The Eighth Day (11 page)

Long before that extraordinary event in the railroad yard outside Fort Barry, Olga Sergeievna had been aware of something well out of the ordinary at “The Elms.” She had not been the only woman in town who had been a little in love with John Ashley, ordinary though he was to all appearances. She had been occasionally invited to supper at “The Elms”; she had exchanged greetings and general remarks with him on the street almost daily for seventeen years. The strange events that befell him in the spring and early summer of 1902 confirmed her intuition. He was chosen. He was a sign. When she called at the house now she was renewing her strength; she was warming her spirit at a flame, at a place where “real things” had been revealed. On each of these visits to “The Elms” Miss Doubkov requested that Lily sing to her. Lily was training her voice by imitating that of Madame Nellie Melba as it issued from the morning-glory horn of an almost ruined gramophone. The results were remarkable. Miss Doubkov predicted with alarming conviction that one day Lily would be a great singer with the world at her feet. She sent to Chicago—from her slowly accumulated savings—for copies of Madame Albanese's
Method of Bel Canto, Volumes I and II.
She showed her how Madame Carvalho advanced to the footlights to acknowledge applause and how La Piccolomini, in recital, stood in silence, in
recueillement
, until she had gathered all the audience's attention. The ladies at “The Elms” spoke textbook French; she introduced the more informal idioms of polite conversation. She admired Beata Ashley; she did not like her. There is nothing remarkable about that for she liked no women. She disapproved of Mrs. Ashley's refusal to appear in the streets of the town. Under similar circumstances she would have walked the length of Main Street daily, glaring crushingly at those who failed to salute her. Sophia did not interest her. She saw clearly the extent of the girl's achievement in the creation of the boardinghouse, but she offered no help or counsel. She had been through hard straits herself and assumed that persons of quality did not discuss them. Steel exists to support pressure. The truth was that she was interested only in men, despicable though most of them were. There had been no man in her life since the death of her father and the ignominious disappearance of a fiancé, but she lived only to impress men with her sharp judgments on them, her good sense, and her elegant carriage. Women were tiresome.

The linen room in the basement of the Illinois Tavern was long, low, and airless. Feeble light fell from a high grated window that was seldom washed. Several mornings a week Miss Doubkov descended to this room carrying two kerosene lanterns which she attached to hooks hanging from the ceiling. Piles of linen lay under dustcloths on shelves about the room. Under the lanterns was a long table, which she cleaned thoroughly on each of her visits. One morning in June of 1903 she was interrupted in her work by a knock on the door. She opened it a few inches; a draft would admit dust from the coalbins down the corridor.

“Wa-all?”

“Miss Doubkov?”

“Yass.”

“I see that you're busy. May I come in and wait until you are free to give me a moment?”

“I'm always busy. What do you want?”

“My name is Frank Rudge. I'd like to talk to you in confidence, if you'll let me come in.”

“Confidence! Confidence!—Come in. Sit down there until I finish what I am doing.”

She placed him under the light and glanced at him sharply. He was a good-looking man of thirty-five and he knew it. In a moment he knew, too, that Miss Doubkov was susceptible to good-looking men and that her susceptibility would take the form of truculence and rudeness. She put him to work. There were piles of freshly laundered sheets on the floor. She directed him to heap them on the table. She busied herself at the far end of the room. Finally she lit a cigarette and addressed him.

“What do you want?”

“I want to offer you payment of thirty dollars a month for very little work.”

“So!”

“And to point out to you a way of possibly earning several thousand dollars.”

“Faugh!”

“I want to talk to you about John Ashley.”

“I know naw-thing about John Ashley.”

“You're right. For fourteen months nobody has known anything about him.”

“Stop your foolishness and tell me what you want.”

“The truth, ma'am. All we want is the truth.”

“You are from the police! You are from Colonel Stotz's office!”

“Colonel Stotz is not in office as State's Attorney. I was in the police, but I was fired. I represent a private person.”

“Colonel Stotz is an old fool.”

“His office didn't handle the matter very well. We know that.”

“Say what you mean! They were imbeciles!”

“Well—”

“They were idiots. You're wasting my time.”

“Miss Doubkov, will you allow me to talk to you for three minutes without your interrupting me?”

“Well, first you be quiet for three minutes.”

She made him wait again. She pretended to count piles of towels. Her hands were trembling slightly. She hated the police, all police everywhere. Just so the police must have closed in about her home in Russia; just so, after their departure, the police must have “smoked” about among their neighbors. But she smelt money in the air—rubles and rubles. At last she lit another cigarette and turned toward him, leaning her back against the shelves, her arms akimbo. “Say what you have to say.”

“Thank you, ma'am. Ma'am, the State's Attorney's office has a section dealing with the search for missing persons—particularly for missing persons under conviction. That section has been unable to find any trace of John Ashley or of the six men who rescued him. Four thousand dollars has been offered for information leading to the arrest of either Ashley or the men.”

“Three thousand.”

“The price has been raised.”

“Why are you telling this to me?”

“Because you are the only person who goes in and out of that house—the only observant person, Miss Doubkov! The answers to those questions are
in that house.
As soon as Mrs. Ashley gets fifty dollars together she will start making payments to those rescuers. She will soon be receiving messages and money from her husband. It is very possible she is receiving them already through some indirect means.”

“Hah! So that is why the police have been opening my letters!”

“Only twice, Miss Doubkov. I didn't do it; they did it. Remember, I represent a private person. That house is being watched very closely.” He rose and came around the table toward her. He stared into her eyes. “That information is going to come to light, somehow, any day now. Lots of people are going to put in a claim for the money. Why not you? Eh? If you got hold of the principal piece of information, I could arrange that your claim to the money was recognized.”

“And with your low dirty minds you think I would help to send an innocent man to his death?”

“Don't be a child, Miss Doubkov. There is another governor in office. You don't suppose a new governor would put his head in that hornet's nest. Ashley would be pardoned, but he can't be pardoned until we know the truth. That's all we're after—facts.”

“Why are you all so excited about a man you are ready to pardon? Just announce his pardon and he will come back.”

“He might come back, ma'am, but he would never tell us who his rescuers were. I don't think you realize how many mysterious things lie back of this thing. Who organized that rescue? He didn't do it from jail, we're sure of that. Someone was ready to pay those men a lot of money to risk their lives. Who are Ashley's rich, influential friends? Try to find that out. Who's behind the boardinghouse? We know to a penny how much money Mrs. Ashley had. We know every stick of furniture that was left in the house. Even if Mrs. Ashley were a very bright woman she couldn't have got that going alone, and she's not a bright woman at all. You didn't lend her money; Dr. Gillies didn't; Miss Thoms has no money to lend her. We called on their old people: Mr. Ashley's mother's dead, but his father's still alive—runs a small bank in upstate New York. He wouldn't talk about his son; threw us out of the house. Also, Mrs. Ashley's parents. There are mysteries here, Miss Doubkov—big mysteries. When they're cleared up, Mr. Ashley can come back to his family.”

Miss Doubkov walked away from him and lit another cigarette. Mr. Rudge put his business card on the table.

“You write me a letter every month on the last day of the month. Put anything into it that could have the least connection with this matter. And I shall write to you, because information is constantly turning up at our end. What is the son's address in Chicago? Through what agent is Mrs. Ashley in touch with him? Do you think Mrs. Ashley is getting messages from her husband now?”

“No!”

“You have the opportunity to find out. There is another thing you could do. You call on Mrs. Lansing, don't you? Your four thousand dollars may be there.”

“What?”

“Has it never occurred to you that Mrs. Lansing may have arranged Ashley's escape?”

“What is that you say?”

“Mr. Ashley and Mrs. Lansing were—pardon my frankness—lovers.”

“No, they were not.”

“You cannot be sure of that. It is possible that Mrs. Lansing advanced money to start the boardinghouse. All sorts of things are possible.”

Miss Doubkov gave a long low contemptuous laugh. She glanced at her visitor's card. “Mr. Rudge,” she said, “you know very little about the Ashleys and the Lansings. And you don't even know what your problem is. You're barking up the wrong tree. Your business is, first, to find out who killed Breckenridge Lansing.”

“There is no doubt that Ashley killed—”

“Are you a detective?”

“Yes.”

“Then stop talking. Start looking and listening. Are you staying in town a day or two?”

“Well . . . ? I could.”

“You should. Your office made a botch of the trial. Try not to make a botch of your investigation. Learn something about what took place here. Change your clothes. You look like a policeman. Go up the River Road. Pretend to get drunk at some of those places up there like Hattie's Hitching Post and The Old Brown Jug. Breckenridge Lansing spent two or three nights a week there. He certainly made some enemies. Get to know the men in the mines. Breckenridge Lansing was a pitiful administrator. He certainly made some enemies there. Get to know an old hunter around here named Jemmy. Lansing used to go off on hunting trips with him for a week at a time. Now I've earned thirty dollars of your money already. Yes, I will write the letters you want for four months. I am an honest person. If no useful information turns up in that time our agreement is over. You will pay me at the first of the month, not when you receive the letter. You will pay for my first letter now.”

“I'll put a cheque in the mail this afternoon.”

“No! I don't want it in writing. You'll put thirty dollars in my hand.”

Rudge stayed eight days in Coaltown. He visited the linen room four times in order to discuss the Ashley Case with Miss Doubkov. He was learning a good deal about Breckenridge Lansing, although he could not see that it threw much light on the murder. She abounded in further suggestions; she guided his investigations. As for her, she also went promptly to work, but she did not tell Rudge about whatever progress she made. An odd friendship sprang up between them. Soon they were playing cards together in the foul air and bad light of the basement. They won and lost immense fortunes in dried peas collected from the storeroom next door. They told each other the stories of their lives. Finally he confessed that he had been one of the armed guards that accompanied Ashley on the night of the rescue. Hence his dismissal from the police force. He had become a private detective and was engaged by insurance companies, banks, hotels, and jealous husbands. He had become something of an expert on arson and barn burnings. It was enjoyable work. He had been a favorite of Colonel Stotz during several of his terms of office and was now serving him in a private capacity. Colonel Stotz was a very rich man and had dug down into his own pockets to launch a manhunt: Ashley, dead or alive. Miss Doubkov drew from Rudge a detailed account of that famous rescue. Her questions drove him to search his memory for gestures and impressions that had escaped his conscious observation at the time and that he had failed to recall at the official inquiry. His account confirmed her belief in the obtuseness of the police. She did not point out to him certain deductions that seemed self-evident.

How stupid men are! Within a week she was convinced that she knew who Ashley's rescuers were. She had long been fairly certain who Lansing's murderer was.

The only person aware of these long conversations in the basement was the janitor, Solon O'Hara. Like his cousin Porky O'Hara—third or fourth cousin, cousin many times—Solon belonged to the Church of the Covenant community on Herkomer's Knob, the religious sect that had found its way from Kentucky into southern Illinois a hundred years ago. They were largely Indian stock though they bore English and Irish family names. It was thought that they engaged in strange religious rites and they were given several derisive names, but they were known to be trustworthy, irreproachable in their habits, and particularly secretive. They were employed all over Coaltown as janitors and caretakers in the Tavern, bank, court, schools, jail, in Memorial Park, the cemetery, and the railroad yards. Except for Porky, none of them worked in stores or held sedentary jobs. Solon knocked at the door of the linen room from time to time, bringing in fresh laundry or replacing the hot irons that Miss Doubkov required when she had finished some work of mending.

Miss Doubkov set about her new task at once. She invited Mrs. Ashley and her two older daughters to “Russian Tea.” Mrs. Ashley was unable to leave her boardinghouse, but the girls accepted the invitation. Lily was seen on the main street for the first time in well over a year. The appearance of a giraffe could not have caused a greater sensation. Miss Doubkov's attention to everything about her at “The Elms” was redoubled.