Jack and Susan in 1913

by Michael McDowell

  She found herself oddly curious about which path she would take in her downward descent and spent most of the night restlessly pacing the room.

  Slap clunk. Slap clunk. Slap clunk. Slap clunk.

  Bed to the window, and window back to the bed.

  Slap clunk. Slap clunk. Slap clunk.

  Stirring up the embers in the dying fire. How much did embers go for these days?

  Slap clunk. Slap clunk.

  Staring out the window at the darkened city.

  Tripod growled in his sleep, warning away imaginary enemies.

  Destitution was no phantasm of the mind.

  Slap clunk.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  HAVING SLEPT FOR little more than an hour, Susan awoke with a start, sitting up in bed with eyes wide and staring. She worked to dispel a nightmare in which her landlady knocked at the door and demanded the monthly twelve-dollar rent. In her black dream, Susan came up thirty-seven cents short of the sum required.

  But it was no dream.

  Feverish with anxiety, Susan rose from bed and tried to perform her daily routine. Washing, dressing, laying out a butcher’s bone for Tripod. But nothing seemed to go right. She’d go to the bureau, and a few moments later end up at the window, with no memory of why she was supposed to have gone to the bureau.

  Slap clunk. Slap clunk.

  Tripod, too, was eager to go out. It was Susan’s custom simply to open the hall door, and let the dog maneuver his way down—it was no easy task for a three-legged dog to descend four flights of steep stairs. At the front door, he’d wait for someone coming in or going out to open the door for him. He’d be gone for about a quarter of an hour. On returning, he’d wait patiently outside until, again, someone came in or went out. Four flights going up was even more difficult, and poor Tripod would be winded and weak by the time he scratched at Susan’s door again.

  Susan reflected that not all dogs were as intelligent as Tripod. In fact, in her experience, she had known some dogs that were downright stupid.

  But this morning, the tenth of February, with the rent due, Susan was distracted, and Tripod had to whine at the door to get her attention.

  “Oh, Tripod, I apologize!” Susan cried, and hurried to the door to let the dog out. She pulled the door open and Tripod hurried out into the hallway. But before Susan even got the door all the way closed she heard the dog growl, then bark—and then a ferocious tearing of cloth.

  “Get down! Get down!” a masculine voice cried out.

  Susan peered out into the hallway. There near the stairs was Tripod, tearing away at the trouser cuff of a tall, bearded man who was backed up against the wall. Susan had never seen the man before.

  “Tripod! Stop! Stop that right now.”

  The cuff in the dog’s teeth remained attached by a thread. Tripod gave one last tug, and it sheared away. Satisfied, the dog began his hobbling, sliding descent down the stairs.

  “I am sorry,” said Susan to the man. He was about her age, though the beard made it hard to tell for sure.

  “Your dog?” he asked in a not particularly friendly tone of voice.

  “Yes. Tripod is excitable. He didn’t bite you, did he? Please come inside and let me—”

  “Do you know what time it is?” the man asked suddenly—and ferociously.

  “Half-past seven? I heard bells a little while—”

  “It is a quarter past six in the morning,” he said, stepping inside the room. “And you live in these apartments?”

  “Yes…”

  “Madam, your husband has the heaviest tread of any known mortal. I did not so much mind that he kept me up until four-thirty this morning while he paced the room. But when he got up again only half an hour ago, I thought that I must speak to him. So if you would kindly—” He nodded his head toward the bedchamber in back.

  “I’m not married—” She saw a flicker of surprise cross the bearded man’s features, and she hastened to add, “That was me. I. And I’m sorry that—”

  “That was your tread?”

  She lifted the hem of her robe to reveal her cast. “I suppose you’re the new tenant—directly below me?”

  “Yes,” he replied, “and though probably I have no right to ask you to give up walking, I beg you to walk either all night, or else all morning—but not both.”

  “Of course,” said Susan quickly. “Mr.—”

  “Beaumont,” said the gentleman. “My name is Jack Beaumont.”

  “Mr. Beaumont, please let me repair your cuff. Tripod is sometimes—”

  “—rambunctious,” said Mr. Beaumont.

  Susan noticed, in the greater light afforded by the apartment windows, that Mr. Beaumont’s clothing was far from brand-new and quite threadbare. It was clean, but worn carelessly. Perhaps he’d just thrown on whatever came to hand when he’d decided to mount the stairs for his complaint, and what came to hand was not the best his wardrobe had to offer.

  “Please don’t think about it,” said Jack Beaumont, and with that he simply walked out the door.

  She listened to his heavy tread as he made his way down the stairs.

  Mrs. McCalken, the landlady of the Fenwick, was a generously proportioned woman of indeterminate middle age. She had pitted skin, a red nose, a fat neck, and half a dozen teeth of assorted sizes and colors. She was pleasant in such a way as to make you wish that she were more standoffish. She generally made the rounds of the building twice on rent day, first at noontime, and then again in the evening, so as to be sure to catch all her tenants in.

  Which is to say that Susan had approximately five hours in which to scrape up thirty-seven cents.

  She decided to do what all young women in her position did when faced with a shortage of funds.

  She’d pawn all her jewels.

  All her jewels consisted of a gold bracelet that had belonged to her grandmother, and a diamond ring with a stone so small it ceased to sparkle if so much as a mote of soot fell on to it.

  As she dressed to go out, Tripod scratched at the door. The dog, still bearing the woolen trophy of Jack Beaumont’s trouser cuff in his mouth, trotted in and Susan rather impatiently snatched the fabric from those grinning, self-satisfied jaws.

  “Just for that, you won’t go out with me,” said Susan, excited by the prospect of a trip downtown. She’s been visiting First Avenue was euphemistic green-room tattle—for on lower First Avenue was a cluster of pawnshops. She’d been out so little lately that she was happy for even so melancholy an errand as this.

  But Tripod looked so forlorn as she was pulling on her cape that Susan relented. “All right, you can go too.”

  The animal struggled out from underneath the table where he’d crept, and flung himself through the air at Susan in his happiness.

  He dashed against her, nearly knocking her over, and when he came away, she saw that he had a small pink envelope in his mouth.

  Susan looked at it a moment in perplexity, and then realized that the envelope must have been protruding from the pocket of her cape, which had been hanging on the back of the door.

  The pink envelope smelled half of Tripod, and half of a perfume of violets.

  Inside were five one-hundred-dollar treasury notes.

  CHAPTER SIX

  MY DEAR MISS Bright,

  I know that I am acting directly contrary to your wishes in writing to you once more, but I wanted to tell you that you would never hear from me again. Having found Chicago a congenial city in every respect, I have decided to settle here. I do not anticipate any return to New York.

  My memory of the inadvertent injury done to you still makes me quake in mortification and remorse. And even though you have refused to accept any recompense whatever from me so that I might atone, in some small measure, for your discomfort—physical and mental—I am taking the liberty of enclosing a sum of cash. There is no way for you to return this money, as I have refrained from giving you my address. My account in Wall Street has been closed. If you still do not wish to have even
this much reminder of our unfortunate encounter, I beg you to give the money to some worthy charity.

  In painful regret, Miss Bright,

  Of What Might Have Been,

  I remain,

  Most Sincerely,

  Your Humble Servant,

  Jay Austin

  Tripod jumped into Susan’s arms, and together they danced happily about the room—until they were interrupted by a loud thumping sound from below.

  Susan suddenly remembered Mr. Beaumont. He was evidently knocking against his ceiling with the handle of the broom or some other such object.

  She immediately stopped dancing, but her excitement still sought release. She threw open the window, pushed her face into the cold air, and produced one brief, loud, happy scream. Then she leaned farther out and craned to see as much of the city as she could. This was precious little—a bit of the street, a slice of river, the tops of a few trees, and a great deal of wall. But brilliant February sunshine beamed down upon everything, and New York seemed a brighter, cleaner, and more promising place than it had seemed in weeks.

  Mrs. McCalken arrived shortly after noon, and never had Susan counted out money as happily as she did then. To have paid her rent and still be possessed of four hundred ninety-nine dollars and sixty-three cents seemed more riches than any mortal deserved.

  Except of course that it wasn’t hers; she had no right to it, and conscience demanded that she return it as quickly as possible. She would be penniless again, but under no circumstances could she keep the money.

  The appearance of the envelope in the pocket of her cape had at first seemed a mystery. But it quickly became apparent to Susan that Ida Conquest had left it there on her visit the day before.

  Jay Austin would have known Ida, from He and She, gotten in touch with her and persuaded her to assist him in this deed.

  The quickest way to find Jay Austin, and return his money, was through Ida, who made it a point to keep track of rich young men.

  Adjuring Tripod to remain inside, Susan took one of her crutches and hobbled down to the telephone on the third-floor landing. She lifted the receiver and asked to be connected with the Cosmic Film Company.

  The Fenwick Apartments’ telephone was on a private exchange servicing that portion of the city west of Central Park, and the Cosmic Film Company was on a much larger commercial exchange downtown, so it was some moments before the operator could make the proper switchings. As Susan waited, she noticed that the door of Mr. Beaumont’s apartment was cracked open, and that his bearded face was peering out at her.

  “When does your cast come off?” he asked in a low voice.

  “Mr. Beaumont,” she said, “I promise—no more dancing.”

  “Thank you,” said Jack Beaumont curtly, and shut the door with a bang.

  On the other end the telephone rang, and a high-pitched voice—that of a boy, Susan thought—intoned drearily, “Cosmic Film Company.”

  “Could you please call Miss Ida Conquest to the phone?” asked Susan.

  “Couldn’t,” replied the boy. “She’s getting shot.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Shot. They’re shooting her now.”

  “Then might I speak to Mr. Hosmer Collamore?” It really was impossible to speak into this machine with any semblance of ease. One’s voice always sounded strained and formal, and Susan like many others had never quite been convinced that it wasn’t all some form of prestidigitation foisted off on a gullible public in order to collect monthly fees. This dreary child was really in the next room, speaking to her through a hole in the wall. There might come a time when people became really accustomed to this sort of thing, but Susan doubted she’d live long enough to see it.

  “Colley’s the one shooting her,” said the boy in a voice that was now disgusted as well as dreary.

  “Then would you please ask Miss Conquest to phone me when she’s free? My name is Susan Bright and my number is River Zero-Six-Three-Zero.”

  After giving a sigh a martyr might make as the pyre is lighted, the boy announced he would have to go find a pencil. When he came back he demanded that everything be repeated, then spelled, then repeated again.

  Susan was told, grudgingly, that the shooting would be over in approximately ten minutes—or maybe thirty—and that Miss Conquest would be given the message. Rather than struggling back up to her room, Susan decided that she would simply sit on the steps there and wait for the telephone to ring.

  Basking in the warmth—temporary though it was—of the thirty dollars she had impulsively placed in her pocket, Susan looked out a grimy window to the dingy garden. Despite the sunlight, the leafless tree in one corner looked stark and dejected.

  “Did your dog drive you out of your apartment?” a man’s voice asked from behind her.

  Susan turned quickly. There stood Mr. Beaumont, holding a crate filled with trash which he was evidently about to take downstairs to the street.

  “No, no, Mr. Beaumont, I was only waiting for the telephone to ring.”

  He nodded silently and then proceeded down the stairs with his heavy tread. Susan thought what a shame it was that he wore a beard, that he was so gruff and unfriendly, and that he couldn’t afford better clothes. It would have been pleasant to have a handsome, cordial, well-dressed gentleman living just below her. Actually, Hosmer Collamore fit that description, but Hosmer wasn’t what Susan wanted.

  She wondered what Mr. Beaumont did for a living that enabled him to be at home in the middle of the day; every other male above the age of six left the building by eight o’clock every weekday morning. He wore soft-collared shirts, which meant he had no job outside the house; and by his carriage and his speech she knew that he was not a laborer. Peering around, she noticed he had left the door of his apartment ajar, and curiosity got the better of her.

  Certain that she’d be able to hear him when he started back up the stairs, Susan moved quietly to the door and pushed it open.

  She had expected to find the rooms of a single gentleman who wore threadbare clothes to be scantily furnished, with unmistakable, shabby indications of a lack of superfluous wealth. Certainly, despite his careful wardrobe, the furnishings in Hosmer Collamore’s apartments were not remarkable, and this was also true of the room in which Susan now stood. There was an old patched divan pushed against one wall, a rag rug in the center of the painted floor, a long table against the blind wall, a shorter table beneath the windows, and a Swift’s Premium calendar hanging from the molding. A wire extension from one of the wall sconces had been draped to the center of the ceiling, and a large bare fixture hung down which appeared capable of positively flooding the room with light in the evening.

  But if the furnishings were not unusual, the other objects in the room were. For everywhere in the room—spread, stacked, piled, and pyramided on newspaper and scraps of dirty cloth—were pieces of machinery. All of it black and metallic, all of it oozing grease or oil. It was impossible to tell if this jumble of wheels and cogs and levers actually belonged to one large machine or to a hundred smaller ones. On the tables were small wooden boxes filled with nuts and bolts, screws, nails, and small tools. Larger tools were arranged beneath the two tables. Several work aprons, each stained with the sort of black machine grease that permeated the air, hung on nails on one wall.

  Mr. Beaumont, she decided, was a tinkerer.

  To Susan’s eyes, it appeared that he was more adept at taking things apart than he was at putting them back together, though she didn’t want to judge him so harshly on so short an…acquaintance.

  Standing in the middle of the room looking around—with one ear cocked for the sound of Mr. Beaumont’s returning footfalls—she wondered if she dared risk a peek into the bedroom.

  No, she decided. That would be unredeemable snooping. After all, the door to this room had been open, while the bedroom door was most emphatically shut and—

  She heard a step on the stairs—but not from below. Instead, it came from above—the step of he
r across-the-hall neighbor, Mrs. Jadd, on her way out shopping. As usual, Mrs. Jadd was accompanied by her twin five-year-old daughters. Susan moved quickly to the door, but found that it was too late to slip out, Mrs. Jadd and her children already having got halfway down the stairs from above. The woman was of a suspicious nature, and, as it was, credited Susan with enjoying the very worst sort of intimacy with Hosmer Collamore. Susan certainly did not wish Mrs. Jadd to see her emerging from Mr. Beaumont’s rooms. She carefully eased the door of the room shut, and held it closed as she heard the little entourage pass by and turn down the next flight of stairs. It was easy to mark their progress, for Mrs. Jadd invariably repeated to her shrinking children a litany of the perils of the city streets.

  When Susan could no longer hear the woman’s voice—she was talking about a little boy whose body had been separated into four different pieces just on the next block because he let go of his mother’s hand and ran out into the street into the path of an automobile driven by a drunken mechanic—Susan quietly and carefully opened the door.

  “Pardon me,” said Mr. Beaumont, standing directly in front of her, “I must be on the wrong floor. I thought this was my room.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN