The Book of the Lion by Elizabeth Daly

Author:Elizabeth Daly
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781631940279
Publisher: Felony & Mayhem Press
Published: 2014-12-21T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Night Life

BY NINE O’CLOCK the Gamadges were nearing the end of their dinner, at the round table beside the window in the library. Malcolm was announced, came in, and said with an avid look at Gamadge that he had come for coffee.

“Yes, and for news,” said Clara. “Perhaps he’ll give you some. It must be very bad, because he has that gloomy look and won’t open his mouth except to eat.”

“And drink.” Gamadge swallowed whisky.

“He’s been drinking whisky right through dinner,” said Clara.

“To tell you the truth I came for whisky,” said Malcolm, sitting down next to Clara. “I thought you’d be done with dinner long ago.”

“We never sat down until twenty minutes to nine. I don’t know where he was.”

Gamadge said: “Tell you all about it later. I may have to go out again, and if anybody rings up and asks questions you can say you don’t know anything about it or where I am.”

“And how true that will be.”

“And they’ll know it’s true. The mildest prevarication,” said Gamadge, “and you stammer and stutter.”

“Can’t you teach her to do better than that?” Malcolm was eyeing Gamadge with ill-concealed impatience.

“No, she won’t learn.”

The telephone in the hall rang, and Gamadge took it. The voice of Indus sounded jubilant: “Mr. Gamadge, I got her isolated.”

“No!”

“We’re at the movies, Translux at Eighty-fifth and Madison. She and this feller Welsh went to the nine o’clock pictures, they’re lookin’ at it now, and I’m downstairs in the lounge telephoning. The picture lasts till ten-thirty, and you say he has to be at the hospital at eleven. But I thought she might not leave with him, because they missed the newsreel and the cartoon, and she might stay on and see them. It’s a Disney.”

“Not such a long shot, Indus. I’ll be there.”

“Even if she did go to the hospital with him—it ain’t much of a walk—she’d have to come home alone afterwards.”

“That’s so.”

“I’ll be standing up at the back, where I can keep watching them. I’ll point ’em out when you get here. When he goes you might get a chance at his seat. There’s not such a crowd for the last show.”

“I’ll be up in good time.”

“No hurry, it’s a good picture, and they paid for it. They’re set till ten-thirty.”

Gamadge went back into the library. “I find I do have to go out again in a little while. Dave, what about having that drink in the office?”

Clara said: “Isn’t he wonderful, the way he saves me worry? Here’s coffee; or do you want yours down in the office too?”

They had coffee together, and then Gamadge and Malcolm went down in the little elevator, leaving Clara hunched up with a cat on her knee, glumly watching them go.

Down in the office Malcolm sat listening in consternation while Gamadge related the events of the afternoon. At the end of the recital he composed himself with most of his highball. Then he asked: “You mean Durfee didn’t see any tie-up at all?”

“It all hangs

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