The Listening House Read online

  I said to Mrs. Garr one day, “All animals care about is getting fed. They’re the great original moochers.”

  It was nasty, but all four animals had been howling in that cellar kitchen all evening, unfed, I was sure, and I was cross.

  She was as full of delusions about animals as a sixteen-year-old girl is about love.

  “A dog is man’s best friend,” she said stiffly. “Cats, too. They’re true friends. True friends.”

  She was so moved she actually went down and fed the beasts, and they shut up.

  That next evening Mrs. Halloran was over again; this time she had two uncombed little girls with her. After dinner, Mrs. Garr knocked at my door and invited me to sit a spell in her parlor.

  I sat there for as short a spell as I politely could. It was a cluttered room, overawed by the biggest grand piano I ever saw; you had to edge past the piano bench to get to the front of the room where the tables and chairs were.

  “Me and Mrs. Garr, we’re taking us a trip!” Mrs. Halloran told me grandly the news I had been called in to hear. “We’re going to Chicago for the excursion on Memor’yal Day!”

  I said that was lovely. The two girls went out into the hall, where they sat on the black chair whispering to each other and furtively sniggering; I wondered if everyone attached to Mrs. Garr was as unpleasant as the Hallorans.

  Mrs. Halloran was full of excited plans, but Mrs. Garr, I noticed, mostly kept silent, looking at me, looking at Mrs. Halloran. She nodded, now and again. That was all the cooperation Mrs. Hallo-ran’s conversation needed.

  During that evening and the next day I heard either Mrs. Halloran or Mrs. Garr telling everyone in the house about the trip, in detail.

  I wondered about it, mildly. Except for that one movie, which had had such burglarious results, and for quick trips to the grocer’s when she couldn’t get someone to go for her, I had never known Mrs. Garr to leave the house. She brooded over that house, I’d thought, like a hen over chickens. And now she was calmly leaving it for four days.

  “That shows you,” I said to myself. “You’re a hot psychologist, you are.”

  Mrs. Garr and Mrs. Halloran were leaving Friday night. I went down cellar early Thursday morning, to pay my rent.

  Even at eight thirty Mrs. Garr was already established in her rocker near the furnace. The five-dollar bill I gave her was badly worn, I remember; it had been torn almost an inch at one end, in the lateral crease. Mrs. Garr said something about people not having decent respect for money. She went limping off to her kitchen to get the change, said:

  “Don’t you plan too wild parties for when I’m gone, now.”

  That was all. Nothing unusual, nothing strange.

  We worked until almost seven o’clock at Benson’s that Friday night; they were right in the middle of their Anniversary Sale. Hilda Crosley and I—Hilda was the other copywriter—stayed downtown for dinner because it was so late, then went to see After the Dark Man for fifteen cents at the Lido, which is about a tenth-run movie house, but gets all the good pictures in the end.

  The hall at Mrs. Garr’s house was as dark as usual when I stepped into it about ten o’clock that evening. I’d no sooner stepped in than something light and small came hurtling down the stairs from the second floor.

  I turned the light switch and bent to peer under the bookcase. Sure enough, the green eyes of the gray cat stared out at me; it was her favorite hideout. A minute later, someone ran downstairs. Mr. Buffingham.

  “Good evening,” I said. I was particularly nice to him now, whenever I saw him.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “One of the cats is loose,” I told him. “Mrs. Garr must have forgotten to lock her in the kitchen before she went. She told me she was going to lock them in with food enough to last until she got back.”

  Mr. Buffingham shrugged. “I guess she couldn’t have caught this one. I nearly fell over her upstairs.”

  “But this is the one that—my goodness, I should think she’d be especially careful to get this one in, because she may have kittens anytime, and you know how cats are about picking the best sofa. Do you think we ought to try to get her in the basement room?”

  “Why should we worry? Mrs. Tewman’ll feed her.”

  “Well . . .” I said; then, “Of course it isn’t any of my business, either,” and went on into my rooms.

  I was dead tired and had another hard day coming; I was going to have eight pages of proofs to read next day. I went to bed right away but was too dead tired to sleep.

  With Mrs. Garr gone the house felt different. Almost empty, in spite of the people I knew were upstairs. It seemed to me there were more noises than usual, too. Someone stayed an unconscionable time in the bathroom, right over my head. Later on I thought I heard footsteps too stealthy to be real, first coming down from upstairs, then going on to the cellar, footsteps so slow they took twenty minutes for the trip.

  But there were always noises in the cellar, of course; the animals were down there. Occasionally the dog would grumble, and once he barked quite sharply for a while.

  After that, I was just dropping off to sleep when I suddenly found myself lying tense with my eyes staring wide.

  This time I knew I had heard unusual sounds. Quiet, furtive sounds at the back of the house.

  Then, almost as if it were directly under me, a sharp plink!

  It was a late May night, clear and quiet. No wind. My windows were open from the top. There wasn’t any doubt of it. Someone was fiddling around at the back of the house.

  That was getting to be too much.

  If anyone was really prowling around Mrs. Garr’s house—well, I was going to find out if my imagination was working overtime or what.

  I wrapped my negligee around me, clicked on my light, slipped quietly to my back door. The bolt made a tiny whine when I pushed it back.

  There were basement windows below the back porch both to the right and to the left; it was from one of those that I thought the sound must have come. I leaned to the right over the rail to peer at that window.

  What happened next was incredibly quick.

  I tried to scream but couldn’t. The hands were too soon on my throat.

  I hadn’t heard a sound. I’d had no feeling of a body approaching.

  Just hands coming out of the air and grabbing at my neck.

  Powerful hands that closed around my windpipe, squeezing breath out of me, squeezing life out of me.

  I fought desperately, but it was a short fight, I know; I was overpowered at the beginning.

  The bottom fell out of the world and I went whirling down into the black dark.

  6

  IT WAS AN AWFULLY long, dark way to climb up again.

  I knew I had to climb, though, because there was such a loud, imperative calling for me at the top.

  I climbed and climbed, fell back into the dark, climbed again. Even when I was up over the brink, I could just lie still for a while, staring at night over me.

  Then I came to with a jump.

  I was lying in a heap on the kitchen floor, as if I’d been thrown there. The door to the back porch was closed now; I could see it in the light that came through from my living room.

  On the doors in my living room a fist was pounding. There was a voice, too.

  “Mrs. Dacres! Mrs. Dacres!” it yelled. “Gwynne, what’s the matter? Gwynne!”

  I picked myself up from the floor. The floor wavered when I stepped on it; the ceiling tipped drunkenly. But my feet moved me falteringly toward the other room and the noise.

  “Who is it?” I croaked. My throat felt frightfully sore; I could hardly push words up through it.

  “By God! What’ve you been doing? It’s me, Hodge Kistler. Let us in!”

  I pulled the chairs out from under the knobs and unlocked the doors. They almost hit me in the fac
e, opening; Mr. Kistler was pushing them so hard from the other side. When the doors were open he stood glaring at me; behind him I could see Miss Sands, Mr. Buffingham, Mr. Grant, Mr. and Mrs. Waller, all peculiarly dressed in rumpled pajamas and robes.

  “I . . . I . . .” I said.

  I threw my arms around Mr. Kistler’s neck and began weeping on his chest. He picked me up and sat down in the big chair with me on his lap; I pushed my face into his neck and kept on crying. It was confusing; people kept patting me here and there and saying: “What happened? What is it?”

  And there was a murmurous buzz.

  Mr. Kistler said, “Cut it out, drizzle-puss, and tell us what happened.”

  I pulled my face out of his neck to wipe it on the handkerchief he was kindly holding in front of me. Crying had softened my throat.

  “A man choked me.”

  “Go on, you’re foolin’.”

  “No, I’m not. My neck’s still sore.”

  People crowded around to look at my neck.

  “My God, look at the bruises!” Mr. Kistler said. “She did get choked! Who did you have in here?”

  Miss Sands and Mrs. Waller screamed; everyone but Mr. Kistler stood off a little to stare at me and the room.

  “It wasn’t anyone I knew. I heard a noise in back—near the basement window I thought it was—so I went back to look—”

  Mr. Kistler stood up, dumping me unceremoniously on my feet.

  “You heard a noise so you went back to look.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why, you little rattlebrained piece of goof! Opened the door, I suppose, just waiting for whoever it was to get his hands on your neck!”

  “No, I didn’t. I leaned over the railing and looked. But I guess he must have been on the other side.”

  “Oh, you guess he must have been on the other side.” This time his eyebrows did hit his nose. He pushed me into the chair with one hand and then opened his arms wide to the others.

  “No brain,” he said.

  “It was someone—”

  I looked at the people in my rooms then. Every person who lived in the house, except the Tewmans and Mrs. Garr. Mr. Grant little and shivering in a blue bathrobe. Mr. Waller, burly and pompous even in red-stripe pajamas. Miss Sands, eager and nervous in aluminum curlers and a Japanese kimono. Mr. Buffingham, in rumpled white pajamas, with his eyes quick and dark flickering over both the room and me. Mrs. Waller, hovering near the door as if she thought what was going on was not quite decent, perhaps, and she ought to leave.

  What I had started to say was that I thought the choker was someone from the house.

  Because now, I thought the stealthy steps I had heard coming from the second floor were real.

  I decided not to say it right then.

  “I think I’ll call the police,” I said.

  Mr. Kistler was the only one who answered.

  “Okay, baby; it’s your party,” he said slowly. “First, though, I’ll take a look around the back of the house myself.”

  The three other men went out with him. They all came back very quickly.

  “Couldn’t see a thing,” they reported.

  “All there is out there is a door, an empty porch, two railings, cement, and untouched windows.” Mr. Kistler amplified it. “I’ll call the police for you. A lot of good they’re going to do.”

  The others stood hesitantly around the room while he phoned.

  “You can just as well stay here,” he told them when he came back. “You’d get called down again anyway.”

  The four men again wandered out to the back porch while we waited. Mr. Grant returned first; he sat down in a chair to look vacantly about the room; he wore thick-lens glasses and bent his head to look over the tops of them with his round, popping little blue eyes. Miss Sands asked me breathless questions: what did the man look like, and wasn’t you terribly scared, dearie?

  The police came quickly.

  Two of them. They were both very young policemen, so young they bristled with importance and assumed boredom. One of them knew Mr. Kistler.

  “Hi, Hodge,” he said.

  “Hi, Jerry! So you got put on. That’s swell!”

  “Yeah, thanks. What’s the trouble here?”

  “This young lady got choked by a strange man.”

  “You shouldn’t let strange men in, lady.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Who was it?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, but I braced myself and let go my bombshell theory. “I think it was someone from the house.”

  They all froze at that.

  Then there was a burst of excited voices.

  “All right, all right, calm down. Let the little lady tell her story. Spill it.”

  I did, beginning with the footsteps I thought I’d heard on the stairs.

  “Any of the rest of you hear anything?” Jerry turned to the people who lived upstairs.

  They all talked at once, but he weeded them out one by one.

  Not one of them would admit that he had either seen or done anything unusual.

  Miss Sands reported having been in bed and asleep since nine thirty, after a particularly tiring sale day in her store.

  Mr. Grant had gone to bed a little after ten, had been asleep.

  The Wallers had been at a movie at the little house below the capitol, had come home just after eleven, gone to bed and to sleep.

  Mr. Buffingham had been on his way out for a package of cigarettes when he passed me in the hall; had come back, read for a while, slept.

  Mr. Kistler had stayed downtown until after midnight, had stopped at my door to say hello when he saw the thread of light under my doors, and had been disturbed when I didn’t answer. The other people had appeared from upstairs, one by one, when they were awakened by his pounding on my door and calling my name. They’d gone to their doors to see what was up, then out into the halls, and finally been lured downstairs, pretty much as they slept.

  Except for Mr. Kistler, they had all come down together.

  Unless they were all lying, there couldn’t be any doubt of that. They all verified it.

  “Of course,” speculated Jerry gloomily, “we can’t tell how long before you was found that the choking took place. Whoever it was might have had time to get upstairs and undressed. Or he might just have gone around the front again, come in, and started pounding on your door.”

  “That wasn’t what happened.” Mr. Kistler was elaborately calm.

  “Oh hell.” Jerry abandoned that track and tried another. “Who runs this joint?”

  They explained to him about Mrs. Garr’s going to Chicago. He was interested in that. He asked them over, one by one, if each one had been aware that Mrs. Garr was to be gone that night.

  They all knew. Mr. Buffingham said, at first, that he didn’t know, but then he recollected it.

  “Oh yeah, I guess she did say somethin’. I didn’t pay much attention.”

  When it was Mr. Grant’s turn he said, “Oh yes, I knew,” vaguely.

  “What time’d she go?”

  “It was that excursion on the Great Western,” I said.

  “Pulled out at 8:05 p.m., Jerry,” the quiet second officer said.

  “I wonder who else knew the old lady was gone?”

  “The Hallorans would—” I started.

  “But Mrs. Garr didn’t go, then.” It was said absently, as if the speaker were thinking aloud.

  It was Mr. Grant. He blinked at us over his thick lenses when we stared at him, fidgeting as if he wished he hadn’t spoken.

  “What do you mean she didn’t go? She’s gone, ain’t she?”

  “Oh, it’s nothing, nothing at all.”

  “I’ll decide that. You talk.”

  “It was just that I saw her after that. After eigh
t-five, I mean.”

  “Oh, you did! Where at?”

  “I saw her across the street, walking up Sixteenth Street. I was in my room, looking out the window, and I saw her crossing over from the other corner, from the Elliott House corner, you know. I remember I wondered about it because I knew she was going away. Then I thought she must have come back for something. She started across Trent Street just as a car came along; she went back to the sidewalk again until it went past. I looked at my watch pretty soon after that because I wondered if I should go for a walk until bedtime. It was after eight thirty-five then, almost eight forty.”

  “Why, I suppose she might have come back for some reason,” Mr. Kistler said. “Funny she didn’t turn up with all this racket going on, though. She’s usually Johnny-on-the-spot. I’ll call her.”

  He went into the hall. “Mrs. Garr! Mrs. Garr!” he called loudly.

  His voice echoed, but there was no other answer. He came back.

  “Sure about the time that excursion left, Red?” asked Jerry.

  Red went into the hall, made a telephone call, came back.

  “Eight-five. Checked it,” he reported laconically.

  Jerry took Mr. Grant in hand.

  “Mr. Grant, there’s a lot of old ladies around.”

  “It’s not likely I would mistake Mrs. Garr.” Mr. Grant was quiet but stubborn.

  “Yeah. Maybe. And the time, now. How long before you looked at your watch?”

  “Not more than five, ten minutes.”

  Jerry laughed. “That’s what you think. If you’d listened to evidence in court a couple times, mister, you’d know how right people are about time.”

  He stood up impatiently.

  “This ain’t getting us anyplace, anyhow. You don’t think the old lady came back and choked her, do you? Time for you to speak up, lady. I mean you, Mrs. Dacres. Think it could have been the old lady choked you?”

  I thought back. “Oh no. No, it couldn’t have been. Whoever it was was strong. Mrs. Garr had a bad heart. It made her breathless to do anything taking strength. Breathless to walk upstairs, even. I didn’t hear the—the person breathe at all, until he grabbed my neck.”