Gentleman Called (22 page)

“Are you jealous?” he said, with an impish twinkle in his eye. “I’ll banish them.” And with a sweep of his arm he toppled two of the nearest clay models to the floor. They made a great thud, but nary a lip nor an ear nor a nose so much as chipped.

Mrs. Norris could not but titter at the indestructibility of his women. Watching her, Mr. Adkins puckered his face into a blue wrath. He caught from the wall a primitive axe and began hacking wildly at the toppled models, all of which merely moved and spun, and shed little more of themselves than dust, until finally the axe-head flew from its handle, and hurtling through the air, grazed Mrs. Norris’ brow—or so she thought. She saw the flick of stone and felt a sharp pain. Because she could still see for an instant thereafter, a watery shimmering view of the strange room and man, she thought it must be but a glancing blow. But then there was nothingness.

J
IMMIE TURNED THE KEY
in the door and called out Mrs. Norris’ name as soon as he opened it. There was no answer. He went to the foyer table where she was in the habit of leaving him a note if she expected to be out at an unexpected hour. But this was not an unexpected hour for her to be out. The only unexpected thing about it was the dust on the polished table.

Jimmie went through the house, somehow hoping she would come home while he was there. There was, he thought, something about the place which bespoke a hasty departure, either that or a limited occupancy. For example, there was not a thing in the huge refrigerator to indicate her usual early shopping.

On his way out of the building, he asked the doorman if Mrs. Norris had by any chance mentioned to him where she was going.

“Isn’t she up there?” the man said. “She was a few minutes ago, sir.”

“She’s not now,” Jimmie said. “Thanks, John.”

“She must have gone out through the basement then,” John said after him.

Jimmie turned back. “Why would she do that?”

John took off his glove and rubbed his chin. “Mr. Jarvis, I wouldn’t want it to get back to her that I told you, sir, but that little man’s been here already today—the little bald one who always comes to see you before you get home?”

Jimmie nodded.

“Well, sir, he was here this morning—not an hour ago—and I called up the way I always do to inform her who’s coming up whether they asked to be announced or no. And he’s not been asking it lately…”

Jimmie made a gesture of impatience. He was now remembering Teddy Adkins’ “older woman.” But Mrs. Norris had sense, he told himself, and she had Jasper Tully…or did she have as much of either as he had thought?

“She said she wasn’t going to answer the door to him, and it was the first time she didn’t tell me to keep my nose out of her affairs.”

“Go on,” Jimmie said.

“He went up and he came down, and I don’t think he saw her,” John said, “for he went to the table in there in the vestibule and wrote a note which he asked me to give her personally. I took it up and when she wouldn’t answer to me either, I tucked it under the door.”

There had been no note on the floor, Jimmie knew that. He signaled a cab to wait for him. “Anything else, John?”

“Do you think he’s up to no good, the same as I do, sir?” the old doorman said. “Your Mrs. Norris is too nice a lady for him.”

“I agree on both things,” Jimmie said.

“Then I’ll tell you something I should be ashamed of. But I felt the way you do. I read the note, sir. It was full of mush and promises.”

“Oh, Godalmighty,” Jimmie said.

W
HEN JASPER TULLY SWORE,
it was with rare deliberation and thoroughness. He now delivered a veritable litany against the day he had ever allowed Annie Norris to think herself a detective.

“Do you think she’s trying to bring this man to justice herself? Is that it?” said Jimmie.

“What else? Of course, that’s what she’s doing,” Tully said.

Jimmie had his doubts, though he kept them to himself. But having briefly compared notes with Tully, he did not consider that possibility to be any more dangerous than trying to marry Teddy Adkins. “He has an office on Wall Street; did you try it?”

“He’s not expected there till this afternoon,” said Tully. “Bassett just checked.”

“And he was at my apartment within the hour,” Jimmie said.

Tully began to pace his office. “I suppose we’d better try to pick up her trail from her own back door.” He bellowed down the hall. “Tommy!”

Bassett came running and Tully gave him his instructions. “Call in every half hour wherever you are.”

“A half hour’s a long time,” Jimmie said. He picked up the phone and called the Adkins house in Connecticut. He asked for Miranda, wondering while he waited, who would break the ultimate news of her brother to her.

All that Miranda could suggest by way of finding him was that Jimmie leave a message with Teddy’s secretary.

“The Precinct men are staking out his office,” Tully said. “Oh, I hope the devil takes a feather to her for this.”

A call came through from the stake-out. Theodore Adkins had no office at that address on Wall Street.

Tully picked up the notation of Adkins’ phone number. “Who the devil did Bassett talk to then?”

Jimmie was already dialing the number. He could tell instantly it was an answering service.

Tully got the telephone supervisor on the line. “I want information on Whitehall 9-7150,” he said, having identified himself. “It seems to be listed to a dummy address.”

“It’s a dual phone service as I explained to your office this morning, sir…”

“Hold it,” Tully said. “Who did you talk to in our office?”

“I’m sure I don’t know her name. She said she was calling for you, sir.”

“All right,” Tully said. “Just give me the information again.”

“The residential address which that number also services is 732 East 61st Street.”

“Thank you very much,” Tully said, hanging up, getting to his feet and holstering his gun all in the same instant. “There! She was even trying to get that information through to me,” he said to Jimmie. “I told you what she was doing.” He put his hat on his head and led the way out, loping down the hall like a rheumatic moose.

W
HEN MRS. NORRIS CAME
to, she found herself propped and cushioned like the Queen of Sheba. Mr. Adkins was waving a scented cloth beneath her nose, and he seemed to have half-drowned her with compresses, for her head and shoulders were soaking.

“Bless you,” he cried. “You are alive!”

“I’m very glad one of us is aware of it,” she said, and looking painfully about, she recalled the situation. “Help me off this couch at once, sir. You’ve closed the door, Mr. Adkins.”

“I bolted it, as a matter of fact. How is it our song goes: ‘Get up and bar the door?’ I did just that. And since there is to be no marriage ceremony, we can at least have a marriage feast in private. Look, I’m binding your head in what might have been a bridal wreath.”

“When did that news get through to you?” Mrs. Norris said of his abandoning his matrimonial prospects.

Teddy Adkins was too busy to answer. He thrust a mirror into her hand. Her head, as she watched—and assumed it to be her head—became swathed and circled in silken handkerchiefs he was pulling out of a bottle by the dozens. Then turning the bottle upside down, he extracted from there a fistful of red poppies which he flung about her. Mad! Out of his head—or she out of hers?

“You did not know I was a magician!” he cried. “Did you not ever hear of Murdock the Mighty?”

“You’re acting daft, man.”

“Dear Mrs. Norris, how many people would agree with you if only they knew me as well. But I am not known at all, for I am many people. I am he, and he, and he…” He pointed to one, then another of the pictures on the wall, amongst which Mrs. Norris could see very little resemblance, except perhaps in the general tendency to rotundity.

“Are they all you?” she said, unable herself to match them. But then at the moment she could not have matched one of her own eyes with the other.

“All, every one…and all these ladies…” He rubbed his chin. “We might call them your ladies-in-waiting, my dear…they were the brides-to-be of those various gentlemen.” He began to make the round of his sculptured heads. “Do you not remember her? This is Ellie True.”

“The Murder of Ellie True!” Mrs. Norris cried. She remembered.

Mr. Adkins bowed. “Your humble servant.” He swung around and made a face at as ugly a lump of clay as Mrs. Norris could imagine. “This is the Widow Bellowes. I swear her to have been the devil’s midwife. But I don’t suppose you would have known her.”

Mrs. Norris had no notion now what she did or didn’t know. She had always thought him a bit daft in a pleasant sort of way. And he was cheerful enough in public to be morbid in his privacy—but to have created a studio like this for himself: it was like furnishing your own room in the underworld!

“You don’t take me seriously, do you?” he said.

“Surely not as seriously as you take yourself, Mr. Adkins.”

“Then perhaps you would like to meet the most recent amour. The clay, you will observe, is not yet dry. Her name is Arabella Sperling. And there—” he darted a finger at one of the pictures—“that dapper chap with briefcase and umbrella…I wonder would you have observed his name in the vestibule? Alexander Cardova. She finally found in him a lover, Arabella did, and I must say that of them all, she most deserved him.”

Mrs. Norris managed to pump herself out of his cushions. Her legs would not support her, however, so she sat down on the edge of the nearest chair. “I don’t care much for your hobby, Mr. Adkins,” she said with as much dignity as she could muster. “But I would appreciate the cup of tea you offered, thank you. Then I will let you see me home.”

“My dear, you are home!” He pulled up a chair and sat down, his knees touching hers. “Do you know, Mrs. Norris,” he went on quite earnestly, and his eyes as sharp as darts, “you are the only woman I have ever known whom I have found it genuinely difficult to loathe?”

“Get up from there and let me go,” she said, “or I’ll make it simple for you now. I’ve never heard anything so conceited in my life. Do you think all you have to do is propose yourself as a giddy rogue and any woman will marry you?”

“You are my only refusal,” he said.

“And what do you call that Daisy Thayer?”

“Why, I quit her, dear woman! She’d be Mrs. Adkins now if I’d have her.”

“Is she here?” Mrs. Norris asked suddenly.

“Certainly not. And for an obvious reason.”

“What’s that?”

Mr. Adkins sighed wearily. “I shall have to do her with two heads, if ever.” He threw his arms in the air in a sudden change of mood. “You’ve not understood me at all.”

“I want to go home,” Mrs. Norris said. “Nothing like this has ever happened to me before.”

“It’s all gone wrong,” he said, almost tearfully. “I wanted us to be happy in our last hour together. Well, the tea. It can be postponed no longer. The bitter tea of Dr. Woodling. I don’t suppose you’ve heard of him either?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“The murderer of the Widow Bellowes.”

“You’re a very morbid man, Mr. Adkins,” she said after him. “A little interest in murders is all right, but you’ve taken an overdose of it.”

He smiled wistfully from the kitchen door. “Go and pretty yourself up. There are towels—and a comb. I’ve mussed the part in your hair, I’m afraid.”

“It’s hard to make a straight one with an axe,” she said.

When she came out from the bathroom, the tea was ready, the steam rising in the chilly room. Mr. Adkins rubbed his hands together in apparent satisfaction at the service he had set. He bounded to her side and held the chair. She was of a mind to open the door, but really for tea it mattered little, and she was very tired.

Mr. Adkins sat beside her, very proper, and poured two cups. He made light of the shuffle of feet and a sudden commotion somewhere down the hall. But almost instantly there was a pounding on the door and the roar of men’s voices.

“Open up, Adkins!”

“Cardova or whatever you call yourself!”

“Mrs. Norris are you in there? Are you all right?”

“Why, that’s Mr. James,” she said.

Adkins lifted his eyes to her face very slowly. “I am disappointed in you,” he said. “I thought you a woman as bold as myself, and as circumspect, and here you have invited an army…”

“In the name of the law…”

“That’s Jasper Tully!” Mrs. Norris said.

“Then for heaven’s sake get up and open the door!” Adkins cried.

Mrs. Norris managed to get up although there was a new and awful weakness coming on her with the hindsight. She was determined not to faint. There might be a first time in her life for that, but this was not to be the occasion. She reached the door and pulled open the latch.

Mr. Tully was the first in, bruising her arms with his bony fingers so fearful and fierce were their clutch. He shot his head out from his shoulders like a crusted turtle, to better peer into her face.

“You’re a trifle pale,” he said, but his tone was bitterly sarcastic. He thrust her into Jimmie’s arms and confronted Adkins: “I arrest you, Theodore Adkins, for the murder of Arabella Sperling…”

Mrs. Norris sucked in enough breath to revive her. She pointed to the nearest bit of sculpture. “And Ellie True,” she said.

Jimmie took in the room in a glance. “There must be a dozen!” he cried.

“Presently there should have been,” Adkins said ruefully. “Will you gentlemen care for tea?”

Tully lifted a cup to his nose. “You didn’t have any of this, Mrs. Norris?”

“Certainly not,” she said.

Teddy Adkins offered to take the cup from Tully. “Oh, no,” the detective said. “This goes into the laboratory, not into you, my bucko.”

“I wouldn’t dream of touching it now,” Adkins said. “I would much rather have missed the day I was born than the days ahead of me. We shall be very busy, you and I, my dear Jarvis. You will accept my retainer?”

Jimmie chose to beg the issue at the moment. He looked down at Mrs. Norris who was leaning rather heavily on his arm. “How long have you been onto him?” he asked.