“No, I want some. Can you tell me what this is all about?”
A slight pause, and then, “I’m sorry, sir, but the matter is confidential. I’m sure you’ll understand.”
“Can’t you tell me anything? Is it Miss Clamp or Mrs. Clamp?”
“I’m sorry, sir, the matter is confidential. May I ask you why you called?”
“Well, the name seemed — I just heard of a name like it this morning.”
“I see. Well, there are other names like it in the city. We are not referring to — just a moment, please.” Sounds of papers rustling. “We don’t want to hear about Mrs. June Hilda Clamp of 2637 Larch Street, or Miss Joan H. Clamp of 1178 West 97th Street, or J. Helga Clamp of 21219 New Zealand Avenue. I might also say, although I’m sure I needn’t warn you, sir, that we can make it uncomfortable for crank callers if we catch them. What we want is bona fide information about the whereabouts of Jane Hildegarde Clamp. We want to get in touch with her.”
“I see … Well, thank you.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Well, so much for that. Another coincidence, no doubt. And yet … and yet I had the nagging suspicion that everything was pointing in some particular direction, and that I could make sense of it if only — if only—
But I couldn’t make sense of it. I spent the rest of the day alternately trying and giving up, drinking coffee, pacing about, cooking dinner, going to a disappointing movie …
Late that evening I sat down with a sigh to read Susan’s diary again. It had occurred to me that perhaps I had overlooked something in it that might give me a clue. I was right. As I neared the end of it, and again read that scene where a despairing Susan crouches under the hedge with Robert and Victoria, and Victoria proposes one last measure to save their plan from total ruin, and Susan says that even that measure is hopeless, because here they are in the nineteenth century whereas the witch is in the twentieth — as I read that for the second time my heart began to thud, and the hair on the back of my neck prickled.
That wavery voice on the telephone! That ancient creature in the huge automobile! Eureka!
12. The Elevator’s Last Trip
Of course I hadn’t recognized the witch.
How could I? Whenever I thought of her at all, it was as Susan had described her: an eccentric, garish old woman with an umbrella, a newspaper, a sack of potatoes, and a vague manner, who was driven about on a motorcycle. Whereas my lady in distress — Well, no matter. She had changed her appearance and her mode of transportation, but the old vagueness was still there, and her way of doing things was the same. You helped her out, and she gave you something. But what she gave you was a mystery, a hint, a possibility. From there on, you had to figure out her meaning for yourself.
Well, now that I knew who she was, everything clicked into place in my mind. She was going to answer the Walker children’s plea; and because I was the only person in the world who knew — and accepted — where the Shaws had gone, she had chosen me to carry out her plans.
The first phrase of her note was so roundabout that it took me a while to interpret, but I finally guessed it to mean that I could not go back to 1881 myself. The rest was straightforward enough. I could send a message to the Shaws. The means of sending it would have to be the elevator. The message itself would have to be the Special Notice.
But wait — I’d better be careful about that. Just because I’d found a Special Notice with a familiar name didn’t mean that it was the one to go. I took the elevator down to the basement, and spent an hour rummaging through Mr. Bodoni’s heap of newspapers. There were some pretty odd Special Notices to be found, but none that seemed closer to the purpose than the one I already had. That one, by the way, appeared in every paper I looked at. Tri-City Guaranty and Trust Company had been seeking contact with Jane Hildegarde Clamp for as far back as I could check. Curious …
Back in my apartment, I figured out what my strategy should be. If the Shaws did find the message in the elevator, they would be there for only one reason: to return to the twentieth century. But if they came back to the twentieth century, thereby using up their last trip on the elevator, the message might be useless. Therefore, they must be persuaded to read it before they took the irrevocable step.
I found a large manila mailing envelope and wrote on it with black crayon: SUSAN SHAW—MR. SHAW — DON’T COME DOWN UNTIL YOU READ WHAT’S INSIDE! Then I circled the Special Notice about Jane Hildegarde Clamp, to call the Shaws’ attention to it; and put a question mark beside it to show that its significance was just a guess on my part. For a while I tried to think what it might mean to them, to figure out how it could possibly turn the tide of events where they were. But it was useless. With a sigh, I folded the sheet of newspaper and inserted it in the envelope, and went out in the hall to call the elevator.
The latest wisecrack about Mr. Bodoni’s mechanical ability had been imperfectly scrubbed off, I noticed. I stuck the envelope to the rear wall with tape, and stepped back to view the effect. My message was as conspicuous as I could hope to make it. “Okay, old horse, do your stuff,” I murmured to the elevator. It sighed, and the door trundled shut.
Well, it was out of my hands now. I went to bed. But the doubts flooded over me, I couldn’t sleep. Had I done the right thing? How would I ever know? After an hour of tossing, I put on my bathrobe and rushed out to check the elevator. My message was gone. My heart lifted — and sank again. What did that prove, after all? Only that it was gone; perhaps to 1881, perhaps (just as likely) to the apartment of some nosy and not too scrupulous tenant …
How would I ever know …?
Saturday night was another sleepless one for me. At about nine-thirty Sunday morning I decided to go to the park; I thought that perhaps in the shade of a tree I might find some relief from the heat and from the questions that were still plaguing me. I pressed the elevator button and waited … And pressed again and waited. And waited.
Finally I took the stairs down. I ran into Mr. Bodoni at the front door. He was prepared for a Sunday outing too, in a black suit that made him look like a mourner at a gangster’s funeral, and a straw hat, and a new (but of course unlit) cigar.
“Hey, Mr. Bodoni, what’s the matter with the elevator?” I asked.
“Busted,” he said with a huge smile. “Busted for good. Finished. I call the owners, they gonna replace. All brand-new parts — everyting!” No more gestures of apology: Mr. Bodoni was a free man.
“Oh,” I said.
“Whatsa matter, you crazy or someting, you don’t wanna new one?”
“Well … I was kind of attached to the old beast. How did it go?”
“Hah?”
“How did it bust?”
“Boy oh boy!” he said, beginning to frown. “Some business! I don’t even wanna tink about it!” His voice dropped to a confidential murmur. “You wanna know someting? Crazy lady in there!”
“What?”
“Yeah! Boy oh boy, I don’t even wanna talk about!”
Nevertheless, I didn’t have to prompt him to tell me the whole story.
In order to escape the heat late last night, he had gone down into the basement, where it was five degrees cooler than anywhere else. Settled in a camp chair, in his undershirt, a can of cold beer within reach, the early edition of the Sunday papers in his lap opened to the comics section, he slipped into a state of perfect contentment.
It lasted perhaps fifteen minutes.
A faint rhythmic banging began to intrude on his consciousness. It seemed to be coming from — from the elevator shaft … Oh oh! Had the elevator broken down at last? Was somebody stuck? He looked up at the arrow. No, it was moving; moving to the left. The banging became louder. It sounded as if someone were trying to do grievous damage. Indignation welled up in Mr. Bodoni’s heart; he had no love for the elevator, but it was his responsibility. They shouldn’t do that! Thunderous blows drowned the sigh of the opening door. Mr. Bodoni stood up, prepared to defend his elevator against carousing delin
quents or perhaps some tenant who had had too much to drink. “Hey!” he cried, taking one step forward, only to be stopped dead in his tracks by the most ferocious glare he had ever encountered.
It was not coming from a juvenile hoodlum or a drunk, but from a woman. She was awkwardly seated, as one entirely unaccustomed to such a position, on the floor of the elevator. Her stout figure was dressed in a red flannel robe. Her face, under a ruffled cap, was purple with rage, and her eyes glittered behind pince-nez glasses. The black umbrella with which she had been battering the elevator door was raised to strike another blow.
Mr. Bodoni managed another, and much more feeble, “Hey.”
“I’ll hey you, my man!” the woman shouted in a voice that was even more piercing that her eyes. “Who are you? What is the meaning of this outrage?”
“Outrage” had been a familiar word of late. Mr. Bodoni’s wits rallied. “Not dangerous,” he said, waving conciliatory hands. “A little slow maybe, yeah, but not dangerous. Don’t hit, the paint job won’t take it.”
“Stop talking rubbish!” she shouted. “I demand an explanation!”
“No rubbish,” Mr. Bodoni protested. “It’s a little old, is all. Loose parts.”
“I won’t have any more of this lunatic raving!” she cried. “I am in severe pain. I require medical attention. Above all, I wish to return. And you stand there —!”
“Madame,” a man’s voice broke in, “there is nothing to be gained by shouting like that.”
Mr. Bodoni tore his gaze away from the glittering eyes, and saw for the first time that there was another passenger within. It was a man with a bruised face and rumpled hair, wearing a very old-fashioned suit that was torn in several places and mottled with large wet stains.
The woman turned and jabbed at him with her umbrella, like a lion-tamer forcing an unruly beast back into its corner. “You, sir,” she shouted, “are a scoundrel! I believe the most appropriate place for you is a police station. I intend to see you taken to one at the earliest opportunity.” She turned to Mr. Bodoni again. “Don’t stand there like an imbecile, my man! I have vitally important duties to discharge and I wish to return to them at once! Do you understand the mechanism of this conveyance?”
“Hah?”
“Look here, my good fellow,” the man said from the corner of the elevator. He had been staring at the washing machines against the wall. “Just tell us where we are, will you?”
“Yeah,” Mr. Bodoni said. “Here.”
“No, no, what I mean is, where is this building —?”
“I wish to return!” the woman shouted at Mr. Bodoni. “Do what is necessary this instant, or I shall seek out your employer and have your wages stopped for a month!”
“Madame,” the man snapped, “you are sorely trying my patience. Something serious is happening here, and I am trying to find out what, but you keep inter —”
“Patience, you scum!” she roared. “If I could stand, I’d show you patience!” she turned and slashed at him with her umbrella. The steel tip grazed his vest. A button fell to the floor and rolled over to Mr. Bodoni’s feet. She turned back to skewer him with her glare. “I — wish — to — go — back,” she said, enunciating each word like the crack of a whip. “I am waiting.”
The message penetrated at last. Mr. Bodoni jerked his thumb toward the ceiling. “You wanna go back, hah? Back up there?”
She closed her eyes and inclined her head slightly. “So intelligent of him!” she murmured. “Such a firm grasp of what is required! If you will be so kind as to set me in motion.”
Mr. Bodoni saw that for some reason she was waiting for him to press the button. He sidled toward the elevator, keeping his gaze fixed on her umbrella. Her mouth tightened, and she drew in the skirt of her robe as he approached. He dared not ask her which floor she wanted. He reached inside and pressed the first button his fingers found.
It was the emergency button. They all gave a start as the warning bell on top of the elevator burst into a deafening clangor. “Stop that noise!” the woman shouted, pounding Mr. Bodoni’s paunch with her umbrella. He pressed three more buttons simultaneously and staggered back. The bell stopped. Its echoes could be heard bouncing about and dying away in the shaft.
“Look here!” the man said, appealing to Mr. Bodoni with a wild eye. “What do you know about this?”
“Not dangerous,” Mr. Bodoni croaked.
The door trundled shut.
Mr. Bodoni sagged against the wall. Beads of sweat were trickling down his cheeks and neck. “Crazy!” he muttered. “Boy oh boy — crazy! Whew! Must be the heat.” He found that his legs were shaking. He collapsed into his camp chair, took a deep swig of beer, and fanned himself with the sports section of his paper. Who? Who? Who …? They weren’t tenants, he knew that. He hoped they weren’t going to be tenants. Boy oh boy, with a crazy lady like that in the building he’d have to get a job somewhere else … Maybe they just wandered in from the street, crazy from the temperature. He hoped they would wander out again. He listened. All was quiet. Boy oh boy … He finished his beer in two more gulps, leaned over to retrieve the scattered comics — and froze.
Bang bang bang bang!
The elevator was coming down again. The shaft resounded like a huge drum to the blows of her umbrella.
Mr. Bodoni’s spirit failed. “Nah,” he bleated. His camp chair clattered over backward as he scrambled to his feet. He fled toward the stairs on the opposite side of the basement, shedding pages of newspaper as he went. Behind him the elevator door opened. Her shriek stabbed through his ears: “Imbecile! Return me at once!” He soared up the steps like a kangaroo.
He was standing out on the front sidewalk, panting and mopping his face, when a hand fell on his shoulder.
“Nah!” he cried, leaping halfway across Ward Street in one bound.
“Hey, Bodoni, whatsa matter with you? It’s me!”
He turned, and saw that it was an old acquaintance, a man who lived on the sixth floor.
“Listen, the elevator’s stuck down in the basement. I keep punching the button but nothing happens. It won’t come up.”
“Leave alone!” Mr. Bodoni cried. “Crazy lady in there!”
“What?”
Mr. Bodoni told him what had happened, and invited him to come see for himself. They crept silently a little way down the basement stairs, and peered across the room. The elevator stood open-doored, with only one occupant now. She sat on the floor with folded arms, an implacable presence, radiating fury in almost visible waves.
The two men sneaked back up the stairs.
“Oh boy oh boy!” Mr. Bodoni moaned. “What to do?”
“We better call the cops, Bodoni. She oughta be in a psychiatric ward.”
It took three policemen to get her away. After the din was over, Mr. Bodoni discovered that the elevator had made its final trip.
“Crazy!” he said to me now. “Everything all at once! Motor shot! Circuits burnt out! Cable busted! Boy oh boy — zap!” He took a deep breath and grinned. “I’m gonna play bocce ball inna park. See ya!”
My mental turmoil of the last two days and nights was nothing compared to now. Because while Mr. Bodoni had been talking, a feeling that I can only call recognition had flashed over me. That “crazy lady,” with her stout figure and glittering eyes and pince-nez glasses and umbrella, sounded so much like — like —! Why not? It wasn’t impossible! And there was a man with her, too … Now who on earth —? Oh lord, what had happened in 1881?
There was no relief in the park, no relief. I trudged back to the apartment building and hauled myself up five weary flights of stairs and mixed myself a cold drink. Susan’s diary was on my bookshelves where I had put it day before yesterday. I looked at its spine and shook my head, almost wishing that the whole baffling business had never begun. There was something sticking up out of the top, like a marker. I couldn’t remember having put any such thing in the diary. I pulled the book out to check. Yes. Something bulky between the fro
nt cover of the first page … Brown paper …
Funny! I stared at it and turned it over in my hands for a long time before the meaning of it began to sink in. It was a large folded envelope of time-darkened brittle paper. The words on it were still perfectly clear: SUSAN SHAW — MR. SHAW — DON’T COME DOWN and on the other side of the fold UNTIL YOU READ WHAT’S INSIDE! Inside, darkened to a burnt orange-brown, was a fragile folded sheet of newspaper …
The back of my neck began to prickle. Now I really know how Susan and Victoria and Robert had felt when, after finding the treasure, they discovered that the front page of their newspaper had changed. My word! It’s one thing to mention “time paradox” glibly, as I had to Charles, and another thing to experience it. I shivered. Here was the paradox in my hands, beyond explanation, beyond argument. The envelope had been in the diary for many decades. There was a straight-edged stain on the first page and the inside of the cover to prove it. But there had been no stain on the envelope in the diary day before yesterday, because I had not yet sent the envelope up the elevator to change the past …
Wait a minute —!
Mightn’t that mean that the diary — that the diary also — that in the diary —?
My legs were doing funny things. I had to sit down. My mouth was dry and my hands shook as I turned to the place where—
Yes! There were now pages and pages of fast loopy scrawl after the word “despair”!
13. Mrs. Walker Weeps
It’s happened! It’s happened! We called up the elevator to leave and there was a sign on the back wall. At first we thought it was one of Mr. Bodoni’s, but when my eyes got used to the light I saw it had our names on it! It said to read it before we came down, and because I tried to, it happened at last …
“Think an eagle will be enough?” Mr. Shaw said. “We never did find out what they charge, did we?”
“No,” Susan murmured.
“Let’s see … We’ve been here two days, more or less — oh, nuts! I don’t know why I’m making a fuss about it. Let’s just leave all we’ve got.” The coins clinked as he laid them out on the little table by his bed.
All in Good Time Page 9
