Locked Rooms Part 29

We walked hand in hand through the cool evening. The wind had s.h.i.+fted, coming in from the sea to drive the worst of the smoke in the direction of Oakland; indeed, I thought, rain appeared possible.

We found our waterproof coats, and I went upstairs and brought some toys and books for our daughter to keep her from fretting if the rain should last. Between one thing and another, it was nearly an hour before we left the house with our armloads of provisions. We took a detour to the edge of the high ground, to look at the darkness falling across the city, and found the familiar view profoundly eerie-few lamps, no street-lights, just the outline of the Fairmont Hotel on the opposite rise, and below us a great stinking expanse of blackness, the fires out at last. We must have stood there looking at the foreign landscape for twenty minutes, and when we got back to the tent, we found the entire area in a state of writhing turmoil.

In our absence, someone had come looking for me, and frightened my daughter. Her screams had awakened all the infants in the vicinity, and they had raised their voices in chorus, along with half the women, all the men, and most of the dogs. We soon got her soothed and I went to ask if anyone knew who the intruder had been, but he hadn't left his name, merely said (or rather, shouted, over Mary's roar, which had been of fear but had quickly turned to one of indignation) that he would come back later.

The most glaring characteristic of the man, all agreed, was that his face had been burnt, and that his thick ointment and bandages rendered his face invisible.

A burned face could have been any of the men I labored with over the past few days, so I thought nothing of it. He did not come back that night, or the following morning, and it was not until noon on Sunday that I found who it was.

During the night, the rain had come down hard, Nature's cruel joke on our heartbreaking efforts against the fire. Had it begun earlier, the city might have been saved, but it came on Sunday, to turn the ruins into a sodden black slop-pit. Even our tidy green park was a sea of mud, and we needed shovels to direct the runnels and creeks out from under our feet.

As I walked through Sunday's drizzle down the drive beside the house, intending to fetch tools from the gardener's shed, I heard something move inside the house.

It could have been the foundations settling, or a precariously balanced whatnot taking its final plunge, but it was a sound, and I stopped to listen for more. Nothing came, but I walked around the back just to check that the door was locked, and found it was not.

I hesitated, since I knew there was a gun inside and that if an intruder had found it, I would be in trouble. But then I turned the handle and took a step inside, and shouted for them to come out.

I wasn't expecting an answer, and certainly not the one I got. Which was a voice calling from upstairs, "Charlie? Is that you?"

It was my Good Friend. I asked him what he was doing there and how the h.e.l.l he got in, the oath startled out of me by his unexpected presence in my home, and he reminded me that I'd given him a key long ago, and that he'd never taken it off his ring. I'd forgotten that he had a key, but indeed, before I married I'd given him and two or three other of my friends keys to the door, in case I was away when they needed a place to sleep. That had been years ago, but they were the same locks, and clearly the key still worked.

As we called to each other, he had been coming down the stairs. When we met in the gloom of the hall-way, a great deal became clear: His face was s.h.i.+ny with smears of white ointment, his eyebrows and lashes had been burned away, and he had a bandage around his head.

"Hey, you're the one who scared my little girl!" I accused him, and he immediately began to apologize for it, saying he'd never thought about how his appearance would strike a child, certainly never thought the kid would be alone in the tent, and he'd left as soon as he saw there were people that she knew who could look after her, so as not to frighten her any more. So he'd come here, and found the place empty, but he'd desperately needed a place to sleep so he'd let himself in and dragged the guest bed over to a spot where the plaster had already fallen down.

He ended by saying he hoped I didn't mind, and that he'd been careful not to light a fire anywhere.

"I guess not," I told him, and asked what he'd done to his face. He touched it gingerly and said he'd done it on Friday night when the fire he was working on hit a stash of kerosene and blew up in his face. "Knocked me top over teakettle," he said with a laugh. "I woke up in the hospital tent twenty-four hours later, and since I could walk and remember my name and that Teddy Roosevelt was President, they kicked me out, since they had a dozen others who needed the bed worse than me. My boarding-house is gone, so I thought you wouldn't mind."

"Of course not," I told him.

"There's one other thing," he said, and the way he said it made my sympathy for his plight fade.

You see, when we were young, we'd gotten into a number of sc.r.a.pes. Just through high spirits, but it would begin with a dare and a look, and even beneath the white grease and the bandages he wore, the look he gave me now was the same he'd give me when he had something really outrageous in mind. And I remembered the "stuff" he'd needed help with, and I immediately stepped away from him.

"GF," I said, "I have a family. I can't do that kind of thing anymore. You're on your own."

"It's nothing at all," he told me. "Hey, my face really hurts. You got anything to drink in this mess?"

That was the moment I should have ended it. I should have told him no and showed him the door, taking his key as he left. I should have, but I did not. He was burned and I'd seen far too much in the last few days to put my old friend out on the street. Before I knew it we were sitting in the library with a candle and a bottle of good whiskey, talking about old times.

It turned out his "stuff" was a tin cookie box that he'd tripped across right in the middle of Geary Street the first morning. Because it was heavy enough to trip him, he'd taken a closer look and found it packed to the gills with cash-bills, coins, even gold. No names on it, no identifying marks, no body lying nearby. "So I kept it."

"It's not yours," I told him in disgust. "You'll have to put up a notice and ask somebody to identify it. If they tell you what kind of money was in it and how much, it'll be theirs."

"Well, there's a little problem."

"What's that?"

"I kind of added to it. It'd be hard to know what was there originally and what went in as time went along."

"Jesus wept!" I shouted at him. "You're a d.a.m.n thief."

"I guess," he said, "but I've got to tell you, it all came from people who won't miss a hundred dollars here or there. All of it. And I can't give it back, there's money there from maybe ten places."

I dropped my head in my hands, feeling sick.

"Charlie, I really need a new start." He was pleading. "You know about my wife and that mess, and I can't get any money, and without money you can't make money. You've got to help me."

"You disgust me," I told him.

"I know."

"Where is the box now?"

"Well, that's the thing. It's buried in your garden."

I nearly hit him, bandages and all. If I'd had the gun, I'd have shot him dead, I was so angry. He saw it, and put up his hands as if to say "Whoa."

"Now look, Charlie, I couldn't very well just leave it sitting on your kitchen table while I went up to sleep, could I? I just buried it under a bush to keep it safe for a while."

"You buried your looted cash in my garden." I couldn't believe I'd once been close to this idiot.

"Just until I can get it and go. I'm off to France. My half-sister lives there now, she said I could go stay with her and help manage the business-she's got a nice little bar and cabaret in Paris. Anyway, I was thinking about it even before all this happened. This town has been a curse for me, Charlie, you know that."

I did know that, as it happened. He'd had a lot of bad breaks, and only some of them he'd brought on himself. His final blow had been when his wife had divorced him, then six months later inherited a packet.

I stared into my gla.s.s for a while, and then I asked him, "How much do you suppose is in your box?"

"I'm not sure. Maybe about three thousand."

I thought he was absolutely sure, but I didn't call him on it. I was tired, and I was tired of him, but on the other hand I felt so incredibly lucky, having seen all those poor souls dead, mangled, and homeless while my family had come through unscathed, that I could not bring myself to judge him. "If I give you a check for five thousand dollars, will you go to France and leave me alone?"

"Charlie, I can't ask you to-"

But of course he allowed himself to be talked into it. I'd find a way to return the money to its owners somehow, or donate it to the orphans, but buying GF out seemed somehow appropriate, as if it placated the Fates that had pa.s.sed me over. I hunted down my checkbook, wrote him his check, and told him I didn't want to see him again, ever. And to leave his key with me. He took the thing out of his pocket with a hurt expression and put it on the table, then grabbed my hand and made me shake his, told me he'd buried it under that statue with the book, and ran away like I'd given him a set of wings.

It was madness, I know, to do that, but he'd been like a brother once, and in the last few days we'd all walked through h.e.l.l.

It was only later that I heard the whole story-or rather, heard some, read about parts of it in the papers, and guessed the rest, but by then he was gone and I was stuck.

It seems that on the Friday night after the quake, a cop had seen him going into a house whose residents had been ordered out just ahead of the fire. There were actually two cops together, but they split up when they heard the distinctive crash of a breaking window on the next street. One went to investigate that, the other followed GF, and when the cop came through the back door after him, GF panicked and bashed him with the fireplace poker. It killed the man, or anyway GF a.s.sumed it did, but instead of just running away, he thought he'd conceal the evidence by burning the house. What was one more burning building when the whole city was up in flames?

But being GF, a couple of problems came up. The first was that the bottle of gasoline GF found in the pantry and poured around the floor didn't just burn when he set a match to it, it went up like high explosive, shooting GF out of the house and scorching off all his hair. The other problem was, the fire s.h.i.+fted and didn't eat up that street, so after the fire died down, there was one house burned among a bunch still standing. And in that house was a dead cop with a broken skull and a fireplace poker lying next to him.

GF had b.u.t.toned the box of money inside his s.h.i.+rt to leave his hands free when the gas went off in his face, and when he picked himself off the ground and found he could walk, he did so. Eventually he more or less pa.s.sed out, and was taken to a hospital tent, but as soon as he came to on Sat.u.r.day he figured it wouldn't be healthy to be a scorched man with a box full of money.

So he came to me.

And I bought his way to freedom, leaving me with a tin box so badly dented that I understood why the hospital workers hadn't looked inside-when I dug it up, I had to use a hammer and screwdriver to get it open. It had money in it, but only about $1700, and some of that had what looked to me like blood on it. Talk about your blood money.

The other thing it had was a band of cloth with a red cross painted on it. Dressed as a rescue worker, GF had gone in and out of houses under the pretense of looking for injured people, when all the while he'd been robbing them blind.

I felt wild when I held that cloth in my hands and realized what it meant. Then later, I got to thinking about the problems I had, and I began to feel even worse. I was stuck with the d.a.m.ned box. If I gave it to the authorities and told them the honest truth, I thought that I'd probably be charged-if not with the actual stealing, then at least with aiding a felon. If I took the box away and threw it off a ferry, I risked getting caught with it red-handed, and wouldn't that be fun to explain? Plus, if I got rid of it and GF came back to shake more money out of the Russell tree, I couldn't use it as a threat to get rid of him-surely there'd be his finger-prints or something in that box that would-I started to write "hang him," which is a little too close to the bone. But I couldn't leave it where he'd put it-what would stop him from sneaking in one night and digging it up? I could take it down to the Lodge and drown it in the lake, but something about introducing that box into that setting made it feel somehow polluting.

So in the end I talked it over with my friend-I should say, my true friend-PA, and he agreed that it would be best if we just buried it again quietly and said nothing. But not in the same place-we talked about where to do it, and he had a fellow in to do some mumbo-jumbo over it, and we hid it deep, where only he and I know.

A year or so later, the gardener uncovered another box, this one with pictures of chocolates on the front. It had money in it, too, and jewelry. It also had a gun. PA and I buried it in the same place as the first, but without the gun-that I did get rid of.

The whole thing was just a disaster, and it didn't even end with seeing the back of GF. I told my wife about it a few weeks later, which I probably shouldn't have done-she always had some odd notions about GF, from the very first time I'd brought her home, she'd never taken to him, never liked having him around. When she heard about what he'd done, and that I'd buried his stash, she became convinced that he would return one night and do something to us, maybe even threaten the children, to get it back. I got quite hot at that, the idea that I'd be friends with such a man-it still seems to me that robbery and panicked manslaughter in the midst of anarchy is a far cry from cold-bloodedly threatening friends, but my wife is as strong-minded a person as I am, and we had words. It took me years before I could talk her into coming home again.

So there's my story. I haven't seen GF since, although I think he's been around, because once in 1910 we found someone had been digging where he'd buried the two boxes. For all I know he's dead, but I wrote a letter to his half-sister last week, saying that if he was still alive and she was in touch with him, I wanted him to know that around the end of October, the U.S. government would "know the details of an incident that took place in 1906." The events of those days have been allowed to fade somewhat, but it was murder, after all, and it wouldn't be too hard to figure out who GF was, if they wanted to come after him. I thought it only fair to warn him that the U. S. of A. might not be a comfortable place for him.

Like I said, he was my friend, once, and frankly I don't know that we weren't all pretty insane those days of the fire.

I've also told PA all this, and he agrees it's best. I'll try to keep him out of it as best I can, and I've long since removed all mention of him from my official doc.u.ments, my will and such, even though he had nothing to do with it until it was all over.

So there it is, my life of crime. I may be over-scrupulous in revealing this, but I would not care to be put into a position involving the security of the nation with this vulnerable point in my past. If it alters the judgment of my superiors as to my fitness for the proposed position, so be it.

Yours sincerely, Charles David Russell

October 1, 1914 San Francisco

ADDENDUM:.

I leave next week for Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., and will take the above with me to present to my superiors. I shall bury a copy with the two tin boxes as well, less for insurance than by way of explanation, should someone ever come across the incriminating contents and wonder.

The day after tomorrow, I'm going down to the Lodge, to close it up for some time. Most people here believe the war will be over in a few weeks, but I have been to Germany, I know the strength of her people, and I do not think so. I do not know if I shall ever see my beloved lake again, and I have a sentimental wish to visit it one last time before I go. My wife says she has too many things to do here in San Francisco, but I hope that she will reconsider and that she and the children will join me at the place where we have spent so many blissful days of family unity and pleasure.

I have had no word from the man I called GF, nor from his half-sister, although considering the disruption France is currently undergoing, I do not suppose that is surprising. Well, I have done my best by him, and can only hope that his life since we last met has been lived in a manner to recompense his sins.

As for my own, we shall soon see.

Signed, Charles Russell

BOOK FIVE.

Russell

Chapter Twenty-four.

The letter was written and sent to France the third week of August, just after the war began," Holmes remarked. "And the accident that killed your family occurred the third of October. Even in the first month of war, mail was getting through, particularly to Paris. 'Good Friend' would have got the letter within a week. He could have made it back here from Paris with time to spare."

"His friend," I said bitterly. "A man he helped out of a tough place, a man with whom he shared a wild . . ." My voice s.h.i.+fted tone as my mind tore itself from the immediacy of my father's presence and began to process the information it had been given, now and in recent days. I finished ". . . wild youth."

"Pet.i.t Ami, or 'PA,' could only be Micah Long," Holmes observed, too taken up with his own thoughts to notice my distraction, "considering the references to hiding things in the garden and the fellow's protective 'mumbo jumbo' of feng shui. And as Charles Russell himself says, it shouldn't be too difficult to come up with a name for the other. Particularly after one has had a close look at the household records, in which is noted a cheque for seven thousand five hundred dollars, written just days after the earthquake. Your father seems to have held the charmingly innocent notion that changing the amount of the cheque in the letter would mislead anyone investigating the evidence of the accounts book."

I stood up abruptly. "I have to go. I'll meet you back at the hotel."

I was out of there before he could stop me, striding down the streets with neither hat nor coat. I pulled the ornate bell, then banged on the door when it did not open instantly. When Jeeves appeared in the opening I pushed my way inside.

"Where's Flo?" I demanded. "Miss Greenfield? Is she still in bed?"

The abruptness of my entrance and the lack of delicacy in my question reduced him to jerky little protests, which I overrode ruthlessly. "I need to talk to Flo this instant. Where is her room? Oh, never mind, I'll find it myself."

The house-maid he summoned sprinted up to me after the sixth door I had opened, and said breathlessly, "This way, miss, er, ma'am."

I'd have found the room eventually, but I did not bother to thank the little maid, just marched past her towards the formless shape on the bed. "I'll bring coffee!" the poor girl squeaked, and slammed the door.

"Flo!" I said loudly, shaking where I thought her shoulder would be. "Flo, wake up, right now. I don't have time for your morning dithers. Flo!"

My shout brought her bolt upright, staring around in a panic. She dashed her hands across her eyes as if doubting their evidence. "Mary? What on earth-"

"Flo, do you know a man with a scarred face?"

"What?" It came out more like, Wha? With an effort, I resisted the impulse to slap her awake.

"A man with scars on his face, burn scars."

"What of it?"

"G.o.d d.a.m.n it, Flo, who is he?"

"My father," she said, her pretty face s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up in confusion. "What about him? Mary, what a state you're in! You look like you've been rolling in the garden!"

I sat down abruptly on the bed, ignoring her fastidious protestations. "Your father had a scarred face?"

"Yes, it was sort of puckered, like. He got burned rescuing people in the great fire. Mary, what are you doing here? What time is it? Oh, golly," she said, squinting at the clock on her table, "it's not even noon. Do you know what time I hit the hay?"