SIX
The busy ringing of the telephone awoke me and I saw that the morning sunlight was streaming into the room. It was nine o’clock and all the lamps were still burning. I arose feeling a little stiff and dissipated, for I was still wearing my dinner suit. But I am a healthy man with very steady nerves and I did not feel as badly as I expected. I went to the telephone and answered it.
Henry’s voice said: «How you feel, pal? I got a hangover like twelve Swedes.»
«Not too badly, Henry.»
«I got a call from the agency about a job. I better go down and take a gander at it. Should I drop around later?»
«Yes, Henry, by all means do that. By eleven o’clock I should be back from the errand about which I spoke to you last night.»
«Any more calls from you know?»
«Not yet, Henry.»
«Check. Abyssinia.» He hung up and I took a cold shower and shaved and dressed. I donned a quiet brown business suit and had some coffee sent up from the coffee shop downstairs. I also had the waiter remove the empty bottles from my apartment and gave him a dollar for his trouble. After drinking two cups of black coffee I felt my own man once more and drove downtown to the Gallemore Jewelry Company’s large and brilliant store on West Seventh Street.
It was another bright, golden morning and it seemed that somehow things should adjust themselves on so pleasant a day.
Mr. Lansing Gallemore proved to be a little difficult to see, so that I was compelled to tell his secretary that it was a matter concerning Mrs. Penruddock and of a confidential nature. Upon this message being carried in to him I was at once ushered into a long paneled office, at the far end of which Mr. Gallemore stood behind a massive desk. He extended a thin pink hand to me.
«Mr. Gage? I don’t believe we have met, have we?»
«No, Mr. Gallemore, I do not believe we have. I am the fiancé — or was until last night — of Miss Ellen Macintosh, who, as you probably know, is Mrs. Penruddock’s nurse. I am come to you upon a very delicate matter and it is necessary that I ask for your confidence before I speak.»
He was a man of perhaps seventy-five years of age, and very thin and tall and correct and well preserved. He had cold blue eyes but a warming smile. He was attired youthfully enough in a gray flannel suit with a red carnation at his lapel.
«That is something I make it a rule never to promise, Mr. Gage,» he said. «I think it is almost always a very unfair request. But if you assure me the matter concerns Mrs. Penruddock and is really of a delicate and confidential nature, I will make an exception.»
«It is indeed, Mr. Gallemore,» I said, and thereupon told him the entire story, concealing nothing, not even the fact that I had consumed far too much whiskey the day before.
He stared at me curiously at the end of my story. His finely shaped hand picked up an old-fashioned white quill pen and he slowly tickled his right ear with the feather of it.
«Mr. Gage,» he said, «can’t you guess why they ask five thousand dollars for that string of pearls?»
«If you permit me to guess, in a matter of so personal a nature, I could perhaps hazard an explanation, Mr. Gallemore.»
He moved the white feather around to his left ear and nodded. «Go ahead, son.»
«The pearls are in fact real, Mr. Gallemore. You are a very old friend of Mrs. Penruddock — perhaps even a childhood sweetheart. When she gave you her pearls, her golden wedding present, to sell because she was in sore need of money for a generous purpose, you did not sell them, Mr. Gallemore. You only pretended to sell them. You gave her twenty thousand dollars of your own money, and you returned the real pearls to her, pretending that they were an imitation made in Czechoslovakia.»
«Son, you think a lot smarter than you talk,» Mr. Gallemore said. He arose and walked to a window, pulled aside a fine net curtain and looked down on the bustle of Seventh Street. He came back to his desk and seated himself and smiled a little wistfully.
«You are almost embarrassingly correct, Mr. Gage,» he said, and sighed. «Mrs. Penruddock is a very proud woman, or I should simply have offered her the twenty thousand dollars as an unsecured loan. I happened to be the coadministrator of Mr. Penruddock’s estate and I knew that in the condition of the financial market at that time it would be out of the question to raise enough cash, without damaging the corpus of the estate beyond reason, to care for all those relatives and pensioners. So Mrs. Penruddock sold her pearls — as she thought — but she insisted that no one should know about it. And I did what you have guessed. It was unimportant. I could afford the gesture. I have never married, Gage, and I am rated a wealthy man. As a matter of fact, at that time, the pearls would not have fetched more than half of what I gave her, or of what they should bring today.»
I lowered my eyes for fear this kindly old gentleman might be troubled by my direct gaze.
«So I think we had better raise that five thousand, son,» Mr. Gallemore at once added in a brisk voice. «The price is pretty low, although stolen pearls are a great deal more difficult to deal in than cut stones. If I should care to trust you that far on your face, do you think you could handle the assignment?»
«Mr. Gallemore,» I said firmly but quietly, «I am a total stranger to you and I am only flesh and blood. But I promise you by the memories of my dead and revered parents that there will be no cowardice.»
«Well, there is a good deal of the flesh and blood, son,» Mr. Gallemore said kindly. «And I am not afraid of your stealing the money, because possibly I know a little more about Miss Ellen Macintosh and her boy friend than you might suspect. Furthermore, the pearls are insured, in my name, of course, and the insurance company should really handle this affair. But you and your funny friend seem to have got along very nicely so far, and I believe in playing out a hand. This Henry must be quite a man.»
«I have grown very attached to him, in spite of his uncouth ways,» I said.
Mr. Gallemore played with his white quill pen a little longer and then he brought out a large checkbook and wrote a check, which he carefully blotted and passed across the desk.
«If you get the pearls, I’ll see that the insurance people refund this to me,» he said. «If they like my business, there will be no difficulty about that. The bank is down at the corner and I will be waiting for their call. They won’t cash the check without telephoning me, probably. Be careful, son, and don’t get hurt.»
He shook hands with me once more and I hesitated. «Mr. Gallemore, you are placing a greater trust in me than any man ever has,» I said. «With the exception, of course, of my own father.»
«I am acting like a damn fool,» he said with a peculiar smile. «It is so long since I heard anyone talk the way Jane Austen writes that it is making a sucker out of me.»
«Thank you, sir. I know my language is a bit stilted. Dare I ask you to do me a small favor, sir?»
«What is it, Gage?»
«To telephone Miss Ellen Macintosh, from whom I am now a little estranged, and tell her that I am not drinking today, and that you have entrusted me with a very delicate mission.»
He laughed aloud. «I’ll be glad to, Walter. And as I know she can be trusted, I’ll give her an idea of what’s going on.»
I left him then and went down to the bank with the check, and the teller, after looking at me suspiciously, then absenting himself from his cage for a long time, finally counted out the money in hundred-dollar bills with the reluctance one might have expected, if it had been his own money.
I placed the flat packet of bills in my pocket and said: «Now give me a roll of quarters, please.»