“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 feel 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.
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
