The person who was answering the bell came toward the door. Her footsteps hesitated a moment, just inside; Georgine could see that it was a woman, that she was turning, raising her head; then swerving away from the door and mounting the staircase.
And at that moment came a sound from the street, someone walking and whistling as he walked. The tune he whistled was The Farmer in the Dell.
Georgine wheeled around. Her startled eyes saw the whistler, and then her knees gave way and she was sitting on the top step, her head bowed on her clenched hands.
“The Marines have landed,” remarked Todd McKinnon from the sidewalk. He mounted to the porch and helped her to her feet. “Even a li’le bit early, it’d seem. Dear Georgine, what’s the matter?”
She could only shake her head, grasping the wiry solidity of his arm. “Later,” she managed to whisper, turning her head toward the door. It was opening, and a highly colored face was peering through the crack.
“Mrs.—Mrs. Trumbull?” Georgine managed to stammer.
“Yeah,” the woman said, pulling the door wide. “That’s me.”
She was not the slattern that one might have expected in these surroundings. She was plump, but unmercifully corseted and zippered into a new-look dress of wine-colored rayon, with only a few spots visible on its front. This made a lively color-scheme with her hair, which was a dark orange-red with streaks of lighter pink. Surprised arcs of black were drawn above her eyes, her skin was a lovely peach-glow shade down to just below her chin, and in a laudable attempt to tie the scheme together she had put on dark red lipstick and light flame-colored nail polish. The effect shone out against the drab background of the house like a basket of Easter eggs.
“Sure, I’m Mrs. Trumbull,” she repeated. “You the lady I called a while back?”
“Yes. Is he—could we see—”
“Oh, the gentleman. Now, I’ll tell you, dear, it was bad luck—but just about half an hour ago they came for him in an ambulance and he went off to the hospital.”
“They? Who came for him?”
Mrs. Trumbull shrugged. “I guess it was that doctor he had to see him once or twice. Now, I feel real bad about having you come all the way over here, but I didn’t know they were taking him, and I wouldn’t of wanted to stop them, anyway, he was pretty sick.”
“But what hospital?” Georgine said painfully.
The woman’s mouth sagged half open. “Why—” she said after a moment, “I guess—the Good Samaritan.”
“Don’t you know? Didn’t you ask?”
“Now, to tell you the truth, I didn’t. I thought I heard ’em say something about the Good Samaritan, but now I come to think, I couldn’t be sure. I was on the ’phone, and I just let ’em in. No need to worry, he was paid up on his room rent, I’ll say that for him.”
Todd, who had been looking narrowly at Georgine throughout this interchange, now remarked in a suave tone, “But we can go up to his room, of course? He must have left some sort of message for us.”
“No,” the woman said quickly. “No, he didn’t. I—I packed up all his things for them to take along, there’s nothing left there at all.”
“Oh? Then the room’s vacant? Do you know, my dear,” said Todd, turning a pleased glance toward Georgine, “this may be providential. It’s just the place for my nephew. He’s been looking and looking,” he explained kindly to Mrs. Trumbull, “for a single room, not too expensive, but near to the center of things in San Francisco. This would just suit him.”
He moved toward the door, and the woman stepped hastily into his path. “No, no, it’s not for rent. I—I’ve got to clean it up, and then I’ve got a long waiting list, there’s no room for somebody just coming in—”
“But we could see it anyway, just to give him an idea of accommodations and prices? Perhaps you could put him on the waiting list. I don’t need to tell you how hard it is to get anything reasonable these days—”
“You can’t see it,” said Mrs. Trumbull harshly. “It wouldn’t do you the least bit of good. This is my house, ain’t it? I pay the rent, and I can keep out anybody I want to. That’s all!”
She took a step backward and slammed the door in their faces.
“Come on, let’s go,” Todd said in a defeated tone. As they went down the steps he added more softly, “At least let’s look as if we were going. Georgine, what is all this?”
Instead of answering, she said, “Todd, how did you know I’d come here?”
He gave one of his deep, almost inaudible chuckles. They were on the sidewalk now, going briskly along toward the corner around which the nose of the McKinnon car was just visible. “I tell people I’m no detective,” he said modestly, “but of course that’s far from the truth. Just li’le indications of flight in perturbation: your melba toast smoking up the whole kitchen—”
“Oh! It burned—I forgot it—”
“Yes, that’s what I mean. Also your best suit in a heap on the bedroom floor, most of your folding money left on the dresser, and the face-powder box upside down on the floor. Open, I may add.” He was talking freely along in his usual light tone, and although Georgine did not let go of his arm, her grip slackened. “Of course, you might have run away with your lover, but not, I figured, in your oldest suit. No note, either. I’d like you to remember that if you ever do leave me the least you can do is to write a note.”
“I—I did write one,” said Georgine shakily, “and then picked it up and brought it along without knowing what I was doing. But how did you know where to come?”
“I telephoned Barby’s school,” Todd admitted, “to find out if you’d had a hurry call from there. You hadn’t. Then I saw the San Francisco telephone book lying open at the T’s, with the mark of a fingernail under this address, indicating a queer part of town. And it seemed a safe bet. I thought at least,” he added with a sidelong look, “that you might like a ride home.”
He helped her into the car, and got behind the wheel, but did not start it. Instead, he let it roll a foot or two forward and adjusted the driving mirror so that it showed the street and Mrs. Trumbull’s front steps. “And now, dear heart,” he said in a low voice, “can you tell me?”
“I thought Jim Wyeth was there,” Georgine blurted out.
“What?” Todd said after a moment’s pause.
She nodded painfully. Her head had begun to ache with almost unbearable violence.
There was another pause. “Good God,” he said slowly. “And I was joking about—”
“No, wait. It’s—there’s something horribly wrong about it, but I didn’t dare to ignore it—and yet it felt like a trap even though I couldn’t see how it could be!” She pulled herself up wearily. “There was this telephone call,” she began…
And when she finished, Todd’s hand was on her wrist in a close steadying pressure. “You’re right,” he said. “There’s something evil going on. Well, the first thing to do is to find out if Wyeth really did get taken to a hospital. There’s a soda fountain in this block, I can telephone around. Georgine, can you keep watch up this street?… Good girl. If anyone comes out of that house, lean on the horn.” He glanced up its narrow length. “There aren’t any spaces between houses. I suppose they may have some kind of back exits, but we can’t stop all the rat-holes… Have you cigarettes with you? Then lean back and smoke one, and see if you can relax. I’ll be as quick as I can.”
He vanished into the small store, and Georgine sat unmoving, her eyes fixed on the mirror. She was mortally tired, but the sickness was abating and her head no longer throbbed so badly. Todd was here, and whatever evil had been in the street she had traversed was melting away; actually, a small boy emerged from one of the street-level doors and sat down on its step, looking filthy but normal. It was just an odd street of old houses, that was all.
—No, not quite, she told herself. In that one house the unknown terror was still waiting.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE SUN WHEELED slowly overhead and its light disappea
red from all but the topmost windows of the little street. Georgine got up enough energy to smoke her cigarette and to feel the better for it, even to realize that she had had no lunch and needed it now. A woman came out of the corner house and gazed at her incuriously as she passed; except for her and the little boy there had been no one moving in the narrow lane. And at last, Todd came back.
He had a sandwich on a paper plate, and a carton of coffee. “I’ll train as a car-hop if worse comes to worst,” he said, giving her the food and getting in. “Well, nobody answering to Wyeth’s description has been admitted to any hospital in the city today. What’s more, the storekeeper says there’s been no ambulance around. It couldn’t turn in that street, it would have had either to come in or go out on this side.” He watched her begin to eat, and said no more until she had finished. “I feel fairly sure that he’s not in that house, too,” he added.
“I think he never was,” Georgine murmured.
“I think you’re right.” Todd waited a minute, and then took a short audible breath. “You’ve never been anything but honest with me. —If he did turn out to be alive, would you want to go back to him?”
“After you?” she cried out. “Oh, Todd, don’t be an utter fool!”
“There was a chance that I had been, and a fatuous one at that. But thank you, dear Georgine. Dear Georgine,” he repeated, and looked at her; and all at once she relaxed, and warmth went flowing gently through her for the first time since she had gone taut and frozen at the words of that telephone call.
She had tried not to think of the complications, during the past hours, but certain things had come inexorably, again and again, to batter at the door of her thoughts: the feeling that she always had with Todd, like coming home at the end of a long day; and his hands, and half-sentences spoken in darkness. She had known that it would be like giving up life, to give up those.
“Nobody could make trouble,” she said, vaguely smiling at him. “He was declared dead—and even if he’d just disappeared, there’s a statute of limitations or something, isn’t there? I did worry a little about Barby. She’s his child after all, and if he’d wanted to see her—but it couldn’t have gone any farther than that, surely?” She frowned a little. “But, Todd—if the whole story were untrue, where on earth did anyone get the details? And is it—do you think it could be connected somehow with Mrs. Majendie and the Beyond-Truth? I couldn’t help thinking of that; but I didn’t tell her, I almost did but I swear I never said a word.”
Or had she? Had she somehow conveyed the whole story, perhaps without opening her lips, as the Mother-Superior eyes had met hers in the mirror? Georgine was overtaken by another shiver.
“It’s got to have something to do with this mix-up,” said Todd slowly. “But I’m damned if I see what. And yet—I’d bet everything we’ve got that it was a trap of some kind; whoever thought this up imagined he’d found the one thing that would make you come alone. —If I’d been home, would you have told me?”
“I—I don’t know. Maybe not.” No, she thought, I wouldn’t.
“It was a risk, of course. How’d they know I wouldn’t be home?”
Georgine’s lower lip went up. “I’ve just remembered something. Do you know anyone called Haynes? Of the firm of Haynes and Hunter? —Of course not. She checked, first.”
“Well, I spoiled the plan by turning up.”
“Todd,” Georgine whispered, “what was the plan? What did they mean to do to me?”
“God knows,” he said. His muscles tautened involuntarily.
“I’ve been thinking about it. If it was to murder me, it would be simpler somewhere else, wouldn’t it? They might know I’d leave word of where I’d gone! And I’m hardly the type to appeal to a white-slaver.”
“I might argue that point,” said Todd, “but we’ll se’le that some other time. When did you think of all these possibilities? Before you left the house? H’m. And you didn’t feel any reluctance about coming?”
“Reluctance! I could hardly drag myself—and yet I had to do it. They picked the one thing that would make me come, trap or no trap. Don’t be disgusted, Todd, I wasn’t just walking into it unarmed. I’ve got your gun in my bag.”
“You’ve got my gun,” said Todd mildly, and covered his eyes with a hand. “Oh, God. You go to see your husband that was supposed to be dead, and you take a gun with you!”
“Good grief,” said Georgine in a suddenly appalled voice. A moment of pregnant silence ensued.
Then she turned abruptly in her seat. “They couldn’t have foreseen that, do you think? Could they have wanted me to do exactly that—and was I supposed to be found standing over the body of somebody? You know, so I could be blackmailed or made to keep still about something later on?”
“That’s an idea. That’s really an idea.” Todd thought it over. “But what have you witnessed?”
“Not one thing,” said Georgine firmly. “There isn’t a detail of any meeting or conversation that I haven’t described to you, and you haven’t passed on to Nelse, already. Why, suppose the thing I was supposed to keep still about were something that Joan Godfrey might have told me yesterday afternoon. The time to shut my mouth would be last night, not today!”
“Well, hell,” said McKinnon helplessly, “maybe it’s something that hasn’t happened yet; that’s all I can think of.”
Georgine stirred uneasily. “You mean something I was meant to witness inside that house?”
“I don’t know. Damn it, Georgine, I don’t know. And yet— this can’t just have been an act of senseless cruelty. It has to tie up somehow.”
She sighed. “Why are we sitting here? It must be almost an hour since that woman turned us away.”
“Well, I’ll tell you. While I was doing my telephoning, I called up Nelse, to find out if there were someone in the police over here whom we ought to notify about this. And what he said was, the police wouldn’t touch it. You see, nothing happened.”
“Nothing happened. Is that how they look at it?”
“That’s how. If you’d gone in, and one of the occupants had snatched your purse or bopped you over the head, we could report it. If we could get in now, and discover anything wrong, they might condescend to come and inspect it. As matters stand, nobody’s so much as committed a misdemeanor.”
“Mrs. Trumbull—”
“Might have made a mistake. That’s what she’d say. And so, since the Law won’t do anything, I mean to do my li’le best and watch the rat-hole in the hope that somebody’ll stick his nose out.”
“Oh, Todd, can’t we just let it go? Let’s not get in any farther!”
“No, we won’t let it go,” said Todd in his gentlest voice. “I don’t like what’s been done to you today.”
“But no one’s come out of that place. You’ve scarcely taken your eyes off the mirror, and neither did I while you were in that store. If they’ve left, it was by a back door, and we—”
“Hold it,” said Todd, sitting up straight. “I knew something would happen if we waited.”
Georgine swung round hurriedly. No one was coming out of the house, it was true; but a car had driven into the narrow lane from its far end, and stopped. A man was getting out of it; he was crossing the street
“It’s David Shere!” she cried out. “He’s going in there!”
“Right you are. And so am I.” Todd flung open the car door, and then turned a searching glance upon her. “Do you feel up to coming along?”
Georgine got out and hurried after him. As they came up to the door of 968, David Shere was fitting a latchkey into its keyhole.
“Wait a minute, Shere,” said Todd mildly.
The young man turned, startled. “McKinnon! What the devil are you doing here?”
“What are you doing, if it comes to that?”
“I own this house, if you’ve got to know.”
“I see. There’s something you might want to know. Your Mrs. Trumbull has been up to some funny business—with us.”
<
br /> David Shere scowled at Todd and Georgine impartially. “She has? Well, if so, she’s mighty candid about it. She called me up herself, over an hour ago, and said there was something going on that she couldn’t handle, and I’d better come over. No, she didn’t say what. Is it any of your business?”
“I rather think it is. D’you mind letting us look through the house?”
“Look here McKinnon, you annoy the hell out of me. What—”
“Shut up, and let us in,” said Todd in a surprisingly good-natured tone. Only his face betrayed anything, and that to his wife alone. It looked as if it were carved out of hardwood, and bits of flint stuck in for eyes.
Perhaps David Shere felt it also, for he stepped back sullenly and admitted them to a hall scarcely wide enough for two persons. It led off into darkness at the rear of the house; at its right, near the door, a steep and rickety staircase rose to the upper floor; and both stairs and hall smelled as if they had worn the same paint and carpets for sixty years of tenants’ cooking.
“It’s a dump,” Shere said gruffly. “Ought to’ve been condemned, I suppose, but—Trumbull rents it from me and it’s her funeral how it looks.”
“We’d like to see Mrs. Trumbull,” said Todd. “And don’t start yelling until I’ve told you why.”
He told him why. Shere’s ruddy face lost several degrees of color as the story went on, and he glanced nervously at Georgine and away. “You see,” Todd concluded smoothly, “it’s just possible there’s a dead body upstairs.”
“Yes. Yes, you’re right, we’ve got to see about it. But I don’t understand—” The young man shook his head wildly, and then disappeared into the depths of the building.
The McKinnons stood waiting. A cool draught of air swept through the open door, but made no impression on the iron strength of the smell.
Shere came back, looking bewildered. “Trumbull’s gone,” he threw at them as he began to mount the stairs. Todd and Georgine followed wordlessly.
The Smiling Tiger Page 13