Cornell Woolrich - Nightwebs (A Collection of Stories)

He didn’t answer. She glanced at the adjoining bed, but it was only rumpled on top, the covers hadn’t been turned down. He must have just lain down on it without getting in.

She didn’t speak again until she had come out of the shower in turn. He was all dressed now, standing looking out of the window, cigarette smoke working its way back around the bend of his neck. She snapped off her rubber bathing cap, remarked:

“I guess Leona thinks we died in our sleep.”

She wriggled into a yellow jersey that shot ten years to pieces — and she’d looked about twenty to begin with.

“Is Burroughs still here,” she asked wearily, “or did he decide to go back to town anyway, after I left you two last night?”

“He left,” he said shortly. He didn’t turn around. The smoke coming around the nape of his neck thickened almost to a fog, then thinned out again, as though he’d taken a whale of a drag just then.

“I was afraid of that,” she said. But she didn’t act particularly disturbed. “Took the eight-o’clock train, I suppose.”

He turned around. “Eight o’clock, hell!” he said. “He took the milk train!”

She put down the comb and stopped what she was doing. “What?” Then she said. “How do you know?”

“I drove him to the station, that’s how I know!” he snapped. His face was turned to her, but he wasn’t looking at her. His eyes focused a little too far to one side, then shifted over a little too far to the other, trying to dodge hers.

“What got into him, to go at that unearthly hour? The milk train — that hits here at 4:30 A.M., doesn’t it?”

He was looking down. “At 4:20,” he said. He was already lighting another cigarette, and it was a live one judging by the way it danced around before he could get it to stand still between his cupped hands.

“Well, what were you doing up at that hour yourself?”

“I hadn’t come up to bed yet at all. He decided to go, so I ran him in.”

“You had a row with him,” she stated positively. “Why else should he leave—”

“I did not!” He took a couple of quick steps toward the door, as though her barrage of questions was getting on his nerves, as though he wanted to escape from the room. Then he changed his mind, stayed in the new place, looking at her. “I got it out of him,” he said quietly. That special quietness of voice that made her an accomplice in his financial difficulties. No, every wife should be that. That special tone that seemed to make her his shill in a confidence game. That special tone that she was beginning to hate.

“You don’t act very happy about it,” she remonstrated.

He took a wallet out of his pocket, split it lengthwise, showing a pleating of currency edges. And it was so empty, most of the time!

“Not the whole twenty-five hundred?”

“The works.”

“You mean he carries that much in ready cash around with him, when he just comes for a week end in the country! Why... why, I saw him go in to cash a twenty-five-dollar check Saturday afternoon in the village. So he could hold up his end when he went out to the inn that night. I was embarrassed, because he asked me if I thought you could oblige him; I not only knew you couldn’t, but I knew it was up to us as hosts to pay his way, and I didn’t know what to say. Luckily you weren’t around, so he couldn’t ask you; he finally went in to get it cashed himself.”

“I know,” he said impatiently. “I met him out front and drove him in myself!”

“You?”

“I told him I was strapped, couldn’t help him out. Then after he’d cashed it himself and was putting it away, he explained that he had twenty-five hundred on him, but it was a deposit earmarked for the bank Monday morning. He hadn’t had time to put it in Friday afternoon before he came out here; our invitation had swept him off his feet so. He wanted this smaller amount just for expense money.”

“But then he handed the twenty-five hundred over to you anyway?”

“No, he didn’t,” he said, goaded. “At least, not at first. He had his check book on him, and when I finally broke down his resistance after you’d gone to bed last night, he wrote me out a check. Or started to. I suggested as long as he happened to have that exact amount in cash, he make the loan in cash; that I was overdrawn at my own bank, and if I tried to put his check through there they’d put a nick in it and I needed every penny. He finally agreed; I gave him a receipt, and he gave me the cash.”

“But then why did he leave at that ungodly hour?”

“Well, he did one of those slow burns, after it was all over and he’d come across. You know him when it comes to parting with money. It must have finally dawned on him that we’d only had him out here, among a lot of people so much younger than him, to put the bee on him. Anyway, he asked when the next train was, and I couldn’t induce him to stay over; he insisted on leaving then and there. So I drove him in. In one way, I was afraid if he didn’t go, he’d think it over and ask for his money back, so I didn’t urge him too much.”

“But you’re sure you didn’t have words over it?”

“He didn’t say a thing. But I could tell by the sour look on his face what he was thinking.”

“I suppose he’s off me, too,” she sighed.

“So what? You don’t need an extra grandfather.”

They had come out of the bedroom and started down the upper hall toward the stairs. She silenced him at sight of an open door ahead, with sunlight streaming out of it. “Don’t say anything about it in front of Leona. She’ll expect to get paid right away.”

An angular Negress with a dust cloth in her hand looked out at them as they reached the open door. “Mawnin’. I about gib you two up. Coffee’s been on and off ‘bout three times. I can’t drink no more of it myself; make me bilious. I done fix the old gentleman’s room up while I was waitin’.”

“Oh, you didn’t have to bother,” Jacqueline Blaine assured her happily, almost gayly; “we’re not having any more guests for a while, thank—”

“He still here, ain’t he?” asked Leona, peering surprisedly.

This time it was Gil who answered. “No. Why?”

“He done left his bag in there — one of ’em, anyway. He want it sent to the station after him?”

Jacqueline looked in surprise from the maid to her husband. The blinding sunlight flashing through the doorway made his face seem whiter than it actually was. It was hard on the eyes, too, made him shift about, as in their bedroom before.

“He must’ve overlooked it in his hurry, gone off without it,” he murmured. “I didn’t know how many he’d brought with him so I never noticed.”

Jacqueline turned out the palms of her hands. “How could he do that, when he only brought two in the first place, and” — she glanced into the guest room — “this one’s the larger of the two?”

“It was in the clothes closet; maybe he didn’t see it himself,” offered Leona, “and forgot he had it with him. I slide it out just now.” She hurried down the stairs to prepare their delayed breakfast.

Jacqueline lowered her voice, with a precautionary glance after her, and asked him: “You didn’t get him drunk, did you? Is that how you got it out of him? He’s liable to make trouble for us as soon as he—”

“He was cold sober,” he growled. “Try to get him to drink!” So he had tried, she thought to herself, and hadn’t succeeded.

“Well, then, I don’t see how on earth anyone could go off and leave a bag that size, when they only brought one other one out with them in the first place.”

He was obviously irritable, nerves on edge; anyone would have been after being up the greater part of the night. He cut the discussion short by taking an angry step over, grasping the doorknob, and pulling the door shut. Since he seemed to take such a trifling thing that seriously, she refrained from dwelling on it any longer just then. He’d feel better after he’d had some coffee.