“It was good to talk with you,” I said. “These are pretty flowers you have. Mind if I walk around and have a look at them.”
“Might as well. Frost will get them in a week or so.”
So I walked around the grounds, hating myself for what I had to do, and looking at the flowers, working my way closer to the corner of the house he had pointed out to me.
There was a bed of petunias underneath the window and they were sorry-looking things. I squatted down and pretended I was admiring them, although all the time I was looking for some evidence that someone might have jumped out the window.
I didn’t expect to find it, but I did.
There, in a little piece of soft earth where the petunias had petered out, was a footprint—well, not a footprint, either, maybe, but anyhow a print. It looked something like a duck track—except that the duck that made it would have had to be as big as a good-sized dog.
I squatted on the walk, staring at it and I could feel spiders on my spine. Finally I got up and walked away, forcing myself to saunter when my body screamed to run.
Outside the gate, I did run.
I got to a phone as fast as I could, at a corner drugstore, and sat in the booth awhile to get my breathing back to normal before I put in a call to the city desk.
The Barnacle bellowed at me. “What you got?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe nothing. Who was Mrs. Clayborne’s doctor?”
He told me. I asked him if he knew who her nurse had been, and he asked me how the hell should he know so I hung up.
I went to see the doctor and he threw me out.
I spent the rest of the day tracking down the nurse; when I finally found her she threw me out too. So there was a full day’s work gone entirely down the drain.
It was late in the afternoon when I got back to the office. Barnacle Bill pounced on me at once. “What you get?”
“Nothing,” I told him. There was no use telling him about that track underneath the window. By that time, I was beginning to doubt I’d ever seen it, it seemed so unbelievable.
“How big do ducks get?” I asked him. He growled at me and went back to his work.
I looked at the next day’s page in the assignment book. He had me down for the community chest, and See Dr. Thomas at Univ.—magnetism.
“What’s this?” I asked. “This magnetism business?”
“Guy’s been working on it for years,” said the Barnacle. “I got it on good authority he’s set to pop with something.”
There was that “good authority” again. And just about as hazy as the most of his hot tips.
And anyhow, I don’t like to interview scientists. More often than not, they’re a crotchety set and are apt to look down their noses at newspapermen. Ten to one the newspaperman is earning more than they are—and in his own way, more than likely, doing just as good a job and with less fumbling.
II
I saw that Jo Ann was getting ready to go home, so I walked over to her and asked her how it went.
“I got a funny feeling in my gizzard, Mark,” she told me. “Buy me a drink and I’ll tell you all about it.”
So we went down to the corner bar and took a booth way in the back.
Joe came over and he was grumbling about business, which was unusual for him. “If it weren’t for you folks over at the paper,” he said, “I’d close up and go home. That must be what all my customers are doing; they sure ain’t coming here. Can you think of anything more disgusting than going straight home from your job?”
We told him that we couldn’t, and to show that he appreciated our attitude he wiped off the table—a thing he almost never did.
He brought the drinks and Jo Ann told me about the old lady and her hundredth birthday. “It was horrible. There she sat in her rocking chair in that bare living-room, rocking back and forth, gently, delicately, the way old ladies rock. And she was glad to see me, and she smiled so nice and she introduced me all around.”
“Well, that was fine,” I said. “Were there a lot of people there?”
“Not a soul.”
I choked on my drink. “But you said she introduced…”
“She did. To empty chairs.”
“Good Lord!”
“They all were dead,” she said.
“Now, let’s get this straight…”
“She said, ‘Miss Evans, I want you to meet my old friend, Mrs. Smith. She lives just down the street. I recall the day she moved into the neighborhood, back in ’33. Those were hard times, I tell you.’ Chattering on, you know like most old ladies do. And me, standing there and staring at an empty chair, wondering what to do. And, Mark, I don’t know if I did right or not, but I said, ‘Hello, Mrs. Smith. I am glad to know you.’ And do you know what happened then?”
“No,” I said. “How could I?”
“The old lady said, just as casually as could be—just conversationally, as if it were the most natural thing in all the world—‘You know, Miss Evans, Mrs. Smith died three years ago. Don’t you think it’s nice she dropped in to see me.’”
“She was pulling your leg,” I said. “Some of these old ones sometimes get pretty sly.”
“I don’t think she was. She introduced me all around; there were six or seven of them, and all of them were dead.”
“She was happy, thinking they were there. What difference does it make?”
“It was horrible,” said Jo Ann.
So we had another drink to chase away the horror.
* * * *
Joe still was down in the mouth. “Did you ever see the like of it? You could shoot off a cannon in this joint and not touch a single soul. By this time, usually, they’d be lined up against the bar, and it’d be a dull evening if someone hadn’t taken a poke at someone else—although you understand I run a decent place.”
“Sure you do,” I said. “Sit down and have a drink with us.”
“It ain’t right that I should,” said Joe. “A bartender should never take a drink when he’s conducting business. But I feel so low that if you don’t mind, I’ll take you up on it.”
He went back to the bar and got a bottle and a glass and we had quite a few.
The corner, he said, had always been a good spot—steady business all the time, with a rush at noon and a good crowd in the evening. But business had started dropping
