The Black Door (18 page)

“No, no. I’m working for Mr. Grinnel. It’s—” I thought about it a moment, then said: “It’s a confidential assignment, actually. May I have Mr. Ferguson’s home address, please? I’ll drop in on him for a few minutes.”

Regretfully, she shook her head.

“I’m terribly sorry, Mr.—?”

“Drake.”

“Yes. Well, I’m terribly sorry, Mr. Drake. But, as you probably know, one of our strictest rules is that we never give out the addresses or home phones of our associates.” And, again, suspicion narrowed her eyes as she said: “If you’re with Mr. Grinnel, you should know that. It’s a standing rule in every chapter in the country.”

“Well, I’m not a member of the F.F.F., you see. It’s just that I’m on a—a special assignment for Mr. Grinnel, as I said.”

She shook her head in decisive denial. Plainly, she was now suspicious of me, and I watched her dull, pleasant expression change into something sullen and crafty.

“Are you sure you even know Mr. Grinnel?” she asked finally.

I took a moment to think about it, while I tried to assess her. Then I asked: “Do you know Mrs. Fay? Mr. Grinnel’s secretary?”

She nodded, watching me closely.

“All right.” I pointed to the phone. “Call up the Fairmont, and ask for Mr. Grinnel. You’ll probably get Mrs. Fay. Tell her Stephen Drake is here, and he wants Mr. Ferguson’s home address in connection with the investigation I’m making for Mr. Grinnel.”

I sat down on one of the reception room chairs, folded my arms, and waited.

It was obvious neither Mrs. Pate nor the F.F.F. had ever intended that she should be in such a difficult position, and for a moment I thought she was going to burst into tears, snatch up her purse, and run out the door. But in the next moment, looking at her more closely, it seemed more probable she might open her desk drawer, withdraw a pistol, and order me into the back room, where the chains and torture instruments were waiting. I had the weird sensation of being somehow suspended between two worlds: one embodied in the impersonal, drab office with its cheap, glaring lights, and the other lurking somewhere deep and dangerous, behind the mousy brown eyes of the dumpy lady I faced across the desk.

I watched her hand slowly pick up the telephone as her eyes remained upon my face, expressionlessly.

If Grinnel were in the White House, I thought irrationally, and I were telling this dowdy lady a lie, I would be shot.

She was dialing, waiting, and now asking for Mr. Grinnel. As the connection was being made, I watched her expression change again, now involuntarily rapt, as she realized in whose presence the other phone was ringing.

“Is this Mrs. Fay?” There was a brief pause. “Well, this is Mrs. Pate, of the local chapter. I—” Her face suddenly broke into a grateful, almost beatific smile as she listened for a moment. Then she spoke again.

“I have a Mr. Drake here, Mrs. Fay. Mr. Stephen Drake. And he, well, he wants Mr. Ferguson’s home address. I told him the rules, of course. But he asked me to contact you. And, well, I thought that—What?” She blinked, her eyes wide and surprised as they looked innocently into my own. “Well, yes, I will. And thank you, Mrs. Fay. Thank you
so
much.” Gently, with a soft, mother’s touch, she laid the telephone to rest in its cradle, her eyes lingering dreamily upon it. Then, sighing to herself, she carefully wrote across a slip of notepaper and handed it to me.

“I’m dreadfully sorry to’ve cause you all this trouble, Mr. Drake,” she said gently. She rose from behind the desk, as if to pronounce upon me a parting benediction. “But I’m sure you can understand.”

I answered with a sticky, sardonic piety. “Of course, Mrs. Pate. And I
do
understand. Thank you
so
much.” I stood for a moment as we gazed at each other—two enraptured disciples with the Word for the waiting world.

I opened the door and left. As I walked briskly toward the stairway, I wondered whether the managing editor would someday join the F.F.F.

Then I glanced at the slip of paper in my hand: 2157 Sobel Street, Apt. #4.

T
HE BUILDING AT 2157
Sobel Street was similar in vintage and feeling to the one in which David Pastor and Roberta Grinnel were murdered, although the neighborhood was different. Ferguson lived in San Francisco’s Mission district, a blue collar section of the city. As I drew up in front of the building, I noticed with misgivings the dimly lit street. Newspapers and debris choked the gutters, and lighted windows revealed broken, patched panes and torn curtains. As I got out of the car, I recalled newspaper stories on the delinquency problem in the Mission. Only a month previous I’d covered a knifing close by. As I walked to the apartment house door, I glanced nervously over my shoulder, wondering whether I should have called Larsen first. But what could I tell him—that I had a strange, uncomfortable feeling I was finding my way closer to something evil and dangerous?

I immediately located Ferguson’s mailbox and his apartment, number 4. But still I stood irresolute, unwilling to ring the bell, yet unwilling to simply turn and go. Finally I pushed at the lobby door. It swung open, squeaking in mild protest. I walked inside. Ahead was a broad staircase, covered with worn floral carpeting. In the lobby, two doors bore numerals 1 and 2. The carpeting smelled musty and depressing. The woodwork was scarred by time and abuse. The plaster was stained and cracked.

I became aware of an eerie, apprehensive scalp prickle as I began climbing the stairs. I turned at the first landing. I was walking down the second-floor corridor. There were four doors. Ahead was number 3; the next was number 4. Almost dreamily now, I was walking toward Ferguson’s apartment. I remember feeling a complete cessation of external sensation, as if nothing could touch me. It was, I realized, precisely the same numbed, floating feeling I’d experienced in San Jose crossing a darkened street, following my own footsteps into a deeper darkness.

I was pressing the buzzer of number 4. There was no response, although I thought I heard a soft, furtive movement within. I pressed the buzzer once more. Then, as I heard heavy, shuffling footsteps approaching, I remember thinking, a little irrationally, that I should have asked Larsen for a permit to carry a gun. Because it was dangerous, what I was doing. I should be armed.

And I should have some plan. Was I going into the apartment? Was I going to identify the man to my satisfaction, and then call the police? I didn’t know. I had simply followed a series of hunches and hopes and hallucinations to where I now stood, uncertain and frightened, my breath coming shallow and fast, stifled by a nameless, faceless fear.

The door swung open.

The present and the past fused with the real and the remembered; he was staring at me as I’d seen him stare, standing over the girl’s twisted, naked body—a creature with his fingers still crooked in murderous spasm. She lay still tangled in the tortured, carnivorous jungle tendrils, savagely ensnared by her own futile struggles.

I blinked and stepped back. I looked at him again.

He was a bulky, bloated, incredibly ugly man. My first impression was of coarse black hair, somehow more anthropoid than human. The strangely obscene hair covered his forearms like a pelt, and covered his head like a shapeless hat made for another man. His eyebrows were heavy with the same black, spiky hair, and his day’s growth of beard was a dark stain against his sallow white face.

The small, dark, suspicious eyes became even smaller beneath descending black brows; the thick lips twisted to ask, “What is it?”

I caught the overpowering odor of alcohol.

I licked at my lips, suddenly determined not to go into the apartment.

“My—my name is Stephen Drake,” I faltered. “I’m working for Mr. Grinnel. Mr. Robert Grinnel.”

For a moment, I thought he hadn’t heard me. He stood leaning heavily against the door frame, staring at me. I was about to repeat what I’d said when he roused himself. With exaggerated caution, he looked up and down the hallway.

“Mrs. Pate said you were coming,” he mumbled. “She just called.”

Now, satisfied with his bleary scrutiny of the hallway, he began examining me. He leaned very close, then took a stumbling step forward, to keep his balance. I saw that he was very drunk. His eyes were vague; his mouth was slack at the corners.

At that moment, a door close by opened. Someone was approaching down the hallway.

He moved back, an animal backing into the sheltering darkness of its lair. His voice was thick and furtive.

“Come in.” He was shadowed in the small, darkened entry hall, holding open the door. “If you’re from Mr. Grinnel, come in.” In his voice was the now-familiar awe of the Grinnel name.

I hesitated. My throat was suddenly dry; my shirt was soaked and clammy.

“Come
on.”
A quick anger flamed irrationally in his voice. “Hurry.”

I was inside, watching his thick, unsteady fingers fumble with the door’s lock, then with the double chain. I realized that I had to begin talking, quickly and convincingly. Yet, watching him rattle the door and then turn unsteadily toward me, I somehow couldn’t speak, but could only swallow, repeatedly. My thoughts seemed to whirl helplessly around a plaintive, querulous refrain: I was a stupid, naive, suicidal fool to be standing in a narrow, darkened hallway facing a drunken murderer.

“Wha’s Mr. Grinnel want?” He was lurching toward me, his face still in the shadows. I backed away, turned from him, and found myself staring with a rooted fascination at Ferguson’s apartment. The room was incredibly cluttered, conveying an indescribable sense of futility and depravity. The wall bed was down, dominating the room with its tumble of rumpled, soiled bed clothing. Garments draped every chair, and newspapers littered the floor.

But it was the walls that compelled my attention. On each wall hung mementos of violence and death: swords of every description, rifles and pistols, modern and old. Two sabers were crossed over a ceremonial German helmet; nearby hung a ragged battle flag, stained with the terrible dark brown of human blood. The top shelf of a bookcase had been arranged in a kind of improvised shrine. Above the bookcase hung a large picture of Robert Grinnel. Flanking the picture, separately framed, were three typewritten letters and a newspaper clipping. On the bookcase itself stood a photograph in a cheap gilded frame, a picture of Ferguson and young Bobby Grinnel, smiling at each other. Beside the picture lay a black armband, with the letters
F.F.F.
stitched on in white felt. Beside the armband lay an incongruous pair of brass knuckles. Next to the brass knuckles was a small velvet jeweler’s box, intended to contain a valuable ring. But in this box, resting in the ring-slot, was a misshapen blob of metal.

Dimly I realized that my best chance of escaping from the room lay somewhere in the riddle of that makeshift shrine to Grinnel and the F.F.F. I moved a numbed step closer to the bookcase, by an effort of will keeping my eyes away from the man now shuffling to stand on my left, close to me. I could smell the reek of liquor and hear the harsh rattle of his breathing.

Now we both faced the bookcase. I found myself staring at the blob of metal in the velvet box. I was about to ask, when I realized the blob was a spent bullet. I looked at the newspaper clipping, with its three-column headline.

ASSASSIN SHOOTS AT

RIGHT WINGER, MISSES

The story was datelined San Diego and was almost exactly two years old. Although I was unable to concentrate on the specific words, I skimmed the sense of it. Someone had attempted to assassinate Grinnel, but had failed. Ferguson, with only brass knuckles to defend himself, had rushed the man, disarmed him, and almost killed him in the minute or so it took police to make their way through the crowd.

I remembered the story. In the city room at San Jose, the sentiment had been all with the assassin.

I sensed Ferguson’s greed for my approval. And I felt myself becoming calmer, even though the sensation of his presence so close was almost nauseating. Yet I forced myself to make a show of reading the three framed letters, all written under the Forward For Freedom letterhead, all addressed to Ferguson, and all signed by Robert Grinnel. The first letter was a commendation for saving Grinnel’s life. The second letter announced Ferguson’s appointment as San Francisco director of the F.F.F.

The third was little more than a note. It stated that Grinnel’s son was coming to Bransten as a student, and had expressed an interest in associating himself with the local chapter of the F.F.F. Grinnel hoped Ferguson would show the boy every courtesy, but without undue favoritism or privilege. For a long moment I stared at the third letter. I remember thinking that it was all neatly displayed before me, everything I needed.

Then I stepped back. Suddenly the exhibit seemed as pitiful as it was terrible. Upon the narrow bookshelf and the surrounding walls were displayed the entire substance and purpose of a human life; what remained within the man was little more than vicious, drunken delusions.

I pointed to the bullet, then turned to face him, at the same time backing a step away.

“Mr. Grinnel gave you that?” I asked.

He nodded.

“You saved his life.”

He drew himself up in a grotesque burlesque of pride and manhood. He pointed to the first letter. “It says so right there.” He tapped at the frame, jolting it awry. Then, with something of the small boy’s entreaty: “I have a cold, you know. A bad cold. It’s better now, but yesterday it was bad. And today, even—even today, it was bad. And that’s the reason—I mean—” He paused, frowning and confused. Then with a ponderous, transparent guile, he said, “I went out this morning after breakfast and bought myself a bottle. I didn’t go to work today, see. So I—I—bought a bottle. But it’s the first one I bought in—in—” He waved a vague hand. Then, focusing on me narrowly, his eyes became suddenly hostile and suspicious. “You won’t tell Mr. Grinnel, will you?” He took a step forward. “I can’t let you do that, you know. He—they—he don’t know that I—I—”

I backed away, yet I tried to contain my fear. I felt my only chance with him was to assert some kind of authority, constantly keeping the initiative, and keeping him off balance.