“Safe?” repeated Moran blankly. “Sure — there’s nothing in there, couple of old raincoats.”
“Ready,” a faint voice called.
She turned her head. “Here I come,” she warned, and vanished from the doorway as unnoticeably as she had first appeared in it.
He could hear her pretendedly questing here and there for a preliminary moment or two, to keep up the relish of the game longer. Then a straining at woodwork and a muffled burst of gleeful acknowledgment.
Suddenly his name sounded with unexpected tautness. “Mr. Moran!” He jumped up and started out to them. It had been that kind of a tone: hurry. She’d repeated it twice before he could even reach them, short as the distance was.
She was pulling at the old-fashioned iron hand-grip riveted to the door. Her face was whitening down around the chin and mouth. “I can’t get it open — see, that’s what I meant a minute ago!”
“Now, don’t get frightened,” he calmed her. “There’s nothing to it.” He grasped the iron hand-grip, simply pulled it up a half inch parallel to the door, the latch tongue freed itself, and he drew out the heavy oaken panel. It was set into the back of the staircase structure, half the height of the average door and a little broader. It did not quite meet the floor, either; there was a half-foot sill under it.
Cookie clambered out hilariously.
“See what it was? You were trying to pull it out toward you. It works on a spring latch and you have to free that first by hitching the iron bracket up; then you pull it out.”
“I see that now. Stupid of me,” she said half-shamefacedly. She gestured vaguely above her heart, fanned a hand before her face. “I didn’t let on to you, but what a fright it gave me! Phew! I was afraid it had jammed and he’d smother in there before we could—”
“Oh, I’m sorry — darn shame—” he said contritely, as if it had been his fault for having such a door in his house at all.
She seemed to want to continue to discuss possibilities, as though there was a hidden morbid streak in her. “I suppose if worse had come to worst, you could have broken it down, though, at a moment’s notice.”
“I could have taken something to it, yes,” he agreed.
She seemed surprised. He saw her eye glance appraisingly over his husky upper torso. “Couldn’t you have broken it down with your bare hands or by crashing your shoulder against it?”
He fingered the edge of the door, guided it outward so she could scan it. “Oh, no. This is solid oak. Two inches thick. Look at that. Well-built house, you know. And it’s in a bad place; there isn’t room enough on either side to run against it, to get up impetus. The turn of the wall here only gives you a couple yards of space. And on the inside it slants down with the incline of the stairs; you can’t even stand up full-length. The closet’s triangular, wedge shaped, see? Swing your arm too far back over your shoulder, on either side of the door, and it would jam against the sloping top. Or against the wall indentation out here.”
Suddenly, to his surprise, she had lowered her head, gone through the low doorway into the darkness inside. He could hear her sounding the thick sides of it with her palms. She came out again in a moment. “Isn’t it well built!” she marveled. “But it’s stuffy in there, even with the door open. How long do you suppose a person could last if they did actually happen to get themselves locked into such a place?”
His masculine omniscience was caught unprepared for once. He’d evidently never given the matter any thought before. “Oh, I don’t know—” he said vaguely. “Hour and a half, two hours at the most.” He looked up and down the thing with abstract interest. “It is pretty airtight, at that,” he conceded.
She winced repugnantly at this thought she had herself conjured up, wholesomely changed the subject. Everyone, after all, has odd moments of morbid conjecture. She leaned down, grasped Cookie from below the armpits and started to march his legs stiffly out before him like a mechanical soldier. “Well, mister.” Then she deferred to Moran: “Do you think he should go to bed now?”
Cookie started some more vertical emphasis. He was having too good a time to give it up without a battle. “One more! One more!”
“All right, just one more and then that’s all,” she conceded indulgently.
Moran went back to his chair in the living room. He’d finished his paper. Exhaustively; even down to the quotations of stocks he didn’t own but would have liked to. Even down to letters from readers on topics that didn’t interest him. He took out a cigar the man he’d lunched with had given him today, appraised it, accepted it for smoking, stripped it and lit it up. He blew a lariat of sky blue around his head with ineffable comfort. He sat there with it for a moment in a complete vacuum of contentment.
It was a seldom enjoyed luxury, and he almost didn’t know what to do with it. His head started to nod. He caught it the first time, took time off to put his cigar on the tray beside him so he wouldn’t drop it and burn a hole in Margaret’s carpet.
Cookie came tiptoeing in with exaggerated mincing of footfalls that was almost a hobbling creep, probably impressed upon him from outside, carrying Moran’s soft-toed carpet slippers, one in each hand. Soft-toed and soft-soled. “Miss Baker says to put these on, you feel better,” he whispered sibilantly.
“Say, that’s fine,” Moran beamed. He bent down and effected the change. “Tell her she’s spoiling me.”
Cookie tiptoed out with the discarded shoes — heavy soled, thick toed — with as much precaution as when he’d come in, even though the object of his care was unmistakably still awake.
Moran sprawled back and, when the second and third nods came, let them ride. A girl like that oughta... oughta be in a jewelry-store window... mmmmmm—
He meant well, but oh, God, it was like being on the rack to have to sit there beside him and listen to him. “Yessir, I brought all three of you girls into the world. I can remember the night you came as clear as though ’twere yesterday. And now look at you, sitting here beside me, all grown up and married and with a youngster of your own—”
And frightened, oh, how frightened, she thought dismally, eyes straining for the bus that seemed never to come.
“Doesn’t seem possible. No sir, either you grew up too fast or I don’t feel old enough for my age, must be one or the other.”
She matched her chortle with a wan smile by the faint light of the dashboard.
“I know,” he purred. He reached out and grasped her outside shoulder and juggled it hearteningly. “I know. You’re all worried and upset and wish you were down there already. Now, honey, don’t take on like that. It’ll be all right, it’s bound to be, how could it help being otherwise? Just ‘cause he doesn’t answer the telephone? Shucks, he’s probably over at one of the neighbors’ houses guzzling beer—”
“I know, Dr. Bixby, but I can’t help it. It’s that telegram. It gives me the most uncanny feeling, and I can’t throw it off. Somebody sent that telegram—”
“Nat-chelly, nat-chelly,” he chuckled benevolently, “telegrams don’t just send themselves. Maybe some blame fool in his office thought he’d like to get back at him—” But he let the thought die out; it wasn’t very convincing.
She was staring ahead, down the state highway that skirted the opposite side of the bus station to where the doctor had his Ford parked. “It’s late, isn’t it? Maybe there aren’t going to be any more tonight—” She kept continually putting a finger to her teeth, replacing it a moment later with another one.