THE THING IN THE DARK
It has the usual Huron street ending. Emergency case. Psychopathic hospital. Dunning. But the landlady talked to the police sergeant. The landlady was curious. She wanted the police sergeant to tell her something. And the police sergeant, resting his chin on his elbow, leaned forward on his high stool and peered through the partition window at the landlady—and said nothing. Or rather, he said: "don't know. That's the way with people sometimes. They get afraid."
This man came to Mrs. Balmer's rooming-house in Huron Street when it was spring. He was a short, stocky man with a leathery face and little eyes. He identified himself as Joseph Crawford, offered to pay $5 a week for a 12 by 12 room on the third floor at the rear end of the long gloomy hallway and arrived the next day at Mrs. Balmer's faded tenement with an equally faded trunk. Nothing happened.
But when Mrs. Balmer entered the room the following morning to straighten it up she found several innovations. There were four kerosene lamps in the room. They stood on small rickety tables, one in each corner. And there was a new electric light bulb in the central fixture. Mrs. Balmer took note of these things with a professional eye but said nothing. Idiosyncrasies are to be expected of the amputated folk who seek out lonely tenement bedrooms for a home.
* * * * *
A week later, however, Mrs. Balmer spoke to the man. "You burn your light all night," said Mrs. Balmer, "and while I have no objection to that, still it runs up the electric light bill."
The man agreed that this was true and answered that he would pay $1 extra each week for the privilege of continuing to burn the electric light all night.
Nothing happened. Yet Mrs. Balmer, when she had time for such things as contemplation, grew curious about the man in the back room. In fact she transferred her curiosity from the Japanese female impersonator on the second floor and the beautiful and remarkably gowned middle-aged woman on the first floor to this man who kept four kerosene lamps and an electric bulb burning all night on the third floor.
For some time Mrs. Balmer was worried over the thought that this man was probably an experimenter. He probably fussed around with things as an old crank does sometimes, and he would end by burning down the house or blowing it up—accidentally.
But Mrs. Balmer's fears were removed one evening when she happened to look down the gloomy hallway and notice that this man's door was open. A gay, festive illumination streamed out of the opened doorway and Mrs. Balmer paid a social call. She found her roomer sitting in a chair, reading. Around him blazed four large kerosene lamps. But there was nothing else to notice. His eyes were probably bad, and Mrs. Balmer, after exchanging a few words on the subject of towels, transportation and the weather, said good-night.
But always after that Mrs. Balmer noticed that the door remained open. Open doors are frequent in rooming-houses. People grow lonely and leave the doors of their cubby holes open. There is nothing odd about that. Yet one evening while Mrs. Balmer stood gossiping with this man in the doorway she noticed something about him that disturbed her. She had noticed it first when she looked in the room before saying hello. Mr. Crawford was sitting facing the portieres that covered the folding doors that partitioned the room. The portieres were a very clever ruse of Mrs. Balmer. Behind them were screwed hooks and these hooks functioned as a clothes-closet.
Mrs. Balmer noticed that Mr. Crawford, as she talked, kept staring at the portieres and watching them and that he seemed very nervous. The next morning, when she was straightening up the room, Mrs. Balmer looked behind the portières. An old straw hat, an old coat, a few worn shirts hung from the hooks. There was nothing else but the folding-door and this was not only locked but nailed up.
When two months had passed Mrs. Balmer had made a discovery. It had to do with the four kerosene lamps and the extra large electric bulb and the portières. But it was an irritating discovery, since it made everything more mysterious than ever in the landlady's mind.
She had caught many glimpses of this man in the back room when he wasn't looking. Of evenings he sat with his door opened and his eyes fastened on the portières. He would sit like that for hours and his leathery face would become gray. His little eyes would widen and his body would hunch up as if he were stiffening. But nothing happened.
Finally, however, Mrs. Balmer began to talk. She didn't like this man Crawford. It made her nervous to catch a glimpse of him in his too-brightly lighted room, sitting hour after hour staring at the portières—as if there was something behind them, when there was nothing behind them except an old hat and coat and shirt. She looked every morning.
But he paid his rent regularly. He left in the morning regularly and always returned at eight o'clock. He was an ideal roomer—except that there never is an ideal roomer—but Mrs. Balmer couldn't stand his lights and his watching the portières. It frightened her.
* * * * *
Screams sometimes sound in a rooming-house. One night—it was after midnight—Mrs. Balmer woke up. The darkened house seemed filled with noises. A man was screaming.
Mrs. Balmer got dressed and called the janitor. There was no doubt in her mind where the noises came from. Some of the roomers were awake and looking sleepily and frightenedly out of their doorways. Mrs. Balmer and the janitor hurried to the back room on the third floor. It was Crawford screaming.
His door was closed, but it opened when the janitor turned the knob. Mr. Crawford was standing in front of the portières in the too-brightly lighted room and screaming. His arms, as if overcoming some awful resistance, shot out, and his hands seized the portières. With the amazing screams still coming from his throat, Mr. Crawford tore crazily at the portières until they ripped from the rod above the folding-door. They came down and the man fell with them. Over him, hanging on the "clothes-closet" hooks, were revealed an old straw hat, an old coat and a worn shirt.
* * * * *
"You see," said Mrs. Balmer to the police sergeant, "he was afraid of something and he couldn't stand the dark. And the portières always frightened him. But the doctor wasn't able to do anything with him. The doctor says there was some secret about it and that Mr. Crawford went crazy because of this secret. The only thing they found out about him was that he used to be a sailor."