Donald A. Wollheim: Doorslammer

 

FROM SOMEWHERE down the darkened hall a door slammed.

I looked up from my papers, looked at Mr. Wilkins questioningly. It was ten thirty at night and I had supposed we were alone in the office, probably alone in the whole gigantic office building.

"The cleaning woman come back?" I queried. She had been in an hour ago, dusting and mopping and emptying the waste baskets. It was a disturbance and a distraction. We wanted to get the books straightened out and we needed peace and quiet to do it.

Wilkins shook his head. "It was nothing. Let's get on with this."

I frowned, annoyed, went back to my ledgers. I finished four more pages, saw that the work was finished on this book. It wasn't going to be such a long job at that. I'd figured on being at the office until maybe one in the morning. I leaned back, looked up.

Wilkins looked up just then, caught my eyes, smiled a bit. I saw he'd probably realized just how close we were to being through.

"I'm done with this one," I said. "Going to stretch my legs a bit." He watched me, said nothing. I got up, walked over to the water cooler at the door, took a drink, looked out into the dark corridor leading towards the editorial offices. I couldn't see what door had slammed. They were all shut, all the little cubbyholes at the far end, the ones with the view of the river from twenty stories up, the best offices reserved for the sensitive souls in Editorial - with the big brains and the lowest salaries.

I walked down the hall towards that end. It was dark and deserted, and there were no lights behind the chilled glass windows of the doors. It's eerie in an office building after hours, darned eerie. I came back. Wilkins had finished his ledger, was leaning back, lighting a cigarette.

"Nobody there," I said. "But somebody slammed a door before. I heard it. And there's no drafts."

He nodded soberly. "I know. I heard it too. Often hear it late at night like this. Ifs nobody. Only Alice."

"Alice?" I asked. 'Thought you said we were alone. Is Alice the cleaning woman's name?"

He shook his head. "No, not Mrs. Flaherty. Just Alice . . . You remember." -

I sat down. "Who're you kidding? I don't remember any Alice."

WILKINS LOOKED at me, took his cigarette out of his mouth. "Oh, that's right. You never knew her. You came after her time. Well . . . it's Alice, anyway. Alice Kingsley, I thinkwas her name. Alice C. Kingsley. Mrs."

"So?'' I said. "So this Alice is working here tonight. Why doesn't she come in and say hello? One of those stuck-up editors?"

"Alice isn't working here tonight," said Wilkins mildly. "She hasn't been working here for a couple of years. Not here. Not nowhere."

"So who are you talking about?" I asked, beginning to get a little piqued. "First you say Alice, then no - so what Alice is here now?"

Donald A. Wollheim: Mimic

. It is less than two hundred years since the discovery of the last continent. The sciences of chemistry and physics go back scarce one century. The science of aviation goes baclc forty years. The science of atomics is being born. And yet we think we know a lot. We know little or nothing. Some of the ,most startling things are unknown to us. When they are discovered they may shock us to the bone. We search for secrets In the far Islands of the Pacific and among the ice fields of the frozen North while under our very noses, rubbing shoulders with us every day, there may walk the undiscovered.It Is a curious fact of nature that that which is In plain view Is oft best hidden. 1 have always known of the man in the black cloak. Since I was a child he has always lived on my street, and his eccentricities are so familiar that they go unmentioned except among casual visitors. Here, in the heart of the largest city in the world, in swarming New York, the eccentric and the odd may flourish unhindered. As children we had hilarious fun jeering at the man in black when he displayed his fear of women. We watched, in our evil, childish way, for those moments; we tried to get him to show anger. But he ignored us completely, and soon we paid him no further heed, even as our parents did. We saw him only twice a day. Once in the early morning, when we would see his six-foot figure come out of the grimy dark hallway of the tenement at the end of the street and stride down towards the elevated to work again when he came back at night. He was always dressed in a long black cloak that came to his ankles, and he wore a wide-brimmed black hat down far over his face. He was a sight from some weird story out of the old lands. But he harmed nobody, and paid attention to nobody. . Nobody except perhaps women. When a woman crossed his path, he would stop in his stride and come to a dead halt. We could see that he closed his eyes until she had passed. Then he would snap those wide watery blue eyes open and march on as if nothing had happened. He was never known to speak ,to a woman.

He had then. he never spoke to anyone. unless you look very carefully. people like that inhabit big cities and nobody knows the story of their lives until they're all over. But that had stopped and that was all there was to that story. It is colored to appear shiny and armored. Even to having phony vein markings that look just like the real leaf's. but he never had any trouble with him either.He would buy some groceries maybe once a week. We grew up on the street. and they had heard a lot of hammering and banging in his room for several days. There are twig insects that look exactly like a leaf or a branch of a tree. Exactly. we saw him occasionally when he came home and went back into the dark hallway of the house he lived in. I went to college. Or until something strange happens. though there were one or two funny stories. He. I learned. Antonio did not like him. We got used to him. which it twists and curls just like a wasp's stinger. Now that I think of it. I studied. years ago. It even has a fake stinger made of hair. and hundreds and hundreds of insects from all over. Finally I got a job assisting a museum curator. I spent my days mounting beetles and classifying exhibits of stuffed animals and preserved plants. One of the kids on the block lived in that house too. Nature is a strange thing. Antonio said once that he never talked. even though its body is soft and not armored like a wasp's. A lot of families did. You realize how nature uses the art of camouflage. I grew up. You learn that very clearly when you work in a museum. Nature is strange and perfect that way. It has the same colorings and. for he was reputed to pay his rent regularly when the janitor asked for it. You can't tell them apart. He had money. never had visitors. . And he had once built something in his room out of metal. hauled up some long flat metal sheets. There is a moth in. Central America that looks like a wasp. at Antonio's but only when there were no other patrons there. Well. Where he worked I don't know and never found out. he just pointed at things he wanted and paid for them in bills that he pulled out of a pocket somewhere under his cloak. Antonio said they knew nothing much about him either. nobody ever did have any trouble with him. sheets of tin or iron.