Then finally, without any further urging, he began to talk about it. Maybe because she was from his own home town, and he had to tell someone. She was the girl next door, the one he would have told his troubles to, if they were both still back there. He wouldn’t have had anything like this to tell her, back there, but he had it here, so he told it here.
“I had a job as an electrician’s helper until just a short while ago. Sort of an apprentice or assistant, whatever you’d want to call it. It wasn’t much, but it was something. We did a little of everything, repairing radios, converting them from one current to another, electric flatirons, vacuum cleaners, putting in new wall-outlets or extra lengths of wiring in people’s homes, fixing doorbells — you know, all that sort of thing.
“It wasn’t what I’d come here for, but it was a darned sight better than the first few weeks had been, when I’d slept out on park benches. So I wasn’t complaining.
“Then about a month ago, I lost it. I wasn’t fired, it just folded up under me. The old guy got a heart-attack and was told to take it easy, so he quit business. He had no one to take over for him, I was no kin of his, so he just closed up shop. I was left high and dry again, like I’d been before. I tramped around by the hour, and I couldn’t get myself anything else. Nothing that was halfway permanent, anyway. Either in that line or any other. Stints at washing dishes in greasy-vest joints, or busman in one-arm hash-houses — Things are tight in this town, and nothing else was open. 1939’s a tough year, you know that yourself. When I saw that I was heading for the ash-heap again, I should have gone back home while I still had the price of the fare on me. Or written the family for money; they’d have sent it. But it was like with you, I guess. I hated to admit I was licked. I’d come here on my own, and I wanted to make good on my own. Smart guy, me.”
He was pacing slowly back and forth now, while he spoke to her; hands shoved deep into his pockets in dejection, head bent, looking down at his own feet as he moved them.
She just sat there, listening intently, sideward on the chair, hugging her own waist.
“Now I’ve got to go back and mention an incident that happened last winter, several months before I lost my job. This is the part that’s going to sound shady, that you won’t want to believe, but it happened, just the way I’m telling you. We got one of these custom-made jobs, that came our way once in awhile. The shop was on Third, but it was right on the edges of the Gold Coast; you know, the swanky zone, the east side Seventies. My boss had been in business there a long time, and he had a good reputation for thorough, methodical work, and you’d be surprised how often these people would call him in for something in their homes. We got to see the insides of lots of the swellest homes in the city.
“Well anyway, this particular call was from a swanky private home over on East Seventieth. The guy had bought an ultra-violet ray sunlamp, to keep himself fit through the winter instead of going to Florida, and it needed a special outlet rigged up for it on the bathroom wall so it could be plugged in.
“The name was Graves. Mean anything to you?”
She shook her head.
“It didn’t to me either. It still don’t, as far as that goes. My boss claimed they were in the society columns a lot, very old and well-known family. Not that he read the society columns himself, but he seemed to know all about them. The job itself was easy enough. It took us three days, but that was because we only worked at it for an hour or so at a time each day, in order not to inconvenience them too much.
“We had to chop a hole about the size of a fist part way through the bathroom wall, then hook up a wire with one that was already inside the wall, leading into the room beyond, and bring it through, to take the lamp-connection. Well, it was an old house, and the walls were good and thick, I never saw them so deep. One time, when I was chipping away there by myself — my boss wasn’t with me at the moment, he’d gone back to the shop to get something — I struck wood offside to me. I didn’t know what it was, but I shifted further over to avoid it. After that, it didn’t give me any more trouble.
“Then the next day — I think it was — somebody stepped into the next room from where I was working, it was a sort of library or second-floor study at the back; he was only there for a minute or two, and then he went out again.
“I heard a slight disturbance in the wall right next to me. The doorway between was open, and I leaned my head back and glanced out. There was a mirror opposite, and I could see him in that; he was standing on the other side of the same wall I was working at, just a little further over. He’d opened sort of a wooden panel — the whole wall in there was panelled about halfway up — and he was turning a little dial on a safe-lid built-in behind it. It wasn’t a very big one, oh about two by four, one of these baby-sized safes, like they have in rooms sometimes. He swung out the lid, and slid out a shallow drawer, and I saw him take out some money; then he shoved it back again.
“I didn’t even wait to watch any more. I went back to my work. I wasn’t interested. All I’d wanted to know was what the vibration was I could feel right next to me in the wall. Afterwards I remembered about hitting wood the day before, so I figured it must have been the back or the side of the wooden lining the safe was set into that I’d grazed. And I let it go at that, I didn’t think any more about it from then on. I don’t ask you to believe that; I don’t blame you if you don’t.”
All she said was, “I didn’t believe you when you said you were from the same town I was, at first, either. If that was true, why shouldn’t this be?”
“Then what I’m going to tell you next is even harder to believe. I don’t know myself how it happened; I only know it did, and I had nothing to do with it. They had a little table, downstairs by the door as you came in. Several times, without meaning anything, I’d left my kit standing open on need, after we’d once got the job lined up; I guess it was more absentmindedness than anything else, though. Then when we were all through and went back to the shop for the last time, I emptied it out and I found something in it that must have got mixed up with my tools and wiring and things by mistake. Either somebody had dropped it in by mistake, or I’d swept it up off the table with my own hand without noticing, when I was putting things back in the kit. There was a dopey-looking sort of a maid answered the door for us once or twice, she might have done it when she was dusting around the table, thinking it was part of my equipment. All I know is I didn’t do it purposely, I swear to you I only saw it for the first time when I got back to the shop. I don’t know yet how it got in there.”
“What was it?” she asked.
“It was the latchkey to the front door of the house, that I’d brought away with me by mistake in my tool-kit. Or at least one of the latchkeys to the front door.”
She just looked at him, long and hard.
He said again, “I don’t know how it got in there. I only know I didn’t do it, didn’t know about it till I saw it.” Then he let his hands fall limp at his sides. “That I don’t expect anyone to believe.”
“An hour ago I wouldn’t have,” she admitted. “Now I’m not so sure any more. Go ahead, finish it.”
“The rest don’t need much telling, you can guess it from here. I should have told my boss about it, turned it over to him. I would have, but he wasn’t there any more; he’d already gone home and left me to close up shop. Then the next best thing was, I should have gone right straight back there myself and returned it to them. But it was late and I was hungry and tired; I wanted to eat and take it easy, I’d been working all day. So I left it where it was overnight, and I meant to drop around the next day and turn it over to them without fail. I didn’t do that either. I was kept on the jump from eight in the morning until the last thing at night, and I didn’t have a chance. By the day after that, it had already slipped my mind. First thing you know, I’d forgotten about it completely.