Читать книгу The Exile of Time - Raymond King Cummings - Страница 4

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The extraordinary incidents began about 1 A.M. in the night of June 8-9, 1935. I was walking through Patton Place, in New York City, with my friend Larry Gregory. My name is George Rankin. My business and Larry’s—are details quite unimportant to this narrative. We had been friends in college. Both of us were working in New York; and with all our relatives in the middle west we were sharing an apartment on this Patton Place—a short, crooked, little-known street of not particularly impressive residential buildings lying near the section known as Greenwich Village, where towering office buildings of the business district encroach close upon it.

This night at 1 A.M. it was deserted. A taxi stood at a corner; its driver had left it there, and evidently gone to a nearby lunch room. The night was sultry and dark, with a leaden sky. The houses were mostly unlighted at this hour. There was an occasional apartment house among them, but mostly they were low, ramshackle affairs of brick and stone.

We were still three blocks from our apartment when without warning the incidents began which were to plunge us and all the city into disaster.

Larry was saying, “Wish we would get a storm to clear this air—what the devil? George, did you hear that?”

We stood listening. There had sounded a choking, muffled scream. We were midway in the block. There was not a pedestrian in sight, nor any vehicle save the abandoned taxi at the corner.

“A woman,” he said. “Did it come from this house?”

We were standing before a three-story brick residence. All its windows were dark. There was a front stoop of several steps, and a basement entryway. The windows were all closed, and the place had the look of being unoccupied.

“Not in there, Larry,” I answered. “It’s closed for the summer—” But I got no further; we heard it again. And this time it sounded, not like a scream, but like a woman’s voice calling to attract our attention.

“George! Look there!” Larry cried.

The glow from a street light illumined the basement entryway, and behind one of the dark windows a girl’s face was pressed against the pane.

Larry stood gripping me, then drew me forward and down the steps of the entryway. There was a girl in the front basement room. Darkness was behind her, but we could see her white frightened face close to the glass. She tapped on the pane, and in the silence we heard her muffled voice.

“Let me out! Oh, let me get out!”

The basement door had a locked iron gate. I rattled it. “No way of getting in,” I said then stopped short with surprise. “What the devil—”

I joined Larry by the window. The girl was only a few inches from us. She had a pale, frightened face; wide, terrified eyes. Even with that first glimpse, I was transfixed by her beauty—and startled; there was something weird about her. A low-necked, white satin dress disclosed her snowy shoulders; her head was surmounted by a pile of snow-white hair, with dangling white curls framing her pale ethereal beauty. She called again.

“What’s the matter with you?” Larry demanded. “Are you alone in there? What is it?”

She backed from the window; we could see her only as a white blob in the darkness of the basement room.

I called, “Can you hear us? What is it?”

Then she screamed again. A low scream; but there was infinite terror in it. And again she was at the window.

“You will not hurt me? Let me—oh, please let me come out!”

What I would have done I don’t know. I recall wondering if the policeman would be at our corner down the block: he very seldom was there.

I heard Larry saying, “What the hell!—I’ll get her out. George, get me that brick. . . . Now, get back, girl—I’m going to smash the window.”

But the girl kept her face pressed against the pane. I had never seen such terrified eyes.

I called to her, “Come to the door. Can’t you come to the door and open it?” I pointed to the basement gate. “Open it! Can you hear me?”

“Yes—I can hear you, and you speak my language. But you—you will not hurt me? Where am I? This—this was my house a moment ago. I was living here.”

An insane girl, locked in this empty house! I gripped Larry; said to him, “Take it easy. There’s something queer about this. We can’t smash windows. Let’s—”

“You open the door,” he called to the girl.

“I cannot.”

“Why? Is it locked on the inside?”

“I don’t know. Because—oh, hurry! If he—if it comes again—!”

We could see her turn to look behind her.

Larry demanded, “Are you alone in there?”

“Yes—now. But, oh! a moment ago he was here!”

“Then come to the door.”

“I cannot. I don’t know where it is. This is so strange and dark a place. And yet it was my home, just a little time ago.”

It seemed to me that her accent was very queer.

She went suddenly into frantic fear. Her fists beat the window glass almost hard enough to shatter it.

“We’d better get her out,” I agreed. “Smash it, Larry.”

“Yes.” He waved at the girl. “Get back. I’ll break the glass. Get away so you won’t get hurt.”

The girl receded into the dimness.

“Watch your hand,” I cautioned. Larry took off his coat and wrapped his hand and the brick in it. I gazed behind us. The street was still empty. The slight commotion we had made had attracted no attention.

The girl cried out again as Larry smashed the pane. “Easy,” I called to her. “We won’t hurt you.”

The splintering glass fell inward, and Larry pounded around the casement until it was all clear. The rectangular opening was fairly large. We could see a dim basement room of dilapidated furniture; a door opening into a back room; the girl, nearby, a white shape watching us.

There seemed no one else. “Come on,” I said. “You can get out here.”

But she backed away. I was half in the window so I swung my legs over the sill. Larry came after me, and together we advanced on the girl, who shrank before us.

Then suddenly she ran to meet us, and I had the feeling that she was not insane. Her fear of us was overshadowed by her terror at something else in this dark, deserted house.

“Come on,” Larry muttered. “Let’s get her out of here.”

I had indeed no desire to investigate anything further. The girl let us help her through the window. I stood in the entryway holding her arms. Her dress was of billowing white satin with a single red rose at the breast; her snowy arms and shoulders were bare; white hair was piled high on her small head. Her face, still terrified, showed parted red lips; a little round black beauty patch adorned one of her powdered cheeks. The thought flashed to me that this was a girl in a fancy dress costume. This was a white wig she was wearing!

I stood with the girl in the entryway, at a loss what to do. I held her soft warm arms; the perfume of her enveloped me.

“What do you want us to do with you?” I demanded softly. McGuire, the policeman on the block, might pass at any moment. “We might get arrested! What’s the matter with you? Can’t you explain? Are you hurt?”

She was staring as though I were a ghost. “Oh, take me away from this place! I will talk—though I do not know what to say—”

I had no desire to have her fall into the clutches of the police. Nor could we very well take her to our apartment. But there was my friend Dr. Alten, psychiatrist, who lived within a mile of here.

“We’ll take her to Alten’s,” I said to Larry, “and find out what this means.”

Larry said, “There was a taxi down the street.”

It came, now, slowly along the deserted block. The driver halted at the curb. The girl had quieted; but when she saw the taxi her face registered wildest terror, and she shrank against me.

“No! No! Don’t let it kill me!”

Larry and I were pulling her forward. “What the devil’s the matter with you?” Larry demanded again.

She was suddenly wildly fighting with us. “No! That—that mechanism—”

“Get her in it!” Larry panted. “We’ll have the neighborhood on us!”

It seemed the only thing to do. We flung her, scrambling and fighting, into the taxi. To the driver, Larry said, “It’s all right. We’re just taking her to a doctor.”

We whirled off toward Washington Square.

Within the swaying taxi I sat holding the trembling girl. She was sobbing now, but quieting.

I murmured. “We won’t hurt you. We’re just taking you to a doctor. You can explain to him. He’s very intelligent.”

“Yes,” she said softly. “Yes. Thank you. I’m all right now.”

She was huddled against me. Her face, upturned to mine, had color in it now; red lips; a faint rose tint in the pale cheeks.

She murmured, “Is this New York?”

My heart sank. “Yes.” I answered. “Of course it is.”

“But when?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what year?”

“Why, 1935!”

She caught her breath. “And your name is—”

“George Rankin.”

“And I”—her laugh had a queer break in it—“I am Mistress Mary Atwood. But just a few minutes ago—oh, am I dreaming? Surely I’m not insane!”

Larry again leaned over us. “What are you talking about?”

“You’re friendly, you two, but strange, so very strange-looking young men. This—this carriage without any horses—I know now it won’t hurt me.”

She sat up. “Take me to your doctor, and then to the general of your army. I must see him, and warn him. Warn you all.” She was turning half hysterical again. She laughed wildly. “Your general—he won’t be General Washington, of course. But I must warn him.”

She gripped me. “You think I am demented, but I am not. I am Mary Atwood, daughter of Major Charles Atwood, of General Washington’s staff. That was my home, where you broke the window. But it did not look like that a few moments ago. You tell me this is the year 1935, but just a few moments ago I was living in the year 1777!”