“Why, no,” Miss Turner said. That’s what she’d been wracking her brains over. She didn’t have an enemy in the world.
“Well,” her mother suggested, “there’s only one thing to do. Take the matter up with the telephone company immediately. Have them trace the call.”
“Yes,” Miss Turner said. That’s what she’d been thinking herself.
The following Wednesday, her afternoon off, she went downtown to the local company offices and was referred at once to the supervisor, a Mrs. Armstrong. Mrs. Armstrong was a courteous, smart looking woman who heard her out alertly and showed sincere dismay but said that unfortunately not much could be done. There were too many similar cases and they couldn’t track down local calls unless of the utmost emergency. The only thing she could suggest would be to install a new, unlisted number. But Miss Turner made a sad sound. “Oh, I do outside stenographic work, Mrs. Armstrong. I’m listed in all the agencies. People wouldn’t know where to call.” Mrs. Armstrong was sympathetic. In that case, Miss Turner would simply have to bear it out until the caller, undoubtedly one of those psychopathic cases, got tired, or picked up the trail of someone else. If it got too troublesome — disturbing a sick mother certainly was a bad thing — Miss Turner might take the matter up with the police. Perhaps they could work something out. It certainly would be worth trying.
“Well, maybe he’ll stop himself.” Miss Turner managed to smile. “If only we could get a clue as to who he is.” When she walked down the long corridor on her way out she saw Mrs. Armstrong making a moue of puzzlement. It was obvious to Miss Turner that Mrs. Armstrong was wondering who would call on such a precious anonymous little thing like her. Telephone cranks and poison pen writers usually knew what their victims looked like, wanted somebody glamorous.
That, apparently, was the question puzzling not only Mrs. Armstrong. That evening as Miss Turner and her mother sat together reading magazines in the little parlor still furnished with antimacassars and rockers from Mrs. Turner’s youth — both really quite openly waiting for the telephone to ring — Miss Turner saw that her mother was wondering about it, too. Miss Turner knew exactly what was going on in her mother’s head, had for years. In her own heyday, Mrs. Turner had been a pretty, gay young woman with a great many male admirers. And she’d never stopped thinking her daughter should have inherited some of it. Miss Turner watched the older woman peer over the top of the magazine with a strange sour antagonism. Maybe, Miss Turner was beginning to realize, her mother had a point. Those droopy old dresses! She hadn’t had a new hat in three years! Even to herself she had to admit that she was hopeless, an old maid. The past 20 years all she’d done for excitement was go to church suppers, take in a movie once a week, and, for her annual two-week vacation, visit with her mother at a quiet lake hotel nearby, rocking on the porch with the old ladies.
But Mrs. Armstrong's and Mrs. Turner’s puzzlement didn’t alter the fact. Some man was calling Miss Turner.
That midnight he called again, and all the rest of the week, and they didn’t have the courage to call the police. For both of them it would be a terrible strain. He now let loose with such a new low in sexuality, when Mrs. Turner heard what he’d said (she insisted her daughter tell it all, word for word) she had palpitations and couldn’t sleep and Miss Turner herself on two occasions was violently sick to her stomach.
“Well, what are we going to do?” her mother asked at breakfast the end of that week. The night had been horrible.
Miss Turner clasped her hands. She was the picture of helplessness and total disorganization. She looked terrible. “I don’t know. I’ve done everything. I’ve appealed to his better nature, threatened to call the police, told him how ill you were. Nothing works. Frankly, mother, I’m at my rope’s end. I suppose now we’ll simply have to go to the police and get it over with.”
Mrs. Turner was painfully upset. “Oh, the police,” she said. “And the publicity.” She looked as though she were going to have an attack, and Miss Turner agreed with her attitude. Like her mother, she herself, she said, could take a few more days of it — all that abuse and the broken nights — if in the end it meant he’d get tired and stop by himself. “But I warn you, mama,” she said, shaking her head wearily, “if one more week doesn’t do it, then it’s straight to the police. I don’t think I can stand more.”
“Well, maybe the man will stop.” Her mother smiled with queer hopefulness.
The man didn’t stop. All the rest of the week everything was the same — horrible calls at all hours. There was only one change, Miss Turner reported.
Miss Turner told her mother it was something brand-new and was frightening her to death. It was no longer a matter of mere annoyance, nuisance, curiosity, or lost sleep. This was nightmare. The man had begun telling her things out of her past.
“Things out of your past?”
“Yes.”
“Such as what?”
Miss Turner got a funny look. “Well, such as: ‘What about Lemuel G.’ ” Lemuel Greer had been one of Miss Turner’s classmates, and had been considered the handsomest boy in school, star of the football and basketball teams, head of the dramatic club, a dream of a dancer; all the girls had been wild about him. He’d been elected class “dreamboat.”
“Why, what about Lemuel Greer?” her mother demanded.
Miss Turner got flustered and didn’t want to talk about it but finally had to confess. At the class picnic, she and Lemuel had gone for a stroll in the wood, found a deserted bandstand, and sat talking for hours.
“He went with you?” her mother said.
“Yes, mama. Oh, all perfectly innocent, of course.” Lemuel had merely kissed her once, that was all. It was one of her fondest memories. She’d kept it secret even from her mother.
Mrs. Turner said, “Why, Lemuel Greer married Susan Ann Blower not three months out of high school.” They were schoolmate sweethearts.
Miss Turner nodded. “Yes.” What frightened her was that nobody in the world but she and Lemuel — who, for the past 20 years, had been an oil executive in Arabia — knew anything about the bandstand business. “How did the lunatic on the telephone know?”
Also, how did he know to mention the time, just two or three months ago, some horrible man, sitting next to her in the balcony of the movie house, had let his arm slip from the back of her chair to around her waist and begged her to see the picture over again with him — until she’d threatened to call the management?
“What?” her mother said hoarsely.
There were five or six other little matters the man had brought up out of the depths of her past. “Oh, God, mama,” Miss Turner begged, “I’m going crazy. How can he possibly know?”
Her mother stared for a long moment. “Well, all right,” she said finally, resolutely. “It’s gone far enough. I don’t believe I can stand another night’s broken sleep, anyway. We’ve tried to dissuade him two whole weeks and it hasn’t worked. Now we’ll go to the police.”
That evening, on her way home from work, Miss Turner dropped in at headquarters and asked to see the chief. Chief Harrington was a tall skinny cigar-chewer with a bald head, a chronic worried look, and a kindly soft voice which he tried to make charming. He told her to sit down and listened carefully to her story.
The chief got an amused little twinkle in his eyes; it was perfectly normal — he couldn’t hide it. “Phoning you, Miss Turner?”
“Yes.”