The Listening House Read online

  “Get any look at him at all?”

  “No, I didn’t. But I have a feeling it was a man. That was my impression.”

  Jerry grunted. “A lot of good that’s going to do us. Couldn’t tell was he short, fat, tall, thin?”

  Again I tried to think, desperately. It was important, I could see that. If it were someone from the house. Short—that would be Hodge Kistler or Mr. Grant. Tall—Mr. Buffingham or Mr. Waller. Fat—Mr. Waller. Thin—Mr. Buffingham or Mr. Grant.

  But try as I might, I couldn’t give the figure that had attacked me any bulk at all.

  Just hands, coming out of the darkness. Arms. Steel strength in clenching fingers.

  I shook my head.

  The looks Mr. Waller, Miss Sands, and Mrs. Waller directed at me now were resentful. Mr. Grant merely looked mild. Mr. Buffingham sullen. Mr. Kistler alert. I looked from one to the other, hoping for a telltale sign.

  Jerry gave signs of new impatience.

  “You keep an eye on ’em, Red,” he said. “I’m going to take a look around.”

  He pulled a flashlight from his pocket, strode toward the kitchen. After a minute or two Mr. Kistler followed him out. We were quiet while they were gone. When I turned to look at one of the others, now, his eyes would slide from mine.

  Jerry was back shortly. “It don’t look like anything’s been sprung,” he announced.

  He tramped through my rooms, into the hall; we heard him running down the cellar stairs. He was down there a much longer time. When he came back he stood thoughtfully in the center of the room, swinging his flashlight.

  “Them steps you thought you heard stealin’ down the stairs, that’s all you got to go on, to think it was someone in the house?”

  “Yes, that’s all.”

  “Now listen, sister. This is how I dope it out. Some small-time guy is around trying his luck, see. Some poor sod from down on Water Street, maybe. There’s a basement window back there that’s open about an inch. It’s nailed there or something; anyway, it sticks; I can’t move it. He tries to jimmy it open, can’t make it. You hear him. Then you open your door and scare him so he jumps on you to keep you from yelling, and beats it. You come with me if you want to rest your mind. I’ll show you.”

  He started for my back door, beckoning us after him.

  I’ve often thought what a theatrical procession we must have made, if anyone had passed to see us at two o’clock of that moonless night. The policeman ahead, flashing his light low at the basement windows, the night-clad parade after him. We toured the entire house that way, the light playing on each basement window in turn.

  All those basement windows were of frosted glass, made doubly obscure by dust and dirt. They were all locked tight, too, except for the one to the left of my back porch, which was open an inch or so from the bottom. It seemed nailed there, as Jerry had said: I guessed that Mrs. Garr knew her pets needed air, but didn’t want burglars.

  The policeman played his light on that window longest.

  “See that window? That’s where some guy thinks maybe he can squeeze through and pick up whatever’s loose inside. But he don’t make it. He don’t get through. I’ll show you if you’re still scared.”

  We all trooped back through my kitchen door; Mr. Kistler, last, bolted it. In the cellar Jerry continued his assurances.

  “See? I’ll go through everything here. Rooms in front empty, and not even locked.”

  The Tewmans hadn’t been around all evening. I guessed they were taking advantage of Mrs. Garr’s absence.

  “Not a soul in there. Nothing touched that I can see. Now look at this furnace room. Nobody in the furnace. Nobody under the washtubs. Nobody in the storage room.”

  He darted his light briefly in there; the room was now orderly again. There was something, though. Mrs. Garr’s chair, with some clothes left on it in a dark heap.

  “Mrs. Garr’s chair’s in there. She usually keeps it near the furnace.”

  Jerry snorted. “Well, she wasn’t going to sit on it for a while, was she? Why shouldn’t she stick it away in there?”

  I subsided. Jerry took up the march.

  The dog barked as we drew near the back kitchen.

  “And this here room, see? The door’s safely locked.”

  We all looked at the kitchen door. The dog barked again, and for some reason I didn’t know a shiver shook me. I tried to explain it, seizing on the only reason I could see.

  “That’s funny, the key’s gone. Mrs. Garr always left that key hanging on the casing. She must have taken it with her.”

  “Well, you got a right to think things is funny,” Jerry said paternally. “But now you’ve seen for yourself there ain’t a thing wrong down here.” He turned, stalked toward the stairs. “The next time you get to thinking, don’t go opening your back door to see what noises is in the middle of the night. Wasn’t it near here that Zeitman guy was picked up? Yeah, I thought it was. You keep that in mind, lady. What if you’d run into something like that? You could have been knocked over that railing, just as well as left on that kitchen floor. You’re lucky, that’s all.”

  “All right,” I said meekly. It would have been a longer, darker drop, that real one over the rail.

  “Why don’t you come on up and sleep on my couch in my living room the rest of the night?” Mrs. Waller suddenly offered. Now that the attack had been pinned on an outsider, there was forgiveness and a sort of amused condescension at my weakness in the air.

  “That’s fine, that’s fine,” Jerry said.

  Mr. Kistler had been at my elbow during the entire tour of the house; when we stood once more in the hall on the main floor he spoke up thoughtfully.

  “There’s one more reassurance we might make, Mrs. Dacres. We might glance over the rest of the house to make sure no one’s in hiding. And there’s one thing more we might look at. The way I figure it, if it was anybody in the house, that person must have gone around in his stocking feet. And those stockings would be pretty dusty—show they’d been walked on, anyway. I suggest we look over all the socks in this outfit. We can begin on mine.”

  He sat down on the black leather chair to pull his shoes off. He hadn’t been walking outdoors in those socks.

  I looked at the other slippered feet. The policeman laughed.

  “Okay, buddy.” He was bored now.

  One by one the others showed socks or bare feet, guiltless of dust.

  They looked briefly into Mrs. Garr’s parlor before going upstairs. Mrs. Garr’s house has no attic; it’s a flat-roof house. So we just went around to all the rooms.

  It was a comedy by that time.

  No one in the bath.

  We crowded into Miss Sands’ room, peered at the limp mended stockings across the chair by the rumpled bed, peered into her laundry bag, all of us looking at the pitiful, bare, uncomfortable room—gas plate, varnished dresser, brass bed—half ashamed and half suspicious.

  The Waller apartment was next; it had three tiny rooms at the back: bedroom, living room, kitchen; it wasn’t as poverty-stricken as Miss Sands’ room, but it, too, had a pathetic bareness, few pictures, no knickknacks, none of the loved impedimenta that clutter up a happy life. Just the walls, the furniture, the rugs. Clean, undisturbed, barren with the barrenness of people who are childless in their middle age. Their stockings lay over their shoes, hers at the right of the bed, his at the left, clean.

  Mr. Grant’s room was next. There was a difference here. The room’s essential cheapness was overlaid with luxury. A good reading lamp by a comfortable, down-cushioned blue chair. An expensive set of brushes on the dresser top; a bookshelf crowded with well-bound books. He was wearing his socks.

  Mr. Buffingham’s. His room was like Miss Sands’ but more cluttered; unwashed kettles and a frying pan with grease congealed in it stood on the gas plate; unwashed dishes on the table. The s
tory was the same here: bedding thrown back and clothes on chairs. He dug out all the soiled socks from the heap of laundry on the closet floor, all dustless.

  Mr. Kistler’s rooms, the last, were locked before he opened them; the air was stale as if they had been closed all day. He made a ceremony of hunting up soiled socks.

  Not one single clue in the whole house.

  The men stood about in the hall after that, talking with that insufferably superior indulgence men often use when some woman has exhibited weakness. Jerry and Red, leaving, flung back:

  “Good night, all. We’re goin’. Ring us up when you really get murdered.”

  Mr. Kistler helped me carry sheets and blankets up to the Wallers’ couch. He took all the bedding in one load; I looked at his hands and thought of the strong hands on my throat. Certainly he had the strongest hands in the house.

  “You said you stopped at my door because you saw light under it?” I asked.

  “I didn’t think you’d be asleep with the light on. I thought I’d say good night. I rapped lightly and you didn’t answer, so I rapped louder and you didn’t answer, and pretty soon I was giving it the works.”

  “Lucky for me,” I said.

  But I was wondering.

  * * *

  —

  IN THE WALLER APARTMENT, I felt perfectly safe and dropped right off to sleep. In spite of Mrs. Garr I wasn’t particularly suspicious of the Wallers then; I thought that even if Mr. Waller had been the one who attacked me, he wouldn’t be likely to throttle me again in his own apartment. It would be a dead giveaway.

  So I slept the sleep of the unthrottled, and when I woke in the morning, both Mr. and Mrs. Waller came out to look at me in bed, more wistfully and jocosely than anything else, it seemed to me. Mrs. Waller asked me how I was and said I could just as well eat breakfast with them; Mr. Waller kidded me and treated me altogether as if I were a great big wonderful joke.

  I did eat breakfast with them, too; first going downstairs to dress and bring up bacon and cream for my share. We became so friendly Mr. Waller put on his hat to walk down Sixteenth to the car line with me, after breakfast. To see, he explained, that no one choked me on the way.

  “Don’t let this thing get you.” He was grandly paternal. “That sort of thing happens often in a town this size. Always some guy around trying to see what he can pick up. But it isn’t dangerous, not if you keep your doors and windows locked.”

  “You must have had a lot of experience with people like that,” I said. “Mrs. Garr told me about your being a retired policeman. You’re awfully young to be retired, though.”

  His geniality changed to sudden storm.

  “That old bitch! I could tell you things about her that would empty that house in a hurry and keep it empty!”

  That left me at half-mast. I tried to pass it over and be friendly again, but it was hard going. He shut up like a trap; I couldn’t get anything except a glower out of him, and when the car came he lifted his hat and stalked away without having said one more word.

  I was bewildered by the change. What had brought it on? My reference to his having retired so young? Why should he be infuriated by that? I began to wonder what could be the hidden story behind his retirement—had there been one of those police scandals that break out in newspaper rashes?

  I was still puzzling over Mr. Waller when I reached the office.

  I had a heck of a day there. Of course I had to begin by telling my dramatic experience to the girls in the office; being a copywriter, I detailed the attack in full. By ten o’clock, when I was swimming in a sea of proofs, the buyers began coming up with corrections so important they couldn’t possibly be sent up with the office girl as usual, and demanding with their second breaths, had I really been attacked by a man, and how far had it gone?

  The advertising manager didn’t like it; at six o’clock, I was told the girl I was replacing would be back next week, and thanks for helping out.

  Well, that job had lasted longer than I’d thought it would.

  Unemployed again, I took my week’s pay in its envelope and went home to bed, stopping only for a sandwich. Once home, I printed GONE TO BED in big black letters on a sheet of paper, pinned it to the outside of my doors, and did a sound job of barricading myself. That last included pulling the overstuffed chair over to reinforce the two dinette chairs under the doorknobs, pulling the kitchen table against the bolted back door, and hooking a chair under the doorknob of the door in my kitchen that led to the unused basement stairs.

  I slept well, too.

  If there was any prowling that night I didn’t hear it.

  Memorial Day, Sunday, dawned rainy and gray, as Memorial Days have a habit of dawning. I had, at breakfast, almost a reception. Even Mrs. Tewman came in, more sullen than ever because the disturbance Friday night had shown up her absence from the house, and she was afraid Mrs. Garr would hear of it when she came back. She stared at me as if I were a victim in a wax museum. Mrs. Waller had told her the story.

  “You missed out on it,” I condoled.

  “Jim and I went out on a party. We don’t get much chance to go out on a party when she’s here.”

  “I’ll bet you don’t,” I said. “Sit down and have a cookie?”

  She took the cookie, but she wouldn’t sit down; she munched grimly, standing up.

  “It was a beer party,” she said defiantly, and left.

  Mr. Kistler came down at eleven to eat everything left on the table.

  “I suppose you know your publicity by heart?” he started.

  “Whose publicity? You mean I got in the papers?”

  “Don’t tell me you don’t know a whole reporter stormed the house yesterday! He telephoned.”

  “He missed me. I was a working girl.”

  “Didn’t even read last night’s Comet?”

  “Too tired.”

  “These people who can’t read and then try to alibi,” he said.

  He left, taking his slice of toast with him, and came back, still chewing, with a paper.

  “See? Page eleven.”

  The item he pointed at was a brief notice at the obscure bottom of page eleven.

  PROWLER ATTACKS WOMAN

  Mrs. Gwynne Dacres, 26, lodger at 593 Trent Street, was set upon by an unknown assailant who attempted to choke her, early this morning. Mrs. Dacres told police she was wakened by a slight noise at the back of the house and went to investigate it. The moment she stepped outside her door, the man sprang upon her and, she says, attempted to throttle her. She found herself lying on the floor of her kitchen when she recovered consciousness a short time later. Police believe she probably surprised a prowler who was trying to break into a basement window. No clues were found. Mrs. Dacres recovered promptly without medical assistance.

  “Short and sweet! ‘Recovered promptly’? What about my nerves?”

  “Copywriters don’t have ’em in the plural. Only in the singular.”

  “Sir! No gentleman is insulting to a lady at her own table!”

  “But it’s a breakfast table. How do you know what goes on at breakfast tables—or do you?”

  Miss Sands and the Wallers came in then. After they had been there awhile, the breakfast things were all pushed to one end of the table so we could play put-and-take with matches for chips. Mr. Grant came down to chirp around the table, too, although he refused to play. Mr. Buffingham poked his head in at the door just before noon.

  “How’re you doin’?” he asked awkwardly.

  “Fine,” I said. “I have almost all Mr. Kistler’s matches. Come in and take a hand?”

  “No, thanks, I’m a workin’ man.”

  After he left we played without interruption. At three o’clock we were still sitting there; the rumpled tablecloth still held the toaster and the empty dishes at one end of the table. At three o’clock
Mr Kistler had all the matches. The Wallers and Miss Sands gave up and went upstairs.

  “Unlucky in love.” Mr. Kistler aggrievedly piled the matches back into their box. “I’ll pay you back in dinner for that breakfast I ate.”

  He did better than that. We dined and danced, and the next morning he got me up early to go fishing in a woolly gray drizzle. We spent all that holiday sitting in a boat on Slater Lake, pulling flat little sunfish up on drop lines, screwing hooks out of their gelatinous mouths, and then throwing them back into the lake again, because they were too little to keep. He thought it was fun. We didn’t have licenses, either.

  I rose late on Tuesday morning because of the long day before, and because I wasn’t working. In fact I was just getting out of bed when the telephone rang, about ten o’clock. Mrs. Tewman didn’t answer, so I did.

  The high voice at the other end of the wire was Mrs. Halloran’s.

  “Could I speak to Mrs. Garr, please?”

  “Why, hello, Mrs. Halloran, welcome home. I haven’t seen her, but I’ll call.”

  With my hand over the mouthpiece I called, “Mrs. Garr! Mrs. Garr!” I waited, but there wasn’t any answer.

  “I haven’t seen her yet, and she doesn’t answer,” I said to the phone. “When did you get in? Did you have a nice time?”

  “About a hour ago. I just got home. Oh, swell, I had a swell time. I saw four movies and Lincoln Park and Michigan Avenue and I bought me a hat in the Boston Store and I saw the house where that girl shot her friend in the back; you know, you saw it in the papers?”

  “It must have been lovely.”

  “Oh, it was, just lovely, my, I had a swell time.”

  “Shall I take any message for Mrs. Garr when I see her?”

  “No, you just tell her I called up and it was just lovely, my, I had a swell time.”

  I don’t see how I could have had an inkling of the truth from that conversation.

  The only thing that struck me, as I went back to dress, was that Mrs. Halloran’s message didn’t sound grateful, it sounded vindictive, and that it was odd of her to call before Mrs. Garr had even had time to get home from the station.