Bill Gregg drew himself up rigidly and slowly replaced
the hat on his head. If a man had turned that
trick on him, a .45-caliber slug would have gone crashing
through the door in search of him to teach him a Westerner’s
opinion of such manners.
Ronicky Doone could not help smiling to himself, as
he saw Bill Gregg stump stiffly down the stairs, limping
a little on his wounded leg, and come back with a
grave dignity to the starting point. He was still
crimson to the roots of his hair.
“Let’s start,” he said. “If
that happens again I’ll be doing a couple of
murders in this here little town and getting myself
hung.”
“What happened?”
“An old hag jerked open the door after I rang
the bell. I asked her nice and polite if a lady
named Caroline Smith was in the house? ‘No,’
says she, ‘and if she was, what’s that
to you?’ I told her I’d come a long ways
to see Caroline. ’Then go a long ways back
without seeing Caroline,’ says this withered
old witch, and she banged the door right in my face.
Man, I’m still seeing red. Them words of
the old woman were whips, and every one of them sure
took off the hide. I used to think that old lady
Moore in Martindale was a pretty nasty talker, but
this one laid over her a mile. But we’re
beat, Ronicky. You couldn’t get by that
old woman with a thousand men.”
“Maybe not,” said Ronicky Doone, “but
we’re going to try. Did you look across
the street and see a sign a while ago?”
“Which side?”
“Side right opposite Caroline’s house.”
“Sure. ‘Room To Rent.’”
“I thought so. Then that’s our room.”
“Eh?”
“That’s our room, partner, and right at
the front window over the street one of us is going
to keep watch day and night, till we make sure that
Caroline Smith don’t live in that house.
Is that right?”
“That’s a great idea!” He started
away from the fence.
“Wait!” Ronicky caught him by the shoulder
and held him back. “We’ll wait till
night and then go and get that room. If Caroline
is in the house yonder, and they know we’re
looking for her, it’s easy that she won’t
be allowed to come out the front of the house so long
as we’re perched up at the window, waiting to
see her. We’ll come back tonight and start
waiting.”
Two Apparitions
They found that the room in the house on Beekman Place,
opposite that which they felt covered their quarry,
could be secured, and they were shown to it by a quiet
old gentlewoman, found a big double room that ran
across the whole length of the house. From the
back it looked down on the lights glimmering on the
black East River and across to the flare of Brooklyn;
to the left the whole arc of the Fifty-ninth Street
Bridge was exposed. In front the windows overlooked
Beekman Place and were directly opposite, the front
of the house to which the taxi driver had gone that
afternoon.
