Читать книгу The House with the Blue Door - Footner Hulbert - Страница 8

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Blondy Farren, neatly dressed and barbered, stood in front of Lee in the latter’s office with his hat in his hands. Working in the open air during the past weeks had brought a wholesome color into Blondy’s cheeks; Lee was oddly drawn to the good-looking young man with the firm, shapely mouth and the steady blue eyes with their look of pain borne without flinching. He wanted to win Blondy’s confidence, but that promised to be difficult. Blondy answered all questions promptly and briefly and shut his mouth.

“Sit down,” said Lee.

Blondy sat bolt upright on a chair with his hat dangling between his knees.

“Where have you been living?” asked Lee.

“Room on East Fifth Street.”

“They told me that you had a job driving a lumber truck.”

“Part-time job,” said Blondy. “Best I could get without a recommendation. Twelve a week.”

“You can’t do much on that, can you?”

“I get by,” said Blondy shortly.

“I reckon you’ve had a pretty thin time.”

“A man has to take things as they come.”

“Mrs. Cassells wanted to make things easier for you,” suggested Lee.

“I know. She’s real kind. But I had too much of that in the past.”

“Too much of what?”

“Soft living.”

“Now that the Henry Street house is going, you could eat there. They’d be glad to have you.”

“I’ve been there a couple of times. Best not to go too often.”

“I have a friend who is an executive in the Ohio Steel Mills near Cleveland. I wrote to him to see if I could get you something better.”

“They would never hire me,” said Blondy grimly.

“You’re wrong!” said Lee. “I told my friend the circumstances and he has a job for you. It’s foreman of a small yard gang. The pay works out about forty a week.”

This broke down Blondy’s defenses. “Cleveland?” he said with a stricken glance.

“Don’t you want to go to Cleveland?”

The young man quickly recovered himself. “Sure! Cleveland’s an all right town. I’d be glad of it.” His voice changed. “Why do you want to send me out of town?” he asked.

“Don’t you think it would be a good thing?”

Blondy thought it over and nodded. “You’re right,” he said, pressing his lips into a thin line. This was as close as he got to being confidential. “When does it start?” asked Blondy.

“As soon as you like.”

“I’m ready.”

“There’s another thing,” said Lee. “Mrs. Cassells wants you to have a car.”

Blondy shook his head. “I don’t need it ... Much obliged just the same.”

“You do need it. The mills are twelve miles out of town. ... Why not take it?” Lee urged kindly. “It would help make life pleasant for you. Mrs. Cassells can afford it.”

Blondy considered the offer. He was tempted. “I never had a car of my own,” he murmured. Then he seemed to make up his mind. “If Mrs. Cassells wants to make the down payment, I can take care of the monthly payments myself on forty a week, easy. I’d rather have it that way.”

Lee liked this young fellow more and more. “Very good,” he said. “We’ll fix it like that. What kind of a car do you want?”

“I leave that to Mrs. Cassells.”

“All cars are the same to her. You might as well have what you want. I am authorized to buy it for you.”

A gleam appeared in Blondy’s eye. “Do you think she’d stand for a convertible?” he asked diffidently. “They cost more. Boy! I like driving with the top down!”

“Surely!” said Lee. “We’ll go look at them as soon as I sign my letters.”

“Write a letter to the man in Cleveland for me to take,” said Blondy, “and if there’s a car in stock I’ll light out this afternoon.”

“Don’t you want to say good-by to your friends?”

He shook his head. “I’d be obliged if you’d thank Mrs. Cassells for me. I’m tongue-tied with a lady.... I’ll write to her after I get there.”

“Okay,” said Lee. “And, Blondy, I want you to know I’m your friend, too. If you ever get in a jam let me hear from you. Lord! I was young once. I know how things are. Don’t forget that, Blondy.”

Blondy hung his head so low Lee could not see into his face. Kindness, it seemed, was the one thing that broke him down. “Thanks a lot, Mr. Mappin,” he mumbled. “Certainly is white of you!”

“Don’t mention it,” said Lee. “Sit down in the outer office while I dictate the letter for you to take.”

Spick and span in its dress of white paint and pastel wallpaper, the house on Henry Street had been open for a week. The ancient front door and the window frames had been painted a sprightly blue. Sandra and Letty had indulged in an orgy of spending; kitchenware, dining-room furniture, chairs and tables for the game room, sets of furniture for nine bedrooms; rugs for all the floors and curtains for the windows. To Letty it was like a dream to be able to buy everything you wanted at the time you wanted it.

“Everything must be plain, unpretentious, and of the best quality,” Sandra had pronounced. “Quality is important for the physchological effect.”

It had been easier to furnish the house than to fill it with boarders. All the applicants turned out to have unpleasant predilections, such as whisky, cocaine, kleptomania. After a week they had found two only: Hattie Oliver, better known to the police as Handbag Hattie, and Joe Spencer, an old-time forger who, after thirty years in prison, looked at a new world in trembling amazement. Hattie had overcome Sandra’s objections to having women in the house because she was so small, gentle, and anxious to please. Long ago she had cut a dash in the Tenderloin, but of late years it had been hard going, and her pleasant room on the second floor and three square meals a day seemed like heaven.

For nearly half a century Hattie had worked the department stores. Whenever a woman laid down her handbag to examine some goods, Hattie carelessly dropped her jacket over it and worked with lightning fingers under cover of the jacket. In a few seconds she would pick up the jacket and walk on humming a little tune. There were more than forty indorsements on her card in the record room at Police Headquarters. Opposite the last one was written: “Hattie is growing old now, and her fingers have lost their cunning.”

Nobody knew Joe’s other name. He was called Spencer because he wrote such a beautiful flowing hand. He wore a little white beard carefully trimmed to a point, and was extremely neat; one might almost say elegant, in his dress. He sat at a front window all day watching the traffic in Henry Street. He was afraid to go out. He was as timid as a hare and strongly addicted to hard candy.

Sandra was dissatisfied with her first guests. “I didn’t set out to open an old peoples’ home,” she complained. “Hattie and Joe are played out. They can’t do any more harm. I want to get hold of them while they’re worth saving; hot-blooded, passionate, dangerous to society.”

Lee took a pinch of snuff.

They had taken in for house servants an old safe cracker called Soup Kennedy and his wife, Mary, who had served time for one thing or another. They were a slow, heavy old pair, eternally grumbling and very inefficient servants, particularly Mary, who could not roast a joint without spoiling it. Lee groaned in spirit at the thought of the meals he would be expected to eat in that house. The worst of it was, you couldn’t fire them like ordinary hired servants because they had no other place to go.

The dining room was under the extension in the basement. Tonight Sieg occupied the head of the table flanked by Sandra and Lee, then Joe Spencer and Hattie, sitting opposite each other and quiet, Letty at the foot. The heavy-footed Mary waited on the table and joined freely in the conversation. Sandra would not allow Sieg to correct her. “I want this to be a true democracy,” she said. As a psychologist, Lee was intrigued by the oddly assorted household. With Sandra present, everybody was on his best behavior; they chose their words with care and Hattie curled her little finger elegantly whenever she lifted her cup. Lee guessed that it was freer and easier on other nights.

Anecdotes of prison life constituted Hattie’s and Joe’s main stock of conversation. “When I was in Dannemora,” said Joe, “I was in the next cell to Dan Wicksteel, the famous murderer. He was a lifer. As nice a man as you would want to meet. He taught me the Morse code, and when we couldn’t sleep we’d talk together half the night by tapping on a pipe. He told me the whole story of his life. It was a caution. He had killed five men, but all in a fair fight or self-defense, you understand.”

Hattie put in: “When they took Ruth Snyder to the death house she walked right by my cell. I saw her four, five times, just as close as I am to you. Beautiful blonde, my eye! that was all newspaper talk. Her face was all streaky like, her eyes were red and her hair was coming in brown at the roots. A man who would do murder for her sake must have been loco!”

Letty, who had a kind heart, treated Joe and Hattie like elderly children, and heaped their plates with the sweets they loved.

At the other end of the table, Sieg Ammon, dark, ruddy and handsome, devoted himself to Sandra. Lee thought: Whatever there is in him that gets the women, I can’t see it. Certainly it isn’t his brains. And his eyes have no more expression than black glass. Perhaps that’s it. The attraction of a hidden personality.

“Have you had any new applications?” asked Sandra.

“Plenty,” said Sieg, “but nothing I would consider. Bums mostly, poisoned with smoke. When a man gets to drinking that stuff, there’s nothing for him but the hospital and the morgue ... Do you remember Jimpson Souter?”

“Remember him!” said Sandra with a shiver. “I wish I could forget that horrible man!”

“He dogs my footsteps,” said Sieg with a laugh. “He knows we haven’t got a houseful and he’s sore. Blames me for keeping him out. Threatens to sing to the D.A. about my past life if I don’t give him a room.”

Sandra’s eyes widened. “What does he know about you?”

“You can search me! Long ago when we were camping in the jungles, I supposed I used to brag about my crimes. I posed as a bad man then. But that’s not evidence. He doesn’t know anything that he could use against me.”

“Are you giving him money enough to live on?”

“No. We would never get rid of him then. Let him alone and he’ll soon get into trouble with the police again.”

“He’s a dangerous man,” murmured Sandra. “I shall never have any peace until he is safe in prison.”

“Why doesn’t Blondy come and live here?” asked Letty in her quiet way.

Sieg grinned. “Do you like to have him around?”

“Yes,” she said. “Blondy’s on the square. You can depend on him.”

“Well, I’m sorry, but Blondy’s got a job out in Cleveland.”

Letty shrugged indifferently.

“I got a letter from a fellow in Sing Sing called Johnnie Stabler,” Sieg went on. “He’ll be out in a couple of weeks. Said his parents are dead and his wife has divorced him and is living under an assumed name. He has no place to go. Johnnie is an educated fellow. Used to be a clerk in Wall Street.”

“Young?” asked Sandra.

“In his thirties.”

“That’s the sort of man we want. We could help him get a fresh start.”

“I’ll write to him.”

Flat-footed Mary, breathing heavily as she moved around the table, put in her word. “I’ve got a brother over in Jersey who is down on his luck. He ...”

“Pipe down, Mary!” said Sieg brusquely. “I know all about him.”

A bell sounded in the kitchen and Soup Kennedy plodded upstairs to open the front door. He presently returned saying: “It’s a guy to see Sieg.”

“Who is it?”

“He’s been here before.”

Sieg’s eyes narrowed. “Is it Jimpson Souter?”

“That’s right.”

Sieg threw down his napkin, and pushed back his chair.

“Don’t see him!” urged Sandra nervously. “Let Soup send him away.”

“He’d only hang around outside. I’ll get rid of him once and for all. Back in half a moment.”

Sieg went up the stairs two at a time. The others stopped eating and listened. An indefinable fear crept into their faces. For a long time they could hear only a vague murmur of talk in the hall above.

“Why doesn’t Sieg send him away!” murmured Sandra nervously.

Suddenly the two voices broke out in angry cursing. There was the sound of a blow, a fall, followed by a terrifying scramble and stamping to and fro on the floor above. Hattie started to scream and pressed her napkin against her mouth. All sprang up; a chair fell over. Letty, as pale as paper, was the first to reach the bottom of the stairs. Lee thought with a sinking heart: Not another able-bodied man in the house! Nevertheless, he, Soup and little Joe Spencer all clambered up the enclosed stair as fast as they were able. Sandra and Hattie were at their heels.

In the entrance hall Sieg and Jimpson, locked together with crimson faces and starting eyes, lurched heavily from side to side. Sieg’s sleek hair stood out from his head, his collar was torn open; there was a small cut over his eyebrow and blood was trickling down his cheek. Lee saw a gun lying on the threshold of the front room and secured it. Sieg slammed Jimpson against the wall. Jimpson’s hand stole up between them and fastened around Sieg’s throat. Sieg shook himself like a terrier but Jimpson hung on. Sieg turned him halfway round, drew up a knee between them and, thrusting out, sent Jimpson crashing to the floor on his back. Sieg flung himself on the prostrate figure and, gripping his shoulders, beat his head savagely on the floor.

“He’ll kill him!” murmured Letty. “Oh, stop him! Stop him!”

Lee and old Kennedy seized hold of Sieg and dragged him off. Jimpson lay on the floor inert.

“Telephone for the police!” cried Sandra hysterically.

The struggling Sieg went quiet in Lee’s arms. “No!” he said. “I can handle this!”

Sandra ran into the front room where the telephone was.

“Let me go!” said Sieg urgently. “I’m not going to touch him again.”

They released him and he ran after Sandra. Flinging an arm around her, he drew her back from the phone with a grin on his bloody face, as one might grin at a passionate child. “Don’t bring in the police,” he urged soothingly. “It would be bad for the house.”

“He’ll kill you!” wailed Sandra. “I saw a gun.”

“I have it safe,” said Lee.

“He’ll never rest until he kills you!”

Sieg laughed. “I’m not afraid of that poor punk. He can’t touch me. If there was a new charge laid against him, he’d get ten years. I don’t want that on my conscience.”

Lee looked at Sieg in surprise. He hadn’t suspected him capable of such compunctions.

Sieg deposited Sandra in a chair where she broke into hysterical weeping. Lord! thought Lee, if the world could see the famous Mrs. Cassells now! Little Hattie also was weeping noisily, but Letty was white and stony.

Out in the hall Jimpson lay with an arm flung over his face. He was conscious but he didn’t want to stand up to Sieg again. They dragged him to his feet and jammed his hat on his head.

“Now get!” said Sieg.

“Give me back my gun!” whined Jimpson.

Sieg roared with laughter. “That’s likely!” he said.

“You can unload it,” whined Jimpson. “It took my last cent to buy it. I’ve got to pawn it in order to eat.”

“That’s your bad luck,” said Sieg. He opened the door. “Get out!”

Jimpson went out of the door crab fashion, as if he expected to be helped with a kick from behind. His face was ashy now with darker streaks. It bore a horrible look of craven fear and rage. He paused for a moment on the threshold and cursed Sieg thickly.

“I’ll get you! It may be soon and it may be late, but I’ll get you if I burn for it!”

Sieg made a threatening move, and Jimpson went shambling down the steps. Sieg closed the door.

“He shouldn’t go free! He shouldn’t go free!” wailed Sandra.

“He can’t reach me!” said Sieg scornfully.

“You must be armed. You must always be armed now!”

“All right,” said Sieg laughing. “Just to please you, I’ll take out a license.”

Letty led him upstairs to have his face washed and his hair combed. Lee suggested that everybody else needed a stiff drink to compose their nerves.

Later, Sandra and Lee were driving uptown in the Cassells limousine, each sunk in a corner silently thinking over what had happened. Sandra was the first to speak.

“Sometimes I think Letty isn’t worthy of a man like Sieg.”

“Eh?” said Lee. “In heaven’s name, why not?”

“She’s so passive! Not a sound out of her the whole time!”

“You never can tell,” said Lee. “Still waters, you know.”

“Still waters are often stagnant,” said Sandra scornfully.

There was another long silence.

“Wasn’t Sieg magnificent in his rage!” she breathed.

“I can’t say that I was impressed, darling. I myself could almost have handled a broken creature like Jimpson.”

“Flashing like a meteor!” she murmured. “Awful! Irresistible! ... I am so fed up with tame men!”

Lee took a pinch of snuff.