Out of the Air Part 10

VI

"How did they find me, Glorious Lutie?" Susannah asked next morning.

"How _did_ they find me? If I could only teach myself to listen to the warning of those little hammers. Something told me when I saw Warner walking along the corridor of the Carman Building that he was not there by accident. Something told me when I ran into O'Hearn at the Attic the other night that _he_ was not _there_ by accident. They have been following me all the time. They've known what I've been doing every moment. Just as Byan knows where I am now. How did they do it? I've never suspected it for a moment. I've never seen anybody. I'm frightened, Glorious Lutie; I'm dreadfully frightened. I don't know where to turn. If I only had a real friend-- But perhaps that wouldn't help as much as I think. For I'm afraid--I'm too afraid to tell _anybody_--"

All this, she said as usual, wordlessly. But she said it from her bed, her eyes fixed in a lackl.u.s.ter stare on the little oval gleam of the miniature.

"I don't know what I'd do without you, Glorious Lutie, to tell my troubles to. You're a great deal more than a picture to me. You're a real presence-- Oh, if you could only see for me now. I wonder if Byan is still in his room? I wonder what he's going to do. I mean--what is the next move? Oh, of course he's there! He wants to talk with me. But I won't let him talk with me. I'll stay in this room until I starve! And he can't telephone. How can he put over what he wants to say?"

That question answered itself automatically when she dragged herself up from bed. A white square glimmered beside her door. She pounced upon it.

"Dear Miss Ayer:

"Of course we have known where you were and what you were doing every instant since you left the office. We did not interfere with your quitting your boarding-house because we preferred to give you a few days to think things over. I hope you've been enjoying your little excursions to the Museum and the Aquarium.

We knew you'd come to your senses after a while and be ready to talk business. That is why you've had those little, accidental meetings from time to time. That advertis.e.m.e.nt for a job in the Carman Building was a decoy ad. It is useless for you to try to get away from us.

"And in the meantime the situation is getting more and more desperate. You know why. Now listen. We can clean up on that little business deal in three days. Do you know what that means?

Maybe a hundred thousand dollars. We'll let you in. Your share would be twelve thousand five hundred. Don't that sound pretty good to you? You can avoid any trouble by going away with us. Or you can go alone and n.o.body will bother you. We'll give you the dope on that; for believe me, we know how. And you wouldn't have to do a thing you don't want to do. We've got grandpa tamed now in regard to you. We've told him that you're a lady, and won't stand for that rough stuff. He's wild about you, and crazy to see you, and make it all right again. Now why not use a little sense? Slip a note under my door across the way and tell me that you'll doll yourself up and be ready to go to dinner with him tonight at seven."

A postscript added: "This is unsigned and typewritten on your own typewriter and so couldn't be used by anyone who didn't like our way of doing business. For your own safety though, I advise you to burn it."

This last was the one bit of advice in the letter which Susannah followed. She lighted a match and burned it over her water basin. Then she forced her protesting throat to swallow a gla.s.s of milk. She ate some crackers. After that she went to bed.

What to do and where to go! Over and over again, she turned the meager possibilities of her situation. Nothing offered escape. A hackneyed phrase floated into her mind--"woman's wit." From time immemorial it had been a bromidiom that any woman, however stupid, could outwit any man, however clever. Was it true? Perhaps not all the time, and perhaps sometimes. That was the only way though--she must pit her nimble, inexperienced woman's wit against their heavier but trained man's wit.

Her problem was to get out of this house, unseen. But how? All kinds of fantastic schemes floated through her tired mind. If she could only disguise herself-- But she would have to go out first to get the disguise. And Byan was across the hall, waiting for just that move. If there were only a convenient fire-escape! But of course he would antic.i.p.ate that. If she could only summon a taxi, leap into it and drive for an hour! But she would have to telephone for the taxi in the outside hall, where Byan could hear her. On and on, she drove her tired mind; inventing schemes more and more impracticable. For a long time, that woman's wit sp.a.w.ned nothing--

Then suddenly a curious idea came to her. It was so ridiculous that she rejected it instantly. Ridiculous--and it stood ninety-nine per cent chance of failure; offered but one per cent chance of success.

Nevertheless it recurred. It offered more and more suggestion, more and more temptation. True, it was a thing barely possible; true also, that it was the only thing possible. But could she put it through? Had she the nerve? Had she the strength?

She must find both the nerve and the strength.

She bathed and dressed quickly and with a growing steadiness. She packed her belongings into her suitcase, put Glorious Lutie's miniature in her handbag.

She sat down at her bureau and wrote a note:

"If you will come to my room, after you have had your breakfast, I will talk the matter over with you. I will not leave the building before you return. I will be ready to see you at ten o'clock."

She opened her door, walked across the corridor; slipped the note under the door of Byan's room. Then she hurried back; locked her door; sat down and waited, her hands clasped. Her hands grew colder and colder until they seemed like marble, but all the time her mind seemed to steady and clarify.

After a long while she heard Byan's door open. She heard his steps retreating down the hall and over the stairs.

Ten minutes later, Susannah appeared, suitcase in hand, at the janitor's office on the first floor. "I'm Miss Ayer in No. 9, second floor," she said. "May I leave this suitcase here? I've just thought that I wanted to go to a friend's room on the fifth floor and I don't want to lug it up all those stairs."

The janitor considered her for a puzzled second. Of course he was in Byan's pay, Susannah reflected.

"Sure," he answered uncertainly after a while.

"I'm expecting a gentleman to call on me," Susannah went on steadily.

"Tell him I'll be on the fifth floor at No. 9. My friend is out," she ended in glib explanation, "but she's left her key with me. There's a little work that I wanted to do on her typewriter." The janitor--she had worked this out in advance--must know that Room 9, fifth floor--was occupied by a woman who owned a typewriter. Susannah established that when, a few days before, she had restored to its owner a letter shoved by mistake under her own door.

Susannah deposited her bag on the floor in the janitor's office. She walked steadily up the stairs to the second floor. She felt the janitor's gaze on the first flight of her progress. She stopped just before she reached her own room, glanced back. She was alone there. The janitor had not followed her. Perhaps Byan's instructions to him were only to watch the door. With a swift pounce, she ran to Byan's door, turned the k.n.o.b.

It opened.

She ran to the closet; opened that. As she suspected, it was empty.

Indeed, her swift glance had discovered no signs of occupancy in the room. Even the bed was undisturbed. Byan had hired it, of course, just for the purpose of being there that one night. Susannah closed the closet door after her, so that the merest crack let in the air she should demand--and waited. In that desperate hour when she lay thinking, the idea had suddenly flashed into her mind that there was only one place in the house where Byan would not look for her. That place was his own room. But it would not have occurred to her to take refuge there if she had not noted, even in her taut terror of the night before, that when Byan entered his own room he had omitted to lock the door after him. As indeed, why should he? There was nothing to steal in it but Byan. Moreover, of course Byan had sat up all night--his door unlocked--ready to forestall any effort of hers to escape.

An hour later Susannah heard a padded, rather brisk step ascending the stairs, coming along the hall. It was Byan, of course--no one could mistake his pace. He knocked on the door of her room; at first gently, then insistently. A pause. Then he tried the k.n.o.b, again at first gently, then insistently. His steps retreated down the hall and the stairs. He must have got a pa.s.s-key from the janitor, for when, a long minute later, she heard his steps return, the sc.r.a.ping of a lock sounded from across the hall. She heard her somewhat rusty door-hinges creak.

There followed a low whistle as of surprise, then an irregular succession of steps and creaks proving that he was looking under the bed, was inspecting the closet. She heard him retreat again down the stairs, and braced herself to endure a longer wait. At last, two pairs of feet sounded on the stairs. Had her ruse fully succeeded--would they mount at once to Room 9, fifth floor? No--they were coming again along the second-floor corridor. With a tingle of nerves in her temples and cheeks, she realized that she had reached the supreme moment of peril.

They began knocking at every door on the second-floor corridors. Once she heard a m.u.f.fled colloquy--the impatient tones of some strange man, the apologetic voice of the janitor. At other doors she heard, shortly after the knock, the sc.r.a.ping of the pa.s.s-key. Now they were in the room just beyond the wall of the closet where she was crouching. She heard them enter and emerge--the moment had come! But their footsteps pa.s.sed her door; an instant later, she heard the pa.s.s-key grate in the door of the room on the other side. Then--one hand shaking convulsively on the k.n.o.b of Byan's closet door--she heard them go flying up the stairs to the third story--the fourth--

Before noon of that haunted, hunted morning, Susannah found a room in a curious way. When she escaped from the house in the West Twenties, she had walked westward almost to the river. In a little den of a restaurant just off the docks, she ordered breakfast and the morning newspapers.

But when she tried to look over the advertising columns with a view to finding a room, she had a violent fit of trembling. The members of the Carbonado Mining Company, she recalled to herself, were studying those advertis.e.m.e.nts just as closely as she; and perhaps at that very moment.

Hiding in a great city! Why, she thought to herself, it's the only place where you can't hide!

Susannah dawdled over breakfast as long as she dared. She found herself wincing as she emerged onto the busy dingy street of docks. She stopped under the shade of an awning and controlled the abnormal fluttering of her heart while she thought out her situation. She dared no longer walk the streets. She dared not go to a real-estate agent. How, then, might she find a room and a hiding-place?

Then a Salvation Army girl came picking her way across the crowded, cluttered dock-pavement toward her awning. And Susannah had a sudden impulse which she afterwards described to Glorious Lutie as a stroke of genius. She came out to the edge of the pavement and accosted the Blue Bonnet.

"Do you know of any place where a girl who's a stranger in New York may find a cheap and respectable lodging?" she asked.

The Salvation Army girl gave her a long, steady scrutiny from under the scoop of her bonnet.

"My sister keeps a rooming-house up on Eighth Avenue," she said finally.

"She always has an extra room, and she will take you in, I guess. Have you a bit of paper? I'll write her a note."

Susannah flew, swift as a homing dove, to the address. The landlady, a shapeless, featureless, middle-aged blonde, read the note; herself gave a long glance of scrutiny, and showed the room. Susannah's examination was merely perfunctory. In fact, she looked with eyes which saw not.

Probably never before did a shabby, battered bedchamber, stained as to ceiling, peeling as to wallpaper, carelessly patched as to carpet, indescribably broken-down and nondescript as to furniture, seem a very paradise to the eyes of twenty-five.

The bed was humpy, but it was a double bed; and clean. Susannah sank on to it. She did not rise for a long time. Then, true to her accepted etiquette on occasions of this kind, she drew the miniature from her handbag and pinned it on to the wall beside her bureau.

"Glorious Lutie," her thoughts ran, "I'm as weak as a sick cat. If there was ever a girl more terrified, more friendless, more worn-out than I feel at this moment, I'd like to know how she got that way. I want to crawl into that bed and stay there for a week just reveling in the thought that I'm safe. Safe, Glorious Lutie. Safe! Alone with you. And n.o.body to be afraid of. Our funds are running low of course. I've nothing to p.a.w.n except you. But don't be afraid--I'll never p.a.w.n you. If we have to go down, we'll go down together and with all sails set. I've got an awful hate and fear on this job-hunting business now. Heaven knows I don't want much money; only enough to live on. I guess I won't try to be a high-cla.s.s queen of secretaries any longer--or at least for the present. My lay is to lie low for a month or two. I'll rest for a few days. Then I'll go into--what? What, Glorious Lutie, tell me what?

I've got it! Domestic service. That's my escape. I've certainly got brains enough to be a second girl and they never could find me tucked away in somebody's house, especially if I never take my afternoons out.

Which, believe me, Glorious Lutie, I won't. I'll spend them all with you. Oh, what an idea that is! I'll wait around here for about a week and then I'll tackle one of the domestic service agencies. If I know anything about after-the-war conditions, I'll be snapped up like hot cakes."

Keeping her promise to herself, Susannah stayed as much as possible indoors. The landlady consented to give her breakfast, but she would do no more--even that was an accommodation. In grat.i.tude, Susannah took care of her own room. She kept it in spotless order; she even pottered with repairs. With breakfast at home, she had no need to leave the house of mornings. She went without luncheon; and late in the afternoon, before the home-going flood from the offices, she had dinner in a Child's restaurant round the corner. For the rest of the time, she read the landlady's books--few, and mostly cheap. But they included a set of d.i.c.kens; and she renewed acquaintance with a novelist whom she loved for himself and who called up memories of her happiest times. But her mood with d.i.c.kens was curiously capricious. His deaths and persecutions and poignant tragedies she could no longer endure--they swept her into a gulf of black melancholy. On the second day of her voluntary imprisonment, she glanced through _Bleak House_; stumbled into the wanderings of Little Jo through the streets of London. Suddenly she surprised herself by a fit of hysterical, trembling tears. This explosion cleared her mental airs; but afterward she skipped through d.i.c.kens, picking and choosing his humors, his love-pa.s.sages, his gargantuan feasts in wayside inns.

When her eyes grew weary with reading, or when she ran into one of those pa.s.sages which brought the black cloud, Susannah gazed vacantly out of the window.

Her lodging-house stood on a corner; she had a back, corner room on the third floor. The house next door, on the side street, finished to the rear in a two-story shed. Its roof lay almost under her window. The landlady, upon showing the room, had called her attention to this shed.

"We've got no regular fire escapes, dearie," she said, "but in case of trouble, you're all right. You just step out here and if the skylight ain't open, somebody'll get you down with a ladder. A person can't be too careful about fires!" Across the skylight lay a few scanty backyards--treeless, gra.s.sless, uninteresting. This city area of yards and sheds seemed to be the club, the Rialto for all the stray cats of Eighth Avenue. Susannah named them, endowed them with personalities.

Their squabbles, their amours, their melodramatic stalking, gave her a kind of apathetic interest.

The interest lessened as three days went by, and the apathy deepened.