Cornell Woolrich - Nightwebs (A Collection of Stories)

One of them flashed a badge — maybe Crow had loaned him his for the occasion. “You’re being arrested for putting slugs in that phone. It won’t do any good to raise your voice and shriek for help, try to tell people different. But suit yourself.”

I knew that as well as he; heads turned to stare after us by the dozens as they started with me in their midst through the station’s main-level. But not one in all that crowd would have dared interfere with what they mistook for a legitimate arrest in the line of duty. The one with the badge kept it conspicuously tilted in his upturned palm, at sight of which the frozen onlookers slowly parted, made way for us through their midst. I was being led to my doom in full view of scores of people.

I tried twice to dig my feet in when we came to ridges in the level of the terraced marble floor, but the point of the gun at the base of my spine removed the impediment each time, I was so used to not wanting to die. Then slowly this determination came to me: “I’m going to force them to shoot me, before they get me into the car or whatever it is they’re taking me to. It’s my only way out, cheat death by death. I’m to be buried agonizingly alive, anyway; I’ll compel them to end it here instead, by that gun. That clean, friendly gun. But not just shoot me, shoot me dead, otherwise—” A violent wrench backwards would do it, compressing the gun into its holder’s body, discharging it automatically into me. “Poor Joan,” I thought, “left waiting on the Hamlin station-platform — for all eternity.” But that didn’t alter my determination any.

The voice of the train-dispatcher, loudspeaker and all, was dwindling behind us. “New York Express, Track Four, leaves in five more min—”

Sunlight suddenly struck down at us from outside the station portico, between the huge two-story high columns, and down below at the distant bottom of the long terraced steps there was one of those black touring-cars standing waiting. “Now!” I thought, and tensed, ready to rear backward into the gun so that it would explode into my vitals.

A Western Union messenger in typical olive-green was running up the sloping steps straight toward my captors, arm extended. Not a boy though, a grown man. One of them disguised, I knew, even as I looked at him. “Urgent!” he panted, and thrust a message into the hand of the one with the badge. I let myself relax again in their hands, postponing for a moment the forcing of death into my own body, while I waited to see what this was.

He read it through once, then quickly whispered it aloud a second time to the other two — or part of it, anyway. “Penalty cancelled, give ex-Brother Bud safe-conduct to New York on promise never to return. Renewed oath of eternal silence on his part accepted. Interment ceremonies will take place as planned—” He pointed with his finger to the rest without repeating it aloud, that’s how I knew there was more.

The messenger had already hurried down again to where the car was, and darted behind it. A motorcycle suddenly shot out from the other side of it and racketed off, trailing little puff-balls of blue gas-smoke. A moment later the three with me, scattered like startled buzzards cheated of their prey, had followed him down, at different angles that converged toward the car. I found myself standing there alone at the top of the station-steps, a lone figure dwarfed by the monolithic columns.

I reeled, turned and started headlong through the long reaches of the station behind me, bent over like a marathon runner reaching for the guerdon. “Board! ‘Board!” was sounding faintly somewhere in the distance. I could see them pulling the adjustable exit-gates closed ahead of me. I held one arm straight up in the air, and they saw me coming and left a little opening for me, enough for one person to dive through.

The train was gathering speed when I lurched down to track level, but I caught the handrail of the last vestibule of the last car just before it cleared the concrete runway beside the tracks. A conductor dragged me in bodily and I fell in a huddle at his feet.

“You last-minute passengers!” I heard him grumbling, “you’d think your life depended on it—”

I lay there heaving, flat on my back like a fish out of water, looking up at him. “It did,” I managed to get out.

I was leaning far out from the bottom vestibule-step at nearly a 45-degree angle, holding on with one hand, when the Hamlin station-platform swept into sight forty minutes later. I could see the whole boat-shaped “pier” from end to end.

There was something wrong; she wasn’t on it. Nobody was on it, only a pair of lounging darkies, backs against the station-wall. The big painted sign floated up, came to a halt almost before my eyes: “HAMLIN.” She’d said Hamlin; what had happened, what had gone wrong? It had to be Hamlin; there wasn’t any other stop until tomorrow morning, states away!

I jumped down, went skidding into the little stuffy two-by-four waiting-room. Nobody in it. I dashed for the ticket-window, grabbed the bars with both hands, all but shook them. “A girl — blue eyes, blonde hair, brown coat — where is she, where’d she go? Haven’t you seen anyone like that around here?”

“Nope, nobody been around here all afternoon, ain’t sold a ticket nor even had an inquiry—”

“The bus from the city — did it get here yet?”

“Ten full minutes ago. It’s out there in back of the station right now.”

I hurled through the opposite door like something demented. The locomotive-bell was tolling dismally, almost like a funeral knell. I collared the bus-driver despairingly.

“Nope, didn’t bring any young women out at all on my last run. I’d know; I like young women.”

“And no one like that got on, at the downtown city-terminal?”

“Nope, no blondes. I’d know, I like blondes.”

The wheels were already starting to click warningly over the rail-intersections as the train glided into motion; I could hear them around on the other side of the station from where I was. Half-crazed, I ducked inside again. The agent belatedly remembered something, called me over as I stood there dazedly looking all around me. “Say, by the way, your name Ingram? Forgot to tell you, special messenger brought this out awhile back, asked me to deliver it to the New York train.”

I snatched at it. It was in her handwriting! I tore it open, my head swivelled crazily from left to right as my eyes raced along the writing.

I didn’t take the bus to Hamlin after all, but don’t worry. Go on to New York and wait there for me instead. And think of me often, and pray for me sometimes, and above all keep your pledge of silence.

She’d found out! was the first thunderbolt that struck me. And the second was a dynamite-blast that split me from head to foot. She was in their hands! That gruesome message that had saved me at the station came back to me word for word, and I knew now what it meant and what the part was that they’d kept from me. “Penalty cancelled. Give Brother Bud safe-conduct. Renewed oath on his part accepted—” But I hadn’t made one. She must have promised them that on my behalf. “Interment will take place as planned —” Substitute accepted!

And that substitute was Joan. She’d taken my place. She’d gone to them and made a bargain with them. Saved me, at the cost of her own life.

I don’t remember how I got back to the city. Maybe I thrust all the money I had on me at someone and borrowed their car. Maybe I just stole one left unguarded on the street with the key in it. I don’t remember where I got the gun either. I must have gone back to that same pawnshop I’d already been to once, as soon as I got in.

When things came back into focus, I was already on the porch of that boarded-up house at Ellendale, battering my body apart against the door casing. I broke in finally by jumping from a tree to the porch-shed and kicking in one of the upper-story windows, less stoutly boarded.