Корнелл Вулрич - A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

Bruce felt very much the man of the world to be accosted that way. Warren probably did too, he knew, but between the two of them they just nodded dumbly, unable to find their voices in time to answer her. In any case, the barman, his eye always open to business, went ahead and refilled the wine-glass for her without waiting for them to become vocal. They wouldn’t have known how to adroitly refuse the request, anyway, even if they had wanted to.

She did not return however to where her glass had been standing all along and still remained, but kept her new proximity, thus plainly indicating to them that the drink had been only an excuse after all.

She smiled ingratiatingly and they both stared. Suddenly she blurted out: “You boys out for a good time tonight?”

They both knew right away what she meant. Bruce could feel the warmth as his color started mounting slowly upward from his neck. At the same time his breathing quickened a little, and he wondered why. Their stares became hypnotized, almost dilated. Was she really offering to—

The bartender broke the spell. He turned ugly all at once, hard. “Come on, none of that in here!” he rasped at her angrily. “Think I want the police closing me down? On your way, now!” And he flicked his bar-rag in the direction of the entrance.

“Then why don’t you get some customers in here once in a while?” she snarled as she sidled off. “This place is as dead as a burying-ground!” She flounced out into the street and was lost to sight, leaving her wine standing untouched on the counter.

Their two heads had turned as if pulled by wires, and they were still staring after her, even after she’d gone, almost mucilaginously. Bruce was conscious of a sense of loss, as though a supreme adventure had been almost within reach and then been snatched away again.

He turned to Warren with bated breath. “Should we go after her?”

But it was the bartender who answered, while he thriftily returned the wine she had left back into its gallon-jug. “Don’t ever take up with somebody like that, you don’t know nothing about, or you’ll only get yourselves in all kinds of trouble! I got nothing against her,” he went on broad-mindedly. He felt sorry for her, he said. “But she’s got no right picking on youngsters like you. Let her hustle somebody that’s older.” And then, some unsuspected protective streak cropping up in him, he shook an admonishing finger at them. “You got time enough!” he told them sternly. “Don’t be in such a hurry for it!”

But his psychology was that of the adult; he had forgotten himself as he was twenty years before. He had long passed the stage of their smouldering curiosity, himself. His well-meant admonitions were simply wasted.

He turned around to wait on some more mature customer who had just come in, and before he knew it they were gone.

They couldn’t find her again. That, by unspoken common consent, had been their purpose in leaving, though neither one would admit it. They turned back first toward the railroad-crossing, their eyes busy along both sides of the street. Then when they had reached it, turned a second time and retraced their steps toward the bar where they had first seen her. This time they went on past it and deeper into the Tenderloin than they had before. She was nowhere to be seen.

“The old bag!” exclaimed Warren bitterly, giving voice at last to the real reason for their roaming aimlessly about as they had been doing.

Now they continued to progress no longer with a purpose but almost, it seemed, from sheer habit, they’d been doing it so long. They came upon a byway that struck off at right-angles to the direction they had been following. It could hardly be called a street, for it was only one short block long, and had no name-plate and no lights. There were only three or four houses on it, all on a single side.

They knew it at once, though they had never been near it before.

It was called Willow Lane, and though at first sight the daintiness of such a designation might seem ridiculous, there was indeed a dejected tree to be seen glimmering palely in the murk at the other end of it. Palely, because its trailing foliage was a light-green or gray. They’d heard of it before, this Willow Lane; it had figured in the whispers and the rumors exchanged in the high-school corridors and in the candy-stores that had been their habitat in their pre-beer days. “Pillow Lane” it was nicknamed by some, and sometimes other, worse things.

Bruce discovered that, rather childishly, he had half-expected to find some visual evidence of the reputation that it had. Like perhaps a red lantern hanging over it (“red-light district”) or staggering, brawling silhouettes to be seen against drawn, light-colored shades (“disorderly houses”). But there was nothing about these houses that showed what they were. If indeed they all were, or even any of them were. They were dark, shade-drawn, tranquil, no different from any other houses. Even quieter, if anything, than those beehive flats at the other end of Main Street, for no electronic music was pouring from them.

“D’you think all of them are?” Bruce wondered aloud as they stood staring.

“The one in the middle is, boy, you can bet on that!” Warren brayed jeeringly with that irritating omniscience he was always so ready to assume.

But this time, as a matter of fact, there was some evidence to support him. It was somewhat larger than the others, it looked better cared for, and there was a car standing suggestively waiting in front of it. A car that even in the dark looked entirely too sleek and expensive for these surroundings.

Fantastic images filled their minds. It seemed impossible that feverish, panting, sprawling things like that could take place behind such quiet, well-mannered facades. Then even as they watched, a fan of orange light spread open across the sidewalk, slowly, panel by panel, just as a real fan would have in a woman’s hand, and a man came out of the house. And behind him was the outflung shadow of a second man, also about to leave. But it was a woman’s voice that spoke. “Good night, gentlemen,” it said hospitably. “Come back and see us again.”

For some unknown reason that they couldn’t have explained themselves, they had instinctively shrunk back from sight for a moment, Warren and he, though it was not they who had anything to be guilty or chary about. Perhaps because it was like peeping or prying at something they weren’t supposed to.

They heard the door close, and when they looked again, the car had gone.

“That’s a dead give-away,” Warren commented judiciously. They drew nearer as though magnetized. Suddenly he said: “Let’s go up and ring the bell.”

“You mean go in?” Bruce said skittishly.

“Sure, go in. What else?”

“Have we got enough on us?” said Bruce, trying to find a loophole.

“We’ll find out how much it is. Well, are you game or aren’t you?” he urged with nervous intensity.

That always compelled capitulation. You had to be game when that was said to you, you couldn’t afford not to be. Bruce promptly gave him back the twin to the stencil, from boyhood’s early days: “I’m game if you are!”

Forthwith, Warren reached out and poked jerkily at the bell.

The door opened with dismaying suddenness, the same orange fan of light as before spread out, this time full in their faces, and a colored woman confronted them on the threshold.

Her face was as black as her taffeta dress, but relieved by a postage-stamp frilled apron and frilled cuffs, as if she were a parlor maid in some genteel household. She looked them over but noticeably made no move to make way for them to enter. “Yes?” she said finally.

“Can we come in?” Warren asked daringly.