Stranger at the Door. Victor J. Banis
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Copyright © 1967, 2007 by Victor J. Banis
Originally published under the pen name, Don Holliday.
Published by Wildside Press LLC
www.wildsidebooks.com
CHAPTER ONE
Loneliness had come as a guest in the house. She hovered near the faded velvet of the draperies, peering through dust-streaked glass. She paused among Victorian ornaments and misplaced Chippendale, her fingers trailing over yellowed keys on the ancient Steinway.
She had come, Roger Caldwell thought sadly, as a guest. She would remain as mistress. He stood from the desk, his attention stubbornly refusing to remain focused on the monthly accounts, and crossed to the window, peering out without seeing anything beyond.
“I should be packing,” he reminded himself, but he did not want to resume his task. The truth was, he did not want to go, to leave this house. He preferred to stand here at the draperies, nor did he mind the presence of Loneliness beside him, for he found even her company familiar and comfortable.
“Time,” he said aloud, pulling himself resolutely away from the window, “Is passing.” It had been passing all along, of course, swiftly, irrevocably.
Like the house, he was growing old. He felt the weight of his sixty plus years perhaps more heavily than did the house her full century. He could not even wish to be young again, for he scarcely believed that he had ever been young. That, he had finally come to realize, was the misfortune of good fortune, of being reared to wealth and position and the attendant responsibilities that had been drilled into him from childhood.
He had not been merely young Roger, but young Roger Caldwell, and he had never been allowed to overlook that difference, any more than the house had been allowed to fancy, even for a moment, that she was merely a pleasant little cottage.
He sat again at his desk, running a hand through his gray, thinning hair and frowned as he once more directed his attention to his work. He studied the bill from the market, the grocery account.
He was certain that Mr. Schaffer was overcharging him. Hadn’t he quoted the steaks at a dollar twenty-nine a pound, and there they were on the bill, at a dollar forty. Another penalty for being a Caldwell.
“They can afford it,” he could hear Mr. Schaffer justifying the deception to his wife.
With a resigned sigh, Roger signed his name to the check he had written and tucked it into the return envelope along with the bill. In the long run, the amount couldn’t involve more than a dollar or two, and the Caldwells undoubtedly could still afford that, although Mr. Schaffer might have been shocked to discover the increasing limitations on what the Caldwells could afford.
There had been a time when there had been no limitations, a time when they had reigned in this house as Cincinnati’s first family—and to Mama, they were still that, but Roger did not need his monthly struggle with the accounts to tell him that their reign was over, ten years over, that they had been replaced by families of newer and more genuine wealth—young, dynamic, often tasteless people, but people with large fortunes nonetheless.
The monthly bills taken care of, Roger carried the envelopes to the console in the hall, near the front door, where he would be sure to take them with him when he went out. He half rang for Mrs. Bruce before he remembered that the housekeeper was no longer there, that he had dismissed her days before.
Just as well, he assured himself as he moved along the dim hall toward the kitchen, going to prepare his own tea. Mrs. Bruce had been rather a bossy sort, and he himself too willing to give in, with the result that he had been very nearly a servant to her whims and moods rather than the reverse. If he had been smart, he would have let her go weeks ago, but dismissing people was a chore he had always managed to put off as long as possible. It was bad enough when you had a legitimate reason, such as closing up the house. Even so, Mrs. Bruce had managed to imply that the house was only an excuse to conceal more unreasonable motives.
He set the tea kettle atop the antiquated stove, stooping to blow on the gas jet before it would come to life, and wondered if after all it wouldn’t have been wiser to keep the housekeeper on until the house actually was closed. It meant only another month, and there was still so much to be done. Probably he would never get to some of it. There were the back stairs, now locked off from the rest of the house because they were flagrantly unsafe, a withered limb no longer able to play its role, and they really ought to be repaired, but they led nowhere, only to the top attic, which was empty now, so there was no reason for anyone to use them. In any case, unless you knew to look for it, the door—concealed at the back of a broom closet—was not likely even to be discovered, so no one would be tempted, though he couldn’t think who that someone might be.
The furniture would all have to be covered, of course, and a few things put into storage. The morning paper carried the advertisement for the car, the last item he intended to sell before departing. After that would come his trip to Europe and his first reunion with his sister, Emily, since she had taken up residence in Paris some ten years earlier, and when he returned, it would be to another home, to the small apartment that was already prepared for him.
When his tea was brewed, Roger carried it with him into the parlor and settled himself with a book of poetry, but the poetry was no more successful at holding his attention than his other diversions had been. He was restless, strangely so, and the house was too quiet, with first Mama and now the housekeeper gone.
He made a mental note to call and see how Mama was getting along. For some peculiar reason, which he could not quite understand himself, it gave him a vague sense of annoyance to know that she was as comfortable as she seemed to be with Aunt Sarah.
Of course, Aunt Sarah and Mama were both widowed now, and Aunt Sarah’s neat, modern apartment was obviously easier for both of them—no steps to climb, a modern heating system free of the drafts that plagued this old house, everything that would make life simpler for two ladies of advancing years and bad hearts.
The front door knocker banged loudly, interrupting his train of thought. Roger sat for a moment before he remembered again that there was no Mrs. Bruce to answer it, and jumped up to get it himself.
* * * *
The young man at the door was a stranger, and rather a handsome one in a crude, unpolished way. His dark hair, only half combed, framed a faced that in repose was strikingly cherubic. When he smiled, however, an oddly one-sided smile, the eyebrows arched and the dark eyes narrowed, giving him a look not at all angelic, but rather Mephistophelean.
Roger stared at him curiously, momentarily puzzled that such a perversely attractive young man should be calling on him. There had been young men, of course, sweaty cock-teasers in the darkness, in the past, but not here, never at the house. He had often wondered if someday one of those heavy-hung hustlers might not come to this very door. Faint images of the past darted through his mind—but, no, this was certainly a stranger, no one he had seen before. Not until his caller spoke did he recall the advertisement in the morning paper.
“You’re the one with the car for sale?” he asked. His voice was low and the sort that seemed always to be saying something more than the actual words spoken.
The images of hustlers vanished, and Roger smiled with slight embarrassment. “Oh, yes, the car,” he said. “Would you like to buy it?”
The visitor gave him another of his peculiar smiles. “I’d like to see it,” he said.
“Well, that’s understandable.” An attractive creature, Roger thought, exciting, even. Again, memories played across Roger’s consciousness. Beneath a battered corduroy jacket, the young man’s shirt and trousers were unnecessarily tight fitting, but they served to reveal a well-developed physique—and a well-proportioned bulge at his crotch. “It’s in the garage, back this way.”
He pulled the door closed after himself and led the way around the house. The visitor walked beside him, glancing around at the grounds as they went. Roger found himself wishing that things were