The Book of the Dead (7 page)

“If we're right about those underlined passages he seemed weak to himself.”

“You ought to have heard him talk.”

“Oh, bless you, they can talk your ear off.”

“Who can?”

“Those charming bookish people. I don't want to speak ill of him, but we must analyze him for good reasons of our own. According to you he was afraid of his handyman, and I'm inclined to think that your first impression about that must have been right. He was afraid to acknowledge his friendship with you, greatly as he must in his loneliness have prized it. He was afraid to get into touch with you again, to explain why he left Stonehill without a word.”

“He was sick.” Idelia added somberly: “I don't believe anybody ever thought as much of me as Mr. Crenshaw did.”

Gamadge, looking down at her, fancied that this might be true. A flattish life, Idelia's, and he was not at all sure that it would improve with the years. She had not many resources, and her mind—respectful of great works but hardly attuned to them—was not an interesting one.

At present she looked desolate. He said: “There's one of those drugstores you like so much. You must have your soda, and then I'll see you home, and then I'll try to get hold of Billig.”

“Tonight?”

He looked at his watch. “Nearly a quarter past ten; I may find him in his office yet, but if I don't I'll call him at home. Billig is our link with Crenshaw, our link with Pike; I don't want Billig forgetting details that may be valuable to us.”

“If Dr. Billig killed Mr. Crenshaw, he won't forget that!”

Gamadge said, smiling: “By your expression I'm inclined to think that you don't take that theory much more seriously than I do.”

“I don't believe he could fool a hospital.”

“With a false case of leukemia? Nor do I; but I must make certain that he couldn't.”

“I wish you'd go right up there and see him now. You don't have to see me home. If I didn't go around by myself at night,” said Idelia, “I'd never get to the movies. I just take the crosstown bus. It stops quite near the block my rooming house is on.” She added, as they reached the drugstore: “I haven't half thanked you, Mr. Gamadge; if it hadn't been for you I never would have got into Buckley's. I don't know why I keep arguing.”

“Argument is a very good way to approach a problem. But I won't give you cause to argue with me again until I've seen Billig, and reconstructed—or tried to reconstruct—those notes of Crenshaw's.”

“Mr. Gamadge—I don't know how I have the nerve to ask you—”

“Go ahead, what is it?”

“I'm just dying to know what Dr. Billig says.”

“So am I. Do you want a report tonight? Is that it? I can easily telephone.”

“That's the trouble.” She looked up at him anxiously. “The landlady in my rooming house is very nice, but when I moved in she said she didn't want the telephone ringing late. It wakes her up, it's in the hall right outside her door. She thinks perhaps it's for her, and she gets out of bed. She wouldn't mind if I sat in the front parlor and let you in.” Idelia went on hastily: “I wouldn't even suggest such a thing, but the crosstown bus—”

“I see the point,” said Gamadge, “and I shall take the crosstown bus. Whatever you do, you mustn't antagonize the landlady; not on your third day of residence. I may not be so late, you know; I'll take a cab to Billig's. He's not three minutes away from here by cab, I should think.”

“You're just fine.”

The drugstore was well if bleakly lighted, and it was full of noise: A loud-speaker discoursed the most lugubrious swing that Gamadge had ever heard, electric fans whined overhead, a crowd of girls and young men in uniform lined the soda-counter. Glasses crashed, soda foamed; Idelia looked happier.

“You can buy everything here,” she said. “Books, magazines, writing-paper—”

“And candy and crockery. And you can look in a telephone book.” Gamadge bought her a soda ticket, found her a stool at the counter, and went off to consult the directory. When he came back she was imbibing a double chocolate through two straws. He took down her address, and left her gazing after him; her eyes very round, the straws looking like the pipes of Pan.

He rode up Park Avenue, got out before the cab reached the Crenshaw apartment, and walked slowly past that handsome and modern building. There was no doctor's sign in any of its ground-floor windows, or beside its smartly awninged doorway; there was none in any of its windows around the corner. He walked down the side street towards Lexington.

Beyond the apartment house there was an all-night garage, beyond that a row of houses converted into flats, beyond them a laundry, a window-cleaner's, a plumber's supply shop, a small stationer's; on Manhattan, that narrow island, many blocks decline abruptly from luxury to shabby-gentility, from that to dinginess and then to squalor.

The flat-building nearest Lexington had a sign in its bay-window:
Florian Billig, M.D. Office hours: 12-1 P.M., 8-10
P.M
. There was a light behind the doctor's curtains. From a higher window a woman and a dog leaned out to take the air; ashcans stood at the top of the area steps.

Gamadge looked up and down and across the street. Blank windows stared at him from the rooming house opposite, there was a bluish light in the inferior drugstore on the corner. A small car stood at the curb between the doctor's flat and the next one.

He lives here, thought Gamadge. No doctor would have an office here unless he lived here. And I bet Crenshaw's apartment house didn't recommend him.

There were bells and namecards in the vestibule; Gamadge went in and pushed the doctor's bell.

G
AMADGE WAS THINKING:
Can't cover up for Idelia now; he's had her address for a week, knows she called again last night. He hasn't done a thing. Perhaps I
am
crazy? The door clicked, and he went into a mustard-colored hallway. A half-glass door on the right was lettered in gold:
Florian Billig, M.D.
Before Gamadge could ring it opened.

Gamadge was face to face with a big, stooping man who looked all head and forehead; in fact, as he peered questioningly up at the visitor from yellow-brown eyes he looked rather like a buffalo. His words of greeting might have been expanded into a long, grim story: “Accident? Sudden illness?” Doctor Billig could not imagine anything short of a catastrophe bringing a caller like this one to his door.

“No; I'm sorry to disturb you so late, Doctor. I stopped in hoping to get a few details from you about the late Mr. Howard Crenshaw.”

The big white face did not change, and perhaps the big, short fingers did not tighten their hold on the doorknob; certainly they grasped it firmly.

“A friend?” asked Dr. Billig, in a hoarse voice that might once have been a bass-baritone.

“I'm inquiring for a friend.”

“They did say that a young woman had come to the hospital.”

“Miss Fisher is a client of mine; my name's Henry Gamadge, I'm a kind of document man. People consult me about old family stuff.”

Dr. Billig looked moderately interested.

“I walked up to St. Damian's with her this evening,” said Gamadge. “She was greatly shocked to hear that Mr. Crenshaw had died; merely an acquaintance, you know, but those things come as a shock when you're not prepared for them. The hospital informed us that you were Mr. Crenshaw's doctor; I volunteered to call.”

Billig said: “Come in.” He waited until Gamadge had passed him, closed the door, and came lumbering across the room. There was power in the heavy shoulders, upon which Dr. Billig finished shrugging an alpaca coat; power in the clumsy walk. The doctor indicated a leather chair for Gamadge, and sat down in his own swivel-chair behind a desk-table in the bay of the window.

The office was lighted by one green-shaded desk lamp, and most of it was in shadow; but Gamadge could see at a glance that its furniture was too big for it; the doctor had once had a much bigger office than this. Even the threadbare carpet had been cut down to fit, and an examination table and surgical cabinet had been crowded into a corner.

The doctor spoke first: “I rather understood from Mr. Crenshaw that he had no friends—no friends in this part of the world, no close friends anywhere.”

“Miss Fisher, as I said, was an acquaintance. She only met him this summer. She communicated with his apartment when she herself returned to town, and was told that he had been brought to St. Damian's. She inquired there last week and last night. Tonight, as I say, she heard that he was dead. She, too, understood that Mr. Crenshaw was alone in the world; she feels a good deal of sympathy for his case. We went down to Buckley's and saw him.”

“Did you? I dare say Buckley's is adequate.”

“So she thought. She thought he looked as though he had never been ill.”

“That's leukemia. You know he died of acute leukemia? The disease took its normal course, if you can call anything about leukemia normal. I don't know what they would have said about it in the past; called it witchcraft, I suppose.” Billig clasped his hands over his stomach and rotated his thumbs. “Do you know anything about acute leukemia, Mr. Gamadge?”

“Practically nothing.”

“It comes on fast, but mildly enough; a little fever, rheumatic pains, perhaps, a feeling of lassitude. In simple and inaccurate language, the white corpuscles are breaking down; and science has no way at present of arresting the process and prolonging—much less saving—the patient's life. The patient as a rule only becomes alarmed when hemorrhage occurs—hemorrhage which may come from one or more organs. Hemorrhage was what in Mr. Crenshaw's case brought him in a hurry to New York from Vermont; the first one occurred on July the third. They arrived on the afternoon of the sixth, and Crenshaw's man had me in the apartment within the hour.”

Gamadge, listening with civil interest, asked: “He didn't have to go to hospital until last week?”

Dr. Billig smiled. “He didn't
have
to go at all. When a patient has plenty of money and attendance we allow him to die as and where he likes, Mr. Gamadge. I diagnosed leukemia—or rather the pathologist at St. Damian's analyzed the blood sample for me—that same afternoon. I told him next morning.”

“So soon? But I suppose the question's inane,” said Gamadge. “A doctor of experience knows what he's doing.”

“Mr. Crenshaw was then able to transact business and settle his affairs; he might not have been able to do so later, although in fact he did not collapse until he was actually in bed in the hospital. He had explained to me that he had nobody to act for him, and asked for the truth. He was a well-balanced, sensible man; I felt obliged to be frank with him. What a doctor of experience does know,” said Billig, smiling again, “is the kind of patient he's dealing with.”

Gamadge had decided that this doctor of experience was at least sixty years old. He asked: “Could Mr. Crenshaw get all the treatments at home?”

“He refused treatments of any kind; and there again, Mr. Gamadge, an incurable has the privilege—while he's a private case—of being let alone. No treatment could have saved him, as I said; or much prolonged his life. I left him in peace, and if I'm ever in his circumstances I hope somebody will do as much for me.”

“Did they leave him in peace at St. Damian's, though?”

“A hospital,” said Billig, his thick lips forming a smile again, “can't risk charges of neglect. Besides, if they couldn't use their acquired knowledge in a hospital they'd all die of frustration. But as I said, he collapsed very quickly in the hospital. He filled out his papers, he settled all his business with the bursar; provided them with cash for everything. Then he seemed to relax—relax utterly. Never was really conscious again. It's an unpredictable disease, except that one can safely predict death.”

“He was lucky to find so humane a physician. Was it really quite by chance that he did find you, Doctor?”

“Quite, quite. He had fainted; his man rushed out, ran for a drugstore; had some notion of getting spirits of ammonia. Saw my sign, and ran in. I went around, and—well: Mr. Crenshaw and I got on. He refused to hear of another doctor. Pike—his man—seemed excellent at nursing, followed my instructions to the letter.”

“Pike was a valet?”

“Oh dear no; a country fellow of some kind whom Mr. Crenshaw had met and taken a fancy to in Vermont. A paragon of rustic virtue,” said Billy, raising a thick eyebrow. “So much so that he was sent to the town—Stonehill—where they had been staying, to settle accounts and close up the house there. Well, as Mr. Crenshaw had taken
me
more or less on trust,” and Billig gave a snorting laugh like the bray of a bassoon, “I couldn't very well impugn his judgment where Pike was concerned. Crenshaw assured me that he was a remarkable judge of character; who was I to contradict him?”

“What did
you
think of the paragon, Doctor?” Gamadge had settled back in his springless chair like a man enjoying a conversation; he took out his cigarette case. Billig picked up a package of cigarettes from the table, and Gamadge gave him a light. Then he lighted his own cigarette, and sat waiting.

Billig smoked for awhile before he replied: “I'm not qualified to judge the type. I'm not familiar with it. To me Pike seemed a quiet, rather dour, unsuccessful small farmer or tradesman, who had lived much alone and knew how to wait on himself, and therefore on others. Very independent, in the vulgar modern sense of the word. Perfectly respectable. Quite devoted to Crenshaw in his inexpressive way. He's probably still up there, waiting for the news of Crenshaw's death—I told him it wouldn't be long—and I have no doubt he'll make a point of waiting for the funeral. I don't know when that will be.”