By Sunday evening, a week after the wreck, my inaction had goaded me to frenzy.
The very sight of Johnson across the street or lurking, always within sight of
the house, kept me constantly exasperated. It was on that day that things began
to come to a focus, a burning-glass of events that seemed to center on me.
I dined alone that evening in no cheerful frame of mind. There had been a polo
game the day before and I had lent a pony, which is always a bad thing to do.
And she had wrenched her shoulder, besides helping to lose the game. There was
no one in town: the temperature was ninety and climbing, and my left hand
persistently cramped under its bandage.
Mrs. Klopton herself saw me served, my bread buttered and cut in tidbits, my
meat ready for my fork. She hovered around me maternally, obviously trying to
cheer me.
“The paper says still warmer,” she ventured. “The thermometer
is ninety-two now.”
“And this coffee is two hundred and fifty,” I said, putting down my
cup. “Where is Euphemia? I haven’t seen her around, or heard a dish
smash all day.”
“Euphemia is in bed,” Mrs. Klopton said gravely. “Is your
meat cut small enough, Mr. Lawrence?” Mrs. Klopton can throw more mystery
into an ordinary sentence than any one I know. She can say, “Are your
sheets damp, sir?” And I can tell from her tone that the house across the
street has been robbed, or that my left hand neighbor has appendicitis. So now
I looked up and asked the question she was waiting for.
“What’s the matter with Euphemia?” I inquired idly.
“Frightened into her bed,” Mrs. Klopton said in a stage whisper.
“She’s had three hot water bottles and she hasn’t done a
thing all day but moan.”
“She oughtn’t to take hot water bottles,” I said in my
severest tone. “One would make me moan. You need not wait, I’ll
ring if I need anything.”
Mrs. Klopton sailed to the door, where she stopped and wheeled indignantly.
“I only hope you won’t laugh on the wrong side of your face some
morning, Mr. Lawrence,” she declared, with Christian fortitude.
“But I warn you, I am going to have the police watch that house next
door.”
I was half inclined to tell her that both it and we were under police
surveillance at that moment. But I like Mrs. Klopton, in spite of the fact that
I make her life a torment for her, so I refrained.
“Last night, when the paper said it was going to storm, I sent Euphemia
to the roof to bring the rugs in. Eliza had slipped out, although it was her
evening in. Euphemia went up to the roof—it was eleven
o’clock—and soon I heard her running down-stairs crying. When she
got to my room she just folded up on the floor. She said there was a black
figure sitting on the parapet of the house next door—the empty
house—and that when she appeared it rose and waved long black arms at her
and spit like a cat.”
I had finished my dinner and was lighting a cigarette. “If there was any
one up there, which I doubt, they probably sneezed,” I suggested.
“But if you feel uneasy, I’ll take a look around the roof to-night
before I turn in. As far as Euphemia goes, I wouldn’t be uneasy about
her—doesn’t she always have an attack of some sort when Eliza rings
in an extra evening on her?”
So I made a superficial examination of the window locks that night, visiting
parts of the house that I had not seen since I bought it. Then I went to the
roof. Evidently it had not been intended for any purpose save to cover the
house, for unlike the houses around, there was no staircase. A ladder and a
trap-door led to it, and it required some nice balancing on my part to get up
with my useless arm. I made it, however, and found this unexplored part of my
domain rather attractive. It was cooler than down-stairs, and I sat on the
brick parapet and smoked my final cigarette. The roof of the empty house
adjoined mine along the back wing, but investigation showed that the trap-door
across the low dividing wall was bolted underneath.
There was nothing out of the ordinary anywhere, and so I assured Mrs. Klopton.
Needless to say, I did not tell her that I had left the trap-door open, to see
if it would improve the temperature of the house. I went to bed at midnight,
merely because there was nothing else to do. I turned on the night lamp at the
head of my bed, and picked up a volume of Shaw at random (it was Arms and
the Man, and I remember thinking grimly that I was a good bit of a
chocolate cream soldier myself), and prepared to go to sleep. Shaw always puts
me to sleep. I have no apologies to make for what occurred that night, and not
even an explanation that I am sure of. I did a foolish thing under impulse, and
I have not been sorry.
It was something after two when the door-bell rang. It rang quickly, twice. I
got up drowsily, for the maids and Mrs. Klopton always lock themselves beyond
reach of the bell at night, and put on a dressing-gown. The bell rang again on
my way down-stairs. I lit the hall light and opened the door. I was wide-awake
now, and I saw that it was Johnson. His bald head shone in the light—his
crooked mouth was twisted in a smile.
“Good Heavens, man,” I said irritably. “Don’t you ever
go home and go to bed?”
He closed the vestibule door behind him and cavalierly turned out the light.
Our dialogue was sharp, staccato.
“Have you a key to the empty house next door?” he demanded.
“Somebody’s in there, and the latch is caught.”
“The houses are alike. The key to this door may fit. Did you see them go
in?”
“No. There’s a light moving up from room to room. I saw something
like it last night, and I have been watching. The patrolman reported queer
doings there a week or so ago.”
“A light!” I exclaimed. “Do you mean that you—”
“Very likely,” he said grimly. “Have you a revolver?”
“All kinds in the gun rack,” I replied, and going into the den, I
came back with a Smith and Wesson. “I’m not much use,” I
explained, “with this arm, but I’ll do what I can. There may be
somebody there. The servants here have been uneasy.”
Johnson planned the campaign. He suggested on account of my familiarity with
the roof, that I go there and cut off escape in that direction. “I have
Robison out there now—the patrolman on the beat,” he said.
“He’ll watch below and you above, while I search the house. Be as
quiet as possible.”
I was rather amused. I put on some clothes and felt my way carefully up the
stairs, the revolver swinging free in my pocket, my hand on the rail. At the
foot of the ladder I stopped and looked up. Above me there was a gray rectangle
of sky dotted with stars. It occurred to me that with my one serviceable hand
holding the ladder, I was hardly in a position to defend myself, that I was
about to hoist a body that I am rather careful of into a danger I
couldn’t see and wasn’t particularly keen about anyhow. I
don’t mind saying that the seconds it took me to scramble up the ladder
were among the most unpleasant that I recall.
I got to the top, however, without incident. I could see fairly well after the
darkness of the house beneath, but there was nothing suspicious in sight. The
roofs, separated by two feet of brick wall, stretched around me, unbroken save
by an occasional chimney. I went very softly over to the other trap, the one
belonging to the suspected house. It was closed, but I imagined I could hear
Johnson’s footsteps ascending heavily. Then even that was gone. A near-by
clock struck three as I stood waiting. I examined my revolver then, for the
first time, and found it was empty!
I had been rather skeptical until now. I had had the usual tolerant attitude of
the man who is summoned from his bed to search for burglars, combined with the
artificial courage of firearms. With the discovery of my empty gun, I felt like
a man on the top of a volcano in lively eruption. Suddenly I found myself
staring incredulously at the trap-door at my feet. I had examined it early in
the evening and found it bolted. Did I imagine it, or had it raised about an
inch? Wasn’t it moving slowly as I looked? No, I am not a hero: I was
startled almost into a panic. I had one arm, and whoever was raising that
trap-door had two. My knees had a queer inclination to bend the wrong way.
Johnson’s footsteps were distinct enough, but he was evidently far below.
The trap, raised perhaps two inches now, remained stationary. There was no
sound from beneath it: once I thought I heard two or three gasping
respirations: I am not sure they were not my own. I wanted desperately to stand
on one leg at a time and hold the other up out of focus of a possible revolver.
I did not see the hand appear. There was nothing there, and then it was there,
clutching the frame of the trap. I did the only thing I could think of; I put
my foot on it!
There was not a sound from beneath. The next moment I was kneeling and had
clutched the wrist just above the hand. After a second’s struggle, the
arm was still. With something real to face, I was myself again.
“Don’t move, or I’ll stand on the trap and break your
arm,” I panted. What else could I threaten? I couldn’t shoot, I
couldn’t even fight. “Johnson!” I called.
And then I realized the thing that stayed with me for a month, the thing I can
not think of even now without a shudder. The hand lay ice cold, strangely
quiescent. Under my fingers, an artery was beating feebly. The wrist was as
slender as—I held the hand to the light. Then I let it drop.
“Good Lord,” I muttered, and remained on my knees, staring at the
spot where the hand had been. It was gone now: there was a faint rustle in the
darkness below, and then silence.
I held up my own hand in the starlight and stared at a long scratch in the
palm. “A woman!” I said to myself stupidly. “By all
that’s ridiculous, a woman!”
Johnson was striking matches below and swearing softly to himself. “How
the devil do you get to the roof?” he called. “I think I’ve
broken my nose.”
He found the ladder after a short search and stood at the bottom, looking up at
me. “Well, I suppose you haven’t seen him?” he inquired.
“There are enough darned cubbyholes in this house to hide a patrol wagon
load of thieves.” He lighted a fresh match. “Hello, here’s
another door!”
By the sound of his diminishing footsteps I supposed it was a rear staircase.
He came up again in ten minutes or so, this time with the policeman.
“He’s gone, all right,” he said ruefully. “If
you’d been attending to your business, Robison, you’d have watched
the back door.”
“I’m not twins.” Robison was surly.
“Well,” I broke in, as cheerfully as I could, “if you are
through with this jolly little affair, and can get down my ladder without
having my housekeeper ring the burglar alarm, I have some good Monongahela
whisky—eh?”
They came without a second invitation across the roof, and with them safely
away from the house I breathed more freely. Down in the den I fulfilled my
promise, which Johnson drank to the toast, “Coming through the
rye.” He examined my gun rack with the eye of a connoisseur, and even
when he was about to go he cast a loving eye back at the weapons.
“Ever been in the army?” he inquired.
“No,” I said with a bitterness that he noticed but failed to
comprehend. “I’m a chocolate cream soldier—you don’t
read Shaw, I suppose, Johnson?”
“Never heard of him,” the detective said indifferently.
“Well, good night, Mr. Blakeley. Much obliged.” At the door he
hesitated and coughed.
“I suppose you understand, Mr. Blakeley,” he said awkwardly,
“that this—er—surveillance is all in the day’s work. I
don’t like it, but it’s duty. Every man to his duty, sir.”
“Sometime when you are in an open mood, Johnson,” I returned,
“you can explain why I am being watched at all.”
