Phantom lady (7 page)

"Yes, yes." Henderson agreed eagerly, "and maybe that's why you didn't see her step in, because your head was turned the other way. But surely when we got there—"

"When we got there," the driver said sturdily, "mv head wasn't turned the other way, no cabman's ever is when it comes time to collect a fare. And I didn't see her ^et out either. Now how about it?"

"We had the light on, all the way over," Henderson pleaded. "How could you help seeing her, sitting there in back of you? She must have shown in your rear-sight mirror or even against your windshield—"

"Now I am sure," the driver said. "Now I'm positive— even if I wasn't before. T been hacking eight vears. Tf vou had the top light on, you were by yourself. I never knew a guy riding with a woman to leave the top light on yet. Any time the top light's on, you can bet the guy behind you is a single."

Henderson could hardly talk. He was feeling at his throat as though it bothered him. "How could you remember my face, and not remember hers?"

Burgess stepped all over that, before the man could even answer. "You didn't remember her face yourself. You were with her six solid hours— you say. He had his back to her for twenty minutes." He ended the interview. "All right. Alp. Then that's your statement."

"That's my statement. There was nobody with this man when I had him in my cab last night."

They hit the Maison Blanche at the dismantlement stage. The cloths were off the tables, the last long lingering gourmets had departed. The help was eating in the kitchen, judging by the unbridled sounds of crockery and silverware at work that emanated from there.

They sat down at one of the denuded tables, drawing up chairs like a peculiar ghost party of diners about to fall to without any visible utensils or comestibles.

The headwaiter was so used to bowing to people that he bowed now as he came out to them, even though he was off duty. The bow didn't look so good because he'd removed his collar and tie, and had a lump of food in one cheek.

Burgess said, "Have you seen this man before?"

His black-pitted eyes took in Henderson. The answer came like a finger snap. "Yes, surely."

■'When was the last time?"

"Last night."

"Where did he sit?"

He picked out the niche table unerringly. "Over there."

"Well?" Burgess said. "Go on."

"Go on with what?"

"Who was with him?"

"Nobody was with him."

There was a line of little moist needle pricks starting out along Henderson's forehead. "You saw her come in a moment or two after me, and join me. You saw her sitting there during the whole meal. You must have. Once you even passed close by and bowed and said, 'Everything satisfactory, m'sieu?"

"Yes. That is part of my duties. I do it to each table at least once. I distinctly recall doing it to you, because your face was, how shall I say, a little discontented. I also distinctly recall the two vacant chairs, one on each side of you.

I believe I straightened one a little. You have quoted me yourself. And if I said 'monsieur,' as I did, that is the surest indication there was no one with you. The correct inquiry for a lady and gentleman together is 'm'sieu-et-dame.' It is never altered."

The black centers of his eyes were as steady as buckshot fired deep into his face and lodged there. He turned to Burgess. "Well, if there is any doubt, I can show you my reservation list for last night. You can see for yourselves."

Burgess said with an exaggeratedly slow drawl that meant he liked the idea very much, "I don't think that would hurt."

The headwaiter went across the dining room, opened a drawer in a buffet, brought back a ledger. He didn't go out of the room, he didn't go out of their sight. He handed it to them unopened, just as he had found it; let them open it for themselves. All he said was, "You can refer to the date at the top."

They all formed a cluster of heads over it but himself. He remained detached. It was kept in impromptu pencil, but it was sufficient for its purpose. The page was headed 5-20, Tues. Then there was a large corner-to-corner X drawn across the page, to show that it was over and done with. It canceled without impairing legibility.

There was a list of some nine or ten names. They went like this, columnarly:

Table IS — Roqer Ashley, for four. (Lined out)

Table 5 — Mrs. Rayburn, for six. (Lined out)

Table 24 — Scott Henderson, for two. (Not lined out)

Beside the third name was this parenthetic symbol: (/).

The headwaiter explained, "That tells its own story. When a line is drawn through, that means the reservation has been completed, filled up. When there is no line drawn through, that means thev never showed up. When there is no line drawn throucrh. and a number is added, that means only part of them showed up, the rest are still expected. Those

things in the little brackets are for my own guidance, so I will know where they go when they do show up, where to put them, without having to ask a lot of questions. No matter if they come only at the dessert, so long as they come at all, the line goes through. What you see here means, therefore: m'sieu had a reservation for two, m'sieu showed up by himself, and the other half of his party never reached here."

Burgess traced hypersensitive finger-pads over that particular section of the page, feeling for erasures. "Texture unmarred," he said.

Henderson pronged his hand, elbow to tabletop; let it catch his head as it toppled forward.

The headwaiter shoveled with his hands. "My book is all I have to go by. My book says—to me—Mr. Henderson was alone in this dining room last night."

"Then your book says that to us, too. Take his name and address, usual stuff, case wanted further questioning. All right, next. Mitri Maloff, table waiter."

A change of figures before Henderson's eyes, that was all. The dream, the practical joke, the whatever it was, went on and on.

This was going to be comedy stuff. To the rest of them, anyway, if not to him. He caught sight of one of them writing something down. He hooked his finger around to his thumb, like in that old hair-tonic ad. "No, no. Beg pardon, shentlemen. There is a D in it. It is silent, you don't speak it."

"Then what's the good of having it?" one of them wondered to the man next to him.

"I don't care what there is in it," Burgess said. "All I want to know is, do you have table twenty-four?"

"From ten, over there, all the way around to twenty-eight, that is me."

"You waited on this man at twenty-four last night?"

He was going to make a social introduction of it. "Ah, sure, certainly!" He lighted up. "Good evening! How are you? You coming back again soon, I hope!" He evidently

didn't recognize them as detectives.

"No, he isn't," said Burgess brutally. He flattened his hand, to kill the flow of amenities. "How many were there at the table when you waited on him?"

The waiter looked puzzled, like a man who is willing to do his best but can't get the hang of what is expected of him. "Him." he said. "No more. Shust him."

"No lady?"

"No. no lady. What lady?" And then he added, in perfect innocence, "Why? He lose one?"

It brought on a howl. Henderson parted his lips and took a deep breath, like when something hurts you unbearably.

"Yeah, he lost one all right," one of them clowned.

The waiter saw he had made a hit, batted his eyes at them coyly, but still, apparently, without any very clear idea of how he had chalked up his success.

Henderson spoke, in a desolate, beaten down sort of voice. "You drew out her chair for her. You opened the menu card, offered it to her." He tapped his own skull a couple of times. "I saw you do those things. But no, you didn't see her."

The waiter began to expostulate with Eastern European warmth and lavishness of gesture, but without any rancor. "I draw out a chair, yes, when there is a lady there for it. But when there is no lady there, how can I draw out a chair? For the air to sit down on it, you think I'm going to draw out a chair? When is no face there, you think I'm going to open bill of fare and push it in front of?"

Burgess said, "Talk to us, not him. He's in custody."

He did, as volubly as ever, simply switching the direction of his head. "He leave me tip for one and a half. How could there be lady with him? You think I'm going to be nice to him today, if is two there last night and he leave me tip for only one and a half?" His eyes lit with Slavonic fire. Even the supposition seemed to inflame him. "You think I forget it in a horry? I remember it for next two weeks! Hah! You

think I ask him to come back like I do? Hah!" he snorted belligerently.

"What's a tip for one and a half?" Burgess asked with jocular curiosity.

"For one is fifty cents. For two is a dollar. He give me seventy-five cents, is tip for one and a half."

"Couldn't you get seventy-five cents for a party of two?"

"Never!" he panted resentfully. "If I do, I do like this." He removed an imaginary salver from the table, fingers disdainfully lifted as if it were contaminated. He fixed a baleful eye on the imaginary customer, in this case Henderson. Sustained it long enough to shrivel him. His thick underlip curled in what was meant for a lopsided leer of derision. "I say, Thank you, sor. Thank you very motch, sor. Thank you very very motch, sor. You sure you able to do this? And if is lady with him, he feel like two cents, he stick in some more."

"I kind of would myself," Burgess admitted. He turned his head. "How much do you say you left, Henderson?"

Henderson's answer was forlornly soft-spoken. "What he says I did; seventy-five cents."

"One thing more," Burgess said, "just to round the whole thing out. I'd like to see the check for that particular dinner. You keep them, don't you?"

"Manager got them. You have to ask him." The waiter's face took on an expression of conscious virtue, as though now he felt sure his veracity would be sustained.

Henderson was suddenly leaning alertly forward, his licked listlessness was gone again.

The manager brought them out himself. They were kept in sheaves, in little oblong clasp folders, one to a date, apparently to help him tally his accounts at the end of each month. They found it without difficulty. It said Table 24. Waiter 3. I Table d'hote — 4.25. It was stamped in faint purple. Paid — May 20th in a sort of oval formation.

There were only two other checks for table twenty-four

in that day's batch. One was 1 tea — 0.75, from late afternoon, just before the dinner hour. The other was dinner for four, a party that had evidently come in late, just before closing.

They had to help him get back into the car. He walked in a kind of stupor. His legs were balky. Again there was the dreamlike glide of unreal buildings and unreal streets moving backward past them, like shadows on glass.

He broke out suddenly, "They're lying—they're killing me, all of them! What did I ever do to any of them—?"

"Y'know what it reminds me of?" one of them said in an aside. "Them Topper pictures, where they fade off and on the screen right in front of your eyes. Did y'ever see one of them. Burge?"

Henderson shuddered involuntarily and let his head go over.

There was a show going on outside, and the music, and laughter, and sometimes handclapping. would trickle into the small, cluttered office, diluted.

The manager was sitting waiting by the phone. Business was good, and he tried to look pleasantly at all of them, savoring his cigar and leaning far back in his swivel chair.

"There can be no question that the two seats were paid for." the manager said urbanely. "All I can tell you is that nobody was seen going in with him—" He broke off with sudden anxiety. "He's going to be ill. Please get him out of here as quickly as you can, I don't want any commotion while there's a performance going on."

They opened the door and half carried, half walked Henderson toward it, his back inclined far over toward the floor. A gust of singing from out front surged in.

"Chica chica boom boom Chica chica boom boom —"

"Ah. don't," he pleaded chokingly. "I can't stand any

more of it!" He toppled onto the back seat of the police sedan, made a knot of his two hands, gnawed at them as if seeking sustenance for his sanity.

"Why not break down and admit there was no dame with you?" Burgess tried to reason with him. "Don't you see how much simpler it would be all around?"

Henderson tried to answer him in a rational, even voice, but he was a little shaky at it. "Do you know what the next step would be after that, if I did, if I could, make such an admission as you're asking me to? My sanity would start to leave me. I'd never be sure of anything again in my life. You can't take a fact that you know to be true, as true as— as that your name is Scott Henderson—" He clapped himself on the thigh; "—as true as that this is my own leg, and let yourself begin to doubt it, deny it. without your mental balance going overboard. She was beside me for six hours. I touched her arm. I felt it in the curve of my own." He reached out and briefly tweaked Burgess's muscular underarm. "The rustle of her dress. The words she spoke. The faint fragrance of her perfume. The clink of her spoon against her consomme plate. The little stamp of her chair when she moved it back. The little quiver of the shaky taxi chassis when she stepped down from it. Where did the liquor go to. that mv eyes saw in her glass when she raised it? When it came down again, it was empty." He pounded his fist against his knee, three, four, five times. "She was. she was, she was!" He was almost crying; at least his face was wreathed in those lines. "Now they're trying to tell me she wasn't!"

The car glided on through the never-never land it had been traversing all evening.

He said a thing that few if any suspects have ever said before. Said it and meant it with his whole heart and soul. "I'm frightened; take me back to the detention pen, will vou? Please, fellows, take me back. I want walls around me, that you can feel with your hands. Thick, solid, that you can't budge!"

"He's shivering," one of them pointed out with a sort of detached curiosity.