I looked around at her and had a shock. It was the first time I’d had a good look into her eyes. They were black and little and hard and hot, set deep in puffy eyelids like little lumps of hot coal pushed deep into bread dough. Evil eyes. Evil eyes under that lovely white hair.
“Why, certainly,” I said, to cover my own startled recognition. “That’s kind of you. I wonder where—”
“In that closet is a place this trunk would fit. You take that end.”
She breathed with gasps, carrying her side. I hadn’t been into the closet before; it had no light, but a way back at the far end was a raised platform perhaps six inches high that the trunk just fit on.
“They’s stairs under here.” She looked at the trunk with satisfaction. “That’s a good place for a trunk. Most apartments, you’d have to keep it in a basement.”
After that she just watched me again, her eyes like spyglasses on every movement.
F’heaven’s sake, I asked myself, is she going to stick like the old man of the sea?
I asked: “Are there many other people in the house?” I hoped I wouldn’t have quite all her time.
“I got only high-class people in my house. Except them Tewmans. I let them live in the basement for helping around. In front upstairs, I got Mr. Kistler; he’s a newspaperman, a fine young man, two rooms. And back of him I got Mr. Buff’nim, one room, and Mr. Grant, one room, and the bath on one side, and Miss Sands on the other, and the Wallers in back. Mr. Buff’nim is a drugstore man; he gets me my med’cine. Mrs. Hall’ran, that’s my niece, keeps on at me I should go to a heart specialist—”
“Oh, I’m sorry! You shouldn’t have lifted that trunk if your heart bothers you.”
She said short and sharp, “It’s no matter,” then went quickly to a new tack. “Mr. Grant’s a gentleman, a retired old gentleman. So’s Mr. Waller. He’s a policeman, retired. Nice people,” she lipped to herself. “All nice people. Gentlemen.”
I hinted. “I haven’t the keys yet, do I? I’m so tired, I won’t unpack tonight.”
She limped out to the dark room in the hall, came back with a new Yale key.
“I had a new lock put on my house,” she said impressively and lowered her voice. “I tell you, I didn’t like the people who used to have this apartment. I had my suspicions of those people. They went nosing around in my things. So I said to them . . .” Her eyes licked at me. “So I asked those people to get right out of my house. I won’t stand for any nosing around my things. That’s why I was glad to get a nice girl like you, dearie. I knew you’d never go snooping in my things.”
“It’s nice to know there’s a good lock on the front door.” I ignored the last of her remarks. Water Street, below the drop-off, has a bad reputation, and there’s a flight of stairs coming up from there, a block nearer the capitol, where the drop is less steep. I went on about the doors.
“What about the back doors, and the double door to the hall?”
“That back door bolts inside. There ain’t no key to it. And the door to the back cellar stairs, it’s never used, like I told you. See, the bolt’s on your side, all rusted in; you can’t even move it. On the other side it’s nailed shut. You don’t need to worry about anybody comin’ in there.”
“And the double doors?”
“Well, those double doors, now, dearie, I like to have the key of the double doors hanging on the outside on that nail in the casing when you ain’t here. In case you would be gone and there would happen to be a fire, and I’d have to get my things in the closet.”
“But I couldn’t do that! Why, then anyone in the house could walk in!”
“There ain’t anybody in the house would hurt anything.”
I felt it was time to make a stand. “I’m sorry,” I said firmly. “But I’ll want to keep the key to the double doors, too.”
She handed it over.
For a minute or two more she stood there, and I did, too, obviously waiting for her to go. She finally mumbled something and limped slowly out.
Of all the tiresome old women! Had I moved in with a deranged old semi-lunatic with delusions of persecution that might make her throw me out any minute under suspicion of snooping?
If the old woman could have known the amount of snooping I was actually to do in that house, and what I was to find—well . . .
But I didn’t know that then, either.
—
THE LOCK ON THE double door didn’t look difficult enough to me, and the key looked too much like the old-fashioned skeleton key that would unlock any door. But by experimenting, I found I could hook the dinette chairs under the knobs; the doors couldn’t open then without heavy pressure and a lot of clatter. The two doors in the kitchen seemed as tight as Mrs. Garr said they were. I wanted to be barricaded until I had the lay of the land.
With that settled, I went to sleep.
I slept hard.
It must have been nearly midnight when I woke, with cramped muscles, to stretch lightly and turn over.
Seeping in came the thought of strangeness. Strange bed. Strange house. I must have been lying there for fifteen minutes, listening.
Not hearing for anything specific, just listening. A creak here. A drip there.
My room wasn’t dark at all; there’s a streetlight at the corner of Sixteenth and Trent, so the place was filled with that visionless yellow light streetlamps
