by Jerry eBooks
There was more testimony. From Dolph, Doc Joyner, who is coroner in his spare time, from several people who had known Sam. And from Doreen. She simply backed up what I had said. She was dressed as always, attractively, making no pretense that she wasn’t a beautiful woman.
The jury was out for an hour.
I walked out of the courtroom a free and rich man.
Doreen and I sold out a few weeks later. She was restless, and I had no real desire to live in Mulberry longer.
We toured Florida and decided on the Coquina Beach place. For awhile it appeared life might settle to normal, but when we were through the decorating, the hundred and one things in establishing a new residence that kept us busy, Doreen became restless again.
I tried everything. Cocktail parties—they were too vapid. Another hunting trip—but a bleeding animal held no more interest for her.
Doreen hired a yard man last week and fixed up quarters over the garage for him. But we don’t really need a full-time yard man. I looked into his background. A bum. From the downtown waterfront and wino jungles. Comes from nowhere.
But I suspect where he is going. It’s been building in Doreen for quite awhile now. And I don’t know what to do. If I warned the yard man, somebody else would be marked.
Somebody’s going to die—to provide a thrill for Doreen. Nothing less will calm that mounting restlessness.
I certainly am afraid to go home tonight.
STRANGER IN THE HOUSE
Theodore Pratt
Her regular cleaning woman had not appeared that morning, and by the time Mrs. Belding decided she was not coming, and had called the employment agency to send over another to her apartment, it was nearly ten o’clock.
The woman the agency sent was a big creature. She was so tall that she stooped, giving her broad, harsh face a rather ridiculous look as it peered out from under a crazy, flopping little hat set on a mass of straggly gray hair. Her blood-shot gray eyes lighted up, blazing, upon seeing Mrs. Belding, as if in fierce anticipation at working for so lovely a lady.
She was so formidable in appearance that Mrs. Belding was a little disturbed at the idea of having her in the apartment all day. She had heard stories of how strange servants had robbed their employers. She hesitated as she looked at the woman. But when she thought of the reputation of the employment agency and saw again the woman’s funny hat, she asked the woman if she were willing, considering how late she had come, to work until six instead of five.
The woman boomed out readily, in a deep and husky voice, “Sure, Ma’m, sure am.” She didn’t smile, but seemed deathly serious, as if sincerity might be a passion with her. Her name, she said, was Hattie.
Mrs. Belding regretted her decision a little when Hattie had prepared herself for work by simply setting her hat on a chair in the hall. Without her crazy hat perched on her frizzly head, the woman no longer seemed amusing. She was now almost threatening. But when Mrs. Belding explained what was to be done, and Hattie had started, attacking the tasks with a surprising willingness and speed, Mrs. Belding decided that her fears were groundless.
At the same time, it occurred to her, for the first time, that she would have to stay in the apartment all day. It wouldn’t do to leave it in charge of an unknown cleaning woman. Mrs. Belding had meant to shop for some new stockings to go with the evening dress she would wear that night when she dined out with friends. She considered doing her shopping anyway, wondering if she could trust Hattie.
She thought of calling up the employment agency and asking about Hattie. But agencies couldn’t know everything about the people they sent, and besides she couldn’t very well make the inquiry with Hattie listening. She saw Hattie moving the piano to clean in back of it, thrusting the heavy instrument aside as if it were little more than a heavy chair. She decided that the old stockings, mended, would have to do.
Mrs. Belding watched Hattie closely, but the only thing she saw was the woman’s strength. She had difficulty composing herself, or finding a comfortable place to sit, as Hattie bustled about, doing work in a few minutes that ordinarily took the better part of an hour to accomplish. It rather alarmed Mrs. Belding. It made her feel nervous. But she reflected that ability, speed, willingness, and strength were no qualities to complain about in a cleaning woman. She had been accustomed to laziness and sometimes downright shirking—such as the regular woman not coming at all today and sending no message.
She felt angry with the regular woman, and friendly toward Hattie, resolving to keep Hattie permanently if she turned out to be all right in other respects. She examined the work that had already been done, and was pleased.
If Mrs. Belding watched Hattie, and contrived to stay much in the same room with her, Hattie followed the same tactics herself. She didn’t seem to mind being supervised at all, but appeared to like having Mrs. Belding with her, and several times followed her about. She kept looking at Mrs. Belding, as if in deep admiration, but this did not interfere with her work. She went steadily about it all that morning, almost grimly, and silently—except when an especially energetic outburst made her pant a little.
At noon, when Mrs. Belding began preparing lunch, Hattie suggested, “You let me fix it, Mrs. Belding.” And when she was told she could do so if she wished, she said with serious gratitude, “Yes, Ma’m.”
Hattie’s meal was dainty and delicious. She served it to Mrs. Belding as if she had been long a retainer in the household. She was highly solicitous, several times interrupting her own lunch, which she was having in the kitchen, to come in and inquire if everything were satisfactory. She hovered about anxiously wanting to please. Mrs. Belding had never before experienced such attention and devotion in the short course of a meal.
Hattie was almost loving in her service. Mrs. Belding complimented her and the woman replied, from a voice choked with emotion, “Sure, Ma’m.”
By this time Mrs. Belding was assured that Hattie did not mean to rob her. If the woman meant to, she would certainly have attempted it before this, instead of working so hard and efficiently all the time. She looked at Hattie’s face and found it drawn. Trying to make a good impression and overdoing the effort, thought Mrs. Belding. Poor thing.
Mrs. Belding did not object when, in the afternoon, Hattie slowed down considerably and became talkative. The woman had started on the closets. And when she came to the one in Mrs. Belding’s bedroom, she spent some time in it. She busied herself at examining the clothes there, sometimes touching them, as with envious hands.
“You got fine clothes, Mrs. Belding,” she announced.
Her voice went through the room, through the whole apartment, resounding against the walls. “All women’s clothes, too. No man’s clothes here. You don’t have a man, Mrs. Belding?”
Mrs. Belding smiled at this inquisitiveness that had been so long in coming out, and replied, “No, Hattie.”
A little later, Hattie observed the things that had been laid out on the bed and said, “You got your evening dress ready. I’ll bet you got a man coming to call for you tonight, ain’t you, Mrs. Belding?” And Hattie touched the dress softly.
“No, I . . .”
Something in the way Hattie asked this made Mrs. Belding check herself. This was no business of Hattie’s. Even if Hattie seemed all right, possibly it was not a good plan to admit that there was no man about the place. She tried to cover up her admission. “Yes,” she said, “there is a gentleman calling for me later.”
Hattie laughed. It was a long, throaty laugh, full and unrestrained. Caressing the clothes with big, affectionate hands, and stooping over them, she said, “I like to imagine how you’ll look in that dress, Mrs. Belding. I sure like to work for a beautiful woman like you, Mrs. Belding.”
Hattie’s laugh remained in the room, echoing, for minutes after she left it.
Mrs. Belding had been disturbed by the whole thing. But she, finally, decided that Hattie’s comments on the clothes had simply been in the nature of a hint that she be given some old clothe
s, either those of a woman, or of a man. Cleaning women were always wanting clothes, and asking for them by admiring those of the people for whom they worked. That was the way they obtained much of their clothing.
Mrs. Belding laughed herself when she pictured Hattie in any of her cast-off things; they wouldn’t cover half the woman. But then, maybe she wanted them for a sister—or a friend.
Late in the afternoon, Mrs. Belding was sitting on the stool before her dressing-table mending a run in the top of one of the stockings she was to wear that evening. She had not heard Hattie at her work for some time. She listened, and when a number of minutes went by and there was still no noise, she rose and went out to see what Hattie was doing.
Hattie was not in the living room. She was not in the hall nor in the kitchen. Mystified, Mrs. Belding glanced at the closed bathroom door. The woman must be there. She called her name.
From behind the door, muffled, but still booming, came Hattie’s voice. “Yes, Ma’m, you want me, Mrs. Belding?”
“I didn’t know where you were,” Mrs. Belding said, speaking in the direction of the bathroom.
“I’ll be ready in a minute, Mrs. Belding,” Hattie said from behind the door.
Mrs. Belding went back to her bedroom. Something about Hattie’s reply bothered her, but she didn’t know what it was. She thought Hattie had finished in the bathroom, but evidently she hadn’t.
Mrs. Belding took up the mending of her stocking again. She listened for Hattie, but heard nothing. When a longer time than before went by without any noise being made, she called out as she had before, but this time from where she sat.
There was no answer. She called again. Still there was no reply. She wondered what Hattie could be doing. Whatever it was, she was taking a long time about it. Mrs. Belding wanted her to get through, for she meant to take a bath in a few minutes. Surely the woman must have heard her. She put down her mending, got up, and went out into the hall.
“Hattie!” she called. There was no reply. “Hattie!” Her call was nearly a cry this time. But no answer came from the bathroom. Nor was there any sound of movement.
What had happened to the woman? She must still be in the bathroom. Or had she sneaked out, perhaps to let someone else in the apartment?
Mrs. Belding turned quickly about, looking. There was no one to be seen. There was no sound in the apartment.
She took a step toward the bathroom door, then stopped, cautiously. It was indeed strange.
“Hattie!” she called again.
Only silence answered her.
Mrs. Belding stood there, her heart beating fast. The thought came to her that Hattie had left without saying anything, without collecting her wages. While trying to figure out why the woman would do such a thing, she looked for Hattie’s hat.
The crazy little thing was still on the chair. Hattie was still in the apartment.
Mrs. Belding wanted to call in a neighbor, or the building superintendent, or a policeman, to help her investigate. But she hesitated at the prospect of raising a hue and cry over what might be nothing.
In her irresolution at deciding what to do, another thought, a more logical solution, came to her. She remembered the drawn look on Hattie’s face, and how Hattie had slowed down at the work, as though tired. The woman had probably gone beyond the capacity of her strength and fainted in the bathroom. That was it, of course. That was why she hadn’t answered.
Concerned, and a little irritated, Mrs. Belding went to the door and opened it. Hattie was not to he seen. Mrs. Belding stepped into the bathroom.
As soon as she was well into the room, the door swung closed behind her, snapping shut with a sharp click. There was a movement there, and she whirled around quickly to see what it was.
An utterly naked man, who looked gigantic, stood against the door.
In the confusion and shock of her first horror, Mrs. Belding looked about for Hattie. All that was to be seen of her were a heap of clothing and a wig of straggly gray hair lying on the floor. Other than that, there was only the man standing there starkly nude, exposed and horribly ready, staring down at her from his blood-shot eyes which were now wide and burning.
Mrs. Belding’s lips parted to emit a scream that her terror had so far denied her, but, before she could get it out a firm, large hot hand was placed over her mouth, twisting her about so that the back of her head was pressed against a hard sweaty chest that was breathing fast, and another hand began to tear viciously at the clothing on her shoulder.
MAY I COME IN?
Fletcher Flora
The night was hot and humid. I lay in my room on a sheet sodden with the seepage from my pores, and suspended above me in the dark like a design in ectoplasm was the face of the man named Marilla, and the hate within me stirred and flowed and seeped with the sweat from my pores, and the color of my hate was yellow.
I got off the bed and walked on bare feet across the warm floor to the window, but there was no air moving at the window or outside the window, and the adherent heat had saturated my flesh and soaked through my eyes into the cavity of my skull to lie like a thick, smothering fog over the contours of my brain. I could hear, across the narrow interval that separated houses, the whirr of blades beating the air, and because my eyes were like cat’s eyes, I could see behind the blades into the black, gasping room, and it was the bedroom of Mrs. Willkins, and she was lying nude on her bed under the contrived breeze, and her body was gross and ugly with flesh loose on its bones, and I hated her, just as I hated the ectoplasmic face of the man named Marilla, with all the force of my yellow hate.
Turning away from the window, I found in the darkness a pint of gin on a chest and poured two fingers into a tumbler. I sat on the edge of the bed and drank the gin and then lay down again, and the face of Marilla was still suspended above me, and in a moment the face of Freda was there too, and I began to think deliberately about Marilla and Freda, and the reason I hated Marilla.
I stood with Freda in front of the shining glass window, and she pointed out the coat to me on the arrogant blonde dummy. I could see Freda’s reflected face in the glass from my angle of vision, and her lips were slightly open in excitement and desire, and I felt happy and a little sad at the same time to see her that way, because it wasn’t, after all, much of a coat, not mink or ermine or any kind of fur at all, but just a plain cloth coat that was a kind of pink color and looked like it would be as soft as down to the touch.
“It’s beautiful,” Freda said. “It’s, oh, so beautiful,” and I said, “You like it? You like to have it?” and she said, “Oh, yes,” in a kind of expiring, incredulous whisper that was like the expression of a child who just can’t believe the wonderful thing that’s about to happen.
We went into the store and up to the floor where the coats were sold, and Freda tried on the coat, turning around and around in front of the mirror and stroking the cloth as if it were a kitten and making a soft little purring sound as if she were the kitten she was stroking. I teased her a little, saying that, well, it was rather expensive and would raise hell with the budget, but I knew all the time that I was going to buy it for her, because she wanted it so much and because it made her look even more beautiful than before, and after a while I went up to the credit department and made arrangements for monthly payments, because I didn’t have the price. When I came back down, she was still standing in front of the mirror in the coat, and I said, “You going to wear it?” and she said, “Oh, yes, I’m going to wear it and sleep in it and never take it off,” and I kept remembering afterward that it wasn’t after all, so much of a coat, not fur or anything, but just pink cloth.
We went down in the elevator, and she clung to my arm and kissed me over and over with her eyes, and I thought it was the best buy I’d ever made and cheap at the price, even if I had had to arrange monthly payments. We went out onto the street through the revolving door, walking close together in the same section of the door because Freda wouldn’t let loose of my arm, and the street was brigh
t and soft and cool with the cool, bright softness of April, and it was just the kind of day and street for a new pink coat. We walked down the street toward the drug store on the corner, and I was thinking that I’d take Freda into the store for some of the peppermint ice cream with chunks of stick peppermint in it that she liked so much, and it occurred to me that the ice cream was just about the color of the pink coat, and then there were a couple of explosions inside the drug store, and after a second or two a woman began to scream in a high, ragged voice that went on and on, and the door of the store flew open, and a man ran out with a gun in his hand, and the man was Marilla, the man they were later to call a psychopathic killer.
He ran toward us along the sidewalk waving the gun, and he ran with a queer, lurching gait, as if he were crippled, or one leg were shorter than the other, and as he ran he made a sound that was something like a whimper and something like a cry. Between us and him was a kid carrying a shoe shine box, and the kid stopped and stood stiffly with the box hanging at his side, and then the gun in Marilla’s hand began to explode again, and the kid set the box down on the sidewalk and fell over sideways across it. I stood looking at the kid, and I realized suddenly that Freda had let go of my arm, and I turned to see if she was still there, but she wasn’t, and I couldn’t see her anywhere. Marilla ran past me, and I could see directly into his big eyes that were like black puddles of liquid terror, and he pointed the gun at my face and pulled the trigger, and I could hear the dull click of the hammer on a dead shell. I could have tackled him and brought him down, but I didn’t, because just then I saw that Freda was lying on the sidewalk like the kid up ahead, but in a different position, on her back with the new coat spread open around her like something that had been put there in advance for her to lie on. I knelt down beside her on the sidewalk and lifted her head and began to say her name, and at first I thought she’d fainted, but then I saw the small black hole that was about three inches in a straight line below the hollow of her throat, and I knew that she was dead.