All down one side of the block the answers were:
“No,” “No,” “No.”
I crossed the street and started to work the other side. The first house: “No.”
The second: “No.”
The third. The fourth.
The fifth—
No one came to the door in answer to my first ring. After a while, I rang again. I had just decided that no one was at home, when the knob turned slowly and a little old woman opened the door. She was a very fragile little old woman, with a piece of grey knitting in one hand, and faded eyes that twinkled pleasantly behind gold-rimmed spectacles. She wore a stiffly starched apron over a black dress and there was white lace at her throat.
“Good evening,” she said in a thin friendly voice. “I hope you didn’t mind waiting. I always have to peep out to see who’s here before I open the door — an old woman’s timidity.”
She laughed with a little gurgling sound in her throat.
“Sorry to disturb you,” I apologized. “But—”
“Won’t you come in, please?”
“No; I just want a little information. I won’t take much of your time.”
“I wish you would come in,” she said, and then added with mock severity, “I’m sure my tea is getting cold.”
She took my damp hat and coat, and I followed her down a narrow hall to a dim room, where a man got up as we entered. He was old too, and stout, with a thin white beard that fell upon a white vest that was as stiffly starched as the woman’s apron.
“Thomas,” the little fragile woman told him; “this is Mr.—”
“Tracy,” I said, because that was the name I had given the other residents of the block; but I came as near blushing when I said it, as I have in fifteen years. These folks weren’t made to be lied to.
Their name, I learned, was Quarre; and they were an affectionate old couple. She called him “Thomas” every time she spoke to him, rolling the name around in her mouth as if she liked the taste of it. He called her “my dear” just as frequently, and twice he got up to adjust a cushion more comfortably to her frail back.
I had to drink a cup of tea with them and eat some little spiced cookies before I could get them to listen to a question. Then Mrs. Quarre made little sympathetic clicking sounds with her tongue and teeth, while I told about the elderly lady who had fallen off a street car. The old man rumbled in his beard that it was “a damn shame,” and gave me a fat and oily cigar. I had to assure them that the fictitious elderly lady was being taken care of and was coming along nicely — I was afraid they were going to insist upon being taken to see her.
Finally I got away from the accident itself, and described the man I wanted. “Thomas,” Mrs. Quarre said; “isn’t that the young man who lives in the house with the railing — the one who always looks so worried?”
The old man stroked his snowy beard and pondered.
“But, my dear,” he rumbled at last; “hasn’t he got dark hair?”
She beamed upon her husband and then upon me.
“Thomas is so observant,” she said with pride. “I had forgotten; but the young man I spoke of does have dark hair, so he couldn’t be the one who saw the accident at all.”
The old man then suggested that one who lived in the block below might be my man. They discussed this one at some length before they decided that he was too tall and too old. Mrs. Quarre suggested another. They discussed that one, and voted against him. Thomas offered a candidate; he was weighed and discarded. They chattered on:
“But don’t you think, Thomas... Yes, my dear, but... Of course you’re right, Thomas, but...”
Two old folks enjoying a chance contact with the world that they had dropped out of.
Darkness settled. The old man turned on a light in a tall lamp that threw a soft yellow circle upon us, and left the rest of the room dim. The room was a large one, and heavy with the thick hangings and bulky horse-hair furniture of a generation ago. I burned the cigar the old man had given me, and slumped comfortably down in my chair, letting them run on, putting in a word or two whenever they turned to me. I didn’t expect to get any information here; but I was comfortable, and the cigar was a good one. Time enough to go out into the drizzle when I had finished my smoke.
Something cold touched the nape of my neck.
“Stand up!”
I didn’t stand up: I couldn’t. I was paralyzed. I sat and blinked at the Quarres.
And looking at them, I knew that something cold couldn’t be against the back of my neck; a harsh voice couldn’t have ordered me to stand up. It wasn’t possible!
Mrs. Quarre still sat primly upright against the cushions her husband had adjusted to her back; her eyes still twinkled with friendliness behind her glasses; her hands were still motionless in her lap, crossed at the wrists over the piece of knitting. The old man still stroked his white beard, and let cigar smoke drift unhurriedly from his nostrils.
They would go on talking about the young men in the neighborhood who might be the man I wanted. Nothing had happened. I had dozed.
“Get up!”
The cold thing against my neck jabbed deep into the flesh.
I stood up.
“Frisk him,” the harsh voice came from behind.
The old man carefully laid his cigar down, came to me, and ran his hands over my body. Satisfied that I was unarmed, he emptied my pockets, dropping the contents upon the chair that I had just left.
Mrs. Quarre was pouring herself some more tea.
“Thomas,” she said; “you’ve overlooked that little watch pocket in the trousers.”
He found nothing there.
“That’s all,” he told the man behind me, and returned to his chair and cigar.
“Turn around, you!” the harsh voice ordered.
I turned and faced a tall, gaunt, raw-boned man of about my own age, which is thirty-five. He had an ugly face — hollow-cheeked, bony, and spattered with big pale freckles. His eyes were of a watery blue, and his nose and chin stuck out abruptly.
“Know me?” he asked.
“No.”
“You’re a liar!”
I didn’t argue the point: he was holding a level gun in one big freckled hand.
“You’re going to know me pretty well before you’re through with me,” this big ugly man threatened. “You’re going to—”
“Hook!” a voice came from a portièred doorway — the doorway through which the ugly man had no doubt crept up behind me. “Hook, come here!”
The voice was feminine — young, clear, and musical.
“What do you want?” the ugly man called over his shoulder.
“He’s here.”
“All right!” He turned to Thomas Quarre. “Keep this joker safe.”
From somewhere among his whiskers, his coat, and his stiff white vest, the old man brought out a big black revolver, which he handled with no signs of either weakness or unfamiliarity.
The ugly man swept up the things that had been taken from my pockets, and carried them through the portières with him.
Mrs. Quarre smiled brightly up at me.
“Do sit down, Mr. Tracy,” she said.
I sat.
Through the portières a new voice came from the next room; a drawling baritone voice whose accent was unmistakably British; cultured British.
“What’s up, Hook?” this voice was asking.
The harsh voice of the ugly man:
“Plenty’s up, I’m telling you! They’re onto us! I started out a while ago; and as soon as I got to the street, I seen a man I knowed on the other side. He was pointed out to me in Philly five-six years ago. I don’t know his name, but I remembered his mug — he’s a Continental Detective Agency man. I came back in right away, and me and Elvira watched him out of the window. He went to every house on the other side of the street, asking questions or something. Then he came over and started to give this side a whirl, and after a while he rings the bell. I tell the old woman and her husband to get him in, stall him along, and see what he says for himself. He’s got a song and dance about looking for a guy what seen an old woman bumped by a street car — but that’s the bunk! He’s gunning for us. There ain’t nothing else to it. I went in and stuck him up just now. I meant to wait till you come, but I was scared he’d get nervous and beat it. Here’s his stuff if you want to give it the once over.”