The Missing Girl Read online

  Any city in the world, Miss Morgan thought, I’d pick New York. Buy me a home in New York, mister, I’d sell it for enough to buy all the rest of your prizes.

  Carrying a package, she thought suddenly, I’m carrying a package. She tried to ease the package around so she could carry it in her arms, but it was too bulky. Then she took it by the string and swung it as close to her side as she could; must be a thousand people in New York right now carrying large packages, she thought; no one will bother me. She could see the corner ahead where her bus would stop, and she wondered if she wanted to walk another block.

  ‘Say “You are Miss X,” ’ the sound truck screamed, ‘and win one of these gorgeous prizes. Your private yacht, completely fitted. A pearl necklace fit for a queen. Miss X is walking the streets of the city, completely alone. She is wearing a blue hat with a red feather, blue gloves, and dark blue shoes.’

  Good heavens, Miss Morgan thought; she stopped and looked down at her shoes; she was certainly wearing her blue ones. She turned and glared angrily at the sound truck. It was painted white, and had ‘Find Miss X’ written on the side in great red letters.

  ‘Find Miss X,’ the sound truck said.

  Miss Morgan began to hurry. She reached the corner and mixed with the crowd of people waiting to get on the bus, but there were too many and the bus doors were shut in her face. She looked anxiously down the long block, but there were no other buses coming, and she began to walk hastily, going toward the next corner. I could take a taxi, she thought. That clown in the sound truck, he’ll lose his job. With her free hand she reached up and felt that her hat was perched at the correct angle and her hair neat. I hope he does lose his job, she thought. What a thing to do! She could not help glancing over her shoulder to see what had become of the sound truck, and was shocked to find it creeping silently almost next to her, going along beside her in the street. When she looked around, the sound truck shouted, ‘Find Miss X, find Miss X.’

  ‘Listen,’ Miss Morgan told herself. She stopped and looked around, but the people going by were moving busily without noticing her. Even a man who almost crashed into her when she stopped suddenly said only ‘Excuse me,’ and went on by without a backward look. The sound truck was stopped by traffic, up against the curb, and Miss Morgan went over to it and knocked on the window until the driver turned around.

  ‘I want to speak to you,’ Miss Morgan said ominously. The driver reached over and opened the door.

  ‘You want something?’ he asked wearily.

  ‘I want to know why this truck is following me down the street,’ Miss Morgan said; since she did not know the truck driver, and would certainly never see him again, she was possessed of great courage. She made her voice very sharp and said, ‘What are you trying to do?’

  ‘Me?’ the truck driver said. ‘Look, lady, I’m not following anybody. I got a route I gotta go. See?’ He held up a dirty scrap of paper, and Miss Morgan could see that it was marked in pencil, a series of lines numbered like streets, although she was too far away to see what the numbers were. ‘I go where it tells me,’ the truck driver said insistently. ‘See?’

  ‘Well,’ Miss Morgan said, her voice losing conviction, ‘what do you mean, talking about people dressed like me? Blue hats, and so on?’

  ‘Don’t ask me,’ the truck driver said. ‘People hire this truck, I drive where they say. I don’t have nothing to do with what happens back there.’ He waved his hand toward the back of the truck, which was separated from him by a partition behind the driver’s seat. The traffic ahead of him started and he said quickly, ‘You want to know, you ask back there. Me, I don’t hear it with the windows all shut.’ He closed the door, and the truck moved slowly away. Miss Morgan stood on the curb, staring at it, and the loudspeaker began, ‘Miss X is walking alone in the city.’

  The nerve of him, Miss Morgan thought, reverting to a culture securely hidden beneath six years of working for Mr Lang, the goddamn nerve of him. She began to walk defiantly along the street, now slightly behind the sound truck. Serve them right, she thought, if anyone says to me, ‘Are you Miss What’s-her-name?’ I’ll say ‘Why, yes, I am, here’s your million dollars and you can go –’

  ‘Reddish tweed topcoat,’ the sound truck roared, ‘blue shoes, blue hat.’ The corner Miss Morgan was approaching was a hub corner, where traffic moved heavily and quickly, where crowds of people stood waiting to cross the street, where the traffic lights changed often. Suppose I wait on the corner, Miss Morgan thought, the truck will have to go on. She stopped on the corner near the sign ‘bus stop,’ and fixed her face in the blank expression of a bus rider, waiting for the sound truck to go on. As it turned the corner it shouted back at her, ‘Find Miss X, find Miss X, she may be standing next to you now.’

  Miss Morgan looked around nervously, and found she was standing next to a poster that began ‘Find Miss X, find Miss X,’ but went on to say, ‘Miss X will be walking the streets of New York TODAY. She will be wearing blue – a blue hat, a blue suit, blue shoes, blue gloves. Her coat will be red and gray tweed. SHE WILL BE CARRYING A LARGE PACKAGE. Find Miss X, and claim the prizes.’

  Good Lord, Miss Morgan thought, good Lord. A horrible idea crossed her mind: Could they sue her, take her into court, put her in jail for dressing like Miss X? What would Mr Lang say? She realized that she could never prove that she wore these clothes innocently, without criminal knowledge; as a matter of fact, she remembered that that morning, out in Woodside, while she was drinking her coffee, her mother had said, ‘You won’t be warm enough; the paper says it’s going to turn cold later. Wear your heavy coat at least.’ How would Miss Morgan ever be able to explain to the police that the spring weather had caught her, made her take her new coat instead of her old one? How could she prove anything? Cold fear caught Miss Morgan, and she began to walk quickly, away from the poster. Now she realized that there were posters everywhere: on the lampposts, on the sides of the buildings, blown up huge against the wall of a high building. I’ve got to do something right away, she thought, no time to get back home and change.

  Trying to do so unobtrusively, she slid off her blue gloves and rolled them up and put them into her pocketbook. The pocketbook itself she put down behind the package. She buttoned her coat to hide the blue suit, and thought, I’ll go into a ladies’ room somewhere and take the feather out of my hat; if they know I tried to look different, they can’t blame me. Ahead of her on the sidewalk she saw a young man with a microphone; he was wearing a blue suit and she thought humorously, put a blue hat on him and he’d do, when she realized that he was trying to stop people and talk about Miss X.

  ‘Are you Miss X?’ he was saying. ‘Sorry, lady, red topcoat, you know, and carrying a package. Are you Miss X?’ People were walking wider to avoid him, and he called to ladies passing, and sometimes they looked at him curiously. Now and then, apparently, he would catch hold of someone and try to ask them questions, but usually the women passed him without looking, and the men glanced at him once, and then away. He’s going to catch me, Miss Morgan thought in panic, he’s going to speak to me. She could see him looking through the crowds while he said into the microphone, loudly enough so that anyone passing could hear, ‘Miss X is due to come down this street, folks, and it’s about time for Miss X to be passing by here. She’ll be along any minute, folks, and maybe you’ll be the one who walks up to her and says “Are you Miss X?” and then you’ll get those beautiful awards, folks, the golden tea service, and the library of ten thousand of the world’s greatest books, folks, ten thousand books, and fifty thousand dollars. All you have to do is find Miss X, folks, just find the one girl who is walking around this city alone, and all you have to do is say “You are Miss X,” folks, and the prizes are yours. And I’ll tell you, folks, Miss X is now wearing her coat buttoned up so you can’t see her blue suit, and she’s taken off her gloves. It’s getting colder, folks, let’s find Miss X before her hands get cold without her gloves.’

  He’s going to speak to
me, Miss Morgan thought, and she slipped over to the curb and signaled wildly for a taxi. ‘Taxi,’ she called, raising her voice shrilly, ‘taxi!’ Over her own voice she could hear the man with the microphone saying, ‘Find Miss X, folks, find Miss X.’ When no taxi would stop, Miss Morgan hurried to the other side of the sidewalk, next to the buildings, and tried to slip past the man at the microphone. He saw her, and his eyes jeered at her as she went by. ‘Find Miss X, folks,’ he said, ‘find the poor girl before her hands get cold.’

  I must be crazy, Miss Morgan thought. I’m just getting self-conscious because I’m tired of walking. I’ll definitely get a taxi on the next corner.

  ‘Find Miss X,’ the sound truck shouted from the curb next to her.

  ‘She’s gone past here now,’ the man with the microphone said behind her, ‘she’s passed us now, folks, but she’s gone on down the street, find Miss X, folks.’

  ‘Blue hat,’ the sound truck said, ‘blue shoes, carrying a large package.’ Miss Morgan went frantically out into the street, not looking where she was going, crossed directly in front of the sound truck, and reached the other side, to meet a man wearing a huge cardboard poster saying ‘Miss X, Miss X, find Miss X. CARRYING A LARGE PACKAGE. Blue shoes, blue hat, red and gray tweed coat, CARRYING A LARGE PACKAGE.’ The man was distributing leaflets right and left, and people let them fall to the ground without taking them. Miss Morgan stepped on one of the leaflets and ‘Find Miss X’ glared up at her from the ground under her foot.

  She was going past a millinery shop, when she had a sudden idea; moving quickly, she went inside, into the quiet. There were no posters in there, and Miss Morgan smiled gratefully at the quiet-looking woman who came forward to her. They don’t do much business in here, Miss Morgan thought, they’re so eager for customers, they come out right away. Her well-bred voice came back to her; ‘I beg your pardon,’ she said daintily, ‘but would it be possible, do you think, for you to let me have either a hat bag or a hatbox?’

  ‘A hatbox?’ the woman said vaguely. ‘You mean, empty?’

  ‘I’d be willing to purchase it, of course,’ Miss Morgan said, and laughed lightly. ‘It just so happens,’ she said, ‘that I have decided to carry my hat in this beautiful weather, and one feels so foolish going down the street carrying a hat. So I thought a bag … or a hatbox …’

  The woman’s eyes lowered to the package Miss Morgan was carrying. ‘Another package?’ she asked.

  Miss Morgan made a nervous gesture of putting the package behind her, and said, her voice a little sharper, ‘Really, it doesn’t seem like such a strange thing to ask. A hatbox or a bag.’

  ‘Well …’ the woman said. She turned to the back of the shop and went to a counter behind which were stacked piles of hatboxes. ‘You see,’ she said, ‘I’m alone in the shop right now, and around here very often people come in just to make nuisances of themselves. There’ve been at least two burglaries in the neighborhood since we’ve been here, you know,’ she added, looking uneasily at Miss Morgan.

  ‘Really?’ Miss Morgan said, her voice casual. ‘And how long, may I ask, have you been here?’

  ‘Well …’ the woman said. ‘Seventeen years.’ She took down a hatbox, and then, suddenly struck with an idea, said, ‘Would you like to look at some hats while you’re here?’

  Miss Morgan started to say no, and then her eye was caught by a red and gray caplike hat, and she said with mild interest, ‘I might just try that one on, if I might.’

  ‘Indeed, yes,’ the woman said. She reached up and took the hat off the figure that held it. ‘This is one of our best numbers,’ she said, and Miss Morgan sat down in front of a mirror while the woman tried the hat on her.

  ‘It’s lovely on you,’ the woman said, and Miss Morgan nodded. ‘It’s just the red in my coat,’ she said, pleased.

  ‘You really ought to wear a red hat with that coat,’ the woman said.

  Miss Morgan thought suddenly, what would Mr Lang say if he knew I was in here trying on hats when I’m supposed to be going on his errands. ‘How much is it?’ she asked hastily.

  ‘Well …’ the woman said. ‘Eight ninety-five.’

  ‘It’s far too much for this hat,’ Miss Morgan said. ‘I’ll just take the box.’

  ‘That’s eight ninety-five with the box,’ the woman said unpleasantly.

  Helplessly, Miss Morgan stared from the woman to the mirror to the package she had put down on the counter. There was a ten-dollar bill in her pocketbook. ‘All right,’ she said finally. ‘Put my old hat in a box and I’ll wear this one.’

  ‘You’ll never be sorry you bought that hat,’ the woman said. She picked up Miss Morgan’s blue hat and set it inside a box. While she was tying the box she said cheerfully, ‘For a minute I was afraid you were one of the sort comes into a shop like this for no good. You know what I mean. Do you know, we’ve had two burglaries in the neighborhood since we’ve been here?’

  Miss Morgan took the hatbox out of her hand and handed her the ten-dollar bill. ‘I’m in rather a hurry,’ Miss Morgan said. The woman disappeared behind a curtain at the back of the shop and came back after a minute with the change. Miss Morgan put the change in her pocketbook; I won’t have enough for a taxi there and back, she thought.

  Wearing the new hat, and carrying the hatbox and her pocketbook and the package, she left the shop, while the woman stared curiously after her. Miss Morgan found that she was a block and a half away from her bus stop, so she started again for it, and she was nearly on the corner before the sound truck came out of a side street, blaring, ‘Find Miss X, find Miss X, win a Thoroughbred horse and a castle on the Rhine.’

  Miss Morgan settled herself comfortably inside her coat. She had only to cross the street to get to her bus stop, and the bus was coming; she could see it a block away. She stopped to get the fare out of her pocketbook, shifting the package and the hatbox to do so, when the sound truck went slowly past her, shouting, ‘Miss X has changed her clothes now, but she is still walking alone through the streets of the city, find Miss X! Miss X is now wearing a gray and red hat, and is carrying two packages; don’t forget, two packages.’

  Miss Morgan dropped her pocketbook and the hatbox, and stopped to pick up the small articles that had rolled out of her pocketbook, hiding her face. Her lipstick was in the gutter, her compact lay shattered, her cigarettes had fallen out of the case and rolled wide. She gathered them together as well as she could and turned and began to walk back the way she had come. When she came to a drugstore she went inside and to the phones. By the clock in the drugstore she had been gone just an hour and was only three or four blocks away from her office. Hastily, her hatbox and the package on the floor of the phone booth, she dialed her office number. A familiar voice answered – Miss Martin in the back room, Miss Walpole? – and Miss Morgan said, ‘Mr Lang, please?’

  ‘Who is calling, please?’

  ‘This is Toni Morgan. I’ve got to speak to Mr Lang right away, please.’

  ‘He’s busy on another call. Will you wait, please?’

  Miss Morgan waited; through the dirty glass of the phone booth she could see, dimly, the line of the soda fountain, the busy clerk, the office girls sitting on the high stools.

  ‘Hello?’ Miss Morgan said impatiently. ‘Hello, hello?’

  ‘Who did you wish to speak to, please?’ the voice said – it might have been Miss Kittredge, in accounting.

  ‘Mr Lang, please,’ Miss Morgan said urgently. ‘It’s important.’

  ‘Just a moment, please.’ There was silence, and Miss Morgan waited. After a few minutes impatience seized her again and she hung up and found another nickel and dialed the number again. A different voice, a man’s voice this time, one Miss Morgan did not know, answered.

  ‘Mr Lang, please,’ Miss Morgan said.

  ‘Who’s calling, please?’

  ‘This is Miss Morgan, I must speak to Mr Lang at once.’

  ‘Just a moment, please,’ the man said.

  Mis
s Morgan waited, and then said, ‘Hello? Hello? What is the matter here?’

  ‘Hello?’ the man said.

  ‘Is Mr Lang there?’ Miss Morgan said. ‘Let me speak to him at once.’

  ‘He’s busy on another call. Will you wait?’

  He’s answering my other call, Miss Morgan thought wildly, and hung up. Carrying the package and the hatbox, she went out again into the street. The sound truck was gone and everything was quiet except for the ‘Find Miss X’ posters on all the lampposts. They all described Miss X as wearing a red and gray cap and carrying two packages. One of the prizes, she noticed, was a bulletproof car, another was a life membership in the stock exchange.

  She decided that whatever else, she must get as far from the neighborhood as she could, and when a taxi stopped providentially to let off passengers at the curb next to her, she stepped in, and gave the driver the address on the package. Then she leaned back, her hatbox and the package on the seat next to her, and lit one of the cigarettes she had rescued when her pocketbook fell. I’ve been dreaming, she told herself, this has all been so silly. The thing she most regretted was losing her presence enough, first, to speak so to the driver of the sound truck, and then to drop her pocketbook and make herself conspicuous stooping to pick everything up on the street corner. As the taxi drove downtown she noticed the posters on every lamppost, and smiled. Poor Miss X, she thought, I wonder if they will find her?