Cornell Woolrich - Nightwebs (A Collection of Stories)

Tom had been right; there was only one other guy in the whole balcony. Kids went up there, mostly, during the matinees, and they’d all gone home by now, and the evening crowd hadn’t come in yet.

Stahl picked the second row, sat down in the exact middle of it. Tom left him, saying, “I’ll be back when my five-minute relief comes up.”

Stahl had thought the show would take his mind off his troubles. Later, thinking back over this part of the evening, he was willing to admit he hadn’t known what real trouble was yet. But all he could think of was he hadn’t eaten all day, and how hungry he was; his empty stomach kept his mind off the canned story going on on the screen.

He was beginning to feel weak and chilly, and he didn’t even have a nickel for a cup of hot coffee. He couldn’t ask Tom for any more money, not even that nickel. Tom had been tiding him over for weeks now, carrying his share of the room rent, and all he earned himself was a pittance. Lew Stahl was too decent, too fair-minded a young fellow, to ask him for another penny, not even if he dropped in his tracks from malnutrition. He couldn’t get work. He couldn’t beg on the street corner; he hadn’t reached that point yet. He’d rather starve first. Well, he was starving already.

He pulled his belt over a notch to make his stomach seem tighter, and shaded his hand to his eyes for a minute.

That lone man sitting back there taking in the show had looked prosperous, well fed. Stahl wondered if he’d turn him down, if he went back to him and confidentially asked him for a dime. He’d probably think it was strange that Stahl should be in a movie house if he were down and out, but that couldn’t be helped. Two factors emboldened him in this maiden attempt at panhandling. One was it was easier to do in here in the dark than out on the open street. The second was there was no one around to be a witness to his humiliation if the man bawled him out. If he was going to tackle him at all, he’d better not sit thinking about it any longer, he’d better do it before the house started to fill up, or he knew he’d never have the nerve. You’d be surprised how difficult it is to ask alms of a stranger when you’ve never done it before, what a psychological barrier separates the honest man from the panhandler.

Lew Stahl turned his head and glanced back at the man, to try and measure his chances ahead of time. Then he saw to his surprise that the man had dozed off in his seat; his eyes were closed. And suddenly it was no longer a matter of asking him for money, it was a matter of taking it, helping himself while the man slept. Tom had gone back to the main floor, and there was no one else up there but the two of them. Before he knew it he had changed seats, was in the one next to the sleeper.

“A dollar,” he kept thinking, “that’s all I’ll take, just a dollar, if he has a wallet. Just enough to buy a big thick steak and...”

His stomach contracted into a painful knot at the very thought, and salt water came up into his mouth, and his hunger was so great that his hand spaded out almost of its own accord and was groping toward the inner pocket of the man’s coat.

The coat was loosely buttoned and bulged conveniently open the way the man was sitting, and Stahl’s downward dipping fingers found the stiff grained edge of a billfold without much trouble. It came up between his two fingers, those were all he’d dared insert in the pocket, and it was promisingly fat and heavy.

A second later the billfold was down between Lew’s own legs and he was slitting it edgewise. The man must have been sweating, the leather was sort of sticky and damp on one side only, the side that had been next to his body. Some of the stickiness adhered to Stahl’s own fingertips.

It was crammed with bills, the man must have been carrying between seventy and eighty dollars around with him. Stahl didn’t count them, or even take the whole batch out. True to his word, he peeled off only the top one, a single, tucked it into the palm of his hand, started the wallet back where he’d found it.

It was done now; he’d been guilty of his first criminal offense.

He slipped it in past the mouth of the pocket, released it, started to draw his arm carefully back. The whole revere on that side of the man’s coat started to come with Lew’s arm, as though the two had become glued together. He froze, held his arm where it was, stiffly motionless across the man’s chest. The slightest move, and the sleeper might awake. The outside button on Lew’s cuff had freakishly caught in the man’s lapel button hole, twisted around in some way. And it was a defective, jagged-edged button, he remembered that now well; it had teeth to hang on by.

He tried to slip his other hand in between the lapel and his arm and free them. There wasn’t enough room for leverage. He tried to hold the man’s lapel down and pull his own sleeve free, insulating the tug so it wouldn’t penetrate the sleeper’s consciousness. The button held on, the thread was too strong to break that way.

It was the most excruciating form of mental agony. Any minute he expected the sleeper’s eyes to pop open and fasten on him accusingly. Lew had a disreputable penknife in his pocket. He fumbled desperately for it with one hand, to cut the damnable button free. He was as in a strait-jacket; he got it out of his right-hand pocket with his left hand, crossing one arm over the other to do so. At the same time he had to hold his prisoned arm rigid, and the circulation was already leaving it.

He got the tarnished blade open with his thumbnail, jockeyed the knife around in his hand. He was sweating profusely. He started sawing away at the triple-ply button-thread that had fastened them together. The knife blade was none too keen, but it finally severed. Then something happened; not the thing he’d dreaded, not the accusation of suddenly opened eyes. Something worse. The sleeper started sagging slowly forward in his seat. The slight vibration of the hacking knife must have been transmitted to him, dislodged him. He was beginning to slop over like a sandbag. And people don’t sleep like that, bending over at the floor.

Stahl threw a panicky glance behind him. And now accusing eyes did meet him, from four or five rows back. A woman had come in and taken a seat some time during the past minute or two. She must have seen the jockeying of a knife blade down there, she must have wondered what was going on. She was definitely not looking at the screen, but at the two of them.

All presence of mind gone, Lew tried to edge his crumpled seat-mate back upright, for appearances’ sake. Pretend to her they were friends sitting side by side; anything, as long as she didn’t suspect he had just picked his pocket. But there was something wrong — the flabbiness of muscle, the lack of heavy breathing to go with a sleep so deep it didn’t break no matter how the sleeper’s body fell. That told him all he needed to know; he’d been sitting quietly for the past five minutes next to a man who was either comatose or already a corpse. Someone who must have dropped dead during the show, without even falling out of his seat.

He jumped out into the aisle past the dead man, gave him a startled look, then started excitedly toward the back to tip off Tom or whomever he could find. But he couldn’t resist looking back a second time as he went chasing off. The woman’s eyes strayed accusingly after him as he flashed by.

Tom was imitating a statue against the wall of the lounge, beside the stairs.

“Come back there where I was sitting!” Lew panted. “There’s a guy next to me out cold, slopping all over!”

“Don’t start any disturbance,” Tom warned in an undertone.

He went back with Lew and flashed his torch quickly on and off, and the face it high-lighted wasn’t the color of anything living; it was like putty.