Do Not Disturb

by Helen McCloy

Genres: Mystery; Traditional Mysteries; Thrillers

Synopsis

The sign read 'Do Not Disturb', and at first Edith Talbot ignored the pitiful whimpering that came through the door. The hotel clerk assured her that the room was occupied by a sick boy under the care of a physician. Later in the night, when the cries resumed, she felt something must be done, and she made the fatal mistake of knocking on the door ...

From then on things begin to happen, strange things that at first seem like coincidence but crescendo into a series of hair-raising events.

'Continuous action, and extra good writing' Saturday Review of Literature

Release date: March 14, 2014

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 256

Sample

IT WAS RAINING that night. The wet sidewalk shone like black glass. Thanks to the dim-out, only one street lamp was lighted between Fifth and Fourth. It
seemed to be out of order. As I stared at the pale globe, the light fluttered and fanned with the fuzzy iridescence of a pinwheel. Its small pool of radiance only enlarged and emphasized the
darkness beyond. I could just make out a stone wall, a closed door, and dark shades bordered with light from inside. The effect was sly and secret—a face with closed mouth and eyes that
gleamed through lowered lashes. An unlighted neon sign read: Hotel Majestic.

“It doesn’t look very majestic.”

The taxi driver laughed. “Wha’d’ye expect fer two bucks a day?” He was good-natured and friendly. Aunt Aurelia would have condemned him as too familiar. Lucien would have
said that my free and easy American manners encouraged such familiarity. At least that was what Lucien always did say when I talked to taxi drivers or newsboys in Paris.

“I suppose it is respectable?”

“Oh, sure. One of the oldest hotels in New York. And it’s on your list, ain’t it?”

“Yes.” I looked down at the half-sheet of notepaper I was holding in my hand. Desmond, Marshall-Quincy, Dunraven—we had been to all these inexpensive hotels only to find
each one taken over by the Army. Majestic was last on my list.

“How’d ye happen to hear about it?”

“I don’t remember. I asked lots of people for hotel addresses before I left Hartford and somebody must have given me this one or it wouldn’t be on my list.”

“Then it’s okay. Shall I take yer bag inside?”

“Better wait until I see if I can get a room.”

“Better let ’em see you got luggage.”

That hadn’t occurred to me. In Hartford everyone knew me as Aurelia Talbot’s niece. In Paris everyone knew me as Lucien de Montigny’s wife. It was going to be different in New
York where nobody knew me as anything.

I made a quick dash through the rain to the shelter of the marquee. A doorman pulled the door open and took my bag from the taxi driver.

The Majestic is one of the few hotels left in New York that still maintains the large, dignified entrance hall of the last century. No shallow vestibule or “peacock alley” here; no
smart little shops with glittering show cases; no businesslike travel bureau. So high was the ceiling that the broad, marble pillars seemed to be supporting a roof of shadow. Low, shaded lamps made
islands of light among the lower shadows. Dingy black walnut and dusty crimson plush gave back no reflections. This old-fashioned dullness was reassuring. Shady people usually seek bright
spots.

The guests loitering near the desk looked anything but shady. A restless boy of six or seven squirmed in an armchair. Two women with twenty-year-old hats, thirty-year-old faces, and
forty-year-old hips talked in whispers. A stout man smoked a cigar with the vacant, incurious eyes of a cow chewing its cud.

The clerk at the desk was elderly and deliberate.

I began briskly. “Have you a single room with a bath?”

His measured voice seemed to rebuke my impatience. “I’m sorry, madam, but all our single rooms are occupied at the moment.”

“Have you any double rooms?”

“No, madam, all our double rooms are occupied. New York is almost as crowded as Washington now. So many small hotels have been—”

“Taken over by the Army,” I finished for him. “I know. I’ve been to three other hotels already. I’m just off a train and I don’t know any other place to go.
It’s getting late and it’s raining. Haven’t you anything at all? Even a bridal suite or some room you don’t usually rent? I’m not particular and I must find some
place for tonight.”

His eyes narrowed. He seemed to be appraising me.

When you take a size twelve dress and a size three shoe it’s no use trying to order people around. I was reduced to pleading. “Couldn’t you put a cot in a—a linen closet
or something?”

The appraisal became calculation. “Well—there is one room—”

“At what rate?”

“Three dollars a day.”

It was a little more than I had hoped to pay, but if I hunted any further I would spend almost as much on my taxi.

“I’ll take it.”

His hand hesitated before taking a key from a hook. With the same reluctance, he pushed it across the counter to a bellboy. Even his voice was dubious as he said: “1409.”

“1409?” The bellboy repeated the number with a rising inflection as if there must be some mistake.

“Just for tonight.” The clerk turned back to me. “I’ll be able to give you a better room tomorrow—at the same rate.”

He sounded as if he wanted to get me out of 1409 as soon as possible. I hadn’t asked if there was anything wrong with the room, but now I began to wonder.

The clerk was handing me a pen and a registration form. From force of habit I started to write: Madame Lucien de Montigny. I got as far as the “t” when I remembered. I crossed it out
and wrote Mrs. Edith Talbot instead.

“Everything okay?” asked the taxi driver as I paid him.

I nodded. Lamplight glistened on his wet rubber cape as he turned away. I felt unreasonably as if an old friend had left me alone among strangers. Not that the taxi driver was so very friendly,
but the clerk had left an impression of unfriendliness—first denying that he had any vacant room, then admitting that he had suddenly, reluctantly—I couldn’t help remembering Sir
Waiter Scott’s tale of another crowded hotel where he was invited to share the one vacant room with a corpse.

At the elevator, my bellboy stepped aside to let three other men precede him—two big fellows with hatbrims pulled down over their eyes and a little man shorter than my own five feet three.
He took off a hard, felt hat pearled with raindrops. His bald head shone waxily under the ceiling light. His face was round and soft. Nose and chin seemed mere folds of flesh without a suggestion
of bone or cartilage underneath. He looked fussy, insecure, and anxious to please—the sort of man who is pre-destined to run errands, keep books, and file reports all his life long for other
men who are more aggressive or less scrupulous. There was something a little old-maidish in his careful precautions against rain and dim-out—khaki raincoat, shiny, new, black rubbers and
flashlight of emerald green plastic strapped to one wrist.

The asthmatic elevator wheezed to a stop and my bellboy said, “This is your floor.”

The white paint in the corridor was old and yellow. The crimson carpet looked almost black in intervals of shadow between shaded lights. The little man trudged down the corridor. The two big men
marched on either side of him like bodyguards. I lost sight of all three when my bellboy stopped beside the elevator at a door numbered 1409.

I don’t know just what I expected—faded wallpaper, worn furniture, a bad view, or broken plumbing. The one thing I did not expect was a room that seemed exactly right. It was clean
and bright and impersonal as only a hotel room can be. A bay window looked over roof tops to the East River. There was a deep blue rug and pale blue wallpaper, fresh white paint, and mahogany
furniture. Curtains of ruffled white net foamed over the window. A quilt of pale blue taffeta lay on the white counterpane. No doubt the mahogany was a varnished deal and the taffeta, rayon, but
the whole room shone cozily in the lamplight with an effect that was almost homelike.

I turned to the bellboy. “It isn’t haunted, is it?”

“Haunted?”

Something told me he wasn’t as stupid as he was trying to look.

“It seems odd that such a nice room wasn’t rented already,” I explained. “Especially with the city so crowded.”

“People don’t like being next to the elevator,” he retorted. “It’s sort of old and the chains creak.”

The sudden blankness of his eyes told me he was evading my question. That and the fresh paint. Hotelkeepers don’t repaint a room that is never occupied. But I was too tired to care about
the little mystery. I gave the boy a quarter and he went out, closing the door.

Silence descended on the bright little room. The distant murmur of traffic without underlined the stillness within. Once or twice I heard the creak of the elevator. Most of the time I might have
been at the bottom of a well for all the noise I could hear. Whoever had given me this address must have remembered that I liked quiet. If only I could recall who it was. Some friend of Aunt
Aurelia’s in Hartford? Some of the old school friends who had written me when she died?

As I unpacked I wondered if the previous occupant had died of some infectious disease. That might explain the clerk’s hesitation over renting the room. It was nothing to worry about. The
New York Board of Health keeps a close watch on hotels. Such a room wouldn’t be rented until it was thoroughly fumigated.

The room was becoming personal. New books I had brought in gaudy paper jackets gave a touch of color to the white mantelpiece. Aunt Aurelia’s silver and tortoise-shell brush and comb
dressed the bureau. My portable radio-phonograph on the center table promised music and entertainment. By turning down the top sheet and laying my pajama case on the pillow, I gave myself the
illusion that I was still living in luxury with a maid to prepare my bed for the night. I was almost happy. Happiness depends so largely on one’s capacity for enjoying small comforts, such as
a warm, dry room on a cold, wet night. I learned that from Aunt Aurelia and it has helped me through many bad moments. There have been plenty of them in the last few years.

After my hasty marriage and hastier divorce from Lucien, I remained in Paris as research worker and purchasing agent for a New York firm of art dealers. That job barely survived the shaky period
of undeclared wars, and collapsed with a bang when the real war started. I did some volunteer work for the Red Cross in London until I was dug out of a bombed building. Then I returned to America
with what was charitably known as a nervous breakdown though it was actually a blue funk. Aunt Aurelia, my father’s sister, took me into her Hartford home with characteristic generosity. I
was supposed to be her heir. But like many generous people she had always lived beyond her means, so her death left me with only a few hundred dollars. If I had been living in the piping times of
peace and unemployment, I would hardly have known where to turn. As it was I had come to New York to join the WAC.

All the time I was unpacking, my bath water had been running. Now I got into the tub without turning off the water and relaxed while the heat drew all weariness out of my bones. The bathroom
window was a small casement of ground glass so high in the wall it was beyond arm’s reach but it could be opened or closed by means of a metal rod attached to the frame. I had opened it a few
inches to dissipate the steam. Through that opening came a sound I could scarcely hear through the splash of running water. It seemed to be the crying of a child.

There was no way of telling whether it was a cry of temper or distress. There was no sound of other voices, movements, or footfalls. Just that one voice, desolate and abandoned in its surrender
to fear or pain or frustration. How could anyone let a child cry on and on like that without doing something to comfort it? It was about seven o’clock then—time when properly brought-up
children are abed and asleep. Had the parents gone off to some restaurant or play and left the child alone in the dark in a strange room?

The tub was so full now I had to turn off the water. I reached for the faucets reluctantly. The crying would become louder without the noise of running water to mask it.

But it didn’t become louder. It only became more distinct. That was the moment when I made a startling discovery. It was not a child crying. It was not even a woman.

It was a man.

PERHAPS STRONG EMOTION is always infectious. My heart began to beat slowly and heavily as if it were keeping time to those retching, indecently
shameless sobs. If it had been a woman’s voice I would have knocked on her door and offered what comfort I could.

Since I had to listen, I deliberately tried to harden my heart. After all, men as well as women do cry for the moon, I reminded myself. The virile monster who never weeps is a part of the
folklore of patriarchy, but he doesn’t exist in real life. No doubt this poor wretch believed my room was still vacant.

I clattered the soap dish and splashed about in the water, hoping he would hear me and realize that I could hear him. But the noise I made had no effect.

When I had rubbed down and slipped into a bathrobe, I climbed up on the slippery edge of the tub and balanced there with one hand against the wall. A rush of cool, rainy air refreshed my cheeks.
My shoulders were level with the window sill. I could see roof tops of other buildings on the same plane. I could even look down into a rectangular courtyard, deep and narrow as a well. Dark shades
masked every lighted window. Thin threads of music drifted up from below. Sound rises—the sobbing would not be noticed down there in that nest of rival radios. Across the yard at right angles
to my bathroom window I saw another window on the same floor, the only one near mine. Its dark shade was drawn, fringed with fuzzy lines of light. The sobbing came from that direction. Perhaps
there was real tragedy or horror on the other side of that shade. But of course it was none of my business.

Back in the other room, I closed the bathroom door. Then I could hear nothing. If I hadn’t chanced to take a hot bath that evening before dinner, I wouldn’t have heard the sobbing at
all.

Pushing the whole matter out of my mind as firmly as possible, I spread out my damp tweeds to dry, and put on the only extra dress I had brought with me—black taffeta, ambiguous enough for
afternoon or evening. It was street length but the low, square neck, puff sleeves, and full skirt were almost those of an evening dress. With an old-fashioned gold locket and bracelets of Aunt
Aurelia’s, it could be made quite festive, but that night I wore only a little diamond butterfly that Lucien’s mother had given me long ago for a birthday present.

As I started to leave the room, my eye fell on a placard thumbtacked to the wall. Two columns of fine print were devoted to fire regulations. Below was a plan of the fourteenth floor with the
fire exits marked in red. This wing of the hotel was shaped like a T. The crossbar of the T was filled with a suite of two rooms and bath numbered 1404. My single room, 1409, was the first in the
long line of the T. The bathroom window of the suite was the window that faced my bathroom window across the courtyard at right angles. On the other side of the suite was a linen closet. On the
other side of my room were the elevators. The sounds I had heard must have come from 1404. Judging by the floor plan, they could have been heard in no other room on the fourteenth floor except
mine. If I had bathed a little sooner or a little later I wouldn’t have heard them at all. Such dry, choking sobs couldn’t last for any length of time. Or could they?

I opened the bathroom door. The awful sounds were still there—regular as breathing, hopeless as hell. I looked at my watch. It was nearly eight minutes since I had been in the tub. It was
then that I first thought of suicide. According to newspaper accounts, suicides often took a room in a hotel.

I switched off the light and stepped into the hall—a long vista of white paint, red plush, and closed doors. There was no sound here. Even the traffic murmur could not penetrate these
windowless walls.

The elevator was a long time coming and, when it came, full of people. Mine was the only head that wasn’t gray. They were obviously New Yorkers and, as obviously, people whose fortunes had
diminished as their years accumulated. The type Lucien used to call Murray Hillbillies.

I began to realize the sort of hotel I had chanced upon. A hotel that was kept alive by old New Yorkers who came back year after year with the instinct of homing pigeons because it had
been a fashionable hotel in the heart of town when they were young. They and their hotel had grown old together and when they were gone it would go, too. When these people were young it was within
a few blocks of social institutions which had since moved uptown or gone out of business—Madison Square Garden, Daly’s Theatre, Tiffany’s, the Holland House grillroom, and the
Waldorf. Winston Churchill’s mother was then living in the old brick house that now sheltered the Manhattan Club, and a famous Spanish family was building the Florentine villa since occupied
by the A.S.P.C.A. Today the Little Church was still Around the Corner, but Doctor Parkhurst’s basilica and most other landmarks had given way to offices and lofts and
furnished rooms. All that remained was the Majestic, which had once served as a sort of guesthouse for overflow of households living in private homes on Murray Hill and around Madison Square.

Wasn’t it just the sort of forgotten place that a suicide would choose for his purpose? A place where there would be little danger of his meeting anyone he knew, if he were a young man or
one from out of town.

The lobby looked almost exactly as it had half an hour earlier, as if the flow of time were arrested in this place where so many lived on memory. The elderly clerk still stood at the desk. The
little boy still wriggled in his armchair. The two women were still talking in sibilant whispers. The stout man had finished his cigar and opened a late edition of the Sun.

I was in two minds about speaking to the clerk. I didn’t want to make a fool of myself by meddling in something that didn’t concern me, but neither did I want to read in
tomorrow’s paper that a man in the room next to mine had killed himself tonight. There would be small comfort then in the shabby thought that I had avoided appearing ridiculous.

I went up to the desk. “I like my room.”

The clerk lifted his eyes with a start.

“But I’m afraid there is something—wrong about the room next to mine.”

“Wrong?” Here nothing is ever wrong, his tone implied.

I was goaded on by the memory of that awful sobbing. “I heard noises. Someone groaning and sobbing,” I explained. “It’s been going on for eight or ten minutes. It was a
man’s voice and it sounded—dreadful. I think something ought to be done about it.”

His eyes blinked under the impact of this. His dignity reminded me of the metaphysical steward on the death ship in Outward Bound. Perhaps the shadowy, outmoded hotel was like that
ship—a sort of vestibule to eternity and its guests were really ghosts of old New Yorkers who hadn’t realized they were dead.

At last he spoke in a husky whisper. “I’m sorry you have been annoyed, madam, but there is no cause for alarm. The room next to yours is occupied by a boy recovering from a severe
abdominal operation. He suffers considerable pain at times and most unfortunately his heart is too weak to stand sedative drugs. His father was afraid the groaning might annoy other guests of the
hotel, so he insisted on renting the only other room that adjoins their suite—the room you are occupying now.”

“But—” I gasped. “You rented that room to me!”

“They aren’t using the extra room,” he explained, patiently. “They haven’t even bothered to take the key from the desk. When you said you would take any room we
could give you, I took the liberty of letting you have it for this one night.”

“Do they know I’m in there?”

“No, but I’m sure they won’t mind since the only reason they rented the room was to avoid annoying other people. Of course we won’t charge them for it as long as you are
there.”

“You might have told me!” I protested.

“Possibly I should have done so, but I doubted if you would hear anything at all. Our walls are old and thick. I thought Doctor Melchior was overscrupulous w. . .