The Dream Walker

by Charlotte Armstrong

  “I’m sure,” Charley said gently, “anyone you’d like to like you is going to do it.” He held me off then. “You strike me as being fairly tough, you know,” he said.

  “It must be a pretty good performance,” I bawled.

  But he wasn’t going to soothe and pet me or even tease me out of it, as I suppose I hoped he would. I began to feel foolish. His face was so sad and he so rigid. “I’m inflicting,” I snuffled. “All against my principles. Excuse me, Charley, my boy. Us old-maid schoolteachers get these spells. We’re lone lorn creatures. I don’t have a more convenient shoulder.”

  “Perfectly all right,” said Charley. “Here he comes now, I think,” he added with relief.

  “Who?”

  Charley was letting in Bud Gray.

  Bud said, “Hi, Teacher.” He didn’t even notice I’d been bawling. “Bad news, tonight, eh? Well, try, try again.”

  “You don’t look discouraged,” I said smiling.

  “Same routine tomorrow night, if the ad runs?” said Charley rather briskly. “Well, then, since I need my rest.…”

  “What’s your hurry?” Bud said, surprised. So Charley hesitated. “One thing we’ve gained”—Bud took his drink—“Kent Shaw did go to the Biltmore. Did see the ad. Did respond.”

  “We’re ’way ahead of that, aren’t we?” I said. “His being in Castine was no coincidence. Marcus says a coincidence only means that the connecting roots are underground. Am I preaching? I’m only trying to be cheerful.”

  Charley said with a look almost of pain, “Ollie’s cheered me up. Now you cheer her up, Bud, why don’t you? I am positively folding for the night.”

  “Cheer her up?” said Bud fondly. “Our little Teacher?”

  Charley lifted his hand and grinned good night and went away. It’s strange how the space between my dark walls became wider and more bare, more bleak, when he had gone.

  Bud said to me, “You don’t feel low, do you? Believe me, Ollie, we are going to get them.”

  “I believe you,” I said.

  “And speaking of coincidences, as you so intelligently were,” (I liked Bud) “you know I thought I saw our Maine friend in the Biltmore Hotel?”

  “Our who?”

  “Your chaperone. May have been a relative of hers, at that. Younger getup, that’s for sure. Green whatchamacallit.” He made circling motions of his forefinger around his head, “and big round jiggers from the ears. I learned one time always to look at bone structures and not hats. I sure saw a likeness.” Maybe he was babbling to entertain me, because I seemed to be crying again. But I stopped that.

  I said, “Oh, Bud … oh, Bud … oh, what a fool! Oh, Bud.…”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Bones can be changed. Noses can be changed. Marcus said so. It wasn’t a coincidence, not at all! Not at all!”

  Bud was looking at me but soon he wasn’t seeing me.

  “And, oh,” I moaned, “I thought I was so smart. But all she did was turn out her toes and waddle and she fooled me.”

  “Darlene Hite,” Bud said in awe.

  “We saw her. You and I. She saved my life.”

  “Darlene Hite,” he repeated.

  “That old biddy,” said I (at last), “was no Down East personally appointed chaperone for lone women at night at all!”

  “I think I can describe her,” said Bud licking his lip, “as she is now.”

  “But she was in the Biltmore!” I cried. “If you saw her, probably she saw you. Maybe she saw you in Maine, Bud. Maybe you scared her off tonight.”

  “Maybe,” he said grimly. “If so, done. Never mind. I think you are right. I’ve got to get word out. Description. Hey, you know this can result in something?” So he kissed me a loud smack on the forehead and rushed away.

  He’d been gone about five minutes when I knew where else Darlene Hite had been tonight and might still be.

  Coincidence it was not! I began to think there was no such thing. I meant to know. I sat on my phone and called Charley’s number. No answer. It was 11:25. He’d left about a quarter after. If he was on his way to bed, as he had said, he’d get there in another few minutes. But no answer. No answer. I couldn’t reach Bud, now. I didn’t have that mysterious number of theirs.

  What I did … I called Kent Shaw. It seemed a good idea at the time.

  “Kent? Olivia Hudson.”

  “Oh? And how’s life, dear?”

  “And you?” I said politely. “I thought you might like to know Cora’s flying to France in the morning.”

  “You thought I might like to know?” he said.

  “That bon voyage you promised her.”

  “So I did,” said Kent. “Thanks very much. How early in the morning?”

  “Not so early the press won’t be there,” said I, “more’s the pity. The flight’s at nine.”

  “I do thank you,” he said rather shrilly. “Mustn’t forget our manners, must we?”

  I hung up and I thought Oh, what have I done! I called Charley again, in somewhat of a panic, and this time he answered.

  “Charley, tell me quick,” I cried, “that woman who saw you in Kent Shaw’s room … did she wear a green turban and hoop earrings?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then she was Darlene Hite!” It took a surprisingly short time to explain to him how this could be so. “Don’t you see?” I babbled. “She’s smart. She figured just as you did. She saw him into the Biltmore and hurried back. She wanted to get her hands on that key. She thought he’d leave it behind just as you did. Oh, Charley, has she got it?”

  “Seems to me I was still rummaging around too close to the time he’d get in. Believe me, if she could find anything in that rat’s nest, she is smart. Teacher, are you right this time? The woman I saw lives across the hall.”

  “It really doesn’t matter,” I said, “whether I’m right. If only I might be, we’ll have to go and see.”

  “I’ll go see. Not you.”

  “Can you reach Bud?” I squirmed. I wasn’t going to sit home.

  “I can relay a message. He’ll get it pretty fast.”

  “What if you don’t get him, Charley?”

  “So?” He sounded suspicious.

  “Don’t you see, you need me?”

  “Don’t you remember this Shaw is a killer and nobody for you to tangle—?”

  “Maybe he went out. I … I … I think he has.”

  “What!”

  “Well, I … I called him. I told him Cora was leaving early in the morning. Maybe he’ll go … try for her, now. I did it to get him away. So we could get Darlene. Charley?”

  Charley groaned. “Cousin Ollie, will you keep out of this?”

  “No,” I said. “I’ll meet you there. You can’t get along without me.”

  “I can’t?” he said.

  “I saw her in Maine and you never did, you goop!” Silence. “So, shall I pick you up, Charley, my boy?” I quavered.

  “I’ll be there before you, Teacher,” he snapped.

  So I slammed down the phone joyfully and dashed into my camel’s hair coat, and ran for the elevator.

  Charley, of course, first called and left the word for Bud Gray.

  Then (of course) he called the hospital. He meant to alert the guards over Cora, lest Kent Shaw turn up. He couldn’t risk losing her, for Marcus’ sake.

  How … how can I explain the things that happened that dreadful night?

  Chapter Twenty-one

  But I must try.

  In the first place, consider Kent Shaw. Half mad, maybe three-quarters mad with disappointment that Darlene Hite had not kept this second rendezvous. Maybe oppressed, besides, by what he may have sensed, the watching, the searching of his room. Feeling on the verge, the absolute teetering verge of a great crashing. Then I call and say the other bird is flying out of hand. What would Kent Shaw do but call the hospital (while Charley and I were talking) to see whether or not he had yet succeeded in getting rid of Cora Steffani?


  The hospital let the call go through, on instruction, and someone listened in. So a record of that conversation exists:

  “Cora, darling, I hear you are going away in the morning.”

  “How did you hear that, Kent, darling?”

  “Oh, somebody told me. When shall I see you to say good-bye?”

  “Good-bye, now,” Cora said to him gaily.

  “But I wanted to send you a little something for bon voyage. You remember?”

  “Mail it, Kent, dear.”

  “How will I know where to mail it, Cora, darling?”

  “Because I will tell you,” she said. “I will write. I will be gone a long time, darling, and it is possible nobody will ever see me again.”

  “Is that so?”

  “I shall buy me a new face, don’t you see? Then I won’t be bothered anymore. Will I?” She was gay. And she was threatening. “But, of course, I can write a letter. To anyone I used to know.”

  “How clever of you,” he said. “What an idea! I will surely mail you some token. Candy? Could I see you tonight if I came?”

  “Don’t bother. I wouldn’t take candy on the plane, darling, because of its weight. Although something sweet.…”

  “Mayn’t I come tonight?”

  “No, darling,” she said rather indistinctly.

  “Ah, too bad.”

  “It will taste as sweet afterward,” she rumbled. “But promise not to forget.”

  “Oh, I swear …” he said.

  “Help me.” Silence.

  Kent’s ear must have been lacerated by the phone.

  A nurse’s voice, distantly, sharply, said, “Miss Steffani?” Then the nurse’s voice, in the phone, “I’ll have to hang up. I think she is fainting.”

  So Kent hung up and didn’t think she was fainting. And no more was she. She had reached for something sweet to pop into her mouth as they were talking.

  Therefore, when Charley Ives called the hospital at 11:38, they were able to tell him that Cora seemed to have been poisoned in some mysterious way.

  Charley Ives did what he had to do. He rushed for the hospital. A dying statement could save Marcus. It was no choice really. He had to go.

  Consider Bud Gray. He called that relay number, as in duty he must, and received Charley’s message at 11:40. He was only five minutes away from Kent Shaw’s place. The name of Darlene Hite was like a beacon. And he hurried. So, at about 11:45, Bud Gray spoke quietly to the man watching outside, and he went in. He proceeded up the stairs, heart in his mouth with hope that at last … at last.…

  He listened to the silence on the dingy second floor. He tapped on the door across from Kent Shaw’s. Nobody answered. “Mrs. Thompson?” said Bud softly, reading from the card tacked on the door. No answer. “Mrs. Thompson, may I speak to you? Please?”

  Nothing.

  So Bud said pleadingly and subtly in threat, “Darling? You’d better let me in.” And again, “Darling?”

  When no answer came to this either, he reluctantly retreated to go down to the basement and roust out the landlord and get in at that door.

  And now think of Kent Shaw, who must have been at first exultant. One down! One woman gone! Then wouldn’t he realize the terrible pressure that would descend now upon the other one? If Cora died, Darlene might be so terrified as to despair of the money, as to tell. Now he must get Darlene Hite. But how? He didn’t know where she was.

  He would have been flat against the inside of his own door, listening. He’d have heard Bud Gray say, “Darling?” And it was just as close to her name as Bud had meant it to be. In the wrong ear.

  Darlene didn’t answer.

  Perhaps Kent cracked his door and saw Bud going away and knew him for Charley’s friend, or perhaps for what he was, a policeman. Kent would be jumpy to the point of madness, desperate to seize upon any chance whatsoever. Surely he began to wonder what woman lived in that room, had rented it two weeks ago, and had not been seen.

  Or, if he had seen her, still I had put into Cora’s mind the notion of remodeling a face. And she had put the notion into his. And none of us could have known that Kent Shaw, in the course of some romantic skirmish with a former tenant, retained a key to that door.

  Darlene Hite, who had boldly decided that safety was actually right across the hall from death, did not know this either. When she heard Bud’s voice, she crept from the bed, looked at the windows, turned on no light, made a mistake.…

  Consider me, knowing nothing of all this, taking a taxi, stopping it correctly three doors away. Then, hunching myself along the shadows in the correct movie-spy manner, going up the stoop, passing the man on watch who didn’t know me and didn’t stop me, ringing the wrong bell and getting into the house by this classic method, all the while my heart beating high with pleasurable pretending to myself that I was in danger.

  I inspected the dirty cards on the downstairs wall. One clean one said Mrs. Miles Thompson. I found Kent Shaw’s name in a kind of decadently elegant script, with his room number penciled on in red. I walked up the stairs. The house smelled old and hopelessly encrusted, as if nothing could ever get it sweet and clean again.

  I had only to choose the door across from Kent Shaw’s. I expected Charley Ives to be there, of course. My function, as I saw it, was to lay eyes on this woman, and if she was the one from Maine, to say so. Then we would accuse and discover. At that moment, I had put aside my play-acting about danger. I three-quarters believed that Kent Shaw was not in the building. So I went blithely up and when I found the door of Darlene’s room swinging, although the room had no light in it, fool that I was … I rushed in.

  The dark hit me, as if I came up against a wall. But someone was waiting in the dark. Then, in what light came through the blind, for the dark was soon not so black, I could see a glitter, a shine. I knew him by the knife in his hand. Kent Shaw was in there waiting. I could almost sense the turmoil and the evil in his soul.

  But, you see, I thought that Charley Ives was at least coming soon. I was almost sure he was already there, somewhere, and I knew that Bud would not be far behind. In the teeth of danger, I didn’t even think of danger. When I saw the knife, at once I wondered if Darlene was dead. It sickened me with fear for Marcus. If Darlene was dead, if Kent had got her, and if Cora never broke and told, why then we were beaten.

  So I thought I must, therefore, do something for Marcus’ sake. Somebody had to crack and tell. Lacking Darlene, there was Kent Shaw. Something must be done about him. Oh, I could have turned quickly in my tracks and gone back down the stairs, but I swear that it didn’t even occur to me.

  By a kind of instinct that wasn’t courage—for where is courage when you haven’t the sense to be afraid?—I did the only thing I knew how to do. I play-acted. I jumped into another skin. Yet (because this was for my life, as I somehow also knew, as well as for Marcus) I knew it had to be good I had to make him believe. So I chose the character I’d studied for seventeen years. I became Cora Steffani.

  There was no light on my face but some light in the hall behind me. I drew myself into the high-bosomed, chin-flung-up, hip-tilted posture that was Cora. I let my hand and arm move, flowing from the shoulder, as I softly pushed the door nearer closed. Now we were in a darker place, but I had no doubt Kent Shaw could see my outline. I said in Cora’s voice, “Kent, is that you, darling?”

  Now you must know that the hospital was a long way uptown on the West Side, whereas I’d had a straight run down from my apartment. It had taken me fourteen minutes. Oh, I didn’t know that Kent had just within minutes called the hospital, that he knew Cora was there, poisoned, dying.

  So when he said in a hoarse voice, “Darlene?” all I thought was, Ah, this is something like it! And I hoped that Charley Ives was close enough to hear.

  But I couldn’t play Darlene. So I said, in Cora’s voice, with one of her flying movements of the hand, “No, dear. Cora. I came for what you promised.”

  He said, “Go away. Go back. Go back.”

&nbs
p; “But I need it, darling,” said I in Cora’s coaxing manner. “I’m going abroad. Didn’t you know? I thought I would come for what you owe me. It’s only fair.” He didn’t speak. I strained to make him speak, for evidence. “Where is Darlene?” said I, with Cora’s suspicious jealousy. “Have you paid her before me?”

  He couldn’t have been able to see my face. Of course, he did have in his mind the notion of plastic surgery. He may have expected Cora to look other than like herself already. I knew he was confused. I didn’t imagine that his masterpiece, his beautiful hoax, was turning over in his brain.

  He said, “Darlene, I’m glad you are here. I’ll give you the key. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

  But I had to stay being Cora. So I laughed Cora’s high affected laughter. I wanted him to go on saying revealing and incriminating things. I thought Charley Ives had probably come on soft feet and was listening in the hall by now. I wasn’t afraid. I said, “Kent, don’t you know me? It’s Cora Steffani, darling.”

  “Cora is in the hospital,” he said.

  “But, darling, I’m the Dream Walker—the lady you’ve taught so cleverly to be two places at once.…”

  His thin shrill voice that lacked only volume to be a scream, said, “No. She got the poison. You got to be Darlene.”

  The word “poison” staggered me. I saw his knife lift and make ready. I’d thought if he ran at me to run into the hall. Now I thought, Where is Charley? I hadn’t the time to be much afraid. With a vague notion that I could delay him or appease him, I said, “Oh, very well. I am Darlene.”

  But I couldn’t play Darlene. All the negatives I was using—the voice Darlene couldn’t mimic because she wasn’t trained well enough, the posture that he had never been able to teach her to hold, because she hadn’t the control, the gestures—these were Cora’s and never Darlene’s. All my wisps of knowledge had an inverted power. I had made him believe I couldn’t be Darlene.

  He let out a yammering sound. He cried, “Cora!” in a shriek of terror. And the knife flew at me through the air because he believed I was Cora … walking.

  It struck me in the breastbone. I may have staggered slightly. I did not fall. I hadn’t thought of his throwing that knife. I seemed to myself to stand there, stupidly surprised. But I stood. I knew I was alone. Charley Ives was not here. Nobody listened at the door. I had rushed in and taken the role of the victim, and nobody was going to cast me for the heroine. I thought with dumb sorrow, “Teacher, thirty-four.” Naturally, no hero.…