The Galton Case Read Online Free

Anthony on the eleventh day of October 1936. We parted in bitter anger and hatred. I’ve lived ever since with that anger and hatred corroding my heart. But I can’t die with it inside of me. I want to see Anthony again, and talk to him. I want to forgive him. I want him to forgive me.”
    Deep feeling sounded in her voice. I had no doubt that the feeling was partly sincere. Still, there was something unreal about it. I suspected that she’d been playing tricks withher emotions for a long time, until none of them was quite valid.
    “Forgive you?” I said.
    “For treating him as I did. He was a young fool, and he made some disastrous mistakes, but none of them really justified Mr. Galton’s action, and mine, in casting him off. It was a shameful action, and if it’s not too late I intend to rectify it. If he still has his little wife, I’m willing to accept her. I authorize you to tell him that. I want to see my grandchild before I die.”
    I looked at Sable. He shook his head slightly, deprecatingly. His client was just a little out of context, but she had quick insight, at least into other people:
    “I know what you’re both thinking. You’re thinking that Anthony is dead. If he were dead, I’d know it here.” Her hand strayed over the flat silk surface of her breast. “He’s my only son. He must be alive, and he must be somewhere. Nothing is lost in the universe.”
    Except human beings, I thought. “I’ll do my best, Mrs. Galton. There are one or two things you can do to help me. Give me a list of his friends at the time of his disappearance.”
    “I never knew his friends.”
    “He must have had friends in college. Wasn’t he attending Stanford?”
    “He’d left there the previous spring. He didn’t even wait to graduate. Anyway, none of his schoolmates knew what happened to him. His father canvassed them thoroughly at the time.”
    “Where was your son living after he left college?”
    “In a flat in the slums of San Francisco. With that woman.”
    “Do you have the address?”
    “I believe I may have it somewhere. I’ll have Miss Hildreth look for it.”
    “That will be a start, anyway. When he left here with his wife, did they plan to go back to San Francisco?”
    “I haven’t any idea. I didn’t see them before they left.”
    “I understood they came to visit you.”
    “Yes, but they didn’t even stay the night.”
    “What might help most,” I said carefully, “would be if you could tell me the exact circumstances of their visit, and their departure. Anything your son said about his plans, anything the girl said, anything you remember about her. Do you remember her name?”
    “He called her Teddy. I have no idea if that was her name or not. We had very little conversation. I can’t recall what was said. The atmosphere was unpleasant, and it left a bad taste in my mouth.
She
left a bad taste in my mouth. It was so evident that she was a cheap little gold-digger.”
    “How do you know?”
    “I have eyes. I have ears.” Anger had begun to whine in the undertones of her voice. “She was dressed and painted like a woman of the streets, and when she opened her mouth—well, she spoke the language of the streets. She made coarse jokes about the child in her womb, and how”—her voice faded almost out—“it got there. She had no respect for herself as a woman, no moral standards. That girl destroyed my son.”
    She’d forgotten all about her hope of reconciliation. The angry wheezing in the passages of her head sounded like a ghost in a ruined house. Sable was looking at her anxiously, but he held his tongue.
    “Destroyed him?” I said.
    “Morally, she destroyed him. She possessed him like an evil spirit. My son would never have taken the money if it hadn’t been for the spell she cast on him. I know that with utter certitude.”
    Sable leaned forward in his chair. “What money are you referring to?”
    The money Anthony stole from his father. Haven’t I told you about