The apartment tree boasted many mirrors, a luxury note like its silver-arabesqued gray wallpaper. There was a large one opposite each elevator door and there were three in the lobby.
As he ended each flight, Ramsey would look down the long alley corridor, make a U-turn, and walk back to the landing (glancing into the short corridor and the elevator landing, which were lit by a central third moon and one large window), all this while facing the long front corridor, then make another U-turn and start down the next flight.
(He did discover one difference between the floors. He counted steps going down, and while there were nineteen between the fourteenth and the twelfth floors, there were only seventeen between all the other pairs. So the cage had to travel a foot and a bit farther to make that Fourteen-Twelve journey; it didn’t just seem to take longer, it did. So much for tired elevators!)
So it went for nine floors.
But when he made his U-turn onto the third floor he saw that the front corridor’s full moon had been extinguished, throwing a gloom on the whole passageway, while silhouetted against the wired glass at the far end was a swayed, slender figure looking very much like that of the Vanishing Lady. He couldn’t make out her pale triangle of face or gleaming eyes because there was no front light on her; she was only shaped darkness, yet he was sure it was she.
In walking the length of the landing, however, there was time to think that if he continued on beyond the stairs, it would be an undeniable declaration of his intention to meet her, he’d have to keep going, he had no other excuse; also, there’d be the unpleasant impression of him closing in ominously, relentlessly, on a lone trapped female.
As he advanced she waited at the tunnel’s end, silent and unmoving, a shaped darkness.
He made his customary turn, keeping on down the stairs. He felt so wrenched by what was happening that he hardly knew what he was thinking or even feeling, except his heart was thudding and his lungs were gasping as if he’d just, walked ten stories upstairs instead of down.
It wasn’t until he had turned into the second floor and seen through the stairwell, cut off by ceiling, the workshoes and twill pants of Clancy, the manager, faced away from him in the lobby, that he got himself in hand. He instantly turned and retraced his steps with frantic haste. He’d flinched away again, just when he’d sworn he wouldn’t! Why, there were a dozen questions he could politely ask her to justify his close approach. Could he be of assistance? Was she looking for one of the tenants? some apartment number? Etcetera.
But even as he rehearsed these phrases, he had a sinking feeling of what he was going to find on Three.
He was right. There was no longer a figure among the shadows filling the dark front corridor.
And then, even as he was straining his eyes to make sure, with a flicker and a flash the full moon came on again and shone steadily.
Showing no one at all.
Ramsey didn’t look any further but hurried back down the stairs. He wanted to be with people, anyone, just people in the street.
But Mr. Clancy was still in the lobby, communing with himself. Ramsey suddenly felt he simply had to share at least part of the story of the Vanishing Lady with someone.
So he told Clancy about the defective light bulb inside the front globe on Three, how it had started to act like a globe that’s near the end of its lifetime, arcing and going off and on by itself, unreliable. Only then did he, as if idly, an afterthought, mention the woman he’d seen and then got to wondering about and gone back and not seen, adding that be thought he’d also seen her in the lobby once or twice before.
He hadn’t anticipated the swift seriousness of the manager’s reaction. Ramsey’d hardly more than mentioned the woman when the ex-fireman asked sharply, “Did she look like a bum? I mean, for a woman—”
Ramsey told him that no, she didn’t, but he hadn’t more than sketched his story when the other said, “Look, Mr. Ryker, I’d like to go up and check this out right away. You said she was all in black, didn’t you? Yeah. Well, look, you stay here, would you do that? And just take notice if anybody comes down. I won’t be long.”
And he got in the elevator, which had been waiting there, and went up. To Four or Five, or maybe Six, Ramsey judged from the cage’s noises and the medium-short time the telltale flared before winking out. He imagined that Clancy would leave it there and then hunt down the floors one by one, using the stairs.
Pretty soon Clancy did reappear by way of the stairs, looking thoughtful. “No” he said, “she’s not there anymore, at least not in the bottom half of the building—and I don’t see her doing a lot of climbing. Maybe she got somebody to take her in, or maybe it was just one of the tenants. Or…?” He looked a question at Ramsey, who shook his head and said, “No, nobody came down the stairs or elevator.”
The manager nodded and then shook his own head slowly. “I don’t know, maybe I’m getting too suspicious,” he said. “I don’t know how much you’ve noticed, Mr. Ryker, living way on top, but from time to time this building is troubled by bums—winos and street people from south of here—trying to get inside and shelter here, especially in winter, maybe go to sleep in a corner. Most of them are men, of course, but there’s an occasional woman bum.” He paused and chuckled reflectively. “Once we had an invasion of women bums, though they weren’t that exactly.”
Ramsey looked at him expectantly.
Clancy hesitated, glanced at Ramsey, and after another pause said, “That’s why we turn the buzzer system off at eleven at night and keep it off until eight in the morning. If we left it on, why, any time in the night a drunken wino would start buzzing apartments until he got one who’d buzz the door open (or he might push a dozen at once, so somebody’d be sure to buzz the door), and once he was inside, he’d hunt himself up an out-of-the-way spot where he could sleep it off and be warm. And if he had cigarettes, he’d start smoking them to put him to sleep, dropping the matches anywhere, but mostly under things. There’s where your biggest danger is—fire. Or he’d get an idea and start bothering tenants, ringing theirs bells and knocking on their doors, and then anything could happen. Even with the buzzer system off, some of them get in. They’ll stand beside the street door and then follow a couple that’s late getting home, or the same with the newsboy delivering the morning paper before it’s light. Not following them directly, you see, but using a foot (sometimes a cane or crutch) to block the door just before it locks itself, and then coming in soon as the coast’s clear.”
Ramsey nodded several times appreciatively, but then pressed the other with “But you were going to tell me something about an invasion of female bums?”
“Oh, that,” Clancy said doubtfully. A look at Ramsey seemed to reassure him. “That was before your time—you came here about five years ago, didn’t you? Yeah. Well, this happened… let’s see… about two years before that. The Mrs. and I generally don’t talk about it much to tenants, because it gives… gave the building a bad name. Not really any more now, though. Seven years and all’s forgotten, eh?”
He broke off to greet respectfully a couple who passed by on their way upstairs. He turned back to Ramsey. “Well, anyway,” he continued more comfortably, “at this time I’m talking about, the Mrs. and I had been here ourselves only a year. Just about long enough to learn the ropes, at least some of them.