I turned to the right, down the corridor with the dingy carpet which I had traversed more than fifty times in the past month, so that I knew its red and green pattern by heart. The other apartments on this floor were quiet: 4-B, on my left, 4-C on the right farther down, which housed a man named Spelvin, and my own 4-D at the far end. Around the corner from the stairwell was one more door, behind which the stairs continued to the roof.
The details of this hall were so familiar that they registered only on my subconscious eye: brass letters and numerals screwed into wood, and the board creaking under the carpet as I passed 4-B. I reached my end of the hall, fitted my key into the Yale lock and turned it. The lock worked with surprising ease and quiet, and I thought that Mrs. Ulrichson, in a fit of unusual energy, must have been busy with the oil can.
The door closed behind me, I clicked on the hall light and bent to take off my galoshes. “Home again,” said I aloud to the apartment which had heard so many of my soliloquies.
It was then that I noticed the illumination in the living room. I couldn’t remember leaving that light on—funny!
I walked down the short hall and flung open the door. My hand left the knob, and was arrested in mid-motion; poised in the act of taking a step, I halted, shaken by a horrible qualm.
This was not my apartment.
The furniture was in the wrong places, there were pictures on the walls, and a terrible floor lamp swung its bead fringe over the velour armchair. On the sofa there sat, also transfixed in astonishment, a perfectly strange man.
THREE
One Cat Too Many
I THINK I HAVE never been so frightened.
There are dreams like that, in which a familiar place goes distorted and queer, with doors where there should be no doors. The dream forces you to go searching among them, despairingly, and you know that one of them will open on a bottomless black space roaring with unfriendly winds. I’d had those nightmares sometimes, and wakened from them with a moment of sick terror.
But I wasn’t asleep now, I couldn’t be asleep! The rain was still wet on my coat, my cheeks stung with the transition from cold to warmth. I couldn’t have imagined a radio commercial, nor the brass numbers on my door. The key that had opened it was real and tangible in my hand. If this was a dream, why didn’t I wake?
The man was the first to recover from his surprise, and it gave him some advantage. All I had seen of him at first was a pair of soiled and disreputable flannel trousers, and startled blue eyes above the edge of an outspread newspaper. Now he put the paper aside and got to his feet. It seemed to take him a long time to rise to his full height, and his shoulders spread to an incredible width so that he loomed immense and alien in this strange room. I half expected him to go on growing, dissolving into a dark cloud that would come down on me in smothering weight.
You don’t hear actual voices in your sleep, though. When he spoke, his voice was real—at once deep and soft and faintly husky. “Were you looking for someone?” he said courteously.
My own words caught in my throat. “I—no. I’m in my own—This is my apartment!” And then I added, foolishly, unsteadily, “Isn’t it?”
“Afraid not,” the man said. His eyes were cool; they were of the light blue that makes you think of sailors or aviators. Their expression was guarded as well as chilly. “As you see,” he pointed out, “it’s mine.”
I gazed wildly around me. I knew now that I was awake, but a more unnerving doubt had taken possession of my mind, because all the evidence pointed to the truth of his words. There was a litter of books and papers on the table, and a framed photograph of a grim-faced woman propped up beside them. A pipe had been knocked out in an unfamiliar large ashtray, a leather jacket was flung across the arm of the chesterfield. Not a sign remained here to show that I had ever been in the apartment before; it was as if my name, written on a blackboard, had announced my claim—and had vanished at the touch of an eraser.
“I don’t see how I can have made a mistake,” my voice faltered. “This key opened the door.”
I looked at the room again. Now that the first shock was over, the furniture even in its changed position once more appeared familiar; but it was the same taupe velour that prevailed throughout the house, that might have been found in a dozen other apartment buildings.
“Is—isn’t this the top floor?” I asked.
The man said, “Yes,” flatly. He was watching me with that same expression, his mouth set in a hard uncompromising line.
Now the doubt was growing. I rubbed my forehead hard, but that didn’t help much. “It’s not possible that I’ve gone crazy?” I thought, and to my great consternation realized that I had said it aloud. The man made no response, but his look took on an almost imperceptible shade of compassion.
“Do you mind if I look around?” I managed a somewhat braver tone, and turned to fling open the door beside me. The gesture, even to me, had the quality of desperation.
The dressing room was still there, the same shape and size, but that meant very little. There were a few masculine garments hanging on the rods, and a pair of military brushes on the built-in chest of drawers at the end. A battered Gladstone bag stood on the low shelf where my big suitcase had been. Not a sign, not a sign! In the long mirror that backed the door I saw my own image, pallid and terrified.
“Look here,” I said, turning back to the man, who stood motionless, “something’s terribly wrong. I was in this apartment until Friday morning, and it was all right when I left it. They surely can’t have rented it over my head and moved out all my belongings?”
“Not from this place,” he said calmly. “I’ve been here for two weeks.”
You never saw anyone look so large and steady and imperturbable. He was so solidly planted on his feet that I could well believe he’d been here for two weeks—or months, or years.
It was then that I remembered how the cable car had lurched as I boarded it. Could I, without realizing it, have struck my head? There were cases you read about, cases of amnesia and transfer of personality. Had I, Cameron Ferris—yes, I could remember my own name—really left that dull country boarding house, two hours ago, and come straight to this place—or had weeks passed since then, a space which had somehow been blotted from my memory? Might I have been wandering unknown and unsought for all that time, coming to just at this moment, blundering instinctively back to my apartment?
I couldn’t help recalling that dreamy passage of time on the bus, the illusory sense that among those silent strangers I had lost my own identity. It might have felt just that way if I’d been gradually recovering from amnesia.
But I could remember that. The old lady and her conversation were vivid in my mind, and the clerk who’d asked for particulars about my suitcase. Equally clear was the memory of Thursday’s work at the office. Why, there couldn’t be anything wrong with me, I couldn’t let myself think it!
Yet right then, for the first time, I was conscious of a curious duality of mind, doubt and certainty existing side by side, which was to stay with me in some measure through the whole night.
I’d have to pull myself together. “You moved in,” I said slowly, “two weeks ago? How was the apartment furnished then?”
“Very much as it is now,” he said.
“But—my suitcases, my clothes—they weren’t here? What’s become of my brown luster pitcher, and the balsam pillow on the chesterfield?”
“I don’t know anything about them,” the big man answered, and now there was a hint of impatience in his tone. I could see plainly enough what he expected; I was to admit that I’d made a mistake, and get out without further ado. If someone had burst in on me with as little ceremony, I could never have been so polite. Nonetheless, I had to persist.
“Did anyone tell you that the previous tenant had disappeared, mysteriously?” No, that was a mistake. Even as he moved his head in a negative gesture, I realized that I couldn’t afford to make mistakes.
“This is the fourth floor,”
I made a fresh start. “My key opened the door.”
He shrugged. “In these apartment houses, keys might be interchangeable.”—Too patient, too polite, I thought suddenly.
“In Yale locks? I can’t believe that. And if there’d been a key missing, wouldn’t Mrs. Ulrichson have changed the lock?”
“Who is Mrs. Ulrichson?” His eyes seemed to measure me, as if probing for knowledge.
“Don’t you know the landlady’s name?—She’s the one to settle this, of course. Will you get her, please, and ask her to come up?”
The man hesitated, and then gave a half laugh, the kind that means you’ve almost reached the end of your tether. He said, firmly but softly, “I don’t know what to make of this. There is no landlady here. All my dealings have been with a man called Bassett, who runs this place. I am afraid, under the circumstances, that it won’t do you the least good to see him.”
“I must know, please!” I said, and looked at him as appealingly as I could. “You’ll come downstairs with me, won’t you? It won’t take a minute to clear up this misunderstanding.”
His face didn’t change in the least, yet suddenly I knew that he was very reluctant to go. Now why? If he really thought me misguided or insane, the easiest way to get rid of me was to prove my error. The thought gave me an irrational gleam of hope, and his next words, though I didn’t know why at the time, strengthened it.
“Very well. I wonder if you would mind being very quiet in the hall; we’ve been told there’s illness in the next apartment.”
The hope wasn’t quite enough to sustain me, for as we went down the hall I found myself looking about nervously. Those closed doors had never before seemed so dark and unfriendly. What if I were to knock on one of them and demand that the neighbors help me?—But the neighbors didn’t know me, I’d never set eyes on any of them—except the man called Spelvin, whom I had passed once or twice in the hall. No, wait! There was Mrs. Pitman, she might vouch for me.
Instinctively whispering, I said, “Just a moment,” and walked firmly down the hall to push the bell of apartment 4-A. The man went half way down the top flight of stairs, and stood there; he had not wanted me to ring that bell, but he couldn’t very well stop me. And how silently he moved! This was all wrong, it must be a dream, or—that alternative I was trying not to believe.
Nobody answered the ring. I waited, and rang again, and still nobody came. I was sure I’d heard the radio from those rooms only a few minutes ago.
Or hadn’t I?
It did no good to stand gazing at the door. With my head spinning, I rejoined the man on the stairs. On this landing the potted fern which should have been standing on the little iron and tile table had disappeared. If I didn’t belong in this house, how did I know the fern should have been there? There were three flights to go down. My feet sounded on the treads, muffled but audible. His did not. Why?
Something was stirring in my mind, a story I’d heard, or read—about a girl whose testimony nobody would believe. It was only a vague memory as yet, and we were in the foyer, and the man was pressing Mrs. Ulrichson’s bell. Her apartment was the only one on the ground floor, a dark basement lair where I pictured her crouching all day among her machine-lace tidies. In a moment I’d see her. I fairly longed for the sight of her shapeless figure and plucked eyebrows.
I glanced sideways at my companion. His deeply tanned face, with each cheek marked by a vertical furrow, looked set in a weary patience. Strong as my impression of his uncertainty had been, I saw no trace of it now.
The door swung open. From where we stood I could see a corner of the landlady’s main room, and I looked there first. I knew that room, and it was unchanged; but this person in the doorway was certainly not Mrs. Ulrichson.
It was a man, tall and bony and stooping, and seemingly made of wavering outlines like a cartoon by George Price. His suit looked as if it had been slept in for several nights, his face twitched unhappily as he saw the man beside me, and wafting gently through the doorway came the unmistakable odor of whisky.
“Where’s Mrs. Ulrichson?” I said on a sort of gasp.
There was a moment of silence, during which the landlord’s eyes slid past me and seemed to consult the big man. Then he looked at me again. I thought his brown eyes might have been kind if they had not been so dull and—yes, so apprehensive.
“Why,” he said, “there’s nobody of that name here. Was there something I could do? We got no vacancies.”
From behind me the deep voice said quietly, “Mr. Bassett, this young lady seems to think I’m occupying her apartment. She insists that she left only Friday morning, but I told her I’d been in 4-D for two weeks.”
Bassett spoke slowly, and seemingly with an effort. “That’s right.”
His apprehension was directed only in part toward the big man. He had looked startled on his first glimpse of me, but now that expression was fading and its place taken by a more confident wariness. In the face of this impregnable front I felt helpless; but when I spoke that must not show in my voice.
“I know I am right,” I said. Yes, that sounded sure enough. “This is El Central, and I moved into 4-D on January fifteenth, and paid my rent for a month in advance. If you’ve taken over this place in Mrs. Ulrichson’s absence, you must have gone over her books. Consult them again, and you’ll see that I’m telling the truth.”
“I never saw you before,” Bassett said with perfect accuracy.
“My name is Cameron Ferris.”
“There’s no such name on the books,” he said, and the queerest look flickered behind his eyes, as if he’d thought of something funny.
“Then,” I said firmly, “this is a matter for the police.”
He continued to stare at me, and now I could detect nothing at all in his expression. The big man took a hand. He was maddeningly indulgent and patronizing.
“No, not the police, I think. You wouldn’t like that.”
“And why not?”
“They’d call your bluff,” he told me quietly. “They’d question me, and Mr. Bassett here, and find that I have full right to that apartment. They’d ask you where your baggage is; you might describe your possessions, but you couldn’t produce them. The matter of the key would be easily disposed of. Possibly you knew someone living here, and had an extra key made for the apartment. You’ve put on a pretty good act for us, but without proof, the police would break down your story in five minutes.”
I said, as levelly as I could, “But supposing I have proof?”
The tall man leaned comfortably against the door jamb. “Really, you interest me,” he said. There was amusement in his tone, and a veiled insolence. “If I weren’t fascinated by the way you keep this up, I shouldn’t listen much longer.”
I had a sudden, unwelcome flash of imagination. Suppose he were right, after all, how on earth must I look to him? Either he saw me as a queer character, pitching a tall story for dishonest purposes, or—he thought I was crazy.
There was only one thing to do: somehow to convince myself first. I pushed abruptly past Bassett and went into the landlord’s apartment. “I want to sit down,” I replied to his startled bleat of protest.
I’d been here only twice before, but this place had not changed. I recognized the tidies over the back of every chair and sofa, and the chromo of a “Yard of Kittens” against the dull tan wallpaper. They looked like long-lost friends to me.
With private astonishment at the sure sound of my voice, I suggested, “You sit down too, and let’s talk this over reasonably.”
Bassett, although standing quite still, managed to give the impression of fluttering. He looked perfectly miserable, but he lowered himself into a chair. The big man stayed on his feet, gazing down at me. Something had restored his confidence too; I wondered if I had imagined his indecision in my apartment and the hall. If not, I’d had the advantage there—and had let it slip through my fingers.
“I’m quite sincere, you know,” I said slowly, “in believing that I
belong in the flat upstairs. There are things about it that I couldn’t possibly know unless I’d lived there in the past month. Suppose I try to make you see that, before I call the police?”
Unluckily, just then the story in its entirety had come back into my mind. Woollcott had told it as a legend, about a mother and daughter coming to the Paris Exposition, the mother dying in a hotel room and the affair being so completely hushed up that everyone thought the daughter’s claims were the ravings of insanity. I knew very well that nothing of the sort had happened in this case, but what stuck in my mind was this: the gendarmes had been utterly incredulous, they had refused to listen to a wild tale which seemed without foundation. You could scarcely blame them.
There was that letter, I remembered with a sudden surge of hope—Merideth’s last letter to me, at this address, postmarked February 9. I had my handbag open to produce it before I realized that it had been tucked into the pocket of my lost overnight case. I took a handkerchief out of the bag, and shut it. All my bright ideas were coming back on me like boomerangs.
So, the truth wouldn’t serve. “When you moved into 4-D,” I said, “surely you changed the newspaper under the drip pan of the stove. Maybe you can tell me what you found beneath it.”
“A few crumbs,” said the tall man promptly.
I said, “Oh, then you didn’t change it. I knew as much. Men wouldn’t think of anything like that. Since the original newspaper is still there, I can tell the police—without going into the kitchen—what date was on it, and what’s written on the card that I slipped under the paper, only last Friday. I’ll tell you, so you won’t accuse me of bluffing again. It’s a recipe for cheese soufflé, in my own handwriting.”
The 9 Dark Hours Page 3