Vincent Starrett - The Blue Door

The wrinkled face of the old driver was thrust toward them beyond the open window; his eyes were blinking.

“Whoo-o-o!” roared young Mr. Norway, in imitation of a sea lion. “Attaboy, Methuselah. All together now, gentlemen! We want liquor! We—want—liquor!”

“Shut up, you damned fool!” said Pemberton tensely. “Do you want to wake up the neighborhood?” Leaning forward toward the peering countenance, he asked in a low voice, “Can we get a drink, brother?”

“Right!” said the driver, and turned to rouse his slumbering animal with a long whip.

“Right away,” said young Mr. Norway, and fell asleep in his corner of the cab.

Pemberton looked at his companion with disgust in his glance. The opportunity to escape from the turbulent Norway seemed to have arrived. Still, he decided, after a moment, he might as well see it through. Norway might wake if he stopped the cab to get out, and then there would be another scene. Besides, he had no idea where Norway lived when he was at home, and it was probably necessary—decent, anyway—to get the idiot home, somehow. Let him have his drink, and possibly he would go along by himself.

He leaned back in his own corner and noted the curious career of the cab. Ingenious, he told himself; very ingenious indeed. The course, while erratic, was very methodical, and he was not surprised when, twenty minutes after they had departed, they drove up to the same house in Baker Street from which they had embarked.

He wakened Norway without ceremony and bundled that sleepy inebriate out onto the sidewalk. A door, slightly below the level of the sidewalk, stood open, and at the top of a flight of steps inside an unseen light was burning. The morning air was raw and chilly, and Norway shivered.

“The blue door at the top of the first flight,” said the driver, accepting a gratuity. “Tell ’em that the sleeping cabman sent you.”

Pemberton nodded curtly and led his companion inside. By degrees Norway was coming back to consciousness.

“Funny steps,” he muttered, looking vaguely up the stairway, and pronouncing the word shteps . “Got brass trimmings, ain’t they?” At the edge of each step the runner was bound with a strip of metal.

He stumbled after his companion until they stood upon a landing confronting a door that had been painted blue. Pemberton knocked softly with his knuckles against the panel, and the blue door was slightly opened. In the aperture was framed a hideously ugly woman, who looked back at them with unfriendly eyes.

“Well?” asked the woman sharply.

“We were told,” explained Pemberton, “that we could get—ah—something to drink here.”

“Were yese now?” sneered the woman, and her ugly face seemed to contract with malevolence. “Who told yese that maybe?”

“The sleeping cabman,” replied Pemberton politely, and gave her a smile.

For an instant she continued to stare at them, as though upon the instant she had conceived for them a dislike and an antipathy that would never end. Then, “Come in,” she said abruptly, and they passed into a sudden blaze of light.

Arthur norway came slowly out of a deep slumber and looked about him at the familiar furnishings of his own room. Everything was as it should be, and for some moments he lay quietly on his pillow without memory of the events of the preceding hours of darkness.

After a time it occurred to him that his head was aching with quiet persistence and his tongue was thick and coated. An instant later, as he started to sit up, his dark sleeve attracted his attention, and he noted with a sense of bewilderment that he was fully dressed. At that point memory began to function, and with a bound he was out of bed and standing stupidly in the center of his chamber.

The declining sunlight of afternoon was coming in through his window, and a glance at his watch confirmed his suspicion that he had been asleep for a number of hours. It was, in point of fact, three o’clock Sunday afternoon.

Suddenly he became conscious that the telephone bell was ringing; that it had been ringing for some time. Probably it was that which had awakened him. There was an exasperated note in the outcry of the alarm bell. Pemberton probably, ringing him up to ask how he felt. The answer to that one was easy. He felt like hell.

Slowly he moved to the instrument and placed the receiver against his ear. After a moment it occurred to him to say “Hello,” and he said it.

It was not Pemberton; it was Taylor, reminding him of an engagement for that evening. Well, to the devil with Taylor! Without troubling to speak, he hung up the receiver and was called back a few minutes later. Taylor was under the impression that he had been cut off by the operator. Norway disillusioned him and again hung up the receiver.

Wow, what a head! And his tongue tasted like a brown plush vest. He had a policeman to thank for that. A policeman and a sleeping cabman. Poor old Pemberton! He was probably a wreck, too. He remembered everything very clearly now. At the top of the steps there had been a blue door, and then—in the doorway—an ugly woman with red hair. She had passed them in, and then there had been a barroom and a lot of people drinking. Lots of light, lots of glasses tinkling, lots of men, but not so many women. A flashy place with a long mirror and a lot of tables. A regular old-fashioned bar, though, with a brass rail and everything. The bartender’s hair, he recalled, was parted in the middle and plastered down on the temples just the way a bartender’s hair should be.

He supposed he had done a lot more drinking himself; in fact, he remembered some of it. He remembered it all, up to a point. Then everything had sort of faded out, like a picture on the screen. He and Pemberton had got separated somehow, he supposed. But no! Pemberton must have seen him home. Who else would have bothered?

“Wotta head!” observed young Mr. Norway idiomatically, and returned to the telephone.

He gave the number of the club where he had met Pemberton and asked for that member. Mr. Pemberton, the operator told him, was not in.

“When did he go out?” asked Norway.

The operator consulted someone else. “He didn’t come here last night,” she reported.

Good Night!

What had happened, Norway wondered, to old Pemberton?

The operator was asking, “Who is this?” as he started to hang up.

“Norway,” he said. “Tell him Norway called, when he comes in.”

“Oh, yes!” said the girl, with heavy sarcasm. “Why not Portugal?” She terminated the connection with a spiteful click .

Mr. Norway sat down in a chair to think it over. After all, he had got Pemberton into this mess, by insisting on approaching the policeman. What ought to be done about it?

But—pshaw! Pemberton was a grown man, capable of looking after himself. Probably a good drinker, too. He had gone to a hotel, no doubt, or to a Turkish bath. Probably he hadn’t gone to bed at all.

“You’re a better man than I am, Gordon gin,” said Norway aloud, and decided that he was an ass to worry about Pemberton. Pemberton had been drinking prewar cocktails when Arthur Norway had been drinking root beer at school.

A little later in the day, however, when he had bathed and dined and was feeling somewhat more human, Norway again called his companion’s club. Pemberton had not yet returned, and there had been no word from him.

“Is this Sweden again?” asked the operator, recognizing his voice. “No, Mr. Pemberton hasn’t come in yet.”

With a mild oath, Norway replaced the receiver.

Well, that was that. Then, his conscience reproaching him, he called up Taylor, apologized for his rudeness, and the two friends foregathered for the evening. Norway said little about his exploits of the preceding night, beyond explaining that he had done some important drinking.