The Sinful Ones

Chapter Eleven The Visible Woman

The knob of Carr’s bedroom door kept turning around and back. First a slow, creaking rotation, until the latch bolt was disengaged. Then a push, so that the door strained against the inside bolt. Then the knob, suddenly released, would spin back with a rattle. Then it would start all over again.

From where he lay, fully clothed except for shoes and coat, Carr watched the knob, peering along his leg and through the intricate brass bars that rose at the foot of the bed. He breathed as shallowly as he could. Although his neck and shoulders ached, he kept his head in the same awkward jerked-up position it had assumed when he first heard someone at the door. All his faculties were concentrated on avoiding any betraying sounds.

An infinitesimal breeze stirred the drawn shade. A big fly buzzed lazily in the muted sunlight, hovered along the ceiling, dipped to the mantle, floated noisily across the room, hit the shade with a loud plop, fell to the sill, crawled along it for a while, buzzed, and then started hovering along the ceiling again.

Carr could hear the throaty breathing of whoever was outside the door. Besides that sound there was a faint shuffling or scrabbling, as if a dog were trying to get in.

The doorknob kept on turning like a broken-down bit of machinery that refuses to gasp its last.

For a moment Carr thought the fly had lit on his forehead. It was just a trickle of sweat, but it was enough to make him jerk a little. The bedsprings creaked. His muscles tightened. His stiffened his aching, nearly trembling arms. The whole room seemed to become a wall-papered funnel narrowing down to the doorknob, which kept on turning and springing back just as before.

He could hear more than the breathing now. A querulous muttering as if whoever were outside was getting impatient.

The fly plopped against the shade, fell, and buzzed along the sill. A bit of laughter floated up from the street.

All the will power in the world could no longer have subdued the shaking in Carr’s arms. Again the bedsprings creaked, so loudly that whoever was outside must surely hear.

Yet the rhythm of the knob did not change, though the mutterings grew a trifle louder. Carr strained his ears, but could not make out the words.

The shade swayed. The fly started on its trip across the ceiling. He shifted his weight from arms to buttocks, slid one foot to the floor. The springs creaked, but no worse than before. In a moment he was crouching beside the bed. The mutterings were still unintelligible. He took a cautious step toward the door.

The knob stopped moving. There was a scrape of metal on wood and the swish of water. Then footsteps plodding away from the door.

Carr hesitated. Then he quickly tiptoed to the door, eased open the bolt, paused again, opened the door a slit and peered out.

The cleaning woman was walking away, pail in one hand; mop, broom, duster, and dustpan in the other. Straggly plumes of hair stuck up from the rag wound around her hair. A damp, dirty blue apron was tied in a hard knot behind her waist. The heels of her shoes ran off at the sides.

Carr opened the door farther. He wet his lips. “Hello,” he said huskily.

The cleaning woman kept walking away.

He stepped into the hall. “Hello,” he called, getting control of his voice. Then, louder, “Hello!”

Not by a moment’s hesitation, not by the slightest alteration in her trudging gait, did the cleaning woman indicate that she heard.

“Hello!” Carr shouted.

The cleaning woman disappeared at an even pace down the stairs. Carr gazed after her. But his mind was listening to the drone of lone-forgotten phrases from a college psychology class:

He edged blinding back into his rooms, bolted the door behind him, slumped against it.

At least, he told himself, the things at his door had not been what he had most feared.

But it had been almost worse.

Why, he asked himself, had he bothered to shout? Why had he sought last, unnecessary confirmation?

He already knew, had known ever since he had recovered his memory and fled from the streets.

Knew what he had known, known and rejected, at least four times before: when he had been ignored by the dumpy man and the doctor at General Employment, when he had watched Marcia in her bedroom, when he had spied on Jane’s parents in their apartment, when he had run away from the Pendleton party.

But then he had known it only for fleeting moments.

This time it had gripped his mind for hours.

It was insane, incredible.

But it was true.

Nothing else could explain his experiences.

Jane knew, the small dark man knew, these other three knew.

And now he knew.

The universe was a machine. The people in it, save for a very few, were mindless mechanisms, clockwork things of flesh and bone. So long as you made the proper clockwork motions, they seemed to react intelligently. But when you stopped, they went on just the same. When you quite being part of the clockworks, they ignored you.

How else explain the times when he had been ignored? By the dumpy man, Tom and the doctor. By the desk clerk at Marcia’s and by Marcia herself, when he had come minutes ahead of the clockwork rhythm. By Jane’s parents. By Marcia at the Pendleton party—she hadn’t been pretending to dance with someone as she twirled by herself; she had been mindlessly dancing with another clockworks figure (himself) that had moved from its proper place in the clockworks.

How else explain the times when he and Jane had been ignored? In the tavern, in the music shop, at the movie house, at the chess club. In the stacks of the library, in the streets of the Loop, at Goldie’s Casablanca. Or when Fred and he had been ignored—that crazy ride that should have set people staring and a dozen police cars and motor-cycles on their trail; and that crazy, unnoticed pursuit through the library.

How else explain the times when those other three had been ignored? The slap. Miss Hackman going through his desk. Mr. Wilson helping himself to the cigarettes. Their open talk in the tobacco shop and in front of Jane’s parents.

How else the things that hadn’t fitted? The dumpy man talking to the air. Pianos that played themselves and elevators that rose without occupants. Marcia calling him about the “wonderful evening” they’d spent together, when actually he’d run away. (For a moment he had a ghostly glimpse of her talking to an invisible companion at the Kungsholm, the waiter setting loaded plates before an empty chair. Jane’s mother stroking non-existent hair, whimpering to an absent girl. And now the cleaning woman mindlessly trying a door that, in the vast operation plan of a clockworks universe, was not supposed to be bolted; repeated the action, like a toy obstructed in mid-performance, until the appointed time came for her to finish cleaning his room and go away.

There were no other explanations. The universe was a machine. Teeming Chicago was a city of the dead, the mindless, the inanimate, in which you were more alone than in the most desolate wilderness. The face you looked at, the faces that looked at you, that smiled and frowned and spoke, had behind them only black emptiness.

Except for a few, a mostly horrible few.

What might some people do if they awakened to the knowledge that they alone had minds and consciousness, that they could do what they wanted and the machine could not stop them, that all authority was truly blind?

They would run amuck like soldiers in a conquered city, like drunken thieves in a department store at night. Treating all the people around them like the lay-figures they were. Exulting in their power. (He saw in his mind those three looking down at a sleeping Chicago.) Obeying all their hidden impulses. Satisfying all their secretest, darkest desires.

A few of them might band together, perhaps because they had awakened together. Say a wall-eyed blonde and an affable-seeming older man and a young man without a hand…

And a beast.

Jane had written, “Some animals are alive.” And he, Carr, had once been noticed when he shouldn’t have been, by a cat.

Yes, a few might band together. But except for that, they would be intensely suspicious. Afraid that some greedy, merciless group like themselves might become aware of them and destroy them, because absolute tyrants always fear and hate each other. Afraid, above all, that other people might come alive, more and more people, and punish them for their crimes.

As they satisfied their desires, as they had their “fun,” they would guiltily watch for the slightest signs of true life around them, in order to crush it out.

That was why those three had trailed Jane, why they had wanted to “check” on her.

The slap had been a test. If Jane had reacted to it, she would have been lost.

That was why Miss Hackman had searched his desk—for sights that he was something more than a mindless automaton.

That was why the small dark man with glasses was afraid. That was the great danger against which Jane had warned him, the “private underworld” she didn’t want to drag him into.

Three people preying on the dead city of Chicago, watching for the faintest hints of consciousness in the lay-figures around them.

Carr realized that he was shaking. Mustn’t they have seen him staring out the window at them this morning, conspicuous against the otherwise drearily unbroken façade? Mightn’t they even now be coming up the stairs, or standing noiselessly outside the door at which he was staring so fearfully?

He clenched his hands. All this was insanity, he told himself, a paranoid’s nightmare.

But…

His throat ached. He went to the bathroom, drank a large glass of water, set it down on the stained bowl. Then he lay down again on the rumpled bed. Fatigue smarted behind his eyelids, was like a fever in his flesh.

Presently he fell asleep.

When he awoke it was dusk. The room was all soft shadows. The window shade seemed faintly phosphorescent. His face felt fresh, as if it had just been sponged.

Instantly his thoughts began to race again, but the cooling refreshment of sleep had given them an entirely new perspective.

He had teetered on the edge of insanity, he told himself.

He had fallen victim to a terrible delusion.

He must root it out of his mind as quickly as possible.

He must talk to someone, someone who was close to him and sensible, and convince himself that it was a delusion.

Marcia—

She was real. She represented the businesslike normal side of things.

She’d be home now.

Of course he’d insulted her pretty badly the last time he’d been with her, leaving her that way at the Pendletons’.

Still, she was fair. She’d listen. She’d understand. She’d relieve his haunting anxiety.

He got up and rapidly put on his shoes and coat. He tried not to let his thoughts or emotions wander. His purpose was to get to Marcia before he lost the feeling of confidence with which he had awakened—the saving conviction that all his hideous delusions had been nightmarish fancies.

He met no one on the stairs except his slinking counterpart in the mirror. The entrance hall below was also empty, and dark. Then he pulled open the door and stepped out into what he assured himself was not a city of automatons.

A man was passing by at the foot of the steps, a little old man in a brown coat and hat, with deep-set eyes that scowled ahead and lips that worked as if he were muttering to himself.

Carr had the impulse to call out to him, to engage him in conversation, to assure himself at once of the falsity of his delusion.

But strangers sometimes ignored you when you spoke. Especially crazy-looking ones.

No, it must be someone closer, someone who couldn’t ignore him.

Marcia—

He walked rapidly. The sky was almost dark and a few stars could be seen. Soft glows from apartment windows made grotesque shadows. At intervals, streetlights glared. Narrow passageways between buildings were vertical black slits, except where side windows spilled illumination over brick walls a few feet away. Little shrubs crouched back against basement walls.

It was quiet. There were few figures on the streets. He tried unsuccessfully to avoid looking at the eyes of those he passed.

But people were that way in the city, he reminded himself. They’d pass you a foot away and not by the faintest flicker of their gaze betray an awareness of your existence.

This was Chicago, he told himself. Over three million inhabitants. A bustling metropolis.

Only tonight it was very quiet.

He had only one more street to cross before he came to Marcia’s apartment—that corner just ahead where there was a small cluster of lighted signs. On this side, a restaurant and a cleaner’s, the latter closed, both in an apartment hotel. On the other side, across the street, to his right, a cocktail bar decorated by scalloped banks of small electric lights.

He wasn’t fifty feet from the corner—in fact he had almost entered the pool of light under the last street lamp—when he saw Marcia. She was wearing a dark dress with a white flower pattern. She was carrying a square black handbag. She turned north toward her apartment.

Carr stood still. There was the person he most wanted to see, but now that he’d fond her, he hesitated. Just as with the little old man passing the apartment steps, something held him back from making the move, from speaking the word that would relieve him.

He watched Marcia cross the street, walk into the pool of light on the other side, walk out of it.

He still hesitated. He felt a growing agitation. He looked around indecisively.

His glance took in a figure standing across the street, its slim, college boy form and cropped hair silhouetted by the bright glow of the scalloped lights, its face in shadow.

There was something familiar about the man. Carr automatically stared him, trying to recall where he’d seen him before.

The man glanced behind him as if to reassure himself that Carr wasn’t looking at someone else. Then he turned back. There was a tiny flash of white from the lower part of his shadowed face, as if he had shown his teeth in a smile. He waved to Carr jauntily.

As he did so, Carr realized that he did want to be with Marcia, walking at her side, in his proper place, accounted for, not alone in this dreadfully empty city.

For only a bit of hooked metal came out of the upraised cuff across the street.

Everything stood out sharply as an engraving to Carr. He knew without counting that there were sixteen bulbs in each of the scallops, that inside the bar were walls stenciled with nymphs and satyrs, three nymphs and two satyrs to each panel, that the wide sidewalk in front of the bar was divided crosswise into blocks of three.

The handless man started toward him, entreating him to wait with another jaunty wave.

Carr pretended not to see. He turned north. Marcia was a small silhouette a quarter of a block away. He started after her at as brisk a pace as might still seem natural.

“Hold on a moment, would you?” The handless man called after him. The voice was rather high, but cool and pleasant, with an Eastern accent.

He knew he must not answer. Once give them proof that he was alive—

He pretended not to hear. He gained the opposite curb, thankful that an approaching car had allowed him to lope for a few steps.

“Stop a minute, please,” the handless man called. “There’s something I want to tell you.”

Carr’s gaze clung to Marcia’s flowered dress. Thank God, she was walking slowly. He went through a little pantomime of recognizing her, to justify a further increase in his pace.

“Please stop,” the handless man called. “I’m sure I know you.”

It was a dark stretch. The apartment Carr was passing boasted a hedge. Parked cars, gleamingly washed but filled with gloom, made another wall.

The footsteps behind him were gaining. Marcia was still some distance off. Carr fought to keep from running.

“You’re not very polite,” the handless man called. “After all, I’m a cripple, though it doesn’t slow me down.”

The footsteps were very close now. Although Marcia was hardly twenty feet away, it seemed to Carr that there might as well be a trench deep as the world between him and her.

The footsteps were just behind him. A toecap flicked the lower edge of his field of vision. A voice said in his ear, “Do stop now,” and he felt his shoulder brushed by something like a talon.

Carr darted forward a few steps, slide his arm around Marcia’s and said in as gay a voice as he could manage, “Hello, dear!”

Marcia did not turn her heard. Not by the slightest break in her stride did she betray that she was aware of his existence. Even her arm, under his hand, was like a stick of wood.

The other footsteps dropped back a little.

“Please don’t cut me,” Carr whispered urgently. “I know how you feel about the way I behaved last night, but I can explain.”

She turned, pulling away from him. He realized they had reached her apartment hotel.

The footsteps behind him speeded up.

Carr followed her up the walk. “I must come in with you.”

Still she did not recognize his presence. She jerked at the door before he could reach it. He ducked through after her.

They crossed the lobby together. The clerk was leaning on the counter, chin in hand, so that his gold seal ring gleamed and his coat sleeve fell back, exposing the gold cuff link.

His eyes ogled them. He opened his mouth—there was the flash of a gold filling—and said, elaborately, “Good evening, Miss Lorish.”

“Good evening,” said Marcia, curtly.

Carr heard the door open and close behind them. Then the footsteps, crisp on the tiling, soft on the carpeting, swiftly over-taking them.

The elevator was waiting. Marcia stepped in and jabbed quickly at the seven button. Carr barely slipped through as the door started to close. Swiftly turning, he saw a hook blotted out by the closing door. The cage started up.

Carr felt a surge of partial relief, but then instantly the bigger fear closed in.

Marcia was ignoring him so utterly. She hadn’t given him a single sign. As if, behind that beautiful impatient face, there was nothing, absolutely nothing…

No, that couldn’t be true, he told himself. Mustn’t be—not with her so close and the two of them locked in this little cage.

And as for Marcia, she was just being cruel. There’d been times before when she’d ignored him as a punishment.

“Darling,” he began.

The cage stopped. Marcia jerked at the door and darted out. Carr hurried after her down the hall.

Marcia had her key out and the door to her apartment open in a single movement. The latter was almost slammed in Carr’s face.

She must be aware of him, or she wouldn’t be acting this way, he tried to assure himself as he pushed in after her. Her quick, angry movements pointed at her realization of his presence.

“Marcia, please stop acting so childish,” he managed to say.

She tossed her handbag in a chair, hurried into the kitchen. He started after her, hesitated, moved around nervously.

She came out of the kitchen. She had a highball in her hand.

She set the drink down on the small table at his elbow, and went on into the bedroom.

Carr could hardly realize it for a moment, his relief was so great.

She was aware of him. Bu that simply action she’d admitted his presence.

All the rest of her behavior had been just temperament, her peculiar captiousness.

He picked up the drink and took a grateful gulp.

But as he did so, he noticed a piece of notepaper near it, covered with Marcia’s handwriting.

His own name was at the top.

Transferring the drink to his other hand, he picked it up.

When supernatural terror prefaces an emotional wound, the latter is deadened. Still, as the letter dropped from Carr’s hand and he heard Marcia coming from the bedroom, he felt a stab of mingled jealousy and self-pity hard to endure.

Her hand brushed the table beside him, she hesitated a moment, then stood at the center of the room.

Now that she knew he knew, he told himself, she must be waiting for him to go, perhaps preparing herself to reject some final appeal, setting her expression in obdurate lines.

But instead she was smiling. Smiling in a particularly unpleasant, animal-like way.

And gesturing in a peculiar fashion with her right hand.

And still not looking at him.

Carr felt a mounting horror as he watched her.

He tried to tell himself that he didn’t understand what her gestures meant.

Tried to tell himself that they weren’t the movements of someone sipping from a highball glass that wasn’t there.

Tried to tell himself that when her hand had brushed the table, it hadn’t been to take up the drink she had left there.

Because that would mean she hadn’t made the drink for him, but for herself; that she hadn’t recognized his presence; that the terrible delusion that had tortured him back at his room was true.

And that mustn’t be.

“Marcia!” he called sharply.

She licked her lips.

Mustn’t, he repeated to himself. Nothing could write you a letter to hurt you so and yet be a mindless machine.

He moved toward her. “Marcia!” he cried desperately and took her by the shoulders.

Then, under his hands, the moment he touched her, he could feel her muscles go rigid. She began to shake, to vibrate like a piece of machinery that’s about to tear itself apart. He jerked away from her.

Her face was flustered, her features screwed up like a baby’s.

From her lips came a mumbling that grew louder. It was, Carr realized with a gust of horror, exactly like the chattering of the dumpy man.

Or rather, the image sprang into Carr’s mind as he broke away toward the door, like the meaningless noise of a phonograph record running backwards.