Phantom lady (25 page)

"Your whole premise is full of flaws. No matter how phenomenal the prices you offer, why should that attract her? Suppose she's well off?"

"Suppose she no longer is well off?"

"I still don't see how she can fail to smell a rat."

"To us the program is 'hot.' To her it isn't. Why should it be? She may never even notice those tell-tale little folds

Up at the corner, or if she does, never dream that they'll tell us what we want to know. You didn't remember about it yourself, until just a few minutes ago. Why should she? She's not a mind reader; how is she going to know that you and I are here together in this cell talking about it right now?"

"The whole thing is too flimsy."

"Of course it's flimsy," Lombard agreed. "It's a thousand to one shot. But we have to take it. Beggars can't be choosers. I'm going to try it, Hendy. I have a strange feeling that— that this'll work, where everything else has failed."

He turned away, went over to the bars to be let out.

"Well, so long—" Henderson suggested tentatively.

"I'll be seeing you," Lombard called back.

As he heard his tread recede outside behind the guard's, Henderson thought: He doesn't believe that. And neither do I.

Boxed Advertisement, All Morning and Evening Papers:

Turn Your Old Theatre Programs into Money

Wealthy collector, in town for short visit, will pay over-generous amounts for items needed to complete his sets. Life-long hobby. Bring them in, no matter how old, no matter how new! Specially wanted: music-hall and revue numbers, last few seasons, missing because of my absence abroad. Alhambra, Belvedere, Casino, Coliseum. No job-lots nor second-hand dealers. J. L. 15 Franklin Square. Premises open until ten Friday night, only. After that I leave town.

At nine-thirty, for almost the first time all day, the line had dwindled to vanishing point, a straggler or two had been disposed of, and there was a breathing spell, with nobody in the shop but Lombard and his young assistant.

Lombard slumped limply in his chair, thrust out his lower lip, and blew breath exhaustedly up across his face, so that it stirred the disarranged hair overhanging his forehead. He was in his vest, shirt collar open. He dragged a handkerchief out from the pocket he was sitting on and popped it at his face here and there. It came away gray. They didn't bother dusting them off before they dumped them in front of him. They seemed to think the thicker the dust, the more highly they would be valued. He wiped his hands on the handkerchief, threw it away.

He turned his head, said to somebody hidden from view behind him by towering, slantwise stacks of programs, "You can go now, Jerry. Time's about up, I'm closing in another half hour. The rush seems to be over."

A skinny youth of nineteen or so straightened up in a sort of trench left between two parapets of the accumulation, came out, put on his coat.

Lombard took out some money. "Here's the fifteen dollars for the three days, Jerry."

The boy looked disappointed. "Won't you be needing me any more tomorrow, mister?"

"No, I won't be here tomorrow," Lombard said brood-ingly. "Tell you what you can do, though. You can have these to sell for waste paper; some rag-picker might give you a few jits for them."

The boy looked at him pop-eyed. "Gee, mister, you mean

you been buying 'em up for three days straight just to get rid of them?"

"I'm funny that way," Lombard assented. "Keep it under your hat until then, though."

The boy went out giving him awed backward glances all the way to the sidewalk. He thought he was crazy, Lombard knew. He didn't blame him. He thought he was crazy himself. For ever thinking that this would work, that she'd fall for it, show up. The whole idea had been harebrained to start with.

A girl was passing along the sidewalk as the boy emerged. That was the only reason Lombard happened to notice her, because his eyes were on his departing assistant and she cut between them. Nobody. Nothing. Just a girl. A stray pedestrian. She gave a look in, as she passed the doorway. Then, with just a momentary hesitation, probably caused by curiosity, went on again, passed from view beyond the vacant show window. For a moment, though, he had almost thought she was about to enter.

The lull ended and an antediluvian in beaver-collared coat, black-stringed eyeglasses, and an incredibly high collar came in, walking stick to side. Behind him, to Lombard's dismay, appeared a cab driver dragging in a small ancient trunk. The visitor halted before the bare wooden table Lombard was using for a desk, and struck a pose so hammy that for a minute Lombard couldn't believe it was intended seriously, wasn't just a burlesque.

Lombard rolled his eyes upward. He'd been getting this type all day long. But never with a whole trunkful of them at a time, until now.

"Ah, sir," began the relic of the gas lit footlights, in a richly resonant voice that would have been something if only he'd kept his hands down, "you are indeed lucky that I read your advertisement. I am in a position to enrich your collection immeasurably. I can add to it as no one else in this city can. I have some rarities here that will warm your heart. From the old Jefferson Playhouse, as far back as—"

Lombard motioned a hasty refusal. "I'm not interested in the Jefferson Playhouse, I've got a full set."

"The Olympia, then. The—"

"Not interested, not interested. I don't care what else you've got, I'm all bought up. I only need one item more before I put out the lights and lock up. Casino, last season. Have you one?"

"Casino, bah!" the old man sputtered in his face, with a little more than just expelled breath. "You say Casino to me? What have I to do with trashy modern revues? I was once: one of the greatest tragedians on the American stage!"

"I can see that," Lombard said dryly. "I'm afraid we can't do business with one another."

The trunk and the cab driver went out again. The trunk's owner stopped in the doorway long enough to express his contempt by way of the floor. "Casino— thut!" Then he went out too.

Another short hiatus, then an old woman who had the appearance of being a charwoman came in. She had bedecked herself for the occasion with a large floppy hat topped by a cabbagy rose, that looked as though it had either been picked up from an ashcan or taken out of a storage closet where it had lain forgotten for decades. She had applied a circular fever spot of rouge to the leathery skin of each cheek, with the uncertain hand of one trying to indulge in a long-forgotten practice.

As he raised his eyes to her, half compassionately, half unwillingly, he caught sight over her rounded shoulder of the same girl as before, once again passing outside the shop, this time in the opposite direction. Again she turned and glanced in. This time, however, she did more than that. She came to a full halt, if only for a second or two; even went back a single step to bring herself more fully in line with the open entrance. Then, having scanned the interior, she ] went on. She was obviously interested in what was going on. Still, he had to admit, there had been enough publicity attending the enterprise to make a chance passerby conscious

of it, cause her to give a second look. There had even been photographers sent around early in the event. And she may have simply been coming back from wherever she had been bound the first time she passed; if you went some place, you usually followed the same route on the way back, there was nothing unusual in that.

The old drudge before him was faltering timidly, "Is it on the level, sir? You really pay money for old programs?"

He brought his attention back to her. "Certain ones, yes."

She fumbled in a knitted market bag hanging over her arm. "I have only a few here, sir. From when I used to be in the chorus myself. I kept them all, they mean a lot to me. The Midnight Rambles, and the Frolics of 1911—" She was trembling with apprehension, as she put them down. She turned one of the yellowed leaves, as though to add to the veracity of her story. "See, this is me here, sir. Dolly Golden, that used to be my name. I played the Spirit of Youth in the final tableau—"

Time, he thought, is a greater murderer than any man or woman. Time is the murderer that never gets punished. He looked at her raw, toilworn hands, not the programs at all. "A dollar apiece," he said gruffly, feeling for his billfold.

She was nearly overcome with joy. "Oh. bless you, mister! It will come in so handy!" She had swept up his hand before he could stop her and put her lips to it. The rouge started to elongate into pink tears. "I didn't dream they were worth that much!"

They weren't. They weren't worth a plugged nickel. "Here you are, mother," he said compassionately.

"Oh, now I'm going to eat—I'm going to eat a big dinner—!" She staggered out almost drunk with the unexpected windfall. A younger woman was standing there quietly waiting, as she gave place before him. She must have come in unnoticed behind her just now, he hadn't seen her enter. It was the same one who had passed the doorway twice already, once in each direction. He was almost sure of it, although the previous optical snapshots he had had of her

had been too brief to focus properly.

She had looked younger out there, in the middle distance, than she did now, directly before him at close range. That was because she had retained a slimness of figure, after almost everything else was gone. She was ravaged, almost as ravaged as the charwoman who had just preceded her, if in a different way.

A prickling sensation lightly stirred the fuzz below the hairline on his neck. He tried not to stare at her too blatantly, looked down again after one all-comprehensive sweep of the eyes, so she wouldn't detect anything on his face.

His composite impression was this: she must have been pretty until just recently. It was rapidly leaving her now. There was an air of sub-surface refinement, perhaps even culture, still emanating from her, but there was a hard crust, a shell of coarseness and cheapening, forming on the outside that would soon smother it, extinguish it for good. Probably it was already too late to save her from the process. It was being accelerated, as far as he could tell at sight, either by alcohol in destructive day-long floods, or by acute and unaccustomed destitution; or perhaps by an attempt to dull the one with the other. There were traces of a third factor still discernible, and this perhaps had been the predecessor, the causative, of the other two. but it seemed to be no longer the determining one, had been superseded by the other two: unbearable distress of mind, mental misery, fear admixed with some sort of guilt, and prolonged endlessly over a period of months. It had left its mark but it was dying out now; the strictly physical dissipations were the current ones. She was jaunty, now she was rubbery and unbreakable with the resiliency of the gutters and the bars, and of those who can go no lower, and that would suffice to see her through to the end. Probably a gas-tube in some rooming house.

She looked as though she hadn't been eating regularly. There was a shadowed hollow in each cheek, and the whole bone structure of the face showed through the thin covering. She was entirely in black, but not the black of widow-

hood nor yet the black of fashion; the rusty black of slovenliness, adhered to because it doesn't show soil. Even her stockings were black, with a white crescent of hole showing above the back of each shoe.

She spoke. Her voice was r
ed, raucous with cheap whisky gulped inordinately all day and night. Yet even here there was a ghost of cultivation left. If she used slang now, it was from choice, from contact with those she associated with, and not because she didn't know any better. "You got any jack left to pay out on programs, or am I too late?"

"Let's see what you've got," he said guardedly.

There was a snap of her shoddy, oversized handbag, and a pair of them were planked down. Companion pieces, from the same night. A musical show at the Regina, season before last. I wonder who she was with that night, he thought. She probably was secure yet and comely, she didn't dream. He pretended to consult a reference list giving his needs, the gaps that remained to be filled in his "sets."

"I seem to be short that one. Seven-fifty," he said.

He saw her eyes glitter. He'd hoped that would get her.

"Got any more?" he suggested craftily. "This is your last chance, you know. I'm closing up this place tonight."

She hesitated. He saw her eyes go to her bag. "Well, do you bother buying just one at a time?"

"Any number."

"As long as I'm in here—" She opened the bag once more, tilted the flap over against her so that he couldn't look down into it, pulled an additional program out. She snapped the bag shut again, first of all, before she did anything else. He noted that. Then she spaded the folder at him. He took it, reversed it his way.

Casino Theatre

It was the first one that had showed up in the full three days. He leafed through it with pretended casualness, past the preliminary filler columns to where the play-matter itself

began. It was dated by the week, as all theatrical programs are. "Week beginning May 17th." His breath log-jammed. That was the week. The right week. It had been on the night of the twentieth. He kept his eyes down so they wouldn't give him away. Only—the upper right-hand corners of the pages were untouched. It wasn't that they'd been smoothed out, that would have left a tell-tale diagonal seam; they'd never been folded over in the first place.

It was hard to keep his voice casual. "Got the mate to it? Most of them come in twos, you know, and I could make you a better offer."

She gave him a searching look. He even caught the little uncompleted start her hand made toward the snap of her pocketbook. Then she forced it down again. "What d'you think I do, print them?"

"I prefer to buy duplicates, doubles, whenever possible. Didn't anyone go with you to this particular show? What became of the other pro—?"

There was something about it she didn't like. Her eyes darted suspiciously around the store, as if in search of a trap. She edged warily backward a step or two from the table. "Come on, one is all I got. Do you wanna buy or don't you?"