Mischief

by Charlotte Armstrong

  “You told me all this,” she said. Her ankle was swinging.

  Eddie saw it and silenced himself.

  “Going?” she murmured. Her head fell against the chair. She turned her cheek. Her eyes closed.

  “I’ll take the coke bottles. I don’t think the Joneses are going to be so long, now. Couple of hours, maybe. Tired?”

  She didn’t answer. Eddie rose and the bottles clinked together as he gathered them. She was breathing slowly. “I’ll be in the building,” he murmured. His eye checked over the room. Everything was in pretty good order. Looked all right. He took up the glass from which Nell had sipped her coke.

  Absorbed in his own thoughts, his anxieties, his endeavors, his gains and his losses, Eddie went mechanically toward the running water, which was in the bathroom.

  CHAPTER 10

  Even before he met, in the mirror, the little man’s shocked and unbelieving eyes, an appraisal of this new situation flooded clearly through Jed’s thoughts. The jig was up, all right. O.K. He rose smoothly. The frightened eyes followed him up, still by way of the glass. But Jed was smiling.

  This could be handled.

  The mind has an odd ability to play back, like a tape recorder, things heard and yet not quite attended to at the time. Jed knew, immediately, that Eddie could be handled. And that it was a way out for Towers, too.

  He knew from what he had overheard that Eddie was by no means sure of his little niece, Nell. Eddie had stuck his neck out, getting her this job. Eddie knew she was unreliable, to put it mildly, although he tried, he struggled, to make himself believe everything was going to be all right All that pitch about his belief and understanding, all that stuff, was a hope and a prayer, not only conviction. Oh yes. Eddie had taken an awful chance here and Eddie was liable.

  All Jed needed to do was use Eddie’s self-interest. Very simple. Jed would apologize. Nothing happened, really. Had a couple of drinks, very sorry, sir, he’d say. I’ll be leaving now. No harm done and enough said. Nobody need say anything more about it?

  Jed would make it easy for the other fellow. He’d ask silence as a favor to himself. Eddie could escape by magnanimity the consequences of his own folly. Eddie would be glad to say “good-by” and only good-by.

  So long, Nell, Jed would say, quietly. And he’d be out of it.

  So Jed rose, smiling, knowing he had the power of charm and attractive friendliness when he chose to use it. In the time it took him to rise and open his mouth, the little man had jerked with a mouse-squeak and backed toward the door, keeping a frightened face toward Jed’s tall figure in the tile-lined gloom. Jed, not to alarm him, stood quietly where he was.

  But Nell, like a cat, was lithe lightning across room 807. She had the standing ash tray, the heavy thing, in her wild hands. She swung it up. Jed’s lunge and Jed’s upraised arm missed the downswing. The thing cracked on Eddie’s skull. The detachable portion of heavy glass clanged and boomed and echoed on the tile. And Jed said something hoarse and furious and snatched the thing out of her hands cruelly, and Nell jabbered some shrill syllables.

  All at once, the noise was frightful.

  Only Eddie made no noise. He sank down, very quietly.

  There was an instant when everything was suspended. Then the phone began to ring, in 807, and at the same time Bunny’s voice screamed terror, in 809. And the glass part of the ash tray, rolling off a brief balance, rumbled and at last stopped rolling, unbroken.

  “Now!” said Jed thickly. “Now, you …” He squatted beside the crumpled little body.

  Nell turned and walked over to the telephone, which in some freak of time had rung four times already.

  “Hello?” Her voice was fuzzy and foggy.

  Jed touched Eddie’s temple and then his throat.

  “Oh yes, Mrs. Jones.” Nell said. “I guess I must have been dozing.”

  There was a pulse under Jed’s fingers and he stopped holding his breath.

  “She’s fast asleep,” Nell said, blithely. (And Bunny kept screaming.) “Oh no, no trouble at all. Everything’s just fine.”

  Jed, crouching, found himself listening to that voice. It was pretty cool. Just the faintest undertone of excitement. It could pass for enthusiasm. He could feel the child’s cries pierce him, and he shuddered. He looked down at Eddie, feeling a blank dismay.

  “Yes, she did. Went right to sleep after her story, Mrs. Jones. I hope you are having a nice time.”

  Phone to ear, Nell pivoted to see what Jed was doing and one stare was as blank as another. Her hand rose to hover over the mouthpiece.

  The kid was frantic in there! Frantic!

  “Please don’t feel you need to hurry, Mrs. Jones,” purred Nell, “because I don’t mind— What?”

  Her eyes widened as her voice acted surprise. “Noise? Oh, I guess you can hear the sirens down in the street.” Her hand clamped on the mouthpiece. She said, through careful fingers, “They’re just going by. There isn’t any fire near here.” She laughed. “Oh no. You just have a real good time,” she advised gaily. She hung up the phone.

  Her face set.

  “It’s a wonder he’s not dead,” Jed growled. “You little fool!”

  “Isn’t he?” said Nell absent-mindedly.

  She walked into 809.

  Jed’s hand, going about the business with no conscious command from his numb brain, felt carefully of Eddie’s head. The dry hair crisped on his finger tips. He left the dismayed welter of his thoughts to pay attention, here. Couldn’t tell what the damage was, but there was, at least, no bleeding. Gently, he straightened the body. He lifted it, shifting it all the way over the threshold within the bathroom and, reaching for the thick bath mat, he slid it gently between the hard tile floor and the head. He took a towel and wet it. He washed the forehead gently, the eyes, and the cheeks.

  Eddie’s breathing seemed all right … a little difficult, not very. Jed thought the pulse was fairly steady. Knocked out, of course, but perhaps …

  He lifted his own head suddenly.

  Bunny was not screaming. The empty air pulsed in the sudden absence of that terrible sound.

  Jed sat motionless on his heels. A trickle of sweat cut a cold thread of sensation down his neck and blurred in the fabric of his collar.

  Ruth stepped with slow grace out of the phone booth. “Have a real good time.” The phrase rang in her ears. Not the mot juste for a night as this! This Night of Triumph! A time to keep in the mind for reference, forever. Even now, so soon afterward, it was an hour to live over again, and feel the heart stop, when Peter got up from his chair, and lurch, when he began, so nervously. And pound proudly, because she soon knew that all these politely listening people were wanning to the man, who began a little bit nervously and shyly, as if to say, “Gosh, who am I?”

  And then, Peter getting interested, himself, in what he was saying. Everybody feeling that. First, the words, coming out grammatically, properly placed, in full sentences. Then, the thought transcending, and driving the grammar into vivid astonishing phrases that rang just right. And finally Peter in the full power of his gift, taking directly from his mind and heart the things he knew and believed. The heads turning because they could not help it. They must hear this.

  He was still excited (oh, bless Peter!) and he was reaping his reward. Now that his speech was over, now that they were pushing the tables out of the middle of the floor, and music was playing, and people stood in little groups, and he in the middle of the largest group of all.

  Peter was reaping an evening’s worth of praise and glory. But maybe even more. Maybe even the real thing! Was it possible, the Joneses wondered, that some might remember, might retain and refer to some small part, at least, of what he had told them?

  A victory! But the rehashing, the reaping, the wonderful fun of this, might go on for hours.

  Ruth turned her bright nails into her palms. Bunny was fast asleep. The girl had told her so. Everything was fine. The girl had said so.

  But Ruth stood, trembl
ing, in the hall of mirrors, and she knew in her bones that everything was not fine.

  “Don’t be silly!” she gasped to her own image. “Don’t be such a mother! Don’t spoil it, now!”

  Peter’s head craned toward her out of the group, and she gave him a gay little signal of the hand that meant “all’s well.”

  For it must be so.

  But that hadn’t sounded like the same girl. Oh, it was the same voice. But it was not the same manner. The girl on the phone, just now, was neither dull nor passive. She wasn’t stupid enough! No, she’d been too decisive. Too … too darned gay! Too patronizing …“Run along, little Mrs. Jones, and have your real good time. Don’t bother me.”

  “Don’t you be so silly!” Ruth told herself once more. “Are you going to be mean and spoil Peter’s wonderful night, being such a hick and such a female? What’s wrong with you?”

  She shook herself and walked forward.

  “What’s wrong, oh, what’s wrong where Bunny is?” her bones kept asking.

  Peter was in full flight, amplifying something he hadn’t touched on quite enough in the speech. Men, standing around him, were smoking with very deliberate and judicious gestures, and nodding, and breaking in to quote themselves. “As I said at lunch the other day …” “I was saying to Joe …” It seemed as if only last week or the other day they’d been thinking the same things Peter thought. They’d been telling somebody, in some fumbling fashion, that which Peter has just told them so well. (Ah, sweet praise!)

  “O.K., hon?” Peter was tuned in on the wave length of Ruth’s bones. Often and often he’d heard what they were muttering. But now, when she answered, smiling, “All quiet. Everything fine, Nell says.” Peter didn’t hear her bones proclaim, “But I don’t believe it.”

  “Good.” He squeezed her, swung her, “Ruth, this is Mr. Evans, and Mr. Childs, and Mr. Cunningham.”

  “How de do … how de do …”

  “Husband of yours has a head on his shoulders and a tongue in his head, Mrs. O.—uh—Mrs. Jones. Fine talk. Fine.”

  “I thought so, too,” said Ruth in sweet accord.

  “Isabel, come here. Turn around, want you to meet …” The women murmured.

  Peter said, “So, a man says to you, ‘Honesty is the best policy.’ You don’t need to look up his antecedents, and if you find his great uncle stole fifty cents thirty years ago, figure what he says must therefore be suspect. What he says you can agree to or not agree to. However, if he claims he is prohonesty, but expects you to rob a bank with him, you can see the difference, I hope. In fact, you had better learn the difference.”

  “Right,” said a cigar.

  “I claim the truth can come out of a rascal’s mouth, but how can a rascal fool us, if we learn to sort out words from deeds and keep our heads clear?”

  “Just what I said to Isabel. I said …”

  “And how old is your little girl, Mrs. O.—uh—Mrs. Jones?” Isabel was cooing.

  “Bunny is nine.”

  “Ah, I remember Sue when she was nine,” said the woman sentimentally. “A sweet age. A darling year.”

  Ruth smiled, bright eyed. She had no voice for an answer.

  CHAPTER 11

  Mrs. Parthenia Williams said, “I can’t help it.”

  “Aw, Ma,” her son said, keeping his voice down in the evening hush of the place where they stood. “Listen to me—”

  “I can’t help it, Joseph, hear?”

  For old Mr. and Mrs. O’Hara in the front suite, the Hotel Majestic had somehow, in the inertia of the years, acquired the attributes of home. Now, Mrs. O’Hara wasn’t very well. She wasn’t ill enough to warrant a nurse, yet they were unwilling to risk her being alone. So Mrs. Parthenia Williams came by day and sometimes, when Mr. O’Hara had to be away, she remained late, into the evening. Whenever she did so, her son, Joseph, came to see her home.

  As they stood in the hush of the eighth-floor corridor, Joseph said, “You better keep out of it, Ma. You know that. Don’t you?” He was a thin nervous Negro with an acquiline face.

  “I know what I know,” his mother said.

  Mrs. Williams’s chocolate-colored face was designed for smiling, in the very architecture of her full cheeks, the curl of her generous mouth, the light of her wide-set eyes. Nothing repressed her. Nothing could stop her from saying “good morning,” in the elevators in her beautiful soft voice. She seemed to acquire through her pores bits and scraps of knowledge about all these strangers, so that she would say, in the corridor, “Did you enjoy the boat trip, ma’am? Oh, that’s good!” with the temerity of an unquenchable kindness. Mrs. O’Hara, who was sixty-two and so often annoyingly dizzy, felt at rest on Parthenia’s bosom. She told Mr. O’Hara it was as if, after thirty orphaned years, and in her old age, she were mothered once more. (Mr. O’Hara crossed his fingers and knocked on wood.)

  Joseph knew his mother’s ways and adored her, but some of her ways … He tried to protest this time. “Some things you can’t—Ma!”

  “Something’s scaring that baby in there nearly to death,” Parthenia said. “She’s just a bitty girl. She’s in 809 and her folks next door. I spoke to them today. A real nice child. And I can’t help it, Joseph, so don’t you talk to me.”

  Her big feet carried her buxom body down the corridor. “If her folks ain’t there, somebody ought to be comforting her. It’s not good for her to be so scared.”

  “Ma, listen …”

  “All right, Joseph. Her papa, he was asking about a sitter and I know they were planning to go out. Now, if her mama’s there, that’s one thing. But I got to ask. I can’t help it I don’t care.”

  Jed got to his feet. His eyes rolled toward the frosted bathroom window. He unlocked it and pushed it up. Cold air hit him in the face.

  The deep court seemed quiet. He thrust his head through to look down into the checkered hollow. He couldn’t, of course, see all the way to the bottom. He couldn’t see Bunny’s window, either, for it came on a line with this one.

  He could see that old biddy across the way and she was walking. She walked to a chair and held to the back of it with both hands and let go with a push and walked away. And back again. He could see only the middle section of her body, and those agitated hands.

  The fear that hadn’t been verbalized, even in his mind, seeped away, and he wondered why he was looking out of the window. He wondered if the dame over there was upset because she had been hearing things. He wondered, and in the act of wondering, he knew that someone must have heard all that commotion.

  Get out of here, Towers, he warned himself, while you got the chance, you damn fool! Before all hell’s going to break loose. This guy’s not going to die. He’ll be O.K. He’s resting peacefully. Look out for Towers!

  Jed realized that he had a perfect chance, right now. While the wildcat was in 809, Towers could fade out of 807. And Towers would run like crazy away from here.

  What he heard himself growling aloud, as he stepped over Eddie’s body, was, “What in hell is she doing in there?”

  The knock made him jump. Too late? He groaned. He eyed the distance from where he stood to 809. Through there, where the key, he remembered, dangled its fiber tag on the inside of Bunny’s door … that would have to be the way out, now that someone, and he didn’t doubt it was trouble, knocked on 807. He waved. How would he get by whoever it was, once in the corridor. He would, he thought, get by and he’d better.

  Then, he saw Nell standing in the way. She looked at him and moved her left hand. It said, “Be still.” Jed shook his head and tightened his muscles for the dash. But Nell was too swiftly across 807 … so swiftly that Jed caught himself and ducked backward into concealment again, only just as she opened the door to trouble.

  “Yes?” Jed could see her and he cursed, silently, her dark-clad back (she’d changed her clothes!) and the fantastically cool lift of her chin.

  He expected a man’s voice, an official voice, cold and final. But the voice was deep music, and not a
man’s. “I heard the little child crying so bad,” it said. “Is there anything I can do?”

  “Why, no,” said Nell in chill surprise.

  “You taking care of the little girl for Miz Jones, ma’am?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s good. You know, I spoke to the little girl and her mama … she might know me. I wonder could I comfort her?”

  “She’s all right, now,” Nell moved the door. But Parthenia’s big foot was within the sill.

  “I had so much experience with childern. I get along with child-em pretty well, it always seems. She was scared, poor child? I hear that.”

  “Just a nightmare,” said Nell indifferently. “Come on, Ma,” Joseph said. “You asked. Now, come on.”

  “Who are you?” said Nell sharply, peering at him.

  “This is my middle boy,” Parthenia said with pride. “I’ve got three boys and two girls. Yes, ma’am, a big family but they raised. Hurts me to hear a baby cry so bad. Just hurts my heart like a pain. Poor little child … and all so strange …” It was like a song, a lullaby.

  “It’s none of your business that I can sec,” said Nell coldly.

  “Maybe not,” said Parthenia. But her big foot stayed where it was. A big foot, worn with carrying a big body, bunioned and raked over at the heel … a big strong stubborn foot. “Maybe not,” the lovely voice said sadly, “but I got to try to stop my pain. Can’t help trying, ma’am, whatever child is crying.”

  “She’s not crying now,” said Nell irritably. “And it’s too bad you’ve got a pain. Please let me close this door, will you?”

  “Ma—”

  “You got a charm for the nightmare?” Parthenia asked with undefeated good will.

  “If you don’t get out of here, I’ll call somebody.”

  “Ma … Excuse us, miss … Ma, come away.”

  “I can’t feel happy about it,” said Parthenia softly mournful. “That’s the truth. It’s just,” her soft voice begged, “could I be sure she ain’t scared any more? Little children, being scared sometimes in the night, you got to be sure. Because it hurts their growing if they’re not comforted.”