Arrow Pointing Nowhere by Elizabeth Daly Read Free Book Online

think of it I’ve never been paid yet!”
    Mr. Fenway was more pleased than ever, but he grew grave. “I always like to find that we are not entirely commercial now, but you put me in something of a quandary. I have a little problem of my own which I should be very glad to consult you about, but if I consulted another lawyer, or a doctor, I should expect to reimburse him for giving me the benefit of his experience.”
    â€œI have no professional standing, Mr. Fenway; and as I said, I like little problems.” Gamadge hoped that he did not sound eager. “Let me hear what yours is. But if it’s about books, you know, I’m no expert; J. Hall’s your man.”
    Fenway said: “Hall has no opinion on the matter, and I don’t suppose even you will have one. However.” He turned to a long table in the embrasure of the west window. It was heaped with what looked like an odd lot of books, some not entirely out of their wrappings; two slender dark-green quartos lay among them.
    He lifted first one and then the other. “Now what,” he murmured, “can Caroline have done with Volume III?”
    â€œCan I help, sir?”
    â€œNo, no. This is the last lot that little Hilda Grove sent down from Fenbrook. Such a good child. Now where on earth… Wait! I remember.”
    He crossed the room to a buhl table at the right of the hall door; its surface was almost hidden by a large, flat-topped coffer of metal thickly inlaid with ivory; Fenway raised the lid.
    â€œHere it is,” he said, and withdrew another of the dark-green books, which Gamadge now saw to be bound in velvet.
    â€œIf you’ll just sit down again, Mr. Gamadge, and look at this?”
    Gamadge resumed his seat beside the fire, and took the quarto on his knees. It was lettered in gold: Views On The Hudson .
    Fenway sat down opposite him; he watched him open it, glance at the charmingly colored frontispiece, and then look at the title page.
    Views On The Hudson , he read, With Descriptions by Several Hands. In Four Volumes. Coloured Plates by Pidgeon. 1835 . He turned leaves. “What a nice set.”
    Fenway looked sad, “It was a nice set, Mr. Gamadge. If you’ll turn to page 50…”
    On page 50 Gamadge read: “Description of Fenbrook; the old Fenway residence near Peekskill. By Julian Fenway, Esq.” He lifted his eyes to his host. “Was that your grandfather, sir?”
    â€œThat was my grandfather.”
    â€œBut there seems to be no picture of Fenbrook here.”
    â€œNo; as you see, it has been torn out.”
    Gamadge discerned a trace of ragged edge where the plate had been, and another trace of its protective tissue. He said: “This is shocking!”
    â€œYou can imagine how I felt, when I looked for the picture and found that it was gone. But perhaps you can’t, unless you happen to know that the original house was torn down in 1849, and that that view was all we had left of old Fenbrook. The set is irreplaceable; some of the landowners combined and had the books made and the views taken; there is none, Hall thinks, on the market. Fenbrook was a plain little house, and my grandfather doesn’t seem to have cared much about it; he let a friend have it and the rest of that property; my father never saw it.”
    Gamadge expressed his sympathy by a groan.
    â€œThe poor old gentleman,” continued Fenway, “my grandfather, of course I mean, didn’t do badly in the financial sense by the deal; he bought property here and in Westchester county, and in the 60’s he built himself this house and the new Fenbrook; they were, I can assure you, the latest thing. You should have seen the delightful house downtown that my father was born in! That went, too. So now we have this, which even to me, with all my sentiment for it, isn’t a model of architectural beauty; and one of the same period up the Hudson, completely suburban of course, and (I