The Rat Began to Gnaw the Rope

by C. W. Grafton

  I said: “I know it was a long time ago but I’ll bet you just happen to remember what that forwarding address was.” I had a five dollar bill rather carelessly in my hands and I wouldn’t be surprised if it might have been waving around a little in front of his eyes. He thought a long time and his eyeballs looked pretty hard at the five dollar bill. Finally he said:

  “Nope, can’t remember.”

  “Not at all?”

  “Well, I remember the name. That was Miss Phoebe Murdoch. I remember that.”

  “Well, that’s something. It would sure be tough if you didn’t remember even that.”

  “But I don’t remember the street. No, sir. I’ve clean forgot the street. That was when did you say? 1925. Hmmmmm. Sixteen years ago. My daughter was seven. She didn’t cost me much then but by God she sure does now.”

  “I’ll bet she does. Don’t remember the street, huh?”

  “Nope, don’t remember the number either. Can’t even remember whether it was a big number or a little number and can’t remember whether it was odd or even. Just don’t remember it. Don’t remember a thing.”

  I was definitely discouraged but if I was going to pay him for his time anyway I was certainly going to stay there until the well was dry. I said:

  “How about the city?”

  “Wasn’t a city at all. Seems to me it was some little place somewhere. Do you ever read history?”

  I said I had read some history but what did that have to do with it.

  “John Brown,” he said, shaking his head with a distant expression, “something to do with John Brown or something like that.”

  “All I know about John Brown is that his body lies mouldering in the grave,” I ventured.24

  “Well, that might be it. I don’t know anything much about him myself. Might be where the body lies mouldering or something.”

  I said: “Well, let’s see. I believe he was killed at Harpers Ferry. That mean anything?”

  “Yep. Kinda believe it does. Son of a gun if that ain’t where she moved. That’s just about it. Yessir. You just about got it. Harpers Ferry sounds just about right. Didn’t think I would remember it, did you? Well, as a matter of fact, I didn’t think I would either.”

  I thought I began to see something I hadn’t seen before.

  “Aren’t quite sure, are you?”

  “Well I wouldn’t say that.”

  “How does Harpersville sound?”

  “Sounds a lot like Harpers Ferry, don’t it?”

  He shook his head and muttered, “Harpers Ferry Harpersville-Harpers Ferry-Harpersville,” and then he looked up and said:

  “Son of a gun, damn if I can tell one from the other. Could be Harpersville. Could be Harpers Ferry.”

  I could see I wasn’t going to get anything more out of him and I thought I knew what I wanted to know anyway so I said thanks a lot and gave him the five dollar bill.

  21 Edna Mae Oliver (1883–1942) was a well-known character actor, who described herself as having “a horse’s face.” In a lovely coincidence, she played the detective Hildegarde Withers in the early 1930s series of Stuart Palmer’s mystery novels.

  22 A popular laundry product for bleaching, bluing, and purifying clothing. The earliest advertisements date to 1907, when it sold for 10 cents for a four-month supply. A 1921 advertisement offered a premium of a school box with a pen, pencils, etc., for selling 10 packages of Bluine, and there were undoubtedly many more sales incentives offered over the years.

  23 Robeson (1898–1976) was a renowned African American bass baritone singer and performer who became famous for his activism as well as his artistry.

  24 Gil humorously refers to the well-known Civil War marching song about the famous abolitionist who was killed in his daring raid on Harper’s Ferry. The tune was subsequently reused for “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

  25

  I went into a grocery store and borrowed the telephone and called to see when I could get a train out for my own stamping ground. There weren’t any more trains until eight o’clock in the evening and that would put me back in my office the next day, which wouldn’t do. I called the bus terminal and found that one bus had left a few minutes before and the next one was at 6:30 in the evening, so that wouldn’t do either. I had an awful urge to get out of town in the first place, and I wanted to get back to the office and on to Harpersville in the second place.

  While I was turning this over in my mind, I put in a call to Yoland & Jolley and asked to speak to Mr. Jolley. I recognized Miss Judson’s voice and she said:

  “Sorry, Mr. Jolley is out of town. Could I take a message please?”

  “He told me he would be back this morning.”

  “He did come back this morning, but he went out of town again. It may be several days before he is back. Who’s calling, please?”

  “Did he say where he was going?”

  “Who is this speaking, please?”

  “Did you get a package from Western Union?”

  “Oh! Wait just a minute, please.”

  “Never mind,” I said, “the police haven’t got me yet.”

  I hung up. If Hillman Jolley was out of town, it looked as if he hadn’t gone to Harpersville since I didn’t think he was the kind who would travel by bus if he could help it, and if he had gone by train, he would have had to catch one about an hour after he got back to the office.

  I looked up the airport and called the office about chartering a plane and I was told to get in touch with a flying service, which I did. They didn’t have much to offer but there was a Piper Cub I could get and I had enough money left to pay for it. I gave them the first name I could think of just in case the police were checking up, and then told them to have the plane ready and I would be there as fast as a cab would take me.

  26

  I was back in the city again after it was good and dark and the office was closed. I had to let myself in with my key. I was pretty quiet about it for no particular reason and I was glad of it. There was a light shining through the frosted glass panel of Mr. James Mead’s door and I did not much want to talk to Mr. James Mead at that time. I went into my own room on tiptoe but I was afraid I would make a noise if I shut the door, so I just sat down quietly in the dark and didn’t even smoke a cigarette. There was nothing to do and I sat there and remembered I hadn’t eaten anything since the first World War, and I was so hungry I almost felt dizzy.

  Then I heard Mr. Mead’s door open and the light went off and someone walked through the outer office in the dark. The door into the hall was the kind you can always open from the inside whether it’s locked from the outside or not. From where I was sitting I could not see the door and by the time I got up for a better look the door was closing and all I could see was a shadow against it before Mr. Mead walked away. The only trouble was, it definitely was not the shadow of Mr. James Mead, although shadows are more or less shapeless sorts of things and I could not have told you why. All the same, it was definitely not the shadow of Mr. Mead, and the footsteps that rang on the cement floor of the hall did not sound like Mr. Mead either. The footsteps were very quick and precise, not like when someone is running but like the footsteps of a person who walks rapidly with a very short stride.

  I knew there was no chance to follow since my leather heels would raise hell out in the corridor, but I did go as far as the door and opened it softly. Whoever it was had just disappeared around the corner toward the elevators and a moment later I heard the night bell ring. I waited until the elevator door clicked shut and then I went down to the elevator myself and after a decent interval I rang the bell. The elevator operator told me I ought to make up my mind. He said he had just made a trip to the same floor and nobody got on.

  27

  I told the elevator man to go on down without me and from the expression on his face I didn’t doubt that he would stay righ
t where he was the next time the bell rang for the tenth floor. I stood where I was and listened to the elevator until it stopped and then the building was so quiet I could hear my heart beat. I put my back to the elevator door and looked down the hall to the comer I had just come around. There was a dim light over my head and another one at the corner of the corridor, but otherwise the whole floor was dark. There was no light in any of the offices and as far as I could see the doors were shut tight.

  I wondered what I would have done if I had rung the elevator bell and disappeared. I could have opened the door to the stairway and gone up or down. I could also have walked into one of the offices and closed the door behind me, and if I had some sort of key that would let me into the office of Mead, Opdyke, Smallwood, Garrison and Henry, it might also be a key that would open other doors in the building like the keys held by the night elevator man and the cleaning women. Since I had seen the man turn the corner toward the elevator, this would mean he was behind one of the doors I was looking at, if he were behind any door at all. Among the doors before me were those of the men’s washroom and the ladies’ washroom, but these lock like any other doors and you had to have a key to get in, so they didn’t belong to any special class. That about covered the possibilities as far as I could see.

  I remained there as long as I could stand it, and although it seemed like thirty minutes, it was probably not more than five. Nothing happened and the building was so still I could hear the water dripping from a defective tap in one of the washrooms. I knew I was going back to the office to see what I could find, but it was hard to make up my mind to move because I knew if anyone were listening, the clattering of my heels would tell them exactly what I was doing.

  Finally I thought of something and took off my shoes as quietly as I could. I was glad none of our better clients was present because there was a big hole in one of my socks and the floor was cool where my bare toes touched it.

  I made so little sound on my way back to the office that I couldn’t even hear myself. I got the key in the lock without difficulty even in the gloom and eased the door shut behind me. I went straight into Mr. Mead’s office and since there was no way to avoid it, I turned on the light. At first I couldn’t see any evidence that anyone had been there at all, but then I remembered that Mr. James Mead was not like me and always kept the top of his desk clear of everything except an appointment book and a pen set. It was not clear now. A file was on one corner of it and the file was marked “Harper Products Company—Income Tax Deficiency—1938.”

  I wish telephones would not ring so loud and so suddenly. Looking back at the last few days, I realized that I was getting awfully jumpy and telephones had acquired a new significance.

  I went out to the switchboard and if I had been smart I guess it would have occurred to me that the phone had no business ringing since no one could be expected to be in the office at that hour.

  I answered it just the same. I guess my mind was on the file in the other room and anyway there is practically no one human who can sit and watch a telephone scream its head off without doing something about it. I picked up the operator’s headphone and put it to my ear and said, “Hello,” into the little horn that she hangs around her neck.

  Nothing happened. I said hello again and thought maybe I didn’t know how to operate the switches but I tried all of them and said hello several times and still nothing happened. Then I realized that somebody wanted to know whether I was in the office or not, and somebody knew.

  You can’t stay in an office on the tenth floor of a building the rest of your life, especially when you are as hungry as a mother wolf. However, you can stay there quite a while when you don’t want to go out, and I expect even a mother wolf would rather be hungry a little while longer if the alternative is to come out and look a hunter between the eyes. I decided I wasn’t so terribly hungry after all and went in and opened the file on Mr. Mead’s desk.

  There wasn’t much to see. The Bureau of Internal Revenue had given notice to Harper Products Company of a deficiency assessment for the year 1938 and there were a lot of figures showing the Bureau’s computation of how much profit the Company had actually made. Even allowing for the fact that the government always claims everything in sight so as to be sure not to miss anything, the figure did not look anything like what I remembered seeing in the audit report. I would have been glad to take the difference in the taxes and retire from the practice of law.

  There was some correspondence between William Jasper Harper and James Mead as to whether the additional assessment should be paid or contested, with Mr. Mead recommending for various reasons that it be paid and William Jasper Harper insisting that it be fought. The top thing in the file was a letter signed by William Jasper Harper instructing my partner to file a protest immediately and carry on the battle with all ammunition at hand. I couldn’t see why anyone should break into an office to read a dull file like that and made a mental note to come back sometime when I was not starving to death and make a more thorough investigation of the attractions the office might have to offer. I picked up my shoes, turned out the light and listened at the outer door. There was not a sound. I looked out cautiously and the hall was empty. I made up my mind I was not walking down ten flights of stairs and if the elevator man didn’t want to come up to the tenth floor, I was going to hold my hand on the bell until he did.

  Once started, there was no use dillydallying. I walked rapidly down the corridor, turned the corner and proceeded briskly toward the elevators, watching all the doors like a cat watches ratholes.

  It would have paid me to look behind but I could hear the elevator coming up and I guess that is what distracted me. When I heard a sound it was too late. Somebody hit me and I don’t remember going down.

  28

  I have never had a particularly high regard for women who clean office buildings. I never had anything against them but we had always moved in different social circles and they were just things that were there like running water and light switches.

  Now cleaning women have an enviable place in my esteem, especially the shapeless old woman who was bending over me when I opened my eyes. I probably owe my life to the fact that the elevator was bringing her up when a blunt instrument clipped me behind my right ear. It was entirely possible that my assailant did not intend to make me extinct but it did not seem logical that he would hang around waiting for me so that he could practice with his blunt instrument. It seemed obvious enough that he must have heard me when I walked into the office the first time and my subsequent maneuvers must have made him think I knew who he was. If that were the case, it would do no good to have me sleeping for a few minutes in a corridor where I was sure to be found sooner or later. If my knowledge didn’t hurt him he would have left me alone. If it was dangerous enough to make him clout me over the head, there could hardly be any doubt of his intention to get rid of me permanently.

  The cleaning woman was a sensible soul and instead of asking a lot of foolish questions, she opened the door to the ladies’ washroom and helped me get in where I could put some water on my face and explore the swelling on the back of my head. It was a nasty-looking place and I was pretty tired of having everything north of my neck beaten out of shape.

  There wasn’t much blood and a handkerchief soaked in cool water stopped what little there was. I explained to old Mother Hubbard that I had slipped in some unaccountable way and I suppose she must have heard all the silly explanations in the world because her expression clearly said that if it was my business, it was my business and to hell with it. I asked her if anyone who might have tripped me had passed her in the hall, but she said the place was as empty as a gourd so I left it at that.

  29

  My first thought was to get hold of the police and search the building but I remembered that I had given my name to Mr. Yoland and Mr. Yoland had given it to the police in Louisville. The way police departments work together these days I didn�
��t think there was much to commend the idea that I could call the local gendarmes without getting myself involved in something more than explanations. If the price of getting a man put in the Bastille25 was getting in there myself along with him, the price was decidedly too high.

  I rang for the elevator again, gave the operator a dollar to make him feel better, bought a late edition of the afternoon newspaper and walked down to the YMCA. On the way I chewed some more aspirin tablets and wondered if life would ever reach a lower ebb. In addition to the tooth and the bruises and the lump on the back of my head, I was hungry almost to the point of unconsciousness and my pants were still squeezing my empty middle and there were bloodstains on my collar. I half expected to find a policeman in the lobby waiting for me but I guess the possibility of chartering a plane had not occurred to them and no doubt I was supposed to be still in Louisville. I went up to my room and found that someone had been there and had scattered my belongings all over the floor. The drawers were out of the dresser and such suits as I had were scattered around with most of the pockets turned wrong side out. Feeling as I was, the sight was almost more than I could stand.

  I called the Greek who runs the cafe in the middle of the next block and told him to send me up the best steak he could find and a hatful of French fried potatoes and a whole pot of coffee. After that I called him back again and told him if he loved his mother he was to get some whiskey from somewhere and send it along. He said he couldn’t do it but I knew he would. Then I got under a hot shower and stayed there until I was as limp as a piece of spaghetti. I was just drying myself when the boy came up with the food. I felt rather lavish and gave him a five dollar bill and told him to keep the change. George, the Greek, hadn’t been able to get me a bottle of whiskey but there was a tumbler half full of it from some supply of his own and I drank it as soon as the door was closed. This time it went down much easier than on the train and it occurred to me that if this kept up, I would be seeing faces on the barroom floor26 and spoiling all of the good habits which I had spent a lifetime learning.