Into The Night Read Online Free PDF Page B

the ceiling fixture. The wall, at least on the one side facing her, was in two shades of green. Most of its surface a fading yellowing green, like peas when they've begun to wither and dry up. And then in the middle of this, an oblong patch of a much darker green, looking as fresh as if it had just been dampened with water. A vacant nail protruded from the middle of it, giving the explanation. A picture had once hung there long ago, and then been moved. Before the window there was a brilliantly bright stepladder. But not a real one, a phantom stepladder of fuming sun motes, placed there as though for some angel in domestic service to step up on and hang the curtains. Its luminous slats were made by the openings in the fire-escape platform outside the window above.
    On the roof, visible only in a slanting diagonal that cut across one upper corner of the window, a woman was hanging wash. You could hear the pulley squeak querulously each time she paid out more rope to herself, but not see her or the wash.
    Mrs. Bartlett came back again. You could not tell she had been crying.
    "Let me get you something," she said. "I'm forgetting myself. Would you like some coffee?"
    "Nothing, please," Madeline begged her with utmost sincerity. Almost with abhorrence. "I just came here to talk to you, really I did."
    "You wouldn't refuse Starr's mother, now would you?" the other woman said winningly. "It won't take a minute. Then we can sit and talk." She went into a narrow little opening, almost like a crevice, over at the far side of the front door, and Madeline could hear water running, first resoundingly into the drumlike hollow of a porcelain sink, then smotheredly into tin or aluminum. Then she heard the pillow-soft fluff that ignited gas gives.
    Mrs. Bartlett came back again. For the first time since she'd admitted her, she sat down with Madeline.
    "You look tired," Madeline remarked compassionately.
    "I don't sleep much anymore since she's gone," she said unassumingly. "At nights, I mean. That's why I have to sleep when I can. I was napping when you rang, that's why it took me so long to open the door."
    "I'm sorry," Madeline said contritely. "I would have come some other time."
    "I'm glad you came when you did." She patted Madeline's arm and gave a little snuggle within her chair that was pure anticipation. "You haven't told me a word about her yet."
    "I don't know where to begin," Madeline said. And it was true.
    "Was she happy?"
    "That," Madeline said with infinite slowness, "I don't know. Don't you?"
    "She didn't tell me," Mrs. Bartlett said simply.
    "Was she happy when she was here with you?"
    "She was at first. Later on--I'm not so sure."
    Madeline thought, There could be something there. But how to get it out?
    "Did she have any particular--ambitions, that she ever spoke of to you?"
    "All girls are ambitious. All young things are. Not to be ambitious is not to be young at all." She said it sadly.
    "But any in particular?" Madeline persisted.
    "Yes," Mrs. Bartlett said. And then again, "Yes." And then she stopped as if mulling it over.
    Madeline waited, breath held back.
    "Wait a minute," cautioned Mrs. Bartlett, getting up. "I hear the coffee bumping." She went out to get it.
    Madeline softly let her breath out, like a slow tire leak. Oh, damn this coffee break, she thought. Just when we seemed to be getting somewhere.
    Mrs. Bartlett bustled with cups and saucers and spoons, and a glass holding little lumps of sugar (she kept them in a water tumbler in lieu of a bowl), and it was impossible to continue consecutively. Whatever ground had been on the point of being gained, which was the most she could say for it, was lost again for the time being.
    Mrs. Bartlett sat there and sipped, and the black eyes watched Madeline over the rim of the tipped cup, but in a friendly, trusting manner.
    I can't eat her bread, Madeline thought. Meaning the beverage. Her gorge rose. I'm a murderess. I can't sit here taking food and drink with her. I