The Book of the Dead (17 page)

“It's the skylight being blacked out makes it so bad,” said Indus. “Come this way.”

They walked to the front of the house, and into a furnished room where a parlor suite of indigo velvet had been allowed through many summers to absorb dust and fade into gray. There was a studio couch, within which bedding was stuffed when not in use; the stuffing had been imperfectly done by Mr. Indus, who looked mortified and poked a no-colored corner of pillow-case out of sight. Then he joined Gamadge, who was considering whether to sit down on a hard chair.

“I wiped that one off,” said Indus.

“Thanks.” Gamadge sat on it. “Our friend seeing patients?”

“It's a minute early for them. He's home, though.”

“I'm glad of that. I have a feeling that he won't keep office hours today.”

“Why?” Indus leaned to one side of the open window, glancing across the street and down to the Billig office.

“He's had a telephone call. We're lucky to have caught him—he'll be shifting that patient of his from the J. H. Wood.”

“Oh. Toomey said something. You found out there was a patient?”

“I saw the patient.”

Indus regarded Gamadge with the faint smile of one who acknowledges the standing of a fellow-craftsman. “You did?”

“Just now. I'm going now to get a cab. When Billig comes out you can join me at the corner. We've got to keep after him.”

“Find out where he takes the party?”

“Find out what she keeps in her handbag. I'm depending on that handbag—it may give us a clue to her identity. It's an old one; she paid a lot for it once—twenty dollars, perhaps—and she'd pay twice that now; she likes good old things better than cheap new ones.”

“You think I can get a look at what she has in her handbag?”

“If you can't while she's on the move, I don't know how you ever can. It's our chance.”

“Class, is she?”

“She's been down and out for some time.”

“Will she go anywhere he says?”

“If he says he's taking her home.”

“Home?”

“She wants to go home.”

Indus considered this, looking at Gamadge. “Where?”

“I don't know that it exists any longer, even; but it was here in New York. She may not have seen it since the nineties. And for God's sake, Indus, don't call them gay.”

“Weren't they gay?”

“Not particularly. Not for everybody. Not all the time.”

“Looney, is she?”

“On that subject.” Gamadge rose.

“Why does Billig risk moving her himself?”

“She's a very sick woman; if she collapsed he'd want to be on hand.”

“You want me to get a squint at initials on the bag, or on a cigarette case or something?”

“Whatever there is.”

“Wouldn't they remove identifying objects at that place—the J. H. Wood?”

“Why should they? Billig hasn't asked them to keep any secrets. They'd understand an alias, because she's a dipsomaniac; lots of people must go there under assumed names—but not criminals, so far as they know.”

“Wouldn't
he
remove the objects?”

“I'm hoping he wouldn't notice them. He isn't the type to notice women's gadgets much.”

“What'll you do if I don't find anything to identify her?”

“Do without. I don't absolutely need identification, Indus, but how I want it!”

Gamadge went down the blacked-out stairway and into the street. He hurried around the corner. The first cab that came by was driven by a tough citizen in an undershirt, who said he didn't mind a trailing job if there wasn't going to be any shooting.

“There won't be any.” Gamadge handed him half a generous tip on account, promised him the other half when the trip was over, got in and waited. He did not have to wait long. Indus came, jumped into the cab, and said: “He's getting out his car. He's put a sign on his door—no patients this noon.”

The cab never lost sight of the Billig car, and was separated from it only once by a changing light; but that separation was unfortunate, since it occurred just as Billig entered the block containing the Jeremiah H. Wood Home. The pursuers sat helpless while the doctor got out and rang, while Mrs. Lubic supported Mrs. Dodson out to the car and handed her dressing-bag in after her. The light changed again in time for them to follow the car to First Avenue, but Indus had now lost his first chance at the red handbag; the next chance would be his last.

B
ILLIG'S CAR ROUNDED
the next block north, came back through 57th Street, and followed a stream of traffic up the ramp to the Queensborough Bridge. The cab shot after it just before the traffic policeman's hand rose against the oncoming tide.

“Friday, Friday, Friday,” chanted the driver. “All going to Long Island, and what do we say when they ask us where we're going?”

Indus produced his license. “Crime business.”

“Have we gas?” asked Gamadge, when the bridge was passed. The Billig car was going steadily on through blistering streets.

“Unless he's bound for Montauk,” said the driver, who was getting up an interest in the pursuit.

Dr. Billig was not bound for Montauk; he turned off the highway, drove for twenty minutes, and at last drew up in a shady block, before a small stucco house. Children played in the neighboring yards, a bus went past the further end of the street.

The cab slowed, reversed, stopped short of the corner. Indus tore off his coat, wrenched the door open, and sprang to the ground. He dashed up the street; with his hat on the back of his head, the coat over his arm and the ends of his necktie flying, he was the very picture of a little man catching a bus. The cab driver and Gamadge watched him from the concealing angle of a board fence.

“What's he going to do?” asked the driver.

“I don't know.”

Billig had got out of the car, and was with some difficulty persuading Mrs. Dodson to get out too. Her bag was in his left hand, and his right firmly grasped her arm. A small woman in a gingham dress was coming down the walk from the house.

Mrs. Dodson reached the sidewalk; there was a straw toque on her flaming hair, and she had the red handbag over her left arm. She was hanging back and shaking her head; this was not home, this was by no means home. The small woman had arrived, a smile on her round face, and was beginning to add her persuasions to the doctor's, when Indus plunged into the group. His right arm engaged with Mrs. Dodson's left, and swung her half way round; her handbag, stripped from her wrist, lay on the ground. It may not have fallen open en route; but when Indus, stammering apologies, arrested in full flight, began to scrabble at it, it
was
open, and had discharged its contents upon the grass border of the sidewalk.

The whole thing took no more than a few seconds, during which Mrs. Dodson stood bewildered, and Dr. Billig, both hands occupied, gazed down at Indus with rising annoyance. No more than that—Indus was too inept a figure to do more than annoy anyone. He pushed money and small articles back into the bag, pushed the bag into Mrs. Dodson's hand, and stood breathing heavily and excusing himself.

Billig took the bag, glanced within, and then dismissed Indus with a kind of sweeping motion of the arm that consigned him to his bus or elsewhere. Indus turned and ran on, to catch the next bus going east.

The watchers did not linger to see Mrs. Dodson's induction into the stucco house. They climbed hurriedly into the cab, and drove by way of the next intersecting street to the bus line. They pursued Indus' bus for several blocks. When it stopped, and Indus joined them, nobody said anything until the cab was on its way back to the bridge at the highest rate of speed by ordinance allowed.

Then Gamadge asked with some awe: “How did you think that up?”

“That's an old one. That's the way they get the women's handbags, and the only way they can get them, without tearing the lady's arm off.”

“I thought
I
was pretty damn ruthless in a good cause, but really. Did you frighten the poor soul?”

“Frighten her? No. I don't frighten anybody.”

The driver remarked: “That was some wad you stuffed back into that handbag. Or did you stuff it all back? And do I get a cut?”

“I was only looking for identifying papers,” said Indus. “Those were big bills; hundreds.”

“Could there have been two thousand dollars there, Indus?” Gamadge was sitting forward, braced by one hand on the window sill, his face and body turned towards his operative.

“Sure could.”

“Get the identification?” asked the driver, idly.

“No,” said Indus, his eyes on Gamadge's. Gamadge sank back into his corner and lighted a cigarette.

“No ration cards, even?” the driver was surprised.

“No. The lady might as well be living some other time,” said Indus.

The cab was paid off, and the driver given the other half of his tip, near the Gamadge corner. Indus preserved an obstinate silence until they were in the house, a late lunch had been ordered, and he and Gamadge were alone in the library. Then, gazing steadily into Gamadge's face, he put his fingers into his right-hand trouser pocket and withdrew them holding a small object. He kept it palmed.

“Besides that wad of bills,” he said, “there was only the usual junk that the women carry around with them. A handkerchief, a lipstick, a little flat box for rouge and powder, a pack of cigarettes, some small change, and—er—old stuff she's been toting around half her life and didn't even know she had. Like we do. You turn out all your pockets and you'll find this and that; you never use the things, but you wouldn't throw them away. And the women's pockets are their handbags.

“And when they get new handbags, they transfer the junk.”

Gamadge asked: “Such as?”

Indus opened his hand. Lying on it was an oblong of metal with a hole in one end of it for a key chain. It was punched with a series of numbers. “Know what that is?”

Gamadge, staring at it, shook his head.

“That's a charge coin, an old charge coin. You got a coin like that, and you didn't have to wait for your package; they charged it to you when they saw your coin.”

“They?”

“Stengel's. That's an old Stengel coin. Number 152593. It could be fifty years old. They used them until just a few years ago; then they changed to name plates, like the other stores—your name and address punched on. But these old coins had nothing but your number, and they had the name and address in their files. Have, I mean.”

Gamadge looked from the coin to Indus. “That does it.”

“But you want to keep the cops out of it, and Stengel won't give that name and address to you or me,” said Indus. “Don't think they will!”

“I don't care.” Gamadge took the Stengel coin in his fingers. “Of course she would keep this.”

“Keep it? No woman thinks a store is going to close up an account on her. Hers may have been closed up long ago, but catch her throwing that thing away.”

“I think you must be right.” Gamadge put the coin in his wallet. “I think you must always be right, Indus.”

“Only I don't know what the racket is. Billig's racket. I suppose you could put a woman away in a place like the J. H. Wood, get hold of her money? Only he left her a considerable roll, enough to buy herself out of most places.”

“That's his roll. That handbag is his cache; and what a cache! They'd already searched it; they wouldn't bother with it again at the J. H. Wood. If you'd been a second longer returning it, Dr. Billig would have had you out cold on the pavement. He's a strong man; that bulk of his isn't all fat.”

The telephone rang, and Gamadge answered it: “Schenck?”

“None other than he, and things are breaking.”

“What's happened?”

Schenck never began with a climax, or allowed anything to impair his narrative style. He said: “We had the funeral.”

“What was it like?”

“Short. The village turned out, and the step-niece of the late Crenshaw turned up in good time. She stayed all morning at the Stonehill House, and she's aroused a great deal of interest. What with her, and the crowd, Boucher and I had good cover. It's a big old cemetery, had to be enlarged several times since the first incumbents were tomahawked. Now it stretches right out to the edge of the mountain on the north, and they've built a stone wall around the whole thing for fear of landslides.

“I took in the proceedings from the east wall; Boucher parked the car on the road at the northwest corner, and sat slumped down. Did I mention that the bags would be in the car, packed and ready, in case we had to move?”

“I think you did.”

“And the landlady paid for the day in advance? Mrs. Much. She wished we knew just how long we
could
stay; nothing she likes better than single gentlemen who don't know enough to complain about the beds and the coffee.

“There's an intersecting dirt road running along the west wall of the burying ground; Pike had his old car on that, and he came and stood at the graveside; he and Miss Daker were chief mourners, faced each other across the grave. Ceremony over at 2:15. Miss Daker had looked at Pike two or three times, seemed interested; he didn't pay any attention to her. He was dressed up in his store clothes, felt hat; looked less like a farmer and more like a commission agent. After the ceremony she went around and spoke to him, and he tipped the felt hat; very cool and stand-offish, no time for Miss Daker.

“But she went on talking, and finally they walked off to the gate in the west wall, and through it, and sat down on the running board of his car. The crowd was leaving, and I began to worry a little about Pike noticing Boucher. Not at all; he never glanced that way. I had to get down off my perch, of course, and stroll off a little way with some natives. They were full of Crenshaw's sad death from leukemia, and Mrs. Crenshaw not knowing anything about his being sick until he was dead, and her not coming to the funeral, and Miss Daker showing up to represent the family. It seems people had been asking Miss Daker a lot of questions, and she came through with some of the answers. She's a pretty girl, isn't she?”