As he stared back at her, speechless with amazement, her eyes left his face, turned toward the windshield. Her pale lips twitched oddly, as if, mute with fear at what she saw there, she sought vainly to scream.
Then abruptly the spell was broken. She leaped to her feet, throwing one arm across her face in a gesture of one warding off some fearful harm. A shrill, hysterical scream pierced the quiet of that closed space like the stab of a knife!
That cry jarred Strite hack to consciousness with a suddenness that jerked him upright in bed.
As he sat there trembling with the realism of his dream and that agonized scream, he became aware that he held something tightly in one closed hand. A fresh chill passed through his body at the familiar feel of that something. He needed no light to tell him that it was a dime he clutched — the dime he had been ready to drop in the fare box of his dream!
3
Of course he found that the coin evidently had fallen out of his vest when he sat on the bed while undressing. In fact, he usually kept some change in his vest pocket so as to have it handy for tips, newspapers, and such. Perhaps the accidental finding and touching of that coin in his slumbers had even started the train of thought that had made him dream of the fare box — and the other things. But there was no more sleep for Strife. After tossing about for the rest of the night, he got up about five o’clock.
This morning he was determined upon one thing. He would ride the black bus — “the phantom bus,” as he had come to term it privately — this morning, and kill for once and all this persistent subconscious illusion that had taken root in his mind from the seed of his first absurd impression of the rickety conveyance in the eery light of half-dawn.
Once more his intention was to be defeated, however. The black bus failed to appear before the six-forty-five, though he had arrived at its stop more than a quarter-hour before it was due. He even waited for it ten minutes after his regular bus had gone — only to learn later that the other line finally had been discontinued.
His first reaction to this information was an overwhelming relief. No longer would he be reminded by this shadowy, rumbling hulk each morning, of things he wanted to forget.
But on the heels of this thought came the realization that the very discontinuance of the line had removed all chance of his ever killing the illusion if the latter continued to trouble him.
That day at noon as he walked along a downtown street a peculiar odor halted him. There was an illusive, dread familiarity about it. He was before a florist’s open shop, and a great bowl of tuberoses, those once choice flowers for all those departed, was set out in front. He knew now where he had smelled their scent before — on the phantom bus of his dream.
4
Once again Strite was in the phantom bus — in his subconscious mind. This time he knew exactly what was coming. He seemed powerless to change a single detail of it all. The pause just inside the doorway as he forced his gaze up to where the six passengers sat in plain view, their eyes closed, in death-like weariness or worse. The icy touch of a finger on his wrist, the reaching for a coin, and the discovery of the slender, tall girl up front. Doris!
At this point the sequence of events suddenly galvanized him into a feverish alertness for the next thing. As Doris’ hysterical scream rang in his ears, he was abruptly released from the grip of immobility. He turned quickly and looked out of the front of the bus.
What he saw there made him throw up his hands in an involuntary gesture similar to her own instinctive gesture of terror. He heard the brakes squealing shrilly — felt the bus skid on the sleet-covered road even as he caught a side glimpse of the operator’s face — saw with sudden added horror that half the face was missing. Beyond that fleeting glimpse, he had time for no further examination; for just ahead a heavily loaded truck was emerging from a narrow bridge-end, blocking their way. Then a terrific, rending crash...
5
The six-forty-five bus was four minutes late on account of the icy condition of the roads; they had been that way for two days. A little group of commuters on the roadside were talking in subdued tones, for once unmindful of the delay as they waited.
“Personally,” a pompous, red-faced man was saying, “I believe Ranson killed and — mauled— him for attentions to Mrs. Ranson.”
“But Strite didn’t appear to be that type,” objected a young member of the group. “Nor is Mrs. Ranson the sort who would encourage him. Besides, consider the condition of the body. Why, Ranson or no one else could have so mangled another — to say nothing of leaving it in bed and persistently claiming that he didn’t know how it happened, except that he and his wife were awakened in the middle of the night by a frightful cry — and found him that way! No, I say there is some deeper mystery about the affair, the nature of which we haven’t suspected.”
The big, orange-colored bus hove into view at this juncture, interrupting the discussion for the time. Presently they all had boarded it and found seats at various vantage-points. A little distance along the road one of them pointed out to his neighbor a twisted and splintered mass of wreckage at the foot of an embankment of the narrow bridge they were just then crossing.
“Lucky it jumped off when it struck — didn’t even delay us yesterday when we followed a few minutes after it was discovered.”
“Queer thing about how it got there,” said the other. “Nobody witnessed the accident, and the defunct bus company’s officials swear that the last they saw of their ‘death trap’ was when it was locked away in an old garage on the other side of Norwood. Can you imagine any one swiping a can like that for a ride? But the present-day young coke-head will grab anything for a joy-ride.”
“No queerer than that — that mess inside the wreck — as if some one had been crushed like — well, like poor Strite, for instance. Yet they could find no trace of a body!”
Beyond the Door
by Paul Suter
“You haven’t told me yet how it happened,” I said to Mrs. Malkin.
She set her lips and eyed me, sharply.
“Didn’t you talk with the coroner, sir?”
“Yes, of course,” I admitted; “but as I understand you found my uncle, I thought—”
“Well, I wouldn’t care to say anything about it,” she interrupted, with decision.
This housekeeper of my uncle’s was somewhat taller than I, and much heavier — two physical preponderances which afford any woman possessing them an advantage over the inferior male, She appeared a subject for diplomacy rather than argument.
Noting her ample jaw, her breadth of cheek, the unsentimental glint of her eye, I decided on conciliation. I placed a chair for her, there in my Uncle Godfrey’s study, and dropped into another, myself.
“At least, before we go over the other parts of the house, suppose we rest a little,” I suggested, in my most unctuous manner. “The place rather gets on one’s nerves — don’t you think so?”
It was sheer luck — I claim no credit for it. My chance reflection found the weak spot in her fortifications. She replied to it with an undoubted smack of satisfaction:
“It’s more than seven years that I’ve been doing for Mr. Sarston, sir: bringing him his meals regular as clockwork, keeping the house clean — as clean as he’d let me — and sleeping at my own home o’ nights; and in all that time I’ve said, over and over, there ain’t a house in New York the equal of this for queerness.”