The Lady of Lyon House Read Online Free PDF Page A

it noisily into the night, singing raffish songs. Mattie would circulate briskly from room to room, attending to various duties, and I would help her, or else I would sit in the parlor and sew or read a novel.
    It was an eccentric establishment, buzzing with noise and activity during the night while all around was dark and silent, closed up tight and silent itself from morning till noon while all the surrounding businesses were opening their doors and clamoring with noise. We were all accustomed to it, and we all loved the old place, haggard and threadbare though it might be. To me it was home. I loved the noise. I loved the unusual hours. I loved my little room under the eaves on the top floor, and I loved the odors of boiled cabbage and ancient grease that permeated the wallpaper.
    I could not sleep that first night when we got home from the music hall. I kept thinking about Mattie’s bewildering attitude, and it worried me. It was after three, and the house had been shut up for a long time. The last chorus girl had come in over an hour ago, and everyone had gone to bed early. The men did not play cards. Laverne didn’t play the piano. Mattie went into her room immediately after supper and had not come out. Everyone seemed to be dispirited and listless, the usual vitality dampened. Now I was the only one awake, sitting up in bed and staring at the frosty starlight that came through the window and illuminated the opposite wall with dancing silvery spangles.
    I thought about the man who had been following me in the fog. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason for it. If he had intended to do me harm he would surely have done it already, and if that had been the case, he would not have been so brazen as to come to the music hall every night and leave so obviously after I had finished my act. The girls had commented on him; Laverne had noticed him, called him my boy friend. If he had sinister motives, he would have been stealthy in all of his movements. Yet I was certain that the man sitting openly in the music hall and the man moving stealthily through the fog were one and the same man. What did he want?
    He was watching me. Why? It was almost as though he were a detective from Scotland Yard, keeping me under surveillance. Why should he be interested in what I did? I thought about this, and then my mind wandered to the men Bert had seen at Finnigan’s Bar and the questions they had asked him. Could there possibly be some connection? They had sounded like such awful people. I was glad Bert had told them to go on about their business.
    I do not know how long I sat there, nestled on the pillows, watching the starlight dancing on the shabby old wallpaper. I was wide awake and I knew that sleep would not come for a long time. I listened to all the noises of the old house. They were familiar to me, unfrightening. The limbs of the oak tree scratched against the windowpane, and when I had been smaller I had thought it sounded like someone trying to break into the house. Now it was merely a steady, monotonous noise that I usually didn’t even notice. The old house settled, and the floorboards groaned. There was a creaking noise, like someone creeping up the staircase, and that, I knew, was the wind blowing the back gate on its rusty hinges.
    The wind whistled softly, moaning. It caused the loose shutters to flap and bang lightly against the house. There was a whole symphony of sound, once frightening, now reassuring. This was my home. Here I was safe from the fog and the cold night air and the shadows that lurked in darkened doorways. Here there was warmth and all the old ordinary things that I saw everyday and touched and loved.
    The shutters flapped, the tree limbs scratched, the wind moaned and the noise was comforting. I do not know at what point I noticed something out of tune. The rhythm was broken. There was a noise that did not belong. There was a clatter in the alley behind the house, but that was not unusual.