“Police work?” said father, scandalized. “Good God, why do I pay taxes? Why can’t the police do their own dirty work?”
But of course this was just father. He was pouring Johnny a drink while he talked and moving a copy of the Social Register out of the way while he did it. I picked up the book. It occurred to me that Gussie might be in it. So far all I knew was her name. And she was in it!
I remember feeling very queer when I had found her, and that father looked up and saw me. The next thing I knew Johnny was carrying me to the sofa, and father was pouring some of his best whisky down my throat. I sat up irritably.
“Stop it,” I said. “I didn’t faint. I just saw something in the Register.”
“I have never regarded it as a dramatic publication,” said father, shaken but doing his best. “However, if you say so—”
But Johnny had the book, and the place. I knew what he was reading: Garrison, Mr. and Mrs. William D. (Helen Moore) Lieutenant Jason Moore. Miss Augusta Garrison. Johnny looked at me. Father stared at us both.
“So that’s it,” said Johnny.
“That’s it,” I said dully.
“Perhaps,” said father, “if I understood what all this is about it might be easier. What is it?”
Johnny looked at him soberly.
“We’ve had a murder tonight, sir,” he said. “A girl was shot. It looks as though this Mrs. Garrison might have done it. Her daughter was in the house at the time.”
Father looked profoundly shocked. People in the Register simply did not do such things.
“You see,” said Johnny, “her son by a first marriage committed suicide on account of this girl. It looks as though tonight she was admitted to the house by the daughter, and she killed the girl. The daughter tried to cover up for her, poor kid. And she pretty nearly got away with it, too. If it hadn’t been for Anne here—”
The telephone rang. Father picked it up and handed it to Johnny. He listened.
“I see,” he said. “Well, I guess that settles something. All right, I’ll be around.”
He turned and faced us, his face sober.
“Gussie wasn’t so successful after all,” he said. “Mrs. Garrison has just been identified at the morgue. She fell under a bus tonight.”
All I could think of was Gussie doing all those desperate things to save her mother, and then failing after all. When Johnny came over and put his arms around me, I simply put my head on his shoulder and wept. Father poured himself another drink, as though he needed it, and glared at us both.
“Perhaps,” he said, “when you two have ceased to ignore my elderly blushes, you will tell me who was killed tonight. Or does it matter?”
I stopped crying and looked at him.
“It was Caroline Jennings, father,” I said. “You know. Caroline Jennings.”
“And who,” said father incredibly, “is—or was—Caroline Jennings?”
Test Blackout
HALLIDAY STOPPED IN THE hall and laid down, in order, his old steel helmet, his trench coat, his flashlight, and his automatic. Thus denuded, as it were, he became merely a man of forty-five, slightly stooped as to shoulder and with the faintly defeated look so common in business men nowadays.
The living room door was closed. With a glance to see that his equipment was out of sight he opened it and stood in the doorway. The four women around the bridge table looked up.
“I guess I’d better go, Laura,” he said apologetically. “The blackout begins pretty soon.”
Laura was dealing. He noticed that she was wearing her diamond wrist watch. She did not look up.
“All right,” she said. “Go on out and play.” She picked up her cards and looked at them. “I’m passing,” she said.
The other three women passed. The cards went down. Halliday stood in the doorway, apparently forgotten.
“About those curtains—” he said uncomfortably. “Don’t forget them, will you? I mean”—as Laura looked up resignedly—“it’s a real blackout. No lights anywhere in this district. When you hear the siren—”
“Good heavens!” said Laura. “As if I’ve heard about anything else all day!” She smiled at the other women. “He’s going out to save the town, girls. What will you bet he’s got his tin helmet in the hall?”
Halliday flushed. The girls laughed. They were stout middle-aged women, overdressed and smug. He thought of the other women he knew at the post, who carried on jobs all day and gave their evenings and often their nights to watching over the city. But it was a long time since he had argued with Laura, or with Laura’s friends.
“It does seem silly,” said one of them. “It’s hard to get enough men for a dinner party these days. I’m going to bid something. Let’s see.”
They had forgotten him entirely. He went out, closing the door behind him, and feeling slightly ridiculous, as though he had been caught playing with tin soldiers. He stood for a minute looking at himself in the hall mirror. He bore very little resemblance to the boy who had gone to France in 1917, singing The Old Gray Mare, with variations, and what he would do to the Kaiser when he got to Berlin. The light shone down on the thin hair on top of his head, and on the slight bulge below his belt. He tried holding in the bulge, but after a minute or so it was painful, and he let it go with a sigh of relief.
The trench coat was tight and smelled to heaven of moth balls, and the helmet had a tendency to slide down over his ears. He had had more hair when he wore it in France. But any hope that the combination would turn him into a dashing military figure died within him. He still looked what he was, a patient, slightly hopeless, middle-aged man, puffy under the eyes from the night life which Laura insisted upon, and too little business, which he blamed on his government and the New Deal.
He looked at his watch. He was still too early. The first signal was to come by telephone at ten, and it was only nine forty-five. Feeling in his pockets he found he had his tin whistle—purpose unknown—his flashlight, the end covered with thin blue paper, and his screwdriver. He looked at the last wryly. Fool thing, that every light in town had to be put out by hand. First you unscrewed the small door in the base of the pole. Then you reached in and turned off the fuse. Some of the wardens had already unscrewed the doors and then conveniently lost the screws. The police had gone around pasting bits of adhesive plaster to hold the doors shut, but even the plaster disappeared. Well—
The door behind him opened. It was Laura. She laughed when she saw him.
“I wish you could see yourself!” she said. “I hope nobody we know gets a look at you. Listen, Jim, I need some money.”
He looked at her. It seemed to him lately that Laura had changed, or perhaps he was seeing her for the first time. It had been different when they lived out of town, and he had commuted. She had had a garden then, and at night when he went home they would play two-handed solitaire, or go to the movies, or listen to the radio. But in 1929 he had been too busy to commute. Anyhow he had been making a lot of money. So they had moved in, and now where were they?
Laura’s voice was irritable.
“Did you hear me, Jim? I need some money.”
“I gave you some this morning.”
“It’s gone. I can’t run a place of this size on nothing.”
He unbuttoned the trench coat and pulled out his wallet.
“How much do you need?”
“Twenty. If I lose more I can give a check.”
This was his time, to tell her that there was no more money, that he was giving up the car, that they would have to leave the apartment when the lease was up. Even that he might close the office and try to get back into the service again. But he did not do it. He opened the wallet.
“That’s all I have.”
“You used to carry a lot of money.”
“That was when I had it to carry,” he said wearily.
But Laura did not hear him. She went back into the living room and closed the door.
The telephone still had not rung. He stood stil
l, looking out the window at the river below, at the stone-paved street, quiet now, which rumbled all day with the noise of trucks moving to and from the line of sheds and wharves. By one of those inexplicable shifts of population the riverfront had suddenly become fashionable. Huge apartments stood cheek by jowl with ancient houses and tenements, rickety and inflammable. One incendiary bomb, and they would burn and burn fast. And beyond them, across the street, were the wharves where ships were loaded with material for Europe, for Russia and the South Pacific. At least he hoped for the South Pacific.
There was a ship there now. It was out in the river, dark save for her riding lights. Waiting for the tide, probably, to slide out and meet her convoy somewhere, and to hope to get across. He wondered what it would be like to be on her, facing catastrophe; men staring across the black waters at night, working, eating and sleeping always under the shadow of death. A white ribbon coming across the water, the ship trying to escape the torpedo, and then—
He began slowly to put on his equipment. The telephone still had not rung. He made a final survey of the apartment: the maids’ rooms closed and undeniable snores from inside; the drawn window shades, the sand, the stirrup pump, long-handled shovel and asbestos gloves which Laura considered a part of the general hysteria. Then he took off his helmet, which was hurting his head, and sat down on a stool in the pantry where there was a telephone.
Maybe Laura was right, and he was a fool. He had become a warden largely on impulse. It had been one of their rare nights at home, and Laura had gone disgustedly to her room. Out of sheer loneliness he had taken a late walk along the riverfront, and a youth in a cap with a white brassard on his arm had been standing at the corner. It was bitterly cold, and in spite of his heavy mackinaw he looked half frozen.
Halliday had stopped. There was nothing to warn him that by doing just that he was to change the course of his entire life. He had merely stopped.
“What’s the idea?” he said. “Red Cross?”
“Air warden, Mr. Halliday. Just in case of trouble.”
Halliday looked surprised.
“Do I know you?” he said. “Or should I?”
The boy—he was little more than that—smiled.
“I’m your milkman. Name’s Kelly. I’ve seen you once in a while, coming home. I get around pretty early, you know.”
Halliday felt uncomfortable. He cleared his throat.
“Looks as though you don’t get much sleep,” he said.
Kelly grinned.
“I’m not on every night. But somebody’s got to do it. This river, for instance. They’d like to get a ship or two.”
“Then you think they’ll come?”
“It’s likely, isn’t it? Even if they don’t there are plenty of them here already.”
Laura was massaging cream into her face when he went back to the apartment. She had rolled her hair into aluminum curlers, and was now patiently patting her face. It was to the sharp slap of the patter, familiar as it was, that he told her. She stared at him in the mirror.
“Air warden?” she said suspiciously. “Out all night, I suppose. What am I to do while you’re parading the streets and feeling important? Sit here and twiddle my thumbs?”
“I’m over age, Laura,” he said. “If I can do my bit—”
“Saving the world for democracy!” she jeered. “The way you did before! All you brought back from that was a game leg and a medal. Lots of good they did you.”
He became an air warden the next afternoon. That is, he gave two character references and filled in a questionnaire. On the line which read occupation he thought for a minute. Then he wrote in, “brokerage business, if any.”
“Like that, is it?” said the officer, reading it.
“Like that,” Halliday said drily.
After that, to his surprise, he was fingerprinted.
“It won’t hurt,” said the officer. “Just relax, and let me do the work.”
So Halliday had relaxed, as much as was possible for a man who had been tight as the skin of a drum for thirteen years, but Laura had taken it rather hard when his card came and he handed it to her. It showed a stamp-size photograph of him, with a slight squint and the light from above focused on his thinning hair; and it stated that the Police Department of the city now recognized that he was appointed and hereby authorized to perform the duties of Post Warden in Precinct 15, Zone 2.
“What does it mean?” she said. “Are you telling me you’ve been fool enough to join that thing after all? At your age?”
“I’m not senile, Laura.”
But she was still resentful. He had not been called to duty yet, and that night they had made the usual dreary round. He had spent too much money and had had more than he needed to drink, and at the doorway of the apartment building they met young Kelly with a rack of milk bottles.
Kelly grinned cheerfully.
“Morning, Mr. Halliday,” he said. “Hear you’ve joined us. Glad to know it.”
“So that’s one of your new friends,” Laura said coldly, as they got into the elevator. “You might ask him up for a cocktail some time.”
To his surprise he had found himself liking his new job. He had never known anybody in the neighborhood. Now he found himself in a cross section of democracy. The officer on the beat wandered in sometimes to warm his hands. The heavy man with the scar turned out to be Higgins, his grocer. The cheerful individual with red hair was the local undertaker. And the women ranged from middle-aged widows, evidently well off, to stenographers and salesgirls who worked all day and were willing to work at the post all night.
When once a week he took the night watch at his post, from two until six in the morning, a little old gentleman who suffered from insomnia would wander in and let him take a nap.
“Can’t sleep anyhow,” he would say. “I’ll call you if the phone rings.”
He was less lonely than he had been for years. He learned how to put out an incendiary bomb. He learned how to bandage, to care for fractures, even to give artificial respiration. But Laura remained resentful. When one day there arrived with the grocery order a jar of brandied peaches, with a slip fastened to it which read “Compliments of Higgins & Company,” she eyed it suspiciously.
“What does it mean?”
“Mr. Higgins is an air warden at my post.”
“I see. Well, you’ll get it on the bill some way. I know these people.”
He wondered if she did. He was liking them a lot, men and women. Especially he liked young Kelly. He and Kelly both patrolled the waterfront. Each had two blocks, and sometimes they took them together. Kelly, it appeared, wanted to enlist in the army, but he had a small boy at home and his wife had died when the youngster was born. A woman took care of him during the day, but he was alone at night.
“A fellow doesn’t know what to do,” he said. “I’d like to kill me a few Germans or Japs, but what about the boy?”
“What about him now?” said Halliday, rather appalled. “Suppose we do get a bombing, and you’re out?”
“He knows what to do,” said Kelly. “He’s four. He’s to get out in the hall and sit on the floor, He’ll do it, too. He’s a smart kid.”
By Christmas Halliday had fallen into the routine, and was feeling better than he had in years. He was even sleeping, as he had not slept since ’29; perhaps not since the last war, when he had found it possible to sleep standing up, or even on the march. And he had lost the sense of loneliness which he had had for so many years. He knew the neighborhood now, and it knew him. Even the police.
“Hiya, Halliday. Any bombs tonight?”
They would grin at him, these big uniformed men, sometimes stop and talk to him.
“How’s the brokerage business these days?”
“Shot to hell. How’s crime?”
At Christmas Laura bought herself a diamond-studded wrist watch as his gift to her, and the day before he stopped in at a toy shop and sent a small electric train to Kelly’s boy.
Kelly was
smiling when they met that night on the waterfront.
“Wish you’d seen him,” he said. “Talk about excitement! But you shouldn’t have done it, Mr. Halliday.”
“I liked doing it,” Halliday said. “I have no children of my own.”
But as the weeks went on and nothing happened, interest in the work began to fall off. They had no money and no equipment, and orders given by the city one day were canceled the next. Halliday grimly held on. So did Kelly. Then had come the idea of a test blackout.
“It might revive some interest in the job,” said the senior warden worriedly. “We’ll make it noisy. Maybe have an ‘incident,’ if I can get a smoke bomb or two, and an empty house to use it in. Get out the fire engines too, and an ambulance. I’ll have to have permission, of course.”
So this was the night.
Halliday roused himself and looked at his watch. He still had five minutes. He snapped the brassard on his left arm and put on his helmet. Below on the river the ship still lay, but now there was smoke rising from her funnels. She was going out, then. Loaded with troops perhaps, crowded into her huge black hulk, sleeping in tiers one above the other. If he had had a son—
He went forward. The game was still going on, and Laura looked up as he opened the door.
“Look,” she said. “What did I tell you girls? Helmet and all!”
He smiled his patient rather tired smile.
“Orders,” he said. “Don’t forget the blackout, Laura. And the curtains. When you hear the siren—”
But Laura was not listening.
“It’s a laydown,” she said triumphantly, and spread her cards. When she finally looked up the telephone was ringing in the hall, and Halliday had gone.
The elevator boy eyed him with surprise as he went down.
“Sure look like a war tonight, Mr. Halliday,” he said, grinning.
“Well, if you’re interested, we’ve got a war,” Halliday said shortly.
He felt better when he got to the post. The place was crowded with men and women. There was a sense of expectancy over them all, and the senior warden looked tense, even pale.
Alibi for Isabel: And Other Stories Page 7
