Mischief

by Charlotte Armstrong

  It had been so swift, so startling, so furtive, and there had been a white roll of his eye.

  “Who was that!” Her knees felt mushy.

  The girl looked as if she could hop with rage, as if she would begin to bounce, like popcorn.

  “Explain, at once!” cried Miss Ballew and reached out to shake this stupid creature.

  The girl collapsed at her touch. “Oh, oh,” she said. “Oh—” and bent her arm against the doorframe and buried her face in her arm. “Oh, I was so scared! Oh, miss, whatever’s your name. Oh, thank you! You’ve saved me!”

  “What!”

  “That … man!” said Nell, muffled.

  “Why, he must have come out of the next— Yes, I see he did! Out of the child’s room!”

  “Yes. Yes,” cried Nell. “Now do you see? He was in there all the time. He said if I didn’t get rid of you … Oh!”

  “Oh, dear,” said Miss Ballew faintly.

  “He said he would—” Nell’s body pressed on the wood as if in anguish.

  Miss Ballew rocked on her feet and reached for the wall.

  “He just forced himself in here. He was so wild!” Nell cried, “and strong.” Her face peeped, now, from the sheltering arm. “I didn’t know what to do!”

  Silence beat in the corridor while Miss Ballew fought with her wish to fall down. One heard, one read, and all one’s life one feared, but not often did one encounter … But the ruthless predatory male was, of course, axiomatic.

  “There wasn’t anything I could do.” The girl’s whine broke the spell. “I couldn’t—I’m not very strong.”

  “But he is getting away!” moaned Miss Ballew. For she heard, in the mists of her horrors, the yawn of the door to the fire stairs and the hish-hush of its closing. This, she felt, was outrageous. Outrageous! That such things … in a respectable hotel … and go unpunished! The anger was starch to her spine. She tightened her mouth, gathered her strength, and bustled past the girl into the room. She threw her stout sturdy form on the bed and reached for the telephone.

  Downstairs, Rochelle Parker shifted the lifesaver expertly into the pouch of her cheek. “Yes?”

  “This is Miss Ballew,” said the agitated voice. “I’m in room—what?” she cried to the girl “What is this number?”

  “Number 807,” said the girl quite promptly and calmly.

  “Room 807. A man has just fled from here.”

  “What did he do, madame?”

  “Fled. Ran. He ran away.” Miss Ballew was often forced to translate her remarks. “He was up to no good.” She tried to be basic. “Get him!” cried Eva Ballew and reverted. “He must answer for it. He must face his accuser and be brought to book. This is criminal and he must be apprehended.

  “Just a moment, please,” said Rochelle. She pressed the button that would discreetly summon Pat Perrin to a phone. Almost at once, she plugged him in. “Yeah?” “807’s on, Pat.”

  “Yeah, what is it?”

  “There was a man in here,” said Miss Ballew. It was as if she said “African lion.” “He is trying to get away, right now.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “What did he look like?” cried the teacher to the motionless girl.

  The girl’s lips opened and her tongue slipped to moisten them. “He … had red hair.”

  “Red hair!” Miss Ballew’s voice both informed Perrin and doubted the information, for this had not been her own impression.

  “Very dark red,” said Nell, “brown eyes, freckles.”

  “Dark red, brown eyes, freckles, and tall. I saw that And I think a gray suit.”

  “Brownish,” Nell said, “and a blue shirt.”

  “Brownish? Well, some light color. And a blue shirt. And he took the stairs, not two minutes ago. You had best—”

  “We’ll see,” said Perrin. “He intruded, you say?”

  “He did, indeed,” cried Miss Ballew in ringing tones. It was the very word.

  “I’ll see if we can pick him up,” said Pat Perrin, sounding competent and unruffled. He hung up at once.

  Miss Ballew rolled a bit and sat up. She propped herself on the headboard. She was trembling. “This really—” she gasped. “I don’t know when I’ve been— What did happen? How did he—? Who—?”

  The girl, who had closed the door, came slowly around the bed and sat down on the other one. Her eyes were a trifle aslant and an odd blue. She clasped her hands in her lap. Unpainted nails. Dark, decent dress. Modest ankles, shabby shoes.

  Miss Ballew read all these signs as she was bound to do. “You poor thing,” she said. “I don’t know your name.”

  “Nell.” Not Sonya. Not Toni. Plain Nell.

  “I am Eva Ballew,” said that lady warmly. “I suppose you were under such strain. I thought your manner was odd.”

  “You don’t know,” said Nell wanly, and Miss Ballew’s heart fluttered alarmingly. “Oh Miss Ballew, I just had to tell you those lies,” the poor thing said, pathetically. “I couldn’t help it. He was in there, and he said he’d listen, and if I dared …”

  “Simply terrible!” murmured the teacher. “How ever did he get in here?”

  “Oh, he knocked, and of course I went to see who it was.” Nell twisted her hands. “And then he just pushed me.”

  “Didn’t you scream?” It was Miss Ballew’s conviction that a woman always screamed. It did not, at this time, cross her mind that there was any other procedure whatsoever.

  “But he said … said he was a friend of the people’s,” said Nell. “I didn’t know.”

  “No, of course, you couldn’t know. Tsk. Tsk. Do you think he had been drinking?”

  “Oh, he was!” cried Nell. “Look!” She seemed very young and lithe as she reached for the whisky bottle. The cheap dress twisted tight to her body. Miss Ballew felt a shiver, rather a delicious one, along her nerves. She gazed, horrified, at the bottle’s emptiness.

  “And then,” said Nell, “Bunny—that’s the little girl— she … she woke up.” Nell put her face in her hands. She dropped the bottle on the floor to do so. Miss Ballew’s mind swirled. So odd. Poor thing, so upset, to do such a disorderly thing.

  “Now, now,” she soothed. “It’s all over, now.” And then, fearfully, “Isn’t it? There wasn’t? Nothing?”

  Nell took her face out and shook her head vigorously. Her tawny yellow hair tossed.

  “Well,” said Miss Ballew feebly. Her heart raced. She felt unwell.

  “Anyhow,” said Nell moodily, “he only tried to kiss me once. He just kept on drinking and drinking.”

  “You should have screamed,” Miss Ballew said trance-like.

  “But I was so scared, I didn’t dare.… And I thought maybe, when Bunny cried so loud, someone might notice.” The girl’s eyes rolled.

  Miss Ballew felt herself flushing guiltily.

  “And she didn’t really ‘almost fall,”‘ said Nell with sudden passionate indignation, “at all! He was mad. That’s what it was. He thought I was trying to, you know, get somebody’s attention out the window like that, so he dragged her away.”

  “Oh, dear …” Miss Ballew thought how wise one is never to believe too hastily in what one thinks one sees. Always, she noted, wait for the other side of the story. “And when she began to scream so, later? Why was that, my dear?”

  Nell looked wildly around her, threw herself face down, and her shoulders heaved, and soon her sobbing shook the bed.

  “Now,” Miss Ballew struggled to reach over but she felt dizzy, herself, and she couldn’t make it. “Now,” she said, “don’t—” She thought, Someone must soon come. She herself was really not in any condition to deal with this any further. It was shameful, but she felt as weak as a kitten. Just hearing about it. The poor girl must have had a violent psychic shock. In fact, Miss Ballew knew herself to be suffering the same thing, vicariously.

  “She got scared and began to cry,” sobbed Nell. “She just got scared. That’s why she began to cry. But he was so mad. It made
him wild. He said she had to stop that noise.” The head slipped, the face turned, the wet lashes lifted.

  Miss Ballew lay against the headboard and her rather long countenance was whitening. “Then, it was he, in her room?”

  “You saw …” the girl challenged.

  “Yes, I saw. But it was too dark. I couldn’t clearly see. Oh, my dear, if he has harmed—”

  “Oh, he didn’t hurt her.” Nell said and suddenly she sat up again. “He just made her stop crying.” A little smile— pitiful, it might have been—worked on her face. “And there wasn’t anything I could do because he locked me in the closet …”

  “Incredible.” The teacher’s lips were stiff.

  Nell looked solemnly at her. The room fell … as if all its emotion-laden air swirled, falling … to silence. “You know,” she said, “I think he was insane.”

  Miss Ballew said, “Is there— Could you? A glass of water? Or could you call, perhaps the house physician. I really am afraid I am having rather a reaction …” She closed her eyes.

  Insanity was obviously the explanation. For things so wild and wanton, insanity was the definition, really.

  In the dim bathroom of 807, on the cold floor, Eddie stirred. His right arm moved as one moves in sleep. He turned a little to his left side. Then he lay still.

  CHAPTER 16

  The hotel detective, Pat Perrin, put up the phone and crossed the lobby, moving quietly. He opened the door to the base of the tall rectangular tube where the fire stairs ran. He discounted, from long practice, ninety per cent of what he had just heard. But for the sake of the other ten per cent, he stood and listened. Any sound, he knew, would come booming down to him.

  And so it did. Someone was on those bare stairs. His own ears informed him. So far, so much was confirmed. He waited, quietly. He wore a gun.

  Jed realized the echoing clatter of his descent in this confined space. Nimbly, he brought himself up against a door, stopped the second or two it took to rearrange his own rhythm, tugged the door in upon himself, and stepped steadily out to the sixth-floor corridor.

  As he crossed the carpet toward the elevators a man—just a man—joined him. Jed took care not to be caught looking to see whether the other was looking. The man pressed the down button and, superhumanly, Jed did not. He set his suitcase down, denying the need of his nervous hand to hang onto it. It occurred to him, freakishly, that he had left a blue tie and a good pair of socks, damn it. His jaw cracked and he deliberately let tension out of it. Without fidgeting, he watched the dial, as the other man was doing, as all elevator, awaiters seem compelled to do. The hand was coming down.

  Disinterested, strangers, they stepped on in silent sequence as the elevator obeyed the call. And in silent sequence they stepped out, below. Jed, looking to neither side, walked to the desk. His gait deceived. His trunk and shoulders showed no effort but his long legs drove hard against the floor and bore him more swiftly than they seemed to do.

  He said, crisply, “Checking out Towers, 821.”

  “Certainly, Mr. Towers.”

  “Mind making it quick?” Friendly and crisp but not too urgent. “Just got hold of a cancellation. I can get out of here tonight if I make it down to the station.” Jed looked at the clock in the woodwork back of the man’s head.

  “Yes, sir.” The clerk did not seem to put on speed but Jed was aware that he did, in fact, waste no motion. He recognized the skill in it. He made himself stand still.

  Pat Perrin knew when no feet rattled on the stairs. He caught a boy and posted him, here, near where the stairs came down, at a door to a narrow passage that was the back way out. He caught another to watch the entrance to the bar, for one could exit to the street through that dim corner room. He himself had a brief word with an elevator boy. Then his skilled eyes ran down every man in his sight. “Tall, light suit.” He weaved among the chairs. He moved along the carpet.

  “You figure,” Jed was asking pleasantly, “about twenty-five minutes to Penn Station?”

  “That’s close, sir. Might do it. Here we are.” The clerk turned the reckoning around. He took an envelope from a box and presented this, too. Jed saw his name before him in a script he knew. A note from Lyn. Lyn Lesley. He stuffed it into his coat pocket. (No time for her now.) He took money out.

  Perrin’s eye checked Jed’s tall figure in the gray suit. Dark hair, no freckles, white shirt. He walked on by, the eye skimming.

  Jed put his wallet back, picked up his bag, surveyed the way ahead, the not-very-long distance to that revolving door and out. He was the same as out, already. The clerk already counted him for gone. To turn back, to speak again was like contradicting the forward flow of time itself.

  But Jed put his palm noiselessly on the blotter and the clerk looked up.

  “You’d better,” said Jed, speaking slowly and soberly and emphatically to be understood and heeded in this, the first and only time he would say it, “send someone to room 807, right away. Trouble. A kid’s in trouble. 807 and 809. A little girl If you know where Mr. and Mrs. Jones went, call them. It’s their kid.”

  He turned swiftly and went, in that same smooth, deceptive, very rapid gait, in the shortest line to the revolving door and through it without a check.

  Then he stood in the air, in the open night, and he was out of it, and it was their kid, wasn’t it?

  Pat Perrin knew someone on those stairs had got off the stairs. So much was true. Whether he rode down or not was a question. Now, Perrin peered through to the street, saw him, tall, dark, and handsome, in the white shirt, harmlessly pausing to light a cigarette. He pushed through and crooked a finger to the doorman, said a word or two. He raked Jed’s back with his glance, conscientiously, turned, looped on his own tracks, and went back through the lobby because the other exit would be the one a fugitive would like. He saw Milner at the desk lift a startled hand as if to beckon. He signaled with his own, Busy (no time for him now), and he walked on by.

  Jed shook out his match. All right. So he’d established Towers had nerves of iron. And what now? Cab? Bus? Subway? To the airport? His thoughts were jumpy.

  A cab swerved in to the curb and braked in his very face. He thought it was querying him. Then he saw that it had a fare to discharge here. He stepped aside.

  As the domelight went on, he could see her. Young woman, blond, attractive, in party clothes.

  He stood with his bag at his feet and blew smoke out. Here was a cab, emptying before him, becoming available, and in it he would be gone, like smoke. Smoke poured out of his mouth. He half turned his head. He looked (because he was in some way forced to look) up behind him at the checkered facade, the tall bulk, the flat and secretive face of the Hotel Majestic.

  The girl from the cab, with her change, bills and all, in her bare hand, got. She swept her long skirts, aquamarine velvet over rosy silk, up in one hand. Her golden slippers stepped quickly on the gray sidewalk. She went by Jed. Her gaze crossed over his face blankly, and he, blankly, watched her by, for they were strangers.

  Jed saw the doorman prance, and the door spin. The cab door, in front of him, remained open. It hinted, tempted, invited. Finally it said to him, “Well?”

  He moved nearer and put out a hand, ducked his head, brought his bag up in the other hand, and his knee up … Something hit him. It seemed to him that he was struck in the face by a barrier as soft, elastic, and yielding, as easy to pass through, as a cobweb. Something that was no more substantial than the air itself. Only a faint scent … breathing into his face from the cab’s closed place. A perfume, it was, that stopped him because he knew that scent and it made his stomach turn over. Why, he reeked of it, himself! Of course. It was on him! It came from himself.

  He barked, “Sorry,” and slammed the door. He lifted his hand, giving permission and command. Go ahead. The cab’s gears snarled at him. It went away in a huff, saying with a flounce of its back bumper, “Whyncha make up your mind, stupid!”

  Jed trod his cigarette out. He felt rooted on the s
idewalk and his feet kicked at the invisible chain. All right. He would not shut himself up with that sickening odor. That’s all. He’d air himself free of it. Walk, then. Lug your damn bag. But get gone, stupid! He held hard for anger, this kind of anger. His hand came up to brush before his face.

  Milner, the man at the desk, leaned over, full of summons, but Pat Perrin was out of range of a soft hail and a loud hail would never do. Milner’s still-startled eyes blinked. Towers, 821. Eighth floor, sure enough. Fellow might know what he was talking about. Something wrong in 807? Peter O. Jones, 807 and 809. Mr. Milner didn’t know where the Joneses were. He was annoyed as well as startled. But of course he would check. It would never do not to check up on such a warning.

  He took up a phone and pivoted, looking anxiously for some reason at the hands of the clock. “Give me 808, Rochelle, will you?”

  “Sure thing.” Rochelle alerted. She thought, “Oh boy, something’s up!” She thought, “I smelled a rat up there hours ago.” She was rather pleased. There were long stretches on this job that were pretty dull. She hoped this was going to be interesting. Whatever it was. She said softly, “What goes on, Mr. Milner?”

  Since Mr. Milner did not know, he was haughty. “If you’ll ring them, please?”

  “O.K., O.K.” He heard Rochelle ring them. He stood, holding the phone, staring at the clock as if he could by the willful power of the human eye stay the hand, as Ruth O. Jones went rustling by behind him.

  No need to stop for her key, she reflected, since of course Nell was there to open the door. Besides, it would take time. Her feel of time wasting was because she’d been wishing too long to come. Only that. Why, the lobby was just the same, just the same.

  Ruthie and the jitters. How Betty would laugh! Betty the city mouse. Betty the louse, who’d begged off. Although why on earth I assume she’s so darned reliable … Betty and her system of values … Betty who doesn’t even know, yet, what a woman’s in the world for … It was the blood tie, of course. It was the mere fact that Peter’s sister could not be a stranger.