The Listening House Read online

  “Up the cellar stairs,” she said, thickly still. She looked around at us, heavy and tired, her white hair slipping in back, only her eyes alive, with their ominous black heat.

  “You stay here. You all stay here.”

  She was out of the chair with surprising quickness, darting away from us into the room under the stairs. She shut the door; we heard the click of a key, the snap of a light switch.

  Mr. Kistler looked at me, eyebrows more triangular than ever; then we both looked at Mrs. Halloran.

  “She acts as if she had something she was frightened to death might get stolen,” I offered. “What could it be?”

  Mrs. Halloran tittered and shrugged her shoulders; she looked frightened but swaggering, as if she were carrying something off with bravado. “Well, she don’t believe in banks,” she said.

  “But surely she wouldn’t keep money around the house,” I began slowly. “I remember, she said something to me one day about not liking banks, too. I wonder if she could—”

  Mr. Kistler pinched my arm. “Don’t wonder too much.”

  We stood there in a hesitant group, waiting for Mrs. Garr to come back. Mrs. Halloran’s nervousness obviously doubled every minute of the six or seven it took before the door clicked again and Mrs. Garr came out.

  “The storeroom, that’s where he was,” she said. She was stronger now, angry instead of terror-stricken. She stood thinking a moment, then turned to Mr. Kistler.

  “You see him?”

  “No. No one saw him except Mrs. Dacres, as far as I know.”

  “Mr. Grant might have,” I remembered. “Mr. Grant was waiting in your parlor to pay his rent when I came in.” Should I say more? After all . . .

  “Mr. Grant? He paid his rent yesterday.”

  “Oh, look here,” Mr. Kistler broke in. “Don’t get suspicious about that poor old guy. I’ll ask him if he saw anything.”

  He bounded upstairs. Mrs. Garr turned to me.

  “You saw him.” It was almost an accusation.

  “Yes, I—”

  “Wha’d he look like?”

  “He wasn’t a tall man, just about medium. He looked sneaking and furtive. He was wearing a gray cap and a gray topcoat, open but belted in back. I think there was a sweater under the coat, no suit coat. His face was thin and red; a big nose; I’d say he had brownish-gray hair. And when he ran down the hall I thought what a funny countrified haircut he had in back, cut straight across. I’ll describe him to the police if you—”

  “No, you don’t have to. I ain’t calling no police.”

  Mrs. Garr had quit looking at me. She was looking at Mrs. Halloran. Mrs. Halloran was standing pinched and trembling, with a terrified look on her face.

  “You had to stop for ice cream,” Mrs. Garr spat at her. She shoved Mrs. Halloran ahead of her into the parlor and slammed the door.

  I was standing alone in the hall when Mr. Kistler came leaping down the stairs again, calling out:

  “He says he didn’t see any—Well, where’s the party gone?”

  “It looks as if it’s over as far as we’re concerned,” I said. “But I’d like to know what the heck it means.”

  5

  FOR ONCE, WHAT WENT on in that front parlor was too low to reach my ears. It was a good two hours before the parlor door opened again; I heard Mrs. Halloran rush out of the house. After that I didn’t see her for two weeks.

  I had a streak of luck. One of the copywriters at Benson’s got sick; they took me on until she could return. During that time I was at Mrs. Garr’s house only through the evenings and at night, so I heard only the night activities of the house.

  And I heard plenty of those. If that house had seemed to stay tensely awake, listening, before, it seemed to do so doubly then, when I knew it only at night. I’d wake up, not once, but five or six times a night. I even told Mr. Kistler about it; he took me out to dinner or to a movie a few times, and once I asked him for Sunday dinner. He was hard to keep down, but he was fun when he wasn’t being too obstreperous.

  He laughed about the listening, but the next morning before I went to work he knocked at my door and swore at me.

  “Now you’ve got me started. I heard the damn thing listen last night. You’re going to have to come up and stay with me nights; I’m afraid to sleep alone.”

  “You might ask Mrs. Garr to let you borrow Rover.”

  “No heart.”

  “Good ears, though. I can tell you everything that happened last night from midnight to dawn. You came in at midnight, reeling.”

  “Weariness, that was. The Buyers’ Guide is distributed to its waiting public today.”

  “Around one thirty Mr. Buffingham and another man came in. At two Mrs. Garr got up and began prowling again . . .”

  I was there when the doorbell rang, when Mrs. Tewman went to answer it.

  “You got a guy named Buffingham living here?” asked a big voice, held low.

  Mrs. Tewman made only a frightened squeak.

  “What the . . . !” began Mr. Kistler. “Say your prayers, baby, it’s cops.”

  He left me for the newcomers.

  “Good morning, Officer. Anything I can do?”

  “Yeah. Guy named Buffingham in this joint?”

  “Yes, sir. Upstairs.”

  The bluecoat came in, and behind him five more like him. They came into the hall with revolvers drawn, tense, watchful. Mrs. Tewman squeaked again, dashed for the cellar stairs. Mrs. Garr popped out, cowered back when she saw the police. I stood startled in my doorway as they came on, Mr. Kistler pointing the way.

  “First door to your right toward the front of the house,” he told the leader.

  The policeman in charge reconnoitered at the foot of the stairs, ran lightly up, leaving his men below. A moment, and he was down again, arranging two men on the stairs, going ahead with the other three. They were unbelievably quiet in motion; there was quiet above, too.

  Then a sudden knock, loud but muffled, as sounds were in that house.

  The big voice yelled, “Put down the gun, Buffingham, and come on out here!”

  A shot answered, two shots, splintering wood. The house was no longer quiet; the two shots seemed to echo, and heavy breathing stirred.

  “You can’t get us that way! We’ve got you, Buffingham, six to two, even if your father’s fool enough to stick with you. We aren’t dumb enough to stand in front of that door. Come on out!”

  I don’t know why it made me turn. The sound was so very small.

  It was the first window of the bay at the left side of my living room that drew my eyes.

  Two legs dangled outside the upper sash.

  I screamed.

  Even as I screamed the man dropped. I saw him for an instant, falling, his face distorted.

  But even in that time I could see that it wasn’t Mr. Buffingham. It was a younger man, heavier, shorter.

  “He’s out the window!” I cried.

  I think the policemen came down the stairs without hitting more than two or three steps; they surged through my room, pushed the lower sash up, went right through the screen.

  More shots outside now, to the rear of the house. I ran to my kitchen door; the fugitive crouched at the back near the corner of the house, supporting himself on one hand. He fired around the house the way he had come, but the police were on him from the other side of the house, too; there must have been some of them stationed outside. I’d no more than got my door open a crack than the hunted man threw his gun to the ground, crying: “You’ve got me! You’ve got me!”

  He tried to haul himself upright, but one leg dragged; the police were on him in a smothering heap; I saw a fist crash his chin, and he went down, limp.

  The tangle broke then. Three policemen emerged, carrying the unconscious man; they disappeared around the Sixteenth Street side o
f the house.

  Breathless, I went back to the hall. Mr. Buffingham, the one I knew, was there, handcuffed to another policeman. Hodge Kistler, alongside, was rapt and intent, his eyes shining. He was practically wagging his tail.

  The three of them disappeared out the front door as the sirens began to cry.

  * * *

  —

  IT WASN’T THIRTY SECONDS before Mrs. Garr and Mrs. Tewman, Miss Sands and Mr. Grant, Mr. and Mrs. Waller and I were all there in the hall in a knot. Mr. Waller was sent off posthaste to find out what it was all about.

  Mrs. Garr was quivering with excitement.

  “It’s that no-good boy of his, that’s who it is. Oh, he’s got his hands into some dirty work now. I always said to him, ‘That boy’ll come to no good,’ I said, ever since he got his first job driving trucks for those dirty bootleggers.”

  “Here! How did he get here?” Mrs. Waller was still breathing hard from hurtling her weight downstairs.

  “Brought him in, that’s what he did,” snapped Mrs. Garr. “No respect for a decent house. You mark my words.”

  My mind leaped to another possibility.

  “Sam Zeitman—that gangster—do you think that’s what he could have done? Do you think he was the one that shot him?”

  Four tongues spoke at once as they considered the possibility. I had to leave for work while the talk still raged.

  When I came home, that session—or another one—was still in progress. By that time, Mr. Waller had long been home with the story. But the papers were full of it, too; I read the account coming home on the streetcar.

  The gist of it was this. The younger Mr. Buffingham—his given name was Reginald, of all impossible names—had driven out to Elsinore the day before with three other men, and the four of them had robbed the little Elsinore bank. They’d shot and killed a schoolteacher, waiting at the wicket for the money from her paycheck, because she didn’t get out of the way fast enough. Reginald Buffingham, bending to push her aside, had lost his hat. The cashier had a good look at him; he was shot for that, but he lived long enough to give the police the description. The Buffingham boy had fled, with all other hands against him, to his father for hiding, but the police had rounded up all his known associates, and they’d squealed.

  “He robbed a bank,” Mrs. Garr screamed at me when I walked in. “Killed a lady! Killed a cashier!”

  “I saw it in the paper,” I said. “Do you think Mr. Buffingham, the one that lived here, had anything to do with it?”

  “Oh no, he didn’t have nothing to do with it,” spat Mrs. Garr. “He wouldn’t have the nerve. I know him.”

  “Will he be sent to prison, too? He must have known about it when his son came here last night.”

  “Get sent up for harboring?” Mr. Waller’s bulk was quick with excitement. “Maybe he will. You can’t tell, though. Mostly they jug people for harboring when they can’t get hold of the big shots, or don’t want to get hold of ’em. Do it to stop the public hollering.”

  “They certainly caught young Buffingham, if you could call him a big shot.” I shuddered, thinking of the exhausted, desperate boy who had cried so truly that morning, “You’ve got me!”

  “Was he hurt much?”

  “Broke a leg when he fell out that window. Lucky you saw him. If he could have made his father’s car parked alongside on Sixteenth Street he could have made the start of a getaway anyway, and they’d have been shooting up the whole town. Can’t tell who’d of been killed.”

  “I notice it didn’t say anything about the possibility of his having shot Sam Zeitman,” I said. “I wonder if the police didn’t think of that. I should think they would.”

  “I should think they would, too,” Mr. Waller agreed. “He’s been here with his father before; he knows about that drop. They’ll bring it up yet, see if they don’t.”

  I left the four of them to their pleasant conversation for the greater pleasure of eating. But I waited up until Hodge Kistler came in just after midnight.

  “Poor Mr. Buffingham,” I said when I had supplied coffee and a sandwich. “Imagine having children and having them turn out like that.”

  “Yeah. But don’t let it keep you awake. This isn’t the first job Reggie pulled. He had it coming.”

  “That doesn’t make it any easier for his father.”

  “They all have fathers.”

  “Yes, but we know this one. I mean, I’ve seen him around. Couldn’t we do something?”

  “Sure. Maybe we could take up a collection for bail. It wouldn’t take much—a couple grand here, ten grand there—”

  “But the father’s in jail, too, isn’t he? If he gets out, we could go out of our way to show sympathy. Ask him for dinner or something.”

  “Say, are you nuts?” Mr. Kistler’s lips pressed tightly together, and his eyebrows almost hit his nose. “You let me see you talking, just talking, to that guy, and I’ll take your pants down and spank you with a table leg. Get that?”

  “But just because the son—you don’t know the father isn’t all right. Look at Dillinger’s father. Look at all the other fathers.”

  “No, I don’t know, but I’ll take it on trust. And you keep your funny nose out. You hook your little chairsy-wairsies under the doorknobs and beat it to bed.”

  He stood in the hall until I did it.

  * * *

  —

  THE BOARDERS OF THE house were still excited the next morning, of course. I learned that Mr. Buffingham’s hours in the drugstore were from twelve noon to six p.m. one day, from twelve noon to twelve midnight the next day, a regular drugstore schedule. But of course he wasn’t on that now. That didn’t keep Mrs. Garr, Mrs. Tewman, and the Wallers from lurking in the hall at likely hours in the hope they’d see him come home.

  Mr. Waller was right about the police. The papers that second day screamed:

  BANK SLAYER SUSPECTED OF ZEITMAN MURDER

  Police Try to Pin Third Slaying on Killer

  Reggie Buffingham today faced a third murder charge, as police worked to force a confession that he had shot and killed Sam Zeitman. Zeitman was found dead a few weeks ago at the foot of the Capitol Hill cliff directly behind the Trent Street house in which Buffingham was taken. Although no connection between the New York gangster and Buffingham’s gang has been found, police hope to uncover some clue that will solve the Zeitman killing.

  It went on for columns, but it was all review.

  The police weren’t successful. A more modest account some days later announced:

  POLICE UNABLE TO TRACE ZEITMAN KILLING TO BUFFINGHAM

  So the fate of the dead man I had found was still unknown.

  The elder Mr. Buffingham was held an entire week before he was released on bail. Even after all that time Mrs. Garr and Mrs. Tewman were close enough at hand to the hall to see him when he came in. It was early morning; I was just getting ready to leave for work.

  I heard the outside door open, heavy steps in the hall and upstairs, a hush, and then Mrs. Tewman’s voice: “My, he looks terrible.”

  I expected, of course, to hear Mrs. Garr tramp up the stairs immediately to ask Mr. Buffingham to move. Day came and day passed, with Mr. Buffingham’s hours more irregular than ever. I saw him only once, during that period, but that was enough to know Mrs. Tewman’s opinion was justified.

  “I suppose Mr. Buffingham will be moving soon,” I said to Mrs. Garr one evening.

  “He can’t get that boy in here again. He’s in jail.” She avoided my eyes.

  “I suppose you hate to ask him to leave when he’s having so much trouble.”

  She looked at me then, expressionlessly, with her coaly little black eyes.

  “My, yes, I wouldn’t want to do a thing like that. Kicking a man out of his home, that’s an awful thing to do. I always say about my house, I want people to fe
el it’s their home. I wouldn’t kick a man out of his home.”

  However that was, it didn’t seem to apply to the Wallers, because as the days went by, instead of her gossiping threesomes with the Wallers in the hall, I came to know they were quarreling. I came home one night to hear three heated tongues going in the parlor; as I went past I heard Mr. Waller roaring:

  “You can’t turn us out like that!”

  Well, well. I wondered if Mrs. Garr had brought up the snooping.

  Later on that evening, to my surprise, I heard Mrs. Garr at the phone. I’d heard her use it very seldom—it was a pay phone.

  The telephone was right outside my doors, on the wall at the foot of the stairs. I got all the conversations in the house—they came right through the wall.

  The person Mrs. Garr called was Mrs. Halloran. So, that feud is over, I thought amusedly, thinking how much gossip about the Wallers and Mr. Buffingham must be spoiling in Mrs. Garr’s breast.

  After that Mrs. Halloran was in the house often again. She and Mrs. Garr were mulling something over; I wasn’t interested enough to listen to what it was. Mrs. Garr was just an annoyance to me. She hovered through the house more than ever; I started moving my furniture around one evening for sweet variety’s sake, and she was there like a shot, staying until I had things rearranged, though I couldn’t imagine why she’d think I wanted to hurt her precious furniture.

  She was that way with the other lodgers, too. Hodge Kistler ran down to light the hot-water heater for a bath, one night, just to save her old legs. She ran out of her parlor, screaming at him.

  “What you doin’ down there? What you doin’ in my basement?”

  She began letting the dog run through the house, too; if I cooked dinner in the evening he’d snuffle under my door, breathing hard and emitting plaintive woofs.

  I think she starved those animals of hers, in spite of her incessant talk about her fondness for them, because I gave the cat that was about to have kittens a sausage one day, and she swallowed it whole, in one gulp. After that the cat was always mewing at my door; she was so thin her back sank in along her backbone. I fed her quite often, although she was completely unfriendly outside of her anxiety for food.