The Listening House Page 5

  I was out that afternoon, too, on the eternal job hunting that took most of my daylight hours. I returned around four thirty, and as I came past Mrs. Garr’s living room I heard a drawer closing softly. I stopped to ask how Mrs. Garr had liked the movie.

  Mrs. Garr wasn’t there. Only the mousey little gentleman from upstairs, Mr. Grant, was sitting on the davenport.

  “I wonder if Mrs. Garr won’t be in soon; I’m waiting for her to pay my rent.” His speech was as dry and brisk as he was.

  But his hand on his knee shook so it moved the knee.

  “She went to a movie with Mrs. Halloran. She should be back any minute.”

  “Oh, thank you. I won’t wait, then.”

  He hurried out past me and upstairs.

  I stared after him in unbelief.

  So there was a rummager! So there was some foundation for Mrs. Garr’s imaginings! And that foundation was in Mr. Grant; little, blue-eyed Mr. Grant!

  Thoughtfully I left my doors open and sat in the upholstered chair in my left bay window, where I could watch the hall while I read the paper I’d brought home.

  I’d only just settled down when a man I’d never seen before crept silently out of the room under the stairs, came to a dead stop on seeing me, then shot down the hall and out the front door.

  4

  “WELL, WHAT THE . . . !” I said, jumping up.

  What was going on in this house?

  Should I call the police?

  I went to the head of the basement stairs, but I could hear nothing down there except dark silence—the type of silence that’s so much more frightening than any understandable sound. My nerves weren’t what they had been before the discovery of Sam Zeitman.

  Hurriedly I got away from there, hastening toward the upstairs; I wanted company. Who else was in the house?

  I knew Mr. Grant was, but I couldn’t very well speak to him about the prowler, not when I’d almost caught him rummaging among Mrs. Garr’s possessions, too. If anything queer was going on, he probably was in on it. The watch, perhaps.

  I knew, by this time, just about who lived where in the upstairs. Miss Sands wouldn’t be home yet. I walked back toward the Wallers’ door, but stopped with my hand lifted to knock. Mrs. Garr suspected the Wallers.

  If she was right, they might be in on it, too.

  I left there for the front of the house. The bath was empty. The room ahead of that was quiet, too. But in the rooms at the front, thank goodness, I heard a steady thump, thump.

  I knocked.

  “Come in,” yelled a man’s voice.

  The thump, thump went on, slowly and steadily, but nothing else happened. So I turned the knob and went in.

  I almost forgot what I’d come for, because I walked in on a man with nothing on but a pair of shorts, chinning himself on a bar which had been put in at the top of the doorway between that room and the next. It was the stocky man with the brown eyes, Mr. Kistler. With his clothes off, he looked like nothing so much as a buff gorilla; his arms were long for his height and obviously powerful; he pulled himself up until his head bumped the casing—that was the thump I’d heard—and counted.

  “Twenty-six . . . twenty-seven . . . twenty-eight . . . Oh, hello!”

  He dropped to the floor, and again I thought of a gorilla; he took the jar so easily on bent knees.

  “Hello again!” He disappeared in the other room, came back shouldering into a bathrobe. He smiled ingratiatingly.

  “I wasn’t expecting a lady, but one’s always welcome.”

  I stuck right by the door.

  “You took my breath away. I don’t usually walk in on exactly this scene.”

  “You never can tell what opportunities will develop,” he said cheerfully.

  “Oh,” I said. “I didn’t—I came up because a strange man that acted like a burglar or something came out of the cellar. Mrs. Garr’s out. He came up the cellar stairs tiptoeing; he must have because I didn’t hear him at all. Then when he saw me through my open door he dashed out the front as if he expected me to yell for the police.”

  “What interesting adventures you have! Weren’t you the one that found the slain gangster, too? We’ll look into this.” He left for the other room again; when he came back he had added slippers to his costume.

  He ran ahead down the stairs, but I went, too.

  The basement, as far as we could see, was empty now. Mrs. Tewman’s rooms in the front were locked and seemed undisturbed. Mrs. Garr’s kitchen in the back was locked and seemed undisturbed, too; I was sure of that last because as we came near the door the dog barked and the cats cried. She always locked her pets in there when she went out on errands, leaving the key on a nail on the casing. The key hung there now. Those animals would have shot out of there if anyone had opened the door.

  “Not much evidence of prowling here,” my fellow detective said.

  I took another look around the furnace room. One thing you could say for Mrs. Garr was that she didn’t keep a mess in her cellar; she was too much enamored with the idea that every scrap of paper burned saved on the coal bill. The furnace room was bare except for a pile of newspapers on a box near the storage-room door. That pile of papers . . .

  “Look! Some of the papers have been knocked down.”

  “You mean you think we have a newspaper fiend in our midst? What depravity! What vice!”

  “They might have been knocked off by someone hurrying into or out of the storeroom.”

  The young man walked toward the storage-room door, tried the knob gently. It turned.

  “Whoever’s in there come out,” he yelled, standing back.

  No one came.

  The young man opened the door then, and we both went in.

  Obviously someone had been prowling there. Boxes were pulled down, papers and musty old clothes strewn over the floor.

  “Well, what the hell do you know! So you weren’t thinking up fairy tales!”

  “Do you think we should call the police?”

  “Police? He’s gone, isn’t he? You saw him scoot out, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, but—”

  He shook his head.

  “We don’t even know if anything’s missing. If anything valuable was stolen, Mrs. Garr can tell the police. That’d be the only way they could catch him now—by nabbing him when he tried to sell what he got. How would you go about catching the guy? If he’s as far away as you’d go if you were him? No, no, lady, you’ve always got to think, in moments like this, that police are just as human as we are, and not any brighter. If as.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  There didn’t seem to be much more we could do in the cellar. Nothing else that we could see looked as if it had been touched. In fact there wasn’t much else there, just gray cement walls, gray cement ceiling, a swept but grimy gray cement floor, the big hot-water furnace, pipes, laundry tubs, Mrs. Garr’s table and chair. What could there be that a thief would want?

  Unless, of course, she had something valuable hidden in that storage room.

  In that case, it was probably gone.

  I trailed upstairs again. The room at the head of the basement stairs, and under the second-story stairs, looked in only its normal mess; a rather unclean old lady’s room, with faded tapestry curtains hiding the dresses on a rod at one end, one cot with a matching tapestry cover, one many-times-varnished chest of drawers, one chair, no window. I didn’t see how Mrs. Garr could sleep in that airless place, with the peculiar overhanging ceiling made by the stairs above.

  The young man, right at my heels, paused when I did to look at Mrs. Garr’s room, then followed me confidently into my living room.

  “I’ll stay by until you’re safe and sound with Mrs. Garr back,” he offered debonairly. He dropped onto my studio couch before I’d sat down myself, and examined the room.

&nbs
p; “My, my, how clean we are.”

  “My personal imprint.”

  “She brags about herself.”

  I was still standing. He wasn’t a particularly polite young man, and it disturbed me to think how few clothes he had on. I wished he’d go upstairs for more. He triangled an eyebrow at me and patted the couch by his side.

  “Come sit by Papa?”

  “No, thanks. I like this chair.” I stood by the armchair.

  “Oh well, I always try,” he philosophized. “Why don’t you sit in it then, instead of emphasizing how impolite I am? Didn’t you ever hear about George Washington drinking coffee out of his saucer so as not to embarrass the congressmen, who were just as elite in his day as in ours? Now, my motto is, if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Sit down or come here.”

  He was impudent. I sat down.

  “You’re Mr. Kistler, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, I am. Mr. Kistler. Hodge Kistler.”

  “I was sure you couldn’t be Mr. Buff’nim.”

  “Mr. Who?”

  “Buff’nim. Mrs. Garr said—”

  “Oh, Mr. Buffingham. Spelled B-u-f-f-i-n-g-h-a-m. What those English don’t think up!”

  “I’m Mrs. Dacres.”

  “Always formal and a lady?”

  “Names are good dresser-uppers.”

  “Alas, aren’t they? Do you like this weather, Mrs. Dacres?”

  “Very much.”

  “Lovely April day.”

  “Very.”

  “Don’t think it might be coming on to rain?”

  “Not a chance.”

  “I’m so relieved. These damp nights . . .”

  I stood up again. “I suspect I shall never know you again after Mrs. Garr gets home.”

  “Slapped again. But, ah, you got it. That was all I wanted to know.” He was grinning at me fiendishly. “Is there any approach you do like?”

  “I’m sorry, but I’d like it just as well if I waited here alone.”

  “Oh, sit down, baby. You know how newspapermen are. We have to live up to the reputations the movies give us, don’t we?”

  “Not with me.”

  “The trouble with you is that you should be introduced to yourself sometime.”

  “I shan’t go to a reporter for the introduction.”

  “Reporter? If by that name you mean me, Mrs. Dacres, you belittle me. Once I may have been a reporter, but no more. I have left that infancy behind. In me, you behold a publisher.”

  I stared at him. Mrs. Garr had said newspaperman, and I’d filled in the reporter without thinking.

  “Then what are you doing living in a—a place like this?” I blurted out.

  “Dear lady, why not?” he asked largely. “I get two rooms for six dollars a week, big ones with plenty of light and air. I’ve got practically a private bath. I’ve got maid service, such as it is. How much’d I have to pay in an apartment hotel? Or would you suggest I rent a house? Me, a bachelor?”

  “William Randolph Hearst in disguise, I suppose.”

  “Just like all women, always expecting too much. Very silly of Mr. Hearst, squandering himself on all those papers. Spreads himself out too thin.”

  “Have you telegraphed Mr. Hearst your opinion?”

  “I am too big a character to write anonymous telegrams. Now me, I devote all my talent to one paper, and what a paper. Fastest-growing paper in Gilling City. Most ads. Brightest columns. Most wit. Best movie reviews. I handle most of it personally.” He waved a grandiose arm.

  I stared again. Gilling City has only one big newspaper.

  “Do you mean to sit there and try to make me believe you’re the publisher of the Comet?” I began furiously.

  “That tradition-bound, blind, earmuffed rich man’s rag? No, no, lady. I wouldn’t touch the Comet. I haven’t touched it since I said good-bye to it forever in 1933.”

  “You were fired, I bet.”

  “Bull’s-eye in one shot.” He grinned again.

  “Then what?”

  “Now, Mrs. Dacres, haven’t you heard of the paper everyone in town reads? The paper at every door? Haven’t you heard of that illustrious, that incandescent, that blisteringly brilliant publication, the Buyers’ Guide?”

  Comprehension flooded in on me.

  The Buyers’ Guide is interesting. When I first saw a copy, two years ago, it was a small, four-page sheet of local ads for the north side. But it’s been growing. Its ads cover the whole town now; it comes out in full newspaper size, sometimes even in two sections. It’s delivered at every door in town once a week; I always go through it on Thursdays myself.

  The radical thing about it is that it’s free. It’s full of ads, grocery, meat market, small shop; it’s completely an advertiser’s paper, without the perfunctory bows to the news made by regular newspapers. But it carries several features so good, people read and talk about them every week.

  “You’re the Buyers’ Guide!”

  He rose, bowed. “The same.”

  “I can believe it, too. The ‘Sh-sh-sh-sh’ column. The movie reviews. How do you get away with ’em?”

  “I don’t. Theater owners lurk at the doors with blackjacks when rumor has it I approach. I go disguised. Why, I even have to pay my way in!”

  “Brace yourself. I never go to a movie unless it’s on the ‘Morons Keep Away’ list.”

  “Be still, my heart. You mean you think you’re not a moron?”

  “Not so much I don’t think your Guide a good idea.”

  “You grow on me.”

  “Not literally, I hope. Does it make money?”

  “Money? You mention a thing like money when I’m bent on expressing my soul?”

  “You’re running enough ads to make money.”

  “Money, she says. That’s all I hear. That’s what that superannuated, supercolossal old press we’ve got wants, too. Les—that’s my partner—says we’ve got to make money! Pooey!”

  “How about the city council?”

  He gave me a black look.

  “That’s where our money for our next twenty new presses went.”

  I knew, from the Guide’s own vitriolic columns, what it had been up against. Chain stores were cutting down their ads in the Comet to run full pages in the inexpensive Guide. The Comet had tried to push through a city ordinance making it illegal to leave broadsides (broadsides were defined as all unpaid-for printed matter) at doors. That would have put the Guide where the Comet wished it was.

  But it hadn’t gone through. I could only guess the cost.

  Mr. Kistler stood up, stretched, and began prowling my room: thumbing through my magazines, opening the buffet’s glass doors to look over the china appreciatively, pulling out the linen and silver drawers for brief glances.

  “Nice,” he said.

  “I’m beginning to think Mrs. Garr is right and it applies to everyone in the house.”

  “Mrs. Garr is never right. About what?”

  “She says people snoop.”

  “Oh, she does, does she? Me?” He stood wide-legged in front of me, pointing a finger at his chest.

  “She never mentioned you.”

  “You?”

  “Oh no.”

  “Who, then?”

  “The people who were in this apartment before me.”

  “Aw nuts. They were a respectable middle-aged couple, and they couldn’t take it. Not when I brought that—Skip it. Who else?”

  “The Wallers.”

  “The bulky ones? No, they’re no threat.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. I saw something myself.”

  “Little Bright Eyes.”

  “All right, laugh. But when I came home this afternoon I am sure I heard a drawer closing in the living room. I looked in, and there was Mr. Grant
sitting on the davenport. His hands shook.”

  “Him? That innocent little twerp? Oh, now, sister!”

  “I said you could laugh. And right after that the man came out of the cellar.”

  “Well, I’ll concede you the man in the cellar.” He sat down on the couch again and observed me solemnly. “Let’s figure it out. Mrs. Garr, unbeknown to all, has the Hope diamond. It was given to her in her youth by a lover—ah, the gay and dashing Grant. Spent, burned out, and impoverished, Grant comes to steal the diamond from his erstwhile love—”

  “But, ah, the villain enters,” I said. “Peering through a crack in the basement shutters, he sees Mrs. Garr fondling her incredible jewel by the furnace. She keeps it there, in a chink in the furnace. A bold plan enters the villain’s mind. No sooner is he . . .”

  We were having quite a good time when Mrs. Garr came home.

  * * *

  —

  MRS. GARR CAME HOME, tenderly escorted by Mrs. Halloran, around six o’clock. The black eyes took in Mr. Kistler pretty fast.

  “I didn’t know you knew Mr. Kistler.” The voice suggested I had made the acquaintance for no good purpose.

  “Oh, but she does know me now, Mrs. Garr.” Mr. Kistler stood up, beaming like a father.

  “Mr. Kistler came in to—to stay with me because I had been a little startled,” I explained hastily. “You see, a man—a strange man—ran up out of the cellar. At least I saw him dash out of your bedroom—”

  Mrs. Garr turned yellow and swayed. I cried: “Catch her!”

  Mrs. Halloran and Mr. Kistler were close enough to ease her into the black leather chair before she toppled. Mrs. Halloran started fanning her with her handbag, which wasn’t much use; I ran for water while Mr. Kistler undid her dress at the neck.

  Mrs. Garr came around quickly. But her eyes were sick with terror when she opened them.

  “He go in your rooms?” she asked thickly.

  “Oh no. No, indeed. No one’s been in my rooms. He came tiptoeing out of that room under the stairs and saw me, then dashed out the front door.”