He had to find out who William MacDonald was. William MacDonald of 372 Broadway. He said the name to himself when he was awake, and someone or something else said it to him when he was asleep. It gave him no leave. It became the printed heading on the newspaper he was reading, it became the context of the store-sign across the street (until he stopped dead in his tracks for a minute, and saw that it really was “J. MacDonald, Men’s Tailor”), it became the entry in the ledger he was working on at the office (until he stopped short and saw that he really had entered that, and had to erase it). And once during those few hours and days, as he was riding home, he seemed to hear the trolley conductor cry it out, in revery-shattering appropriateness. In an insant, white-faced and almost fainting, he was standing beside him, pulling at his coatsleeve and panting: “What? What’d you say just then? What was that?”
The conductor turned and stared at him coldly. “Calm down, mister. I wasn’t talking to you.” Then he flung a pointing thumb across his own shoulder. “I was saying something to him out there. Is that all right witchew?”
And looking past him, Marshall saw that an opposite-bound trolley had halted alongside this one he was on, and their two conductors had accordingly been placed more or less abreast of one another. So, although no further explanation was given, he had to surmise what he had heard had been either a hail by name between them, or else an inquiry about a third conductor named MacDonald, for whom the second one was substituting on the daily run, perhaps because it was his day off.
Marshall turned and stumbled back to where he’d sprung from, aware that every eye in the car was on him, in gradations of expression from incomprehension to snickering amusement. His legs still felt weak when he finally got off that car.
The next day the obvious finally occurred to him, long after it should have. Or perhaps would have, had he been more in command of himself. A New York City telephone directory might give some clue, one of the classified that listed subscribers under their businesses and occupations. One of the ordinary kind would not do, for that might only give the name and address, both of which he knew already.
The next problem was where to locate one, here. Although the New York to San Francisco circuit had already been open since the previous year and one could now reach almost any city in the country by telephone, such calls were still fairly uncommon. There was little or no demand for out-of-town listings, at least not enough to make it easy to put your hands upon another city’s directory. He tried several of the hotels first, and was told they had none. At last, and with considerable misgivings, he stopped in at the local main telephone exchange and approached the information desk.
“I have a name and address here, for New York,” he said tremulously, offering the slip he had written out ahead of time. “Could you, could you — is there some way in which I can find out the number and the occupational listing that go with it?”
“We have a master directory here for New York City,” the young woman told him. “I can have Information look it up for you, if the party is a subscriber to the New York directory.” She handed the slip to a boy and sent him off somewhere. “There will be a short wait.”
Marshall sat down fearfully on a bench and slowly rotated the brim of his hat between his two hands.
After what seemed like a far greater time than it must actually have been, the boy returned. Instantly Marshall jumped up and returned to the counter, almost leaning flat over the top of it. She returned the slip to him.
“Your party is listed in the New York City classified directory. Here is the complete information.”
He stared at it for a moment, feeling as though the blood vessels in his eyes were about to burst.
“Do you wish to put in a call to this number?” he heard her asking him.
“No! No! No!” he gasped, eyes fastened to the slip as though he couldn’t believe what he was reading. And then tried to modify it somewhat by mumbling half coherently, “Not just now— Later in the week— I’ll be back...”
Horrified, he almost forgot to thank her, in the haste with which he took himself out of there.
Outside, he looked at it once more, before hurriedly stuffing it away out of sight in his clothing.
With the additions that had been made, it now stood: “MacDonald, Wm... detective agency... 372 Broadway...” and then a telephone number had been added.
“Well, you wanted to know,” he told himself bitterly. “Now you do!”
11
Marjorie’s news only added fuel to his already smoldering fears and disquietude, sent them sparking and flaming upward into full-fledged bonfire panic, like gasoline poured onto a bed of latent coals. News was too subdued, too casual a word for the tidings. Even to her, it was a dramatic crisis. To him it was a revelation of the direst import. He had the key to it, the explanation; she didn’t.
He had unsuspectingly taken his usual short terminal walk down the sun-slanted russet-dyed sidewalk from bus-stop to their house. Up to that point, no warning. And then as he turned into the building, the first shock. Their flat-door wide open and a uniformed policeman loitering there. Not coming, not going, just standing there posted alongside it.
All the blood left Marshall’s face and he could feel it puckering into a resemblance to a sucked-out lemon skin.
The policeman said to him: “You belong inside here?”
He couldn’t muster breath to float the words from his mouth, but he nodded affirmatively.
The policeman took a little pity on his consternation. “Don’t be frightened,” he tried to reassure him. “Your wife’ll tell you about it, she’s in there now,” and motioned him permission — or advice — to go ahead in without further delay.
Marjorie was standing there in their front room, talking with an unknown man. He was writing something down (that recurrent little manual gesture that Marshall invariably hated so, dreaded so).
They both turned. “Here he is now,” she said.
She ran over to him and held herself against him, as if seeking solace.
“What’s happened? What’s wrong?” he managed to get out. (Oh my God, is he here to arrest me? I can’t get out past the door again, with that policeman by it. I shouldn’t have walked in.)
“Somebody’s been here,” she said. “Somebody’s been in here.”
He didn’t understand her for a minute. She realized that and repeated herself more clearly. “I mean, our flat was broken into. A burglar has been here. I went to the butcher about half-past three, to get some veal. I came back, and somebody had been in here while I was gone. I found it like this. Look at the way it looks.”
Somebody had. It was obvious. It was not just her imagination, or a case of nerves. He could see that at a glance.
The front room was not too flagrantly disturbed. Even his practiced eye might have noted nothing amiss, but for her say-so and the presence of the stranger in it. One or two of the chairs were awry, that was about all.
“But wait’ll you see the bedroom,” she said. “That’s a sight.”
All the drawers were yawning out, almost to within tipping-over distance, from the bureau front. Their contents were stirred into a turmoil, and in several cases had fallen to the floor below. The clothes-closet door stood wide, and in there, too, several garments had slipped their hangers and lay in a muddled puddle below.
“You’ll never know what went through me, when I first stepped in here and found this staring me in the face! I immediately phoned the police, and they sent this young man over.”