Night Walk

by Elizabeth Daly

  Next door, well back from the street, is the fine old Wakefield house, now the Wakefield Inn. Miss Emeline Wakefield runs it as a select boardinghouse.

  At about twenty minutes to eleven on Thursday night a young man, personable if rather bony as to form and features, sat up in bed at the Wakefield Inn, reading. He had arrived in his car at ten o’clock, and Miss Wakefield had told him at first, and firmly, that she had no room for him.

  “I know you don’t take transients,” said the young man, who had ingratiating manners. “The Tavern said so when they sent me on. They’re full up.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Miss Wakefield. “I hear Mrs. Broadbent got those traveling salesmen who couldn’t get rooms in Westbury on account of the Fair.”

  “Labor Day makes everything so crowded,” said the young man. “I’m only up for over Labor Day myself—up from New York. I have an uncle at Edgewood.”

  “Well, Mr. Yates, I don’t think you would have been very comfortable at the Tavern. It’s clean and decent, but very plain.”

  “And I understand it has no bar.” Mr. Yates thought the tall, gaunt woman with the cropped hair who stood before him in the paneled hall looked like a sport; he spoke accordingly.

  “The post office and general store are in the bar now,” said Miss Wakefield. “Well, let’s see. I could let you have Mr. Compson’s room, I suppose. He’s off for over the holiday, but you’ll have to turn out on Monday evening.”

  “That would be—”

  “I can only let you have it because he always expects me to deduct his board and lodging while he’s away on his trips. I don’t know why I should keep the room empty.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “Several other guests are away too, but they don’t want any reductions. I don’t know what’s got into Tom Compson, he has plenty of money, but he’s getting very close in his old age. They say people do.”

  “I’ve heard so.”

  “You’ll have to be very careful of his things.”

  “I will, you can trust me.”

  “The man’s gone home. Mind driving around to the garage and putting your car up? You’ll find a place. Hope you don’t feel unequal to lugging your own bag.”

  Mr. Yates laughed and said he didn’t.

  “I’ll wait here for you.”

  Yates went and got his bag out of the car and brought it up to the porch. Then he drove around to the back and found the garage; the only lights anywhere came from his own lamps. He pushed open the garage door and got the car in. He walked back to the house through a mist that was almost rain.

  Miss Wakefield had towels over her arm. She led him through a large room on the left to a side hall, and into a corner room opposite.

  “Quietest room in the house,” she said. “Used to be the library. It’s cut off from the back premises by a little cross passage, as you see, and the back stairs are just beyond. There’s no bathroom down here, I’m sorry to say, but there’s one just at the head of the back stairs. It’s a regular bachelor’s room. Side door to the garden along the passage, makes you quite independent.” She arranged the towels on an old-fashioned rack. “I know how men are, and a lot of women too; they hate always running into other boarders and having to say things about the weather fifty times a day.”

  Yates, looking at the big double bed, said the room was a perfect paradise.

  Miss Wakefield turned down the bed. “Breakfast at nine, I mean it stops after that.” She turned to face him. “You look a little tired.”

  “Nothing at all, I feel fine.” Yates managed to look pathetic. “I suppose I couldn’t have a cup of coffee in bed?”

  “We haven’t full service by any means, but you’re on the dining-room floor. You can have a tray in your room. Everybody could while we had proper service.”

  “If it wouldn’t be too much trouble I’d like that.”

  “I like it myself. Well, might as well enjoy yourself. You haven’t brought golf clubs?”

  “No, I didn’t think I’d get any golf.”

  “Oh well, if you want to play I suppose they can fix you up at the Westbury Club.”

  Yates, glancing about him, said he saw that Mr. Compson played chess.

  “Yes. Terrible game, isn’t it? I never could see it. Haven’t the brains. Good night, and I hope you’ll be comfortable.”

  “Awfully good of you to take me in.”

  “I suppose there’s stuff to read here.” Miss Wakefield looked round her with the faintly hostile air of one to whom reading is an enemy of outdoor games and healthy exercise. Yates, glancing at Mr. Compson’s stack of magazines, said he would find something.

  Miss Wakefield left him. He unpacked his bag, and then in shirtsleeves, and with his towel over his arm and his toilet case in his hand, made the journey to the bathroom. He met nobody. On his way back he looked along the cross passage to the open, screened door that Miss Wakefield had spoken of.

  “Privacy, all right,” he told himself. “Compson could live his own life.”

  He went down the hallway to his room. It had a big bow window facing the front, but no side windows. However, plenty of damp fresh air came in, quite enough.

  He got into bed, picked up a magazine from the night table, and settled down.

  A slight fumbling noise caused him to look up and across to the door. The handle of the door moved gently. But more from habit than from any other reason, Yates had turned the key; the door therefore did not open. Wondering whether Mr. Compson had returned unexpectedly, and hoping not, he called: “What’s wanted?”

  The ensuing silence puzzled him. But he was not acquainted with the ways of the Inn, somebody thinking the room empty might have come down for matches or reading matter or something. There was a slightly furtive effect, however, in the whole thing—the way the handle had turned, the quiet withdrawal afterwards. Yates got out of bed.

  Remembering in time that he didn’t wear pajamas, he put on a bathrobe and slippers and went across to the door. He opened it and looked out; nothing.

  He crossed to the opposite door and listened; no sound in the lounge or drawing room, and none, when he reached them, on the back stairs. There was a further door leading to the rear of the house, but he didn’t open it; his attention had been caught and fixed by something on the floor at the foot of the stairs, something that just caught the faint light from his room.

  He had barely noticed it before; it had hung in a niche, above a shelf on which stood two buckets; one full of sand, one full of water. He bent over and picked it up—a short fire axe.

  Mr. Yates stood contemplating it and chewing his lower lip. He looked up at the brackets it had hung on; it simply couldn’t have fallen. By no stretch of the imagination could it be fitted into normal activity of any sort. It fitted rather well, he uneasily thought, with that lunatic fumbling at his door; and he felt a certain relief at the fact that that door had happened to be locked.

  Mr. Yates found himself in something of a quandary. Musing, he half turned and looked to his left along the cross passage on which he stood to the screen door at the end of it, beyond which there was utter darkness. But he did not think of it as a way of retreat; it somehow never occurred to him that the lunatic had come from outside.

  He reached a conclusion. Much as he would have preferred to hang the axe on its brackets and go back to his room and to bed, he simply couldn’t do it. Nothing for it, he must convey his odd information to Miss Wakefield.

  He put the axe down where he had found it, then shook his head angrily and took it into his room. He crossed to the lounge opposite, made his way to the front hall, and found a light switch. He went up the broad stairs to an upper hall, where closed doors confronted him. He raised his voice: “Miss Wakefield? Miss Wa-a-kefield.”

  Heads appeared in doorways. One of them was tied up in a bath towel and dripped soapsuds; another, with rumpled hair, belonged to a scholarly-looking middle-aged man with pince-nez; a third appeared behind his shoulder, feminine and frighten
ed. Three pairs of eyes looked at Yates as if he had come through the roof.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “I’m Miss Wakefield’s transient. Nothing’s wrong, I just want to speak to her.”

  The scared woman asked: “You didn’t smell smoke, did you?”

  “No, I assure you I didn’t.”

  Miss Wakefield came out of a room at the end of the hall. She had a blue net on her hair, and for a dressing gown she wore a raincoat tightly belted. She asked: “Want something, Mr. Yates?”

  “Could I speak to you a minute?”

  “Come in.”

  The heads disappeared. They think I have a stomachache, thought Yates, and followed Miss Wakefield into a large front room.

  “Awfully sorry to come up and bawl for you like that,” he said, “but I couldn’t see any way out of it. I didn’t want to knock at doors. Hoped I wouldn’t wake anybody.”

  “That’s all right. What is it?”

  “Something I thought you ought to know about. Anyhow, I couldn’t let it go without putting it up to you.”

  “What in the world is it?”

  “Perhaps it would be better if you came downstairs—the back way.”

  Miss Wakefield followed him along the hall, and then took the lead around a corner and down the back stairs. He showed her the empty brackets where the axe had hung and related his experience. When he had finished she stood gazing at him, flabbergasted. At last she asked: “Where is it?"

  “I thought I’d better put it away in my room. Of course there may not be anything in all this; you may have some idea—”

  “I haven’t any idea at all.”

  “Somebody wouldn’t have been chopping kindling and left the axe—”

  “It’s never been touched since the fire warden put it up five years ago.”

  Yates smiled at her. “I’m afraid you think I’m the lunatic, Miss Wakefield.”

  “Certainly I don’t.”

  “I assure you I’d rather have gone back to bed.”

  “You had to tell me, of course. It wasn’t anybody in the house, Mr. Yates. I’ve known all these people forever. The Silvers and their boy are all together in their room and Dick’s sleeping porch. Miss Homans was washing her hair—spoke to me about an extra towel only a minute ago.”

  “Servants?”

  “They’re all local help, and they sleep at home—farms or the village. Those four upstairs are the only guests I have at present—as I told you, the rest are off for over Labor Day.” Miss Wakefield looked over her shoulder at the screen door behind her. “We never had prowlers.”

  “Er—could one get in?”

  “I suppose so. You may think it’s funny, but half the time we don’t lock up. People in and out. My soul.”

  “The trouble is it all seems a little crazy.”

  Miss Wakefield glanced about her and up the back stairs. “My soul, he might be still in the house.”

  “We’ll soon find out, if you like.”

  “Would you? I’ll come too.”

  “Just to direct me. Stay well behind.”

  “Hadn’t you better take something? I mean the axe.”

  “I might use it as a club, I suppose. The prowler doesn’t seem very effectual. Easily discouraged.”

  “Thank goodness you locked your door. I suppose I ought to tell the others, but I hate to upset them. And Dickie Silver would simply revel in it. Such a fuss.”

  “If we search the house and don’t find anybody we can lock up and be all right till tomorrow.”

  Yates went and got the axe. Then he and Miss Wakefield went through the house, very quietly, from attics to cellar. They found nobody.

  “Just as I thought,” said Yates, locking the side door. “He left as he came—this way.”

  Miss Wakefield stood frowning. “If we only had a constable. There’s nobody nearer than Westbury, the state police are beyond that. I mean it wouldn’t be fair not to notify people, would it? Perhaps we ought to have done that first.”

  “Can’t think of everything at once,” said Yates, whose heart was sinking.

  “I could call Edgewood, and the Tavern, and the Carringtons. That ought to be enough—Mrs. Broadbent would send out and tell the neighbors. It isn’t late, that’s one thing.”

  Yates looked at his wristwatch. “No, only ten fifty-five plus. I suppose we aren’t making too much of this, Miss Wakefield? I mean it’s only what I noticed, and this confounded thing.” He looked at the axe in his hand. “And I’ve got fingerprints all over it. That was bright of me.”

  “Well, at least the man didn’t take it. That’s funny, too, isn’t it? Some crazy person. We really ought to telephone.”

  Yates gloomily agreed.

  They went through to the front hall, where Miss Wakefield, her voice kept low, called Edgewood. While she was waiting for an answer she talked to Yates:

  “This is a funny little place, you know. It isn’t a quarter of a mile long, the whole thing, and just this one street. Edgewood at one end, Carringtons’ at the other, on this side. On the other…Yes, Miss Studley? This is Emeline Wakefield. I thought I ought to tell you there’s been a prowler around…Yes, got in here through the side door and then left. Somebody heard him…Well, I don’t understand it myself. He seems to have taken down the fire axe and then left it. You might lock up, if you haven’t already…That’s all right.”

  She turned to Yates. “Miss Studley doesn’t scare easy. Well, now for the Tavern.”

  As she waited for the Tavern to answer, Yates, leaning against the telephone table with the axe dangling from one listless hand, said he hadn’t realized Frazer’s Mills was so small.

  “Sixty souls at present, counting the farms to the west. Don’t you know how The Mills was settled?…Oh, Mrs. Broadbent, I called up to say that there’s some kind of crazy tramp wandering around tonight…No, he wasn’t seen. Just heard.” Miss Wakefield cast a look at the axe. With the receiver to her ear, she addressed Yates in a whisper: “No use getting the whole town up here tonight, overrunning us.” She answered Mrs. Broadbent’s voluble comments: “I’ll tell you all about it in the morning. Just at present we ought to let the place know. I’m calling the Carringtons. Could you send down the street, and perhaps notify the farms?”

  Mrs. Broadbent talked for some time.

  “That’s nice of you,” replied Miss Wakefield. “I’ve called Edgewood. I haven’t anybody here to send out, and it would take so long to telephone…I can’t imagine either where he came from.”

  She put down the receiver. “The whole village will get it in the next few minutes. Just a row of cottages, you know, across the way, and the girls’ school is closed and the housekeeper’s in New York getting supplies, she won’t be back till morning.”

  The Carrington house answered promptly to her ring.

  “That you, Lawrence? How’s your father?…That’s good.” Miss Wakefield told her story for the third time, but this hearer seemed bent upon details. Miss Wakefield supplied them. “Yes, he did get in…My transient heard him and found the axe on the floor.” She scowled. “Mr. Yates, a very nice fellow. Don’t bother about him…Yes, I thought of the state police, but…All right, if you want to. I know that’s what they’re for, it’s only that I didn’t want them roaring through and waking the whole village…Well, thanks, Lawrence. Don’t scare Lydia.”

  She hung up. “That’s Lawrence Carrington for you, always so fussy. And now where shall we put that thing?”

  They settled on a store cupboard in the rear front hall. Miss Wakefield locked the axe up and took the key.

  Yates, instead of retiring to his room, stood looking at her. She returned the look inquiringly.

  “Miss Wakefield, I’ve been a damn fool.”

  “You certainly have not.”

  “The whole thing may turn out to be nothing at all; some harmless half-wit walking in his sleep.”

  “Well, he’d have to walk a long way, because there are none in the place, unless Miss Studle
y has one at Edgewood. And she never takes people like that.”

  Yates made a face. “Don’t talk about Edgewood.”

  “Why not?”

  “Miss Wakefield, I have no uncle there.”

  “You haven’t?”

  “I don’t know a soul in the place. I’ve never been here in my life before, and if I’d known it was such a small place I’d never have told you that whopper. I thought Edgewood was somewhere on the outskirts, like most sanatoriums; but Frazer’s Mills seems to be an outskirt.”

  Miss Wakefield, frowning severely, kept her prominent blue eyes on him. “Well, what was the idea?”

  “The idea was that I thought you’d let me stay here if I had some kind of local reference. I couldn’t get in anywhere in Westbury on account of the Fair, and they told me to try the Bay Horse Tavern in Frazer’s Mills. The Tavern sent me on to you—I didn’t realize that this wasn’t a regular inn. I was tired, and I didn’t want to drive back to New York tonight. So I invented Uncle at Edgewood, and if it hadn’t been for the prowler—”

  Miss Wakefield said: “Now you think the state police may come around checking up on everybody—out-of-town people.”

  “They certainly will.”

  “But you came and told me.”

  “Hang it, I’m the only witness. They’ll check up on me, all right.”

  She studied him. “You needn’t have said a word.”

  “About the prowler? That would have been a nice return for your kindness, wouldn’t it?”

  “What are you up here in this neighborhood for, anyway?”

  “Just touring. Holiday trip. But I don’t think I’d better go on with it if I have no better luck getting rooms than I had at Westbury. Miss Wakefield, I have perfectly good references in New York. My family’s in California, but you can call up any number of people.”

  She said: “I’d better have a look at your driving license and so on.”

  They went to Mr. Compson’s room, and Yates supplied her with a wad of papers, including a bill for club dues, his checkbook, and certain records reminiscent of the late war, which established one Garston Yates as ex-captain in the Air Force.