Two Flights Up (17 page)

The heavy footsteps were coming down the attic stairs again. They stopped on the third floor, and she knew they were laying her in Margaret’s room. After a time the door opened and Mrs. McCook came in. She turned on the lights and mended the fire, and then smoothed back the bed.

“You better come and crawl right in here, honey,” she said. “Joe’s attending to things. We’re not going home.”

“Not
there
,” said Holly, and shuddered. “I’ll get dressed.”

Later on she insisted on going upstairs. The lights were on full in Margaret’s room, and her mother lay on the bed. Holly had hardly ever seen her in Margaret’s room before. It was as though she did not belong there. She made it look shabby.

“She looks nice and peaceful,” said Mrs. McCook.

Holly went quietly out again and stood, with Mrs. McCook at her elbow, outside of Howard Warrington’s room, gazing in. A faint odour of tobacco still hung in the air. But she did not go in. He had left her, abandoned her. She was all alone.

In the early morning somebody got word to Margaret, and she came. She showed very little, grief, very little anything. She kissed Holly, and then stood erect and took off her hat.

“I guess I’m back to stay,” she said. “James has left me.”

After that, time had gone on. There was stealthy movement in the house; someone—Clara, perhaps—came in and drew down the window shades to give the house the proper air of decorous mourning. Margaret, red-eyed and speechless, brought in a tape measure and said something about a black dress. Holly stood up to be measured obediently, and even remote Margaret had been somehow touched.

“I wouldn’t grieve so,” she told her. “She didn’t suffer.”

Holly let it go at that. How could she say it was remorse and not grief?

Some time that morning the door opened and Mrs. McCook slipped in.

“Your young man’s outside,” she told her, with the air of one bringing glad tidings; and a moment later Furness was inside the door looking at her.

“I’ve just heard,” he said. “Can I do anything, Holly?”

“I think everything’s being done.”

He was still wary and a little afraid of her. He came over to the hearth and stood looking down at her.

“I’m sorry. You know that, don’t you?”

She nodded.

“Would you like me to stay with you?”

“I think I’m better alone,” she said, “if you don’t mind, Furness. I just can’t talk.”

“You’d rather I’d go, then?”

She nodded once more.

But he did not go at once. He took a turn or two around the room in growing irritation.

“I’m damned if I understand you,” he said. “I don’t want to make a fuss, just now, anyhow. But if the moment you get into trouble you want to get rid of me, what on earth are you going to do when you’re married to me?”

The unconscious humour of that escaped them both.

“What?”

“I don’t think,” she said painfully, “that I’m going to marry you, Furness.”

“What?”

“I don’t think I can. I’ve tried. I can’t go through with it.”

“Look here,” he said. “You’re hysterical. You don’t know what you’re saying. Let’s wait for a day or two, until all this is over.”

“I know perfectly well what I’m saying. I hate it, but I must.”

“But—the thing’s announced! It’s—it’s as good as done.”

“Oh, no, it isn’t. I don’t like to do it, Furness.
She
wanted it, and—I would like to do it for her. But there’s somebody else.”

He was stupefied, hit in his weakest part—his vanity.

“Somebody else! That’s not true, and you know it. Why, you don’t
know
anybody else.”

But her eyes met his honestly and fearlessly. “I’ve told you,’ she said. “There is somebody else.”

He went closer to her and looked down at her, with hostile eyes that showed a sudden comprehension.

“It’s not that fellow upstairs!” he said. “The roomer, or whatever he is?”

She nodded, and suddenly he threw back his head and laughed. The sound echoed through the room and out into the quiet house.

“The roomer!” he said. “Oh, my God!” And flung out of the room and out of the house.

She would have felt sorry had she been capable of feeling anything. As it was, his going left her with nothing but a sense of relief. After a long time she saw his ring still on her finger, and she got up and laid it on her mother’s bureau; the sight of the small familiar objects, the toilet waters, the old ivory brushes, the smelling salts, brought the first tears she had shed.

Margaret found her weeping and coaxed her into her own blue-and-white bedroom and into bed. She fell asleep there finally, and Margaret drew the shades and closed the door.

She was asleep when Warrington and the detective arrived.

I
T WAS A PORTION
of the decorum of death, to Mrs. McCook, like drawn windows and a closed piano, that doorbells must not be rung. Attired in her best black, therefore, she lurked in the lower hall, and any arrivals found the door mysteriously and slowly opening before them, while she herself remained behind it out of sight.

In this manner she admitted Warrington and the detective; but once inside, she recognized the former and condescended to mournful speech.

“Terrible, isn’t it?” she said. “I guess Miss Bayne will be glad to see you. It’s a pity you weren’t here last night.”

“Was she alone?”

“Yes. The mother had been sick all day, and about two in the morning, while the poor girl was asleep, she took a notion to go up to the attic. Of all places! And Miss Bayne found her there, dead.”

“In the attic!” Warrington repeated after her. He was hardly conscious that he had spoken; his mind was busy with the picture the words conjured up. She had gone to the attic and found the suitcase gone, and so she had died. It was horrible.

He glanced at the detective, but that gentleman had apparently not been listening. He had moved to the drawing-room door and was surveying it, noiselessly whistling between his teeth.

“Who is with Miss Bayne?”

“Mrs. Cox is up there somewhere. I’ll get her if you like.”

“Never mind; I’ll go up,” he said.

The officer made no objection. He moved to the foot of the staircase and watched him out of sight, and after that he went back, rather to Mrs. McCook’s astonishment, and examined the rear of the house. He located the servants’ staircase, and leaving a door open, took up a position which commanded it. Only then, did he speak.

“So she was found in the attic?” he said. “What do you suppose took her up there at that hour of the night?”

Margaret was sewing in the front room, with the door open. She had the black material for Holly’s frock in her lap, and the face she raised as Warrington stopped in the doorway was colourless and set. Involuntarily she dropped her work and clenched her left hand.

“Don’t make a noise,” she said. “Holly’s asleep.”

“Asleep!” he said blankly. “But I came to see her. I only have a little time.”

“I’m not going to waken her. She’s had more than any human being ought to bear.”

“Yes,” he agreed; “yes, I suppose so. I had hoped—how is she?”

“As well as could be expected,” said Margaret briefly, and picked up her work again. He stood inside the door, saying nothing, merely facing this new disappointment. “If she wakens before I go, will you tell her I’m here?” he said.

“Oh! So you’re going again!” said Margaret bitterly. “Well, maybe it’s better. I must say you haven’t brought us any luck. Any of us. If you’d used some common sense—”

Her resentment against him rose. She put down her work and got up, two bright spots of colour in her sallow cheeks.

“I’ve lost my husband,” she told him, “and he’s lost the thing he cared for most in the world. More than he cared for me. His good name. I suppose you didn’t mean any harm, but God protect us from the blundering fools who wreck us and didn’t mean to.”

She went out of the room, leaving him there, and he heard her go along the back passage. There followed the opening and closing of the door, and he knew that she had locked herself away from him.

He squared his shoulders and went out into the hall. The detective was at the foot of the stairs, and with a gesture Warrington signalled that he was going on up. As he climbed, he heard the officer’s heavy deliberate tread behind him. It irritated nerves already strained to the utmost, and the search he made of Warrington’s room for a possible concealed weapon drove him almost to frenzy.

“Oh, get the hell out of here and let me clean up!” he said. “I don’t own a gun, and I’m not going to jump out of a window.”

Nevertheless, the detective stood by until he had seen him go into the bathroom and turn on the shower. Then he very deliberately locked him in, put the key in his pocket and started on certain investigations.

He found the attic staircase without difficulty and climbed it with a certain caution; and once up, he stood in the semi-obscurity of the garret room and gave it a general survey. At first, however, it told him nothing. A blanket, lying carelessly on the floor, spoke of the last night’s tragedy, and a candlestick on a cedar chest, the candle burned to the socket. But there was nothing else.

The detective resumed his noiseless whistling through his teeth. The usual litter of such places surrounded him, a broken chair or two, boxes and trunks. Nothing, apparently, to bring Mrs. Bayne up here at two in the morning from a sick-bed.

Yet she had come. She had come up with a candle and set the candle on the chest there. Had she brought up the blanket also, or had they thrown it over her later? The place was cold. Damned cold.

He picked up the blanket, and a small shining object fell to the floor and lay there in the dust. It was a silver nail file. He picked it up, and stood speculatively surveying it. So she’d brought up a nail file, too. That was queer. A nail file, at two in the morning!

So far, from the time the stolen bond had made its appearance, the attention of the police had been directed solely toward locating the securities, and later on to locating Warrington. Holly’s story to the District Attorney had been strictly between the two of them. But naturally there had been considerable discussion as to where the securities had been hidden for the last ten years, to leap from obscurity into such glittering prominence.

In the Kelsey Street house, undoubtedly, but where in the house?

So now, with the file in his hand, his keen eyes began to search the room. Near the candle, probably. Something that had to be opened near the candle. There was a trunk there, but it was unlocked. He threw the lid back, and saw folded away in it old silk and satin gowns, and a bit of brocade. A heavy odour of camphor rose from it, and he closed the lid.

“Wrong!” he said out loud. No nail file was needed to open that.

He moved on, and a board slipped under his foot. Like a cat he was down on his knees, lighting a match. This was more like it. A file, of course, to lift the end of a board! And now again, a file to lift the end of a board. It came up in his hand. He lighted another match and, leaning over, proceeded carefully to examine the cavity beneath.

He was still noiselessly whistling. …

Later on, he took his prisoner down the stairs again. The house was very quiet. Holly still slept the sleep of exhaustion in her blue-and-white room, and Margaret was not visible.

Warrington stopped on the second-floor landing, with a queer look on his face; then he drew himself up and went on down. In the lower hall the dog knew him and leaped at him joyfully. It was at once his hail and farewell.

J
AMES COX SAT IN
the district attorney’s outer office. He had sat there, more or less, all day. Every now and then he paid a visit to the ice-water cooler in the hall, but he did not go out for food. He could not remember when he had eaten, and he did not care.

The ignominy of his arrest for drunkenness and his reprimand that morning before a magistrate had hardly affected him. He had brushed it aside, already forgotten it. Since the morning of his arrest in the store, his single-tracked mind had been concentrated on one problem; the world that moved about him was one of shadowy figures, which went about on trivial matters, ate, drank, walked, ran, loved and perhaps grieved, but unimportantly.

Thus it happened that he had brushed aside the minor incident of the night before. An event which would normally have stupefied him hardly entered the realm of his consciousness. He remembered, indeed, only vaguely any of the incidents leading up to it. He knew he must have walked most of the day, for his feet felt blistered; and he had a fairly clear recollection of making a decision to go back to Margaret, to seek comfort with her, even if she had lied to him.

But when he had gone back, at six o’clock, the apartment was dark. There was no Margaret, no table laid with good honest linen, no odour of broiling chops and coffee, no anything.

He had not even switched on the lights. He had simply turned and gone on out again.

Sometime later—he had lost all count of time—he had been standing on one of the bridges. He didn’t remember which bridge. He was standing there thinking and looking over, and a policeman, after watching him awhile, told him to move on. Yes, he remembered that, for it must have been then that that fellow from the china department came along and took him by the arm.

“You come with me, Cox,” he said. “You’re too much a man for that sort of thing. Come on, and we’ll have a drink.”

They had gone somewhere. It was bright and warm, and he hadn’t eaten anything for a long time. He guessed he’d taken a lot of whisky, but he felt all right when he left. It hadn’t really hit him hard until he was almost home. Then it had got him in the legs.

Well, maybe that could happen to anybody; he didn’t know, and he didn’t much care. He was going to see the District Attorney if he had to sit in that chair for a month.

At four o’clock he was admitted to the inner office. Phelps had spent most of the day in court, and now he too was tired. He wanted to go home, and bathe and shave, and maybe after dinner listen to the radio and doze in his chair. His tone was impatient when he looked up and saw James.