Part 12 (1/2)

With the naked eye it was just a brown blank, like undeveloped film; under the gla.s.s a dim outline revealed itself.

”Haven't you got anything stronger? Get me a magnifying gla.s.s.”

The jeweler came hurrying back with it, Jordan got the thing in focus under it, and suddenly found himself looking at a dimmed snapshot of his own kid, taken at the age of three or four. He didn't say a word, just gave a peculiar heaving snort down his nose, like a horse drinking water. There couldn't be any mistake, it was no optical illusion, the gla.s.s played up the engraved lettering on the inside of the other half-locket: H. J. to M. J. 1925.

He heard some other guy walk out of the shop saying to the jeweler he didn't want to sell it after all; it must have been himself, because here he was on his way back home with it again. He didn't say a word when he got in, just sat there reading the account of the fire in the morning's paper over and over, and s.h.i.+vering a little more each time. Finally he put the crusher on that by getting up and pouring himself a shot from the bottle in the closet.

”What jeweler'd you leave that locket with?” he asked her quietly.

She looked up from one of the kid's stockings she was darning. ”Old man Elias,” she answered unhesitatingly. ”He's the only one I know of around here.”

He'd just been there. He didn't say another word for the next hour. Then, very slowly, around 11 he took out his pipe for his usual last smoke. He had to keep his wrists from trembling as he reached for the tobacco tin, filled the bowl, pressed it in with his thumb. His lashes were low over his eyes the whole time, it was hard to tell where he was looking. He took a folder of matches out of his pocket. She came right over to him with a housewifely smile. ”No, no, that's my job,” she said. She lit the pipe for him and then she turned the flickering match upside down, deftly pinched it at the head, and let it burn itself up to a finish. He kept looking down his nose at the bowl of his pipe, and beyond, to where her other hand was. You could only see a quarter of the match folder now; her hand covered the rest. You couldn't see it at all now, it had been tucked completely out of sight. She straightened up and moved around the room. She'd forgotten to give him his matches back, as she had the night before. His face was moist sitting there, as if the room were too warm. He got up and went to bed, leaving on his socks and trousers under the covers.

She stayed in the kitchen for awhile, and then came in carrying a cup and saucer with steam coming from it. ”Harry,” she said, ”I want you to try some of this, just to make sure of getting a good night's sleep. The druggist I was speaking to last night recommended -”

”You seem to need it, not me,” he said dryly.

”I just had mine out there,” she a.s.sured him. ”Now don't let it get cold -”

He took the cup from her, sat up, keeping the covers around his shoulders with one hand. ”Well, bring me the box and let me see what it is, I like to know what I'm swallowing.”

She turned and went out again docilely. He promptly thrust one leg far out, flipped up the lid of the radiator cover, and emptied the cup into the humidifying pan below.

”Tasted swell,” he said, handing the cup back when she returned with a can marked Ovaltine. He gave her a wretched grimace that was the closest he could get to a grin. ”Just like in the ads,” he said, and flopped limply back on the pillow. The lights went out.

She came in again in about half an hour and bent over him, listening. ”Harry,” she said guardedly, ”Harry,” and even shook him a little by the shoulder. He didn't move. It sure was supposed to be strong, all right! he thought. He heard the front door close, and he reared up, shoved his feet into his shoes, whipped on his coat, and made for the door. He heard the elevator slide open and close again outside just as he got there. He tore the flat door open, attempted to catch the elevator before it went down, then stopped short. Stop her? What good would it do to stop her? She'd only say she couldn't sleep again, like last night, and he'd end up by half believing her himself. He had to find out once and for all, make sure, and there was only one way to do that.

He waited till the red shaft light went out before he rang to bring the car back again. It flashed on again, white, and the porter gave him a surprised look when he saw who it was. There wasn't a joke in poor Jordan's whole system, but he managed to force one out nevertheless. ”Insomnia seems to be catching.” The porter smirked. He didn't believe him, and Jordan didn't blame him.

She was still in sight when he got to the door, hugging the building line as she walked. Third again, where the houses weren't fireproof and there were no doormen. He waited until she'd turned the corner before he started out from their own place, because if she should look back - the porter was right beside him the whole time, wondering what it was all about. Jordan covered the pause by pretending to sc.r.a.pe something off the sole of his shoe that wasn't there at all. When he finally got to the corner she was already two blocks up, avenue blocks being shorter than the lateral ones. He crossed to the other side, so he could get closer to her without being conspicuous, then crept up until he was just half a block behind her, she on the west side, he on the east. The El pillars kept coming between them like a sort of spa.r.s.e picket fence, and then there were occasional barber poles and empty gla.s.s sidewalk display cases to screen him. But she never once looked around.

When she got to the corner where the scene of the fire was, ten blocks north of where they lived, she stopped, and be saw her stand there gazing down the street at the wrecked building. The front wall had been pulled down by now, but the side walls were still up, with an occasional floor beam to link them. It was almost as if she was gloating, the way she stood there devouring the scene, and it was the deadest giveaway ever that she knew what it was, that she'd been there once before.

He put his hand to his windpipe, as if he couldn't get enough air in, and turned his head away. Any shred of hope he may have had until now, that she'd lost the locket and someone living in that house had picked it up and carried it there to lose it a second time in the fire, was swept remorselessly away - no room any more for benefit of doubt.

She started on again, so he did too. Why didn't she turn back - wasn't it bad enough, what she'd done already? Was she going to do it over again, the very night after? But hope springs eternal, and a minute after she'd d.a.m.ned herself irrevocably by standing there staring at her handiwork, he was again trying to find an out for her in his own mind. She had undoubtedly been there the night before - there was no denying that - but could she have come home so calm after she had purposely done a thing like that? n.o.body could. It must have been accidental. She might have had to light a match to find her way downstairs, thrown it over the banisters, and gone away without realizing what she'd done. Or someone else had done it, right after she left. She might have been visiting some indigent relative or black sheep that she didn't want him to know about, given them the locket to turn into cash, and then fibbed about it to him; even the best of women kept certain things like that from their husbands at times. It was that alone that kept him from swiftly overtaking, stopping her. Only why didn't she go home, why in G.o.d's name didn't she go home now?

Instead she went two blocks farther, then abruptly, as if on the spur of the moment, she chose a side street to the right, leading down toward Second Avenue. Again, he took the opposite side of the street, but hung back a little, since it was much narrower than the north-south artery. It was a neighborhood of decrepit, unprotected tenements, all crammed from bas.e.m.e.nt to roof with helpless sleepers, and his spine turned cold as ice as he darted in and out from doorway to doorway after her. And at each moldy entrance that she herself pa.s.sed, her head would turn a little and she'd glance in, he couldn't help noticing. Past Second she went, all the way to First, and then without warning she doubled back, began to retrace her steps. He shrank back into the nearest doorway and flattened himself there, to let her go by. At last, he breathed with relief, she was going home. And then the horrid thought occurred - had she just been reconnoitering, trying to pick the right spot for her ghastly act?

There was not even a taxi driver around this time; the street, the whole zone, was dead. She pa.s.sed a building that was vacant, that had been foreclosed and doomed to demolition perhaps, whose five floors of curtainless windows stared blankly forth, most of the lower panes broken by ball-playing kids. She had pa.s.sed it once before. Now suddenly, just as she came abreast of it, the blackness of its yawning entryway seemed to suck her in. One minute she was there in full view on the sidewalk, the next she had vanished; she was gone like a puff of smoke, and he shuddered at the implication.

He came out of his retreat and started crossing diagonally toward where she had gone in. As he neared it he quickened his steps, until he was nearly running. He looked in from the sidewalk; it was like trying to peer through black velvet. He stepped in, treading softly, one hand out before him. Something suddenly slashed across his waist and he nearly folded up like a jackknife. One hand pressed to the excruciating stomach pain that resulted, he explored the obstacle with the other. The front door had evidently been stolen off its hinges, carted away for firewood. In place of it the new owners or the police had nailed up a number of slats to keep out intruders, all but the middle one of these had also been yanked away, and you could either slip in under it or, rather foolishly, climb up over it. He ducked below it, went soft-shoeing down the musty hall, keeping the wall at his shoulder to guide him, stopping every other minute to listen, trying to find out where she had gone.

Suddenly the thin glow of a match showed ahead, far down at the other end of the hall. Not the flame itself - that was hidden - just its dimmer reflection, little more than darkness with motes of orange in it. It was coming from behind the staircase; so too, before he could take even another step forward, was the rattling and scuffling of dry papers, then the ominous sound of a box being dragged across the floor. He plunged forward, still keeping his heels clear of the ground. The match glow went out once before he got there, then a second one immediately replaced it. He turned the corner of the staircase base and stopped dead - He saw it with his own eyes; caught her in the very act, red-handed, killing all condonation, all doubt, once and for all. She had dragged a box filled with old newspapers into the angle formed by the two walls of the little alcove just under and behind the long tinder-dry wooden staircase that went up five stories, with a broken skylight above to give it a perfect flue. He saw the lighted match leave her hand, fall downward into the box, saw a second one flare and follow it with the quickness that only a woman can give such a gesture, saw her preparing to strike a third one on the sandpaper.

He caught her with both hands, one at the wrist, the other just under the thick knot of hair at the back of her neck. She couldn't turn, gave a sort of heave that was half vocal and half bodily, and billowed out like a flag caught in a high wind. He flung her sideways and around to the back of him, let go his hold, and heard her stumble up against the wall. The silence of the two of them only added to the horror of the situation, in a gloom that was already beginning to be relieved by yellow flashes coming up from the box, each time higher than before. He kicked it further out with the back of his heel, to where he could get at it, then tamped his foot down into the very middle of it, again and again, flattening the papers, stifling the vicious yellow brightness. It snuffed out under the beating; pitch-darkness welled up around him, and he heard the pad of her footfalls running down the long hallway, careening crazily from side to side until they vanished outside in the street. He couldn't go after her yet, he had to make sure.

He made the mistake of reaching down for the box with his hand, intending to drag it after him out into the open. The draft of the abrupt motion must have set a dozen wicked little red eyes gleaming again inside it, then an unevenness between two boards of the rotting floor jogged it, caught it, up-ended it behind him before he could check his progress. It was out from under the stairs now, with an open flume straight up through the roof to the sky above sucking at it. Instantly papers and red sparks went swirling upward in a deadly funnel; before bis eyes he saw the sparks fanned brighter, bigger, the scorched papers burst into yellow flame once more as they shot up the long dark chute, striking against this banister and that like so many fireb.a.l.l.s setting off the dried woodwork. Before he could reach the nearest of them, on the floor above the whole crazy spiral from top to bottom was alight with concentric rings of brightness, one to a floor. It was too late - she'd accomplished what she'd set out to do, in spite of him! He turned back from the first landing that he'd climbed up to, raced down again and out along the hall, remembering the board at the entrance just in time. A faint crackling already sounded from the shaft behind him, like a lot of mice nibbling at something. He tore out of the tunnel-like doorway, and turned up toward the corner.

He saw her just a few steps ahead of him, she hadn't gone very far after all. She was lingering there about the premises as though she couldn't tear herself away. He caught her by the hand as he swept by, pulled her after him as far as the corner, where the alarm box was. She didn't resist, didn't try to escape from him at all, not even when he let go of her to send in the call. Then he hurried onward with her, not waiting for the apparatus to get there. If he'd been alone it would have been different, but he was afraid she'd say something, give herself away, if they questioned her. He didn't want her arrested - not until he had a chance to find out what was the matter with her first. They were three blocks away already, hurrying homeward, when the engines went roaring and clanging past them up Third Avenue, satanic red lights aglow. He bowed his head, but she turned and stared after them.

The only time he spoke, the whole way, was once when he asked her in a m.u.f.fled voice, ”How many times did you do it - before tonight?” She didn't answer. When the porter in their own building had taken them up to their floor and said ”Good night,” she was the one who replied, just as though nothing had happened. Jordan closed the door and locked it on the two of them - and what they both knew, and n.o.body else. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, then turned and leaned it against the wall.

”People might have been living in that house,” he said heavily.

”But there weren't any, it was vacant,” she said simply.

”There were plenty in the houses on either side of it. It doesn't matter even if it was just a pile of brushwood in a vacant lot.” He took her by the shoulders and made her look at him. ”Don't you feel well? Does you head bother you? What makes you do it?”

She shrank back, suddenly terrified. ”No, no, not that! I know what you mean. Oh Harry, don't take my mind from me, you can't! There's nothing the matter with me! They told you that long ago, they proved it, all of them, after my accident!” She would have gone down on her knees, but he held her up.

”Then why do you do it? Why? Why?” he kept asking.

”I don't know. I can't help it.” That was all they said that night.

He was still in the same clothes, hadn't been to bed at all, when the morning paper was left at the door. He lifted himself stiffly off the chair that he had tilted on its two hind legs against the door, to make sure that she stayed in the place, took the paper inside and looked for the account. It wasn't played up much, they'd put it out after it had destroyed the staircase, and they were inclined to think that two tramps who had found shelter on one of the upper floors had inadvertently started it, either by smoking or cooking their food. One had run away but one had been found with a broken leg, in the rear yard where he'd leaped down trying to save himself, and was in the hospital. Jordan got an envelope and jotted down the fellow's name and the hospital on the outside of it, then stuck two five-dollar bills in it with a note, just two words: Sorry, buddy.

Then he got the police on the wire. ”Are there going to be charges against the vag So-and-so with the broken leg, in connection with that fire last night?” There certainly were, he was a.s.sured: vagrancy, unlawful entry, and setting fire to the premises, and who wanted to know anyway? ”I'm an investigator for the Herk Insurance Company. He'll have to take the rap on the first two counts maybe, but I'd like to say a word for him on the fire charge. Let me know at my office when the case comes up.” Time enough to figure out a way of clearing the man without involving her, when the time came.

Then he telephoned his boss. ”Cancel that report I turned in on the fire night before last, the Lapolla property, and hold up the indemnity.” He swallowed hard. ”It wasn't accidental - it was arson.”

Parmenter got excited right away. ”Who was responsible, got any idea?”

”An unknown woman,” said Jordan limply. ”That's all I can tell you right now. Lapolla himself had no connection with it, take my word for it. I'll give you a new report when I get a little more evidence - and - and I won't be in until late today.”

He went to the bedroom door, took the key out of his pocket, and unlocked it. The room was dark, he'd nailed down the Venetian blinds to the window sills the night before. Looking at her lying there so calm, so innocent, he wondered if she was insane, or what. Yet the specialists who had examined her when he and she had brought suit against the taxi company whose cab she had fallen out of, hadn't been able to find anything, not even a fracture or concussion; she was right about that. They had lost the suit as a result. But maybe things like that came on slowly, or maybe there was no connection, it was something deeper, more inexplicable. He woke her up gently, and said, ”Better go in and get the kid ready for school. Don't say anything about last night in front of him, understand?”

When the boy had left he said, ”Let's go out and get some air, I don't have to go to work today, Parmenter's laid up.” She got her hat and coat without a word. They set out without seeming to have any fixed destination, but Jordan led toward Fifth Avenue and there he flagged a bus. He pulled the cord at 168th, and she followed him out in silence. But when he stopped a little further on, she looked up at the building. ”Why, this is the Psychiatric Inst.i.tute!” she said, and got white.

”Parmenter's in there undergoing treatment, they told me about it when I telephoned the office,” he said. ”You come in and wait, I want to go up and see how he's getting along.”

She went in with him without further protest. He left her sitting there out in the reception room, and asked to see one of the staff members. He closed his eyes, could hardly answer when he was asked what they could do for him. ”I'd like to have my wife put under observation.” He had rehea.r.s.ed what he was going to say on the way there; he still couldn't bear to tell them the whole truth - not yet anyway. She would be liable to imprisonment if sane, commitment to one of the hideous state inst.i.tutions if unbalanced, he couldn't let that happen to her. There were always private sanitariums, nursing-homes, he could put her in himself - but he had to find out first. What symptoms, if any, did she show, he was asked.

”Nothing very alarming,” he said, ”she - she goes for short walks by herself in the middle of the night, that's all, claims she can't sleep.” The fire must stay out of this at all costs; reluctantly he brought out a small bottle of chocolate-colored liquid that he had collected from the pan of the radiator before leaving the flat. ”I have reason to believe she tried to give me a sleeping potion, so that I wouldn't worry about her going out. You can tell if you'll a.n.a.lyze this. We have a child; I think for his sake you should set my mind at rest.”

He could, they told him, engage a private room for her if he wanted to and leave her there for the night, have one of the staff doctors look at her when he came in. It would have to be voluntary, though, they couldn't commit her against her will merely at his request and without a physician's certificate.

He nodded. ”I'll go out and talk it over with her.” He went back and sat down beside her. ”Marie, would you trust me enough to stay here overnight so they can tell us whether there's anything the matter with you?”

She got frightened at first. ”Then it wasn't your boss! I knew that, I knew you were going to do this from the time we left the house!” She lowered her voice to a whisper, so they wouldn't be overheard. ”Harry, I'm sane! You know it! Don't do this to me, you can't!”

”It's either that, or I'll have to go to the police about you. Which is it going to be?” he asked her, also in a whisper. ”I've got to, I'm an accessory if I don't. You'll end up by killing somebody, if you haven't already without my knowing it. It's for your own sake, Marie.”

”I'll never do it again - I swear I won't!” she pleaded, so convincingly, with such childlike earnestness, that he saw where the real risk lay. It was like water off a duck's back; she didn't seem to realize even now the heinousness of having done it at all, and certainly she would keep on doing it again and again, every time she got the chance.

”But you said yourself you didn't know why you did it, you couldn't help it.”

”Well, keep matches away from me, then; don't let me see any, don't smoke in front of me.”