Arrow Pointing Nowhere by Elizabeth Daly Read Free Book Online Page A

can assure you) well bracketed!”
    â€œI’m sure it has immense dignity and charm.”
    â€œNobody but a Fenway would live in it. At least I have one thing to be thankful for—my poor brother Cort never knew that the picture of old Fenbrook would be lost. He was very fond of these books. I can see him now, sitting in the library up there with Volume III on his knees. We had a project even then, and I looked forward to carrying it out—until now. There’s not much point in it now. I wanted to write a little history of our family here—we’re extinct in England—for the Historical Society. Of course the view of Fenbrook and Grandfather’s description of it would have been the most important—the only important part of the thing. That’s why I had the books sent down; I’ve retired from law practise, and I thought it would be a delightful way of spending my leisure.”
    â€œIt’s tough, Mr. Fenway.”
    â€œWell, now, Mr. Gamadge,” and Fenway, sitting back in his chair, looked at his guest with a smile, “you’re to tell me what can have become of the view of Fenbrook.”
    â€œAm I?” Gamadge returned the smile.
    â€œThat’s my little problem. Mind you, I don’t hope to get it back, because it may have vanished at any time in the last twenty years; I haven’t looked for it since my brother died. But I should like a mind trained in these mysteries to tell me why on earth it and only it should have been torn out of the book, and what can have been done with it.”
    Gamadge became grave. “I shouldn’t in the least mind discussing the possibilities, but it wouldn’t be an intelligent discussion unless we included all of them.”
    â€œOf course, all of them.” Fenway looked surprised. “Why not?”
    â€œMy type of mind is a very aggravating one, you know; it pursues a question long after more comfortable minds are ready and willing to drop it. I may bore you.”
    â€œBore me? I venture to say that you are incapable of doing that, Mr. Gamadge.”
    â€œWell, to make a beginning.” Gamadge looked down at the open book on his knees. “You saw the picture twenty years ago?”
    â€œA little less than that. My brother was up at Fenbrook shortly before he died—very suddenly, of pneumonia—in the summer of 1923.”
    â€œWhere were the books kept?”
    â€œIn cases very much like these, in the Fenbrook library.”
    â€œNot locked up?”
    â€œNo, we had nothing we thought valuable there; I mean to thieves.”
    â€œWhen did they reach you here in New York?”
    â€œThey arrived on Thursday afternoon, the twenty-first. I opened the parcel there on that table, but I had no time to look at them until Friday evening, after dinner.”
    â€œThis young lady—Miss Grove—sent them down?”
    â€œBy express, with some others, on Tuesday. We don’t of course use the station wagon now for such work. It only goes out for necessary shopping. Hilda, of course, was distressed when I called her up about the view; I had a first faint hope that it might have loosened, and that it would be found somewhere in the library. But it was torn out, that’s obvious.”
    â€œMiss Grove has looked for it?”
    â€œShe’s looked everywhere. We don’t go up there ourselves except in warm weather; we’re conserving coal. The Dobsons—a very nice couple who have been with us a long time—keep part of the house warm for themselves and Hilda. It must be lonely for her.” Fenway’s expression was doubtful. “But she insists not; she won’t complain. She’s a niece—or niece by marriage, rather—of my sister-in-law’s friend and companion, Mrs. Grove; did I mention her before? My sister-in-law was badly injured on her trip here from France in 1940—a most terrible experience it all was. She is still