had was summer clothes, and I almost froze. But I loved it; I think it’s a fascinating city.” She reached back and took a key from one of the pigeonholes. “Take Number Twelve,” she said.
“I’d better pay you now,” I said. “How much is it?”
She started to reply, but the telephone rang. The effect on her was almost startling. She went rigid, as if she had been sluiced in the back with iced water, and just for an instant I could see the terror in her eyes. It was on the desk, just to the left of her. It rang again, shrilling insistently, and she slowly forced herself to reach out a hand and pick it up.
“Magnolia Lodge,” she said in a small voice.
Then the color went out of her face, all of it. She swayed, and I reached out across the desk to try to catch her, thinking she was about to fall, but she merely collapsed onto the stool behind it. She tried to put the receiver back on the cradle, but missed. It lay on the blotter with faint sounds issuing from it while she put her face down in her hands and shuddered.
I picked it up. I knew I had no business doing it, but it was pure reflex, and I already had a suspicion as to what I’d hear. I was right.
It was an unidentifiable whisper, vicious, obscene, and taunting, and the filth it spewed up would make you sick. I thought I heard something else, too, in the background. In a minute the flow of sewage halted, and the whisper asked, “Are you hearing me all right, honey? Tell me how you like it.”
I clamped a hand over the receiver and leaned over the desk. Touching her on the arm, I said, “Answer him,” and held the instrument before her.
She raised her head, but could only stare at me in horror. I shook her shoulder. “Go on,” I ordered. “Say something. Anything at all.”
She nodded. I removed my hand from the receiver. “Why? she cried out. “Why are you doing this to me?”
I nodded, and went on listening. The soft and whispered laugh was like something crawling across your bare flesh in a swamp. “Because we’ve got a secret, honey. We know you killed him, don’t we?”
I frowned. That wasn’t part of the usual pattern. The whisper continued. “We know, don’t we, honey? I like that. I like to think about just the two of us—” He repeated some of the things he liked to think. He had a great imagination, with things crawling in it. Then, suddenly, there was a brief punctuation mark of some other kind of sound in the background, and the line abruptly went dead. He had hung up. But maybe not soon enough, I thought.
I replaced the receiver and looked down at the bowed head. “It’s all right,” I said. “They’re usually harmless.”
She raised her face then, but uttered no sound.
“How long has he been doing it?” I asked.
“A long—” she whispered raggedly. “Long—” She collapsed.
I whirled round the end of the desk and caught her. Carrying her out, I placed her gently on the floor on one of the rugs. She was very light, far too light for a girl as tall as she was. I stood up and called out “Josie!” and then looked back down at her, at the extreme pallor of the slender face and the darkness of the lashes against it, and wondered how long she had been running along the ragged edge of a breakdown.
Josie pushed through the curtains and looked questioningly at me.
“Have you got any whisky?” I asked.
“Whisky? No, sir, we ain’t got none—” She had taken another step nearer the desk, and now she could see Mrs. Langston on the floor. “Oh, good Lawd in Heaven—”
“Shut up,” I said. “Bring me a glass. And a damp cloth.”
I hurried out and brought in the two-suiter bag from the station wagon. There was a bottle in it. Josie came waddling back through the curtains. I poured some whisky into the glass, and knelt beside Mrs. Langston to bathe her face with the wet wash-cloth.
“You reckon she goin’ to be all right?” Josie asked anxiously.
“Of course,” I said. “She’s just fainted.” I felt her pulse. It was steady enough.
“Ain’t you goin” to give her the whisky?”
“Not till she can swallow it,” I said impatiently. “You want to strangle her? Where’s her husband?”
“Husband?”
“Mr. Langston,” I snapped. “Go and get him. Where is he?”