The Door (24 page)

I felt then that he had been certain of it from the day Howard died.

Jim was arraigned a day or so later. It was a hideous ordeal for him, and for the rest of us; the courtroom crowded, and the crowd hostile. It seemed to me that the concentrated hatred in that room was a menace in itself, that if thought is a force, as I believe that it is, there was enough malignancy there to have destroyed a man.

They had brought him from the jail in the Black Maria; very carefully dressed, he was, and holding his head high. He had not come alone. There were criminals with him, black and white and even one yellow man. He had to wait while they entered their pleas, and he fixed his eyes on Katherine. I saw her smile at him, and her whole face warmed. A queer woman, Katherine, filled with surprises.

He listened gravely to the reading of the indictment, and nodded a sort of mute thank-you to the clerk when he had finished. I saw him draw a long breath, and I fancy he had meant that his “Not guilty” was to be a full-bodied and manly thing, a ringing assertion of his innocence. But he failed. At the last moment he looked at the crowd, and its concentrated hatred struck him like a blow in the chest. I saw his spirit fall under it and lie there, a broken thing, and Judy moaned a little. His “Not guilty” was not heard beyond the front benches, and he knew it.

Some hysterical woman somewhere giggled, and he heard it. I have never seen such torture in a man’s face. When they took him out he stopped at the prisoners’ door, as though he would come back and face them down, but Godfrey Lowell put a hand on his arm, and he went out to face again the battery of news photographers waiting outside.

I have one of those pictures now. It shows him handcuffed to another prisoner and with his head bent. The other man is smiling.

S
O WE ENTERED INTO
that period of dreadful waiting between the indictment and the trial. Not that the waiting was to be long. The prosecution was doing everything possible to get the case on the docket before court closed in June, and the press was urging haste.

On the twenty-fourth of May, Tuesday, Katherine moved into Jim’s house, and took Judy with her. Apparently she paid no attention to the curious looks of the neighbors, or to the cars which halted in the street to survey the house. She was like a woman set apart, not so much hardened as isolated.

As Laura wrote: “She seems superhuman to me. I’d come on if she wanted me, but quite frankly she doesn’t. And what is this mysterious fund, anyhow? Poor dear Howard leading a double life seems rather incredible, at his age and with that heart of his. As for the rest of it, I don’t see why Wallie shouldn’t have his share. No matter what you think about Margaret, she stood by Howard in the early days, and he was certainly crazy enough about her; although I wouldn’t care to tell Katherine that.”

She said she would be on for the trial, and to be sure to get the best men to defend Jim; and she ended by saying that the whole thing was preposterous, and that the Grand Jury must be insane. “Collective insanity,” she put it.

Dick was rather at a loose end after the move. There could be no informal dropping in at any house of Katherine’s. Amos was gone, and a part of her own staff from New York had taken his place. Just how they found houseroom I do not know, but somehow they managed. Judy reported to me daily, and so matters went on for a week or so; Jim in jail, I alone once more in my house, and Katherine moving silently and austerely about that little house, sipping her after-dinner coffee in the back garden and passing, in order to reach it, the door to the liquor closet, and the passage to the cellar stairs.

Then one day Judy told me that her mother wished to see the manager of the Imperial Hotel, and wanted me to go with her.

“But why, Judy?”

“She didn’t say. She thinks something must have happened here last summer; I know that.”

“The hotel wouldn’t know about it.”

“They might know if father had had any visitors.”

She glanced at me, then looked away. I think she felt that there was something shameful in this prying into a dead man’s past, and that she had herself refused to go.

I agreed, however. It seemed the least I could do, although I do not frequent hotels. I had never been inside the Imperial in my life. I daresay I belong to a generation which is absurd to the present one, but it has always seemed to me that well-bred folk should use hotels as necessities, not for pleasure.

But the hotel manager, a short ruddy man, swollen somewhat with good living, was unable to help us.

“I knew Mr. Somers well, of course,” he said, “and I gave him the suite he usually occupied. I remember asking him if he wanted so much space, for he came alone. Usually he brought his valet. He said he did, and I went up with him myself.

“I thought he looked tired, and I suggested he have dinner in his sitting room. He said he would, and that his son would dine with him.

“The attack came on just after dinner. I was in the lobby when the word came, and I went up. The hotel doctor was there, and we got Doctor Simonds also. He—it looked pretty serious for a while.”

“Walter Somers was there when it occurred?”

“Yes. He telephoned for help.”

As to visitors, he did not know. The floor clerk might remember. From her desk near the elevator she could see the doors of the suite clearly, and of course Mr. Somers was an important guest. It was a chance, anyhow. She had known Mr. Somers for years, and naturally his grave illness had been a matter of interest and solicitude.

A pleasant enough little man, if rather unctuous. He took us to the sixth floor and left us with the floor clerk. I imagine he had wanted to remain, but Katherine’s “thank you” was a dismissal. He turned and went away.

The clerk at the desk on the sixth floor turned out to be a middle-aged woman, with keen eyes and a shrewd mouth. Long ago, I daresay, she had lost any illusions as to the men and women whose comings and goings it was her business to watch. They came and went, intent on their own affairs, hardly aware of her at all. But she saw them and studied them; their tragedies, their seriocomedies. A thousand small dramas were played about her, and sometimes she was audience, and occasionally she was God.

I saw that Katherine had impressed her, even before she heard her name; her air of breeding, the heavy handsome black she wore. But Katherine was intent on herself and her problem; her eyes were on that long corridor, with its mirrors and heavy jars, its chairs and its rows of doors.

“You were here, I believe, while my husband was ill last summer?”

“Yes, Mrs. Somers. He was in six-ten, the corner suite down there.”

But Katherine did not look, although I did.

“And I suppose that you know we are in trouble. Very great trouble.”

“I do indeed. I am so sorry.”

But the interview, at the time at least, appeared to develop very little. Miss Todd, the floor clerk, was on duty from four o’clock in the afternoon until midnight, when she turned in her keys to the main office and went home.

She knew of no visitors to Howard during those hours.

“His son came and went,” she said. “At first, when Mr. Somers was critically ill he stayed all night, getting such sleep as he could, and there was a day nurse and a night nurse. When Miss Gittings came she replaced the day nurse, and after he began to gain strength she took the case herself. The night nurse was dismissed. She wanted it that way.”

“The evening he was taken sick, do you remember anything unusual about that?”

“Well, I do; in a way. Mr. Walter Somers came out about ten minutes before the attack. He had his hat, and I remember thinking he had eaten his dinner in a hurry. He came along to about that third door there, then he turned right around and went back again.”

“And it was after that that he telephoned for help?”

“About ten minutes. Yes.”

Katherine hesitated. She was a proud woman, and only desperation could have forced the next question.

“You don’t know if there had been a quarrel? Some excitement, to bring on the attack?”

It was Miss Todd’s turn to look embarrassed.

“Well, I hardly like to say. The waiter, William, said there were some words while he served dinner, and that Mr. Walter looked upset. But these waiters talk a good bit.”

“He had no idea what the trouble was? Did he hear anything? I am sorry,” Katherine interrupted herself, “but this may be more vital than you realize. What was said? What did this William hear?”

“William’s gone now, but he said Mr. Somers had accused Mr. Walter of lying about something. And he said: ‘You can’t put that over on me. I know. I’ve got the facts, and if you think you are going to hold that over me you can think again.’ Those are not the exact words, but after he took sick William came here and told me.”

Katherine sat very still, thinking that over. It must have satisfied that furious jealousy of hers that Howard and Wallie had quarreled. But it must have puzzled her, too, as it was certainly puzzling me. She drew off her gloves, sat smoothing them absently.

“But of course that was nothing serious,” Miss Todd went on brightly. “Things were all right after that, and Mr. Walter was devotion itself. He came in every day. He was nice to everybody. We all liked him.”

Katherine moved in her chair.

“Did Mr. Somers have any other visitors?”

“Well, it was summer and his friends were all away. There were the doctors, of course; Doctor Simonds had called in several. But I remember no callers.”

“Were you on duty when Mr. Waite came in?”

“Yes. Both days. The manager, Mr. Hendrickson, brought him up himself. He had only the stenographer with him; she sat here until Mr. Waite opened the door and signaled to her. A quiet person. They came back again the second day, and I think they called up the notary from downstairs. Mr. Walter brought him up, I believe, but I was at my supper at the time.”

“Was his son—was Walter Somers with his father at these times?”

“On the first day he met Mr. Waite in the hall and took him in. But he did not stay. He came out and rang for the elevator. I remember that, because he brought me some flowers from the sickroom. He said his father had suggested it. He had just received a large box.”

I saw a quick flicker of suspicion in Katherine’s eyes, and I knew that her quick jealousy had been again aroused. Flowers to her meant a woman, and with some justification, at that. Men do not ordinarily send boxes of flowers to other men. And this had been in midsummer, when practically all the few people Howard Somers knew in the city would be out of town.

“Flowers?” Katherine said. “I suppose you have no idea who sent these flowers?”

“I haven’t an idea,” said Miss Todd, looking slightly surprised. “Mr. Walter Somers would know, of course. He came out and got some vases for them.”

Katherine’s face set, as it always did when Walter was mentioned. Nevertheless, she was calm enough on the surface.

“And who brought these flowers, Miss Todd? Walter Somers?”

“No. They were delivered by the florist. At least I suppose so. An elderly man brought them. Usually such parcels are left here at the desk, but he said he had been told to get a receipt for them, and I let him take them in himself.” She stopped suddenly. “That’s curious,” she said. “I don’t remember his coming back this way, now that I think of it.”

“He delivered the flowers and did not come back?”

“He may have, of course. I was pretty busy that day. I just don’t remember seeing him again. But there is a service staircase near the suite. He could have walked down. I remember him,” she added, “because it was a rainy day and he was soaking wet. He seemed old and feeble to be out and working.”

She remembered nothing else of value. The messenger with the flowers she had seen only once; a shabby man, elderly and with longish white hair, and considerably stooped. Several times, during the illness, a squat heavy-set woman had come to give Howard a massage. She had reported at the desk the first time. After that she had merely nodded and passed by.

Visitors were forbidden. Walter came and went, getting little sleep at the beginning but later on in better spirits. It was evident that Miss Todd had liked Walter. Sarah Gittings had gone her efficient way. “Very particular about his food she was, too!” As Howard improved he had insisted that Sarah take a walk in the afternoons, and she did so. At such times Walter often stayed with his father and read to him. Sarah would wait until Walter would come, after office hours, and then dutifully go out.

There was no fuel there for Katherine’s jealousy and suspicion to feed on; the record of a normal illness, with no women visitors save a muscular
masseuse.
No men, even, save Walter and the doctors, this messenger from a florist, the elderly man with stooped shoulders and a box of flowers, and Mr. Waite himself, sole survivor now of that little group of three which had stood by a bed in that hotel suite and watched a wavering hand sign a will which was to send four people to their deaths and three others into danger and injury.

Before we left Miss Todd asked if we would care to see the suite. Katherine refused, but I agreed. It seemed to me that the secret, whatever it was, might lie there; that if the florist’s messenger could depart by a rear staircase, it would be possible for others who wished to avoid scrutiny to arrive by the same method. Something had happened to Howard Somers in those rooms, I felt; something which had altered his attitude toward his family and toward Walter, and which Jim had indicated in his defense.

And—strange how things will come to one at the most unusual times!—it was while walking down that corridor, with its Chinese vases on pedestals, its gilt mirrors here and there over console tables, that I thought of Margaret Somers.

Suppose Margaret were still alive? And suppose that Walter knew this, had secured that fund of fifty thousand dollars for her? No wonder, in that case, that he had refused to explain it! He had shown a real fondness for Judy, and detest Katherine as he certainly did, he would certainly never willingly invalidate his father’s second marriage at the cost of exposure of Margaret’s deception.