Читать книгу False to Any Man - Leslie Ford - Страница 12

If Capitol Hill were being demolished in an air raid, I’d still get my sleep. Unless, of course, the neighbors had left a cat out; and this night one of them had. I woke up gradually in the pitch dark, a faint “Meow, meow, meow” seeping through into my conscious mind. I turned over and resolutely closed my eyes. It still went on. Mrs. Harris didn’t yowl, she merely moaned.

I muttered savagely, for all the world like Lilac, “Why doesn’t that blasted Karen take her cat in?” I don’t know what it is about a low pitiful noise that makes it so unbearable. At last I sat up in Stygian darkness, thinking that of course the animal must be half frozen, and turned on the light. Then I thought it must be entirely frozen. It was after five; o’clock. Mrs. Harris still mewed, so close as to sound almost under my window.

I thought, “Why doesn’t it go home and wake its mistress?” but I got up, put on Sandy’s bathrobe and woolly slippers and went to the window. The sound must at last have waked Karen too, I thought; there was a light in her house, both upstairs and down. I waited a moment, expecting to see her open the door and call her cat, but she didn’t. Mrs. Harris’s cry rose again. She’d seen my lights go on, I supposed. Then I saw two little balls of fire raised from the Candlers’ garden doorstep.

“If I liked cats, Mrs. Harris,” I said, “I’d come down and get you”; and then I added, “—with more pleasure,” knowing very well that I couldn’t let a rat lie there and freeze to death. I opened the door and stepped out into the hall. The house was as silent as the grave. I crept down the wide old staircase, and stopped abruptly. Someone else was awake too. I could hear quiet footsteps behind me. I turned around. In the faint light from the window I could see no one.

“I must have imagined it,” I thought, and started on down. The soft footsteps behind me started too. I whispered, “Who’s that?” There was no answer, nothing but the utter silence, and Mrs. Harris’s faint wail still sounding outside. My heart, never too brave, crawled up to my mouth. My fingers were like icicles on the old pine stair rail as I realized that I couldn’t go back, I had to go on. “If I can reach the switch,” I thought, and started quickly. The soft thump-thump-thump sounded again, closer now. I dashed across the hall, fumbled with shaky fingers at the switch, clicked it on and whirled around . . . and saw the long heavy tassel of Sandy’s bathrobe flying around after me.

I said “Fool!” and tied it up, but I stood there for a moment, my heart still pounding. Then I made my way back through the door beside the stairs and into the garden entry. I felt around for the light there, found it at last, and started to reach for the big old-fashioned key in the polished brass lock. Then I stopped abruptly, staring down at the worn old drugget on the pine floor in front of the door.

A piece of caked snow lay in the middle of it. It was dry and perfectly firm. Someone had come in that way, and not very long before.

My lips were so parched that I moistened them without relief. Mrs. Harris’s low wail on the other side of the door was the only sound in the world except my own heart pounding dully. I turned the key in the lock and drew the door open. Mrs. Harris slithered inside instantly and rubbed against me with a grateful “Meow!”, her icy fur electric against my bare ankle.

I looked down at her, and I looked down, through the bare branches of the crape myrtles, icy black above the snow-white garden, at that little gem of a house. I don’t know what it was that made me just stand there, for a moment, staring down at it with some kind of a nameless dread catching at my heart. I’d certainly never pretend I’m psychic . . . and yet there was something about that gay lighted little building that wasn’t gay at all—like a brilliant ballroom quite empty of dancers. Maybe it wasn’t that; maybe it was just my bloodhound’s sense of smell communicating something strangely unfamiliar in the clean night to my subconscious. Or perhaps it was some curious foreboding that had been plucking at the muted strings of fear in my mind all that evening. I don’t know. I only know that as I stood there the tiny house seemed unreal and frightening to me, like brilliant rouge on cheeks drained of life.

It must have been sharper and more compelling, too, than I was aware of, or I’d never have ventured down the icy path in Sandy’s sheepskin slippers, hugging his bathrobe around my frozen limbs, until I came almost to the end of the path. And then I knew—for the foul acrid smell of gas was unmistakable.

I ran those last few steps, and banged frantically on the door.

“Karen!” I called. “Karen!”

The lights from the little windows shone brightly still, but no longer gaily . . . like wide staring grimaces, utterly horrible. I dashed to the nearest one. Through the chinks in the Venetian blind I could see into the living room. Karen Lunt, still in her black velvet evening dress, the bright corn-colored curls still piled on top of her head, was sitting motionless in the cherry-red love seat.

I banged at the window, and cried out desperately. She didn’t move. Then, almost beside myself, I searched frantically around on the snow-covered walk until I found a loose brick, pried it out, dashed back to the window, and then—I shall never forget that crash as long as I live—hurled it through the pane. A flood of gas poured out, choking me as I tried to get closer to tear down the blind.

I vaguely realized that the lights were going on in the Doyle house across the street, and behind me in the Candlers’, as I scooped up a handful of snow, held it over my nose, reached through the broken glass and seized Karen by her black velvet shoulder. She swayed there for just an instant, toppled over and lay, quite inert in a huddle on the eggshell rug.

My head reeled then, and I had just enough consciousness left to bury my face in the snow as I fell, and to hear voices all around me then and the crashing of window glass. The next thing I knew I was in Judge Candler’s study. And then for a brief instant I was alone, the smell of gas making a roller coaster of my stomach. I pulled myself together with a dreadful effort, reached for the telephone on Judge Candler’s desk, and whispered to the operator:

“Get Colonel Primrose at District 0091 and tell him to come to Alexandria, to Judge Candler’s house, at once! Tell him Mrs. Latham wants him.”