You're All Alone (illustrated) (8 page)

He stopped dead, stared, took a backward step.

This couldn’t be. He must have made a mistake.

But his memory of the gate—and especially of the chalk-mark—made that impossible.

The sinking sun suddenly sent a spectral yellow afterglow, illuminating everything clearly.

A gravel drive led up to just the sort of big stone mansion he had imagined—turreted, slate-roofed, heavy-eaved, in the style of the 1890’s.

But the gate and fence were rusty, tall weeds encroached on the drive, lawn and flowerbeds were a wilderness, the upper windows were blank and curtainless, most of them broken, those on the first floor were boarded up, pigeon droppings whitened the somber brown stone, and in the center of the lawn, half hidden by the weeds, was a weather-bleached sign:

FOR SALE

It doesn’t do for too many people to come alive, brother. The big engine gets out of whack. And the mean guys don’t want any competition. They get busy and rub it out . . .

CARR PUSHED doubtfully at the iron gate. It opened a couple of feet, then squidged to a stop against gravel still damp from yesterday morning’s rain. He stepped inside, frowning. He was bothered by a vague and dreamlike sense of recognition.

Suddenly he recalled the reason for it. He had seen pictures of this place in popular magazines, even read an article about it. It was the old Beddoes house, home of one of Chicago’s most fabulous millionaires of the 1890’s. John Claire Beddoes had been a pillar of society, but there were many persistent traditions about his secret vices. He was even supposed to have kept a young mistress in this very house for ten years under the eyes of his wife—though by what trickery or concealment, or sheer brazenness, was never explained.

But the house had been empty for the past twenty-five years. The magazine article had been very definite on that point. Its huge size and the fact that it was owned by an eccentric old maid, last of the Beddoes line, who lived on the Italian Riviera, had combined to make its sale impossible.

All this while Carr’s feet were carrying him up the drive, which led back of the house, passing under a porte-cochere. He had almost reached it when he noticed the footprints.

They were a woman’s, they were quite fresh, and yet they were sunk more deeply than his own. They must have been made since the rain. There were two sets, one leading toward the porte-cochere, the other back from it.

Looking at the black ruined flowerbeds, inhaling their dank odor, Carr was relieved that there were footprints.

He examined them more closely. Those leading toward the port-cochère were deeper and more widely spaced. He remembered that Jane had been almost running.

But the most startling discovery was that the footprints apparently didn’t enter the house at all. They clustered confusedly under the port-cochère, then returned toward the gate. Evidently Jane had waited until he was gone, then retraced her steps.

He walked back to the gate. A submerged memory from last night was tugging at his mind. He looked along the iron fence. He noticed a scrap of paper lodged in the low back shoots of some leafless shrub.

He remembered something white fluttering from Jane’s handbag in the dark, drifting through the fence.

He worked his way to it, pushing between the fence and the shrubbery. Unpruned shoots caught at his coat.

The paper was twice creased and the edges were yellowed and frayed, as if it had been carried around for a long time. It was not rain-marked. Unfolding it, he found the inside filled with a brown-inked script vividly recalling Jane’s scribbled warning. Moving toward the center of the lawn to catch the failing light, he read:

Always keep up appearances.

Always be doing something.

Always be first or last.

Always be alone.

Always have a route of escape.

Never hesitate, or you’re lost.

Never do anything odd—it wouldn’t be noticed.

Never move things—it makes gaps.

Never touch anyone—DANGER!

MACHINERY.

Never run—they’re faster.

Never look at a stranger—it might be one of them.

Some animals are really alive.

Carr looked over his shoulder at the boarded-up house. A lean bird skimmed behind the roof. Somewhere down the block footsteps were clicking on concrete.

HE CONSIDERED the shape of the paper. It was about that of an envelope and the edges were torn. At first glance the other side seemed blank. Then he saw a faded postmark and address. He struck a match and, holding it close to the paper, made out the name—Jane Gregg; and the city—Chicago; and noticed that the postmark was at least a year old.

The address, lying in a crease, took him longer to decipher.

1924 Mayberry St.

The footsteps were closer. He looked up. Beyond the fence an elderly couple was passing. He guiltily whipped out the match, but they walked by without turning their heads. After a minute he slipped out and walked west.

The streetlights winked on. The leaves near the lights looked an artificial green. He walked faster.

The houses shouldered closer together, grew smaller, crept toward the street. The trees straggled, gave out, the grass sickened. Suddenly the houses coallesced, reached the sidewalk with a rush, shot up in towering brick combers, became the barracks of the middle classes.

His mind kept repeating a name. Jane Gregg. He’d half believed all along she was the girl loony Tom Elvested had talked about—the girl he’d made a date with, through Tom, this very afternoon.

A bent yellow street sign said, “Mayberry.” He looked at the spotty gold numerals on the glass door of the first apartment. They were 19S4-S8. As he went down the street he had the feeling that he was walking back across the years.

The first floor of 1922-24 was lighted on the 24 side, except for a small dark sunporch. Behind one window he saw the edge of a red davenport and the head and shoulder of a gray-haired man in shirt-sleeves reading a newspaper. Inside the low-ceilinged vestibule he turned to the brass letter boxes on the 24 side. The first one read: “Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Gregg.” After a moment he pushed the button, waited a moment, pushed It again.

He could hear the bell clearly, but there was no response, neither a mumble from the speaking tube, nor a buzz from the lock of the door to the stairs.

Yet the Gregg apartment ought to be the one in which he had seen the old man sitting.

Beyond the inner door, in the darkness of the stair well, he thought he saw something move. He couldn’t tell what it was. When he stepped closer and peered in, he saw nothing.

He went outside. He craned his neck. The old man was still sitting there. An old man—perhaps deaf?

Then, as Carr watched, the old man put down his paper, settled back, looked across the room, and from the window came the opening triplets of the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata.

Carr felt the wire that fenced the tiny, nearly grassless plot press his calf, and realized that he had taken a backward step. He reminded himself that he’d heard Jane play only the third movement. He couldn’t know she’d play the first just this way.

He went back into the vestibule, again pushed the button, heard the bell. The piano notes did not falter.

He peered once more through the inner door. A little light trickled down from the second landing above. He tried the door. Someone must have left it off the buzzer, for it opened.

He hurried past the blackness of the bottom of the stair well. Five steps, a turn, five steps more. Then, just as he reached the first landing, he felt something-small and silent come brushing up against his ankle from behind.

THE NEXT moment his back and hands were pressed to the plaster wall across the landing, where it was recessed about a foot.

Then he relaxed. Just a cat. A black cat. A black cat with a white throat and chest, like evening clothes.

And a very cool cat too, for his jump hadn’t even fazed it. It walked suavely toward the door of the Gregg apartment.

But about two feet away it stopped. For several seconds it stood there, head upraised, making no movement except that its fur seemed to thicken a trifle. Then, very slowly, it looked around.

It stared at Carr.

Beyond the door, the piano started the sprightly second movement.

Carr edged out his hand. His throat felt dry and constricted. “Kitty,” he croaked.

The cat arched its back, spat, made a twisting leap that carried it halfway up the next semi-flight of stairs. It crouched on the top step, its bugged green eyes peering down.

One of the notes came back to Carr’s mind: “Some animals are really alive.”

There were footsteps. Carr shrank back into the recess. The door opened, the music suddenly swelled, and a gray-haired lady in a blue and white dress looked out and called, “Gigolo! Here, Gigolo!”

She had Jane’s small chin and short straight nose, behind veils of plumpness. She was rather dumpy. Her face had a foolish look.

And she must be short-sighted, for although she looked up the stairs, she didn’t see the cat, nor did she notice Carr. Feeling uncomfortably like a prowler, he started to step forward, then realized that she was so close he would give her a fright.

“Gigolo!” she called again. Then, to herself, “That cat!” A glance toward the dead bulb in the ceiling and a distracted headshake. “Gigolo!”

She backed inside. “I’m leaving it open, Gigolo,” she called. “Come in when you want to.”

Carr stepped out of the recess with a husky, “Excuse me,” but the opening notes of the fast third movement drowned him out.

He crossed to the door. The green eyes at the top of the stairs followed him. He raised his hand to knock. But at the same time he looked through the half-open door, across a tiny hall, into the living room.

It was small, with too much heavy furniture and too many lace runners and antimacassars. He could see the other end of the red davenport and the slippered feet of the old man sitting in it. The woman had returned to the straight-backed chair across the room and was sitting with her hands folded, her lips worriedly pursed.

Between them was the piano, an upright.

There was no one sitting at it.

To Carr, the rest of the room seemed to darken and curdle as he stared at the rippling keys.

Then he puffed out his breath. Of course, it must be some kind of electric player.

Again he started to knock, hesitated because they were listening to the music.

The woman moved uneasily on her chair. Her lips anxiously puckered and relaxed, like those of a fish behind aquarium glass. Finally she said, “Aren’t you tiring yourself, dear? You’ve been at it for hours.”

Carr looked toward the man, but he could still see only the slippered feet. There was no reply.

The piano stopped. Carr took a step forward. But just then the woman got up. He expected her to do something to the mechanism, but instead she began to stroke the air a couple of feet above the piano bench, Carr felt himself shivering.

“There, there, dear,” she said, “that was very pretty, I know, but you’re really spending too much time on your music. At your age a girl ought to be with other young people.” She bent her head as if she were looking around the shoulder of someone seated at the piano, wagged her finger, and said, “Look at the circles under those eyes.”

FOR CARR, time stopped, as if a clockworks universe hesitated before the next tick. In that frozen pause only his thoughts moved. It was true, then. Tom Elvested. . . The dumpy man . . . The room clerk . . . The Negress . . . Marcia in her bedroom . . . Last night with Jane—the bar, the music shop, the movie house, the chess players . . . The horizontal mannequin . . . The tobacconist . . . And now this old woman . . . All, all automatons, machines!

Or else (time moved again) this old woman was crazy.

Yes, that was it. Crazy. Behaving in her insanity as if her absent daughter were actually there. Believing it.

He clung to that thought.

“Really, Jane,” the old woman was saying vapidly, “you must rest.”

The slippered feet protruding from the davenport twisted. A weary voice said, “Now don’t worry yourself over Jane, Mother.”

The woman straightened. “Too much practicing is bad for anyone. It’s undermining her health.”

The davenport creaked. The man came into sight, not quite as old as Carr had guessed, but tired-looking. “Now, Mother, don’t get excited,” he said soothingly. “Everything’s all right.”

The father insane too, Carr thought. No, humoring her. Pretending to believe her hallucinations. That must be it.

“Everything isn’t all right,” she contradicted tearfully. “I won’t have Jane practicing so much and taking those wild long walks by herself. Jane, you mustn’t—” Suddenly a look of fear came over her. “Oh don’t go. Please don’t go, Jane.” She stretched out her hand toward the hall as if to restrain someone. Carr shrank back. He felt sick. It was horrible that this mad old woman should resemble Jane.