Harry began to grow angry. Who these strangers in his apartment were, he had no idea, but he had no intention of continuing to stand in the hall outside of his own home. He started to push by the woman, then stopped in confusion.
The front room was not that of his apartment. Not only were its furnishings entirely different, but the wallpaper was a flowered pink instead of a vertically striped green.
A tall, dark-skinned man seated on the sofa looked up at Harry with a frown, folded the paper he was reading and rose to his feet.
Harry stammered, “I’m... I’m sorry. I thought this was my apartment.”
As he backed through the door, the man crossed to stand next to the woman. He continued to frown at Harry, and now the woman was frowning too. Finally the dark-skinned man shrugged and pushed the door closed in Harry’s face.
Once again Harry looked at the numbers over the door. They still read one, three and four. Checking the doors to either side, he found they were 132 and 136, just as they should have been. Immediately across the hall, as usual, was apartment 135.
Just as his bewilderment started to become tinged with an element of panic, Harry saw the light. He was simply in the wrong building; an understandable error, inasmuch as he and Helen had moved in only a week ago and their apartment house was one of three identical buildings in the same block.
With a relieved but rather embarrassed chuckle at himself. Harry went down the stairs, passed through the front door and studied the gilded number embossed on the glass of the door. Panic jumped within him again when he saw it was 102.
Glancing left, then right, he saw identically solid, red brick apartment houses rising five stories either side of him. Wildly, he turned to study the opposite side of the street. At one end of the block was the same gas station which had been there that morning, at the other end the same drug store. And between them were the same brownstone-front houses which had once been upper middle-class homes, but now were boarding houses.
Harry felt his sanity slipping. Grasping at a straw, he ran to the corner and peered up at the L-shaped street sign. His throat contracted when the sign verified that the corner was Carlton and Fourth.
“Whoa, boy!” Harry told himself. “Let’s pull ourselves together.”
With forced calmness he marshaled facts to convince himself he was not going mad. Last Saturday he and Helen had moved into apartment 134 at 102 Carlton Avenue. It was now Friday, which meant five times he had left apartment 134 at 102 Carlton Avenue to go to work in the morning, and five times had returned after work in the afternoon...
He dismissed the possibility that he had left from and returned to either 10 °Carlton or 104 Carlton, for not only was he certain of the address, he was certain it was the center apartment house. With equal certainty he discarded the possibility that his apartment was 34, 234, 334, or anything but 134. Since he always climbed a single flight of stairs to reach it, it had to be 134.
Glancing at his watch, he saw it was five-fifteen, too late to catch Helen by phone before she left work. Since she would be getting off a bus right where he was standing within another ten minutes, Harry decided to wait for her. The thought that they could tackle the problem together reduced his panic to mere worry.
When Helen failed to alight from the five twenty-five bus, Harry was disappointed. When she was not on the five forty-five, he began to experience unease.
When the five fifty-five passed without even slowing down, a cold chill crept along his spine.
Forcing himself to at least surface calmness, he crossed the street to the gas station, located a pay phone on the wall, and then discovered he had no change in his pockets. He extracted a dollar bill from his wallet — and found that he was all alone.
The station’s single attendant was outside gassing a car. Under the stress of his increasing nervousness, it seemed to Harry the man deliberately moved in slow motion when he finally hung up the hose and began wiping the windshield, though actually he was kept waiting no longer than a minute and a half.
When the attendant finally entered the station, Harry thrust the dollar bill at him and asked for change to include some dimes. To his slight annoyance the attendant gave him ten dimes.
Catching his expression, the man said, “Didn’t you want to play the machine?” For a moment Harry was puzzled, but then he noted the dime slot machine in one corner of the room. In Wright City you found slot machines everywhere: in filling stations, drug stores and even in barber shops. And of course in every tavern.
“Phone.” Harry said briefly.
Fishing from his wallet the slip of paper on which Helen had written the unlisted phone number of her boss, he dropped a dime and dialed the number. It rang several times before a woman’s voice answered, “Hello.” It was not Helen’s voice.
“Is this Mr. Dale Thompson’s office?” Harry asked.
“Yes. His home and his office.” The woman’s voice had a dulled edge, as though she had been crying.
“This is Harry Nolan. Is my wife still there?”
“Who?” the woman asked.
“Helen Nolan. Mr. Thompson’s secretary.”
For a moment there was silence. Then the woman said in a puzzled tone, “I’m afraid I don’t understand. You are speaking to Mr. Thompson’s secretary. My name is Miss Wentworth.”
For a long time the constriction in Harry’s throat refused to let him speak. Finally he got out, “May I speak to Mr. Thompson, please?”
On the other end of the wire there was a silence nearly as long. Then in a muffled tone the woman said, “I’m sorry. Dale... Mr. Thompson had a heart attack this morning. He died at Mercy Hospital at eleven o’clock.”
The shock of it flooded over Harry like an icy stream. Not because of any particular feeling for Thompson, for he had never even met the news columnist. But the announcement of his death was like a closing door to Harry, an abrupt curing off of an avenue of escape from what was gradually assuming the proportions of a nightmare.
He managed to stammer, “I’m awfully sorry to hear that, Miss Wentworth. But you must know my wife, Helen. She has been Mr. Thompson’s secretary for the past two weeks.”
“I’m afraid I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” the woman said with a note of finality. “I’ve been Mr. Thompson’s secretary for more than a year. And under the circumstances, I am hardly in a mood for practical jokes.”
She hung up.
In a daze Harry left the station, crossed the street and entered the building at 102 Carlton for a second time. Resolutely he climbed the stairs, paused in front of apartment 134 and took the Yale key from his pocket.
Nothing in the past hour has really happened, he told himself. I’ve been suffering some kind of mental hallucination. Now I will put the key in the lock, open the door and find Helen with dinner ready, beginning to worry about where I have been.
Sliding the key into the lock, he twisted it so hard it bent slightly. But it would not turn.
He dropped it back in his pocket and rang the bell. The same red-headed woman appeared. When she saw him, she frowned in surprised annoyance, but then she noted the strained paleness of his face and withdrew a step in alarm.
“Pardon me,” Harry said in an even tone. “Would you mind telling me how long you’ve lived in this apartment?”
“Why... why going on four months. Why?”
“Thank you,” Harry said, and walked away.
The night desk sergeant said, nothing for a few moments after Harry finished talking.
Then he said, “You left out one part.”
When Harry only looked puzzled, the desk sergeant said, “The tavern you stopped in on the way home.”