The Wrong Way Down by Elizabeth Daly Page B

you to stay when you get here. Perhaps your son and daughter could put you up.”
    This suggestion brought a violent negation from Ashbury: “I always go to the Roosevelt.”
    â€œIt isn’t so easy nowadays. But we’ll find something. Oh, one moment more. Do you remember a picture—engraving—that hung in the hall of the Park Avenue house, just beyond the door of the dining room? Picture of—” he looked down at Gamadge’s hasty scrawl—“of Lady Audley. By Holbein.”
    â€œI don’t understand you. Engraving? I never knew one of them from another. There were a lot of pictures.”
    â€œThis one was supposed to look like Mrs. Vincent Ashbury—your grandmother.”
    â€œI never heard of it. What of it?”
    â€œTell you when you get here. And before we ring off—do you know a friend of your son’s named Bowles?”
    Dead silence. Then Ashbury said slowly: “Bowles? No.”
    â€œOr a Mrs. Spiker?”
    â€œNo. Why?”
    â€œAs you say, the young people pick up a lot of funny friends nowadays. Well, good night. Be expecting you.” Ashbury mumbled something and broke the connection. Nordhall sat back in his chair to address Gamadge, his face wreathed in smiles:
    â€œIf I get in trouble about this it’s worth it. But I won’t get in trouble. Could I help following up when he gave himself away about the son and daughter? And the Paxton news was almost too much for him. Hear his voice afterwards?”
    â€œWhat interested me was the fact that he knew Bowles and Spiker by those names.”
    â€œHe knows all the false names you heard tonight. He knows all about it. He’s in it up to his neck.”
    â€œBut he didn’t know his children knew Miss Vance, and he never heard of Lady Audley. I told you that was a side show.”
    â€œI’ll believe anything you tell me now. And I’ll make sure he does get on a plane, and stays on it till it gets here. Did Bantz take your car?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œRide downtown with us then.”
    Gamadge waited in the police car until Nordhall had conversed at length with his superiors over the telephone. At eleven minutes to one the car started, with a sergeant on the seat beside the driver and Gamadge and Nordhall behind.
    â€œI got the green light,” said Nordhall, “but I wouldn’t have got it if Bantz hadn’t dug the bullet out of the woodwork down there. You got me into this; now you’ll have to stick around and see me through it.”
    â€œYou couldn’t get rid of me.”

CHAPTER NINE
Missing Persons
    A T ONE MINUTE past one the police car drew up in front of the old corner apartment house. Harold stood beside Gamadge’s car talking to a plain-clothes man. “All right and thanks,” said Gamadge. “Go on home.”
    â€œWant the car?”
    â€œI’d better have it.”
    Harold walked off towards Third Avenue. Gamadge joined Nordhall in the lobby, where he was in conversation with an elderly Scot who wore trousers and a sweater over pajamas.
    â€œThe manager,” said Nordhall. “Mr. Macdougal.”
    Macdougal returned Gamadge’s nod, and went on talking:
    â€œWhen your men rang me just now, sir,” he said, “it was the first I knew that there had been trouble. I have my apartment in a wing at the back, on this floor; off the garden. If the tenants want me after ten o’clock at night they ring me. We have no night porter, we’ve had none since Christmas of 1941. That one waited for his Christmas tips, and then he went off into Defense; so we didn’t get any after that, not at night.” He chuckled dryly.
    â€œNeed any?” asked Nordhall.
    â€œNot until now, sir, but I don’t know why. I hear it’s a scandal, these rough characters getting into buildings for purposes of robbery.”
    â€œThis was the gentleman that nearly got shot.”