Cornell Woolrich - Nightwebs (A Collection of Stories)

“Afraid to go in and face her, eh? I used to be that way, too. Why don’t you do like I do now? Why don’t you take off your shoes first just outside the door? That way they never hear you. Otherwise, you’ll stand out there in the hall all night.”

He winked sagely, and he trudged on up out of sight.

I must remember that, thought Freshman. I may need it ten years from now.

He looked at his watch. Four forty-four and a half.

In the room, darkness and two whispering voices.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m looking for a cigarette. I gave my case away. I have none with me.”

“Reach behind you. There is a table. To your left. On it a box of them. Your fingers will find it.”

“They have. I’ve got it.”

Something loosely dangling, like a chain-pull, gave a smothered plink .

“Do not touch the lamp. You promised me.”

“I won’t. I didn’t know there was one there.”

“The box will play a tune, as the lid comes up. Do not be alarmed when you first hear it—”

She had spoken too late. A startling bell-like note had already sounded, and his fingers gave an involuntary jump away from it before he could control them. They struck pottery, there was an agitated swirl, and he could feel the lamp going over. He clawed at it, got only a handful of loose chain, and then that was snaked away from him.

There was a dull thud from the floor, without breakage, but followed by a blinding flash — or what seemed like one. It stayed on, however, in all its intensity, rocking a little, that was all. It glared upward through the upside-down shade, full into their faces, like a spotlight trained from the floor at their very feet.

Two livid satanic masks were the result, floating around without shoulders or bodies or background.

He could only see the one opposite him, not the one she saw.

There was dawning stupefaction on it.

It deepened instant by instant.

It became consternation.

It became unutterable horror.

She started to shake her head. She couldn’t articulate. She could only shake wildly. As if in denial of this trick her eyes were playing upon her. He righted the lamp. The light broadened, naturalized, swam out about the room now as it should have.

He turned to see if that would moderate the stark terror that seemed to have engulfed her. It didn’t. It augmented it, as if the more of him she could see, the greater became her unreasoning terror.

She gave a startled leap to her feet, as if the divan were afire. But it was he she was looking at. He remained with one knee crouched on it, half-sitting, half-standing.

She tried to scream. She couldn’t articulate that either. He saw the cords of her neck swell out, then contract again. No sound came. Her larynx was paralyzed with horror.

She kept shaking her head, as if her only salvation, her very sanity, depended on denying what had taken place, and believing in her own denial.

She took a tottering step, as if to turn and flee. Instead, she clawed at the table the lamp had originally been on. A drawer leaped out from it, and her fingers groped inside. There was a flash as they knotted, swept high up over her head. The light exploded along a gleaming knife blade in her hand.

He was too transfixed to move in time; she would have surely had him.

The threatened blow never fell. Instead it crumpled, seemed to disintegrate into a swaying lurch that rocked her whole body. The knife fell, loosened from her fingers. Her hand dropped, limp, and clutched at her heart.

With the other she pointed, quivering, toward the opened drawer, as if asking him to help her. A bluish cast had overspread her lips.

She was trying to whisper something. “Heart-drops — quick!”

He turned and dredged a small vial from the drawer. Then before he could turn back and reach her with it, a swirl of violently agitated air rushed past him, as when something goes over.

When he turned back to her, the fall had already completed itself. She lay there still, one hand vaguely reaching toward her heart.

He picked her up and put her on the divan. He felt for her heartbeat.

He couldn’t find it; it had expired.

Too panic-stricken to believe the evidence of his own senses, he snatched up the mirror-lined cigarette box, strewing its contents all over the floor. Then he held the inside of the lid to her lips. It was unadulterated horror. A miniature waltz started to play, there in front of her face. But the mirrored surface remained unclouded.

She was dead.

He whispered hoarsely aloud.

“She’s dead. My God, she’s dead!”

He didn’t know what to do. He was so stunned at the suddenness of it, its inexplicability, that he sat there numbed, beside her, for a moment or two.

He picked up the knife after awhile, looked at it, dazed. Then he looked over at the door.

He rose at last, started to go toward it, to open it, to call to Freshman.

Then he stopped short, stood where he was, knife in hand.

He looked at it. Then he looked at the door. Then he turned his head and glanced at her, where she lay in new death.

At last he went back to her.

He tested her one last time for signs of life. She was gone irremediably. Nothing could ever bring her back again. He picked up the heart-drops and put them into his own pocket.

Then he crouched over her as he had been before, one knee resting on the divan, half-sitting, half-standing. He raised the knife high overhead.

After a moment he shut his eyes, and the knife in his hand drove downward and he felt something soft and thick stop it, at the hilt.

He left it in her, and got up from there without looking. He went toward the door. This time he didn’t stop. He didn’t walk in a very straight line; he swayed, as though he were a little unbalanced himself.

He swung the door back. All the way back, flat against the wall, so there was a good unobstructed view of the room.

Freshman was standing there, a little to one side. The detective’s head started to swing around toward him. He didn’t wait for it to finish.

“I’ve just killed her, Freshman,” he said in a strangely steady voice. “You’d better come in here.”

This time it was Jones doing the hanging around waiting outside the door. For just a moment or two, perhaps, but waiting alone, unguarded, just the same. Standing straight and stiff as a cigar-store Indian, his back to the room, the way Freshman had been before. He could hear Freshman moving around inside. He didn’t look in to watch what he was doing. He kept his head turned the other way.

Freshman finished at last. He came out and carefully closed the door after him.

“I notice you didn’t stir, did you?” he commented. “You had plenty of chance to make a break for it.”

“Are you kidding?” Jones answered. “You could have dropped me with a shot straight down the stair-well from up here.”

“Are you sure that’s the only reason you stayed put?” Freshman asked drily. “Come on, let’s go,” he said.

They went down the stairs together and out into the street. They walked a preliminary block or so, until Freshman could flag a cab. Then they both got in. Not a word was said by either of them.

“Downtown,” was all Freshman said to the driver.

That could mean either the main police headquarters or Jones’ rooms at the Victoria, to wait for the following evening and the boat for New York. Either one was downtown from Valencia Street.

Jones didn’t ask him which one it was going to be. Freshman didn’t tell him. Spanish custody, or American. Leniency or lynch-law.

Jones kept telling off each intersection as they crossed it. You could tell he was doing that by the way his head gave a little side-turn each time. He was breathing kind of fast, though he was only sitting still in a taxi. His forehead glistened a little each time a streetlight washed over it. Finally he turned in desperation and stared into Freshman’s face.