Into the Night

Mrs. Fairfield had seen her gaze up at the wall. “My husband insisted I sit for that,” she remarked complacently. Then she went on to explain, rather piquantly, “Not this one. One of the earlier ones. I forget just which.”

She wants me to know she’s been married more than once, Madeline thought, so that it won’t fail to point up how attractive to men she once was. But anyone can be married more than once, she reflected. All it takes is a disagreeable disposition.

“I’ve seen you from a distance once or twice, coming and going,” Mrs. Fairfield confided. “I asked everyone, ‘Who is that lovely young girl?’ No one seemed to know. No one could tell me anything about you—”

“There isn’t anything to tell,” Madeline murmured.

“—Always alone. Never a young man with you. Why, when I was your age, I could hardly put my foot down without fear of stepping on one of them.”

She wants to give me the mental picture that they were always on their knees all around her, groveling.

“They don’t interest me too much,” Madeline said dryly. “They seem to be always there, a part of the background. I take them for granted.”

A look of genuine horror passed fleetingly across Mrs. Fairfield’s marshmallow-white face. She promptly dropped the topic, which was what Madeline had wanted in the first place, anyway.

“I don’t suppose most people deliver their contributions in person,” she said.

“I assume you wanted to be very certain I received it.”

“That’s only part of the reason,” Madeline said. “It struck me that I might be able to do something for the cause besides what cash I can afford to contribute.”

“How do you mean?”

“I thought I could solicit donations. I’m sure not every building in the city is fortunate enough to have a volunteer passing out envelopes and collecting contributions. I could go around to other buildings, tell people a little about multiple sclerosis, and see if they’d care to make a donation.”

“That’s grueling,” the woman said. “If you just leave envelopes you never hear from the people again. And if you press for a donation on the spot, you get turned down time after time. All in all, it can be a terrible waste of time.”

“It’s my time,” Madeline said evenly. “I don’t mind wasting it, not if it’s in a good cause.”

“I don’t know. I’m not authorized to deputize you as a building representative or anything of the sort—”

“Just give me some literature and contribution envelopes,” she suggested. “I don’t have to have any official standing. Any contributions I receive I’ll hand over directly to you and you can turn them in with whatever else you collect.”

The woman thought for a moment. Then, abruptly, she shook her head. “I’ll list you as a volunteer,” she said. “It may be slightly irregular, but it will be all right.”

An hour later, a sheaf of donation envelopes in her purse, she stood on the sidewalk in front of the address listed for V. Herrick, on Lane Street.

It was a frugal, little apartment building, no frills or luxuries, somewhat run-down in appearance but still clinging to an overall aspect of respectability. It was of newer vintage than the old walk-ups of the early 1900s — she could see a self-service elevator no wider than a filing cabinet standing open at the end of the hall — but it was anything but modern. It probably dated, she surmised, from the immediate pre-Pearl Harbor period, when all such construction was jerry-built, due to the shortage of funds and the low level of rents. It had probably just gotten in under the wire before controls went on, all private building was frozen, and the hordes of war workers came pouring in from all over the country, to beg, bribe, and fight for every square inch of floor space that was to be had. And today — who wanted it?

The Herrick door was indicated as the first one on her left as she entered the ground-floor hall. There was a peculiar vibration such as a riveting machine might make somewhere about, but she couldn’t identify what the source of it was. She took out the donation forms, took in a deep but not very heroic breath, and knocked. Nothing happened. She knocked again. Nothing happened again. There was a roaring sound, then it died down again.

She noticed a small push button at the side of the door. It had escaped her until now because some unsung but remarkably conscientious (or remarkably sloppy) painter had painted it over the same sage-green color he’d used on all the rest of the woodwork around it.

She didn’t hear any sound when she thumbed it in, but evidently it still worked, because in a matter of not more than a minute or so the door opened, and the torrential tumult of hundreds of shouting voices came banging out at Madeline’s eardrums, almost bowling her over by the sheer impact and unexpectedness of it alone. Somewhere in the middle of it all a man was screaming away, as if he were being torn apart by wild horses: “—into the bleachers back of left field! Bob Allen, twenty-three! A left-hander from Texas!”