CHAPTER SEVENTEENPathology
Some months later Gamadge was waiting in a downtown bar for a would-be client to meet him and show him an autograph letter.
“I guess it’s the real thing,” the client had said on the telephone. “But it’s only signed ‘Garthwain.’ It’s just a few lines, thanking some old guy in our family for sending him his umbrella—he lost it on a London bus. It’s been kicking around the house for years. We thought since this boom it might be worth more than it would have brought earlier.”
“Double, I should say,” Gamadge had told him, “and the poet often signed himself ‘Garthwain.’ ”
“Well, if you could meet me on my way home from the office—have to take a train home, but I said I might be late.”
So Gamadge waited, leaning up at the bar and absorbing an old-fashioned. He noti
