Phantom lady (15 page)

"I can't do it. I'm alone in here and helpless. I can't let anyone in." He was worried about his day's gleanings, Lombard knew. You couldn't blame him for that. It was a wonder he hadn't lost them, in the way that he took this to be, long before now,

"You can let me in. Come on, open up a minute. I only want to talk to you."

The voice on the other side quavered, "Get away from here. Go on away from my door or I'll holler down for help from the window." But it was pleading rather than threatening.

There was a short stalemate. Neither of them moved. Neither of them made a sound. They were acutely aware of each other's nearness. Fright on one side of the door, determination on the other.

Lombard took out his wallet finally, scanned it thoughtfully. The largest denomination in it was a fifty-dollar bill. There were some smaller ones he could have taken out in place of it; he chose the larger one instead. He dropped to his heels, worked it through the crack under the door until there was nothing left of it to hold on to any more.

He straightened up again, said, "Reach down and feel along the bottom of the door. Doesn't that prove I don't want to rob you? Now let me in."

There was a postscript of hesitancy, then a chain head slid off its groove. A bolt sidled back, and last of all a key turned in the keyhole. It had been well barricaded.

The door opened grudgingly, and the sightless black lenses that he'd first marked out on the streets hours ago stared at him. "Anyone else with you?"

"No, I'm alone. And I haven't come here to harm you, so don't be nervous."

"You're not an agent, are you?"

"No, I'm not a police agent. There'd be a cop with me if I was, and there's nobody with me. I just want to talk to you, can't you get that through your head?" He pushed his way in.

The room was invisible in the darkness, nonexistent, a pall of sightlessness, just as the other's whole world must be. For a moment a wedge of dull amber-tan lying along the floor from the hall light outside helped a little, then that went too as the door closed.

"Put on a light, can't you?"

"No," the blind man said, "this makes us more even. If you just want to talk, what do you need a light for?" Lombard heard a decrepit bedspring sing out somewhere near by, as he sank down on it. He was probably sitting on his day's take, nested under the mattress.

"Come on, cut out the foolishness, I can't talk like this—" He groped around him at knee level, finally located the arm of a rickety wooden rocker, shifted it over, and sank into it.

"You said you wanted to talk," the other voice said tautly in the dark. "Now you're in, now go ahead and talk. You don't have to see to be able to talk."

Lombard's voice said, "Well, at least I can smoke, can't I? You don't object to that, do you? You smoke yourself, don't you?"

"When I can get it," the other voice said wearily.

"Here, take one of these." There was a click, and a small lighter-flame peered out in his hand. A little of the room came back.

The blind man was on the edge of the bed, his cane crosswise on his lap in case it should be required as a weapon.

Lombard's hand came away from his pocket holding, instead of cigarettes, a revolver. He held it in close, but pointed directly at the other. "Here, help yourself," he repeated pleasantly.

The blind man became rigid. The cane rolled off his knees and hit the floor. He made a spasmodic warding motion of the hands, up toward his face. "I knew you were after

my money!" he said hoarsely. "I shouldn't have let you in—" Lombard put the gun away again, as calmly as he had taken it out. "You're not blind," he said quietly. "I didn't need that stunt to prove it to myself either. But I needed it to prove to you that I was already on to you. The mere fact that you opened the door for a fifty-dollar bill was proof enough. You must have struck a match for a minute and scanned it. How could you know it wasn't a one-dollar bill, if you weren't a fake? A one is the same size and shape, feels the same, as a fifty. A one wouldn't have made it worth your while to open the door, you probably came in with more than that on you yourself just now. But a fifty was worth taking a chance for; that was more than you'd collected."

He saw a misshapen remnant of candle, went over and touched the lighter to it while he was still speaking.

"You are an agent," the beggar faltered, wiping sweat from his forehead harassedly with the back of his hand. "I might have known—"

"Not the kind you mean, interested in whether you're out taking the public's money under false pretenses or not. If that's any consolation to you." He came back and sat down again.

"Then what are you? What do you want with me?" "I want you to remember something you saw—Mr. Blind Man," he added ironically. "Now listen to this. You were hanging around outside the Casino Theater, working the audience as it came out, one night last May—" "But I've been around there lots of times." "I'm talking about one night only, one particular night. That's the only one I care about, I don't give a damn about the rest. This night that I mean, a man and a woman came out together. Now here's the woman: she had on a bright orange hat with a tall black feeler sticking up from it. You put the bite on them as they were getting into a taxi, a few yards down from the entrance. Listen carefully, now. Without thinking what she was doing, she dropped a lighted

cigarette into the cup you shoved at her, instead of the donation she intended. It burned your finger. The man quickly dug it out for you, and to make it up to you, gave you a couple of dollars. I think he said something like this: "Sorry, old man, that was a mistake.' Now surely you remember that. It isn't every night your finger gets burned by a live cigarette landing in your cup, and it isn't every night you get two dollars in a lick from just one passerby."

"Suppose I say I don't remember?"

"Then I'm going to haul you out of here with me right now and turn you in at the nearest police station as an impostor. You'll get a stretch in the workhouse, you'll be down on the police blotter from then on, and you'll be picked up each time they see you trying to work the streets."

The man on the bed clawed at his own face distractedly, momentarily displacing the dark glasses upward past his eyes. "But isn't that like forcing me to say I remember, whether I do or not?"

"It's only forcing you to admit what I'm sure you do remember anyway."

"Then suppose I say I do remember, what happens then?"

"First you tell me what you remember, then you repeat it to a certain plainclothesman, a friend of mine. I'll either bring him down here or take you up there with me to see him—"

The mendicant jolted with renewed dismay. "But how can I do that, without giving myself away? Especially to a plainclothesman! I'm supposed to be blind, how can I say I saw them? That's the same as what you were threatening to do to me if I didn't tell you!"

"No, you'll just be telling it to this one guy, not the whole force at large. I can strike a bargain with him, get him to promise you immunity from prosecution. Now how about it? Did you or didn't you?"

"Yes, I did," the professional blind man admitted in a low voice. "I saw the two of them together. I usually keep my eyes closed, even behind the glasses, when I'm near

bright lights, like there were outside that theater. But the cigarette burn made me open them good and wide. I can see through the glasses, and I saw them both, all right."

Lombard took something out of his wallet. "Is this him?"

The blind man hitched his glasses up out of the way, scrutinized the snapshot critically. "I'd say it was," he said finally. "Considering how short a glimpse I had of him, and how long ago it was, it looks to me like the same guy."

"What about her? You'd know her again if you saw her?"

"I already have. I only saw him that one night, but I saw her at least once more after that—"

"What!" Lombard was suddenly on his feet, leaning over him. The rocker swayed emptily behind him. He grabbed him by the shoulder, squeezing as if trying to get the information out of his skinny frame in that way. "Let me hear about it! Come on, quick!"

"It was not very long after that same night, that's how I knew it was she. It was in front of one of the big swanky hotels, and you know how bright they are. I heard a pair of footsteps coming down the steps, a man's and a woman's. I heard the woman say, 'Wait a minute, maybe this'll bring me luck,' and I knew she meant me. I heard her footsteps turn aside and come over to me. A coin went in. A quarter. I can tell the different coins by the sounds they make. And then the funny part of it happened, that made me know it was she. It's such a little thing, I don't know if you'll be able to catch on like I did. She stood still for just a tiny minute there in front of me, and they never do. The coin was already in, so I knew she must be looking at me. Or something about me. I was holding the cup in my right hand, the one with the burn on it, and the burn was one of those big water-blisters by that time. I think it must have been that she saw, on the side of my finger. Anyway, here's what happened. I heard her say under her breath—not to me. but to herself— 'Why, how very odd—!' And then her footsteps turned and went back to where the man's were. That was all—"

"But—"

"Wait a minute, I'm not finished yet. I opened my eyes just a slit, to look down at the cup. And she'd added a dollar bill to the original quarter she'd put in the first time. I knew it was she, because it hadn't been in there until then. Now why should she change her mind and add a dollar bill after she'd already put in a quarter? It must have been the same woman; she must have recognized the blister and remembered what had happened a few nights be—"

"Must have, must have," gritted Lombard impatiently. "I thought you said you saw her, could tell me what she looked like!"

"I can't tell you what she looks like from the front, because I didn't dare open my eyes. The lights were too bright around there, it would have been a give away. After she turned away and I saw the dollar bill, I peered up a little higher under my lashes and saw her from the back, as she w as getting into the car."

"From the back! Well, tell me that at least, what was she like from the back!"

"I couldn't see all of her even from the back, I was afraid to look up that high. All I saw was just the seam of a silk stocking and one heel as she raised it to step in. That was all that was in focus with my downcast eyelids."

"An orange hat one night. A stocking-seam and the heel of her shoe another night a week later!" Lombard gave him a fling back onto the bed. "At this rate, after about twenty years we'll have a whole woman to stick in between the two!"

He went over to the door, flung it open. He looked back at him balefully. "You can do a lot better than that, and I'm sure of it! What you need is the professional touch, to bring it out. You certainly did see her full eye-width the first night, outside the theater. And the second time you must have heard the address given to the driver of the car, as she stepped in—"

"No, I didn't."

"You stay here, get it? Don't move from here. I'm going

down and call up this fellow I told you about. I want him to come over here and listen to this with me."

"But he's a bull, isn't he?"

*'I told you that's all right. We're not interested in you, either one of us. You've got nothing to be nervous about. But don't try to run out before I get back, or then we will make it hot for you."

He closed the door after him.

The voice at the other end sounded surprised. "You got something already?"

"I've got something already, and I want you to hear it for what it's worth. I think you can probably get a lot more out of it than I can. I'm way up here at a Hundred and Twenty-Third Street and Park Avenue, the last house short of the railroad tracks. I'd like you to get over here as fast as you can, and see what you think of it. I've got the beat-cop posted at the door watching it for me until I can get back. I'm talking from around the corner, nearest phone I could find. I'll be waiting down there by the street entrance for you."

Burgess dropped off a patrol car with a running slowdown a few minutes later. The car went on without stopping and he came over to where Lombard and the cop were standing waiting in the doorway.

"In here," Lombard said, turning to go in without any further explanation.

"Well, I guess I can get back on the line," the cop said, turning away.

"Thanks a lot, officer," Lombard called out to him. They were already in at the stairs by that time. "All the way up at the top," he explained, taking the lead. "He's seen her twice, that night and another time, a week later. He's a blind man; don't laugh, phony of course."

"Well, that was worth coming over for," Burgess admitted.

They made the first turning, one behind the other, hands coasting along the rail. "Wants immunity—about the bhndness. Scared of cops."

"We can work something out, if it's worth it," Burgess grunted.

Second landing. "One more." Lombard checked off gratuitously.

They saved their breath for climbing on the next.

Third landing. "What happened to the lights from here on up?" Burgess heaved.

A hitch snagged the rhythm of Lombard's ascent. "That's funny. There was one still on when I came down. Either the bulb died, or it was tampered with, turned off."

"You sure it was still on?"

"Absolutely. I remember he had his room dark, but light from the hall came in through the open door."

"Better let me go first. I've got a pocket light." Burgess detoured around him, took the lead.

He must have been still in the process of getting it out. At the middle turn, between floors, where the stairs changed direction, he suddenly went floundering down on all fours. "Look out," he warned Lombard. "Step back."

The moon of his torch sprang up. bleaching the little oblong between end wall and bottom step. Spanning it lay an inert figure, grotesquely contorted. Legs trailing downward off the last few steps, torso proper on the level landing place, but head bent backward at an unnatural and acute angle by the impediment of the end wall at the turn. Dangling from one ear, but miraculously unbroken, was a pair of dark glasses.