The Iron Gates

by Margaret Millar

  “I killed Edith,” he said.

  Sands did not reply.

  “I killed her because she started to nag at me. She wanted a sleeping prescription, so I gave her one. I hadn’t planned anything, hadn’t thought of it. But suddenly there she was, wanting to be put to sleep. You understand? It was so simple, so predestined. She asked for it.”

  “Yes.”

  “I went in after she was dead, to find the diary and destroy it. But it wasn’t there. I didn’t worry about it, however.”

  “You should. It might help to hang you.”

  “No, it won’t. This talk is confidential between the two of us. And the evidence against Edith is top strong. Your friends will find morphine in Edith’s glass, and I will supply the letter she wrote to Lucille at Penwood.”

  “Edith was the only one who couldn’t possibly have sent the amputated finger to Lucille.”

  “You can’t fool me like that,” Andrew said. “You will have to bring me to trial one case at a time. You can’t try to prove that perhaps I killed Greeley, and perhaps I killed Edith, and have the two perhaps make a certainty.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why do you want to hang me, anyway? Revenge? Punishment? To teach me a lesson or teach other people a lesson?”

  “It’s my job,” Sands said wryly.

  “Purely impersonal?”

  “No, not quite.”

  “Why, then?”

  “I think you might do it again.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Andrew said. “I have no reason to kill anyone else.”

  “Perhaps you had no reason to kill Greeley?”

  “He was interfering, getting in my way. I hadn’t planned on killing him or anyone else. I hadn’t really planned anything. I was pretty dazed after reading the diary, I hardly remember driving out to meet Giles. All I could think of was Lucille’s two faces—the one she showed to me and the one I saw in Mildred’s diary. I thought I would keep quiet until after Polly was married and then I would confront Lucille with the diary. But what then? Would she confess? Would she lie? Would she even try to kill me perhaps, to save herself? Then we came upon the train wreck and the situation solved itself. I knew how I could test Lucille. I saw the finger in a slop pail and I picked it up and wrapped it in my handkerchief.”

  The grotesque picture formed in Sands’ mind. The man bending furtively over a slop pail, wrapping the finger carefully in his handkerchief, like a jewel.

  “You know how it makes you feel when you do something like that?” Andrew said. “It makes you feel a little crazy.”

  “It would.”

  “It was only a test for her, you understand. I had to know whether she was guilty. I didn’t foresee the actual results—it wasn’t even her own guilt that drove her crazy, it was the knowledge that someone else knew of her guilt, and was pointing it out, that someone had tracked her down. She, who had lived a placid, happy life for sixteen years now found herself a criminal.” He paused. “I keep thinking of what she did when she opened the box. She screamed, we know that, and then she must have run to the bureau drawer to find the diary. When she saw it was gone, she knew one of us must have taken it.”

  “A pretty symbol, that finger.”

  Andrew shrugged away the implications.

  “I carried it in my pocket for the rest of the night. In the morning I bought a box in the dime store on my way to the office, and wrapped it. I thought of sending it through the mail, but then I saw this shabby-looking little man standing beside the newsstand. I asked him if he’d deliver a parcel for two dollars and he said he would.”

  “You could have saved yourself trouble by lowering it to fifty cents. A parcel worth a two-dollar delivery is worth opening. Childish of you.”

  “I—it just didn’t occur to me not to trust him. I’ve had no experience with such things.”

  “The first thing he did, of course, was take it to a washroom and open it. Maybe he was a little surprised by it, but I don’t think so. Greeley had seen a lot of things in his life. What interested him was the smell of money, and he got a big whiff when he opened that parcel. He delivered it, all right. Then he waited around to see what would happen. He followed Lucille down to Sunnyside and waited outside while she was in the beauty parlor. When she came out he confronted her. She gave him a fifty-dollar bill to keep him quiet. She took a room at the Lakeside Hotel, and when he was pretty sure she was going to stay there for a while he went out and had what for Greeley was a big evening. Life was all right for Greeley that night. He had champagne, even if it was in a third-rate joint; he had a girl, no matter how many other people had had her; he danced, though his legs must have hurt him; he had a shot of morphine for a cheap dream, but most of all he had a future.

  “Lucille must have promised him more money, for he told the girl he was with that he had a date, and then he returned to the Lakeside. He got there about the same time as Inspector Bascombe and I did. Men like Greeley have a sharp nose for two things—money and cops, and he probably recognized us right away. He didn’t know what we were there for. Maybe it was Lucille, maybe not. He hung around the alley for a while, and then you came along. He recognized you immediately.”

  “It was a shock,” Andrew said, “it was a terrible shock to me to meet him again. I’d almost forgotten about him. Then I saw what I should have seen the preceding afternoon if I. hadn’t been intent on my plan—he was a morphine addict. I could see his eyes clearly in the light of the hotel sign, they were pupil-less, blind-looking. The tragedy of it was that I was carrying my instrument bag in case I’d have to give Lucille a sedative.”

  “Tragedy?”

  “He saw I was a doctor.”

  “I see.”

  “Yes, a doctor means only one thing to an addict—a chance for more dope. We’re all pestered by them at one time or another. The first thing the man said was, “A sawbones, eh?” I told him I wasn’t, but he didn’t believe me. He seemed to be burning up with triumph. I could see then what I had let myself in for. I had committed no crime, but I had done what most people would consider a revolting thing—and I wanted it kept secret. But Greeley, you understand, thought I had committed a crime.”

  “ ‘Some parcel,’ he said. ‘Where’s the rest of the guy?’ I didn’t answer him. Then he asked me for some morphine. He told me he had a hard time getting any and what he did get was diluted. ‘I haven’t got any extra,’ I told him. ‘Just a quarter grain, not enough for you.’

  “The crazy part of it is that if I hadn’t refused to give it to him at first, he would have been suspicious. But because I refused, he said, ‘What do you know about me? That’ll do—for now.’

  “He didn’t need it then, he was pretty full of the stuff already. But he couldn’t pass up the chance, you see. They all have that same senseless greed because they know what it’s like to be without it. Anyway he led me around to the alley. It was dark and intensely cold. I put my bag on the ground and opened it. Greeley lit a match and cupped it in his hands, and then we both squatted down beside the bag. Bizarre, isn’t it, and somehow obscene?

  “I could tell you it was then that I decided to kill him, but I couldn’t tell you why. There was no one reason, perhaps there never is for a murder. Perhaps I killed him because I was afraid of him, and because he hadn’t long to live and would be better off dead anyway, and because he had betrayed my trust, and because of the very ugliness of the scene itself.

  “It was no trick to kill him. He had no way of knowing how much I was giving him. Besides, he kept watching the end of the alley and urging me to hurry up. I prepared the syringe and told him to take off his coat. He said, ‘What the hell, nothing fancy for me,’ and shoved out his arm.

  “I gave him two grains. The whole incident didn’t take ten minutes.”

  Two grains, ten minutes, the end of Greeley, Sands thought.

  “Simple,” he said. “Natural. Practically an accident.”

  “I told you that.”

 
“Sure. Any logical sequence of events ends in murder just as the logical sequel to life is death.”

  “Irony doesn’t affect me,” Andrew said. “I was trying to present my story sincerely and honestly. I feel that you are a civilized man and can understand it.”

  “It’s easy enough to be civilized in a vacuum. The mouse in an airless bell jar can’t be compared to ordinary mice. In the first place he’s dead.”

  “Quite so.”

  The doorbell began to ring.

  “Your friends are here,” Andrew said politely.

  While the policemen were there Andrew remained in his study with the door shut. Overhead, the men worked very quietly, and only by straining his ears could he hear them moving about.

  What are they doing up there?

  Nothing. Don’t listen.

  What have I overlooked?

  Nothing. It is all arranged. Poor Edith killed herself in remorse.

  Poor Edith, how like Greeley she’d acted after all, both so greedy for a little death and so surprised at getting the real thing.

  He didn’t worry about either of them. About Greeley he had no feelings at all, and while he felt sorry for Edith because she had made her own death necessary, he did not wish her back. He had turned a corner in his life. Looking back he could see only the sharp gray angle of a nameless building, and ahead of him the road was a nebula of mist swirling with forms and shapes, faces that were not yet faces, sounds that were not yet sounds. As he walked along the mist would clear. But right now it was frightening. It stung his eyes and muffled his ears and curled down deep into his lungs and made him cough. He could taste it in his mouth, fresh like the snow he had eaten when he was a child.

  I don't feel very well.

  Andrew dear, have you been eating Snow?

  I don't feel very well.

  The child is Ill. Call the doctor Immediately.

  Calling Dr. Morrow. Calling Dr. Morrow. Dr. Morrow is wanted in . . .

  Andrew my Dear. Snow is full of Germs. It may look pretty but it is not to Eat because it is full of Germs. I'll buy you a microscope for your birthday so you can see for Yourself how many Germs there are Everywhere.

  Many many many many Germs. Everywhere.

  He became aware, suddenly, that the noises overhead had ceased. The house was empty. Mildred had gone, with the children, Edith was gone, and Lucille—only the maids were left and they must go too. He had to be alone, to think.

  He rose painfully. His legs were cramped, he had been sitting too tensely. He must learn not to look back or look ahead. Where, then, could you look? At yourself. Turn your eyes in, like two little dentist’s mirrors, until you saw yourself larger than life, in great detail, each single hair, each pore of skin a new revelation, wondrously crawling with germs.

  But the silence, the appalling silence of the man in the mirrors; the brittle limbs, the face mobile but cold like glass . . .

  He crossed the hall, quickly, to escape his own image. He found the maids in the kitchen. They had been quarreling. Della’s eyes were swollen from weeping and Annie’s mouth had a set stubborn look. She didn’t change her expression when she saw Andrew.

  “I say we’re leaving,” she said. “I say there’s too much going on around this place that don’t look right.”

  “Of course,” Andrew said. “If you feel like that.”

  “She don’t want to go. Afraid she won’t get another job. Why, in times like these they get down on their knees and beg you to take a job. She’s too dumb to see that.”

  “It’s different with you!” Della cried. “I got to send money home every month!”

  “Don’t I got to live too? And am I scared?”

  “I’ll give you both a month’s wages,” Andrew said quietly. “You may leave today if you like.”

  Della only wept harder, and Annie had to do the talking for both of them. It was real kind of Dr. Morrow, really generous. Not that they couldn’t use the money. Not that they wanted to leave him in the lurch like this. But what future was there in housework?

  “What future indeed?” Andrew said. “You may leave at once. I’ll make out your checks.”

  They went upstairs and began to pack.

  “Remember the emeralds?” Della said wistfully. “What emeralds?”

  “You remember. The parcel.”

  “Oh, hell,” Annie said and jerked open the closet door savagely. “We’re too old to play games like that. You’re eighteen and you talk like you were ten. Imagine us with an emerald.”

  “Maybe—some day we’ll find something. Money or something. Or maybe radium. They say if you find just a little bit of radium you get to be a millionaire.”

  “Will you shut up?” Annie banged her fist against a suitcase. “Will—you—shut—up?”

  They hadn’t many clothes to pack. Within half an hour they were on Bloor Street waiting for a streetcar, their purses tight beneath their arms. They were still quarreling, but there was a softer look on Annie’s face and now and then she scanned the sidewalk and the gutter. Just in case.

  Andrew stood at the door, watching, long after they Were out of sight. They were gone, the last remnants of the old life, and now he must begin his new one. But he felt curiously tired, reluctant to move from the door, as if any movement at all might bring on a new situation, a new series of complications that he would have to deal with. He wanted to see and hear nothing, to feel nothing, to be alone in a vacuum, like the mouse in the bell jar.

  But the mouse was dead. In the first place he’s dead.

  He heard someone coming down the stairs behind him. He had thought the house was empty, but now that he found it wasn’t, he was too weary to feel surprise. He turned slowly, knowing before he turned that it was Sands.

  “I thought you were gone.” He had to drag the words out of his mouth.

  “I’m leaving in a minute. Everyone else has gone. You’ll be alone.”

  Alone. The word had a solemn sonorous sound that struck his ears with a thud.

  “That’s what you wanted,” Sands said. “Isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, now you have it. You’ll be alone. And you’ll be lonely.”

  “No, no, I—Martin—Martin will come back.”

  “But he won’t stay. There’s nothing left for him here in this house.”

  “He’ll stay if I ask him to, if I . . .”

  “No, I don’t think so. You’ll be quite alone.”

  Andrew closed his eyes. He saw the mist on the road ahead suddenly sweeping back toward him in gusts of fury.

  “No—no . . .” he said, but how faint and suffocated his voice was, with the mist smothering his mouth. “I’m not—not afraid of being alone.”

  “You’re afraid of the big fellow. You don’t want justice any more, you want mercy.”

  Andrew bowed his head. Mercy. A terrible and piteous word that conjured up all the lost people wailing to their lost gods.

  “I want nothing,” he said.

  “But it’s too late now. You already have what you wanted. Don’t you recognize it?” Sands smiled. “This is it, Morrow.”

  “Is this it?” He heard in his own voice the wailing of the lost men.

  “The role of avenger is not for a little man like you. You dispensed justice to Lucille, now you must await it, in turn. You even asked the police to help you hunt her down. You couldn’t wait, could you? . . . You enjoyed seeing her suffer, didn’t you?”

  “No—no—I’m sorry . . .”

  “Too late, it’s all over.”

  “And now?”

  “Now, nothing.” He smiled again. “Doesn’t that amuse you? You’re like Lucille, after all. You have nothing left to live for.”

  Andrew was propped up against the wall like a dummy waiting for someone to come along and move it into a new position.

  Sands took out his watch, and in the silent house the ticking seemed extraordinarily important.

  He put his watch back and began button
ing his overcoat. “I’ve got to leave now.”

  “I am afraid,” Andrew said, but the door had already opened and closed again, softly, and he knew he must die alone.

  Sands stepped out into the keen sparkling air.

  He stood on the veranda for a moment and looked across the park where the phallic points of the pines were thrust toward the sun. He felt outside time, naked and frail and percipient. Evergreens and men were growing toward decay. Time was a mole moving under the roads of the city and imperceptibly buckling the asphalt. Time passed over his head in a thin gray rack of scudding clouds, as if the sky had fled away and its last remaining rags were blowing over the edge of the world.