Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction August 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
the TRAP
By BETSY CURTIS
She had her mind made up—the one way they'd make her youngagain was over her dead body!
ld Miss Barbara Noble twitched aside the edge of the white scrimcurtain to get a better look at the young man coming down the street.He might be the one.
The young man bent a little under the weight of the battered blacksuitcase as he crossed Maple and started up Prospect on Miss Noble'sside. She could see him set the case down on the wide porch of theRaney house and wipe his forehead with a handkerchief. Then she lostsight of him as he advanced to the door. He could be a visitor to theRaney's, but they were out of town on vacation. He could be asalesman.
Miss Barbara shifted her rocker to the other side of the window whereshe could watch without having to disturb the curtain. Thissecond-floor sitting room made an excellent lookout. She quicklyscanned the street in the other direction, but there was no sign ofmovement in the hot sunlight. She settled down to watch the blacksuitcase sitting uncommunicatively at the edge of the porch.
It must have been all of two minutes before the young man appearedfrom under the over-hanging roof and picked up the case. A persistentfellow. He went down to the sidewalk and approached her own house,came up on her own front doorstep, tried to set the case down on thenarrow stoop, couldn't, straightened up and rang the bell. A raucousbuzz filled the sitting room.
arbara Noble leaned toward the window, pulled back the curtain ascant inch, and studied his back as he looked at the windows on theother side of the front door. Limp yellow hair and a big perspirationstain in the middle of a dark sport shirt were her chief impressions.He could be a bona fide salesman working hard at it. She wouldn't lethim in, of course; but she felt a little sorry for him lugging thatbig case around in this weather. Then he turned and looked straight atthe window behind which she was hiding, and she let the curtain gosuddenly. Had he seen it move? The buzzer sounded again, imperiously.
Miss Barbara got up stiffly, moved to the big vizer screen in thenearest corner, and switched it on. The man might have somethinginteresting and she couldn't get out to shop the way she used to. Shesmoothed her lilac housedress and left the room to descend the stairsto the front door.
In the tiny front hall she hesitated, then opened the door inwardabout eight inches. Deftly the man stuck the broad brown toe of hisshoe into the opening and looked down at her. She grinned as she sawhis expression of shock.
She was old, really old. Her sparse white hair was pulled so tightlyinto a knob on top of her head that the plentiful wrinkles on herforehead and around her eyes seemed to run vertically, giving her anoriental look. The hand she rested on the door jamb was a waxy-whiteclaw, a blue vein standing up prominently under the skin tig