that it had always been completely empty, and always would be. Of course that made it a little confusing to me, because such a conception of abstract nothingness didn’t quite fit in with the fact that people were there in the flesh, supposedly confronted by a real dilemma, no matter what the allegory.”
Confused by a glibness that outmatched her own, and that was at least not derived from newspaper criticism, Mrs. Bradlock was spared a reply by Avery Bradlock. Turning from Mrs. Longridge, he said, smiling:
“My wife’s mother has a place down in the deep South, Mr. Gamadge, beautiful old place, full of old things. Lots of old letters. She’s beginning to think she may have missed her chance at a fortune.”
Old Mrs. Longridge, sitting on her son-in-law’s right and next to Iverson, ignored that gentleman’s interested expression and spoke to Gamadge across the table: “It’s a beautiful old place, but it wouldn’t be if Avery hadn’t fixed it up for me. It was fallin’ down. Plenty of stuff moulderin’ away in the attic and cellars now. I wondered if you wouldn’t know somebody who’d come down to Longridge and look at the things.”
“I could certainly find you somebody, Mrs. Longridge.”
Iverson met Gamadge’s eye. “How about Ellis?”
“Ellis might.”
Mrs. Avery Bradlock said with tempered scepticism: “Would it be worth the trouble?” She looked at her husband. “Or the money?”
Avery Bradlock shook his head. “Only one way to find out, isn’t there?”
“Always a chance,” said Gamadge, “especially nowadays. In the last few decades people have gone document crazy.”
Old Mrs. Longridge said: “There now!”
“I had some friends,” Gamadge told her, “who let a university librarian go down into their cellar and look at some old account books, mouse eaten and almost illegible from damp. The man said they were history and paid fifteen dollars apiece for them. But that’s just a trifling instance. We mustn’t forget the old gentleman who offered his collection of letters to a friend for five hundred pounds; only that was a long time ago.”
“What about him?” asked Mrs. Longridge eagerly.
“Well, after
his death it brought four thousand, and now, a hundred years later, it’s valued at twenty thousand. Values change.” He smiled at Iverson. “Don’t they?”
Mrs. Longridge gasped: “Twenty thousand dollars? Avery…”
“Didn’t this old gentleman,” asked Mrs. Paul Bradlock dryly, “know what he had?”
“Oh yes,” said Gamadge, “he knew it was good. But he didn’t know the market, and he certainly didn’t know what a hundred years would do to it.”
There was a pause. Then Vera Bradlock said: “Well, I can’t wait a hundred years, and I’m more than satisfied with a thousand.”
Iverson felt in his breast pocket. “Let’s close the deal, Vera, shall we? Plenty of witnesses, and I came prepared.” Smiling, he laid a folding cheque-book beside his plate, opened it, and took out a fountain pen. “What day is it?”
“It’s the fifth,” said old Mrs. Longridge, leaning forward. She was fascinated by these business preparations, and quite a flush had risen to her delicately powdered cheeks.
Iverson wrote, tore out the cheque, and handed it to Vera Bradlock, across the old silver épergne. “There you are, my child, and never mind a receipt. But I think I shall take my box of letters away with me.”
“You shall,” said Vera. She waved the cheque gently back and forth. “It’s ready and waiting.”
“Well!” exclaimed old Mrs. Longridge, “that’s what I call business!”
“It’s not what we call business down town,” said Avery Bradlock. He was smiling, but he had a doubtful look. “Down town we’d have somebody—say Mr. Gamadge—go through the papers first, and make an inventory.”
“Well, you see,” said Vera gaily, “I know Hill. Avery, will you take care of this for me?”
She handed it to her brother-in-law, who looked at it, folded it, and put it away.
“Haven’t you a bank account, Vera?” asked Iverson.
“A bank account!” She looked at him, her eyes amused but her face grave. “What should I do with one?”
“Oh, but look here, then, I should have brought cash.”
There was a short silence. Then Mrs. Avery Bradlock said coldly: “You needn’t worry, Mr. Iverson. Vera will get her money.”
“Sorry,” laughed Iverson. “I see money’s nothing to joke about at the Bradlocks’. Sometimes I forget. To me it’s just a medium of barter.”
Mrs. Longridge said cheerfully: “I just love it. I wish some of the men in my family had gone in for writin’, then perhaps Mr. Iverson would clear out my cellar and give me a thousand dollars. You know, Mr. Gamadge, often as I was in Paris before the depression, and I tell you we knew plenty of people there, I never once even heard of the Left Bank and all that excitement? Never even heard of it!”
A general laugh seemed to please her. Avery said: “Well, your friends there were out of the excitement, I’m afraid, Mrs. Longridge. Pretty conventional set—at least I found them so.”
His wife said quietly to Gamadge: “Paul and my husband—it seems so strange, that they should have been own brothers. Poor wretched Paul.”
“Yes. Tragic thing.”
“He was so promising—and so wild. I never did know him well, and after they came home they lived to themselves. The studio is quite separate, and their friends were not ours.”
“Much more sensible for families not to live on top of one another.”
“They brought Hilliard Iverson over now and then. We rather enjoyed him, and he plays such good bridge.”
“Excellent company, I imagine.”
“I suppose Vera is doing the right thing.” As the talk around the table died down, she spoke in a louder voice: “We’ll have coffee here, and then Mr. Iverson can go over and look at his new acquisition.”
“Sight unseen, sight unseen, you know!” Iverson rubbed his hands. “You forget, that’s what makes the value. But I’m dying to get my hands on that box. You must all come over with me and witness delivery.”
Dessert came in, a fitting climax to a flawless three-course meal. Gamadge turned back to Mrs. Paul Bradlock. He spoke softly: “You’ve known Mr. Iverson a long time, Mrs. Bradlock?”
“Yes, indeed. He was so fond of Paul, and awfully good to him. Good to me, too, although”—she laughed, glancing across at Iverson—“that was pure benevolence. I’m not exactly his type, as you may imagine.”
Gamadge laughed too. “I can see his type! I’m glad you can trust him with this correspondence. A lot of people, you’d be surprised to know how many, couldn’t be trusted with letters that had—let’s say nuisance value, for instance.”
She was amused. “Poor Hill! He couldn’t blackmail anybody with Paul’s letters, even if he wanted to. There’s a little controversial matter, as Mr. Meriden the publisher so delicately puts it; Mr. Meriden hoped I’d put that sort of thing in my book.” She looked down at her plate. “I wouldn’t use anything likely to prejudice people against Paul. He could lose his temper, you know.” She smiled at Gamadge.
“Who with blood in them can’t, if there’s enough provocation?”
“I don’t think Avery could. He’d just freeze up and walk away.” She added: “I don’t think Nannie could.”
“What a domestic scene! Two snow images walking off in opposite directions.”
“You know,” said Mrs. Paul Bradlock, “you’re very nice and understanding.”
“Glad to convey that impression. Are you staying on here in that little house, Mrs. Bradlock?”
“For a while at least. Now that the book is out I shall have time to look around me. I have a nest egg now.” She laughed. “I might be able to buy myself into a business. I have friends in the West. Avery was very good to us, Mr. Gamadge; a whole house to live in all these years, and our bills paid. It wasn’t meant to be lived in, you know—the studio annex.”
“Wasn’t it?”
“It was built for one of Avery’s aunts, a real musician. She could practise there, and have her concerts. There’s just the music room and a bathroom and a little kitchen and pantry to serve refreshments, only I do all my cooking there, and two little rooms upstairs on the gallery—cloakrooms. They’re bedrooms now.”
“It sounds very compact.”
“It is.”
“Regular guest house.”
“I’m afraid Avery could rent it for a lot.”
Gamadge, served with coffee, drank a little before he answered. Then he said: “I don’t think you owe the Avery Bradlocks anything.”
Her face looked pallid and drawn in the light of the old frosted globes above the table. She said: “Perhaps not.”
“There are so many intangibles in human debits and credits.”
“Yes. For instance, there’s Aunt Bradlock’s concert piano.” She gave him that strange, hypocritical smirk of hers, and ran a scale on the tablecloth with short, strong fingers. “I get a lot of fun out of that, all free. But I pay for keeping it in tune.”
What had those years, alone with Paul Bradlock, done to his wife? She was a woman who didn’t care how she looked, and didn’t care what people thought of her. Supported by her conviction that the Bradlocks would put up with her forever, perhaps only because people expected it of them, she went her own way. Gamadge wouldn’t have cared for her as a neighbour himself.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Other Place
A FEW MINUTES LATER Mrs. Avery Bradlock rose, everybody rose, and the host went directly to a door at the end of the dining-room. Its companion door, at the other end of a built-in Eastlake sideboard, was partly hidden by an immense painted screen, and led to the service pantry; this one opened on a small lobby.
There were three doors leading out of the lobby, and Avery Bradlock unbolted and opened the farther one. The party went through into a short, low passage way, lighted by a single bracket; Bradlock had turned on the switch from the dining-room.
Mrs. Paul Bradlock passed him, opened a door at the end of the passage, and stood aside, smiling. She said: “Do come in.”
/> Gamadge and Iverson were last. Gamadge closed the door for Vera Bradlock, and then stood looking around a big, high room. It was two stories high, with a gallery running along the wall on the west, and a narrow wooden stair rising from the south-west corner to the gallery, and up above it to a trap-door in the ceiling.
Vera followed his look. “I have a nice attic,” she said. “A splendid air-chamber for the hot weather.”
“All the comforts.” Iverson, hands in pockets, smiled at the ceiling, which had a damp-stain in the south-east corner, and a large crack running through the stain down the wall.
“Now, Hill!” But her demure expression convinced Gamadge anew that Mrs. Paul Bradlock was a satirist.
The room was inexpressibly dreary. Ornate standard lamps with battered and faded shades lighted up the shabby chintz-covered furniture, the worn old rugs on the worn flooring, the empty hearth strewn with ashes and cigarette ends, the marred top of the open concert-grand piano. There was a typewriter on a table near a window, with papers beside it.
The only brightness in the place came from a gay unframed painting above the bare mantel, perhaps the only memorial of Paul Bradlock’s life in Paris.
Mrs. Longridge and the Avery Bradlocks stood together, and there was a kind of horror in their attitude. Bradlock said: “I had no idea.”
Mrs. Longridge turned to look at their hostess. “I must say, Vera,” she observed with her usual candour, “you need a decorator.”
“It’s all right,” said Vera.
“But I didn’t know,” protested Avery in a shocked voice, “that it was damp.”
“Oh, that’s nothing. That happens now and then when it rains for a long time. It’s been so rainy this Spring,” said Vera. “It soon dries out.”
“Good God, dries out!” He swung to face her. “How’s the plumbing?”
“All right, Avery.”
Mrs. Longridge had begun a tour of the room. She stopped now before a low bookshelf, containing a dozen or so books, a pack of cards, some teacups, writing materials, and a broken flowerpot. She said: “Bohemian.”
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