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The Sinful Ones

Page 7

by Fritz Leiber


  Yet through all the details of job histories and qualifications, references and referral slips, his thoughts—or rather his sensations—kept wandering. At one time it would be a remembered phrase: “Worry pays,” “Fun must be insured,” “I hardly think the beast will be necessary.” At another it was the pulp magazines on the rack downstairs; he hadn’t remembered seeing them at the time, but now their covers stood out very clearly in his mind. He could read the frantic titles. Once he had the momentary feeling that the portly man had walked into his office. And for several minutes he was bothered by something black and rough poking now and then around the end of one of the benches in the waiting room, until he looked more closely and saw it was a woman’s handbag.

  With a slump of relief he watched the last applicant depart. He’d thought she was going to keep on talking forever—and it was a minute past quitting time and the other interviewers were hurrying for their hats and wraps.

  His glance lit on a scrap of pencil by the wire basket on his desk. He rolled it toward him with one finger. It was fiercely chewed, making him think of nails bitten to the quick. He recognized it as the one Jane had dropped on his desk yesterday.

  Damn it all, he didn’t want to get mixed up in anything. Not now that he’d made his peace with Marcia and ought to be concentrating on the Keaton Fisher proposal. He’d let jumpy nerves get the better of him yesterday, he didn’t want that to happen again. The rather ridiculous episode with Jane was something that ought to remain a closed incident. And how was he going to warn her even if he wanted to? He didn’t even know her last name.

  Besides, it didn’t sound as if those three people actually wanted to harm her, when you came to analyze the conversation he’d overheard downstairs. They’d spoken of “checking” on her. The impression was that they were afraid she might harm them, rather than the reverse. References to a “beast,” though admittedly grisly-sounding at the time, were probably some figure of speech. The “beast” might be merely a disliked person, or an automobile, or even a camera or suitcase.

  Furthermore, Jane had intimated several times that she didn’t want him to learn about or interfere with the three people against whom she’d warned him, that it might mean danger to her if he did. What was it she’d said about them? “horrible and obscene….?”

  Who could they be and what could be up to? Secret agents of some sort? Loads of people were being “checked” today. Yet there’s been that mention of “some other crowd,” that talk about “fun.” Still, presumably even secret agents wanted to have “fun” occasionally.

  Jane was wealthy, he’d guessed. But again these people didn’t sound as if they were out for money, only some sort of security, so they could have their “fun” in perfect safety.

  “Fun” in perfect safety…Once again there came back that tremendous impression of ruthless power the three had given him. His desk invaded, his file folders searched…The stolen cigarettes…The slap…No, damn it, he couldn’t drop pit here. Whatever Jane had intimated, it was his duty to tell her what he’d overheard, to warn her about tonight.

  And there was a perfectly obvious way of doing it. He knew where she lived, since last night. He’d go out there right now.

  He stood up, only now noticing that the office had emptied itself while he’d been thinking. The cleaning woman, dry mop over her shoulder, was pushing a cart for the wastepaper. She ignored him.

  Carr grabbed his hat and walked out past her, tramped down the stairs.

  Outside the day had stayed sparklingly fair, so that, instead of yesterday’s gloom, the streets were flooded with a soft white light that imparted a subdued carnival atmosphere to the eager hurry of the rush hour. Distant faces stood out with unnatural distinctness, as if seen through the wrong end of a telescope. Voices hung on the air. The general clatter sounded almost jolly. Streets and shop windows were colorful with mannequins ogling the paychecks of Spring.

  Carr felt a touch of dancing, adventurous excitement being to add itself to his tension. Instead of heading over to Michigan Boulevard, he took a more direct route northward, crossing the sluggish river by one of the blacker, more nakedly girded red bridges. The sky here spread out big, above vast remote walls formed by windowless warehouses and office buildings with ornate marble, gilt, or ebony spires. Westward loomed the railway yards, a black expanse studded with grim, baffling structures that looked capable of lifting locomotives and maybe did just that.

  Beyond the river, the street slanted downward into a region where the economic tides of the city moved at their shallowest and rapidest. The small, ill-washed shop-windows were mostly those of beaneries with unappetizing tiers of hot dogs, second-hand magazine stores, small saloons that were all blacked-out windows and beer advertisements, check-cashing cubby-holes, drug stores with screaming displays laid out six months ago. Overhead, crammed apartments. Here and there, a soot-darkened church with shut doors.

  This kept up for some eight or ten blocks without much change except an increasing number of cramped nightclubs with winking blue signs and tiredly smiling photographs of the girls who presumably disbursed the “continuous entertainment.”

  Then, in one block, by the stern sorcery of zoning laws, the squalid neighborhood was transformed into a wealthy residential section. First a few apartment hotels, massive, aloof, with the first story dark and barred like old city strongholds of Florence or Venice. Then heavy-set houses with thickly curtained windows, their fenced and untrod lawns suggesting the cleared areas around forts, the shrubs like cheval-de-frise.

  If memory served him right, Jane’s house lay just a block and a left turn ahead.

  But now, for the first time, Carr’s footsteps lagged. It occurred to him that he might have to give his warning under rather difficult circumstances. What if her parents wouldn’t let him see Jane, or at least demanded a preliminary explanation? He’d have to tell about last night and would Jane want that. Just a fellow she’d picked up, who didn’t even know her last name (unless he found it on the mailbox).

  He quickened his step. Such speculations were futile, he told himself. He’d have to gauge the situation when he got there, invent suitable lies if necessary.

  He rounded the corner, noting a broken street lamp. He remembered the odd pattern of its cracks from last night.

  He came to a high fence of iron and brick, to a tall gate of twisted grillework which he recognized.

  He stopped dead, stared, took a backward step.

  This couldn’t be it. He must have made a mistake.

  But the spears of broken glass in the street lamp could not have been duplicated, nor, hardly, this elaborate gate.

  The sunken sun, reaching a point from which its rays were reflected from the underside of a cloudbank, suddenly sent a spectral yellow afterglow. Everything was very clearly illuminated. Nothing was lost in shadow.

  A gravel drive led up to just the sort of big stone mansion he had imagined—turreted, slate-roofed, heavy-eaved, in the style of the 1890’s.

  But the gate and fence were rusty, tall weeds encroached on the drive, lawn and flowerbeds were a wilderness, the upper windows were blank and curtainless, most of them broken, those on the first floor were boarded up and the door as well. Pigeon droppings whitened the somber brown stone, and in the center of the lawn, half hidden by the weeds, stood a weather-bleached sign:

  FOR SALE

  Chapter Six

  Gigolo’s Home

  CARR PUSHED DOUBTFULLY at the iron gate. It opened a couple feet, then squided to a stop against gravel still slightly damp from yesterday’s rain. He stepped inside.

  The house seemed unquestionably deserted. Still, recluses have been known to live in unlikely places.

  Or a place like this might be secretly used by intruders. Eyes might even now be peering through the cracks between the boards covering the lower windows.

  His feet were carrying him up the driveway, which led back behind the house, passing under a porte-cochere. He had almost reached it w
hen he noticed the footprints.

  They were a woman’s, quite fresh, and yet sunk more deeply than his own. They must have been made since the rain. There were two sets, one leading toward the porte-cochere, the other back from it.

  Looking at the black ruined flowerbeds, inhaling their dank odor, Carr was relieved that there were footprints.

  He examined them more closely. Those leading toward the porte-cochere were deeper and more widely spaced. He remembered that Jane had been almost running.

  But the most startling discovery was that the footprints never reached the house at all. They stopped a good six feet from the soil-streaked steps. They cluttered confusedly there, then they returned toward the gate. Evidently Jane had run under the porte-cochere, waited until she was sure he was gone, then retraced her steps.

  She apparently had wanted him to think that she lived in a mansion.

  He walked back to the gate. A submerged memory from last night was tugging at his mind. He looked along the iron fence fronting the sidewalk. A scrap of paper just inside caught his eyes. It was lodged in the low black shoots of some leafless shrub.

  He remembered something white fluttering down from Jane’s handbag in the dark, drifting down.

  He worked his way to it, pushing between the fence and the shrubbery. Unpruned shoots caught at his coat.

  The paper was twice creased and the edges were yellow and frayed, as if it had been carried around for a long time. It was not rain-marked. Unfolding it, he found the inside filled with a brown-inked script vividly recalling Jane’s scribbled warning, yet much smaller and more crabbed, as if a pen were to her a chisel for carving hieroglyphs. With some difficulty, holding the paper up and moving toward the center of the tangled lawn to catch the failing light, he read:

  Always keep up appearances.

  Always be doing something.

  Always be first or last.

  Always be on the streets or alone.

  Always have a route of escape.

  Avoid: empty stores, crowded theaters, restaraunts, queues.

  Safe places: libraries, museums, churches, bars.

  Never hesitate, or you’re lost.

  Never do anything odd—it wouldn’t be noticed.

  Never move things—it makes gaps.

  Never touch anyone—DANGER! MACHINERY!

  Never run—they’re faster.

  Never look at a stranger—it might be one of them.

  These are the signs: contemptuousness, watchfulness, bluff; unveiled power, cruelty, lust; they use people; they are incubi, succubi. No one every really notices them—so don’t you.

  Some animals are really alive.

  Carr looked over his shoulder at the boarded-up house. A bird skimmed up from the roof. It looked leaner than a pigeon. Perhaps a nighthawk. Somewhere down the block footsteps were clicking on concrete.

  He considered the shape of the paper. It was about that of an envelope and the edges were torn. At first glance the other side seemed blank. Then he saw a faded postmark and address. He struck a match and, shielding it with the paper, made out the name—Jane Gregg; and the city—Chicago. The postmark was a little more than a year old. The address, lying the crease, presented more difficult, but he deciphered it: 1924 Mayberry Street.

  The footsteps had come closer. He looked up. Beyond the fence a couple were passing. He could see a bit of white wing-collar and the glitter of a sequined comb. The gait was elderly. He guiltily whipped out the match, but they walked by without turning their heads.

  After a moment he slipped through the gate, pulled it shut, and set out in the same direction they were going, cutting across the street before he passed them.

  The street lights winked on. The leaves near the lights looked an artificial green. He walked faster.

  In this direction there was no abrupt zone-wall, but rather a gradual deterioration. The houses shouldered closer to each other, grew smaller, crept toward the street. The trees straggled, gave out, the grass died. Down the cross-streets neon signs began to glow, and the drone of busses, radios and voices grew in volume. Suddenly the houses coalesced, reached the sidewalk with a rush, shot up in towering brick combers, became the barracks of the middle classes, with only a narrow channel of sidewalk between their walls and the rows of cars parked bumper to bumper.

  Carr thought wryly of his shattered theory of thick-carpeted halls, candlelight and a persecuted heiress. Mayberry Street wasn’t that.

  The strange notes Jane had inked on the envelope kept flashing in his consciousness. If anything had ever read more like a paranoid’s rulebook—! And yet…

  A bent yellow street-sign said Maxwell. At the next corner, Marston. Then, following the mindless association pattern that so often governs the selection of street names, Mayberry.

  He looked at the gold numerals painted on the glass door of the first apartment house. They were 1954-58.

  As he went down the street, he had the feeling that he was walking back across the years.

  The first floor of 1922-24 was lighted on the 24 side, except for a small dark sun-porch. Behind one window he noticed the edge of a red-upholstered davenport and a gray-haired man in shirtsleeves reading a newspaper. Inside the low-ceilinged vestibule he turned to the brass letter boxes on the 24 side. The first one read: Herbert Gregg. After a moment he pushed the button, waited, pushed it again.

  There was no response, neither a mumble from the speaking tube, nor a buzz from the lock of the door to the stairs.

  Yet the “Herbert Gregg” apartment ought to be the one in which he had seen the old man sitting.

  Beyond the inner door, in the darkness of the stair well, he thought he saw something move. He couldn’t tell what it was. When he stepped closer and peered in, he saw nothing. He went outside. He craned his neck. The man was still sitting there. An old man—perhaps deaf?

  Then, as Carr watched, the man put down his paper, settled back, looked across the room, and from the window came the opening triplets of the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata.

  Carr felt the wire that fenced the tiny, nearly grassless plot press his calf and realized that he had taken a backward step. He reminded himself that he’d only heard Jane play the third movement. He couldn’t know she’d play the first just this way.

  He went back into the vestibule, again pushed the button.

  There was no faltering of the piano notes. They sounded icy, remove, inhuman, as if some huge insect were treading neatly, courtseyingly, infallibly up and down the keyboard.

  Carr again peered through the inner door. Light trickled down from the second landing above. He tried the door. Someone must have left it off the buzzer, for it opened.

  He hurried past the blackness of the bottom of the stair well. Five steps, a turn, five steps more. Then, just as he reached the first landing, which still wasn’t very light, he felt something small and silent come brushing up against his ankle from behind.

  His back and hands pressed to the plaster wall.

  Then he relaxed. Just a cat. A black cat with a white throat and chest, like evening clothes.

  And a very cool cat too. It walked suavely toward the door of the Gregg apartment.

  But about two feet away it stopped. For several seconds it stood there, head upraised, making no movement, except its fur seemed to thicken a little. Then, very slowly, it looked around.

  It stared at Carr.

  Beyond the door, the piano started the sprightly second movement.

  Carr edged out his hand. His throat felt dry and constricted. “Kitty,” he croaked.

  The cat arched its back, spat, then made a twisting leap that carried it halfway up the next semi-flight of stairs. It crouched on the top step, its bugged green eyes peering between the rails of the banister.

  There were footsteps. Without thinking, Carr shrank back. The door opened, the music suddenly swelled, and a gray-haired lady in a blue and white print dress looked out and called, “Gigolo! Here, Gigolo!”

  She had Ja
ne’s small chin and short straight nose, behind veils of plumpness. Not Jane’s height, thought. She was rather dumpy. Her face had a foolish look.

  And she must be short-sighted, for although she looked at the stairs, she didn’t see the cat, nor did she notice Carr. Feeling uncomfortably like a prowler, he started to step forward, then realized that she was so close he would give her a fright.

  “Gigolo!” she called again. Then, to herself, “That cat!” A glance toward the dead bulb in the ceiling and a distracted headshake. “Gigolo!”

  She backed inside. “I’m leaving it open, Gigolo,” she called. “Come in when you want to.”

  Carr stepped out of the darkness with a husky, “Excuse me,” but the opening notes of the fast third movement, played too loudly, drowned him out.

  He crossed to the door. The green eyes at the top of the stairs followed him. He raised his hand to knock. But at the same time he looked through the half-opened door, across a tiny hall, into the living room.

  It was a smallish room, with too much heavy furniture in addition to the fake fireplace, and too many lace runners on little tables and antimacassars on the head rests and arms of chairs. He could see the other end of the red davenport and the slippered feet of the old man sitting in it. The woman had retired to a straight-backed chair across the room and was sitting with her hands folded, her lips worriedly pursed.

  Between them was the piano, an upright. On top of it was a silver-framed picture of Jane.

  But there was no one sitting at the piano.

  To Carr, the rest of the room seemed to darken and curdle as he stared at the rippling keys.

  Then he puffed out his breath. Of course, it was some kind of electric player.

  He started to knock, then hesitated because they were listening to the music.

  The woman moved uneasily on her chair. Her lips kept anxiously puckering and relaxing, like those of a fish behind aquarium glass.

  Finally she said, “Aren’t you tiring yourself, dear? You’ve been at it all day, you know.”

 

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