The House without the Door

THE HOUSE
WITHOUT THE DOOR

Elizabeth Daly

F
ELONY
& M
AYHEM
P
RESS
• N
EW
Y
ORK

Doom is the House Without the Door—

'Tis entered from the sun,

And then the ladder's thrown away

Because escape is done.

'Tis varied by the dream

Of what they do outside…

—Emily Dickinson

G
AMADGE HUNCHED
up his shoulders against the rawness of the November air and peered from under his hat-brim at the little archway with its ornamental lantern. He asked: "But why does she live in a dump like this? Two hundred thousand dollars, and lives in a dump like this."

"Dump! My good fellow! We've made a very nice thing of it. It has atmosphere."

"That's what you brokers tell the clients, is it?" Mr. Gamadge was not in his usual state of amiability. He glanced about him, without taking his chin out of the depths of his upturned collar. His gloved hands were crammed into the pockets of his overcoat. His eyes were screwed up, full of resentment. "You get deaf people here, I suppose?"

"Deaf? Deaf? What do you mean by deaf?"

"Your tenants like to listen to the Third Avenue L?"

"Damn it all, we only ask forty-five a month for the front apartments. You can't pick and choose in New York for forty-five a month. When the elevated goes, as it certainly will, the prices are going to be higher. The flats in the rear are only fifty. People get used to anything; it's a good address."

"So it is, Colby." Gamadge favoured the tall, ruddy man beside him with a smile, and then gazed once more through the wrought-iron gateway. It was set in a high yellow-brick wall, which ran from the apartment house in question to its next-door neighbour, a brownstone of the second period. Through the arch could be seen a paved walk, a low hedge, and evergreen shrubs.

Gamadge asked: "Mrs. Gregson's flat is on this alley?"

"This court, you mean. Yes, it is."

"I suppose she gets a ray of sunlight once a day, late in the afternoon?"

"She's only here now and then. I told you she had that house I got her in the country. You still don't seem to catch the idea, Gamadge; in a place like this you can be lost—absolutely lost."

"'Absolutely lost.'" Gamadge repeated the words tonelessly. He turned, and walked past the wall and the side of the building to the street corner. This quiet residential block in the Seventies had preserved its gentility almost as far as Third Avenue, but ended there in sudden squalor. Papers blew along the pavement; cellar doors, protected by chains, yawned open; second-hand goods and kitchen-ware stood in front of their dingy shops. Surface cars clanked by, people with bundles in their arms waited for the lights to change, elevated trains roared overhead.

The double house had no atmosphere on Third Avenue, no distinction but a greater neatness than that of its neighbours. Its yellow-brick façade was reasonably clean, and there were Venetian blinds in its upper windows. The twin stores below were occupied by an electrician and a milliner; a fire escape descended from the roof to the second storey.

Gamadge walked back round the corner and rejoined his friend. It was only four o'clock, but the November afternoon had darkened; a dim yellow light suddenly glowed in the ornamental lantern above the archway. The two men went through into the paved alley.

"Very nice." Gamadge looked at a yellow housefront, at an open green door and two shallow concrete steps. They led to a yellow inner door and vestibule, with rows of shining name-plates and push-buttons and letter-slots below. "Very nice," he repeated.

"The tenants have privacy," said Colby. 'There's a speaking-tube. The superintendent goes up once a day to collect the trash, and that's all you see of him unless you want him."

"I see; you're practically invisible." Gamadge went into the vestibule and peered at a card marked "Greer." He added: "Anonymous, too, if you're using an alias."

"Of course she uses another name. Would you believe me if I told you the super here has never laid eyes on her? Mrs. Stoner does all the talking."

"I believe it if you say so." Gamadge studied the red face of his friend. It was normally a cheerful, even a jovial face, but now it was downcast. "She was lucky to have you to look after her, Colby."

"The lucky thing was my being in the real estate business. That house I got for her up near Burford—the old fellow that owns it lives in California, and he doesn't care anything about references so long as his rent's paid. She didn't need a reference here, either, except from me; our firm owns this house. Of course she ought to be in a better one, but it was the only vacancy we had at the time, and she liked it and stayed on. She comes down for short visits, but most of the year she's up at Pine Lots. It's a nice old place, but lonely as the grave. That's why she wanted it."

"They always disappear," murmured Gamadge. "I always wondered where they got to; Mrs. Gregson didn't get far."

"She's hidden safe enough. She's never been traced to either place."

"You've done a lot for her."

"Not at all; it was strictly in the way of business. I hardly knew the woman; I only met her once in Bellfield before the trial. You know all that." He added: "The fools that most people are!"

"Am I strictly in the way of business too?" Gamadge looked at him, impressed by his vehemence. "Or am I being presented as a friend of yours?"

"I'm not asking any favours of you, and neither is she. She'll pay your bill, whatever it is." Colby was irritated.

"But this kind of thing isn't my business, as you know," said Gamadge mildly. "I avoid it. As for this case, it entails a huge responsibility, and I shouldn't touch it if I didn't wish to oblige you."

Colby looked anxious. "Of course it's a favour, Gamadge; sorry I was short with you. When you see her you'll want to do what you can. My God, her life's ruined; and now she has this other ghastly thing to contend with. If you can make anything out of it, perhaps she'll listen to reason and get away from all these people and play safe."

Gamadge said: "No need to be wrought up about it. Of course I'll do what I can, but from what you told me it doesn't look promising." He glanced along the alley to a cellar door. "Nice little box hedge you have here; too bad there always have to be ash-cans, though."

Colby said: "Our super's a very reliable man, keeps the place very clean. Dare say he's been cleaning the things." A black face emerged from the cellar door, and he addressed it: "Hello, Wingate."

The black face gaped at sight of a member of the firm. "Mist' Colby! Anything wrong? They didn't tell me at the office there was anything wrong. I changed them locks, day I got the order to."

"Nothing's wrong; I'm just calling on a tenant. Mrs. Legge says you're entirely satisfactory, Wingate. How's the house?"

"Everything's fine, Mist' Colby, jam full except that party got exterminated out, second floor front."

"Brrr," said Gamadge.

"It's all right, sir, de place is fumigated and de party is comin' back."

"It happens in the best families," said Colby.

"Too bad I ain't allowed to sublet that Mis' Greer's place in summer," said Wingate. "She's away five or six months. I could sublet furnished for more than she pays."

"Stick to your job and let us worry about the renting."

"I could sublet easy, but that woman lives with her won't let me do it."

"Why should Mrs. Greer sublet, if she doesn't want to?"

"Seems too bad to have it empty. You'd think a lady couldn't pay more than fifty a month would be glad to save that, too."

"Very kind of you to think of it," said Colby, with a grin. "I'm afraid what you're really worrying about is there not being anybody in the apartment all summer to tip you."

"There ain't much tipping in a house like this, Mist' Colby, but that woman lives with Mrs. Greer, she tips. She won't let me put foot inside de do'; fire inspector couldn't hardly get in; but she tips."

"You see that the tenants get all the privacy they want." Colby pushed a button in the vestibule, and announced himself through a mouthpiece set in the wall; the door clicked, he opened it, and they went in. Gamadge looked with approval at fresh yellow-plastered walls and the black, rubberlike composition that carpeted the stairs. He said: "Nice job of work you've done here."

Colby turned on a switch and filled the hall with light. "Two apartments, front and rear, on each side," he explained. They went up the soundless stairs, Colby in front. As they reached the first landing Gamadge made a confession:

"I'm rather dreading this; it's a new experience. Do they look and talk like other people?"

"They?" Colby turned his head to frown at him. "Don't put her in a category."

"I must; she's a woman who was tried for murdering her husband, and acquitted. There have been others."

"Of course she was acquitted. She ought never to have been brought to trial. I wish you could have seen her before it happened. The nicest kind of plain little woman, rather shy. Of course she's changed now—if she hadn't changed she wouldn't be human. She looks very different, you know—she's tried to disguise herself, and I tell her nobody would recognize her. I don't think they would. She's not embittered, and that's a miracle. She had almost a year of it before the trial, you know— blasted routine."

"Routine?"

"What else was it—all the delay, when there wasn't a scrap of new evidence on either side, and they knew they were wasting time hunting for it?"

"Very odd case."

"Plain enough, unless you were looking for mysteries. Man committed suicide, of course."

They reached the second storey, and Colby rang at a black-painted door. It was opened a little way, and after a pause a pale, wrinkled face looked out at them. Recognition came into the faded blue eyes when they met Colby's, but the fear in them remained.

"Good afternoon, Mrs. Stoner," he said. "I've brought my friend Gamadge along, as I promised."

"How do you do." The eyes turned to Gamadge.

"How do you do."

She stood back. "Please come in."

As he followed Colby into a small lobby, Gamadge wondered whether she were as old as she looked; with her thinning grey hair, her lined forehead and colourless mouth, her taut, bluish skin, she might be seventy; but perhaps she was twenty years younger than that, old before her time. The hand which still grasped the doorknob was toilworn, but it was not a really old hand. She was a gentlewoman, neatly and unfashionably dressed in grey wool, with a little old pearl brooch at her collar. Three inches of ankle in woollen stockings showed below her ample skirt; she stood with her feet in their black, laced shoes firmly planted side by side. There was no expression on her face beyond the fear in it. She held a hat and a coat crushed together under her arm.

"Go right in," she said faintly. "Vina expects you."

They stood facing the door of a small kitchen, artificially lighted, and ventilated by a fan which hummed busily. Mrs. Stoner retreated into this cupboard, and Colby led the way to a large, boxlike room on the left. It was high-ceilinged and well-proportioned, with two windows looking across the alley to the dead wall of the next house; Gamadge thought that its boxlike quality proceeded from the fact that a builder had been allowed to tear out the original fireplace. Perhaps a certain type of modern furnishing would have suited the room and made the most of its spaces; but Mrs. Gregson had evidently bought nothing new. Her possessions belonged to a Victorian house and were of several periods; from the walnut of the seventies to the golden oak of the nineteen-hundreds. The upholstery was of yellowish-brown velvet; the curtains matched it, and were lined with paler satin. There was a bronze clock, homeless without its mantelshelf, and looking impermanent on a walnut cabinet. There were two oil paintings framed in gold, a glass table-lamp with a yellow silk shade, a piano-lamp with a pink silk shade, a large and faded oriental rug of some value.