Эд Макбейн - Barking at Butterflies and other stories

“Yes, but...”

“Then what’s to stop her getting out of bed, opening the back door, ringing the front doorbell, and then coming in again through the back door and right into her bed? What’s to stop her, David?”

“Nothing, I guess. Only...”

“Only what?”

“Only why would she want to?”

“Spite, David. There’s people in this world who do things only because it brings misery to others. Spite,” Mary Vincent said, “plain and simple spite. If I was you, David, I would keep my eye on her.” Mary Vincent laughed, and then said, “In fact, I would keep both my eyes on her.”

David started keeping both his eyes on her that very night because the doorbell rang at exactly two-thirteen a.m. David had a watch that was waterproof and shock resistant which his grandfather gave him when he was seven years old. When he heard the doorbell ring, he jumped up in bed and turned on the light and looked at the watch, and it was two-thirteen A.M.

“There it is again,” he heard his father say in the next room, but David was listening for sounds coming from the back door. He didn’t hear anything. The doorbell rang again.

“Let him ring,” his father said. “If he thinks I’m getting out of bed every night, he’s crazy.”

The doorbell rang again. David still hadn’t heard a sound from Helga’s room. He kept looking at the sweep hand of his watch. It was now two-fifteen.

“Are you just going to let it ring?” his mother whispered.

“Yep,” his father said.

“All night?”

“If he wants to ring the damn thing all night, then I’ll let him ring it all night.”

“He’ll wake up Mrs. Shavinsky.”

“The hell with Mrs. Shavinsky.”

“He’ll wake up the whole building.”

“Who cares?” David’s father said, and his mother giggled, and the doorbell continued ringing. David still hadn’t heard a peep from Helga.

“Mom?” he said.

“David? Are you awake?”

“Yes. Do you want me to see who’s at the door?”

“You stay right in your bed,” his father said.

“Someone’s ringing the doorbell,” David said.

“I hear it.”

“Shouldn’t we see who it is?”

“We know who it is. It’s some nut who’s got nothing better to do.”

“Mom?”

“You heard your father.”

“Are we just gonna let him ring the damn thing all night?” David asked.

“What?” his father said.

“Are we gonna let him ring the damn thing all...?”

“I heard you the first time,” his father said.

“Well, are we?”

“If he wants to. Go to sleep. He’ll get tired soon enough.”

The bell ringer didn’t get tired soon enough. David kept watching the red sweep hand on his wristwatch; the bell ringer didn’t get tired until two forty-seven A.M., which was a half-hour after he had first begun. In all that time, Helga hadn’t said a word. It was almost as if she wasn’t even in the house.

For the next two weeks, the doorbell rang almost every night at two in the morning or a little after. David’s father let it ring each time, without getting out of bed to answer the door. Once, while the doorbell was ringing, David sneaked out of bed and went to the other end of the apartment, near the service entrance, to see if Helga was in her room. But the door to her bedroom was closed, and he couldn’t tell whether she was there or not. The doorbell woke the entire family each time, but they simply pretended it wasn’t ringing. Each time, David’s mother would come into his bedroom after the doorbell had been ringing a while, to see if it had awakened him.

“David?” she would whisper.

“Yes, Mom.”

“Are you awake?”

“Yes, Mom.”

“You poor darling,” she would say, and then she would sit on the edge of his bed and put her hand on his forehead, the way she would sometimes do when she thought he had a fever, though he certainly didn’t have any fever. The doorbell would continue ringing and his mother would sit in her nightgown in the dark, her hand cool on his head. In a little while, she would kiss his closed eyes, and he would drift off to sleep, not knowing when she left him, not knowing when the doorbell stopped ringing.

This went on for two weeks. By the end of that time, David was getting used to waking up at two in the morning and getting used to his mother’s visits each time the doorbell rang. He was beginning to think, though, that once Helga left on her vacation, the doorbell ringing would stop. He was beginning to think that Mary Vincent was right, that Helga was ringing the bell just out of spite, just to cause misery for others. But on August the twelfth, Helga went off, and that night at two o’clock the doorbell rang. It couldn’t have been Helga because she had taken a plane that morning at Kennedy Airport, bound for Copenhagen where her parents lived.

The next day, David’s father called the police.

It was David’s guess that his father had suspected Helga, too, because he told the two detectives right away that it couldn’t have been the housekeeper since she was in Denmark. That explained why he hadn’t called the police up to now; he had thought it was Helga and had expected her to quit ringing the bell after a while. The two detectives didn’t look anything like television policemen at all. One of them looked like Mr. Harriman who ran the candy store on Madison Avenue, and the other looked like Uncle Martin, David’s father’s brother. Mr. Harriman did most of the talking.

“When did your housekeeper leave?” he asked David’s father.

“Yesterday morning.”

“And you say the doorbell rang again last night?”

“Yes, it did.”

“Who else lives on this floor?” Mr. Harriman asked.

“Mrs. Shavinsky and her housekeeper.”

“Her name is Mary Vincent,” David said.

“Thank you, son,” Mr. Harriman said. “Would either Mrs. Shavinsky or her housekeeper have any reason to want to annoy you?”

“I don’t think so,” David’s father said.

“He may be after Mrs. Shavinsky’s demitasse cups,” David said.

“What was that, son?” the one who looked like Uncle Martin asked.

“Mrs. Shavinsky’s demitasse cups. They’re worth several thousand dollars.”

“If the intruder wanted her cups,” Uncle Martin said, “why would he ring your doorbell?”

“That’s just what I said to Mrs. Shavinsky.”

“Is there anything you can do about this?” David’s father asked the detectives. “Can you leave a man here?”

“Well, that’d be a little difficult, sir,” Mr. Harriman said. “We’re always short-handed, but especially in the summertime. I think you can understand...”

“Yes, but...”

“What we can do, of course, is to dust the hallway and the doorbell for fingerprints.”

“Will that help?”

“If the intruder left any prints, why yes, it could help a great deal.”

“And if he didn’t leave any prints? If, for example, he was wearing gloves?”

“Why, then it wouldn’t help at all, would it?”

“No, it wouldn’t,” David said.

“Mmm,” Mr. Harriman said, and smiled at David the way some grownups smiled at him when they meant Shut up, kid.

“Well, if you can’t leave a man here,” his father said, “and if dusting or whatever you call it doesn’t come up with any fingerprints, well... well, what are we supposed to do? Just let this person keep on ringing our doorbell forever?”

“I suppose you could spend a night sleeping in a chair near the door,” Mr. Harriman said. “That might help.”

“How?”

“You could open the door as soon as the bell rang.”

“We never know when it’s going to ring,” David’s father said, “or even if it’ll ring at all. There’s no pattern to it.”