The Blue Hammer

XXXIX

I went back to Olive Street. In the full white blast of noon, the Johnson house looked grim and strange, like a long old face appalled by the present.

I parked across the street and tried to imagine what had happened inside the house, and what was happening now. If Betty was there, she might not be easy to find. The house was old and rambling and largely unknown to me.

A small Toyota sedan went by in the street, moving in the direction of the hospital. The man at the wheel looked like Fred Johnson's attorney, Lackner. He stopped up the block, not far from the place where Paul Grimes had been murdered. I heard one of the Toyota's doors open and close quietly, but if anyone got out he was hidden by the trees.

I took the pint of whisky and my gun out of the glove compartment and put them in the pockets of my jacket. Then I crossed the street and knocked on the front door of the Johnson house.

There was a slight noise at the corner of the house. I flattened myself against the wall and made my gun ready to fire. At the end of the porch, the overgrown bushes stirred. Fred Johnson's voice came quietly out of them: "Mr. Archer?"

"Yes."

Fred vaulted over the railing. He moved like a man who had spent his boyhood dodging trouble. His face was pale.

"Where have you been, Fred?"

"At Mr. Lackner's office. He just dropped me off."

"You feel you still need an attorney?"

He ducked his head so that I couldn't read his face. "I suppose I do."

"What for?"

"Mr. Lackner told me not to discuss it with anybody."

"You're going to have to, Fred."

"I know that. Mr. Lackner told me that. But he wants to be present when I do."

"Where did he go?"

"To talk to Captain Mackendrick."

"What about?"

He lowered his voice as if the house might hear him: "I'm not supposed to say."

"You owe me something, Fred. I helped to keep you out of jail. You could be in a cell in Copper City now."

"I owe something to my mother and father, too."

I took hold of him by the shoulders. He was trembling. His mustache drooped across his mouth like an emblem of his limp and injured manhood.

I said as gently as I knew how, "What have your mother and father been doing, Fred?"

"I don't know." He swallowed painfully, and his tongue moved between his lips like a small blind creature searching for a way out.

"Do they have a woman in the house?"

He nodded dismally. "I heard a woman in the attic."

"What was she doing up there?"

"I don't know. My father was up there with her."

"When was this?"

"Early this morning. Before dawn. I guess she's been up there all night."

I shook him. His head bobbed back and forth in meaningless assent. I stopped for fear of breaking-his neck.

"Why didn't you tell me that before?"

"I didn't know what was going on up there. I thought I recognized her voice. I didn't know for sure it was Miss Siddon until I went around to the back just now and found her car."

"Who did you think it was?"

"Just some woman he brought in off the street, maybe a woman from the hospital. He used to con them into the house and get them to take off their clothes for him. That was when my mother started to lock him in."

"How bad a mental case is he?"

"I don't know." Fred's eyes had filled with tears and shifted away from my face. "Mr. Lackner thinks he's really dangerous. He thinks the police should take him and put him in a safe place."

So did I, but I didn't trust them to do it with a minimum of danger to others. I wanted Betty, if she was still alive, to survive her rescue.

"Do you have a key to the house, Fred?"

"Yes. I had one made."

"Let me in."

"I'm not supposed to. I'm supposed to wait for Mr. Lackner and the police."

"Okay, wait for them. Just give me the key."

He took it out of his pocket and handed it over, reluctantly, as though he was surrendering some essential part of himself. When he spoke again his voice had deepened, as if the loss of that essential part had somehow been a gain.

"I'll go in with you. You don't know your way around in there like I do."

I gave him back the key and he thrust it into the door. Mrs. Johnson was waiting just inside, standing at the bottom of the stairs. She offered me a ghastly embarrassed smile, the kind you see on dead faces before the undertaker does his work.

"What can I do for you?"

"You can get out of my way. I want your husband."

Her false smile clenched into a fierce grimace, which she turned on Fred. "What have you been telling this man?"

"We have to stop him, Mother."

Her face changed, groping for an expression that could accommodate the doubleness of her life. I thought she might spit at her son, or curse him, then perhaps that she might break down in tears.

"I've never been able to handle that crazy man."

I said, "Will you come up with me and talk to him?"

"I tried that in the course of the night. He said he'd shoot her, and then himself, if I didn't leave them alone."

"He has another gun up there?"

"He always has had. More than one, I think. I've searched the whole place for them when he was blotto, but I've never been able to find them."

"Has he ever used them on anyone?"

"No. He's just a talker." Her face had taken on a frightened questioning look.

"How did he get Miss Siddon to go up there?"

Her heavy dark eyes veered away from mine. "I don't know."

"Did you take her up there?"

"No. I wouldn't do that."

"You did, though," her son said.

"So what if I did? She asked for it. She said she wanted to talk to him, and that was where he was. I'm not responsible for every newspaper reporter that inveigles her way into my house."

I pushed her to one side and went up past her, with Fred at my heels. I paused in the dim upstairs hall, trying to get my bearings. Fred moved past me and turned on the light. The padlock was in place on the attic door.

"Did your mother lock him in?"

"I guess she must have. She has this phobia about his getting away from her, like when he went to British Columbia."

"Go down and get the key from her."

Fred ran downstairs.

Johnson's voice came through the attic door. "Who is that out there?" He sounded hoarse and frightened. "Archer. I'm a friend of yours."

"I have no friends."

"I brought you some Tennessee walking whisky the other day."

There was a silence. "I could use some of that now. I've been up all night."

Fred came up the stairs two at a time, holding up a small key like a trophy.

"Who is that?" Johnson said.

Fred gave me a look that suggested I do the answering. At the same time, he handed me the padlock key. It gave me a feeling that whatever authority was left in the house was coming to me.

I said, "It's your son, Fred."

"Tell him to go away," Johnson said. "And if you can let me have a sup of whisky, I'd appreciate it very much."

But it was too late for such amenities. A siren had screamed in the distance, and now I could hear it dying in the street. Acting on strong impulse, I unlocked the padlock and got my gun out and held it cocked.

"What are you doing out there?" Johnson said.

"Bringing you your whisky."

Heavy footsteps were mounting the porch below. I removed the padlock with my left hand and pulled the door open.

Johnson was sitting at the foot of the attic stairs. There was a small revolver, another Saturday-night special, on the wooden step beside him. He was slow in reaching for it.

I stamped on his hand, and scooped up the skittering gun. He put his hurt fingers in his mouth and looked at me as if I had betrayed him.

I pushed him out of the way and went up past him to his makeshift studio in the attic. Betty Siddon was sitting in a plain chair, wearing nothing except the piece of smooth clothesline that held her upright. Her face was pale and dull, her eyes were closed. I thought for a moment that she was dead. The world staggered under my feet like a top that had lost its spin.

But when I kneeled down and cut the ropes, Betty came alive into my arms. I held her close. After a while she stirred and spoke to me.

"You were a long time getting here."

"I was stupid."

"I was the stupid one," she said. "I should never have come here alone. He held a gun on me and made me take off my clothes. Then he tied me into the chair and painted my picture."

The unfinished picture was on a paint-spotted easel facing us. It reminded me of the other pictures I had seen in the last few days, in the art museum, in Mrs. Chantry's house, at Mildred Mead's. Though I found it hard to believe, all the evidence seemed to indicate that the loud complaining drunk whom Mackendrick had just arrested at the foot of the attic stairs was the lost painter Chantry.

While Betty was putting on her clothes, I searched the attic. I found other pictures, most of them pictures of women, in various stages of completion. The last one I found, wrapped in a piece of burlap and covered with an old mattress, was the memory portrait of Mildred Mead that Jack Biemeyer had hired me to reclaim.

I carried it down the attic stairs and found Fred lingering at their foot.

"Where's your father?"

"If you mean Gerard, Captain Mackendrick took him downstairs. But I don't believe he is my father."

"Who is he, then?"

"That's what I've been trying to find out. I took-I borrowed that picture from the Biemeyer house because I suspected that Gerard had painted it. I wanted to try and determine its age, and also compare it with the Chantrys in the museum."

"It wasn't stolen from the museum, was it?"

"No, sir. I lied about that. He took it from my room here in this house. That's when I suspected that Gerard had painted it. And then I began to suspect that he really was Richard Chantry, and not my father at all."

"Then why did you try to protect him? Because you thought your mother was involved?"

Fred moved restlessly and looked past me up the stairs. Sitting at the top was Betty Siddon, taking penciled notes in a sketch pad held on her knee. My heart jumped. She was incredible. She had been up all night, been threatened and mistreated by a suspected murderer, and all she wanted to do was catch her breaking story as it broke.

"Where is your mother, Fred?"

"Down in the front room with Mr. Lackner and Captain Mackendrick."

The three of us went down the steps. Betty stumbled once, and I felt her weight on my arm. I offered to drive her home. She turned down the offer.

Nothing much was going on in the drab living room. The questioning had reached a near impasse, with both Gerard and Mrs. Johnson refusing to answer Mackendrick's questions and the attorney Lackner reminding them of their rights. They were talking-or, rather, refusing to talk-about the murder of Paul Grimes.

"I have a theory," I said. "By now it's become a little more than a theory. Both Grimes and Jacob Whitmore were killed because they discovered the source of the Biemeyers' missing picture. Which incidentally isn't missing any more." I showed it to them. "I just found it in the attic, where Johnson probably painted it in the first place."

Johnson sat with his head down. Mrs. Johnson gave him a bitter look, at the same time worried and vengeful.

Mackendrick turned to me. "I don't understand what makes the picture so important."

"It seems to be a Chantry, Captain. And Johnson painted it."

Mackendrick got the message by degrees, like a man becoming aware that he has an illness. He turned and looked at Gerard Johnson and his eyes gradually widened.

Gerard returned the captain's look in dim fear and dejection. I tried to penetrate the puffed discolored flesh that overlay the original contours of his face. It was hard to imagine that he had ever been handsome, or that the mind behind his dull reddened eyes had created the world of his paintings. It occurred to me that his essential life might have gone into that world and left him empty.

Still there must have been vestiges of his younger self in his face, because Mackendrick said, "You're Richard Chantry, aren't you? I recognize you."

"No. My name is Gerard Johnson."

That was all he would say. He stood silent while Mackendrick advised him of his rights and put him under arrest.

Fred and Mrs. Johnson were not arrested but Mackendrick asked them to come to the station for questioning. They crowded into his official car under the eyes of a young detective-sergeant who kept his hand on his gun butt.

Betty and I were left standing on the sidewalk in front of the empty house. I put the Biemeyers' picture in the trunk of my car and opened the front door for her.

She hung back. "Do you know where my car is?"

"Behind the house. Just leave it there for now. I'll drive you home."

"I'm not going home. I have to write my story."

I looked closely into her face. It seemed unnaturally bright, like an electric light that was about to burn out.

"Let's go for a little walk. I've got work to do, too, but it can wait."

She came along with me under the trees, leaning with carefully controlled lightness on my arm. The old street seemed beautiful and formal in the morning light.

I told her a story that I remembered from childhood. There had been a time, it said, when men and women were closer than twins and shared the same mortal body. I told her that when the two of us came together in my motel room, I felt that close to her. And when she dropped out of sight, I felt the loss of part of myself.

She pressed my arm. "I knew you'd find me."

We walked slowly around the block, as if we had inherited the morning and were looking for a place to spend it. Later I drove her downtown and we had lunch together at the Tea Kettle. We were contented and grave, like two people performing a ceremony. I could see the life flowing back into her face and body.

I dropped her off at the newspaper office. She ran up the stairs toward her typewriter.