Cornell Woolrich - Nightwebs (A Collection of Stories)

“Don’t let’s give up yet, Ed. You know the old saying, ‘No news is good news.’” Then: “Don’t let me keep you standing out here. Joe’s upstairs; I’ll call him down.”

As he followed her inside, his whole first impression of Smiles’ mother was that she was as nice, wholesome, and inartificial a woman as you could find anywhere. And first impressions are always half the battle.

She led him along a neat, hardwood-floored hall, varnished to the brightness of a mirror. An equally spotless white staircase rose at the back of it to the floor above.

“Let me take your hat,” she said thoughtfully, and hung it on a peg. “You look peaked, Ed; I can tell you’re taking it hard. That trip up is strenuous, too. It’s awful; you know you read about things like this in the papers nearly every day, but it’s only when it hits home you realize—”

Talking disconnectedly like that, she had reached the entrance to the living-room. She thrust her hand around to the inside of the door frame and snapped on the lights. He was standing directly in the center of the opening as she did so. There was something a little unexpected about the way they went on, but he couldn’t figure what it was; it must have been just a subconscious impression on his part. Maybe they were a little brighter than he’d expected, and after coming in out of the dark— The room looked as though it had been painted fairly recently, and he supposed that was what it was: the walls and woodwork gave it back with unexpected dazzle. It was too small a detail even to waste time on. Or is any detail ever too small?

She had left him for a moment to go as far as the foot of the stairs. “Joe, Smiles’ husband is here,” he heard her call.

A deep rumbling voice answered, “She with him?”

She tactfully didn’t answer that, no doubt to spare Bliss’s feelings; she seemed to be such a considerate woman. “Come down, dear,” was all she said.

He was a thick, heavy-set man, with a bull neck and a little circular fringe of russet-blond hair around his head, the crown of it bald. He was going to be the blunt, aggressive type, Bliss could see. With eyes too small to match it. Eyes that said, “Try and get past us.”

“So you’re Bliss.” He reached out and shook hands with him. It was a hard shake, but not particularly friendly. His hands were calloused to the lumpiness of alligator hide. “Well, you’re taking it pretty calmly, it seems to me.”

Bliss looked at him. “How do you figure that?”

“Joe!” the mother had remonstrated, but so low neither of them paid any attention.

“Coming up here like this. Don’t you think it’s your business to stick close down there, where you could do some good?”

Mrs. Alden laid a comforting hand on Bliss’s arm. “Don’t, Joe. You can tell how the boy feels by looking at him. I’m Smiles’ mother and I know how it is; if she said she was coming up here, why, naturally—”

“I know you’re Teresa’s mother,” he said emphatically, as if to shut her up.

A moment of awkward silence hung suspended in the air above their three heads. Bliss had a funny “lost” feeling for a minute, as though something had eluded him just then, something had been a little askew. It was like when there’s a word you are trying desperately to remember; it’s on the tip of your tongue, but you can’t bring it out. It was such a small thing, though—

“I’ll get you something to eat, Ed,” she said, and as she turned to go out of the room, Bliss couldn’t help overhearing her say to her husband in a stage whisper: “Talk to him. Find out what really happened.”

Alden had about as much finesse as a trained elephant doing the gavotte among ninepins. He cleared his throat judicially. “D’ja do something you shouldn’t? That how it come about?”

“What do you mean?”

“Wull, we have no way of knowing what kind of a disposition you’ve got. Have you got a pretty bad temper, are you a little too quick with the flat of your hand?”

Bliss looked at him incredulously. Then he got it. “That’s hardly a charge I expected to have to defend myself on. But if it’s required of me — I happen to worship the ground my wife walks on. I’d sooner have my right arm wither away than—”

“No offense,” said Alden lamely. “It’s been known to happen before, that’s all.”

“Not in my house,” Bliss said, and gave him a steely look.

Smiles’ mother came in again at this point, with something on a tray. Bliss didn’t even bother looking up to see what it was. He waved it aside, sat there with his arms dangling out over his knees, his head bent way over, looking straight down through them.

The room was a vague irritant. He kept getting it all the time, at least every time he raised his head and looked around, but he couldn’t figure what was doing it. There was only one thing he was sure of: it wasn’t the people in it. So that left it up to the room. Smiles’ mother was the soothing, soft-moving type that it was pleasant to have around you. And even the husband, in spite of his brusqueness, was the stolid emotionless sort that didn’t get on your nerves.

What was it, then? Was the room furnished in bad taste? It wasn’t; it was comfortable and homey-looking. And even if it hadn’t been, that wouldn’t have done it. He was no interior decorator, allergic to anything like that. Was it the glare from the recent paint job? No, not that, either; now that he looked, there wasn’t any glare. It wasn’t even glossy paint; it was the dull kind without highlights. That had just been an optical illusion when the lights first went on.

He shook his head a little to get rid of it, and thought, “What’s annoying me in here?” And he couldn’t tell.

He was holding a lighted cigarette between his dangling fingers, and the ash was slowly accumulating.

“Pass him an ash tray, Joe,” she said in a watery voice. She was starting to cry, without any fuss, unnoticeably, but she still had time to think of their guest’s comfort. Some women are like that.

He looked and a whole cylinder of ash had fallen to the rug. It looked like a good rug, too. “I’m sorry,” he said, and rubbed it out with his shoe. Even the rug bothered him in some way.

Pattern too loud? No, it was quiet, dark-colored, and in good taste. He couldn’t find a thing the matter with it. But it kept troubling him just the same.

Something went clang . It wasn’t in the same room with them; some other part of the house, faint and muffled, like a defective pipe joint settling or swelling.

She said, “Joe, when are you going to have the plumber in to fix that water pipe? It’s sprung out of line again. You’ll wait until we have a good-sized leak on our hands.”

“Yeah, that’s right,” he said. It sounded more like an original discovery than a recollection of something overlooked. Bliss couldn’t have told why, it just did. More of his occultism, he supposed.

“I’ll have to get a fresh handkerchief,” she said apologetically, got up and passed between them, the one she had been using until now rolled into a tight little ball at her upper lip.

“Take it easy,” Alden said consolingly.

His eyes went to Bliss, then back to her again, as if to say: “Do you see that she’s crying, as well as I do?” So Bliss glanced at her profile as she went by, and she was. She ought to have been; she was the girl’s mother.

When she came in again with the fresh handkerchief she’d gone to get, he got to his feet.

“This isn’t bringing her back. I’d better get down to the city again. They might have word for me by now.”

Alden said, “Can I talk to you alone a minute, Bliss, before you go?”

The three of them had moved out into the hall. Mrs. Alden went up the stairs slowly. The higher up she got the louder her sobs became. Finally, a long wail burst out, and the closing of a door cut it in half. A minute later bedsprings protested, as if someone had dropped on them full length.