The Whisper on the Stair/Chapter 10
The coroner’s inquest, the next morning at ten, was the usual humdrum bit of business where both the coroner and the police are at sea. Both Val and Sam Peters were put upon the stand, and both received rather sharp questioning concerning the young woman in the case—the girl who had sold the books which were subsequently stolen. It appeared that the entire case hinged on the robbery of the books—those which had disappeared from Val’s apartment as well as those which had cost poor Mat Masterson his life.
Sam Peters, for his part, was legitimately hazy about the appearance of the girl. She had meant nothing to him—just another seller of books. They came into the store all the time—sometimes twenty or thirty a day, men and women. He was not accustomed to paying much attention to them. He gave what description he could, but it was vague and hazy.
But when it came to a hazy description, Val was the person who seemed to be able to deliver the goods. There have been hazy descriptions of women before now, but never has Val’s description been surpassed for indefinite, fog-like vagueness. This is no brief for perjury, and it might be argued that Val was committing perjury. If it was perjury, he did it lightly and joyfully—let that be an extenuation, if not an excuse. He intended no perjury, no violation of his oath. He silenced his conscience by giving the description of a young girl as she should have appeared to the usual, disinterested observer in a public book store who had no business to notice her, anyway, and who—if he did notice her, did so in a simply casual manner that took in nothing of her looks or her appearance and contented itself by noticing merely that she was a person of the opposite sex and that she was young—or of an indeterminate age, as Val testified. Indeterminate was correct, he admitted to himself. He was undetermined as to whether her age was twenty-one or twenty-two—wasn’t that indeterminate?
“I’ll tell the astigmatic universe that’s indeterminate,” he told himself, and having once more won a strategic victory over the still voice of conscience, he smiled blandly at the coroner and the coroner’s jury and hoped he would be able to assist them still further. He intended, let it be said, to bring the murderer of his friend to earth, to hand him over to justice, but he did not intend to do it until matters were so arranged that it could be done without bringing a certain woman into the case. Unhampered by the police, he was sure he would be able to work swiftly and surely, considering the strands of circumstance he held in his hands—but he would not be unhampered by the police if they knew. It was simplest, then, and best, to conceal what he knew from them.
The coroner’s jury brought in the usual verdict in such cases: “Death . . . violent blow . . . at the hand or hands of person or persons unknown. . . .”
Val spoke to Sam Peters in the hall. Mat’s out-of-town sister was there, too, and Sam introduced him to her. Val spoke briefly to her, and an arrangement was agreed to whereby Sam was to continue the business until the settlement of the estate, thereafter to buy the business at the price set at an appraisal by an expert.
Outside the court house Eddie Hughes waited for him with the limousine, impassive, dead to his surroundings, seemingly, yet seeing everything that might affect him or his master in any way. The afternoon had drawn to a close with the ending of the inquiry into the death of Matthew Masterson and the streets were rapidly filling with the advance guard of the homeward bound workers.
Above the boom of the great city downtown, above the noise and the crash of human industry, loomed the stark, silent shaft of the Woolworth Building, dwarfing everything in its vicinity, making the scurrying humans resemble the little ants which they really were, showing by the mere fact of its being how small human lives and human affairs were. It was a magnificent gesture of superiority, reflected Val, as he stepped towards his car.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Pomeroy,” said a sibilant voice at his elbow, ingratiatingly close.
Val whirled. He disliked that voice even before he saw the speaker, even before he recognized him.
It was the heavy, sinister appearing, armless man of unpleasant memory. He lounged, as Val had seen him before, his hands in his pockets, bulking huge over everybody in the neighborhood but Val, who was rather something of a human monolith himself. He must have weighed at least two hundred and fifty pounds, yet he was not stocky—he was built in proportion to his height, and he carried his weight with the graceful ease of a mountain cat, swinging easily on his toes.
On the left side of his face, extending across his forehead and to the roots of his hair was an ugly scar, slightly red, looking a little like a jagged streak of lightning which impresses itself on the vision in the fraction of a second before it disappears. He was dressed well and quietly, in the best of taste, and his voice, if unpleasant, was soft and well bred. The pupils of his eyes were little more than pinpoints, and the small lines around the corners of his mouth indicated a hard, determined, unscrupulous disposition, a will that would stop at nothing, that would consider no means too terrible for a desired end. All this Val noticed in an instant, before replying as he halted, one foot on the step of his car. A dangerous man, he remarked to himself. Yet how could a man with no hands be dangerous physically? he argued with himself. Val did not know, but he felt that it was possible. He was not squeamish, yet there was a physical repulsion produced in him vaguely by this man—the same sort of electric repulsion that cats produced in Val—a feeling of potential treachery.
Val decided that his age was somewhere between forty and forty-five or -six, yet he had the athletic bearing of a younger man, the upright shoulders and languid strength of an athlete in condition—or a jaguar, lazy with sleep, in the daytime. That was it—the cat family. Val definitely placed him now; the suggestion of the cat was in him, with all the cruelly latent strength and all the treachery of the cat.
“I beg your pardon?” he said coldly, a note of inquiry in his well modulated voice. “I haven’t the honor⸺”
“I know you haven’t, my young friend,” broke in the older man, a little patronizingly, it seemed to Val. “You have seen me before, however, and it⸺”
“Yes, so I have,” said Val. “Twice before⸺”
“Once,” corrected the man with no hands.
“No, twice—once in my bedroom⸺”
“Surely you’re mistaken,” interrupted the man who had no hands, suavely, but Val noticed a slight contraction of his eyes. “I have never had the pleasure of visiting you.”
Val shrugged his shoulders. “It’s of no consequence,” he put in. “You have something to say to me?” He looked at him inquiringly.
“If you don’t mind,” said the other. “It won’t take you a minute.”
“Well, I’m on my way uptown,” offered Val. “If you’ll ride up with me⸺”
“That’ll be fine,” smiled the older man.
They stepped into the car. “Home, Eddie,” called out Val, and the car slid out into midstreet and hummed on its way.
They sat shoulder to shoulder, strangely and constrainedly silent for a few moments. As for Val, he had nothing to say to this man until he had spoken to Miss Pomeroy and knew what relationship there was between them. He did not know how this deformed man came into this plot, anyway. The other, on his part, seemed a bit reluctant to begin the conversation. There was something on his mind—that was evident enough; it did not appear easy to say it, however.
The limousine swung up Lafayette Street and joined a home-going stream of automobiles that must have included nearly every car in New York. From all points east, west and south, and from half a dozen diagonal intersecting streets they added themselves to the live stream, noisy, a grating of innumerable brakes, squeaking of thousands of springs and joints, braying and shrilling of horns—
“By Jove!” said a calm voice at Val’s elbow, “you would think they cost a nickel apiece.” Val nodded.
“You were saying⸺” he began tentatively, turning to his companion.
“That I had something to say to you,” completed the other. “Well, I have. It’s about Miss Pomeroy—and things connected with her. Through a curious series of events, Mr. Morley, you have—to a certain extent—been drawn into matters concerning Miss Pomeroy—and myself. These affairs can be of no interest to you⸺”
“You’re impertinent, sir,” interrupted Val, turning and looking at his companion squarely. The other met his eye, gaze for gaze.
“You wouldn’t say so, if you knew the circumstances. But I am not here to discuss them with you. You have seen Miss Pomeroy—I know you are to see her again.” He paused for a moment.
“What if I am?” queried Val, calmly. “I’m not in the habit of permitting strangers to censor my calling list. You⸺”
“Only this,” went on the man who had no hands calmly. “It would not be advisable for you to keep up your acquaintance with Miss Pomeroy, or to see her again. It will be well for you to withdraw from all the affairs surrounding her⸺”
“Are you threatening me?” Val asked this softly, but his tone was of ice, cold and brittle.
The other took his hands from his pockets—his stumps, rather, and held them up in front of him, misshapen and grotesque.
“Nonsense,” he burst out. “How can I, a helpless cripple, threaten you? You see . . .” he regarded his hands, and was silent for a moment or two.
“Then just what do you mean by⸺”
“Exactly what I said. You are a stranger to Miss Pomeroy—it would be well for you to remain a stranger, and not to mix into affairs that do not concern you in any way.”
“Is this a warning?” asked Val.
The other shrugged his shoulders. “It is anything you choose to make it, my young friend.”
“And if I choose to disregard it⸺”
“Well, we shall see what we shall see, in that event. You are young and healthy—why not remain that way?” He looked at him significantly, his scar glowing in the semi-darkness of the car like a phosphorous gash in his evil face. Val was silent—he did not choose to answer him, and after a time the man went on.
“You will find it best to take my—advice,” he sibilated above the noise of the motor. “And now, if I may leave you⸺”
“Stop on the corner, Eddie,” directed Val. The car grated to a halt.
Val pushed the door open. “Thank you for your advice,” he remarked calmly. “When I feel in need of any more I’ll let you know. I expect to see Miss Pomeroy to-night,” he informed him gratuitously. There was no necessity for telling him this, but Val shrewdly suspected that he already knew, so there was no harm in the parting shot.
The other shrugged his shoulders again.
“Ah, well, youth . . .” he said, almost as though he were thinking aloud. He stood on the curb and bowed his thanks in a courtly manner as the car swung off on its way uptown.