Read an Excerpt
The Cross-Eyed Bear Murders
By Dorothy B. Hughes MysteriousPress.com
Copyright © 1940 Dorothy B. Hughes
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4804-2694-8
CHAPTER 1
Danger's Bright Face
No one paid any attention to you in the subway. Ermine or rags, it didn't make any difference. She might have been wearing the shabby brown tweed as well as the black velvet evening coat, hood lined in white fur; beneath it the black evening gown, unornamented save for the one good clip at the breast line. It had been irresistible although she shouldn't have spent the money for it.
She couldn't endure staying in tonight, two days since her first utterly-alone Christmas. She had decided at six-fifteen to go out, alone as always, but at least pretending a part of the tinsel-wrapped holiday. There was valid reason to go. Eight months of search, haunting the theaters, the concert halls, the hotels, the right New York places where he might appear, a search limited by her meager income—eight months and to no avail. But some night she would see the man whose name she did not know; she would see him and she would begin to find out that which she must know. It might be this night.
Miraculously the small and dingy bathroom had been empty. She had bathed, dressed quickly, and left the apartment. She had considered a taxi but that was too much; she'd walked instead down to 116th, across to Broadway to the subway. She swayed in it now, watching the numerals appear on the underground walls. She got off at Columbus Circle, moved toward the theater district. Tonight she would attend the theater, not merely watch in the lobbies before and after curtain and during intermissions. A gala musical show, only that would suffice; only that could make her forget her loneliness, eight months alone in New York.
She entered the lobby of the theater. There was a small line ahead of her approaching the ticket-seller's cage. She waited, knowing there would be nothing available. She looked about idly, playing a little game—she was with those two men at the end of the line; they were all going to some luxurious hotel for dinner before the show and eat all they wanted to; she was merely standing aside while they bought the seats. She even listened to them, heard one saying amusedly, "Are you still running that melodramatic ad, Bill?"
And then she looked with consciousness at their black overcoats. She had seen those shoulders before, that unbelievably gargantuan back. A little shiver went through her, not the result of her walk in the night air; it was chilly, yes, but it was not that cold. She forced herself to move a bit closer to them.
The thinner one, the one she hadn't ever seen, answered, "Yes. I haven't found what I'm looking for," and then moving forward to the cage, "Reservations for tonight. Folker is the name—the Lorenzo phoned…."
The Lorenzo. That melodramatic ad.
They saw her standing there but they didn't see her. She was just another unknown face on a night in New York, someone waiting for tickets. But she had seen the corner of that ugly face before. It hadn't ever seen her.
This then was the end of the search. It had happened as she had known it must happen. But she knew the end was no more than the beginning. And she didn't know exactly what to do. Seeing him was not enough; she must discover who he was, some way she must meet him, know him. If, indeed, it were he.
She waited until the coats swept out again, then approached the cage. As she had known, no seats to be had; the clerk consented to sell her one standing room, impressing by his bored mouth that she was lucky to be allowed the privilege. She took it, paying out her precious dollars. Those two would return and she would get to see the one again, to make certain. But of course she was certain; there couldn't be duplications of those shoulders and ugly jaw.
She ate alone in one of the smaller hole-in-the-walls where turkeys roasted on a spit in the window; walked back again to the theater. She stood there in the foyer alone, cigarette in hand, as if expecting a dilatory escort. She watched the audience arrive, the formal dress for orchestra circle, the street lengths for balconies. And she saw those two moving their long legs through the door. Then she went in.
They brushed by her during intermission, took a place in a circlet with beautifully gilt women and the usual nondescript escorts. She stood apart; she could stare at them and they wouldn't know. She knew she had never seen the one. He was tall, a young forty, saffron blond, with that nice thinness that wasn't too thin, that length of face that didn't mean skinny shoulders. It was to him that the gilded women turned their predatory eyes. But he didn't look much interested; his own eyes were restless. Once she felt that they turned on her, although it was ridiculous; she had stationed herself sufficiently far away to watch unnoticed, as if anyone noticed anything in a crowd in New York. There was no reason to feel again that little chill; his face was a fine one. But something about him even at this distance and unknown made her feel unsure, unsafe. That was how it was.
It was the other man that would make you shiver, that angry face with the deep slashes around the mouth, and that build like a mammoth football player or a gorilla. He shouldn't have looked at home in tails as did the first man, but he did. He was the same: two years were as nothing; you could never forget the bulk, the ugliness.
The finale was on when they came up the aisle again, almost knocked against her in the dark. The good-looking one was saying, "We can meet her another time, Guard, but I want you to have a chance to see this fellow before the place gets too crowded. He won't admit it but—" and then, with a cold waft of air, they were gone into the lighted lobby.
Again the subway and return to her ash-heap, the morning papers under her arm, hurrying from Broadway toward Morningside. It was cold and late and there was the office in the morning. She hated the grubby little room in the drab apartment. She could actually reach across from the bed and touch the bureau. The box closet, closed by a faded chintz curtain, was too small to hold her trunk; that stood out in the room, half-shutting away the small window, but it didn't matter. Sun only came down the long shaft to the pane from ten-fifteen to ten-fifty of a morning. She had timed it one Sunday.
She hated the smell of the old carpet, always the odor of dust in every corner, and if you opened the door, of canned soup cooking. That was the snoopy older woman in the first room of the apartment, breaking rules. Lizanne didn't break rules. She brought in milk and hard rolls for breakfast, sometimes for dinner, but she didn't cook. Neither did the Texas girl studying music in the second room, nor the fashionable girl studying something in the best room. She knew them by name and sight, occasionally a word. Those two didn't have to break rules; there were always men, some handsome, some not, but all well-dressed, waiting in the dark hallway for them.
Lizanne undressed and sat on the edge of that bed. Rooms didn't grow so small except in the city; in Vermont this would have made a second jam pantry. She held in her hand the check for seventeen dollars, beside it the office notice. It hadn't come as a blow. She was only substituting and the stenographer whose place she had taken was to return the first of the year: next week.
She hadn't paid last week's rent. Seven dollars must go for that; maybe she could eat on five this week, and then there was subway fare. One more of these seventeen dollars and no more. There wouldn't be even this ugly room to which to return. She wondered what happened to girls in Manhattan who had no room, no money, no job. It was all right to read about sleeping on a bench in Central Park; it didn't sound so dreadful, but reality was different stuff. What would she do with her trunk if she moved to a park bench? And what would she eat?
She knew the elusive way of jobs; she hadn't given up two seasons of summer stock, a winter of climbing long, dusty stairways, sitting day by day in producers' harsh anterooms, because she preferred stenography. She had tried what she wanted to do for those months before admitting failure and returning to Uncle Will's to help him sell stamps and sort the mail. But she had known she couldn't stay forever in that Vermont village. She had studied secretarial work by mail at nights preparing for a vague someday return to the city. She had thought it would be easier to find work at a typewriter. She must stay in New York; she'd work at anything to stay in New York. Nothing short of starvation would send her back to Vermont yet. If it came to that she would return and try it again later; she had too much sense to starve to death when Uncle Will's friends would welcome her return, feed her, find work for her, try to keep her safe. But she couldn't return after only eight months away. It might not be safe.
There was, of course, the Lorenzo ad. It had been running for several weeks now, not in the want ads but in the personal column. She read it again although she knew it almost by heart:
Wanted: A beautiful girl. One not afraid to look on danger's bright face. Room 1000, The Lorenzo.
It might be only a message to someone who hadn't seen it thus far. If it were not that, she had been a little afraid of it. Of course, it must be legitimate. A great hotel wouldn't sponsor any kind of a racket under its roof. And yet, maybe they didn't know. It was such a strange ad.
She had been afraid of it. Not afraid of the danger part exactly; she could take care of herself here. Nothing was going to happen to her; nothing would happen to her until she'd finished what she had come to the city to finish. But you had to be careful alone in New York. It wasn't as if she had a family behind her. Uncle Will's death six months ago had severed her last close tie.
She was more afraid of it now. She excused herself anew from answering. She didn't qualify. "Wanted, a beautiful girl." She wasn't beautiful. She was all skin and bones; she always had been thin, it wasn't just not having enough to eat the past eight months. Her face was too tiny, and her round eyes, blue as china plates, diminished her features even more. Her eyes and her too-bright scarlet hair.
She didn't look bad, dressed up, but she couldn't wear black velvet to answer the ad, not even to pass as, not a beautiful girl, but one good-looking enough. She'd have to appear in the shabby brown tweed suit and coat, the brown sweater with the white collar, the old brogues.
She cut the item from the column, placed it in her purse. It wouldn't hurt to try this. She wouldn't have to take the job even if it were offered. Tomorrow was Saturday, half-day at the office. She could go in the afternoon. The saffron man had said, "The Lorenzo phoned…." He looked as if he might know danger intimately. Remembering him, he didn't look at all like one to be feared. The other one had faced danger; that she knew. And she wasn't afraid now. Tomorrow afternoon she would pretend to be "a beautiful girl."
She looked terrible. Although late, winter had arrived. A wet snow had started at noon, her brown felt was mashed to her ears and her hair straggled in her neck behind it; her feet were damp and uncomfortable. The Lorenzo lobby was, in its austerely marble beauteousness, just where she didn't belong. She wasn't going to give up now. She had her mind settled. She went straight to the marble desk as if she were going to rent the best suite, not deliver someone's hat.
She said, "I want to see the house detective."
The musical-comedy clerk, port-colored carnation and all, stared at her as if he wished she were not there.
She took a breath. "I'm not here to make a complaint. I just want to ask him a question."
The clerk wasn't reassured, but he spoke to the girl at the switchboard and said to Lizanne, "If you'll wait." He didn't motion her to the silver brocade chairs reserved for lobby elect and she didn't move toward them. She had no intention of insulting beauty with a damp tweed coat.
The house detective looked exactly as he should, the Lorenzo grandeur notwithstanding. He kept his hat on.
He calmed Lizanne's nervousness even before the clerk spoke, "This young lady was inquiring for you, Mr. Simmons."
She had taken the clipping from her bag. "I'm about to answer an ad here and I just wanted to know if it's … safe."
Mr. Simmons took it and the clerk peered over the desk at its words. The clerk began to titter. "That's Mr. Folker. Room one thousand."
She had thought it would be; how much she had hoped it she didn't know until he spoke the name. But she wasn't surprised.
Mr. Simmons was chuckling. "I should say it is all right, young lady. Mr. Folker's been living here a whole year almost and no complaints. He could buy you and me out like we'd buy a stick of chewing gum."
The clerk said—it was to Mr. Simmons—"He explained about the ad. He's writing a radio serial now and looking for copy. You should see the beauties that have been trailing in."
Lizanne felt dropped and left there. Nothing of romance or glitter, nothing that might pair with a slashed face and too wide shoulders, just an author looking for some unusual assistance. Her voice was small. "Shall I go up?"
"Certainly, go on up." The clerk had forgotten her. He glanced at her now and he looked amused, as if she must be pretty funny thinking she could compete with the trailing beauties. She set her chin and held out her hand for the clipping. At least none of them had been hired.
She left the crystal and gold elevator on the tenth floor. Room 1000 was the first at the right, a white paneled door. She was almost afraid to tap at it but she had to now. She'd come this far; she must finish.
A voice said, "Come," and she went inside. The room wasn't a bit fancy. It was like any well-dressed hotel room only there were a desk and files where beds usually stood, and a few extra chairs. There was a woman behind the typewriter at the desk. She looked tall even sitting down, her face was plain, her hair unfashionably drawn into a knot at the back of her head. She said, "Yes?"
Lizanne was almost ashamed to speak. Plain women recognized beauty; this one must have seen all those lovely women come and go. Her own voice was timid when she spoke, "I've come about the ad."
The woman looked her over. Naturally she wasn't impressed. She said, "Sit down. I'll speak to Mr. Folker."
Lizanne sat down on the edge of one of the chairs and the woman went through a door at the left. She felt like crying. She should never have come. But she blinked the sting out of her eyes. She could do it even if she weren't beautiful. She could help an author. And she wouldn't turn away sight unseen.
The woman returned and said, "Mr. Folker will see you." She held the door open. Her face looked placidly unhopeful.
The saffron man was on a chaise longue near the window, a heavy maroon throw over his knees. He wore a gray business suit and a dark maroon tie and his voice was pleasant. He said, "Pardon my not rising. I have to take it easy." His gray eyes were pleasant, too, but in back of them he was studying her as if she were an important map. She knew it. And she had known last night that this would happen, that he and the ad and the big man were together, and that some power unexplained and unexplainable had led her out of her room and on to West 52nd street at that certain hour. Yet she wasn't frightened. It was only in thinking about things that you were frightened, not in their actuality.
He smiled at her. "Sit, down, Miss …"
"Lizanne Steffasson." But she couldn't put her damp coat on one of the oyster-white chairs. This room was all beautiful, maroon and oyster-white and glass. She said, "My coat's wet. It's snowing out."
He smiled again, touched a button on the arm of the chaise. The plain woman came in. "Lydia, will you take Miss Steffasson's coat and hang it up to dry? And her hat."
Lizanne removed them, not wanting to; her hair was a mess, she was certain, and her suit so shabby. The woman took the dampness away into the anteroom.
"Now, Miss Steffasson," he began, "suppose you tell me how you happened to answer the advertisement."
She met his eyes, just as if she had never laid her eyes on him before; just as if there were nothing in his, save amusement at such a one as she coming to him. "I need the job," she answered.
His eyebrows raised. "Is that the only reason?"
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Cross-Eyed Bear Murders by Dorothy B. Hughes. Copyright © 1940 Dorothy B. Hughes. Excerpted by permission of MysteriousPress.com.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
