Jack and Susan in 1913 (6 page)

He dashed against her, nearly knocking her over, and when he came away, she saw that he had a small pink envelope in his mouth.

Susan looked at it a moment in perplexity, and then realized that the envelope must have been protruding from the pocket of her cape, which had been hanging on the back of the door.

The pink envelope smelled half of Tripod, and half of a perfume of violets.

Inside were five one-hundred-dollar treasury notes.

M
Y DEAR MISS Bright,

Tripod jumped into Susan's arms, and together they danced happily about the room—until they were interrupted by a loud thumping sound from below.

Susan suddenly remembered Mr. Beaumont. He was evidently knocking against his ceiling with the handle of the broom or some other such object.

She immediately stopped dancing, but her excitement still sought release. She threw open the window, pushed her face into the cold air, and produced one brief, loud, happy scream. Then she leaned farther out and craned to see as much of the city as she could. This was precious little—a bit of the street, a slice of river, the tops of a few trees, and a great deal of wall. But brilliant February sunshine beamed down upon everything, and New York seemed a brighter, cleaner, and more promising place than it had seemed in weeks.

Mrs. McCalken arrived shortly after noon, and never had Susan counted out money as happily as she did then. To have paid her rent and still be possessed of four hundred ninety-nine dollars and sixty-three cents seemed more riches than any mortal deserved.

Except of course that it wasn't hers; she had no right to it, and conscience demanded that she return it as quickly as possible. She would be penniless again, but under no circumstances could she keep the money.

The appearance of the envelope in the pocket of her cape had at first seemed a mystery. But it quickly became apparent to Susan that Ida Conquest had left it there on her visit the day before.

Jay Austin would have known Ida, from
He and She
, gotten in touch with her and persuaded her to assist him in this deed.

The quickest way to find Jay Austin, and return his money, was through Ida, who made it a point to keep track of rich young men.

Adjuring Tripod to remain inside, Susan took one of her crutches and hobbled down to the telephone on the third-floor landing. She lifted the receiver and asked to be connected with the Cosmic Film Company.

The Fenwick Apartments' telephone was on a private exchange servicing that portion of the city west of Central Park, and the Cosmic Film Company was on a much larger commercial exchange downtown, so it was some moments before the operator could make the proper switchings. As Susan waited, she noticed that the door of Mr. Beaumont's apartment was cracked open, and that his bearded face was peering out at her.

“When does your cast come off?” he asked in a low voice.

“Mr. Beaumont,” she said, “I
promise
—no more dancing.”

“Thank you,” said Jack Beaumont curtly, and shut the door with a bang.

On the other end the telephone rang, and a high-pitched voice—that of a boy, Susan thought—intoned drearily, “Cosmic Film Company.”

“Could you please call Miss Ida Conquest to the phone?” asked Susan.

“Couldn't,” replied the boy. “She's getting shot.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Shot. They're shooting her now.”

“Then might I speak to Mr. Hosmer Collamore?” It really was impossible to speak into this machine with any semblance of ease. One's voice always sounded strained and formal, and Susan like many others had never quite been convinced that it wasn't all some form of prestidigitation foisted off on a gullible public in order to collect monthly fees. This dreary child was really in the next room, speaking to her through a hole in the wall. There might come a time when people became really accustomed to this sort of thing, but Susan doubted she'd live long enough to see it.

“Colley's the one shooting her,” said the boy in a voice that was now disgusted as well as dreary.

“Then would you please ask Miss Conquest to phone me when she's free? My name is Susan Bright and my number is River Zero-Six-Three-Zero.”

After giving a sigh a martyr might make as the pyre is lighted, the boy announced he would have to go find a pencil. When he came back he demanded that everything be repeated, then spelled, then repeated again.

Susan was told, grudgingly, that the shooting would be over in approximately ten minutes—or maybe thirty—and that Miss Conquest would be given the message. Rather than struggling back up to her room, Susan decided that she would simply sit on the steps there and wait for the telephone to ring.

Basking in the warmth—temporary though it was—of the thirty dollars she had impulsively placed in her pocket, Susan looked out a grimy window to the dingy garden. Despite the sunlight, the leafless tree in one corner looked stark and dejected.

“Did your dog drive you out of your apartment?” a man's voice asked from behind her.

Susan turned quickly. There stood Mr. Beaumont, holding a crate filled with trash which he was evidently about to take downstairs to the street.

“No, no, Mr. Beaumont, I was only waiting for the telephone to ring.”

He nodded silently and then proceeded down the stairs with his heavy tread. Susan thought what a shame it was that he wore a beard, that he was so gruff and unfriendly, and that he couldn't afford better clothes. It would have been pleasant to have a handsome, cordial, well-dressed gentleman living just below her. Actually, Hosmer Collamore fit that description, but Hosmer wasn't what Susan wanted.

She wondered what Mr. Beaumont did for a living that enabled him to be at home in the middle of the day; every other male above the age of six left the building by eight o'clock every weekday morning. He wore soft-collared shirts, which meant he had no job outside the house; and by his carriage and his speech she knew that he was not a laborer. Peering around, she noticed he had left the door of his apartment ajar, and curiosity got the better of her.

Certain that she'd be able to hear him when he started back up the stairs, Susan moved quietly to the door and pushed it open.

She had expected to find the rooms of a single gentleman who wore threadbare clothes to be scantily furnished, with unmistakable, shabby indications of a lack of superfluous wealth. Certainly, despite his careful wardrobe, the furnishings in Hosmer Collamore's apartments were not remarkable, and this was also true of the room in which Susan now stood. There was an old patched divan pushed against one wall, a rag rug in the center of the painted floor, a long table against the blind wall, a shorter table beneath the windows, and a Swift's Premium calendar hanging from the molding. A wire extension from one of the wall sconces had been draped to the center of the ceiling, and a large bare fixture hung down which appeared capable of positively flooding the room with light in the evening.

But if the furnishings were not unusual, the other objects in the room were. For everywhere in the room—spread, stacked, piled, and pyramided on newspaper and scraps of dirty cloth—were pieces of machinery. All of it black and metallic, all of it oozing grease or oil. It was impossible to tell if this jumble of wheels and cogs and levers actually belonged to one large machine or to a hundred smaller ones. On the tables were small wooden boxes filled with nuts and bolts, screws, nails, and small tools. Larger tools were arranged beneath the two tables. Several work aprons, each stained with the sort of black machine grease that permeated the air, hung on nails on one wall.

Mr. Beaumont, she decided, was a tinkerer.

To Susan's eyes, it appeared that he was more adept at taking things apart than he was at putting them back together, though she didn't want to judge him so harshly on so short an…acquaintance.

Standing in the middle of the room looking around—with one ear cocked for the sound of Mr. Beaumont's returning footfalls—she wondered if she dared risk a peek into the bedroom.

No, she decided. That would be unredeemable snooping. After all, the door to this room
had
been open, while the bedroom door was most emphatically shut and—

She heard a step on the stairs—but not from below. Instead, it came from above—the step of her across-the-hall neighbor, Mrs. Jadd, on her way out shopping. As usual, Mrs. Jadd was accompanied by her twin five-year-old daughters. Susan moved quickly to the door, but found that it was too late to slip out, Mrs. Jadd and her children already having got halfway down the stairs from above. The woman was of a suspicious nature, and, as it was, credited Susan with enjoying the very worst sort of intimacy with Hosmer Collamore. Susan certainly did not wish Mrs. Jadd to see her emerging from Mr. Beaumont's rooms. She carefully eased the door of the room shut, and held it closed as she heard the little entourage pass by and turn down the next flight of stairs. It was easy to mark their progress, for Mrs. Jadd invariably repeated to her shrinking children a litany of the perils of the city streets.

When Susan could no longer hear the woman's voice—she was talking about a little boy whose body had been separated into four different pieces just on the next block because he let go of his mother's hand and ran out into the street into the path of an automobile driven by a drunken mechanic—Susan quietly and carefully opened the door.

“Pardon me,” said Mr. Beaumont, standing directly in front of her, “I must be on the wrong floor. I thought this was my room.”

“
O
H, MR. BEAUMONT,” exclaimed Susan, “a sparrow flew in your window, and I was chasing it out when the wind blew the door shut.”

“Then this
is
my room, and not yours.”

“Yes of course, I—”

“I understand perfectly,” said Mr. Beaumont, and it was apparent to Susan that his understanding
was
perfect. He did not believe a word she'd said.

Out in the hall, the phone rang.

“Perhaps that's the call you're waiting for,” said Mr. Beaumont, and Susan scuttled out of the room as quickly and as unobtrusively as a thirty-pound cast and acute embarrassment would allow her.

The door was slammed shut behind her.

“Suss?” inquired the voice on the other end of the line.

“Ida?”

“Mr. Fane don't like us to have calls.”

“I'm sorry, but I had to thank you.”

Ida made no reply to this. Susan understood that Ida was following Mr. Austin's instructions not to acknowledge her part in delivering the money.

“You were very kind to assist Mr. Austin,” Susan went on hesitantly, “but of course I could never accept his money.”

“Did something heavy fall on your chapeau?” asked Ida after a moment.

“You know what I'm talking about?”

“Sure,” Ida said.

“What's his address then?”

“Whose?”

“Mr. Austin's. I want to find him.”

“Have you tried an insane asylum?” Ida asked, in a tone which suggested that Susan might well be acquainted with such a place.

Susan realized there was no help to be got from Ida on this point. “All right, Ida, I know you must have made your promises. And I thank you, but I don't thank him. You understand that, don't you?”

“Oh, perfectly,” Ida concurred. “Clear as mud.”

“And thank you again. I know you meant well.”

“Always do,” said Ida imperturbably. “Have to scat, Suss, they're calling me.” Abruptly, she broke the connection.

Susan returned to her room and, despite the fact that Mr. Austin's note had said the account was closed, she penned a letter to the bank in Wall Street, and dispatched it by messenger—a dirty little boy who played hookey from school every day, and loitered about on West Sixtieth Street in hope of obtaining a dime and carfare for just such random errands as this. She got back an immediate reply, with the expected news that Mr. Austin no longer had an account there, and the disappointing addendum that there was no forwarding address.