Rapidly, then, I went through the book. It went back for months. One receipt to each person for each week. Each week a receipt to Miss Sands, $5.00. Each week a receipt to Mr. Buffingham, $9.00.
Carefully, I checked. The sums never varied. Mr. Grant’s room was small and its comforts probably provided by himself; $2.00 was about right for that. Mr. Kistler had two nice front rooms and shared a private lavatory. Six dollars was about right for that. But Miss Sands, $5.00 for a room scarcely larger than Mr. Grant’s! And Mr. Buffingham, $9.00 a week for a room with one window!
I couldn’t make it out. If it were the Wallers’ apartment, now . . .
The Wallers! Again I went through the receipt book, every last single stub.
There wasn’t one to indicate the Wallers had ever paid anything!
13
I SAT DOWN, THE better to think.
Mrs. Halloran grabbed the receipt book, hunted through it, looked from me to it and back again.
“There ain’t nothing you can get anything out of here,” she said. “They’re all paid up. My aunt Hattie wouldn’t never have let anybody stay if they weren’t paid up.”
What would I gain by keeping my discovery about the Wallers secret? It would be a lot easier and more natural for Mrs. Halloran to tackle the Wallers about their rent than for me to do so. And anything Mrs. Halloran found out I could soon know.
I took the book back from her nervous hands; she gave it to me bottom side up. The cardboard back had been scribbled over with spidery figures, some of them almost erased with handling, the others fresher. The freshest of all was a row of figures added up in a straggling column:
$ 5
$ 9
$ 2
$ 6
$ 4
$26
And underneath, in Mrs. Garr’s old-fashioned script, were two words:
Not enough.
That decided me. There they were, all the weekly rents for which she had given receipts. And here, too, there was no sum included for rent from the Wallers!
Mrs. Garr was scarcely the person to give people free houseroom—not for nothing. And the Wallers themselves said they had been here for years.
But before seeking an explanation I moved to verify the facts.
“Look,” I said to the twittering Mrs. Halloran. “Doesn’t this seem queer to you? Not a single receipt for rent to the Wallers!”
She grabbed the book from me again.
“No, there ain’t! That’s right, there ain’t! Well, they’re going to pay rent to me, I can tell you that much!”
As I had expected, she didn’t wait for more; she hurried out and upstairs.
I went on with the search. In turn, I took each piece of furniture, going over it carefully. When I was halfway through the room Mrs. Halloran was back, half subdued, one quarter suspicious, and one quarter belligerent.
“They says she owed ’em money. They said my aunt Harriet owed ’em two thousand dollars, and they had a note for it. They says she let ’em live here instead of payin’ ’em interest. Well, I ain’t goin’ to do it. They can’t live here on me! And I ain’t going to pay that money, either. They can just go to law for it. They’ll see! Before they can get any money out of me I’ll spend it. I’ll spend every penny!”
“Mmmmmmm . . .” I said. “If they can prove Mrs. Garr owed them money, that’ll probably be paid before you get yours at all.”
She immediately screamed and fell back on the davenport, kicking her heels like an overgrown four-year-old. I gathered, from her comments, that the Wallers were thieves and robbers, I was a thief and a robber, and the sooner I got out of there the better, the police were all thieves and robbers, and she’d get the G-men, that’s who she’d get, they’d “pertect” her, they’d shoot us all down!
There wasn’t anything to do but let her scream; the lumpy fat policeman, who had wandered out into the hall in boredom at my unsuccessful hunting, returned to the doorway, where he stood contemplating her histrionics with calm round eyes.
I went on searching. Nothing.
Until I got to the overstuffed armchair. That contributed nothing above, but when I upended it I noticed that three tacks, holding one corner of the bottom lining, looked loose. They worked out easily; I poked among the springs with my fingers.
Mrs. Halloran, smelling money, stopped screaming, dashed forward, jerked my hands away, and scrambled inside with her own.
Bills came out in her hands. Ones and fives.
She tore madly at the upholstery with one hand, clutching the money to her bosom with the other, uttering beastly little noises to warn me off. Excelsior, horsehair, wisps of cloth scattered over the floor, but there was only the one cache.
She arose from her couch, glaring at me, breathless, at bay.
The policeman placidly advanced.
“I’ll have to take that in charge, ma’am.”
“No, you ain’t going to take it! You thief! You robber!”
As the officer advanced upon her, she thrust the money into the front of her dress; he caught her two hands easily behind her back in one fat fist, reached down with the other, drew the money forth.
“You wouldn’t rob them poor animals, would you?”
She kicked and clawed at him; he fended her off, holding out the money to me.
“Count it, lady.”
I did.
One hundred and twenty dollars, even.
He took it back.
“I call you both to witness the amount.” With that he stowed the bills away in a big wallet, strolled back to the door, Mrs. Halloran shrieking after him in helpless fury.
After that the searching was out of my hands. Mrs. Halloran sped ruthlessly from one article to another, grabbing picture frames from the walls, ripping them apart, casting the shattered remnants on the floor. Between the back and the photograph in one frame, she
