Cornell Woolrich

The Gate-Crasher

I make fifty a week in a bank, and that just about keeps me in socks and neckties, because by the time I buy three meals a day, send a little money home at the end of the week, chip in on the room rent and pay my share of the light, laundry and telephone bills, there isn’t a whole lot left over to cover the expense of going on parties. I mean real swell parties — the kind that have two orchestras going at the same time in the Crystal Room at one of the biggest hotels, and then serve breakfast after the party is over. I go to that kind of a party regularly and it doesn’t cost me a cent. I go without being invited, of course, but I go just the same.

Gate-crashing is what they call the sort of thing I do. Gate-crashing is my specialty. You see, although I room with another fellow on the third-floor front in a brown-stone house off Seventh Avenue and punch an adding machine in a bank, nobody knows the difference. I get away with it at these big parties because, after all, all that’s needed is a good personal appearance and smooth dancing to put one over on them. There are never enough men to go around anyway, so the girls never stop to ask you who you are as long as you have the regulation college hair-cut and can get them in a corner and do a few trick steps.

It’s like taking candy from a baby. You see, at almost any of these big proms and coming-out parties they ask as many as a thousand people or more because they know that a great many won’t come and they want to be sure to have enough to go around. Naturally when a crowd that size gets together, they have no way of finding out who the invited guests are and who dropped in without invitations. Like myself, for instance. If you know how to behave, and don’t give yourself away, you are pretty safe once you get by the doorman and mingle with the crowd. And I am an expert at that, believe me. My roommate, Frankie Turner, and I used to sit in our dingy third-floor hall bedroom on Sunday afternoons scanning the papers for announcements of coming social functions, “hops” as we called them, and deciding which ones we would crash in the week ahead.

We went in for this indoor sport for all we were worth, because you certainly do meet some 14-carat girls at these affairs; the kind of girls you never would have a chance of meeting anywhere else. I often wonder what some of those girls would think if they could see Frankie and me in our hall bedroom with our shirt-sleeves rolled up and the coffee pot boiling on the gas plate and our handkerchiefs pasted flat on the mirror to dry after we’ve washed them under the cold-water faucet.

It seems like yesterday that Frankie came home early one evening and found me pressing the trousers of his tuxedo with a flat-iron I had borrowed from the lady in the room next to ours.

“Oh, you beat me to it,” was the first thing he said. “I was counting on wearing ’em myself tonight.”

We had only one suit of dress clothes between us, which happened to belong to him, and we used to take turns wearing it.

“We’ll toss for it tonight,” I declared, slipping my hand into my trouser pocket.

“Fair enough,” said he.

I threw a coin up into the air and caught it between my hands.

“Heads!” he cried.

I won. It was tails.

“I go,” I told him, “and you sit here and clip paper dolls.” And I licked my thumb and touched the bottom of the iron to see if it was still hot enough, the way the lady that owned it had shown me.

“What’s so special tonight?” my roommate asked curiously, making himself comfortable with a newspaper he had brought in with him.

“One of these big coming-out parties down at the Hotel Versailles,” I told him.

“What are you going to do, crash the gate? You better not try it,” he warned me, lighting a cigaret. “I know the Versailles — there isn’t a chance of your getting in down there.”

“It won’t be the first time I’ve gotten in without an invitation,” I said, putting on my collar.

“You know what’ll happen to you if you get caught, don’t you?” he said.

“I suppose so. I’ll get thrown out sooner or later, but I may as well crash while the crashing is good.”

“Well if you must, you must,” said Frankie.

And that was that.

When I was all through I looked at myself in the glass. The suit I had on may have been Frankie’s, but it certainly fit as though it had been made for me. The patent leather oxfords were his too, and they were half a size too small. But they looked good after I had rubbed a little bay rum on them. I gave the black satin tie a pat and tucked a white silk kerchief in around my collar.

“If I’m not back in half an hour,” I told Frankie facetiously, “that means I got in. And don’t wait up for me.”

I rode down in the subway and walked up to one of the side entrances of the Versailles, which was brightly lighted. A party of men and women in evening clothes had just gotten out of a limousine and, unnoticed, I followed them through a glass turnstile into the lobby, which was crowded with people.

Women in fur wraps and expensive shawls were climbing the short flight of marble steps that led to the ballroom, which was on the floor above. At the foot of the stairs a heavy red velour cord had been slung from side to side, and had to be unhooked and lifted out of the way before any one could go by. A number of attendants in livery were gathered about it, scrutinizing everybody who came in.

My heart failed me at the sight of them. Frankie had been right, you couldn’t get in here for love nor money unless you had an invitation. Just then a member of the party that had come in ahead of me turned to her escort and I heard her say:

“I wonder if Hugh Crawley has arrived yet?”

That was all I needed to know, I waited until they had gone upstairs, then I strolled languidly over toward the group of ushers.

“What is the name, please?” I was asked immediately.

“Mr. Hugh Crawley,” I announced with a supercilious lift of the eyebrows.

One of them looked for it in a flat book he had charge of, containing the list of invited guests, no doubt. As soon as he had found it he crossed it off. They unfastened the cord and let me go through. I had all I could do to keep from laughing. It had been so easy. I didn’t stop to think what might happen if the real Hugh Crawley should put in an appearance later in the evening. All I cared about was that I had got in. I walked jauntily up the stairs and as I reached the top of the staircase I could hear the orchestra in the ballroom playing “Here I am! Here I Am!” It would have been hard for them to have chosen a more appropriate number. Here I was, indeed, although nobody had found it out yet.

I checked my things at one of the little electrically lighted booths provided for that purpose, lit a cigaret and then sauntered casually in. It was the most beautiful ballroom I have ever seen, and I have seen some good-looking ones in my time. The ceiling was mirrored, and when you looked up at it every one seemed to be standing on their heads. The lights were all a deep blue. It took my breath away. But not for long. You get used to that sort of thing very quickly, and anyway I wasn’t there to admire the decorations. I looked around to see if I could carve myself a dance.

There were no wallflowers. There never are at these dances nowadays. Every one gets off to an even start, and the girls that lose out in the race for popularity don’t sit around afterward with crepe on their shoulders. Instead they go off to some place where there is less competition. I didn’t want any of that kind anyway. When a girl isn’t as popular as she should be, it’s usually because there is something the matter with her dancing — or she stutters or she lives out at Port Washington and expects some one to take her home sometime around dawn.

I knew from long experience that at a debutante party like this everybody has their dance cards filled out and in working order weeks ahead of time, so the only thing for me to do if I expected to get anywhere was to cut in. At college dances cutting-in is very much in order. I wasn’t sure about an affair of this kind; sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t, but I made up my mind to try my luck anyway. Let me say right here that it’s a terrible chance for any one to take. To be turned down flat, as they call it, in the middle of a crowded ballroom floor with everybody looking on is about the worst that can happen to you. You may as well go straight home when that happens. Because no girl will let you cut in after she has seen some other girl pass you over. She can’t afford to, because no one wants to be seen with a left-over.

I waited where I was until I saw some one in shell pink come gliding along. Her eyes were like stars and she seemed to be having the time of her life. She wore little silver slippers and had an orchid on her shoulder. She saw me looking at her and gave a little ghost of a smile, as though wondering what I intended doing. I dropped my cigaret into a big Chinese vase that stood by the door and started out after her. She was going so fast I had to follow her half the length of the room. I touched her partner on the shoulder to attract his attention. They stopped and he turned around and looked at me. She smiled again when she saw me and looked at him as though asking his permission. I bowed. He bowed and stepped aside.

“Thank you,” I murmured.

The girl and I began to dance at once. We got around the room twice, I think, and then some one cut in on us. I was sorry to see her go because the next one was by no means as good a dancer. In the course of the next hour I danced with at least fifteen or twenty different girls. Then, just as I was beginning to have a good time and know some of them by their first names, my shoes started in to hurt. It got so that finally I couldn’t stand it any longer. My feet burned like hot coals. It was all I could do to limp away, glad to be free for the moment.

I had noticed a number of little rooms leading off from the ballroom and I stole into one of these, sat down on a sofa and took off my shoes.

I smoked a cigaret or two and was feeling much easier, when suddenly I heard some one coming. It was an embarrassing position to be caught in. I barely had time to thrust my stockinged feet back into the damnable oxfords without lacing them when a girl in green came in and looked around as though she were trying to locate some one. Her dress began in a long, narrow velvet bodice and ended in a cluster of ostrich feathers around the knees. She held a wide fan of curling ostrich feathers in one hand. She was the cutest thing I had seen there that night and I began to wonder who she was.

“Excuse me,” she said. “I’m looking for my brother. He hasn’t been in here by any chance, has he?”

“No,” I smiled. “Won’t I do instead?”

She laughed. “I’m afraid not. You see he has my powder compact in his pocket and he’s gone off with it. What’s to become of my poor nose?”

“I’m afraid they’ve neglected to introduce us,” I said, becoming more sure of myself. “If I may, my name is Ted Lawton.”

“I’m Joyce Nichols,” she answered unassumingly.

I nearly fell over when I heard that. Here she was at last, the very girl I had read about so often in the society columns. It all came back to me.

Her name was always mentioned among those present. Joyce Nichols did this and Joyce Nichols did that, Joyce Nichols went here and Joyce Nichols went there. I never dreamed the day would come that I’d meet her face to face.

Somehow my feet didn’t hurt any more, or if they did I didn’t seem to mind it as much as before. When the music started again I asked her to let me see her dance card, and when she showed it to me I crossed off two or three of the fellows’ names right before her eyes. She only laughed. “They’ll cut in anyway,” she warned me. But I didn’t let them. I kept my back turned when they tried to bow, and slipped away when they touched me on the shoulder. Joyce laughed and encouraged me to keep it up. “Look out, here comes another one,” she would whisper. “Let’s pretend we don’t see him. He’s an awful grasshopper.”

She liked my dancing, and she herself danced better than any girl I had ever met before. “You’ll spoil me for all the rest of my life,” she said. “I won’t want to dance with any of the rest of the boys after I’ve danced with you.”

It seemed like an invitation to get to know her better, so afterward we went back to the little room where we had first met and sat down on a cozy lounge they had in there.

“It’s nice to be alone like this,” Joyce sighed comfortably. I turned out the lights and put my arm around her, and we stayed in there for quite a while, until it was time for her brother to call for her and take her away. They were going to another dance from there, I learned to my surprise. Outside she turned to me while her brother held a beautiful fringed shawl for her.

“Are you going to be at the charity affair next Tuesday?” she wanted to know.

I knew she had mistaken me for one of her own set and thought I went around to all of these gaieties as nonchalantly as the rest of them did. How could I tell her the truth?

“Are you?” I countered.

“Surest thing you know,” she replied briskly.

“Then I am, too,” I answered; and I meant it. I was going to be there or know the reason why.

She wrapped herself in her black shawl embroidered with red poppies and held oat the tips of her fingers to me.

“Bye bye,” she said cozily, “don’t forget Tuesday.”

So around midnight Tuesday behold me decked out as never before, having spent all evening (not to mention two dollars and eighty cents) at the barber shop getting a hair-cut, singe, hot and cold towels and even a facial pack.

But if it had been hard to get in at the Versailles, it was utterly impossible to get in at the Park Venice. I found that out almost at once. The affair was on the roof. I went up thirty-three floors in one of their enameled elevators, and the minute I stepped out of it a member of the entertainment committee thrust his hand out at me and said “Tickets please?” in a very bored voice.

“I... I’ve mislaid it,” I groaned, fumbling through my pockets.

“I have a few left.” he said. “How many do you need? I might be able to help you out.”

It sounded almost too good to be true.

“One will do,” I explained.

“That’ll be sixty-five dollars,” he answered affably.

“Going down!” I said to the elevator boy.

The next time I went up I got off at the thirty-second floor, went up a delivery staircase and came out before a kitchen door.

My eyes fell on something up against the wall that looked like a gas meter. I opened it and discovered it to be full of plugs and coils of wire. There were three copper switches with insulated handles. That gave me an idea. I pulled one of the switches down but nothing happened. Then I pulled another one down and nothing happened. Finally I pulled the third one down and all the roof lights went out. People started to laugh and shout. Without wasting a moment’s time I opened the door and slipped out. It shut behind me with a terrific crash, but I didn’t mind as long as no one could see me. I kept moving forward in the darkness and confusion, trying to get as far away from the kitchen as I could before the lights went up again, as they were sure to at any minute. Several times I stumbled over chairs and ran into people. “Isn’t it awful?” I heard a woman’s voice say close by me.

Suddenly I felt something smooth and slippery under my feet. I realized that it must be the dance floor. The music had stopped completely. People were standing very still and every one kept saving: “Don’t move or well lose each other.” Then the strings of lanterns overhead flashed on again as suddenly as they had gone out. Every one laughed and clapped their hands. “There, that’s much better!”

And I discovered Joyce Nichols standing not two feet away from me. It was as though something had led me to her in the dark. She had chosen to run contrary to the fashion for once, and had on a wide, ankle-length skirt that made her look like a Dresden doll.

“Teddy!” she cried the moment she saw me, “what brought you here so late?”

I mumbled some excuse or other.

“I thought you were trying to renege. I’ve been saving the twelfth and the fourteenth for you,” she explained. “I didn’t want you to have the thirteenth because it brings bad luck.”

“I don’t want to dance with any one but you, Joyce,” I told her. “I’ll sit over there in the corner and watch you until it’s my turn.”

She came looking for me between the seventh and eighth dances and pressed a string of pearls into my hand.

“Put this in your pocket for me like a good boy, will you Teddy?” she said. “There’s something the matter with the catch and I’m afraid I’ll lose it.”

Between the tenth and eleventh the lights went out again. I wondered who was monkeying with the circuit this time. Possibly a fuse had blown out. The current went on again in about a minute’s time, and I expected every one to finish the dance. It was the one before my turn came to dance with Joyce and I wanted them to get it over with. But no one seemed to be dancing. Instead they had all gathered about a very excited old lady who was having hysterics about something. She was stout and rather overrouged, and in her excitement she kept flinging her arms about like two windmills. She ended by fainting away, and they carried her over to one side and laid her on a cane settee.

“She has lost her pearls,” I heard some one say.

The first thing I knew two men in street clothes, detectives I suppose, walked over to me and growled: “What are you doing here, young fellow?”

I looked at them thunderstruck. “I... I’m waiting for some one,” I faltered.

“Well trouble you to stand up for a minute.”

One of them went through my clothes and suddenly pulled out Joyce’s siring of pearls.

“Here it is!” he said.

His companion gripped my shoulder like iron.

“But those... those—” I tried to explain, and the words froze on my lips from sheer horror of the predicament I was in.

“Never mind that now,” they said brutally. “We got you with the goods.”

Every one had gathered about us, staring at me. I could read hatred and disgust in every eye.

Suddenly there was a rustle of silk and a flash of aquamarine blue, and Joyce had forced her way through the crowd.

“Those are my pearls!” she cried to the detectives. “What are you doing with them?”

“How does he come to have ’em in his pocket if they’re yours?” they grunted.

“The catch broke and I asked him to keep them for me while I danced,” she said, her eyes flashing with anger. “Is it any of your business?”

The man that had been taking tickets at the entrance earlier in the evening now stepped forward.

“Just a minute!” he said. “Ask him how he got in here anyway.”

Once to every gate-crasher comes the moment when he’s found out and no possible stall will save him. This was mine now. I guessed. Frankie had said it was bound to happen sooner or later and Frankie had been right: it had. I had crashed one gate too many.

“How about it?” sneered the committeeman. “Thought you’d put one over, didn’t you?”

Before I could answer Joyce stamped her foot. “He came with me, of course. Didn’t he, Mother?” She turned to her mother for corroboration.

“Why, Joyce—” stammered her mother, not knowing what to say.

“Mother, you know he did!” Joyce insisted, giving her a desperate look.

“I’m sorry, Miss Nichols,” said the committeeman humbly. “My mistake. I apologize.”

I could tell by the expression of her face that Joyce was terribly angry about the whole thing. She and her mother sent for their wraps and left immediately afterward without taking any notice of me. But I couldn’t let her go like that; it nearly killed me. I ran after her, and just as she was getting ready to follow her mother into the elevator and go downstairs I caught her by the hand.

“Before you go,” I murmured, “I want to tell you something. You may as well know it now as any other time. He was right. I don’t belong here. I crashed the gate.”

“Hurry, Joyce.” said her mother. “I’m waiting for you.” And the mirrored slide of the elevator shut in my face.

I went home that night, that morning rather, shaking my head.

“What’s the matter?” asked Frankie. “You look as though you’d come fresh from a funeral.”

“I’m afraid I’ve lost her,” I told him.

“Plenty more,” said Frankie. “Another one’ll be along soon enough.”

“It’s got to be her, or no one,” I answered.

“In that case,” he said, “it looks like it’s going to be no one.”

Four or five days passed and I couldn’t get Joyce out of my head. I was blue all day long, never smiled. Frankie said I was turning into an ouch — an ouch is his idea of a person terrible to get along with. Toward the end of the week he came home one night and asked:

“Think you’ll crash any more?”

“Never again.” I said. “I’ve lost the girl I cared for by doing that.”

“Because I see by the paper that the Artists’ and Models’ Ball is being given tonight,” he told me.

“What do I care?” I said. “Go away, don’t remind me.”

“I think I’ll tackle it,” he said.

He started in to dress, and when he had on his dinner jacket he straightened it out by pressing his hands down the sides of it, the way people have a habit of doing.

“What’ve you left in this pocket?” I heard him say. “Feels like candy or something.”

I turned around just in time to see him pull out Joyce’s pearls, which had been there since the night of the dance.

“There is a Santa Claus,” said Frankie, “and you must be his pet.” He held the string up to the light and admired it. “I think I’ll put my hand in the other pocket. I might find a twenty-dollar gold piece.”

I wrapped the necklace in some tissue paper that I pulled out of the cuff of one of Frankie’s starched shirts and reached for my hat without wasting any time.

“I’m going to take them back myself,” I said. “I wouldn’t trust a messenger boy.”

I looked up Joyce’s family in the telephone book and went straight over there. They lived in a private house just off Park Avenue, and when I rang a Jap opened the door for me.

“Miss Joyce at home?” I said.

“Your name, please?” he asked.

I was afraid she wouldn’t see me if I told who I was. “Just say that a friend wishes to speak to her for a moment,” I said.

He left me waiting in a little side-room with a polished floor that shone like lacquer. I could hear voices and laughter and music up-stairs, as though they were dancing. Then I heard some one running down the stairs, and Joyce came through the door in an orange party dress with little silver things dangling around it.

“I forgot to give you back your pearl-the other night,” I said, handing the package over to her.

She put it on a table behind her without even opening it.

“How did you know where to find me?” she asked.

“I looked in the telephone book, of course,” I told her.

She smiled. “Did it tell you I’ve been thinking a lot about you lately?”

“No,” I said.

“Well, I have.”

I thought she was just saying that to be polite in her own home. I looked down at my feet and didn’t answer.

“I have some friends up-stairs,” she said. “I mustn’t stay away from them too long.”

“Good night,” I said.

“Why the good night?” she said. “Put your hat down. You’re coming up-stairs with me for a little while.”

“How can I?” I said. “Your friends won’t want to mix with me. I’m just a bank clerk.”

“Great!” she said. “What bank?”

“The Twenty-first National.”

“Why, that’s funny,” she said. “My daddy is president of that bank. I’ll have to talk to him about you.”

As we went up the stairs arm in arm she said to me: “Are you going to be at the Midnight Rolick tomorrow night?”

“No,” I said regretfully. “No more crashing-the-gate for me.”

“You won’t have to,” she answered cheerfully. “Just give your name to the man at the door. And Teddy—” her voice dropped to a whisper.

“Yes?” Something made my heart go faster.

“After this we’ll do all our crashing together, shall we? You dance so nicely.”

“Joyce,” I cried, “I simply have to tell you. I’m crazy about y—”

“Sh!” she cautioned. “Save it for tomorrow night. There’s going to be a moon.”

Content

Cornell Woolrich
The Gate-Crasher