Free Gentleman Called by Dorothy Salisbury Davis Page B

offered to help out with the children—in a financial way—if I married her. It was tempting. I don’t make enough money to support two households. I didn’t want to come here today in case you’d speak to my boss and jeopardize my job…”
    “I’m always careful not to get anybody into trouble who doesn’t deserve it,” Tully said. “I want to know about Mrs. Sperling, and you can tell me more than most people. You knew her well enough to talk about marriage…”
    “She saw to that and often enough,” the man interjected.
    “And yet you weren’t very fond of her. Didn’t you like her even at first?”
    “Oh, yes. She could be nice. And she seemed awfully generous. But I’ll try to tell you how it got to be: well, the only way I can say it—when she’d give you something, she’d snatch it back, and maybe your arm, too. She had that awful way of getting hold of you. Not with her hands. It was just her way, her personality.”
    Tully thought he understood. The same picture had come through from the Reverend Tope. It was an ungentle irony that someone had in the end got hold of Arabella—by the throat. This lad had thumbs like clothes pins, and fingernails he might use for shoehorns. He could not have grown them since the murder, and such nails would have marked the skin of the victim.
    “You aren’t the first person to feel that way about Arabella Sperling,” the detective said.
    “I’m glad of that,” Masters said quietly. “We don’t always see straight, trying to look round our own problems.”
    “She did want to get married, didn’t she?” Tully mused.
    “She sure did.”
    “You wouldn’t think it’d be so hard, her having money. Where did you meet her?”
    “Three years or so ago—at a place called the Mellody Friendship Club. It’s on Twenty-second Street, near Third Avenue.”
    There was something rang a bell with Tully about the Mellody Friendship Club. But the harder he thought about it, the more unfamiliar it grew. He was probably reminded of something he had seen on television, he decided, for a play did begin to come back to him—a murder outside the door while all these nice, gentle people were inside dancing at arms’ length from each other.
    “That’s where people go with the object of meeting somebody marriageable, isn’t it?” he said.
    “I’d put it this way—I don’t think anybody who’s happily married would see much point in going there. And Mrs. Mellody wouldn’t have anybody there who was unhappily married. Not if she knew it.”
    “They’re trouble, are they?” said Tully. “She wants you lonesome but not miserable.”
    Masters ventured a smile. “That’s about it.”
    “Now I’m a widower. I’ve got a good job—at least most kids between six and sixteen would like to grow up in it, so I guess it’s a good job—and I’m getting to the lonesome age. Do you suppose it’s the place for me?”
    “I’d recommend it very highly,” Masters said with the smugness of one who no longer needed its hospitality.
    “I guess I’ll go see Mrs. Mellody at that,” Tully said.

14
    A NYONE WHO FREQUENTED THE Criminal Court building as regularly as did Jimmie was bound to run into Elmo Mumford, and this time Jimmie did it deliberately. Mumford was a member of that rare and distinguished breed: the trial lawyer. He had a head on him like Daniel Webster in both size and content, and he bore it with the air of one aggrieved it had not yet been sculpted by an artist worthy of the subject.
    Now Jimmie had a very good friend who was a sculptor, or to be precise, a sculptress, of considerable reputation. She was spending a year in England, but Mumford didn’t know her to be out of the country. Not only did he shake Jimmie’s hand on their meeting; he threw his arm about his shoulder, and avowed they must have lunch together.
    “Are you free today?” said Jimmie.
    “Happens I am,” Mumford cried. “How’s Helene? It must be a year since I’ve seen her.