Into The Night Read Online Free PDF Page A

from the stool.
    The girl called to her a little brusquely.
    "Your coffee's only ten."
    "It's on the big sign there," Madeline agreed.
    The girl separated the excess, guided it a distance along the counter, with a stubborn set smile. "I didn't do anything to earn this."
    "I asked you three questions, and you set up my coffee." She was really asking her why.
    "I don't know; there's not the same kick in it. It's like taking something from yourself."
    Madeline reclaimed the donation. She wanted the girl to enjoy herself; the job was dull enough.
    No one answered the bell. After the first ring had gone unheeded a sufficient length of time, she rang a timorous second time. Then waited even longer, fearing to seem importunate, fearing to antagonize. And finally, fearful in the extreme, rang a third time. Still no one came.
    She did not know what to do then. She could not summon up courage to ring any more. Either no one was in, in which case it was no use anyway, or else someone was in and did not wish to answer, in which case she would be antagonizing them, the very thing she did not want to do.
    At last she turned and started down the stairs. She had not given up, she did not intend to give up, not if it meant she had to fold her coat on the floor outside the door and sit on it waiting, the rest of the day and all of the night. But what she intended to do at the moment was seek out and accost somebody outside on the street nearby, who might be able to give her some information. Even a child if possible--she had noticed some of them playing on the sidewalk before. In fact children were often the best sources of information, lacking in suspicion and reserve as they usually were.
    Be all that as it might, she had only gone as far down as the landing below and was still within fair hearing distance, when she thought she heard the door open, and did hear, in this case without any doubt, a voice call out (rather hollowly, due to the enclosed hail), "Hello? Was there somebody here just now?" And then again (and she could tell it would be the last time, would not be repeated), "Hello?" She turned and ran back up the flight she had just descended, with utmost speed, so that she might not be cut off from the voice.
    As her face, and then her body, sprang agilely up above the hall floor level, she saw that the door stood open. Not just aslant, but wide open, with light that was like incandescent smoke fuming out from it into the dim hall, which had no windows. And out in the middle of the hall, well away from the door, turning her head inquiringly first up this way, then down that, stood a woman no longer young. The woman who, somehow, she knew to be Starr Bartlett's mother.
    It was strange that she could feel so sure at sight, because if she had formed any preconceptions of her, and she had of course, not one of them was accurately fulfilled. She was the opposite in almost everything Madeline had thought she would be.
    She had thought she would be gray, not only gray of hair, but with an overall faded, gray aspect. The word "mother" was no doubt what had formed this image in her mind. Having lost her own at an early age, she had had no contemporary, day-to-day experience with one. To her they were all of one type, not individuals. Quite the contrary, the overall aspect of Starr's mother was dark. Everything about her was black. Her hair was the unlikely and unlifelike black of tar, so that almost certainly some sort of vegetable dye must have been applied to it to keep it that even. Perhaps its use initiated years before, and had now become merely a habit rather than a vanity. Her clothes were black without exception; not a fleck of color showed on her anywhere. But this of course would be because of Starr's passing. Her brows were heavily black. And in this case naturally so. They were almost like little tippets of black sealskin pasted above her eyelids. And lastly her eyes were black. Black as shoe buttons. But very mobile shoe