The Man in Lower Ten

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

“Euphemia is in bed,” Mrs. Klopton said gravely. “Is your meat cut small enough, Mr. Lawrence?” Mrs. Klopton can throw more mystery into an ordinary sentence than any one I know. She can say, “Are your sheets damp, sir?” And I can tell from her tone that the house across the street has been robbed, or that my left hand neighbor has appendicitis. So now I looked up and asked the question she was waiting for.

“What’s the matter with Euphemia?” I inquired idly.

“Frightened into her bed,” Mrs. Klopton said in a stage whisper. “She’s had three hot water bottles and she hasn’t done a thing all day but moan.”

“She oughtn’t to take hot water bottles,” I said in my severest tone. “One would make me moan. You need not wait, I’ll ring if I need anything.”

Mrs. Klopton sailed to the door, where she stopped and wheeled indignantly. “I only hope you won’t laugh on the wrong side of your face some morning, Mr. Lawrence,” she declared, with Christian fortitude. “But I warn you, I am going to have the police watch that house next door.”

I was half inclined to tell her that both it and we were under police surveillance at that moment. But I like Mrs. Klopton, in spite of the fact that I make her life a torment for her, so I refrained.

“Last night, when the paper said it was going to storm, I sent Euphemia to the roof to bring the rugs in. Eliza had slipped out, although it was her evening in. Euphemia went up to the roof—it was eleven o’clock—and soon I heard her running down-stairs crying. When she got to my room she just folded up on the floor. She said there was a black figure sitting on the parapet of the house next door—the empty house—and that when she appeared it rose and waved long black arms at her and spit like a cat.”

I had finished my dinner and was lighting a cigarette. “If there was any one up there, which I doubt, they probably sneezed,” I suggested. “But if you feel uneasy, I’ll take a look around the roof to-night before I turn in. As far as Euphemia goes, I wouldn’t be uneasy about her—doesn’t she always have an attack of some sort when Eliza rings in an extra evening on her?”

So I made a superficial examination of the window locks that night, visiting parts of the house that I had not seen since I bought it. Then I went to the roof. Evidently it had not been intended for any purpose save to cover the house, for unlike the houses around, there was no staircase. A ladder and a trap-door led to it, and it required some nice balancing on my part to get up with my useless arm. I made it, however, and found this unexplored part of my domain rather attractive. It was cooler than down-stairs, and I sat on the brick parapet and smoked my final cigarette. The roof of the empty house adjoined mine along the back wing, but investigation showed that the trap-door across the low dividing wall was bolted underneath.

There was nothing out of the ordinary anywhere, and so I assured Mrs. Klopton. Needless to say, I did not tell her that I had left the trap-door open, to see if it would improve the temperature of the house. I went to bed at midnight, merely because there was nothing else to do. I turned on the night lamp at the head of my bed, and picked up a volume of Shaw at random (it was Arms and the Man, and I remember thinking grimly that I was a good bit of a chocolate cream soldier myself), and prepared to go to sleep. Shaw always puts me to sleep. I have no apologies to make for what occurred that night, and not even an explanation that I am sure of. I did a foolish thing under impulse, and I have not been sorry.