<h2><SPAN name="the-house-with-the-blinds"></SPAN>The House With the Blinds</h2>
<p><br/></p>
<p><span>It is a thing said and signed and implicitly
believed in by the discerning few that San
Francisco is a place wherein Things can happen.
There are some cities like this—cities that have
come to be picturesque—that offer opportunities
in the matter of background and local colour,
and are full of stories and dramas and novels,
written and unwritten. There seems to be no adequate
explanation for this state of things, but you can't
go about the streets anywhere within a mile radius
of Lotta's fountain without realising the peculiarity,
just as you would realise the hopelessness of
making anything out of Chicago, fancy a novel
about Chicago or Buffalo, let us say, or Nashville,
Tennessee. There are just three big cities in the
United States that are "story cities"—New York,
of course, New Orleans, and best of the lot, San
Francisco.</span></p>
<p><span>Here, if you put yourself in the way of it, you
shall see life uncloaked and bare of convention—the
raw, naked thing, that perplexes and fascinates—life
that involves death of the sudden and swift
variety, the jar and shock of unleased passions, the
friction of men foregathered from every ocean,
and you may touch upon the edge of mysteries for
which there is no explanation—little eddies on the
surface of unsounded depths, sudden outflashings
of the inexplicable—troublesome, disquieting, and
a little fearful.</span></p>
<p><span>About this "House With the Blinds" now.</span></p>
<p><span>If you go far enough afield, with your face
towards Telegraph Hill, beyond Chinatown, beyond
the Barbary Coast, beyond the Mexican quarter
and Luna's restaurant, beyond even the tamale
factory and the Red House, you will come at
length to a park in a strange, unfamiliar,
unfrequented quarter. You will know the place by
reason of a granite stone set up there by the
Geodetic surveyors, for some longitudinal purposes
of their own, and by an enormous flagstaff erected
in the center. Stockton street flanks it on one side
and Powell on the other. It is an Italian quarter as
much as anything else, and the Societa Alleanza
holds dances in a big white hall hard by. The
Russian Church, with its minarets (that look for
all the world like inverted balloons) overlook it on
one side, and at the end of certain seaward streets
you may see the masts and spars of wheat ships and
the Asiatic steamers. The park lies in a valley
between Russian and Telegraph Hills, and in
August and early September the trades come
flogging up from the bay, overwhelming one with
sudden, bulging gusts that strike downward, blanket-wise
and bewildering. There are certain residences
here where, I am sure, sea-captains and sailing
masters live, and on one corner is an ancient
house with windows opening door-fashion upon a
deep veranda, that was used as a custom office in
Mexican times.</span></p>
<p><span>I have a very good friend who is a sailing-master
aboard the "</span><em class="italics">Mary Baker</em><span>," a full-rigged
wheat ship, a Cape Horner, and the most beautiful
thing I ever remember to have seen. Occasionally
I am invited to make a voyage with him as
supercargo, an invitation which you may be sure
I accept. Such an invitation came to me one day
some four or five years ago, and I made the trip
with him to Calcutta and return.</span></p>
<p><span>The day before the "</span><em class="italics">Mary Baker</em><span>" cast off I had
been aboard (she was lying in the stream off
Meigg's wharf) attending to the stowing of my
baggage and the appointment of my stateroom.
The yawl put me ashore at three in the afternoon,
and I started home via the park I have been
speaking about. On my way across the park I stopped
in front of that fool Geodetic stone, wondering
what it might be. And while I stood there puzzling
about it, a nurse-maid came up and spoke to me.</span></p>
<p><span>The story of "The House With the Blinds" begins here.</span></p>
<p><span>The nurse-maid was most dreadfully drunk, her
bonnet was awry, her face red and swollen, and one
eye was blackened. She was not at all pleasant.
In the baby carriage, which she dragged behind
her, an overgrown infant yelled like a sabbath of
witches.</span></p>
<p><span>"Look here," says she; "you're a gemmleman,
and I wantcher sh'd help me outen a fix. I'm in
a fix, s'wat I am—a damn bad fix."</span></p>
<p><span>I got that fool stone between myself and this
object, and listened to it pouring out an incoherent
tirade against some man who had done it dirt,
b'Gawd, and with whom it was incumbent I should
fight, and she was in a fix, s'what she was, and
could I, who was evidently a perfick gemmleman,
oblige her with four bits? All this while the baby
yelled till my ears sang again. Well, I gave her
four bits to get rid of her, but she stuck to me
yet the closer, and confided to me that she lived in
that house over yonder, she did—the house with
the blinds, and was nurse-maid there, so she was,
b'Gawd. But at last I got away and fled in the
direction of Stockton street. As I was going
along, however, I reflected that the shrieking
infant was somebody's child, and no doubt popular
in the house with the blinds. The parents ought
to know that its nurse got drunk and into fixes.
It was a duty—a dirty duty—for me to inform
upon her.</span></p>
<p><span>Much as I loathed to do so I turned towards the
house with the blinds. It stood hard by the
Russian Church, a huge white-painted affair, all
the windows closely shuttered and a bit of stained
glass in the front door—quite the most pretentious
house in the row. I had got directly opposite, and
was about to cross the street when, lo! around the
corner, marching rapidly, and with blue coats
flapping, buttons and buckles flashing, came a squad
of three, seven, nine—ten policemen. They
marched straight upon the house with the blinds.</span></p>
<p><span>I am not brilliant nor adventurous, but I have
been told that I am good, and I do strive to be
respectable, and pay my taxes and pew rent. As
a corollary to this, I loathed with, a loathing
unutterable to be involved in a mess of any kind.
The squad of policemen were about to enter the
house with the blinds, and not for worlds would
I have been found by them upon its steps. The
nurse-girl might heave that shrieking infant over
the cliff of Telegraph Hill, it were all one with me.
So I shrank back upon the sidewalk and watched
what followed.</span></p>
<p><span>Fifty yards from the house the squad broke into
a run, swarmed upon the front steps, and in a
moment were thundering upon the front door till
the stained glass leaped in its leads and shivered
down upon their helmets. And then, just at this
point, occurred an incident which, though it had no
bearing upon or connection with this yarn, is quite
queer enough to be set down. The shutters of one
of the top-story windows opened slowly, like the
gills of a breathing fish, the sash raised some six
inches with a reluctant wail, and a hand groped
forth into the open air. On the sill of the window
was lying a gilded Indian-club, and while I
watched, wondering, the hand closed upon it, drew
it under the sash, the window dropped guillotine-fashion,
and the shutters clapped to like the shutters
of a cuckoo clock. Why was the Indian-club lying
on the sill? Why, in Heaven's name, was it gilded?
Why did the owner of that mysterious groping
hand, seize upon it at the first intimation of
danger? I don't know—I never will know. But
I do know that the thing was eldritch and uncanny,
ghostly even, in the glare of that cheerless
afternoon's sun, in that barren park, with the trade
winds thrashing up from the seaward streets.</span></p>
<p><span>Suddenly the door crashed in. The policemen
vanished inside the house. Everything fell silent
again. I waited for perhaps fifty seconds—waited,
watching and listening, ready for anything
that might happen, expecting I knew not
what—everything.</span></p>
<p><span>Not more than five minutes had elapsed when
the policemen began to reappear. They came
slowly, and well they might, for they carried with
them the inert bodies of six gentlemen. When I
say carried I mean it in its most literal sense, for
never in all my life have I seen six gentlemen so
completely, so thoroughly, so hopelessly and
helplessly intoxicated. Well dressed they were, too,
one of them even in full dress. Salvos of artillery
could not have awakened that drunken half dozen,
and I doubt if any one of them could even have
been racked into consciousness.</span></p>
<p><span>Three hacks appeared (note that the patrol-wagon
was conspicuously absent), the six were
loaded upon the cushions, the word was given and
one by one the hacks rattled down Stockton street
and disappeared in the direction of the city. The
captain of the squad remained behind for a few
moments, locked the outside doors in the deserted
shuttered house, descended the steps, and went his
way across the park, softly whistling a quickstep.
In time he too vanished. The park, the rows of
houses, the windflogged streets, resumed their
normal quiet. The incident was closed.</span></p>
<p><span>Or was it closed? Judge you now. Next day
I was down upon the wharves, gripsack in hand,
capped and clothed for a long sea voyage. The
"</span><em class="italics">Mary Baker's</em><span>" boat was not yet come ashore,
but the beauty lay out there in the stream, flirting
with a bustling tug that circled about her, coughing
uneasily at intervals. Idle sailormen, 'longshoremen
and stevedores sat upon the stringpiece of the
wharf, chewing slivers and spitting reflectively into
the water. Across the intervening stretch of bay
came the noises from the "</span><em class="italics">Mary Baker's</em><span>" decks—noises
that were small and distinct, as if heard
through a telephone, the rattle of blocks, the
straining of a windlass, the bos'n's whistle, and once the
noise of sawing. A white cruiser sat solidly in the
waves over by Alcatraz, and while I took note of
her the flag was suddenly broken out and I heard
the strains of the ship's band. The morning was
fine. Tamalpais climbed out of the water like a
rousing lion. In a few hours we would be off on a
voyage to the underside of the earth. There was a
note of gayety in the nimble air, and one felt that
the world was young after all, and that it was good
to be young with her.</span></p>
<p><span>A bum-boat woman came down the wharf,
corpulent and round, with a roll in her walk that
shook first one fat cheek and then the other. She
was peddling trinkets amongst the wharf-loungers—pocket
combs, little round mirrors, shoestrings
and collar-buttons. She knew them all, or at least
was known to all of them, and in a few moments
she was retailing to them the latest news of the
town. Soon I caught a name or two, and on the
instant was at some pains to listen. The bum-boat
woman was telling the story of the house with the blinds:</span></p>
<p><span>"Sax of um, an' nobs ivry wan. But that bad
wid bug-juice! Whoo! Niver have Oi seen the
bate! An' divil a wan as can remimber owt for
two days by. Bory-eyed they were; struck dumb
an' deef an' dead wid whiskey and bubble-wather.
Not a manjack av um can tell the tale, but wan av
um used his knife cruel bad. Now which wan was
it? Howse the coort to find out?"</span></p>
<p><span>It appeared that the house with the blinds was,
or had been, a gambling house, and what I had
seen had been a raid. Then the rest of the story
came out, and the mysteries began to thicken.
That same evening, after the arrest of the six
inebriates, the house had been searched. The police
had found evidences of a drunken debauch of a
monumental character. But they had found more.
In a closet under the stairs the dead body of a man,
a well dressed fellow—beyond a doubt one of the
party—knifed to death by dreadful slashes in his
loins and at the base of his spine in true evil
hand-over-back fashion.</span></p>
<p><span>Now this is the mystery of the house with the blinds.</span></p>
<p><span>Beyond all doubt, one of the six drunken men
had done the murder. Which one? How to find
out? So completely were they drunk that not a
single one of them could recall anything of the
previous twelve hours. They had come out there
with their friend the day before. They woke from
their orgie to learn that one of them had worried
him to his death by means of a short palm-broad
dagger taken from a trophy of Persian arms that
hung over a divan.</span></p>
<p><span>Whose hand had done it? Which one of them
was the murdered? I could fancy them—I think
I can see them now—sitting there in their cells,
each man apart, withdrawn from his fellow-reveler,
and each looking furtively into his fellow's face,
asking himself, "Was it you? Was it you? or
was it I? Which of us, in God's name, has done
this thing?"</span></p>
<p><span>Well, it was never known. When I came back
to San Francisco a year or so later I asked about the
affair of the house with the blinds, and found that
it had been shelved with the other mysterious
crimes: The six men had actually been
"discharged for the want of evidence."</span></p>
<p><span>But for a long time the thing harassed me.
More than once since I have gone to that windy
park, with its quivering flagstaff and Geodetic
monument, and, sitting on a bench opposite the house,
asked myself again and again the bootless
questions. Why had the drunken nurse-maid
mentioned the house to me in the first place? And
why at that particular time? Why had she lied to
me in telling me that she lived there? Why was
that gilded Indian-club on the sill of the upper
window? And whose—here's a point—whose was the
hand that drew it inside the house? And then, of
course, last of all, the ever recurrent question,
which one of those six inebriates should have stood
upon the drop and worn the cap—which one of
the company had knifed his friend and bundled him
into that closet under the stairs? Had he done it
during the night of the orgie, or before it? Was his
friend drunk at the time, or sober? I never could
answer these questions, and I suppose I shall never
know the secret of "The House With the Blinds."</span></p>
<p><span>A Greek family lives there now, and rent the
upper story to a man who blows the organ in the
Russian Church, and to two Japanese, who have
a photograph gallery on Stockton street. I wonder
to what use they have put the little closet under
the stairs?</span></p>
<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em"></div>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />