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 story 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
