THE TRAP-DOOR
By Sunday evening, a week after the wreck, my inaction had goaded me to
frenzy. The very sight of Johnson across the street or lurking, always
within sight of the house, kept me constantly exasperated. It was on
that day that things began to come to a focus, a burning-glass of
events that seemed to center on me.
I dined alone that evening in no cheerful frame of mind. There had been
a polo game the day before and I had lent a pony, which is always a bad
thing to do. And she had wrenched her shoulder, besides helping to lose
the game. There was no one in town: the temperature was ninety and
climbing, and my left hand persistently cramped under its bandage.
Mrs. Klopton herself saw me served, my bread buttered and cut in
tidbits, my meat ready for my fork. She hovered around me maternally,
obviously trying to cheer me.
“The paper says still warmer,” she ventured. “The thermometer is
ninety-two now.”
“And this coffee is two hundred and fifty,” I said, putting down my
cup. “Where is Euphemia? I haven’t seen her around, or heard a dish
smash all day.”
“Euphemia is in bed,” Mrs. Klopton said gravely. “Is your meat cut
small enough, Mr. Lawrence?” Mrs. Klopton can throw more mystery into
an ordinary sentence than any one I know. She can say, “Are your sheets
damp, sir?” And I can tell from her tone that the house across the
street has been robbed, or that my left hand neighbor has appendicitis.
So now I looked up and asked the question she was waiting for.
“What’s the matter with Euphemia?” I inquired idly.
“Frightened into her bed,” Mrs. Klopton said in a stage whisper. “She’s
had three hot water bottles and she hasn’t done a thing all day but
moan.”
“She oughtn’t to take hot water bottles,” I said in my severest tone.
“One would make me moan. You need not wait, I’ll ring if I need
anything.”
Mrs. Klopton sailed to the door, where she stopped and wheeled
indignantly. “I only hope you won’t laugh on the wrong side of your
face some morning, Mr. Lawrence,” she declared, with Christian
fortitude. “But I warn you, I am going to have the police watch that
house next door.”
I was half inclined to tell her that both it and we were under police
surveillance at that moment. But I like Mrs. Klopton, in spite of the
fact that I make her life a torment for her, so I refrained.
“Last night, when the paper said it was going to storm, I sent Euphemia
to the roof to bring the rugs in. Eliza had slipped out, although it
was her evening in. Euphemia went up to the roof—it was eleven
o’clock—and soon I heard her running down-stairs crying. When she got
to my room she just folded up on the floor. She said there was a black
figure sitting on the parapet of the house next door—the empty
house—and that when she appeared it rose and waved long black arms at
her and spit like a cat.”
I had finished my dinner and was lighting a cigarette. “If there was
any one up there, which I doubt, they probably sneezed,” I suggested.
“But if you feel uneasy, I’ll take a look around the roof to-night
before I turn in. As far as Euphemia goes, I wouldn’t be uneasy about
her—doesn’t she always have an attack of some sort when Eliza rings in
an extra evening on her?”
So I made a superficial examination of the window locks that night,
visiting parts of the house that I had not seen since I bought it. Then
I went to the roof. Evidently it had not been intended for any purpose
save to cover the house, for unlike the houses around, there was no
staircase. A ladder and a trap-door led to it, and it required some
nice balancing on my part to get up with my useless arm. I made it,
however, and found this unexplored part of my domain rather attractive.
It was cooler than down-stairs, and I sat on the brick parapet and
smoked my final cigarette. The roof of the empty house adjoined mine
along the back wing, but investigation showed that the trap-door across
the low dividing wall was bolted underneath.
There was nothing out of the ordinary anywhere, and so I assured Mrs.
Klopton. Needless to say, I did not tell her that I had left the
trap-door open, to see if it would improve the temperature of the
house. I went to bed at midnight, merely because there was nothing else
to do. I turned on the night lamp at the head of my bed, and picked up
a volume of Shaw at random (it was _Arms and the Man_, and I remember
thinking grimly that I was a good bit of a chocolate cream soldier
myself), and prepared to go to sleep. Shaw always puts me to sleep. I
have no apologies to make for what occurred that night, and not even an
explanation that I am sure of. I did a foolish thing under impulse, and
I have not been sorry.
It was something after two when the door-bell rang. It rang quickly,
twice. I got up drowsily, for the maids and Mrs. Klopton always lock
themselves beyond reach of the bell at night, and put on a
dressing-gown. The bell rang again on my way down-stairs. I lit the
hall light and opened the door. I was wide-awake now, and I saw that it
was Johnson. His bald head shone in the light—his crooked mouth was
twisted in a smile.
“Good Heavens, man,” I said irritably. “Don’t you ever go home and go
to bed?”
He closed the vestibule door behind him and cavalierly turned out the
light. Our dialogue was sharp, staccato.
“Have you a key to the empty house next door?” he demanded. “Somebody’s
in there, and the latch is caught.”
“The houses are alike. The key to this door may fit. Did you see them
go in?”
“No. There’s a light moving up from room to room. I saw something like
it last night, and I have been watching. The patrolman reported queer
doings there a week or so ago.”
“A light!” I exclaimed. “Do you mean that you—”
“Very likely,” he said grimly. “Have you a revolver?”
“All kinds in the gun rack,” I replied, and going into the den, I came
back with a Smith and Wesson. “I’m not much use,” I explained, “with
this arm, but I’ll do what I can. There may be somebody there. The
servants here have been uneasy.”
Johnson planned the campaign. He suggested on account of my familiarity
with the roof, that I go there and cut off escape in that direction. “I
have Robison out there now—the patrolman on the beat,” he said. “He’ll
watch below and you above, while I search the house. Be as quiet as
possible.”
I was rather amused. I put on some clothes and felt my way carefully up
the stairs, the revolver swinging free in my pocket, my hand on the
rail. At the foot of the ladder I stopped and looked up. Above me there
was a gray rectangle of sky dotted with stars. It occurred to me that
with my one serviceable hand holding the ladder, I was hardly in a
position to defend myself, that I was about to hoist a body that I am
rather careful of into a danger I couldn’t see and wasn’t particularly
keen about anyhow. I don’t mind saying that the seconds it took me to
scramble up the ladder were among the most unpleasant that I recall.
I got to the top, however, without incident. I could see fairly well
after the darkness of the house beneath, but there was nothing
suspicious in sight. The roofs, separated by two feet of brick wall,
stretched around me, unbroken save by an occasional chimney. I went
very softly over to the other trap, the one belonging to the suspected
house. It was closed, but I imagined I could hear Johnson’s footsteps
ascending heavily. Then even that was gone. A near-by clock struck
three as I stood waiting. I examined my revolver then, for the first
time, and found it was empty!
I had been rather skeptical until now. I had had the usual tolerant
attitude of the man who is summoned from his bed to search for
burglars, combined with the artificial courage of firearms. With the
discovery of my empty gun, I felt like a man on the top of a volcano in
lively eruption. Suddenly I found myself staring incredulously at the
trap-door at my feet. I had examined it early in the evening and found
it bolted. Did I imagine it, or had it raised about an inch? Wasn’t it
moving slowly as I looked? No, I am not a hero: I was startled almost
into a panic. I had one arm, and whoever was raising that trap-door had
two. My knees had a queer inclination to bend the wrong way.
Johnson’s footsteps were distinct enough, but he was evidently far
below. The trap, raised perhaps two inches now, remained stationary.
There was no sound from beneath it: once I thought I heard two or three
gasping respirations: I am not sure they were not my own. I wanted
desperately to stand on one leg at a time and hold the other up out of
focus of a possible revolver.
I did not see the hand appear. There was nothing there, and then it was
there, clutching the frame of the trap. I did the only thing I could
think of; I put my foot on it!
There was not a sound from beneath. The next moment I was kneeling and
had clutched the wrist just above the hand. After a second’s struggle,
the arm was still. With something real to face, I was myself again.
“Don’t move, or I’ll stand on the trap and break your arm,” I panted.
What else could I threaten? I couldn’t shoot, I couldn’t even fight.
“Johnson!” I called.
And then I realized the thing that stayed with me for a month, the
thing I can not think of even now without a shudder. The hand lay ice
cold, strangely quiescent. Under my fingers, an artery was beating
feebly. The wrist was as slender as—I held the hand to the light. Then
I let it drop.
“Good Lord,” I muttered, and remained on my knees, staring at the spot
where the hand had been. It was gone now: there was a faint rustle in
the darkness below, and then silence.
I held up my own hand in the starlight and stared at a long scratch in
the palm. “A woman!” I said to myself stupidly. “By all that’s
ridiculous, a woman!”
Johnson was striking matches below and swearing softly to himself. “How
the devil do you get to the roof?” he called. “I think I’ve broken my
nose.”
He found the ladder after a short search and stood at the bottom,
looking up at me. “Well, I suppose you haven’t seen him?” he inquired.
“There are enough darned cubbyholes in this house to hide a patrol
wagon load of thieves.” He lighted a fresh match. “Hello, here’s
another door!”
By the sound of his diminishing footsteps I supposed it was a rear
staircase. He came up again in ten minutes or so, this time with the
policeman.
“He’s gone, all right,” he said ruefully. “If you’d been attending to
your business, Robison, you’d have watched the back door.”
“I’m not twins.” Robison was surly.
“Well,” I broke in, as cheerfully as I could, “if you are through with
this jolly little affair, and can get down my ladder without having my
housekeeper ring the burglar alarm, I have some good Monongahela
whisky—eh?”
They came without a second invitation across the roof, and with them
safely away from the house I breathed more freely. Down in the den I
fulfilled my promise, which Johnson drank to the toast, “Coming through
the rye.” He examined my gun rack with the eye of a connoisseur, and
even when he was about to go he cast a loving eye back at the weapons.
“Ever been in the army?” he inquired.
“No,” I said with a bitterness that he noticed but failed to
comprehend. “I’m a chocolate cream soldier—you don’t read Shaw, I
suppose, Johnson?”
“Never heard of him,” the detective said indifferently. “Well, good
night, Mr. Blakeley. Much obliged.” At the door he hesitated and
coughed.
“I suppose you understand, Mr. Blakeley,” he said awkwardly, “that
this—er—surveillance is all in the day’s work. I don’t like it, but
it’s duty. Every man to his duty, sir.”
“Sometime when you are in an open mood, Johnson,” I returned, “you can
explain why I am being watched at all.”