He leaned closer to the lamp and started reading again: “‘The sole exception to the foregoing is that I give, devise, and bequeath to my dear friend, Gerald Musgrove, the following.’”
He began to scrawl on a piece of scrap paper, dictating the words aloud to himself: “‘the solid gold watch which belonged to Papa. Also,’” he glanced at her, grinning mischievously, the corners of his eyes crinkled with stifled laughter, “‘also all the cash money found within my room, whatsoever sum that may be.’”
“Oh, go ’long with you!” She giggled, pushing his shoulder affectionately. “You’re such a josher. I told you there’s nothing.”
He allowed his laughter to break free and she joined in with him, saying as she dabbed at her streaming eyes that he ought to take more, that he really should have the stock because he would know what to do with the papers the companies sent out. He wasn’t too well off, she could tell, although he brought her flowers and wine and that pint of vanilla ice cream last night He really and truly ought not to be so unselfish.
“Honestly, Aunty,” he argued. “The watch and the money is all I want. And I don’t really want that, not for a long, long while. I’d much rather have my sweet little aunty among the living.”
She dozed off as he carefully copied his notes on the original. document. When she awoke they went downstairs together. Mrs. Martin had a parlorful of guests who watched Miss Emmy flourishingly sign her last will and testament. Then Mrs. Martin and that dyed blonde from across the street with whom she was so chummy affixed their signatures as witnesses.
As she passed the parlor door again, after bidding Gerald good night, she could hear them cackling in there, and she thought she knew the source of their merriment. They must think she was giving herself unholy airs, making a will when she was churchmouse poor.
They couldn’t know she had something they’d give their worldly goods to get: a touch of magic. Brothers and sisters she had none, but miraculously she had sprouted a nephew who now looked after her.
When she woke up the next morning, it was to the frightening suspicion that she was in for an illness. She’d never had a sick day in her life, never an ache or a pain, yet she felt dizzy and headachy and not up to snuff at all.
There was a funny smell in the room, one she couldn’t seem to place. The window was closed, although she couldn’t imagine why she had shut it last night. She tottered over to it. As she threw it open, the cracked pane with its gaping hole rattled menacingly. She wondered if Gerald were handy enough about the house to fix it. Papa used to be able to do things like that. She must remember to call Gerald’s attention to it and ask him.
As she dressed, she decided to give Mrs. Martin one last chance to find a glazier and save Gerald the trouble. On her way out to market she stopped at the parlor door and had already started to knock when she heard the landlady on the telephone.
“Honest to Pete,” she was saying. “I’d sell the house like a shot if I could find a buyer. Furniture and all. The real estate man’s already got the papers drawn up.”
She must have met attempted dissuasion at the other end of the line, for she listened a moment before resuming:
“I know I get a pretty penny in rentals and the janitor does all the heavy work, except Miss Emmy’s room which she used to be so fussy about letting a man into, but it’s getting on my nerves. Especially with these plainclothes cops hanging around watching. Won’t tell me what they’re watching for, but it’s plain that one of the tenants is up to no good.
“I suspect it’s that pretty second-floor parlor front. I’ve always thought she had entirely too many uncles visiting her all the time. If you ask me, that girl is uncled to death. But she pays in advance, and I’ve looked the other way. Now I don’t know—”
There was another long pause. Miss Emmy raised a hand again to knock, then realized she had forgotten what she wanted to ask. All she could think of was how wonderful it would be if Mrs. Martin did sell the house and someone really nice replaced her as landlady.
She kept returning to that dream throughout the day. Anyone, she felt sure, would be an improvement on the incumbent, yet she tried casting this and that person she knew in the role, mentally auditioning them. By late afternoon she was convinced that the delightful possibility was a fait accompli, warranting some special sort of celebration.
She dressed herself elegantly, pinning a lavender bow in her hair. From the bureau drawer she took the picture that looked like Gerald. One of the boxes under the bed contained a number of broken picture frames, one of which did nicely. In its split corner she tucked a bouquet of artificial daisies. It looked very pretty on the mantel.
That evening Gerald was punctual, but not alone. With him was the baggage Emmy had not seen since the first evening. Emmy almost wept with disappointment.
“I thought you wouldn’t mind,” he said nonchalantly, and she wondered how he could possibly have been so in error. “I brought my Cousin Mildred along. She’s heard me rave about you and she’s anxious to meet you.”
The girl stepped into the room, although with wholly pseudo-daintiness she seemed to hold herself apart from it. Her plucked eyebrows rose critically as she looked about. The snapping eyes lit upon the picture on the mantel and suddenly her voluptuous mouth tautened.
“What’s that doing there?”
“Nothing,” said Emmy truthfully. “I just thought it looked like Gerald.”
“Well, it doesn’t a bit,” said Mildred. “Get rid of it.”
Emmy blinked back the tears so as not to give the girl the satisfaction. She had never been spoken to in such a tone. She had done nothing. She had behaved, as always, like a perfect lady.
Mildred repeated the command, “Get rid of it!”
“Mildred, dear!” Gerald was once more placatory. With a creature like that, Miss Emmy supposed, it was the only tack to take if one wanted to remain friendly cousins. “It doesn’t matter. Let it be.”
“Okay,” contemptuously. “It’s no skin off my—”
“Darling, don’t!” He turned to their hostess. “Is dinner nearly ready?” he asked. “I’m starving. Don’t worry about is there enough for Mildred. She eats like a bird.”
Fortunately, there was enough. Emmy’s appetite was uncustomarily pawky. With the girl there the vibrations in the room were all wrong, and no amount of effort on Gerald’s part could bring them into tune. The washing up, usually a happy affair with one assistant, became an unwieldy maneuver with two, and Emmy was worn out by the whole dismal business when she returned to her rocking chair beside the window.
“Don’t she remind you of Whistler’s mother?” Gerald cooed dotingly.
“Sure,” said Mildred. “Real quaint.”
Miss Emmy promptly went to sleep.
The room was dusky when she awoke, lit only by the small bulb in the kitchen unit. Mildred had her hand inside the stove. Gerald yanked it out of there, twisting the wrist a little so that she dropped the screwdriver, or whatever it was she’d been holding.
“Don’t be such a milktoast,” Mildred squeaked. “Suppose she has got the keenest nose in town. If we turn it so little every night it’ll be weeks before—Wouldn’t it be better just to open the burners all the way just before we leave?”
“She’d smell it,” Gerald said. “She’d turn it off, and then where would you be?”
“All right, then—let her get used to it gradual. Turn the control valve a little at a time, but does it have to be this little?”
Mildred’s voice had risen. “Shut up, kid,” Gerald implored, glancing toward the chair. “You’ll wake her up.”
Miss Emmy pretended she was still asleep, to spare him the embarrassment of knowing she had witnessed his cousin’s inexcusable behavior. Not having been born yesterday she knew what the wretched girl was up to, and she knew now what the funny smell in the room was, the intensification of which had just awakened her.
This hateful young person was wasting the gas just to run up the
bill. True, the smell had been in the room before Mildred entered it, but there was probably some mechanical reason for that which was beyond Emmy’s power to figure out.
Gerald was trying to make her stop. She was glad to see him showing some backbone, but she did not propose to let him carry the burden alone. She had stock in the Gas Company. They wouldn’t approve of someone who wasted their commodity. Yes, she would tell them what was going on, and she would let Mildred know she was on to her shenanigans.
As a prelude Emmy yawned extravagantly.
“I think I’ll just go downtown tomorrow and pay a visit to the Company,” she said pointedly. “I haven’t been there for a long time. It’s way far down somewhere.” She waved an arm. “It’ll take all morning, but I’ll find it, you can be sure.”
“That’s right. Aunty,’’ said Gerald, coming over to her. “Go ahead and live it up a little.”
Miss Perkins, who had not even been born way back when the Consolidated Edison Company was known as Consolidated Gas, took her job with it most conscientiously. Every day provided fresh problems, but she had rarely had one so provocative as the one now being presented by the little old lady who sat at her desk.
Miss Emma T. Rice, owner of ten shares of Consolidated Gas, was either nutty as a fruitcake or terribly careless in her choice of friends, one of whom seemed to be trying to murder her by slow leak. It wasn’t the gas company’s baby, but someone had to look into it, the police or the Department of Welfare. Miss Perkins would not sleep a wink until she was sure that another person’s bedroom wasn’t filling with gas, barely perceptibly, until enough had accumulated to cause death. If the story were a hallucination, then the poor darling needed help of another sort.
“I’ll take care of it,” Miss Perkins promised, cutting short the third reprise.
“Pray do.” Emmy shivered in her black going-downtown coat which was too warm for the day but too sleazy for the air-conditioned office. “We must stop this thievery, this willful waste of something that belongs to the Company and to me. It isn’t Mildred’s to throw away that way.”
“It certainly is not,” agreed Miss Perkins as she reached for a telephone.
It was a long trip home, and when Emmy got there all she wanted was to crawl upstairs and lie down for a few minutes. But as luck would have it, Mrs. Martin intercepted her in the downstairs hall.
“Your niece was here this morning,” she said. “I let her use my key to get into your room.”
Emmy was in no mood to stand there and talk such nonsense. It just went to show how much Mrs. Martin knew. Miss Emmy had no niece.
Without bothering to answer she started up the steps.
“You’ve forgotten to pay your rent again,” Mrs. Martin nagged after her. “You’ve skipped a week. I’d appreciate your giving me this week’s and next’s at your earliest convenience.”
Emmy marched resolutely upward. Although her pillow looked inviting, she was determined to gather the rent money before resting.
This was never a simple operation. To outwit pilferers she banked her small funds in various corners of the room, in an assortment of envelopes and old bread wrappers, or she tucked them between the pages of magazines or into the top of the sugar bowl.
Her method of making withdrawals was to search thoroughly, find all she could, spread it on the bed, count it, and then subtract the amount needed for the rent or whatever else had to be paid. Today she was astonished to discover that she had much more than usual, a great deal more than last time. In fact, the excess was so striking she was half inclined to think that someone, unknown to her, had been taking advantage of the excellent hiding places her room afforded. Miss Saucepan, perhaps, or Miss Bang-on-the-wall, the annoying neighbor.
But if anyone on the top floor might be presumed to be wealthy it was far most likely to be Miss Emmy. She came of a much older family, and it might very well be that she had always had this much money, and had simply forgotten it.
Certainly she would not mention her doubts to anyone lest she receive that suspicious glance, that tacit implication that Miss Emmy was slightly tibble-dotty and maybe ought to be put away somewhere.
But Gerald, that dear boy—he had known. He’d said she had a fortune. He had called her a recluse, a type which. ipso facto has a roomful of banknotes. And, bless him, here they were. How exciting that Gerald should be so right, when she could have sworn…
After a while, she went downstairs with the money.
It was so late when she returned that there was barely time to prepare Gerald’s dinner, much less stretch out and relax. But the day which had been so unlike the average still had another surprise for her.
A strange man was waiting for her in the upstairs hall.
“Where the heck have you been, lady?” he asked irritably.
She was conscience-stricken. This must be the man from the Gas Company. She had asked them to send someone, then had not been here to receive him.
“I had to go out again,” she apologized. “Something unexpected came up, and I had to attend to it right away.”
She opened the door, waving him toward the best chair by way of mollification. Then it occurred to her that his first interest was undoubtedly the stove, so she waved him toward that
The man obeyed neither signal. He walked to the mantel and stood with arms akimbo before the picture which was not of Gerald.
“Some character!” he remarked.
“You know him?” she asked delightedly. “He resembles a gentleman friend of mine who will be here any minute. If you’re still here, you can tell me if they really do look alike. That Mildred,” she uttered the name with fastidious distaste, “doesn’t seem to think that they do.”
“Neither did the lieutenant,” the man said cryptically. “Mind if I open the window? The smell of gas in here is fierce.”
He didn’t wait for a reply. *
“What stumps him is—here’s a big-time crook. After he gets out he should live like a king, but our boy clerks in a grocery store and lives in a crummy fleabag. His girl’s got runs in her stockings, though she looks like the kind that likes nice things when she can get them.
“We keep a tail on him for weeks, hoping to catch him spending more than he can reasonably explain having, but he doesn’t step out of line once. He acts like a law-abiding citizen. He doesn’t even spit on the sidewalk. And he not only helps old ladies across the street but escorts them upstairs. Then you give us the break we need, by going to Con Edison.
“This patrolman is sent over to check on your story. I’m standing around outside, like always, and I walk up to him to break the monotony, to find out what else is cooking in the house. When he tells me, I go right over and get a warrant for attempted homicide.”
“That’s nice,” she said vaguely. “I’m sure you deserve it.”
He frowned at her, then shook his head.
“I decide to make the pinch here,” he continued, “so’s you could identify him without having to go to the station. I’ve got a grandma myself. We won’t have to bother you anymore, ma’am, soon’s we get his prints. We’ll make it as painless on you as possible. Is that okay?”
How the man did chatter on, Emmy thought, saying anxiously, “I’m afraid I haven’t been listening. I guess my mind’s on the dinner I should be preparing. My guest will be here any minute. Isn’t there something you want to do to the stove?”
He had a nice smile. “I’ll wait,” he said courteously. “It’ll be a pleasure to meet him.”
Miss Emmy began to peel potatoes. The man from the Gas Company rocked contentedly in the chair by the window.
Gerald was his usual punctual self. She went to the door to greet him, her heart springing as always at the sight of him. He scowled when he saw the man in the rocker and t
urned away as though about to leave in anger. Is he jealous? she wondered, almost unbearably flattered. But he couldn’t have left just then even if he had wanted to, because two men were coming up the stairs abreast, cutting off his path.
“Is this the man?” the visitor in the rocker demanded. “Is this the one you heard talking over by the stove last night, ma’am, planning a little surprise party for you?”
“Yes,” she said proudly. “This is Gerald.”
There was something metallic in the gasman’s hand—a tool for fixing the stove, she supposed. But she was wrong, because suddenly the thing was snapped about Gerald’s wrist.
“Take him away, boys,” he told the others.
And then, in spite of all the confusion, she understood. The gas company was going to punish Gerald for something that wasn’t his fault at all, was wholly Mildred’s. And Emmy herself was to blame for their learning about it in the first place. She wished there were some way she could make amends.
Perhaps there was. “Could I speak to you privately?” she asked the gasman, drawing him deeper into the room, although the others had already reached the lower landing. She had no wish to embarrass Gerald further.
“I found today I had quite a bit more money tucked away here than I’d thought,” she broached the subject delicately. “It might help him.”
She unsnapped her handbag, which was capacious but quite inadequate to restrain its contents; the bills burst forth like feathers from a ruptured pillow.
“Great jumping wheels of fire,” said the gasman, and he began counting.
She kept asking him if there was enough to buy Gerald’s freedom, but he paid no attention to her. He just shook his head and whistled as if he had never seen that much money before.
At last he found his tongue. “It’s practically the whole payroll from that factory stick-up,” he exclaimed. “The job our boy did time for. All that’s missing is a measly few hundred.”
The Comfortable Coffin Page 14