The Iron Gates

by Margaret Millar

  There were other prohibitions also, but these were not printed on signs. The bartender attended to them himself. He would sidle up behind a customer and say gently, “No pimps,” or sometimes, “No fairies.”

  Not that he gave a damn about them but he was afraid of the health and liquor inspectors that came around. He didn’t want the place to close up. With his salary and the rakeoff he got from the beer salesmen he was buying a house out in the east end for his family.

  Through his efforts the Allen Hotel got quite a good name with the various inspectors. They didn’t bother much about it any more. The word was passed around, and a number of people who didn’t want to come in contact with the law began to use the rooms upstairs. It was ironical, but in one way it wasn’t so bad. The bartender soaked up information like a blotter. Some of it he sold, some of it he gave away to his friend Sands. From Sands, in return, he got the pleasant feeling that he was on the good side of the law, and that if a time came when he wasn’t, there was at least one honest policeman in the world.

  He took personal pride in Sands and followed all his cases in the newspapers. Whenever Sands came in for a drink or some information the bartender’s face would take on a sly, conspiratorial smile because here were all these bums drinking side by side with a real detective and not knowing it. Sometimes he was so pleased he had to go into the can and roar with laughter.

  Today he wasn’t so pleased. He leaned across the counter and spoke out of the side of his mouth.

  “Mr. Sands.”

  “Hello, Bill,” Sands said, sitting on the bar stool.

  “Mr. Sands, there’s a friend of yours in the back booth. Been here nearly all day. I would sure like to lose him.”

  “Bascombe?”

  The bartender nodded. “This is no kind of place for a policeman to get drunk in. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to Mr. Bascombe.” He grinned suddenly. “Not unless it was fatal.”

  “I’ll talk to him,” Sands said. “Bring me a small ale.”

  He got off the bar stool, a thin tired-looking middle-aged man with features that fitted each other so perfectly that few people could remember what he looked like. His clothes blended in with the rest of him, they were gray and rather battered and limp. He moved unobtrusively to the back of the room.

  Bascombe was sitting alone in the booth with his head in his hands.

  “Bascombe.”

  No answer.

  “Bascombe.” Sands knocked away Bascombe’s elbows. Bascombe’s head lolled and then righted itself. His eyes didn’t open.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” Bascombe said huskily. “Make it double.”

  Sands sat down on the other side of the booth and sipped his ale patiently. Pretty soon Bascombe blinked his eyes open and looked across the table at him.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” he said, “it’s you. Go away, Sands, go away, my boy. You have this elfin habit of appearing suddenly. I don’t like it. It’s upsetting.”

  “D’arcy’s been looking for you,” Sands said.

  “Trouble with D’arcy is his brassiere’s too tight.”

  “You’d better come to and listen. D’arcy’s got his knife in you.”

  “Sure, I know,” Bascombe said. “I got sick of him following me around and maybe I talked a little rough to him.”

  “He reported you for drinking on duty.”

  Bascombe blinked again. “Who to?”

  “To me.”

  “As long as it was to you.”

  “Maybe next time it won’t be,” Sands said. “How many times is this that Ellen’s left you?”

  “Five,” Bascombe said, his face twisting. “Yeah. Five. In three years.”

  “I suppose it’s no use my pointing out that Ellen is a little tramp?” Sands said dryly. “She isn’t housebroken. You can’t do anything with that kind but leave them. Get a divorce. Bascombe.” Bascombe didn’t answer. “If it’ll make it easier for you, I could have you transferred to another department. That’s D’arcy’s suggestion.”

  “That goddam little . . .”

  “Sure, but even D’arcy hits it on the button sometimes. I think he’s right. He said you were fussed up this A.M. over some doctor whose wife is missing.”

  “I can’t help thinking of Ellen.”

  “That’s what I mean. Incidentally D’arcy thinks he’s traced the doctor’s wife as far as some hairdressing shop down near Sunnyside.”

  “How do you know so much about it?”

  “Oh, I’ve been interested in the Morrow family for a long time,” Sands said, and picked up his glass again. “For about sixteen years, I guess. Get your coat on.”

  “What for? I’m not going any place.”

  “Yes, you are. I spent an hour and a half looking for you. I told D’arcy that you were out doing some work for me and that I’d pick you up and take you down to Sunnyside. Get your coat.”

  “You’re an easy guy to hate, Sands. You’re so goddam right all the time, aren’t you, so goddam sure of yourself.”

  Sands said nothing. He never talked about himself, and he didn’t like to listen to other people talk about him. It seemed unreal to him, as if they must be talking about someone else.

  He left Bascombe struggling with his overcoat and went ahead to the bar.

  The bartender was rinsing glasses. He stopped work and wiped his hands.

  “He going with you, Mr. Sands?”

  “Yes.”

  “Jesus,” Bill said. “You must be a regular one of those guys that the rats followed.”

  “A nice description,” Sands said. Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats . . .

  “Human nature is sure a funny thing,” Bill said. “Take me, how big I am, and take you, how small you are, and here I couldn’t do a thing with Mr. Bascombe, and he follows you like a lamb. You must have plenty muscle that don’t show.”

  “Any eight-year-old could knock me off my pins.”

  “Jesus, Mr. Sands, you shouldn’t talk like that.” Bill was offended. “It might get around.”

  Bascombe came up. He had his overcoat buttoned wrong but he walked straight and his voice had lost its thickness.

  “Bye, Billy-boy,” he said to the bartender. “When they kick me off the force let’s make a date in a dark alley.”

  “I’d like that fine,” the bartender said thoughtfully.

  When the two policemen had gone Bill returned to the glasses. Officially the Allen Hotel had been open all day but it was after dark that business got heavy. Bill had a couple of waiters who came in around seven. When there was a rush on he helped serve but most of the night he spent sizing up the customers and easing out drunks and keeping an eye on the money. At the Allen any bill oven five dollars was automatically considered phony until Bill had passed on it.

  Tuesday night was the slowest of the week and only one thing happened that Bill felt Sands should know about. A little ex-con and hophead called Greeley came in with a red-headed fat woman. The woman Bill recognized as a floozie from a house down the street. But it took him several minutes to recognize Greeley. He had on a brand-new topcoat and a new green fedora. But the newest thing about Greeley was his expression. He acted like a millionaire who had to rub shoulders with a rough mob.

  “Well, well,” Bill said. “Mister Greeley. Pardon me while I catch my breath. And is this charming lady Mrs. Greeley?”

  The woman giggled, but Greeley gave him a sour look and led the woman to one of the tables. Bill followed them.

  “If I’d known you was coming, Mr. Greeley, I’d have got out my Irish-lace tablecloth, sure as hell.”

  “Champagne,” Greeley said, and sat down without taking off his hat, and coat.

  “Teaspoon or tablespoon?” Bill said. The woman giggled again.

  Greeley laid a fifty-dollar bill on the table.

  Bill did everything to the bill but chew it up, and it still looked good.

  When the bottle of champagne was gone Greeley had lost his sour look and wa
s beginning to talk big. Bill stood as near the table as he could and now and then he caught a snatch of Greeley’s talk.

  “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life bouncing in and out of Kingston for rolling drunks and picking pockets. Listen, Sue, I’m on to something. You climb on the wagon with me, baby.”

  “Sure,” the woman said. “Sure. Anything you say.”

  “The kinda life we lead we don’t get respect for ourselves. Something high class, that’s what I got, something classy and steady. Look around this dump, look at it.”

  The woman obliged.

  “Ain’t it a dump?” Greeley said. “Couple of days ago this was my idea of a big night, getting tanked in a dump like this with a chance to get fixed up after.”

  “Well, what are we sitting here for if you’re so high class?”

  “Saying good-bye,” Greeley said solemnly. “Saying good-bye to a crappy life like this. From now on you’ll be covered with diamonds.”

  “The hell with diamonds. I want a square meal.”

  Greeley ordered a couple of hamburgers and another bottle of champagne.

  The woman ate the hamburgers, biting on them as if her teeth hurt.

  Three soldiers at the bar began to sing and Bill couldn’t hear what Greeley was saying now. But he guessed it was the same kind of stuff. Greeley was leaning across the table being very intense while the woman chewed and watched him with a where-have-I-heard this-before expression in her eyes.

  Around ten they got up to go out and Bill noticed that Greeley’s pants were badly frayed at the bottom. He hurried over to the till to test the fifty-dollar bill again.

  Greeley saw him and flung him a contemptuous smile. Bill followed him to the door.

  “Good night, Mister Greeley,” he said. “You’ll be back, we hope not.”

  The woman giggled and said, “Honest, you’re a scream.”

  Greeley grabbed her arm. “You never laugh at nothing I say.”

  The woman pushed him away coolly. “At you I’m laughing all the time. I just gotta stop myself or I’d die.”

  “Good-bye, Wisenheim,” Greeley said to Bill, opening the door. “Come and see me at the Royal York.”

  “They still taking on dishwashers? I bet you look cute in an apron.”

  A final giggle from the woman and then the door slammed.

  Wish my wife would laugh like that at everything I say, Bill thought. She’s got no sense of humor.

  He went over to the soldiers. “Better quiet down, boys. I just saw a couple of M.P.s go past the door.”

  The soldiers quieted, and Tuesday night went on.

  5

  On Tuesday Edith quarreled with nearly everyone in the house. She began with Andrew, who told her at breakfast time that he was going to report Lucille’s disappearance to the police.

  Edith raged and wept. It was too humiliating, it was too shameful, how would they ever hold their heads up again.

  Andrew had left without even bothering to argue. Frustrated, Edith turned her anger on Martin. How could Martin go to the office when they needed him, he must stay home, it was his duty . . .

  Directly after breakfast Martin too left the house.

  The most violent quarrel was in the evening. Edith was in the living room with Polly and Giles. She suggested that the wedding be postponed.

  Polly gave her a long hard stare. “What for?”

  “It wouldn’t look right if you were married at a time like this.”

  “It wouldn’t look right to whom?” Polly said. “You? Lucille?”

  “People will talk.”

  “People always do. This is Giles’ last furlough before he goes overseas.”

  “I know,” Edith said tragically. “I know it’s a terrible thing to have it spoiled like this. But couldn’t you wait just a few days? Perhaps Lucille will be back then.”

  “I don’t care a damn about Lucille,” Polly said. “I never have. The only way I’ve been able to live in the same house with her was to ignore her, not to let her spoil things for me. Well, she’s not going to spoil them now.”

  Giles tried not to listen to the two women. He looked down at his hands, hardly recognizing them as his own he felt so unreal and formless. He seemed to be moving through a nightmare, without the power to wake up and without the strength to protect himself against the dim shapes of danger. Sometimes the house was like a box and he was alone in it and on the ceiling of the box there were shadows without cause and the walls moved slightly, in and out, as if the box were breathing. Sometimes he stopped to listen to it, and he heard his own breathing, surely it must be his own, but it sounded as if someone were breathing along with him in rhythm that wasn’t quite perfect.

  When he went into a room it always seemed that someone had just left it. The air was stirring, and the door quivered.

  “She’s been very good to you,” Edith was saying shrilly. “You shouldn’t talk like that about her in front of Giles.”

  “I talk the way I want to. I don’t fake things.”

  “Nobody listens to me in this house! I won’t have it! I forbid you to be married until we find out about Lucille.”

  “I don’t need permission,” Polly said. She turned her back, but Edith’s voice clawed at her ears.

  “What do you know about Giles? What do you know s about him?”

  “I guess there isn’t much to know,” Giles said, and attempted to smile. “I mean, I realize how queer it looks that Mrs. Morrow should disappear the day after I arrive. But I assure you . . .”

  “You must be crazy, Edith,” Polly said in a cold flat voice. “It’s bad enough that Giles should have to be here at such a time, without being accused by you.”

  “She said he reminded her of someone,” Edith cried, flinging herself violently into this new idea. “You can’t tell about people, you can’t believe anyone, you can’t trust . . .”

  Her voice snapped. She turned abruptly and ran out of the room, the sleeves of her dress fluttering. She looked like a great flapping bird with broken wings.

  “Giles.”

  “Yes?”

  “Let’s get out of here. Now. Tonight.”

  “Can we?”

  “No one can stop us. We’ll just leave. Giles, go up and pack. We can go to a hotel.”

  “All right.” The ceiling of the box seemed to open and clear cool air rushed in. “All right, we’ll just leave.”

  “Oh, Giles.”

  The telephone in the hall began to ring.

  “It surely looks like her,” said Miss Betty Flack. “It surely does. But I can’t be sure. I mean if it’s important, with the police in it and all, then I can’t be sure.” Miss Flack handed back the photographs and added thoughtfully, “But it surely looks like her.”

  Over Miss Flack’s platinum curls Bascombe and Sands exchanged glances.

  “What I mean is,” said Miss Flack with an elegant gesture, “I think it’s her, all right. She came in just when I was closing the shop up and wanted to know if I did hair-cutting. Well, naturally I do, though my real specialty is cold waves:”

  “You cut her hair?” Sands said, gently guiding Miss Flack’s mind back from the cold waves.

  “I gave her a feather cut. Did you see For Whom the Bell Tolls? Well, like that. The girl in it, I mean. Mrs. Smith, she said that was her name, she didn’t seem to care how I cut it, just sat there holding her purse. I noticed her shoes were wet and I like to make a little joke now and then with my customers, so I asked her, laughing-like, if she’d been in swimming down at the lake. She didn’t think it was funny,” Miss Flack said, adding fairly, “Maybe it wasn’t.”

  “Didn’t she say anything at all?” Sands asked.

  “Just about how cold it was. I surely felt sorry for her with such a. flimsy little coat on. She was such a lady, if you know what I mean, and so sort of desperate looking. I thought to myself at the time, maybe her husband drinks or something.” Miss Flack had another of her thoughtful pauses. “He certainly looke
d as if he drank.”

  “Oh,” Sands said, and Bascombe’s hands twitched as if they wanted to get around Miss Flack’s throat and choke something out of her. “Her husband came with her?”

  “Not exactly. I mean, I don’t know if he came with her, but when she went out I stood at the door getting a breath of fresh air and I saw this man waiting across the street. Mrs. Smith stopped and talked to him for a minute and then she walked ahead and he followed her. I remember thinking to myself at the time, isn’t it a caution what women marry sometimes. She was so tall and handsome and he was just a little fellow.”

  “A little fellow,” Sands said, and thought back sixteen years to the last time he’d seen Andrew Morrow. Morrow was about six foot three. Even making allowances for the fact that the light had been dim and Miss Flack’s memory was of the vague and romantic order, Sands was sure that the man Mrs. Morrow met across the street had not been her husband.

  It was easy enough to check. Sands asked Miss Flack for a telephone and while he was sitting in the booth looking in the directory for Morrow’s number, he heard Miss Flack tell Bascombe that she herself was single, had a half-interest in the beauty parlor and liked great big men.

  Sands dialed.

  The door into the hall was still open and Polly and Giles heard Della answer the phone and then trot down the hall. A minute later Andrew came to the phone. They heard him say, “Hello. Yes, this is Dr. Morrow.”

  “Well,” Polly said sharply, “do we listen or do we talk? Or do you go up and pack?”

  “I will if you want me to.”

  “If!” Polly said bitterly. “Oh, well, nothing like a telephone ringing for breaking up moods, is there, Giles?” She clenched her hands and began to swear in an undertone. “Damn, damn, damn, damn.”