The Book of the Lion

by Elizabeth Daly

  “And the bar crony, on the other hand, wouldn’t be so likely to have a weapon. You can’t beat a man’s head in with an ordinary walking stick or an umbrella.”

  “That’s so. The weapon could have been a section of steel pipe. Which is in favour of the pro again, because he’d be more likely to use something padded up, like a blackjack or a sandbag.”

  “But a hold-up man wouldn’t be strolling with him in Central Park.”

  “How do you mean?” asked Durfee.

  “Bradlock wasn’t on his way home; that section of the park is above the street where he lived. He must have been taking a walk. Why do that on a rainy night, at that hour, unless a friend persuaded him to do it?”

  “He was drunk, I tell you. Every night of his life at that hour he was staggering drunk. He could have gone any place. He often did. He’d been found in the park before, and all kinds of places.”

  Gamadge thought that over. “I don’t think it seems so likely that he’d head for home and then pass it like that. Was he coming through the park? There are lots of exits along that way, below and above the Museum.”

  “No, he didn’t come through the park,” said Durfee irritably. “He had a regular beat every night. He’d start out just before or soon after dinner, depending on how he felt about it, and first of all he usually rode down, way down to a place in the Village where he used to know a lot of people—writers and theatre people. But the place had changed, and anyway his old friends didn’t much care about him any more. He was always talking loud, laying down the law and slamming into the theatres because they wouldn’t put on his plays. The writers down there seemed to be able to lay off the drink long enough to get things written or produced, and he annoyed them. I’m talking about after he did get his play done, and it folded.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “That’s when he really started this serious drinking. Well, then he’d ride up town a ways and start in on the Third Avenue bars, working up town, you know, from one to the next. Stay a little while in each, always ending up around midnight in a place in the Sixties which is popular and crowded all the time. By midnight he was always full up, ready to wander off. Sometimes he’d wander home. We know that place, it’s run by a nice enough man. He remembers seeing Bradlock there that night, but he doesn’t remember seeing anybody leave with him. Nobody does. Nobody was paying attention.”

  “He had no regular friend he’d be likely to wander off with?”

  “He had no friends at all, far as we can find out. No use denying it,” said Durfee, shaking his head obstinately, “the feller wasn’t liked.”

  “Any special reason, do you know, apart from the ones you mentioned before?” asked Gamadge.

  “Well, he’d got to be very run-down in his appearance, of course,” said Durfee, thinking it over. “But they wouldn’t mind that. I don’t quite get it myself. Of course these failures—they turn sour, sometimes. I have the idea he was a snarling type of man, down on everybody. Small-minded. Whisky didn’t improve him. Once in a while, as I said, he’d start a fight, and being a little thin feller, he’d get the worst of it. But he didn’t get in any fight that last time, he just left this Hanley place and went weaving off.

  “His usual plan, from what they tell me, was to walk over to Fifth and take a bus up to the Bradlocks’ block, and go home that way. This last night he must have walked up the Avenue, past the block, and cut into the park at that entrance I told you about.”

  “I suppose he might have done such a thing alone.”

  “And the thug followed him in. Anyhow, he was found next morning, and he couldn’t be identified. Not a thing on him to say who he was. He looked like any tramp by that time, rained on, and in a pair of old corduroy pants he might have brought back from Paris with him. Old coat, home-washed shirt and underwear. He was taken over to the precinct at first, they always are, kept there twenty-four hours, and just before he was sent down to Bellevue, unclaimed, his wife came over and identified him. Nice little woman.”

  “I’ve met her. Met the family.”

  “Well, they had a time. The brother and wife were out of town, and this poor little woman had the worst of it. She read about the hold-up in the papers, and since Bradlock hadn’t got home and she couldn’t locate him, she called up on the chance and came over. She was a gritty little thing, lots of nerve, but it was tough. She was ashamed about the way he looked, too; had to explain that the brother supported him all right, but like the rest of those soaks, he’d sell anything decent he had if he ran out of cash.” Durfee’s expression was sardonic. “Too bad I can’t give you anything nicer to put in your piece.”

  “It’s all happened before.”

  “They said he’d been a mighty nice-looking feller too.”

  “I suppose this must all have been in the papers, Durfee?”

  “Every last word of it.”

  “You said—”

  “I said we had a little something more, which didn’t get into the papers because it happened after he was out of the news and buried in the family lot, with a nice headstone over him too. I mean we didn’t hear about it till afterwards, and I don’t think it could interest you or anybody.”

  “Let’s have it, anyway.”

  “Well, this feller Downey, Brooklyn man, called us up about a week after Bradlock died. He’d been out of town on business—he’s some kind of a salesman—and he never saw anything in the papers till he happened on a little write-up in Time. He dropped in on us by request and told us the story. Thought we might just possibly be interested. He met Bradlock in an up-town bar the night he was killed, or rather in the early evening. They had something to eat there. Downey said it wasn’t seven o’clock. He’d been working here in Manhattan, and wanted a snack before he went home.”

  “Bradlock hadn’t followed his usual routine, then?”

  “Not this time, anyway. They had the snack and a few drinks, and Downey said Bradlock was well over the line even then. But he was mighty interesting, and Downey was fascinated. Being a new acquaintance, he got a big kick out of Bradlock’s stories and all that talk about his career. He’d never met any such type before.

  “Then Downey had to leave, and they walked to Lexington, where Downey could get a subway. Bradlock—you know how these drunks are—hung on to him. Made him walk a ways down Lexington, said he wanted to pay a call. They stopped at an old-fashioned apartment house on a corner, and Bradlock said to wait for him, he wouldn’t be a minute, and went on in. Downey wasn’t going to wait, but he did, under five minutes; in fact, Downey said it wasn’t more than two. Bradlock came back and said his friends weren’t home. He rode down to Fourteenth Street with Downey, and got out there.

  “Well, that wasn’t interesting; but just for the fun of it we checked at the apartment; because high or low we couldn’t find a soul anywhere that Bradlock seemed to know well at all. These people might have seen him later, and why miss anything?

  “But nobody in the place had ever heard of him.”

  Gamadge raised his eyebrows.

  “He was drunk,” explained Durfee. “Just one of the things they do. He might have known somebody there once—Downey said he talked about people long dead as if they were alive, and acted a little crazy anyway. I don’t know how he lasted out the evening as well as he did, but they said he got his second wind. Here’s the place.” Durfee turned a page of the file so that Gamadge could see it. “Quiet, full of respectable people, no reason for them to deny knowing him, especially with all the publicity done with. Anyway, we couldn’t connect them up with him, and it was long before he was killed that he stopped there, and he’d seen dozens of people afterwards. So we didn’t give it out. Can you use that in your piece?”

  Gamadge laughed, and got up. “I don’t suppose so. Thanks, Durfee. Mighty good of you.”

  “Not at all. I can see”—Durfee squinted up at him, smiling—“that you couldn’t very well get this dope from the family.”

  “Not very well. No.�
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  “Poor little woman; does she still live there in that annex?”

  “Still lives there.”

  “Avery Bradlock has a lot to be grateful to her for. She took the brunt of it. By the time he got back from the country, his brother was in a nice undertaking parlour, without even a tag on him. Well, be seeing you.”

  “I hope so.”

  They shook hands, and Gamadge left the building and took the subway up town. He got out at Forty-second Street, and walked the few blocks across and north to his other club—where he might as easily meet Avery Bradlock as in the little one behind his house, but which Mrs. Bradlock had taken too much for granted to specify. He was early, but he had not wished to keep his luncheon guest waiting.

  That guest soon came trotting into the cool and dim vastness of the lobby—a little old gentleman complete with silver-headed walking stick; slim, spritely, and stored with experience. Gamadge introduced himself with deference.

  “It’s most good of you, Mr. Meriden. I hardly dared suggest it.”

  “Well, after all,” said Mr. Meriden, shaking hands, “apart from the pleasure of meeting you—you’re not going to do a book for us, are you? No, I thought not—it was only a step, and I had to lunch somewhere.”

  “I’m glad you’d at least heard of me, sir.” Gamadge piloted Mr. Meriden into the dining-room, and got him to a table in a window.

  “You’re joking,” said Mr. Meriden kindly. “I read all your—no cocktail, no, a glass of sherry if…”

  The lunch was ordered. When the sherry came, Gamadge ventured to embark on his quest. Mr. Meriden cut it short:

  “Perfect shame, but I can’t help you at all. The poor lady has dropped out, nobody knows what’s become of her. You’re doing some work on the nineteen-twenties in Paris—the expatriate writers? Well, poor Isabel Wakes was a promising girl, made a very good job of that book we did—Some Writing Ladies of France. We commissioned it, you know.”

  “Did you, sir?”

  “Yes, we saw some of her work in literary reviews. And we knew little Jeremy.” Mr. Meriden laughed and shook his head. “Poor little Jeremy, his stuff was much less interesting, very dusty. But it had a certain appeal, it carried on the Curiosities of Literature tradition. Luckily he didn’t write for money, just to amuse himself. I heard that he was one of the casualties of nineteen hundred and twenty-nine. Quite likely. He died over there, and Isabel came home. So much I know.”

  “But you think she’s still alive, Mr. Meriden?”

  Mr. Meriden ate a clam or two before answering. Then he said: “The gossip was that she was doing popular stuff under a pen name. For the pulps, you know. But I have no first-hand information. As a matter of fact, I can quite well imagine her doing that, if she had to make a living. She had tremendous energy, and a strong, effective style, and I should say she was not an idealist.”

  “Wasn’t she?”

  “Oh no, a trenchant humour; directed against what we used to call uplift. But I’m very sorry she couldn’t turn her hand at something a trifle less…” Mr. Meriden looked about him vaguely. “Ephemeral,” he finished, and ate another clam.

  “How did you hear that she was writing for the pulps under another name, Mr. Meriden?”

  “Her agent called up our office, checking on old royalties for her. There were none, of course. He didn’t talk to me, didn’t even give his name. Took our word for it.” Meriden glanced up at Gamadge. “Does that seem at all credible to you, Mr. Gamadge?”

  “Entirely credible, Mr. Meriden. I dare say he didn’t expect any other news, anyway.”

  “No. And he didn’t give us news of her, or say what her pseudonym was. It was a long time ago. Almost seven years, they tell me at the office. Poor lady, I really wonder what’s become of her.”

  “At least we know what became of Paul Bradlock.”

  “Paul Bradlock?” Mr. Meriden looked up alertly. “Going to write him up too? That’s different.”

  “Well, he was one of the expatriates, wasn’t he?”

  “Not when we knew him.”

  There was a pause while the plates were taken away and the Egg Mornay—Mr. Meriden’s choice—came on. At last, when he was well into his spinach, he returned to Paul Bradlock:

  “We only did a play of his, you know. Very interesting. He probably came to us through having known Mr. and Mrs. Wakes in Paris. Then, of course, after his tragic death, his wife approached us about the biography.”

  “I’ve seen it.”

  “You know,” said Mr. Meriden, suddenly rather serious, “we felt rather as the family did. Get this thing out, and scotch a lot of irresponsible half-baked stuff, all personalities and scandal. He was scandalous, of course he was, but there was more to him than that. We were disappointed in the result, but the Bradlocks had a good list for us, and really Mr. Avery Bradlock wasn’t much out of pocket. Very nice man, that.”

  “I thought so.”

  “Oh, you’ve met him? Excellent sort. Upon my word, I don’t know how these things happen in families.”

  “Paul Bradlock didn’t strike you as a good sort, apart from his unfortunate drinking habits?”

  Mr. Meriden, busy with his salad, did not reply for some moments. At last he said: “This is not for publication.”

  “Certainly not, if you say so.”

  Meriden sat back and looked at Gamadge, fixedly and from under knitted brows. “I never saw a man so disliked. I didn’t like him, none of the editors liked him, the very switchboard young lady, a pleasant girl, had a kind of—you might almost say a horror of him.”

  “Really. I wonder why.”

  “He was truculent and embittered by that time, and his hand was against everybody; we can discount all that. He’d had a disappointing life, and he was financially dependent. But—I can only say that he radiated ill will. His play does, you know.”

  “It does, indeed.”

  “There’s no pathos in the fate of those people, and the thing never touches tragedy. Empty. Quite empty. But he could write.”

  “It’s surprising that his wife didn’t make her book more interesting. She seems such a clever woman.”

  “Oh, very, and a most appealing little thing. Quite crushed by the tragedy. You know she comes from the West, and she went to Paris very young to work in a friend’s bookshop. Pretty little creature then, they tell me, quite ethereal. Just the wife for a young poet.”

  “I was surprised that she didn’t use more letters in the Life.”

  “On thinking it over, I wasn’t. He didn’t write letters himself if he could help it—we could hardly get one out of him. And when he did”—there was a glint in Mr. Meriden’s eye—“he had an acid pen. He couldn’t, simply could not write an agreeable letter. I should not think that he’d show up well at either end of any correspondence. He actually drove the other party into being disagreeable. Question of temperament, quite apart from alcohol, I should say. I only hope he reserved some kind of softness for his wife.”

  “She speaks as if he did.”

  “Yes, very loyal.”

  Through the rest of the lunch Mr. Meriden asked questions instead of answering them, and he asked many. They all had to do with Gamadge’s professional work, and Gamadge answered them to the best of his ability. Mr. Meriden seemed to enjoy himself. They parted on the steps of the club in high good humour with each other.

  Gamadge walked down Fifth Avenue to the public library. His step was slow, his head sunk between his shoulders, the stoop in his shoulder pronounced. In fact he had all the air of a baffled man.

  CHAPTER NINE

  A Ghost

  IN THE CATALOGUE department Gamadge could find nowhere in any compilation of or guide to periodical literature the name of Isabel Wakes. These reference books did not list the pulps; Gamadge had hoped that Mrs. Wakes contributed elsewhere under her own name. He moved to the card indexes, wrote out slips, and then went and sat in front of the desk in the reading room, waiting for his number to come up.
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br />   He got his books, sat down at a table, and attacked them. Jeremy Wakes had written three books, not much more than a collection of anecdotes strung on comment that was thin and coy:

  Browsings on the Quai

  Oddities in Old Libraries

  A Bookman’s Diary

  Jeremy Wakes had browsed, but in pastures far from new. The oddities in his works were not as odd now as they had seemed when first noted by people of the past, and the literary discoveries he set forth had not been made by him. He had rehashed old material, frankly confessing it old, and relying on his own chatty style to make it seem as good as new. He was feebly humorous, stuffy in his tastes and queerly conceited.

  According to notes on the end pages, some of these pieces had actually appeared in magazines. Gamadge had to remember that Jeremy Wakes was a member of a very old New York family, and that he probably had all sorts of connections with all sorts of important people.

  His wife’s book was a very different thing. She had had ability, she was rather cruelly amusing—her Madame de Genlis was quite delightful in a scathing way—and she had a hard, tough, masculine approach. What on earth had happened to Mrs. Wakes?

  He returned the books, and went out into the stream of Fifth Avenue. Disgusted, he got on a bus and rode up to the Eighties. He walked across to Lexington, and stood in front of the old brick five-story apartment where Paul Bradlock had called—and stayed “less than five minutes, in fact no more than two,” on the last evening of his life.

  It was a big place, with stores in the basement. It had no canopy and no doorman, and when Gamadge entered the dark, spacious lobby, he felt as if it had no inhabitants. It was as quiet as death. Old panelling rose head-high; a stairway curved from landing to landing, the skylight was a pale smear among shadows. No elevator, and so far as Gamadge could see, no list of tenants anywhere.

  He turned back to the vestibule, where a disheartening message scribbled on a card informed him that the superintendent was on the premises from eight to ten in the mornings and from four to six in the afternoons. It was now only half-past three.