“Mister! Is something…”
On the floor near the bed several objects had been arranged as in a store window display: a man’s wallet, a man’s gold stretch-band wristwatch, a woman’s ring with a large pale-purple stone, a leather change purse and a matching leather toiletry kit. Several bills had been pulled partway out of the wallet so that their denominations were visible: twenties, a single fifty.
For me Rebecca thought calmly.
Yet she could not touch these items. She would not.
She had come to stand close beside the bed, uncertain what to do. If Baumgarten had seriously injured himself with a razor or a knife, there would have been more blood, she knew. Yet: maybe he’d cut himself in the bathroom, and staggered back into the bedroom. Maybe there were wounds she couldn’t see. And maybe he’d drunk so much, he had lapsed into a coma and might be dying, she must call the front desk…
Rebecca made a move toward the phone, to lift the receiver. But she would have to come very close to the man, if she did. And maybe this was a game of his. Baumgarten would open his yellowish eyes, he would wink at her…
“Mister, wake up! You need to wake up.”
Rebecca’s voice rose sharply. She saw veins on the man’s ruined face, like incandescent wires. The greasy pug nose, damp gaping mouth like a fish’s. Thin gray hair lay in disheveled strands across the bumpy crown of his head. Only his teeth were perfect, and must have been dentures. His eyelids fluttered, he moaned and breathed noisily, erratically. In that instant, Rebecca felt pity for him.
If he is dying I am his final witness.
If he is dying there is no one except me.
She was about to lift the phone receiver and dial the front desk when the stricken man slyly opened one eye, and grinned at her. The porcelain-white dentures gleamed. Before Rebecca could draw away, Baumgarten grabbed hold of her wrist with surprisingly strong fingers.
“Eh! My dear! What a pleasant surprise.”
Rebecca screamed and pushed at him, struggling to get free. But Baumgarten gripped her tight.
“Let me alone! God damn you-”
She clawed at Baumgarten’s hands. He cursed her, sitting up now, having swung his legs around; using his legs, as a wrestler would do, to grip Rebecca around the hips. In their struggle Baumgarten managed to pull Rebecca onto the bed beside him, wheezing, laughing. She would afterward recall the harsh whiskey smell of his breath and a fouler, darker smell beneath of something fetid, rotting. She would recall how close she’d come to fainting.
“Hey: what the hell’s going on here?”
A tall man with stiff, nickel-colored hair had entered the room. Like a bear on its hind legs he moved with startling swiftness. Baumgarten protested-“Get out! This is a private room, this is a private matter”-but the man paid no heed, seized him by a flabby shoulder and began to shake him, hard. “Let the girl go, fucker. I’ll break your ass.” Rebecca slipped from Baumgarten’s grasp. The men struggled, and the stranger struck Baumgarten with his fists even as Baumgarten tried feebly to defend himself. With one blow of the stranger’s fist, Baumgarten’s nose was broken. With another blow, the gleaming-white dentures were broken. Whatever Baumgarten had dribbled on himself must not have been blood because there was now a sudden spray of fresh blood, very red blood, on his grimacing face and torso.
Rebecca backed away. The last she saw of Baumgarten/Bumstead he was begging for his life as the man with the nickel-colored hair gripped his head and slammed it-once, twice, a third time-against the rattling mahogany headboard of the bed.
Rebecca fled. She left her maid’s cart in the fifth-floor corridor, she would retrieve it another time.
The man, the stranger: who was he?
Discreetly, for days after the “savage beating” in room 557, Rebecca would make inquiries about the tall solidly-built man with the nickel-colored hair: who was he, what was his name? She would not involve him with the beating of H. Baumgarten in room 557, which police were investigating. Never would she have involved him, who had intervened on her behalf.
Let the girl go. Let the girl go…
So strange, to think of herself as a girl! A girl requiring intervention, protection, in another’s eyes.
In fact, Rebecca had glimpsed the man with the nickel-colored hair in the General Washington Hotel, from time to time. He must have been a frequent patron of the hotel or the tavern. She’d seen him in the company of the Tap Room bartender Mulingar: he was in his mid-thirties, well over six feet tall, distinctive with his steely hair and deep-chested laughter.
A man admired by others. And knowing he was admired by others.
If he’d killed Baumgarten…
Rebecca would have kept his secret. Wouldn’t have told the hotel management, or the police. Wouldn’t have come forward as a witness to the “savage” beating.
Baumgarten had lied to police, saying two (male) intruders had broken into his hotel room, beaten and robbed him. Two! He claimed to have been lying on his bed, asleep. Hadn’t seen their faces except to know that they were white men and they were “unknown to him.” Baumgarten’s nose, lower jaw and several ribs were broken. Both his eyes blackened. Bleeding from head wounds, he’d lain helpless for more than an hour before he revived and had the strength to reach for the telephone.
Baumgarten would claim that “thieves” had taken his wallet, his wristwatch, and other personal items worth approximately six hundred dollars.
Baumgarten would say nothing about Rebecca. Not a word about the chambermaid he had lured into his room. For a week, Rebecca worried that police would come to question her. But no one did. She smiled thinking He’s ashamed, he wants to forget.
Rebecca resented it, that Baumgarten told lies about having been robbed. The man who’d beaten him certainly wasn’t the type to have robbed him! Baumgarten must have hidden away his things, to make a false claim. He could sue the hotel management, perhaps. He could file an insurance claim.
Too injured to walk, Baumgarten had been carried on a stretcher to an ambulance waiting outside the hotel entrance, and by ambulance he had been taken to the Chautauqua Falls General Hospital. He would not return to the General Washington Hotel, Rebecca would not see him again.
“Niles Tignor.”
As Leora Greb said, no mistaking Tignor for anyone else.
He was a brewery representative, or agent. He traveled through the state negotiating with hotel, restaurant, and tavern owners on behalf of the Black Horse Brewery of Port Oriskany. His salary depended upon commissions. He was said to be the most aggressive and overall the more successful of the brewery agents. He passed through Milburn from time to time and always stayed at the General Washington Hotel. He left generous tips.
It was said of Tignor that he was a man with “secrets.”
It was said of Tignor that he was a man you never got to know-but what you did know, you were impressed by.
It was said of Tignor that he liked women but that he was “dangerous” to women. No: he was “gallant” to women. He had women who adored him scattered through the state from the eastern edge of Lake Erie to the northwestern edge of Lake Champlain at the Canadian border. (Did Tignor have women in Canada, too? No doubt!) Yet it was said of Tignor that he was “protective” of women. He’d been married years ago and his young wife had died in a “tragic accident”…