Dark Tales Read online

  She pulled on a hat over her still-damp hair, tucking the straggling ends up under the hat and holding them there with many hairpins. When she put her coat on, she turned up the collar and ducked her head down so her face would be hidden. Then she picked up her pocketbook and went out, closing the door behind her quietly. Go to the movies where it’s dark, she was thinking. When she got down the first flight of stairs and was near the door of the apartment directly under hers, she hesitated for a minute before she ran down the hall to the next flight of stairs. Come back later, she thought, when they’re all tired of looking for me.

  Jack the Ripper

  The man hesitated on the corner under the traffic light, then started off down the side street, walking slowly and watching the few people who passed him. It was long past midnight, and the streets were as nearly deserted as they ever get; as the man went down the dark street he stopped for a minute, thinking he saw a dead girl on the sidewalk. She was nearly against the wall of a building; a few feet beyond her was the small sign of a bar, and seeing that, the man started to walk on, and then turned back to the girl.

  She was so drunk that when he shook her and tried to sit her up she sagged backward, her eyes half-closed and her hands rolling on the sidewalk. The man stood and looked at her for a minute, and then turned again and went down to the bar. When he opened the door and went in he saw that the place was nearly empty, with only a group of three or four sailors at the farther end of the bar, and the bartender with them, talking and laughing. There was one man standing at the bar near the doorway, and after looking around for a minute, the man who had come in walked over and stood at the end of the bar.

  “Listen,” he said, “there’s a girl lying out on the street outside.”

  The man farther down the bar looked at him quietly.

  “I just happened to be passing down this way,” the man who had just come in went on more urgently, “and I saw her, and I think something had better be done. She can’t stay out there.” The man farther down the bar went on looking. “She isn’t but about seventeen.”

  “There’s a phone out back,” the man standing down the bar said. “Call the mayor.”

  The bartender came easily down to the end of the bar, the smile leaving his face as he came. When he got to the end of the bar, beside the man who had just come in, he stood unsmiling, waiting.

  “Listen,” the man said again, “there’s a girl sixteen, seventeen lying outside in the street. We better get her inside.”

  “Call the mayor,” the man down the bar said, “his number’s in the book.”

  “I was just walking by,” the man said, “and she was lying there.”

  “I know,” the bartender said.

  “Mention my name,” the man down the bar said. “Tell him I told you to call.”

  “I saw that she was nice and comfortable,” the bartender said, “and I put her pocketbook beside her, all nice and convenient.” He smiled tenderly. “I hope you didn’t disturb her,” he said.

  The man raised his voice slightly. “She can’t keep on lying there,” he said. “You’re not going to say you intend to leave her there?”

  “He’ll remember me all right,” the man down the bar said, nodding. “He won’t forget me in a hurry.”

  “She likes it there,” the bartender said. “Sleeps there nearly every night.”

  “But a girl fifteen, sixteen!” the man cried.

  The bartender’s voice became harder; he put both hands on the edge of the bar and leaned over toward the man. “Anytime she likes,” he said, “she can get up and go home. She doesn’t have to stay there. Let her get up and walk home.”

  “Not in any sort of a hurry he won’t,” the man down the bar said.

  “Comes in here every night and gets drunk,” the bartender went on. “I let her have a beer now and then without money, do you want I should rent her a room, too?” He leaned back again and his voice softened. “Sleeps like a baby, don’t she?” He turned around abruptly and walked back down the bar to the sailors. “Another drunk,” he said to them.

  The man turned to the door and opened it, still hesitating. Then he went out. “Don’t forget to tell him what I told you,” the man down the bar called after him.

  When he got back to the girl he saw that she still lay in the same position, face against the sidewalk, with her knees against the wall. Her pocketbook lay on the sidewalk beside her, and the man picked it up and opened it. There was no money; there was a lipstick from the five and ten, and a key, a comb, and a little notebook. The man put everything back except the notebook; he opened it and found, on the first page, the girl’s name and address. When he turned the first page he found a list of about twenty bars, with addresses and, in some cases, names of the bartenders. A few pages later he found another list, this time of sailors, each name followed by the name of a ship, and a date, apparently the date of the last time the ship was in New York. The entries were written in a big, childish writing, with uncrossed T’s and an occasional misspelling. Toward the end of the notebook, a picture had been put between the pages. It showed the girl with two sailors, one on each side, their heads together, and all three smiling. The girl in the picture looked pleased and unattractive; lying on the ground, she seemed thin and almost lovely. The man put the picture back into the notebook and the notebook back into the pocketbook, and then, carrying the pocketbook, walked down to the corner and waved down a taxi. With the taxi waiting, he went back to the girl, lifted her, and put her in, and then got in after her. The girl was sprawled out on the seat, and the man had to sit on a corner to give her room. He gave the driver the address he had seen in the notebook, and the driver, after raising his eyes once to the mirror to look at the man, shrugged and drove off.

  The house was in a bad neighborhood, old and dirty, and the driver, stopping the taxi, said: “This is it, mister.” He turned and looked at the girl, and added doubtfully, “Do I help you?”

  The man pulled the girl out of the taxi by taking hold of her legs and dragging her until he could put her feet on the ground, and then taking her by the waist and swinging her over his shoulder. He held her over his shoulder while he took change from his pocket to pay the driver, and then, still holding her by the legs, he went into the house.

  The hall was lighted by gaslights, and the stairway was incredibly narrow and steep. The man knocked on the first door, first with his knuckles, and then, grimly, with the girl’s shoes, swinging her legs back and forth.

  From somewhere on the other side of the door, a woman’s voice asked, “What is it?” and finally the door opened a crack and the woman put her face out. It was too dark for the man to see what she looked like, but she said: “Who is it? Rose? She lives on the sixth floor. Last door on the right.” The door closed again. The man surveyed the stairway and thought. There was no room in the hallway to put the girl down, so he tightened his grip on her legs and started up the stairs. He stopped for breath on every landing, but by the time he reached the sixth floor he was breathing heavily and moving slowly, putting both feet on each step. He leaned against the wall at the top for a minute, trying to shift the girl’s weight, and then went down to the last door on the right. Putting the girl down on the floor, he opened her pocketbook and took out the key and opened the door. It was too dark in the hall to see what was in the room, so he lighted a match and went in, trying to find some light. After lighting three matches he found a candle, which he lit and set on the dresser in its own wax. The room was large enough for a cot and the dresser; on the back of the door were three hooks, on which were hanging a torn silk kimono and a pair of dirty stockings. The bed had a blanket on it, over the mattress, and a dirty, uncovered pillow. On the dresser were a few bobby pins and a package of matches. The man opened the four dresser drawers; all of them were empty except for the top one, which contained a bottle opener and a couple of beer bottle caps. When he had examined the room, the
man went outside, where he had left the girl, and picked her up under the arms and dragged her into the room. He dumped her onto the bed and threw the blanket over her. He opened her pocketbook and took out the notebook, glancing through it until he found the picture, which he put in his pocket. He put the key on the dresser and the pocketbook beside it, and then, just before blowing out the candle, took out his knife. It had a polished bone handle, and a long and incredibly sharp blade.

  *

  He took a taxi on the corner near the tenement, giving the driver an address in the east seventies, and was home in a few minutes. When he got out of the elevator in his apartment house he stopped for a minute, looked at his hands and down at his shoes, and carefully took a piece of lint off his sleeve. He let himself into his apartment with his key, and walked softly into the bedroom. When he turned on the light his wife stirred in her bed, and then opened her eyes. “What time is it?” she murmured.

  “Late,” he said. He went over and kissed her.

  “What kept you so long?” she asked.

  “I stopped and had a few drinks after the meeting,” he said. He went over to the dresser to put down his keys, and looked at his wife’s picture in the tall plastic frame. Reaching in his pocket, he found the picture of the girl with the two sailors and thought for a minute; then he went to his wife’s dressing table, and with her plastic-handled nail scissors cut the two sailors out of the picture, leaving the girl alone. This fragment of picture he put into the lower corner of the frame holding his wife’s picture. He lighted a cigarette and stood looking at it.

  “Aren’t you coming to bed?” his wife asked sleepily.

  “No,” he said. “Believe I’ll take a bath.”

  The Beautiful Stranger

  What might be called the first intimation of strangeness occurred at the railroad station. She had come with her children, Smalljohn and her baby girl, to meet her husband when he returned from a business trip to Boston. Because she had been oddly afraid of being late, and perhaps even seeming uneager to encounter her husband after a week’s separation, she dressed the children and put them into the car at home a long half-hour before the train was due. As a result, of course, they had to wait interminably at the station, and what was to have been a charmingly staged reunion, family embracing husband and father, became at last an ill-timed and awkward performance. Smalljohn’s hair was mussed, and he was sticky. The baby was cross, pulling at her pink bonnet and her dainty lace-edged dress, whining. The final arrival of the train caught them in mid-movement, as it were; Margaret was tying the ribbons on the baby’s bonnet, Smalljohn was half over the back of the car seat. They scrambled out of the car, cringing from the sound of the train, hopelessly out of sorts.

  John Senior waved from the high steps of the train. Unlike his wife and children, he looked utterly prepared for his return, as though he had taken some pains to secure a meeting at least painless, and had, in fact, stood just so, waving cordially from the steps of the train, for perhaps as long as half an hour, ensuring that he should not be caught half-ready, his hand not lifted so far as to overemphasize the extent of his delight in seeing them again.

  His wife had an odd sense of lost time. Standing now on the platform with the baby in her arms and Smalljohn beside her, she could not for a minute remember clearly whether he was coming home, or whether they were yet standing here to say good-by to him. They had been quarreling when he left, and she had spent the week of his absence determining to forget that in his presence she had been frightened and hurt. This will be a good time to get things straight, she had been telling herself; while John is gone I can try to get hold of myself again. Now, unsure at last whether this was an arrival or a departure, she felt afraid again, straining to meet an unendurable tension. This will not do, she thought, believing that she was being honest with herself, and as he came down the train steps and walked toward them she smiled, holding the baby tightly against her so that the touch of its small warmth might bring some genuine tenderness into her smile.

  This will not do, she thought, and smiled more cordially and told him “hello” as he came to her. Wondering, she kissed him and then when he held his arm around her and the baby for a minute the baby pulled back and struggled, screaming. Everyone moved in anger, and the baby kicked and screamed, “No, no, no.”

  “What a way to say hello to Daddy,” Margaret said, and she shook the baby, half-amused, and yet grateful for the baby’s sympathetic support. John turned to Smalljohn and lifted him, Smalljohn kicking and laughing helplessly. “Daddy, Daddy,” Smalljohn shouted, and the baby screamed, “No, no.”

  Helplessly, because no one could talk with the baby screaming so, they turned and went to the car. When the baby was back in her pink basket in the car, and Smalljohn was settled with another lollipop beside her, there was an appalling quiet which would have to be filled as quickly as possible with meaningful words. John had taken the driver’s seat in the car while Margaret was quieting the baby, and when Margaret got in beside him she felt a little chill of animosity at the sight of his hands on the wheel; I can’t bear to relinquish even this much, she thought; for a week no one has driven the car except me. Because she could see so clearly that this was unreasonable—John owned half the car, after all—she said to him with bright interest, “And how was your trip? The weather?”

  “Wonderful,” he said, and again she was angered at the warmth in his tone; if she was unreasonable about the car, he was surely unreasonable to have enjoyed himself quite so much. “Everything went very well. I’m pretty sure I got the contract, everyone was very pleasant about it, and I go back in two weeks to settle everything.”

  The stinger is in the tail, she thought. He wouldn’t tell it all so hastily if he didn’t want me to miss half of it; I am supposed to be pleased that he got the contract and that everyone was so pleasant, and the part about going back is supposed to slip past me painlessly.

  “Maybe I can go with you, then,” she said. “Your mother will take the children.”

  “Fine,” he said, but it was much too late; he had hesitated noticeably before he spoke.

  “I want to go too,” said Smalljohn. “Can I go with Daddy?”

  They came into their house, Margaret carrying the baby, and John carrying his suitcase and arguing delightedly with Smalljohn over which of them was carrying the heavier weight of it. The house was ready for them; Margaret had made sure that it was cleaned and emptied of the qualities which attached so surely to her position of wife alone with small children; the toys which Smalljohn had thrown around with unusual freedom were picked up, the baby’s clothes (no one, after all, came to call when John was gone) were taken from the kitchen radiator where they had been drying. Aside from the fact that the house gave no impression of waiting for any particular people, but only for anyone well-bred and clean enough to fit within its small trim walls, it could have passed for a home, Margaret thought, even for a home where a happy family lived in domestic peace. She set the baby down in the playpen and turned with the baby’s bonnet and jacket in her hand and saw her husband, head bent gravely as he listened to Smalljohn. Who? she wondered suddenly; is he taller? That is not my husband.

  She laughed, and they turned to her, Smalljohn curious, and her husband with a quick bright recognition; she thought, why, it is not my husband, and he knows that I have seen it. There was no astonishment in her; she would have thought perhaps thirty seconds before that such a thing was impossible, but since it was now clearly possible, surprise would have been meaningless. Some other emotion was necessary, but she found at first only peripheral manifestations of one. Her heart was beating violently, her hands were shaking, and her fingers were cold. Her legs felt weak and she took hold of the back of a chair to steady herself. She found that she was still laughing, and then her emotion caught up with her and she knew what it was: it was relief.

  “I’m glad you came,” she said. She went over and put her he
ad against his shoulder. “It was hard to say hello in the station,” she said.

  Smalljohn looked on for a minute and then wandered off to his toybox. Margaret was thinking, this is not the man who enjoyed seeing me cry; I need not be afraid. She caught her breath and was quiet; there was nothing that needed saying.

  For the rest of the day she was happy. There was a constant delight in the relief from her weight of fear and unhappiness, it was pure joy to know that there was no longer any residue of suspicion and hatred; when she called him “John” she did so demurely, knowing that he participated in her secret amusement; when he answered her civilly there was, she thought, an edge of laughter behind his words. They seemed to have agreed soberly that mention of the subject would be in bad taste, might even, in fact, endanger their pleasure.

  They were hilarious at dinner. John would not have made her a cocktail, but when she came downstairs from putting the children to bed the stranger met her at the foot of the stairs, smiling up at her, and took her arm to lead her into the living room where the cocktail shaker and glasses stood on the low table before the fire.