The warm sun excited the little girl. She was running with a few children of her age. They were skipping and singing and circling the sand pile with no more purpose than swallows. Deborah tagged a little behind the others, because her coordination was still impulsive and she sometimes threw herself to the ground with her own exertions. Mrs. Harley called to her, and she ran obediently to the old woman and leaned on her knees and began to talk about some lions and little boys. Mrs. Harley asked if she would like to go and see Renée. “I want to go and stay with Renée,” the little girl said. Mrs. Harley took her hand and they climbed the steps out of the playground and walked to the apartment house where Renée lived. Mrs. Harley called upstairs on the house phone, and Renée answered after a little delay. She sounded sleepy. She said she would be glad to watch the child for an hour if Mrs. Harley would bring her upstairs. Mrs. Harley took Deborah up to the fifteenth floor and said goodbye to her there. Renée was wearing a negligee trimmed with feathers, and her apartment was dark.
Renée closed the door and picked the little girl up in her arms. Deborah’s skin and hair were soft and fragrant, and Renée kissed her, tickled her, and blew down her neck until the child nearly suffocated with laughter. Then Renée pulled up the blinds and let some light into the room. The place was dirty and the air was sour. There were whiskey glasses and spilled ashtrays, and some dead roses in a tarnished silver bowl.
Renée had a lunch date, and she explained this to Deborah. “I’m going to the Plaza for lunch,” she said. “I’m going to take a bath and dress, and you’ll have to be a good girl.” She gave Deborah her jewel box and turned on the water in the bathtub. Deborah sat quietly at the dressing table and loaded herself with necklaces and clips. While Renée was drying herself, the doorbell rang, and she put on a wrapper and went out to the living room. Deborah followed her. A man was there.
“I’m driving up to Albany,” he told Renée. “Why don’t you put some things in a bag and come on up with me? I’ll drive you back on Wednesday.”
“I’d love to, darling,” Renée said, “but I can’t. I’m having lunch with Helen Foss. She thinks she might be able to get me some work.”
“Call off the lunch,” the man said. “Come on.”
“I can’t, darling,” Renée said. “I’ll see you on Wednesday.”
“Who’s the kid?” the man asked.
“It’s the Tennysons’ little girl. I take care of her while the nurse goes to church.” The man embraced Renée vigorously and kissed her and left after they had arranged to meet Wednesday night.
“That was your rich Uncle Loathsome,” Renée told the child.
“I have a friend. Her name is Martha,” the little girl said.
“Yes, I’m sure you have a friend named Martha,” Renée said. She noticed that the child was scowling and that her eyes were full of tears. “What’s the matter, darling?” she asked. “What is the matter? Here, here, you sit on the sofa and listen to the radio. I’ve got to fix my face.” She went into the bedroom to arrange her face and brush her hair.
A few minutes later the doorbell rang again. This time it was Mrs. Harley. “Did you enjoy the service?” Renée asked. “I’ll put on Deborah’s coat.” She looked for the hat and coat. They were not where she had left them, and the child was not in the living room. Her heart began to beat fiercely. She went into her bedroom. “It does my soul so much good to go to church,” she heard Mrs. Harley say. Renée thought in terror of the open windows. The window in her bedroom was open. She looked out, and fifteen stories below she could see the sidewalk and the canopy and the doorman at the corner whistling for a cab and a blonde walking a poodle. Renée ran back to the living room.
“Where’s Deborah?” Mrs. Harley asked.
“I was dressing,” Renée said. “She was in here a minute ago. She must have slipped out. She could have opened the door herself.”
“You mean you’ve lost the little girl!” Mrs. Harley shouted.
“Please don’t get excited,” Renée said. “She can’t have gone very far. The only way she could get downstairs would be the elevators.” She went out the kitchen door and rang for the service elevator. She noticed the perilous service stairs. They were made of iron and concrete, painted a dirty gray, and they fell fifteen stories to the ground. She listened down the stairwell, but all she could hear was the hiss of cooking and someone, way below, singing,
“I’m a soldier, in the army of the Lord,
I’m a soldier,
In the army…”
The service elevator was full of stinking garbage. “There was a little girl in my apartment,” Renée said to the man who had brought the elevator up. “She’s disappeared. Would you look for her?” Then she ran into the front hall and rang for the passenger elevator. “Why, yes,” the man said. “I took a little girl down, about ten minutes ago. She had on a yellow coat.” Renée smelled whiskey on his breath. She called to Mrs. Harley. Then she went back into the apartment to get some cigarettes. “I’m not going to stay here by myself,” Mrs. Harley said. Renée pushed her into a chair. She closed the door and rode down in the elevator. “I thought it was strange, her going down by herself,” the elevator man said. “I thought maybe she was going to meet somebody in the lobby.” As he spoke, Renée smelled the whiskey on his breath again. “You’ve been drinking,” she said. “If you hadn’t been drinking, this wouldn’t have happened. You ought to know that a child of that age can’t be left alone. You ought not to drink while you’re working.”
When he reached the ground floor, he brought the elevator to a sudden stop and slammed the door open. Renée ran into the lobby. The mirrors, the electric candles, and the doorman’s soiled ascot sickened her. “Yes,” the doorman said. “It seems to me that I saw a little girl go out. I didn’t pay much attention to it. I was out there, trying to get a cab.” Renée ran into the street. The child was not there. She ran down to where she could see the river. She felt helpless and feeble, as though she had lost her place in the city in which she had lived for fifteen years. The traffic on the street was heavy. She stood at the corner with her hands cupped to her mouth and screamed, “Deborah! Deborah!”
THE TENNYSONS were going out that afternoon, and they had begun to dress when the telephone rang. Robert answered. Katherine could hear Renée’s voice. “… I know it’s a terrible thing, Bob, I know I should never have done it.”
“You mean Mrs. Harley left her with you?”
“Yes, yes. I know it’s a terrible thing. I’ve looked everywhere. Mrs. Harley is here now. Do you want her to come over?”
“No.”
“Shall I call the police?”
“No,” Robert said. “I’ll call the police. Tell me what she was wearing.” When Robert had finished talking with Renée, he called the police. “I’ll wait here until you come up,” he said. “Please come as quickly as you can.”
Katherine was standing in the bathroom doorway. She walked over to Robert, and he took her in his arms. He held her firmly, and she began to cry. Then she left his arms and sat on the bed. He went to the open window. Down in the street he could see a truck with COMFORT CARPET COMPANY painted on its roof. There were some tennis courts in the next block, and people were playing tennis. There was a hedge of privet around the tennis courts, and an old woman was cutting some privet with a knife. She wore a round hat and a heavy winter coat that reached to her ankles. He realized that she was stealing the privet. She worked quickly and furtively, and she kept looking over her shoulder to make sure that no one saw her. When she had cut a good bunch of the green branches, she stuffed them into a bag and hurried down the street.