The Book of the Dead (4 page)

G
AMADGE TOOK THE VOLUME
of Shakespeare from Idelia, turned it in his hands, opened it, closed it again. “Macloud's compliment was never deserved by me,” he said, “and is deserved at present less than it ever was. I haven't done any work in the laboratory—or any to speak of—since my assistant came to me five years ago. I was the fellow that sat back and told him what I wanted done there. Now he's away off somewhere, and I'm not in the document business at all any more. But I like the feel of Mr. Crenshaw's book. I like the look of it.”

“Those marked passages—” began Idelia.

“Let's look at the book first, inside and out; advance from the general to the particular, inquiring as we go. I'm dying to see the marked passages,” admitted Gamadge with a smile, “but I didn't even take the book in my hands until I had your story. Now that I am actually holding it, I see that it's Volume I of a set of six. It's an octavo, thickish, bound in polished brown calf and nicely tooled and gilt. Who did you say was Elisha M. Crenshaw?”

“Mr. Crenshaw's grandfather.”

“It's a family book, a nice possession, but its binding is in a deplorable condition, and its title-page informs me that it is not an edition hotly desired by collectors. Its market value is nil.

“The binding is rubbed, so rubbed that it deposits reddish-brown smudges on my trouser-leg; that's old calf for you! The back is falling off; half of it, in fact,
has
fallen off,” remarked Gamadge, catching the broken piece and laying it on the corner of his desk. “But the book itself is solid, and when we open it we find that except for a good deal of foxing—I mean these brownish spots—the fine, tough paper is in mint condition, the pages like new.

“Mr. Crenshaw's grandfather's firm but faded signature runs across the top of the title-page—a bad habit of our ancestors. Below we find:

THE PLAYS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
In Six Volumes
Vol. 1.

And below that again is a little engraving in outline of the three witches, whiskered and bearded, and resembling three indignant old gentlemen in night attire. They're pointing to a battle.”

“There are lots of pictures,” said Idelia.

“So we find from the description on the next page:

Harper's Fine Edition—Numerous Steel Engravings.
The Dramatic Works of
William Shakespeare

Time, which is continually washing away the dissolute fabric of other poets, passes without injury by the adamant of Shakespeare.—Dr. Johnson's preface
.

Harper & Brothers, Cliff-Street
1839

“And it
is
a nice edition, but clear and bright as the type is, it's close and it's rather fine. It would try your eyes, Idelia, to read Shakespeare in this edition, unless by the brightest daylight.

“Turning the page, we arrive at
Life and Writings
, by N. Rowe, Esq. Then we have Dr. Johnson's preface to the edition of 1773, hereinbefore quoted. Then we have an
Essay on the Learning of Shakespeare
by Farmer. Hum.
The ever-memorable Hales of Eton (
who, notwithstanding his epithet, is, I fear, almost forgotten
)
…Ho hum. Then we get Observations on
The Tempest
, and then at last we get
The Tempest
itself. Odd.”

“Odd?” repeated Idelia.

“Odd arrangement of the plays. The first play in the first volume was Shakespeare's last. The second is
Two Gentlemen of Verona
, an early play; then
Merry Wives of Windsor
, a jolly play; then
Measure for Measure
, a gloomy play; then
Comedy of Errors
, a funny play; and last
The Merchant of Venice
, which has about everything in it, including a spot of tragedy. I don't know what the editors had in mind when they got up this edition; perhaps it follows the pattern of an earlier one; but what we want to know is, Idelia, why did Mr. Howard Crenshaw bring this volume along with him on his trip east?”

Idelia looked blank. “Why shouldn't he?”

“Well, he couldn't possibly have wanted
Two Gentlemen
or the
Comedy of Errors
for desert island reading; or, unless he's a Falstaff fan,
The Merry Wives of Windsor
. People usually choose a volume of the great tragedies or the coruscating histories for such a purpose. However, we have left
Measure for Measure
,
The Merchant
and
The Tempest
.” Gamadge's greenish eyes regarded Idelia reflectively. “Have you read
The Tempest
lately?”

“I don't know that I ever have read it.”

“There's a play for a desert island! There's a play for an invalid! A calm, philosophical, resigned, after-glowish kind of play. In certain circumstances—circumstances of ill-health, deep trouble, abiding sorrow, you couldn't go wrong with
The Tempest
.” Gamadge opened the volume and glanced casually at a page. He read: “…
after which, to a strange, hollow, and confused noise, they heavily vanish
. What a play. I wonder how they produced the noise; don't you, Idelia?”

Idelia asked: “Who vanish?”

“Nymphs and reapers.”

“Reapers?”

“Only visions, you know; part of Prospero's little games. Pretty soon he gives them a brush-off:
avoid;—no more
. And then he goes on from there into the sublime…Was Mr. Howard Crenshaw fond of
The Tempest
?”

“Both the marked passages and the rubbed-out pencil marks are in
The Tempest
.”

“Ah! What did I say? He brought the book east for the sake of
The Tempest
. In other words, Mr. Howard Crenshaw was feeling middle-aged and—not quite well. He was escaping.”

Idelia looked startled. “He didn't talk about that play.”

“No indeed. He didn't talk about his illness.”

Idelia was silent. After a pause she said: “The marked passages are right at the beginning of the play.”

“And here's the first one: Act I., Scene I. Dear me.”

Idelia looked triumphant.

Gamadge slowly read the marked passage aloud:

I have great comfort from this fellow: methinks, he hath no drowning mark upon him; his complexion is perfect gallows. Stand fast, good fate, to his hanging! make the rope of his destiny our cable, for our own doth little advantage! If he be not born to be hang'd…

“Well!” exclaimed Gamadge. “Your friend Mr. Crenshaw didn't like somebody, that's evident. You think the somebody was his handyman, don't you?”

“Perhaps we'd know if we could read what he wrote in the margin.”

Gamadge lifted the book to peer closely at the faint indications of pencilled writing opposite the marked words in the text. “Gone, all gone,” he said. “He rubbed and he rubbed, but he didn't rub out the ghostly message that something was there. Let's see the second passage…Here it is, Act II., Scene II. Three passages, to be exact:

…this is a very shallow monster:—
…a very weak monster:—
…a most poor credulous monster:—Well drawn,
Monster, in good sooth…

“And what are we to make of these? If the first one referred to Pike, these certainly don't. Can they possibly be a biting attempt at self-criticism? Is Mr. Crenshaw referring to himself?”

“I thought they might mean that he was in Pike's power.”

“You don't need an investigator, Idelia; you only need a leg man. Here's the second marginal comment, or rather its traces, all down the page. He wrote very lightly and with a hard pencil; he rubbed hard. I may not be able to reconstruct these notes.”

“But you'll try?”

“Well, he didn't mean anybody to read them, Idelia.” Gamadge looked at her in some amusement. “He probably rubbed them out before he lent you the book so that you shouldn't read them. Ought we to drag them back into the light of day from no higher motive than intellectual curiosity?”

“I'm not curious. I only want to be sure that he's all right.”

“I'm curious, curious as anything; but we must try to dig something out at the hospital before I have a go at this job. I don't much look forward to it. I wonder—I very much wonder—whether he'll thank you for all the trouble you're taking in his behalf.”

“He'll never know. I won't tell him.”

“But when he gets well again, and you resume your pleasant friendship, you and he may laugh together over the whole episode; including your unauthorized entry into his house above Stonehill, Vermont.”

“I don't believe it's a thing he'll ever laugh about. Mr. Gamadge—how could you bring those pencil marks back again?”

“Or read the traces of them? Well—there are several ways. There are the cold fumes of iodine; they condense on the paper and bring out all sorts of things. But the trouble is that the paper has to be photographed immediately, or the recreated marks die away. As a one man job it's not the handiest in the world; and it had better be a one man job—we don't want accomplices. If we did, I should send the book to a friend of mine who would get it treated in a police laboratory.”

Idelia looked frightened.

“Then there's what they call the addition method,” continued Gamadge, “but let's not go into that; it's very complicated; you use collodion plates and I don't remember what all. Then there's the diapositive method; and there's polarized light with crossed Nicols. You don't want to know about crossed Nicols, do you?”

Idelia shook her head.

“I'm glad you don't. My assistant Harold would have been delighted to instruct you, but I've never used them myself. Then there's the dodge by which you photograph the back of the paper in an oblique light; that may bring out traces of the writing, and that, God helping me, I shall try if I must.”

Idelia sat despondent. “It's terrible. I ought to have known that it would be. Mr. Gamadge—if Mr. Crenshaw is in trouble, and we get him out of it, he might be glad to pay you.”

“Those underlined passages, let me repeat, don't sound as though he would thank us for getting him out of trouble. Don't worry about my getting paid. Hang it all, I have the apparatus; I ought to lick this if Harold could. And I'm getting interested—” he opened the Shakespeare again, and smilingly turned pages—“deeply interested in the problem; for it is one. Will you leave Mr. Crenshaw's book with me for the present?”

“You'll have to have it if you work on those rubbed-out marks.”

Gamadge rose, went over to one of the steel filing cabinets, and locked the Shakespeare away. He came back to his guest, but remained standing beside her. “Shall we go up to St. Damian's?” he asked.

Idelia got out of her chair as if worked by a spring. “Now?”

“It's only a quarter past eight; why not? Hospitals admit visitors in the evening until at least nine o'clock.”

They went out into the hall. Gamadge picked up his hat from the console that had probably held three-cornered hats in its young days, and unchained the door. He closed it behind him as they stepped out into the stupefying heat of the vestibule.

“Thick evening,” said Gamadge, as they went down the steps and turned west. The sky there was yellow, turning to violet, to purple; no human being could be seen as far as the eye could reach, but presently they passed a caretaker sitting on the front steps of his house in his shirtsleeves, and Gamadge nodded to him.

“You never see anybody,” said Idelia.

“No; it's like a plague year. The court has moved to Hoydon; somebody will write a beautiful poem about brightness falling from the air—there will be fever in it.”

A commotion above made them glance upwards at a plane whose body was almost invisible; the cluster of colored lights blinked on and off, on and off, as they sailed north.

“Just a product of our fevered imagination,” said Gamadge. “It will vanish. It was never really there.”

Idelia said: “I like those big drugstores, with all the lights and everything to buy.”

“They do give us a sense of reality. After we've been to the hospital we'll visit one; you must have a soda. I always stand a new client a drink. Hurry, Idelia; there's a bus stopping for a red light.”

T
HE BUS DOOR WAS OPEN,
the driver motionless at the wheel like a wooden man. A few passengers, dummy-like and morose, endured the journey and the gloom of the dim-out in silence. Gamadge put the fares in the box, and followed Idelia to the seat she had chosen next to the exit doors. The thin four-pointed red star of the street-lamp turned to green, and the bus began its climb uphill.

After an interval Idelia turned her head. “Mr. Gamadge.”

“Yes?”

“You said something about knowing why I couldn't get information at the hospital.”

“Knowing? It was a wisp of theory. I have them.”

“Can't you tell me what it is?”

“You won't like the one that leaps to the eye.”

“Why not?”

He replied with another question: “Have you ever seen a drug addict?”

“A what?” She spoke so indignantly that he knew he did not need to answer. Presently she asked: “You mean somebody that takes morphine?”

“Or cocaine, or any narcotic drug.”

“You mean Mr.
Crenshaw
was one?”

“It's a mighty good guess.”

“He wasn't!”

“You know?”

“I've read about them, and I've heard about them. Mr. Crenshaw wasn't nervous or jerky. He acted quiet and natural.”

“Perhaps he wasn't so quiet and natural on Sunday, when you weren't allowed to see him.”

Idelia gazed at him in silence.

“You mustn't be horrified,” said Gamadge. “You've engaged an investigator, and it's his duty to canvass all the possibilities and reject them one by one—until he meets one he can't reject. The drug theory answers some questions, you know.”