The Blue Hammer

"I have no friends."

"I brought you some Te

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 u

"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.