Johnston McCulley
The Ghost Phone
CHAPTER I
AN AFTERNOON OFF
Once more old Peter Podd started impulsively toward the stairs, and then thought better of it and returned to the tradesmen’s entrance. He stood before the open door and looked out at the clean alley. They kept the alley as clean here as the avenue in front, for the servants used it going to and from the street.
It was Sunday afternoon and almost three o’clock. Summer had come in earnest. Crowds were hurrying to the parks. The avenues and boulevards were thronged with automobiles. Couples of pedestrians went slowly along the walks. Children played at the edges of green lawns.
But old Peter Podd was not in the proper mood to enjoy the day. His scant hair was white, his face was seamed and wrinkled and weatherbeaten, his shoulders were stooped and his hands gnarled. For almost forty of the fifty years he had lived, Peter Podd had been compelled to resort to hard labor to gain sustenance, and the struggle had left its marks upon him.
Since it was Sunday, he had put on a clean shirt from force of habit, and a pair of neatly-patched trousers, and he even had his coat handy. But even the fact that he was “dressed up” did not work psychologically to his advantage.
Now he stood back a short distance from the open door and looked into the alley without seeing anything. Peter Podd was living with his thoughts at the moment, and not with his eyes. His face grew stern, his lips moved.
“It ain’t right!” he muttered thickly. “She ain’t got any right to do it. A man’s got his livin’ to make. I’ll see her and tell her so. And I’ll ask her to change her mind and do the right thing. If she don’t—”
He turned and looked toward the stairs again. If he went up just one short flight, he would be on the floor where Mrs. Madge Lennek had her expensive apartment. If he knocked at the door, the maid would answer.
Peter Podd liked the maid. She was about twenty-five, big and strong, and her eyes flashed in a way that said she could take care of herself. Marie Dolge had been with Mrs. Madge Lennek almost a year, so she had said.
The maid would come to the door, and Peter Podd, holding his janitor’s cap in his hand politely, would ask to see Mrs. Lennek. Perhaps she would refuse to see him. But, if she did condescend to see him, Peter Podd would state his mind in this matter, make an effort to appeal to the woman’s sense of justice — if she possessed one — and do what he could to save himself.
Once more he turned toward the stairs. This time he got as far as the second step, and there he stopped. Peter Podd, for all his years and his weakened body, would have offered fight immediately to any man who dared say he was afraid — and yet he was.
Mrs. Madge Lennek, he confessed to himself, was one human being he dreaded to face at any time. It came to him now how caustic her tongue had been whenever he had been at work in her apartment. She always had treated him like the dirt beneath her feet. Well, Peter Podd knew that he did not amount to much. And yet he was a human being. But he dared not face Mrs. Lennek now.
Yet he realized that something must be done at once. If he allowed the thing to go unchallenged, the end would come within a week. Peter Podd dreaded to contemplate that. He could not imagine what he would do.
He went back to the door again, and stood leaning against the casement, staring out at the sunlit alley. A wren sang her song near him, but Peter Podd did not hear. Some servants from the apartment house next door hurried through the alley toward the street and spoke to him as they passed, but Peter Podd did not answer. He did not know that they had passed and had spoken.
A tragic look came into his weather-beaten face. The kind old man disappeared, and in his stead was some sort of a fiend, such a fiend as injustice makes. Peter Podd began to breathe heavily. His eyes narrowed, and his hands were clenched.
“It ain’t right!” he muttered again. “And it wouldn’t be any more than justice if somethin’ was to happen to her! It ain’t right! She and her money!”
He remained staring out at the sunlit alley. Peter Podd was showing more emotion than he had shown for years. A long time before he had reached the conclusion that a man in his circumstances was a fool to show emotion, whether it was hate or enthusiasm. Emotion never had got Peter Podd anything!
He heard a voice behind him:
“Trying to keep the sunshine out, or me in? You’re blocking the door, Mr. Podd!”
Peter Podd came to life quickly and whirled around. The grim expression in his face relaxed. A smile touched his thin lips for an instant.
“Excuse me, Miss Dolge,” he said. “I didn’t realize. I— I was thinkin’.”
“You looked like you were ready to fight,” Marie Dolge told him. “What’s the trouble now?”
“Trouble enough!” exclaimed Peter Podd. “She — she has been makin’ some more for me!”
“Mrs. Lennek?”
“The same!” said Peter Podd. “Mrs. Lennek — your mistress! And by the looks of your own pretty face, she’s been raisin’ a rumpus of some sort with you.”
“What’s the matter with my face?”
“It looks rather pale,” Peter Podd declared. “That woman—”
Marie Dolge stepped closer, glanced back through the hall, and spoke in whispers.
“She’s a regular fiend to-day, Mr. Podd,” the girl said. “She jumped on me about nothing at all. She wanted me to stay in, instead of taking my regular Sunday afternoon off — on a day like this, and me with a date and all. And not a bit of sense in it, either. I told her that I wouldn’t. And she kept me busy, doing things there was no sense doing, until just a minute ago. No sense in it at all. She’s a fiend!”
“And what do you think she’s done to me?” Peter Podd asked. “I’m an old man. I’ve worked like a dog all my life, and six months ago I managed to get this janitor’s job. It’s downright easy compared to the work I’d been doin’. And now I’m goin’ to lose it.”
“Lose it?” the girl said.
“And all on account of her! She’s been pesterin’ me every day about somethin’. And now she’s told the superintendent that I wasn’t courteous to her. I don’t know what lies she’s told!”
“I’m sorry!”
“She’s made me mad enough to choke scores of times, but I always held my tongue. And now I’m to be turned off. I don’t know where I can get another job. Jobs ain’t easy for an old man like me to find. And real hard work would kill me, so the doctor said. I ain’t got money or folks—”
“Oh, I’m sorry!”
“She’s the one ought to be sorry!” said Peter Podd. “I never did her a wrong. She ain’t got any heart — curse her!”
“Mr. Podd! Don’t say that — don’t!”
He turned and looked in wonder at the girl’s face, which was suddenly white again.
“Never curse anybody like that!” she said. “Things will come out right.”
“Not unless she’ll tell the superintendent that she’ll overlook it this time, miss. And I was thinkin’ of beggin’ her to do that. But you say she’s in a tantrum to-day.”
“Don’t ask her now!” Marie Dolge said. “You’ll just make her that much worse, if you do.”
“But if I don’t, I’ll be discharged. The superintendent’s goin’ away day after to-morrow. If she don’t tell him it’s all right before then, he’ll get another man.”
“You wait!” the girl said. “You wait awhile and let her cool down.”
“Maybe it would be best.”
“Promise me that you’ll wait.”
“I’ll wait, miss,” Peter Podd replied. “I’ll try to see her after she cools down.”
“That’s right. You do that. And now I’ve got to hurry. It is three o’clock.”
“Just exactly three,” said Peter Podd, glancing at the clock on the corridor wall.