A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

Meet Me by the Mannequin

All the way up on the bus I kept wondering if she’d be glad to see me or not. I hadn’t told her I was coming. For that matter, I hadn’t told them at the other end I was leaving — not until after I’d gone. Just a note left behind in my room: Dear Mom and Pop: I can’t stand it here any more. I’m not going back to high school when it opens, I’m going to the city. I want to begin to really live. Please don’t worry about me, I’ll be all right. I’ll look up Jean and stay with her. Love — Francine. And that’s what I was on my way to do right now.

My sister Jean hadn’t been much older than I was when she left, just under eighteen. She hadn’t told us much in her letters, but the little she’d said had made it sound wonderful to me. She told us she had a job, but she’d never said what it was. She must have been making a lot of money at it. I don’t think there’d been a letter in the three years she was gone that hadn’t had at least a twenty and sometimes as high as a fifty-dollar bill in it. But when I’d suggested running up to see her during my school vacation the summer before, she hadn’t seemed to want me to come. It was so hot, she’d said, and I wouldn’t like it. And when I insisted, she finally said she wasn’t going to be there herself, she was going away. But then six months afterwards, in one of her later letters, she forgot she’d said that and mentioned something about being stuck in the city through the whole summer.

I wondered vaguely why she hadn’t wanted her kid sister to visit her. I supposed she’d thought I wasn’t old enough yet, or they needed me at home, or she felt I ought to finish high school first, and let it go at that. Older sisters aren’t always so easy to figure out.

I had her address, the one we wrote her to, but it was just Greek to me. I wasn’t worried about finding it though. I’d ask my way when I got there, and that’d be all there was to it.

The bus got in quite late and I was tired. I was hungry, too, and I only had twenty-two cents left, after paying my bus fare and buying a sandwich and coffee at noon. But of course I was going straight to Jean, so what difference did that make?

I climbed down and looked around the terminal. Wonderland was already beginning. I had a single bag with me, not much bigger than a telephone directory. I hadn’t brought much, mostly because I didn’t have much to bring. Who wanted country stuff when you were going to start life in the city, anyway?

I chose one of the many exits at random, and came out on an avenue that was sheer magic. It stretched as far as the eye could reach, and the buildings were tall along it, and neon signs all colors of the rainbow flashed against the night sky. I’d reached the Promised Land, all right.

I was so enthralled that I decided to put off asking my way to Jean’s for a little while and do a little roaming around first. There was plenty of time, it was still early.

I’d walked along for about five or ten blocks, bag in hand, when I first saw the mannequin. It was in a lighted show window on the Avenue — Chalif-Bleekman’s — where there were a row of them with sort of tea-colored faces and gold and silver wigs. It was the one on the end. The others all looked ritzy, but the one on the end had a sort of friendly smile on her face. Her expression seemed to say: “Hi, little girl. Welcome to the city. If you ever need a friend, or get in a jam, come around and tell me all about it.”

I don’t know how to explain what I mean. It sounds sort of crazy, I know. You have to be pretty young, and you have to be pretty imaginative — like everyone said I was back home — to get it. If you’re hardboiled or cynical, you won’t get it at all. It’s like some people carry around a rabbit’s foot, and others have a lucky coin with a hole in it. It’s like some people believe in a lucky star, and others in a patron saint. This mannequin became my patron saint at sight. Oh, I knew it was just a wax figure that couldn’t talk or hear or think. I wasn’t that dumb. But that didn’t alter the case any. Everyone has to have a little fantasy in their life. And I was lonely and didn’t know anybody and it was my first night in the city. That was why, I guess.

Anyway, I stood there day-dreaming in front of it, and telling it all my hopes and fears and ambitions. Not out loud, of course. And it looked back with that understanding smile, as if it was trying to say: “Sure, I know. Don’t worry, everything’ll turn out all right. And if it doesn’t, you know where to find me, I’ll always be here, night and day.” It was like a pact made between us, that first night, that was never to be broken afterwards.

Finally I had to move on. It was getting late, and I had to get up to Jean’s. I put the pads of my fingers against the glass in a sort of parting gesture, and went on my way. The others all looked ritzy with their noses in the air, but mine had that same friendly, sympathetic smile to the end.

I saw a policeman rolling traffic stanchions out of the middle of the street, and I went over to him to ask my way. It’s always safest to ask a policeman when you’re in a strange city. I knew that much.

He scratched the back of his head when I handed him the scrap of paper that had Jean’s address penciled on it. Then he looked me over, up and down, standing there in my country clothes with my little bag in my hand.

Instead of telling me where it was, he said: “Are you sure you want to go there?”

“Certainly,” I said in surprise. “I’m— I’m supposed to.”

He mumbled something under his breath that sounded like: “Ah, it’s a shame — but what can a cop on traffic duty do about it?”

“Thank you,” I said when he’d finished telling me which directions to take.

He shook his head as if he felt sorry for me. “Don’t thank me,” he sighed. “Sure and it’s no favor I’m doing you.”

I looked back and saw him still watching me and shaking his head. He seemed to have recognized the address, but I couldn’t understand why he should feel so bad about my going there.

Even the twenties and fifties she’d sent home hadn’t prepared me for the looks of it when I finally reached it. Why, she must be making money hand-over-fist to be able to afford living in such a place! I almost thought for a minute I’d made a mistake. I went over to the doorman to verify the number. Yes, it was the right one. I asked him which floor Jean Everton lived on.

He acted as though he’d never heard the name before. He went inside to consult a second uniformed man in the hall. Instead of waiting where I was, I went in after him. I was certain she lived here. She wouldn’t have given this address in her letters if she hadn’t. I was just in time to hear the second hallman saying under his breath: “Edwards, that’s who it is. She sometimes gets mail here under the other name. I remember she left orders with me about that once.” Then he looked at me and dropped his voice even lower, but I could still make out what he was saying. “Must be a new girl they’re taking on. Better not let her go up the front way; they won’t like it, they’re open already.”

The first one stepped back to me and whispered in a peculiar confidential undertone, as though it were a secret. “It’s the penthouse you want. But you’re not supposed to go in through the front like this; you’d get in Dutch if they ever caught you trying it, and so would we if we let you. You girls are supposed to use the back way. I’ll show you where it is.”

He took me outside and around to the side of the building, and through a delivery passage to a service elevator run by a grinning colored man. “Take her up to The Place,” he said to him mysteriously.

“Up there?” the operator asked with a strange look.

“Up there.” The doorman nodded secretively.

On the way up he turned to me and asked: “You ever been up there befo’, miss?”

I said: “No, I never have.”

He didn’t answer, just said, “Um-um,” and I caught him shaking his head a little, the same way the cop had.

He stopped the car finally and opened the door onto a little vestibule. There was only one other door, a strong-looking thing with a little peephole in the middle of it. I went unhesitatingly over to it and pushed a bell.

The kind-faced operator behind me seemed to close his car door almost reluctantly, as though he hated to leave me up there. The last I saw of him he was still shaking his head dolefully.

None of this really registered on me at the time. I was too excited at the prospect of seeing Jean. Besides, the city was such a whole new world to me that the way people acted was bound to seem strange at first, until I got used to it. That was all it was, I told myself.

The peephole opened and an eye peered out at me. A single eye, blue, and hard as agate. A little whiff of sachet seeped out through the hole.

A woman’s voice said harshly: “Yes?”

I said: “Is Jean in there?”

The eye slid around in a half-turn, away from the opening. “Somebody to see Jean.”

Chains clicked against steel and the door swung grudgingly open. I edged in timidly, bag in hand.

There were three women in there, but Jean wasn’t one of them. It looked like some kind of a dressing-room. There was a mirror-strip along the wall, and a long table and chairs under it. They all looked at me. They were beautifully dressed, lovely to look at. But there was something hard and forbidding about them, I don’t know quite what. There was a confused hum coming from somewhere nearby — like the drone of a lot of voices. Every once in a while it rose sharply to a crescendo, as though something exciting had just happened, then it would die down again to a breathless, waiting hush. Then start over.

“Where is she?” I asked uncertainly.

The answer was an ungracious snarl. “She’s out in front, where d’ya suppose? You didn’t expect to find her back here, did ya? We’re open already.” She snapped cigarette ashes at me with her thumbnail. “If you were sent here to work, you better get into your duds fast. You’re an hour late.”

I just stared stupidly.

She jackknifed her finger at my bag. “Brought your own clothes, didn’t you? Well, whaddaya waiting for?” She gave me a shove that nearly overturned the nearest chair, and me with it.

“Gord!” she said to the others. “She’s gonna be a credit to the place! Jean musta had a lapse of memory when she picked her out.”

“Them dumb ones make the best come-ons,” one of the others snapped back. “Didn’t you ever know that? And since when does Jean do the picking anyway? She takes whoever Rosetti wishes on her, and likes it!”

There was a sudden peremptory slamming on the inside door, the one across the way from where I had come in, and they froze to silence. A man’s voice called through: “Come on, you tramps in there, get going! Three of the tables need pepping up.”

They jumped like trained seals through paper hoops, jostling each other in their eagerness to be the first out. The blur of noise rose sharply with the opening of the door. A phrase came through it. “Twenty-one — red!” And then someone said, “Whee!” A minute later the door had closed again and I was alone.

A human being can be in a situation in which she never was before and her instincts will tell her what her experience cannot. That happened to me now. They’d just called me dumb, and I was dumb. I didn’t know the first thing about this place. I’d never been in one like it before. And yet I knew instinctively I didn’t like it here. I wanted to get out without even waiting to see Jean. Something told me to. Something told me not to stay a minute longer.

It wasn’t those three girls so much. Their bark was worse than their bite. It was something about the sound of that voice that had come through the door just now. There had been something evil in it. It was the sort of voice you hear in secret places, where secret things are done that never see the light of day. I remembered now the way the cop and the elevator operator had both shaken their heads. They’d known. They’d known something about this place.

There was no one in there with me at the moment, no one to stop me. All I had to do was take the chains off that door, slip out the way I’d come in, ring for the rear elevator. Then I remembered I only had twenty-two cents. But even that wasn’t enough to keep me here. I could telephone Jean from outside and ask her to come out and meet me.

I had my hand out to the first chain, trying to get it out of its socket without making any noise, when I heard my name called in a frightened whisper behind me.

“Francie!”

Jean was standing in the opposite doorway. She came in quickly and locked the door behind her. There was something sick and choked in her voice. “They told me there was somebody back here asking for me — but you’re the last person I expected to see!”

She had diamonds on her wrists and at her throat, and flowers in her hair, and champagne on her breath. She was old. Golden-haired and beautiful, and yet somehow old and tired-looking. Not like when she’d left home.

Her voice was a hiss of terror, like air whistling out of a punctured tire. “What got into you to do this? Why did you come here of all places? This is the last place on earth you should have come!”

“Why? I only wanted to see you.”

She evidently didn’t have time to explain. “Quick! Has anyone seen you?”

“Only those three girls—”

“I can shut them up. They work under me. Come on, get out of here fast!”

“But Jean. I came here to stay with you, to live with you.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying! Stop arguing, someone may come in here any minute. I want you to take the next bus and go back home. I’d take you down and put you on it myself, only I can’t leave here right now—”

“But Jean, I have only twenty-two cents.”

She bent over, fumbled frantically with the side of her stocking, thrust a crumpled bill into my hand. It wasn’t a twenty, it wasn’t even a fifty this time. It was a hundred-dollar bill. I’d never seen one before. I didn’t want the money. I wanted to stay. Not here in this place, but in the city. Now that she was with me, I wasn’t frightened any more.

But she was pushing me toward the door through which I’d come in. She wouldn’t listen to my protests. We never got to it. A muted buzzer sounded somewhere over our heads. It wasn’t any louder than the sound a trapped fly makes in a bottle, but it made us both jump. And at the same instant the knob on the inner door that Jean had locked behind her began to rotate viciously. That same voice as before, the one that had sent cold chills through me, rasped angrily: “Jean, what’re you doing in there? What’s this door locked for? I need you out here — fast.”

“Rosetti,” she whispered sickly. “If he ever sees you—” Her grasp on my wrist was ice-cold.

She pulled me toward the side of the room so suddenly that I nearly went off-balance. There was a sort of built-in wardrobe occupying the entire side, with sliding doors that sheathed into one another. She clawed two of them apart, thrust me in against a welter of gold and tinsel dresses, then drew them together again. There was room enough to stand upright. Her panting, parting instructions came through the hair-breadth crack that remained.

“Stay in there until the coast is clear, then get out of here as fast as you can! If anyone should slide the doors open to take anything out, don’t lose your head — shift with the doors and you’ll be all right! Don’t wait for me to come back, I mayn’t be able to—”

I heard the sound she made unlocking the door, heard him bawling her out. “Take it easy, Rosetti. I had a run in my stocking,” I heard her say placatingly.

I put my eye to the crack and got a look at him — or at least, a vertical strip of his face. He looked just like his voice had sounded.

“We’re taking Masters into the argument room. Do a number and do it noisy, hear me? All ta-ra.”

“Now?” she gasped, “with a place full of people?”

“That’s what you’re here for. Do your Western number.” He gave one of the wardrobe doors I was behind a fling. I quailed, but managed to shift noiselessly behind it, out of the light that slipped in. I saw Jean’s be-diamonded arm come plunging into the opening, take down a two-gallon cowboy hat from the shelf. Then she looped a lariat around her wrist, went over to a drawer, and took out a pistol.

Her face was very pale under the rouge. So was his, but for a different reason — not fear but malice.

She poised in the open doorway a minute. He signaled some musicians and they started an introduction. She gave her lariat a preliminary twirl, screeched “Yippee!” and shot the pistol into the air. Then she moved out of sight.

He closed the door after her, but stayed inside. He crossed swiftly to the outer door, the one that led to the service elevator, opened it, and let in a laundryman and his assistant, carrying an immense basket full of wash between them.

“Leave it here,” he said. “Be ready for you in about ten minutes.”

They went out again and he closed the door after them. Then he turned around and went out the other way. I saw his hand starting to grope into his coat as he pulled the door shut after him, as if he was taking out something. I heard somebody who must have been standing right outside waiting for him ask: “All set, boss?”

“All set,” he answered, and then the door closed.

I waited a minute to make sure he wouldn’t come back, and then edged out of the closet. Outside, in the distance, you could hear Jean’s gun shots go off every once in a while. I opened the peephole on the outside door and looked through. The laundrymen were leaning back against the wall out there in the service passageway, waiting to take away the wash. I was wondering whether I should risk it and let myself out while they were there — whether they’d stop me — when without any warning the door behind me was flung open and a drunk came wavering in. He pulled the door shut behind him and leaned against it for a moment, as if trying to regain sufficient strength to go on.

He was a man in his early fifties, very handsome, with silvery hair. His collar and dress-tie were a little askew, the way a drunk’s usually are. He’d had a flower in his buttonhole, but all the petals had fallen off, just the stem was left.

I was too frightened to move for a minute, just stood there staring stupidly at him. He didn’t see me — he didn’t seem to see anything. He forced himself away from the door that he had used to support him, came on toward where I was. I edged out of the way. Even then he didn’t seem to be aware of me. His eyes had a fixed, glassy look and he walked in a funny trailing way, as though his feet were too heavy to lift.

He was holding a bunched handkerchief to his chest, over the seam of his shirt, and he kept giving a dry little cough. It seemed impossible that he hadn’t seen me, but his eyes gave no sign, so I scuttled back behind the sliding wardrobe doors where I’d come from, and narrowed them once more to a crack, watching him fearfully through the slit.

His knees were starting to dip under him, but he kept on with painful, stubborn slowness toward that outer door, moving like a deep-sea diver under many fathoms of water. It didn’t look as though he’d ever get there. He never did.

Suddenly Rosetti’s voice sounded behind him. He had come in with two other men. One of them closed the door behind him, locked it this time, and sealed it with his shoulder-blades in an indolent lounge.

“Trying to find your way out?” Rosetti purred. “This is the way out.”

Flame slashed from his hand, a thunderclap exploded in the room, and the drunk was suddenly flat and still.

The man holding up the door chuckled, “No wonder he couldn’t make it, all the lead he was carrying with him. I bet he gained twenty pounds in the last five minutes.”

Rosetti opened the outside door, hitched his head. “Hey! The wash is ready!”

The laundrymen came in, picked up the big basket between them and dumped its contents all over the floor. A lot of towels and sheets and things came spilling out. They opened one of the sheets to its full width and rolled the “drunk” into the middle of it. Then they took his legs and forced them over until they touched his head, doubling him in two. Then they tied the four corners of the sheet together, into a big lumpy bundle. They put some of the laundry back into the basket, thrust the big bundle in the middle, and wedged some more down on top of it. When they got all through it didn’t look much fuller than before, maybe a little plumper in the middle, that was all.

Rosetti looked it over. Then I heard him say, “There’s a little starting to come through over on the side here. Jam a couple more towels in to soak it up. And don’t forget the bricks when you get to the end of your route.”

Then he sat contentedly back on the edge of the girls’ dressing-table, swinging one leg back and forth. He took out a little stick of sandpaper and meticulously rubbed it back and forth over one nail, and blew on it.

“D’ya think anyone saw him come in?” one of the others asked.

Rosetti went to work on a second nail. “Sure, everybody saw him come in. And nobody saw him go out again, for sure. And it still don’t mean a thing. Because nobody saw this part of it, what happened to him in between. I’ll be the first one to go down to headquarters to answer their questions — before they even have time to call me. That’s the kind of a public-spirited citizen I am!”

The three of them laughed.

Someone tried the doorknob from the outside just then and the one blocking it called out cheerfully: “Have to wait a few minutes, girls. We’re holding a stag party in here.”

The laundrymen were ready to go now, with their enormous burden suspended between them, shoulder to shoulder. One of Rosetti’s two men accommodatingly opened the outside door for them. “Heavy wash tonight,” one of them gasped as they staggered out.

“Sure,” was the grinning answer, “we’re dirty people up here. Didn’t you know that?”

They closed the back door after them and put up all the chains. I was fighting to stay on my feet — at least, until they got out and went back where they’d come from. My head was swimming and my eyes were blurred; I was all weak at the knees; and I was afraid I wasn’t going to be able to hold out and they’d hear me go down. I knew what was doing it, and it wasn’t lack of air. The city hadn’t taken long to teach me things. I knew I’d just seen a man killed before my very eyes.

I kept swaying from side to side like a pendulum, and each time braking my fall by clutching at one of the dresses hanging behind me. They were opening the door now — in another minute they’d be gone. But I keeled over first.

Maybe the noise from outside covered it, I don’t know. They must have been clapping for Jean’s number about then. I went down sideways into the narrow little trough I was standing in, and a lot of soft things came piling down on top of me, and everything went dark.

It seemed only a minute later that the sliding doors split open and light shone in on me once more. Jean was bending over me, helping me up. She had a street coat on now. She looked haggard. “I’m going to take you out with me,” she whispered. “Lean on me.

The humming noise from outside had stopped now; there was a stony silence. She touched some cologne-water to my temple and it stung unexpectedly. I felt it and there was a welt there. “What happened?” I asked dazedly. “Did I do that when I fell?”

“No, I had to do that, with a slipper-heel, when you started to come to — with those three she-rats in here big as life. You’ll never know what I’ve been through for the past half-hour or so! Luckily, I had a hunch something was wrong, and came back here just before the rest did. I couldn’t get you out unconscious the way you were, and any minute I was afraid you’d come to and give yourself away. Every time one of them wanted something from back here, I’d jump and get it for her — they must have thought I was crazy. When I saw you starting to stir, I had to hit you, to keep you quiet until they got out of here. I told them I saw a bug on the closet-floor.

“Come on, the girls have gone home and the place has closed up for the night. The men are in the office counting up the take. Hurry up, before they miss me.”

We staggered over to the back door together, and she started loosening the chains.

“I’m all right now,” I said weakly. “I guess it was too stuffy in there.”

We were out in the service passage now. She looked at me as if she didn’t believe me. “What’d you see?” she asked sharply. “Are you sure it wasn’t anything you saw while you were in there?”

Somehow I couldn’t bring myself to talk about it, even to her. “Nothing,” I said.

Riding down in the back elevator she turned aside, fumbled some more with her stocking, brought out another hundred dollar bill. “Jimmy,” she said, handing it to the operator, “you never saw this girl come here tonight.”

“What girl?” he asked, when he was able to get his breath back.

“That’s it exactly,” she nodded, satisfied.

She took me somewhere to get some coffee to brace me up. Mostly, I guess, she tried to talk me into going back home. But nothing she could say had any effect on me. You know how it is when you’re eighteen.

“No,” I said. “I’m staying. If I can’t stay with you, then I’ll stay on my own.”

She sighed. “I was like that once, too. That’s why I wish you’d listen to me and go home. I don’t want what happened to me to happen to you.”

“What happened to you?”

She didn’t answer.

“What was that place up there?” I asked curiously.

“Forget you were ever up there. Stay if you must, but promise me one thing — that you’ll never go near there again. I’ll find a furnished room for you and come around to see you whenever I can. And Francie” — her hand covered mine in desperate appeal for a moment — “if you did see something you shouldn’t have up there tonight, don’t ever open your mouth about it, don’t ever mention it to a living soul — for both our sakes, yours and mine as well. Try to forget about it, that’s the best way. I’ve seen things too, from time to time, that I’ve had to forget about.”

“Why don’t you leave there, Jean?”

“I can’t.” She gave a wry smile. “I’m a little tired, and a whole lot disillusioned, but I still — want to go on living for a while.”

I just sucked in my breath and looked at her when I heard that.

Late as it was, we went looking for a room then and there. I had to stay some place, and although she didn’t say so, it was obvious that Jean lived right up there in that penthouse, as a sort of permanent resident-manager to look after Rosetti’s interests.

We took a cab to save time on our quest, and passed Chalif-Bleekman’s on our way. I looked out and thought, “There’s my mascot.” The lights in the shop window had gone out long ago, but you could still make out the mannequins, like ghosts in the dim shine of the streetlights. I asked her about the store.

“I used to work there when I first came here,” she told me. “I’ll take you in with me tomorrow; maybe I can get you a job there.”

She found a room without much trouble. It was too late at night to be very choosy, and I was too dead-tired to care. Anything would have looked good to me by then.

The last thing she said was: “Now if you did see something, erase it from your mind. Always remember, there’s nothing you and I can do about it. We’re up against something that’s too big for us.”

To the end I couldn’t bring myself to admit it to her. “No, I didn’t see anything,” I reiterated.

She knew I was lying, and I knew she knew. I heard her light step go down the stairs, and the taxi that had waited for her below drove off. Afterwards I found another hundred-dollar bill, the second one she’d given me that night, under the soap dish on the washstand.

It was only when I was half undressed that I realized I’d left the little bag with my few things in it in the back room of that place where she worked.

I was too tired to be as frightened as I should have been.

Her face paled when I first told her about it the next day. “It must have been found by now! There’s a maid up there that’s a stooge for Rosetti. Did anything in it have your name on it? Was there anything to show whom it belonged to?”

I tried to remember. “I don’t think so—” Then my own face blanched. “Wait a minute. There was a snapshot of me in the flap under the lid, but without any name or anything on it—”

She’d got her second wind by now. “It’s all right, keep cool. It’s still not fatal. Here’s our only out. If Rosetti asks me, I’ll say some stray or other I used to know on one of my jobs showed up with a hard-luck story and tried to put the touch on me. She’d been put out of her room and she left her things with me. I slipped her something to get rid of her. As long as they don’t think you were right there when—”

I knew what she meant. When the laundry was carried out.

“—you’re safe enough,” she concluded.

She was as good as her word, and got me a job at Chalif-Bleekman’s modeling negligees. Then she left me. “I won’t be able to see you very often, after this once,” she warned me. “Rosetti doesn’t take chances with any of us, and he has eyes and ears all over town. I might be followed when I least expect it, and bring them down on you.”

“If you want me in a hurry,” was the last thing I said, “you can always meet me by the mannequin.” I explained about the window mascot of mine. “I’ll make it a point to stop there a minute on my way in and out.”

That was the last I saw of her for some time, but I could understand her reasons for staying away, so I wasn’t particularly worried. Meanwhile, I started to get the hang of the city a little better and lose some of my greenness.

They were nice to me at the place I worked, and the job was easy, after you once got over being self-conscious about walking up and down the aisles in nothing but lace and ribbons.

I made several girl friends, who worked there with me, and I also got myself a boy friend — my first. His name was Eddie Dent. He was a salesman in an auto showroom, and it looked like I’d hit the jackpot the very first time. But more about him later.

Although I grew wiser, I didn’t forget my mascot. Even Eddie couldn’t take her place. They’d put a new outfit on her long ago, since the night I’d first seen her, but I still stopped before her on my way in and out each day and told her all about how things were coming, and she still smiled in that same protective, encouraging way. She made blue days bright, and bright days brighter.

I was beginning to forget that nightmare scene I’d witnessed the first night of my arrival, and in a little while more it would have faded away like something that had never happened. Then suddenly it all came back with a crash. A succession of crashes, each one worse than the one before.

I’d bought a newspaper back to my room with me after work, and when I opened it a face seemed to leap up from its pages and strike at me. Handsome, with silvery-white hair. The laundry basket must have come apart. They’d picked him up out of the river.

Well-known Sportsman, Missing Two Weeks, Pound Dead, the caption said. And underneath, my eyes ran through the welter of fine print, taking in a phrase here, a phrase there. “... Masters was known to have made many enemies in the course of his long career... his only son committed suicide less than a month ago after incurring heavy gambling losses... Police are trying to reconstruct his movements... Among those who came forward to aid them was Leo Rosetti, through whose cooperation they have been able to establish that one of the last places visited by Masters before he met his death was a small private party given by Rosetti at his own home. He was definitely absolved of all connection with the crime, however. Rosetti’s first inkling of what had become of his friend of long standing was when he reported him missing after repeated attempts to communicate with him for the past two weeks had failed.

They didn’t guess. They didn’t know. But I did. Jean and I both did.

I didn’t sleep so well that night.

I put it up to the mannequin on my way in to work next morning. “How can I go on keeping quiet about it? Shouldn’t I tell them?”

And her rueful smile seemed to suggest: “What about Jean? It means her life if you do.”

That was the first crash.

When I clocked out that night there was a man standing there by my mascot — waiting for one of the other girls in the store, I guess. It meant I had to stand right next to him for a moment or two, while I was exchanging my usual silent confidences with her, but he didn’t even seem aware of me.

I had a funny feeling, on my way home, that I was being followed, but each time I looked around, there wasn’t anyone in sight — so I put it down to nervousness and let it go at that. The feeling wouldn’t leave me, though, right up to my own door.

I’d been home about five minutes when I thought I heard a creak on the flooring outside in the hall. I stiffened, listening. It came again, nearer the door but less distinct than the first time. But no knock or anything followed.

I realized now that my instinct had been right. There had been someone following me all the way home, even though I hadn’t been able to distinguish who it was. There was almost certainly someone standing out there now, motionless, trying to listen to me just as I was trying to listen to him. I tiptoed over, bent down, and put my eye level with the keyhole. Chilling confirmation came at once. My view was blocked. Instead of the opposite side of the hall, all I could see was a blur of dark suiting, standing there perfectly still.

The voice nearly threw me back on my heels, it came through so unexpectedly. The most terrifying thing about it was the casual, matter-of-fact tone he used, as though there were no door in between, as though I had been in plain sight the whole time.

“Come on, little lady, quit playing hide and seek.”

Under a sort of hypnotic compulsion, I touched the key finally, gave it a gingerly little twist as though it was red hot, and he did the rest.

He came in slowly. It was the same man who had been standing outside the store. He had a funny little cowlick down the middle of his forehead, like a fish-hook, and it wouldn’t stay back. I couldn’t take my eyes off it.

He closed the door after him. Then he heeled his hand at me, showing a glint of silver. He said: “You’re Francine Everton, that right?”

I said it was.

He took out a newspaper and was suddenly holding Masters’s picture before my eyes. “Ever see this man before?”

“No!” The sudden shock alone made my denial convincing, if nothing else.

“Are you sure of that?”

“Yes!” If I said I’d seen him, I’d have to say I’d seen him killed. If I said I’d seen him killed—

“Who’s the woman got you your job at Chalif’s?”

So they’d found that out. I decided to bluff it out. It was the only thing I could do. “An acquaintance of mine. Her name is Edwards, I think. I don’t know her very well. Iran into her on the street and told her I had no job.”

It came with treacherous glibness. “When was the last time you were up there?”

Instinct, like a fine wire running through me, jangled warningly: “Make one admission, anywhere along the line, and the whole thing’ll come out.” I said, “Up where? What do you mean?”

“Then how do you explain this?”

Even more suddenly than the newspaper, he had opened an envelope and was holding a charred fragment of snapshot before me. Everything that didn’t matter had been burned away. The face remained, yellowed but perfectly recognizable.

Sparring for time, I asked: “How’d it get burnt?”

He flicked back: “How’d it get where it got burnt?”

“I’d been put out of my room just before I met my girlfriend. I had no place to go. She — took a little bagful of my belongings with her, to keep them for me until I found a place. She was supposed to bring them back, but she never did—”

“And you’ve never been up where she hangs out at any time?”

“Never. She didn’t seem to want me to look her up—”

“I don’t doubt that,” he said dryly. It was suddenly over, to my unutterable relief. I’d thought it would go on for hours yet.

He got up to go. “Well, kid, maybe you’re telling the truth and maybe you’re not. Maybe you’re afraid to.” He got as far as the door, and then added: “Don’t be afraid to. We’ll look after you—” He waited a minute and then went on: “Are you sure there isn’t anything more you want to tell me?”

“How could there be, when I’ve told you everything there is?”

He closed the door. It opened again, unexpectedly. “Armour’s the name,” he added, “in case you should change your mind.”

It closed a second time and I heard the stairs creak complainingly with his descent. I turned and flopped down by the window, peeping under the drawn shade.

I saw him come out and look up, and then he went down the street.

A figure detached itself from the shelter of a dark doorway opposite and started over toward the house I lived in. I knuckled the pane to attract his attention, threw up the lower sash, and called down guardedly: “Don’t come in, Eddie. Wait for me around the corner.”

It was my boy friend. I didn’t want him to get mixed up in it. When I went out to meet him, I went all the way around the block in the opposite direction and approached the corner from the far side — a primitive precaution that wouldn’t have fooled anybody. if I was really being watched.

He said: “Who was the guy just up there to see you?”

I took his arm. “I’ll tell you all about it. Let’s get away from here first.” I hadn’t meant to say that. I only realized it after it was out. I couldn’t tell him all about it. And then again — why not?

I waited until we were in a secluded booth in our usual Chinese restaurant. He said: “What’s the matter, Francie? Is there something on your mind? You don’t seem yourself tonight.”

It was so easy to get started, after that. What was more natural than to confide your troubles to your boyfriend?

“He was a detective, that man you saw,” I blurted out.

He wasn’t as surprised as I’d expected him to be. He piled rice on my plate. “What’d he wani with you?” he said.

“This man Masters they picked up from the river — he held his picture up to my eyes and asked me if I’d ever seen him before.”

A forkful of chow mein halted halfway to his mouth.

“I said no, of course.”

The forkful of chow mein went the rest of the way up.

“Then he asked me about — about a friend of mine named Jean Edwards, that got me my job. Asked me if I’d ever been up to her place. I said no, of course.”

“Then what’re you downhearted about? You gave him straight answers to straight questions. That’s all there is to it. What’s bothering you?”

“Nothing,” I said muffledly.

He looked at me a minute or two. He scribbled something down on a scrap of paper and handed it to the Chinese waiter. I saw the waiter take it over to the bandleader. The music came around me, soft and persuasive.

Eddie stood up, held out his arms. “Come on, Francie, that’s ours. You never could resist that number. It’ll fix everything up.”

I leaned my head against him as we glided around in the twilight. “Feel better now?” he whispered.

“A little.”

“Never mind, baby, it’ll all come out in the wash.”

I went out of step. “Oh, don’t — don’t use that word. I can’t stand it—”

“Why?”

It got away from me so easily, like the tail of a kite, when the kite’s already out of your hands. “Because it always reminds me of the way I saw him carried out that night—”

“Who, Masters?” He kept guiding me around softly in the shadowy crowd. “But I thought you said you weren’t up there—”

“I told him that. But I was. I was hiding up there in a closet. I saw the whole thing happen. I can’t tell you more than that about it, Eddie, because there’s another person involved—”

The music ended and we went back to the booth. He had to make a phone call when the kumquats came on. It took him a little while, but he was smiling the same as ever when he came back. We didn’t talk about it any more after that. I’d got it off my chest and I felt a lot better.

Instead of going on to a show the way we usually did, he took me back to my room. “You’re tired and you ought to get a little rest, Francie.”

“Suppose he comes around again?”

“He won’t.” He sounded strangely confident. “He won’t bother you any more.” Then he said: “I’ll wait across the street until I see your room light go on, so you’ll feel safer.” Almost as though he knew ahead of time.

I went in and up the stairs and unlocked my darkened room. There were two messages under my door — a telegram and a phone message from Jean, in the landlady’s writing — Jean Edwards wants you to come up to her place at once, highly important. Then when I opened the telegram, to my surprise that was from Jean too. Just five words— Meet me by the mannequin.

I ran to the window first of all, threw it up, signaled down to Eddie. “Eddie, wait for me. I have to go out again.”

A large black car had drawn up a few doors down, and the driver had come over to him to ask for a light or something. I saw the two of them standing there chattering casually the way men do.

Then I stood there knitting my brows over the two messages. One contradicted the other. Maybe one was fake, but if so, which one of the two? Her words that first night rang in my ears again. “Promise me you’ll never go near there again.” Still and all, both could be from her and both could be on the level. Maybe something had happened to change her plans. Maybe she’d found out she couldn’t get away, and had sent the second message to cancel the first. The thing was, which one had preceded the other? Well, there was a way of finding that out.

I knocked on the landlady’s door. “Which of these came first — can you tell me?”

“The telegram,” she said unhesitatingly. “I remember I’d just finished slipping it under your door, when the phone started to ring down in the lower hall, and that was for you too.”

“Thanks,” I said. Jean’s place had it, then. The phone message was the one to go by.

I hurried outside to Eddie. The other man was gone now, but the car was still standing there.

“That was a guy I used to know,” he began. “He said I could have the use of his car until he comes out again—”

I hardly paid any attention to what he was saying. “Eddie, don’t ask me any questions, but — just come along with me, will you?”

“You bet,” he agreed, the way a boy friend should.

We passed Chalif’s on our way up to Jean’s place. I was glad now that I hadn’t taken the telegram at its face value. There was no one in front of the mannequin. Jean had changed her mind after sending it.

“Stop just a minute,” I said, on an impulse.

“Why here? The store was closed hours ago—”

“No, you don’t understand. I have a habit whenever I’m in trouble—”

“Oh, yeah. That mascot of yours. You told me about that once.” He veered accommodatingly to the curb and braked.

I jumped out and went over, while he stayed in the car. The window lights were on, the way they were every night until midnight. She was in a different gown tonight. Then I remembered it was Thursday. They changed the window displays every other Thursday. They must have just finished dressing the window before we got there.

There was something about her face— A shock went through me as I halted before the thick plate-glass. It was Jean’s face! I must be’ delirious, or losing my mind. She made a swift little gesture, hidden from the street. Touched one finger to her lips to warn me to silence. Then her hand stiffened into the mannequin’s rigid wrist-bent pose again. I smothered a scream.

She remained motionless after that — all but her lips. I could see them wavering slightly. She was trying to say something to me. I watched them with desperate intentness, while she repeated endlessly, until I got it: “Don’t — go. Don’t — go. Don’t — go.”

“Come on,” Eddie called impatiently from the car. “I thought you were in such a hurry to get wherever it is you’re heading for.”

“Don’t — go.” The silent syllables kept pounding through the glass. She added an almost imperceptible shake of her head, invisible except to me.

“Are you coming? What’s holding you up?”

“No,” I said, hypnotized. I couldn’t take my eyes off her face.

He got out, strode over to me, caught me roughly by the arm. “Why — what’s the matter?” A sudden change had come over him — I couldn’t quite identify it yet. He didn’t waste a glance on the figure in the window. His back was to her. Over his shoulder I could see the warning shake of her head become frenzied.

“Then I’ll give it to you right here — what’s the difference where you get it, as long as we shut you up for good!”

The mask had fallen off, and I saw him now, for the first time, as he really had been all along. His face was now as repulsive as Rosetti’s and those other men’s. He had me trapped between two showcases, where the main store-entrance was, and there wasn’t a soul in sight on the streets to help me.

He cast a quick glance over his shoulder, as though trying to decide whether to risk the sound of a gunshot. Then, instead, he brought out something stubby, and it suddenly doubled its length in his hand. A wicked blade shot out of it right while he held it.

“So you saw Masters go out with the dirty wash, did you? Well, here’s an extra mouth to tell it to the cops through — a mouth in the middle of your heart!”

A terrible game of puss-in-corner began between us. As I shifted from side to side, looking for an opening, he shifted in accompaniment each time, blocking me. I didn’t dare take my eyes from the vicious knife feinting at me, but I was dimly aware of a flurry of motion behind him in the store window.

Suddenly I saw an opening — or thought I did. Maybe he gave it to me purposely. He had shifted over a little too far to one side. I darted for the avenue of escape like an arrow, flashed through — almost, but not quite. He swerved quickly behind me, his free hand shot out, clamped itself on my shoulder and pinned me fast. I could feel the flirt of air as the knife swept up. It would come down over me and plunge into my heart.

There was a flash inside the window beside me, a hollow thud, and pieces of glass fell out, leaving a jagged hole shaped like a maple leaf. A puff of smoke misted Jean’s head and shoulders for a minute, then rose and disappeared. She hardly seemed to have moved at all. One hand, that had held a tinseled evening-bag until now, now grasped a snub-nosed revolver instead. Cottony smoke still licked from it.

The knife clattered to the sidewalk before my eyes. Then, horribly, his whole weight sagged against me from behind, I stepped forward, and he fell to the ground and lay there without moving.

Jean had disappeared inside the store. I was still cowering there, staring at his body, when she unlocked the front door and came out — still in the metallic wig she’d worn in the window.

“You poor innocent. Do you know who you picked for a boy friend? Rosetti’s star banker. He presides at the main roulette table up at The Place every night. They must have sicced him on you purposely, to find out if you knew enough to be dangerous to them. And the minute he found out, he reported back to Rosetti.

“Luckily, I happened to get on an extension phone in the next room while he was making his tip-off call tonight. I had to reach you fast, and I didn’t know how to do it. You were already out with the very guy that had fingered you. It was a cinch he wasn’t going to let you out of his sight. Something you said last time I saw you came back to me. ‘If you ever want me in a hurry and don’t know where to find me, you can always meet me by the mannequin.’

“I got a hold of a gun and slipped out. I sent you a telegram to your room, and then I went over to the store. They were in the midst of dressing the windows when I got there, and the entrance had been left unlocked, so the guy supervising the work could slip out front and inspect the window every once in a while. That gave me an inspiration. I couldn’t just wait for you on the open sidewalk. Eddie knew me too well. He would have spotted me and whisked you off with him before I had a chance to get in my warning. He was too good a triggerman to fool around with. I had to get the drop on him in some way.

“So I sneaked inside, unnoticed, and hid behind one of the counters until the window dressers had finished and gone. When I opened the window, took out your mascot, changed clothes with her, fixed up my face and arms with some ochre powder I found in the store, put on her metallic wig, and stood there in her place, with the gun in my little jeweled bag.

“It was taking a big chance, until I had frozen into the right pose, but the streets are pretty quiet around here and no one passing by on the outside caught me at it. Then I had to hold the pose for what seemed like hours, and I thought you’d never come.”

“What’ll we do now?” I asked helplessly, looking down at the still form at our feet.

She shrugged. “I’ll have to stay out of course, now that I’ve made the break, but it’s just a matter of a day or two before they get the two of us. How can we buck a machine like the one Rosetti has got?”

“A detective named Armour — he was the one who questioned me — said if I ever had anything to tell him, he’d look after me.”

“That’s what they all say, but how can we be sure they’re not taking presents from Rosetti on the side—”

“No, he was different. He was honest. You could see it in his face. He had a funny little cowlick down the middle of his forehead, like a fishhook, and it wouldn’t stay back—”

“My God!” she exclaimed.

I said: “What’s the matter?”

“Then they got him too, tonight. He must have been up there looking around for evidence single-handed, the fool! That proves he was honest, if nothing else. There was a guy with a cowlick drifting around from table to table, going through the motions of playing. I noticed him before I left. I could tell by Rosetti’s face that they were wise to him, were getting ready to close in on him. Trixie was getting out the blanks and sombrero, to cover it up, when I came away. I bet he’s already gone out in the wash!”

The prowl-car must have sidled up with its siren muffled. The first we knew about it was when two cops jumped out with guns drawn.

Jean didn’t waste any time — there wasn’t any to waste. “O.K. I did this, and here’s the gun. But if you’ve got any sense you won’t stop to ask questions about this guy. He’ll keep until later. Send in a call quick, for all the reserves they can spare. Do you two know a plainclothesman named Armour?”

One of them nodded. “Yeah, Danny Armour. He’s attached to this precinct.”

“Well, he’s attached to the sky-patrol by now, but if you get up there in time you may be able to catch them red-handed with the body. Rosetti’s gambling place — I’ll take you in the back way.”

One of them said in a low voice to the other: “He was up to something tonight. I saw him marking bills in the back room—”

The other one hitched his gun ominously. “We’ll take a chance. Put in the call, Bill.”

And so I got my first ride in a police radio-car.

We stopped around the corner from Jean’s place. She led the way in through the delivery entrance.

What she asked the colored boy on the elevator should have been very funny. Somehow it wasn’t, it was gruesome.

“Has any laundry been sent out from upstairs yet, Jimmy?”

He said: “Yes, Miss Jean. The truck just pulled away li’l while ago. Pow’ful big wash tonight, too.”

“Too late,” she moaned.

One of the cops with us said through his clenched teeth: “Dead or alive, he’s still evidence. Hurry up, what’d that truck look like?”

“I’ve seen it. You can spot it a mile away,” Jean snapped. “Ivory-colored, and all lacquered-up like a bandbox. It’ll be a toss-up between the two rivers, though.”

“Well, this is a westbound street, so we’ll take the one it heads for!”

We climbed back in the patrol-car and tore off again. The cordon was beginning to form around Rosetti’s place as we left.

That truck must have made marvelous time, to get all the way down where we finally caught up with it. But our ride was nothing short of maniacal. I wasn’t able to draw a full breath from the time we took off.

We overtook it halfway to the lonely warehouse district along the waterfront, screeched a little too far past, nearly turned over, but managed to come up onto the sidewalk in the process. The two “laundrymen” were armed, but never had a chance to prove it. The cops were on them before they’d even finished staggering out. By the time Jean and I came up they already had the big basket of “wash” out on the ground and were ripping it open.

They kicked away the blood-spattered towels and pillow cases, and I saw his face by the pale arc-light. It was he, all right, the man who had come up to my room. The cowlick was jagged and stiff with blood now.

“He’s still evidence, poor fellow,” one of the cops said.

“He’s better than that!” Jean explained electrically, straightening up from bending over him. “There’s still life in him, I just felt his heart! They were in too much of a hurry this time. Get him to a hospital quick, and you may still be able to pull him through!”

I’d thought we’d ridden fast on the first two legs of our trip but we had practically been bogged down compared to that stretch from waterfront to hospital.

I never thought I’d see that cowlick again, but I did — three weeks later, when Jean and I were taken down to the hospital. I even heard a voice come from under it. He was weak as a rag, but they’d pulled him through. The assistant D.A. who was going to prosecute Rosetti and his whole ring for murder was present at his bedside, to make the final arrangements with us. Jean was to be granted immunity for turning State’s evidence as to the operation of Rosetti’s many gambling establishments that she had presided over. I didn’t need immunity to agree to testify to the murder of Masters, because I hadn’t done anything.

I saw that cowlick all through the trial, sticking out stubborn as ever from under a huge gauze head-bandage.

Rosetti has long since been just a blackout in a prison lighting system, but I’m still seeing that cowlick.

I see it every Saturday night around 8, and sometimes during the week, when I answer the doorbell in the little flat that Jean and I have taken together. And it won’t be long now before I’ll be Mrs. Cowlick — Mrs. Armour to you!