Эд Макбейн - Hail, Hail, the Gang’s All Here

It was twenty-five minutes past five when Adele Gorman came into the room with Meyer’s cup of tea. He was crouched near the air-conditioning unit recessed into the wall to the left of the drapes, and he glanced over his shoulder when he heard her, and then rose.

“I didn’t know what you took,” she said, “so I brought everything.”

“Thank you,” he said. “Just a little milk and sugar is fine.”

“Have you measured the room?” she asked, and put the tray down on the table in front of the sofa.

“Yes, I think I have everything I need now,” Meyer said. He put a spoonful of sugar into the tea, stirred it, added a drop of milk, stirred it again, and then lifted the cup to his mouth. “Hot,” he said.

Adele Gorman was watching him silently. She said nothing. He kept sipping his tea. The ornate clock on the mantelpiece ticked in a swift whispering tempo.

“Do you always keep this room so dim?” Meyer asked.

“Well, my husband is blind, you know,” Adele said. “There’s really no need for brighter light.”

“Mmm. But your father reads in this room, doesn’t he?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The night you came home from that party. He was sitting in the chair over there near the floor lamp. Reading. Remember?”

“Oh. Yes, he was.”

“Bad light to read by.”

“Yes, I suppose it is.”

“I think maybe those bulbs are defective,” Meyer said.

“Do you think so?”

“Mmm. I happened to look at the lamp, and there are three hundred-watt bulbs in it, all of them burning. You should be getting a lot more illumination with that kind of wattage.”

“Well, I really don’t know too much about—”

“Unless the lamp is on a rheostat, of course.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what a rheostat is.”

“It’s an adjustable resistor. You can dim your lights or make them brighter with it. I thought maybe the lamp was on a rheostat, but I couldn’t find a control knob anywhere in the room.” Meyer paused. “You wouldn’t know if there’s a rheostat control someplace in the house, would you?”

“I’m sure there isn’t,” Adele said.

“Must be defective bulbs, then,” Meyer said, and smiled. “Also, I think your air conditioner is broken.”

“No, I’m sure it isn’t.”

“Well, I was just looking at it, and all the switches are turned to the ‘on’ position, but it isn’t working. So I guess it’s broken. That’s a shame, too, because it’s such a nice unit. Sixteen thousand BTUs. That’s a lot of cooling power for a room this size. We’ve got one of those big old price-fixed apartments on Concord, my wife and I, with a large bedroom, and we get adequate cooling from a half-ton unit. It’s a shame this one is broken.”

“Yes. Detective Meyer, I don’t wish to appear rude, but it is late...”

“Sure,” Meyer said. “Unless, of course, the air conditioner’s on a remote switch, too. So that all you have to do is turn a knob in another part of the house and it comes on.” He paused. “Is there such a switch someplace, Mrs. Gorman?”

“I have no idea.”

“I’ll just finish my tea and run along,” Meyer said. He lifted the cup to his lips, sipped at the tea, glanced at her over the rim, took the cup away from his mouth, and said, “But I’ll be back.”

“I hardly think there’s any need for that,” Adele said.

“Well, some jewelry’s been stolen—”

“The ghosts—”

“Come off it, Mrs. Gorman.”

The room went silent.

“Where are the loudspeakers, Mrs. Gorman?” Meyer asked. “In the false beams up there? They’re hollow, I checked them out.”

“I think perhaps you’d better leave,” Adele said slowly.

“Sure,” Meyer said. He put the teacup down, sighed, and got to his feet.

“I’ll show you out,” Adele said.

They walked to the front door and out into the driveway. The night was still. The drizzle had stopped, and a thin layer of frost covered the grass rolling away toward the river below. Their footsteps crunched on the gravel as they walked slowly toward the automobile.

“My husband was blinded four years ago,” Adele said abruptly. “He’s a chemical engineer, there was an explosion at the plant, he could have been killed. Instead, he was only blinded.” She hesitated an instant, and then said again, “Only blinded,” and there was such a sudden cry of despair in those two words that Meyer wanted to put his arm around her, console her the way he might his daughter, tell her that everything would be all right come morning, the night was almost done, and morning was on the horizon. He leaned on the fender of his car, and she stood beside him looking down at the driveway gravel, her eyes not meeting his. They could have been conspirators exchanging secrets in the night, but they were only two people who had been thrown together on a premise as flimsy as the ghosts that inhabited this house.

“He gets a disability pension from the company,” Adele said. “They’ve really been quite kind to us. And, of course, I work. I teach school, Detective Meyer. Kindergarten. I love children.” She paused. She would not raise her eyes to meet his. “But... It’s sometimes very difficult. My father, you see...”

Meyer waited. He longed suddenly for dawn, but he waited patiently and heard her catch her breath as though committed to go ahead now, however painful the revelation might be, compelled to throw herself upon the mercy of the night before the morning sun broke through.

“My father’s been retired for fifteen years.” She took a deep breath and then said, “He gambles, Detective Meyer. He’s a horse player. He loses large sums of money.”

“Is that why he stole your jewels?” Meyer asked.

“You know, don’t you?” Adele said simply, and raised her eyes to his. “Of course you know. It’s quite transparent, his ruse, a shoddy little show really, a performance that would fool no one but... no one but a blind man.” She brushed at her cheek; he could not tell whether the cold air had caused her sudden tears. “I... I really don’t care about the theft, the jewels were left to me by my mother, and after all it was my father who bought them for her, so it’s... it’s really like returning a legacy, I really don’t care about that part of it. I... I’d have given the jewelry to him if only he’d asked, but he’s so proud, such a proud man. A proud man who... who steals from me and pretends that ghosts are committing the crime. And my husband, in his dark universe, listens to the sounds my father puts on tape and visualizes things he cannot quite believe, and so he asks me to contact the police because he needs an impartial observer to contradict the suspicion that someone is stealing pennies from his blind man’s cup. That’s why I came to you, Detective Meyer. So that you would arrive here tonight and perhaps be fooled as I was fooled at first, and perhaps say to my husband, ‘Yes, Mr. Gorman, there are ghosts in your house.’” She suddenly placed her hand on his sleeve. The tears were streaming down her face, she had difficulty catching her breath. “Because you see, Detective Meyer, there are ghosts in this house, there really and truly are. The ghost of a proud man who was once a brilliant judge and lawyer and who is now a gambler and a thief, and the ghost of a man who once could see, and who now trips and falls in... in the darkness.”

On the river, a tugboat hooted. Adele Gorman fell silent. Meyer opened the door of his car and got in behind the wheel.

“I’ll call your husband tomorrow,” he said abruptly and gruffly. “Tell him I’m convinced something supernatural is happening here.”

“And will you be back, Detective Meyer?”