Night Call and Other Stories of Suspense

by Armstrong Charlotte

  “Oh, I don’t know. He’s living easy, meanwhile. After the old lady conks out, she can’t talk. Maybe he figures to leave the house vacant—”

  “And this housekeeper keeps quiet?”

  “Oh, in the meanwhile,” said Maude nastily, “this housekeeper is pretty well-preserved.”

  Ben Crawley looked at her with distaste. “Get away from me,” he said. “For your own sake, Seton, I’m warning you, get off this kick.”

  “Don’t you worry about me being murdered,” said Maude, “I don’t walk around unarmed, you know. I’ve got a little idea dreamed up.”

  “Say, what’s all this?” said Ben with sudden intuitive suspicion. “How come you took such a prejudice against this Philip Mortmain?” He was gratified to see the blood rise in Seton’s cheeks.

  “Oh, he’s charming,” she said viciously, “but nobody can charm the brain out of my head, you know.”

  “Go, soak your head, why don’t you, Seton?” said Ben gloomily.

  “And while you’re at it, run a little soap around the inside. I want no part of this.”

  “You’ll be on your knees, friend,” said Maude confidently.

  Maude got nowhere with the Police Department. Their backs were up; they didn’t like her. So she researched old news accounts and the police reports in them. She discovered that by the day after the significant day Philip Mortmain’s mother-in-law had been in the house. Ah, so? thought Maude. And never got out again?

  The only servant mentioned was a Mrs. Pelham, the cook, and Maude was disappointed to find that this woman had died four years ago. Oh, well, there was still the little idea that she’d dreamed up.

  She banged out a sugary story, working in her messy little apartment where she never entertained because she didn’t know how. On the top copy she typed one extra final paragraph. That should do it. And when it did, she would know she wasn’t wasting time, no matter how long the digging might take.

  Digging? Yah! Under the bird bath? She wondered . . .

  Whenever she was in the streets, Maude carried a gadget with her, manufactured by a firm that had scented profit from the plight of women-alone-on-a-city-street in this year-of-our-Lord. It was a small gun that fired tear gas and was supposed to enable a woman to blind and thus escape an attacker.

  So Maude Seton, with her attaché case holding the top copy of her story, and with the little gas gun in her pocket, convenient to her right hand, went swinging down that street one afternoon, uninvited, unexpected, and hell-bent.

  He opened the door himself. She felt the same shock. He was like something out of Poe. Yet what else was it about him? Maybe I go for murderers, thought Maude—they’re usually strong characters. An extension of this flickered through her mind. Stronger than I am?

  She dismissed the thought quickly and said, as girlishly as possible, “I’ve written the story, Mr. Mortmain. Will you please read it, now? It’s very short, and I do need your approval, right away.”

  So he let her in, led her to the room overlooking the garden, and took the typescript. She sat down as near as she could to the passage leading to the street door; she kept her right hand in her pocket.

  Ordinarily Maude Seton would rather be whipped than watch anybody read her stuff. But this time she kept count of the pages as they slipped behind each other in his lean hands. She wasn’t afraid, she told herself. She had a weapon. She could escape. She would see what he would do when he realized he hadn’t fooled Maude Seton.

  He came to the last page and Maude braced herself. She had written, in the final paragraph. “The whole story has never been told. Only

  Mr. Philip Mortmain knows how angry his wife became that night when she discovered what he had done to her child. Only Mr. Philip Mortmain knows where he buried the beautiful body of Elizabeth Rose—in her own garden.”

  His eyes raced. He froze. His hands crushed the sheets of paper into a twisted roll. He sprang from the chair, holding the paper as if it were a club.

  Maude pulled the weapon out of her pocket. “Hold it, mister,” she commanded. But he didn’t recognize the threat——he was too close to her. She shut her eyes and pulled the trigger.

  She heard him roar. She squinted and saw him stagger. He had dropped the typescript and was pawing his face. Maude nipped out of her chair and down the passage. He roared again and it gave her a deep satisfaction. She reached the street door and yanked it open. She heard a woman’s voice call down the stairs, “Philip?”

  Maude Seton’s brain knew that although she had infuriated him, she had not found out anything conclusively. She slammed the street door. But she had not gone through it. She slipped, instead, through the white door to the kitchen, and stood, hidden and trembling, against the kitchen wall. One of her own eyes was streaming. She made her hands check her little gadget and cause another cartridge to take position for another shot. She could always get out. But first, she must find out.

  She could hear his shuffling progress. He must be blind, but she looked behind her for a hiding place. She was startled when her cheek came into contact with a telephone on the kitchen wall. So much the better. Where was he now?

  “Philip, what’s happened?” The woman must be on the stairs.

  “Where is that Seton?” he raged.

  “I heard the front door slam. Somebody went out?”

  “She’s gone? You don’t see her?”

  “I don’t see anyone. Philip, are you crying? What—”

  Now another woman’s voice shrilled, “Philip? Darling? Oh, what is it? What’s the matter?”

  “I’m all right,” he called. He must be just the other side of the kitchen wall. “Nothing to worry you, dearest.” Then he lowered his voice. “Don’t come down. The place is full of some sort of gas.”

  “But why?” Now Maude recognized the first voice—the housekeeper’s.

  “That little monster wrote that I buried Elizabeth in the garden,” he said bitterly.

  The other voice above was screaming. “Darling, if anything’s happened to you, I can’t bear it! You know I can’t! Darling, come up. Please!”

  “Oh, hush, Elizabeth,” said the housekeeper wearily.

  “I’m coming, Elizabeth,” he called up.

  “Hadn’t we better phone?” said the housekeeper.

  “I can’t see to phone. Can’t come up yet. You go to her.”

  “Yes, and I’ll phone.”

  Maude heard the stairs creak. Then shuffling. The street door must have opened because fresh air crept around the partition to where she was. Phone? she thought, feeling stunned. Phone for what? What do they mean, Elizabeth?

  Holding the gas gun firmly in her right hand, she shifted position and with her left hand lifted the kitchen telephone from its moorings.

  “. . . can’t you get in touch with Dr. Carlson quickly?” the housekeeper was saying on another instrument. “Mrs. Rose has been badly upset and we need him—as soon as he can possibly get here.”

  “Right away, Mrs. Allen,” said a girl’s voice.

  Maude hung up. She had better get out and go somewhere and think. But what if he were standing at the door to the street? She listened to the old house, which had its mysterious noises. Finally she began to slide softly sideways toward the crack of the door.

  He caught her forearms from behind and dragged her backward. He had come from the dining room. “Drop it,” he commanded. Mrs. Allen pushed through to the kitchen. “Take that thing away from her,” he ordered. The woman’s small hands fought at Maude’s fingers. Then her weapon was gone.

  “So there was someone on the extension,” said the woman indignantly. “You rotten little sneak! What shall we do with her? We’ll have to—”

  “No time,” he said. “Go up. Say I’ll be right there.”

  Maude Seton, with her arms pinned behind her, thought she might be murdered in another instant. She had one glimpse of his red-rimmed eyes, as he wrestled her across the sitting room to the wide opening where the glass door had be
en slid aside, to air the room. But he simply put her out into the garden, closed the glass door, locked it and went away.

  Maude stood still, all her feathers ruffled, frightened, of course, and yet in a curious way, delighted. She called on her wits. Get out. (He couldn’t do this to her!) But how could she get out? She didn’t dare throw her body against the glass door to break it. She would find a heavy stone.

  She ran across the bricks toward the bird bath. There were no stones. She searched with her eyes for some opening, some gap, some way out of here besides the way back through the house; but all around her rose those tall, blank, eyeless, earless walls.

  Then she was among the flowers at the far end. Here were the pots—rather, the black metal cans. She could drag one of them and heave it at the glass. Too heavy. Pull out the plant? Dump out the soil? She grubbed at roots. Wait! He would hear the breaking of the glass.

  But what other way out? She was locked in at the bottom of a twenty-odd-story well? Maude began to feel the adrenalin of panic in her blood. She would choke, faint. No. She held her cheeks and told herself to think. Think, Seton, think! It wasn’t so much that she refused to be murdered. She wouldn’t be licked. Then she literally saw a light.

  She hurried back toward the house. There was only one thing to do. She could climb one of the wrought-iron supports of the balcony. Perhaps, if the old woman was alone, she could get in, through the door or a window, scoot through that lamplit bedroom, down the stairs, and out. Or hide.

  So she cast off her attaché case and put her foot in among the curving designs. It was better to be climbing. The exertion relieved her panic. She drew slowly upward. She could hear nothing from the house. There was only the constant roaring of the city, outside this horribly deep well that she was in. As her head drew to the level of the balcony floor, Maude made herself move very, very slowly.

  She could see into the bedroom easily, through the glass door.

  A yellowish lamplight spilled out. The old woman was visible in the bed, high against the fat and shining pillows. She was in tension. Her hands were hooked into each other by curved fingers and the fingers pulled against each other. Her neck cords were tight. She was staring across the room—but not staring Maude’s way.

  Maude could see no one else in the room. This seemed strange. Then she heard the glass door below rumble. Then she heard his voice. “Come down from there,” it commanded softly.

  Not me, friend! Maude’s foot hunted for a higher notch. Her hands on the railing pulled and slowly she went higher, higher, over the low railing, onto the balcony—

  In the room the old woman’s hands let go of each other. The thin arms flashed; she threw off the covering and leaped out of bed. She was wearing a long nightgown of some filmy pink stuff. Her emaciated body f led, like something wild, with a knifing action of those old sharp knees, and the woman was screaming, screaming, as she vanished into the upper hall.

  Maude saw the other woman, that Mrs. Allen, rise up out of a wing chair, look once Maude’s way, and then hurry after the old woman. There was one long echoing cry. The man below shouted, and she knew he was running.

  Scrambling and clinging, Maude went back over the railing, down the wrought-iron support, and dropped to the ground. Yes, the glass door below was open. Maude picked up her attaché case and crept inside. Where were they? Could she escape now?

  She looked down the passage and saw that she could not. He was kneeling over a heap of the pink stuff lying at the bottom of the stairway. As Maude watched, the housekeeper came out of the kitchen, carrying a long cloth. Maude seemed to know that it was a tablecloth. The woman began to spread it over that fallen heap. The man slid back to let her do this, but he did not rise.

  Then the housekeeper saw Maude. She touched the man’s shoulder gently and began to walk in Maude’s direction. Maude shrank backward in the heavy, heavy silence of this house.

  She made herself remember that this woman now had the weapon. But the woman did not brandish it. She said, “Sit down. We knew we’d have to tell you. She’s dead now, so I’ll tell you. Sit down.”

  Maude sat, scheming how to elude the woman and the weapon and the man who was still so near the only exit. It seemed necessary for Maude to keep on believing in her own peril. She wondered if there really was a doctor coming.

  “My daughter Elizabeth,” the woman said, and Maude’s whirling thoughts came to attention, “used to do her breathing exercises and calisthenics on the balcony. Little Barby forgot to take them seriously that day, and when Elizabeth’s arms flung out with her usual impatience, they hit the child and Barby fell over the low railing.”

  She wavered for an instant, but a look of strength came over her face and she stiffened. “It was Philip who rushed the child to the hospital where what could be done for her was done,” she said unemotionally. “Meanwhile, my beautiful and famous daughter, Elizabeth, put into her veins whatever drug she was on at the time and crept up to the top floor—to dream it had never happened. Are you listening, Miss Seton?”

  “But Elizabeth wasn’t here,” gasped Maude, as her wits began to rally.

  “Oh, yes, she was. I was the one who came in that cab. Philip phoned me from the hospital and told me what to do. Wear Elizabeth’s mink that she had once given me. Wear one of her hats that she had given me. Go to Times Square. Hail a cab with Elizabeth’s famous gestures. When I arrived here, he met me and put his arms around me, and whatever neighbors—oh, there were neighbors then—who had seen the ambulance and were curious—they took me for Elizabeth. So my daughter had her alibi.”

  Maude Seton gave up pretending for the moment that she was going to be murdered this afternoon. “Really?” she said feebly.

  “Elizabeth was told that Barby didn’t remember anything, and being what they call ‘high,’ she insisted on visiting the hospital. Philip had hoped to force her into a doctor’s care, but she got away and went to the theater. He was detained, as he has said, although he was doing the best he could to watch her. So—Elizabeth disappeared.”

  Maude’s brain was now buzzing. “Are you trying to say that—that is Elizabeth?”

  The woman lifted one hand to demand silence as if, now that she had begun to tell, she could not bear an interruption. “Barby really didn’t remember anything. We thought that if Elizabeth had gone running blindly to her death, then at least Barby would never need to know how she had come to be so cruelly hurt. And maybe her mother’s legend wouldn’t have to be destroyed. So we found the strength to wait.”

  The voice had steadied. “Thirteen days later Philip found her, doped, debauched, dirty, in some filthy room. He wanted me to dismiss all the servants except our Mrs. Pelham, who kept our secret until she died, God rest her loyal soul. And Philip brought Elizabeth home. With Dr. Carlson’s help, with more agony for us all than you can ever imagine, we took Elizabeth off narcotics. When Barby was ready to leave the hospital, we sent her with Mrs. Pelham to Florida—for convalescence in the sun, we said. Then we put Barby in the very best schools we could find.”

  “I still don’t—”

  “You see, Elizabeth wasn’t—well, right. She was very confused. Some days she wouldn’t believe that she had ever had a child.”

  “Why didn’t you show her the child?” said Maude, who was feeling almost her normally bold self.

  “Because we would have had to show the child her mother,” the woman said quietly. “Of course, we had to account for Elizabeth somehow, so she became Mrs. Rose, and I became ‘Mrs. Allen.’ That meant I couldn’t visit Barby or have Barby come here, since she would have recognized me. So it was Philip who watched over Barby. He went to all her little celebrations. Advised and comforted her. She has grown into a fine young woman. She has married well. She is happy.” The woman’s head was proud. “As for the two of us,” she continued, “we kept on, sometimes hoping that one day Elizabeth would come back—come back to herself.”

  “Now it’s over,” the woman continued. “Will you help u
s, Miss Seton? Let us bury her quietly as Mrs. Rose. No one will pay much attention any more. Will you please not force us to tell Barby, now, what her mother had become and what her mother had done to her? Will you let the legend rest? It does no harm to anyone. Elizabeth really was, once, very beautiful and talented.”

  “You were a little foolish to let me see her, weren’t you?” said Maude saucily.

  “She liked to read about her own legend. She didn’t really understand how much time had passed. She always supposed that next month, next fall, next spring, she would be beautiful again and go back to her former eminence. She could take pleasure in the skill she thought she had—to act the part of a sick old woman.”

  “I see,” said Maude. “You just thought you’d fool me—just for the fun of it.”

  “Yes,” the woman said calmly. “And I see. You still intend to tell the story.”

  “If I promise not to,” said Maude, with belated caution, “then may I go?”

  “Your promises are worthless,” the woman said with quiet resignation. “I shouldn’t have bothered. Just go, if you like.” She was fumbling in the pocket of her dress. “I believe this is your property.”

  Maude got up and took the small weapon from that steady hand. She was settling her clothing, not to be seen on the street in such disarray, when Philip Mortmain appeared at the end of the passage. His eyes seemed dusty. He stepped aside politely.

  “May I leave now?” Maude said.

  “I don’t know,” he answered vaguely, not seeming to give his full attention to her, not really seeing her. “When the doctor comes . . .”

  “I’ve told her and begged her,” said the woman, “But it’s no good, Philip.”

  “No,” He didn’t even glance at Maude, but moved into the big room and sank into a chair. Maude flitted to the open passage. Up the three steps, and she would be safe. She had her weapon. She had her story. She must only pass between that—that heap on the floor—and the wall, then open the door. But who was dead? Maude hesitated.

  The housekeeper had gone to the man. He said to her drearily, “We needn’t worry about Barby, I suppose. She can understand it, now.”