BY EVENING OF THE next day, Sunday, Tully had learned very little more of General Jarvis’ intimate life than he knew when he came, of his recent intimate life, that was. The study was strewn with accounts of “the old days,” but the detective could find no reference to anyone who answered the description of the woman who had brought him home to the Mulvany. No surprises at all, Tully thought unhappily, unless it was in the General’s handwriting: the detective had been wrong about that thinking it probably childish. The old man had written an elegant hand, neat and controlled. Tully had consulted an expert on hypnotism. For the present he could see no purpose to consulting the hand-writing experts. They were not a lot to inspire confidence anyway. A carnival sort mostly.
The detective was sitting in the study chair opposite the President’s portrait at that moment. A queer feeling came over him. He had been joking about the ghosts the night before. He was by no means a superstitious man, but at the instant it was like fifty years being snatched from his own life: he could have sworn he heard someone saying, “You’re getting warm.”
Why the devil should he think of a childhood game…here? Probably in this room as a child the General himself had visited his own father, and got advice he didn’t take. Except for the General, there were two hundred years’ of lawyers in the family, including this old geezer on the wall. “Excuse me, Mr. President,” Tully muttered, half-jest, half-earnest.
A person got a funny feeling sitting under his stare, the heavy-lidded eyes. He was a character, too, no doubt. Tully tried to put himself back in the mental state where he had felt “warm.” How was it the hotel clerk had described the General’s male companion? Salesman, maybe of gadgets for a penny arcade. And the elevator boy: circus maybe, fight promotor…that carnival spirit…carnival…
There was a knock at the door and Tully’s reverie was over. Jimmie came in and introduced the man with him, August Fowler, the General’s literary agent.
Fowler shook hands perfunctorily and then made quite a business of staring up at the picture. “So that’s him. I remember seeing the picture in my seventh grade history. American History, seventh grade. Or was it eighth? Interesting looking face, don’t you think?”
Since the question was asked of no one in particular, no one answered him. Jimmie told the investigator: “It seems father came on a diary of the President—not as dull as we had thought his life might have been. Fowler, here, agreed to submit it for publication.”
“You know, Jarvis, it would be a fine idea for you to go ahead with what your father planned—write an introduction. Good for you too.”
“In what way?” said Jimmie.
“Is it a secret you plan to run for governor? It was no secret to your father certainly. He told me about it.”
Tully had been watching him while he talked. A sharp forty-five, he decided, a press agent who had taken a postgraduate course and got himself a literary license. “When did all this happen, Mr. Fowler?”
Fowler jerked his head around, as though the cat had spoken to the king. “Oh, yes. I’d forgotten. You are the police.”
“A police,” Tully amended. “When was it you last saw the General?”
“May I take it from the beginning of the diary episode?”
“Why not?” Tully drawled. “Take it from a chair, too, if you like.” He gestured the man into one of the General’s easy chairs. Jimmie half sat on the desk.
“On Thursday night he called me at home,” Fowler started.
“What time?”
“After nine. We had dinner guests and were just leaving the table. I suppose you’d like to know where he called from?”
Jimmie merely raised his eyes and Tully drawled: “What makes you think so, Mr. Fowler?”
The agent looked from face to face and then leaned back. “Why, before the General came into my office the next morning—on an appointment we had made over the phone—I had a call for him. It was from…his broker’s office. And I think we are agreed, gentlemen, that General Jarvis did not have a broker?”
Tully noticed the little muscles of anger working at Jimmie’s mouth. This guy was too familiar, too smooth, too much the son of a bitch. “I’m not sure I’d agree to that,” Tully said, “Would you, Jimmie?”
“Not at the moment, I won’t,” said Jimmie.
“I beg your pardon,” Fowler said. “Let’s put it this way then: I don’t believe he had a broker. Not with a southern accent asking for ‘Ransom’ on the phone.”
That was a score and no doubt of it, Tully thought. “As a matter of fact, we would like to know just where the General was Thursday night, Fowler.”
“Now, I’m in a funny spot,” the agent said. “Actually, I don’t know. I thought I had the phone number, but I couldn’t find it today when I looked for it. You see when he called me, I asked to call him back and jotted down the number. I do know it’s an Eldorado exchange.”
Tully nodded. More confirmation. That was all. But he made a note. The General had called EL at a quarter of five from his hotel room. Now at least they could place exact limits on the area where the fair lady dwelt: within the Eldorado Exchange.
“Now,” Fowler went on, “since she called my office Friday morning, I can only assume he gave her the number or else jotted it down on a pad at her house. A fair assumption, Mr. Tully?”
“Reasonable anyway,” Tully said.
“Thank you,” the agent said with sarcasm. “Now I shall volunteer an impression for what it’s worth to you. When he called, I suspected he was trying to impress somebody. Frankly, I pegged it an amatory tactic. When his broker called, I was sure that’s what it had been, and I was not in very great hopes of getting anything special in the way of a manuscript.”
“And did you get something special?”
“I wouldn’t say so,” the agent pursed his lips. “Still, it’s not dull…as some of these things are. I was pleasantly surprised.”
“You really feel you can get it published?” Jimmie said.
“As I told your father, I should like to try. There are what is known as prestige books. As a matter of fact, I should like to proceed. With your permission. No hurry of course, I don’t suppose another hundred years would make much difference.”
Hurry up and stand still, Tully thought. “Did you bring it with you, the diary?”
“No. It’s in my office safe.”
Suddenly mighty precious, Tully thought, for something that laid in an old trunk for a hundred years. “Just what are the royalties on a thing like this liable to come to?”
“Possibly no more than a thousand dollars advance,” Fowler said. “If they caught on—they have a sort of archaic splendor, you might say,—they might make all of us a bit of money.”
“Poor father,” Jimmie said, thinking how long ago the old boy would have dug out the diary had he but known a scratch of its worth. “Did he press you for money, Fowler?”
Fowler made a deprecating gesture. “I wouldn’t say that. I knew him well enough to be circumspect in my promises.”
“Did he get any?” Tully asked bluntly.
“I am not in the habit of paying money before it’s in the house,” Fowler said. “I can’t afford it.”
That was not an answer, not absolutely, Tully thought. But he would wait a while and get at it another way. “When did he bring the book to you?”
“First was the ten o’clock appointment. He was at my office on schedule. We merely talked. I suppose you might call it a briefing. He spoke to me from a few notes he had written out. Quite eloquently. I said if he could make the introduction and commentary as good, and if the diary had the merit he thought, I would try to place it. He said then that he would bring it in that afternoon. And that is exactly what he did. At five o’clock, he brought the diary to my office. I saw him but a moment, as my secretary will testify.”
“Why should your secretary need to testify?” Tully said, leaning forward in the General’s chair.
“Wasn’t General Jarvis murdered?”
“Not that we’ve been able to prove so far. But any such information you can give us would get full consideration.”
“Oh, no. I’ve given you what I know.” He seemed to be genuinely shocked.
“Was that why you went fishing, yesterday—thinking the General was murdered?” Tully asked.
“Certainly not. I had promised a friend a week ago. I was already in North Carolina when I heard that General Jarvis was dead.”
“Didn’t you read the paper yesterday morning?”
“I didn’t have time. Nor the desire. When I take a vacation, it’s complete.”
“Anybody we know—your friend?” Tully said easily.
“I doubt it.”
“Try us.”
Fowler looked at him venomously. Plainly the agent liked him as little as the detective liked the agent. “Wilson Dram, the writer,” he said.
“I’ve been wanting to go fishing a long time myself,” Tully said, “I understand from Mrs. Fowler you got yourself some new equipment. Get a good buy?”
“Not very.”
“Where? so I’ll be sure not to go there.”
“King’s Mart on Forty-third Street.”
Tully nodded. “I’ll remember. I don’t suppose the General left his dispatch case in your office?”
“No. But I remember him carrying it. Yours wasn’t it, Mr. Jarvis? I remember the initials, JRJ.”
“It’s mine, wherever it is,” Jimmie said.
“I’m glad to have met you, Mr. Fowler,” Tully said, getting up from the General’s desk.
Fowler left without shaking hands. After he had seen him to the front door, Jimmie came up again. “What do you think, Jasp?”
Tully was making notes. “I’d like to have heard his story if he didn’t think the General was murdered. Still, it’s just about as hard, Jimmie, for him to sort out the lies he’s going to tell as it is for us to sort ʼem out after he’s told them. That’s what I’m working at now, by the way.”