Athalie Part 38

The landlady was a thin, anxious, and very common woman with false hair and teeth; and evidently determined to secure Athalie for a lodger.

But the terms she offered the girl for the entire top floor were so absurdly small that Athalie hesitated, astonished and perplexed.

"Oh, there's a jinx in the place," said the landlady; "I ain't aiming to deceive n.o.body, and I'll tell you the G.o.d-awful truth. If I don't,"

she added navely, "somebody else is sure to hand it to you and you'll get sore on me and quit."

"What _is_ the matter with the apartment?" inquired the girl uneasily.

"I'll tell you: the lady that had it went dead on me last August."

"Is that all?"

"No, dearie. It was chloral. And of course, the papers got hold of it and n.o.body wants the apartment. That's why you get it cheap--if you'll take it and chase out the jinx that's been wished on me. Will you, dearie?"

"I don't know," said the girl, looking around at the newly decorated and cheerful rooms.

The landlady sniffed: "It certainly was one on me when I let that jinx into my house--to have her go dead on me and all like that."

"Poor thing," murmured Athalie, partly to herself.

"No, she wasn't poor. You ought to have seen her rings! Them's what got her into trouble, dearie;--and the roll she flashed."

"Wasn't it suicide?" asked Athalie.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'Wasn't it suicide?' asked Athalie."]

"I gotta tell you the truth. No, it wasn't. She was feeling fine and dandy. Business had went good.... There was a young man to visit her that evening. I seen him go up the stairs.... But I was that sleepy I went to bed. So I didn't see him come down. And next day at noon when I went up to do the room she lay dead onto the floor, and her rings gone, and the roll missing out of her stocking."

"Did the man kill her?"

"Yes, dearie. And the papers had it. That's what put me in Dutch. I gotta be honest with _you_. You'd hear it, anyway."

"But how could he give her chloral--"

The anxious, excited little woman's volubility could suffer restraint no longer:

"Oh, he could dope her easy in the dark!" she burst out. "Not that the house ain't thur'ly respectable as far as I can help it, and all my lodgers is refined. No, Miss Greensleeve, I won't stand for nothing that ain't refined and genteel. Only what can a honest woman do when she's abed and asleep, what with all the latch keys and entertainin', and things like that? No, Miss Greensleeve, I ain't got myself to blame, being decent and law-abiding and all like that, what with the police keeping tabs and the neighbourhood not being Fifth Avenoo either!--and this jinx wished on me--"

"Please--"

"Oh, I suppose you ain't a-goin' to stay here now that you've learned all about these goin's on and all like that--"

"_Please_ wait!"--for the voluble landlady was already beginning to sniffle;--"I am perfectly willing to stay, Mrs. Meehan,--if you will promise to be a little patient about my rent until I secure a position--"

"Oh, I will, Miss Greensleeve! I ain't plannin' to press you none! I know how it is with money and with young ladies. Easy come, easy go!

Just give me what you can. I ain't fixed any too good myself, what with butchers and bakers and rent owed me and all like that. I guess I can trust you to act fair and square--"

"Yes; I am square--so far."

Mrs. Meehan began to sob, partly with relief, partly with a general tendency to sentimental hysteria: "I can see that, dearie. And say--if you're quiet, I ain't peekin' around corners and through key-holes.

No, Miss Greensleeve; that ain't my style! Quiet behaved young ladies can have their company without me saying nothing to n.o.body. All I ask is that no lady will cut up flossy in any shape, form, or manner, but behave genteel and refined to one and all. I don't want no policeman in the area. That ain't much to ask, is it?" she gasped, fairly out of breath between eloquence and tears.

"No," said Athalie with a faint smile, "it isn't much to ask."

And so the agreement was concluded; Mrs. Meehan brought in fresh linen for bed and bathroom, pulled out the new bureau drawers and dusted them, carried away a few anaemic geraniums in pots, and swept the new hardwood floor with a dry mop, explaining that the entire apartment had been renovated and redecorated since the tragic episode of last August, and that all the furniture was brand new.

"Her trunks and clothes and all like that was took by the police,"

explained Mrs. Meehan, "but she left some rubbish behind a sliding panel which they didn't find. I found it and I put it on the top shelf in the closet--"

She dragged a chair thither, mounted it, and presently came trotting back to the front room, carrying in both arms a bulky box of green morocco and a large paper parcel bursting with odds and ends of tinsel and silk. These she dumped on the centre table, saying: "She had a cabinet-maker fix up a cupboard in the baseboard, and that's where she kept gimcracks. The police done me damage enough without my showin'

them her hidin' place and the things she kept there. Here--I'll show it to you! It's full of keys and electric wires and switches--"

She took Athalie by the arm and drew her over to the west side of the room.

"You can't see nothing there, can you?" she demanded, pointing at the high wainscoting of dull wood polished by age.

Athalie confessed she could not.

"Look!"

Mrs. Meehan pa.s.sed her bony hand along the panels until her work-worn forefinger rested on a polished knot in the richly grained wood. Then she pushed; and the entire square of panels swung outward, lowering like a drawbridge, and presently rested flat on the floor.

"How odd!" exclaimed Athalie, kneeling to see better.

What she saw was a cupboard lined with asbestos, and an elaborate electric switchboard set with keys from which innumerable insulated wires radiated, entering tubes that disappeared in every direction.

"What are all these for?" she asked, rising to her feet.

"Dearie, I've got to be honest with _you_. This here lady was a meejum."

"A--what?"

"A meejum."

"What is that?"

"Why don't you know, dearie? She threw trances for twenty per. She seen things. She done stunts with tables and tambourines and accordions. Why this here place is all wired and fixed up between the walls and the ceiling and roof and the flooring, too. There is chimes and bells and harmonicas and mechanical banjos under the flooring and in the walls and ceiling. There's a whispering phonograph, too, and something that sighs and sobs. Also a machine that is full of singing birds that pipe up just as sweet and soft and natural as can be.

"On rainy days you can amuse yourself with them keys; I don't like to fool with them myself, being nervous with a weak back and my vittles not setting right and all like that--" Again she ran down from sheer lack of breath.

Athalie gazed curiously at the secret cupboard. After a few moments she bent over, lifted and replaced the panelling and pa.s.sed her slim hand over the wainscot, thoughtfully.

"So the woman was a trance-medium," she said, half to herself.

"Yes, Miss Greensleeve. She read the stars, too, and she done cards on the side; you know--all about a blond gentleman that wants to meet you and a dark lady comin' over the water to do something mean to you. She charged high, but she had customers enough--swell ladies, too, in their automobiles, and old gentlemen and young and all like that....

Here's part of her outfit"--leading Athalie to the centre table and opening the green morocco box.

In the box was a slim bronze tripod and a big sphere of crystal. Mrs.

Meehan placed the tripod on the table and set the crystal sphere upon it, saying dubiously: "She claimed that she could see things in that.