Cornell Woolrich - Nightwebs (A Collection of Stories)

Nelson read it to the end, folded it, put it in his pocket without changing his expression.

“Well, did you find out anything?” the captain wanted to know.

“No, but I’m on the way to,” Nelson assured him, but he may have been thinking of that other case of his own, and not the one they were all steamed up over. He went out again without saying where.

He got to Mrs. Avram’s at quarter to seven, and rang the bell. The little girl came out to the basement-entrance. At sight of him, she called out shrilly, but without humorous intent, “Ma, that man’s here again.”

Nelson smiled a little and walked back to the living-quarters. A sudden hush had fallen thick enough to cut with a knife. Krassin was there again, in his shirt-sleeves, having supper with Mrs. Avram and the two kids. They not only had electricity now but a midget radio as well, he noticed. You can’t arrest people for buying a midget radio. It was silent as a tomb, but he let the back of his hand brush it, surreptitiously, and the front of the dial was still warm from recent use.

“I’m not butting in, am I?” he greeted them cheerfully.

“N-no, sit down,” said Mrs. Avram nervously. “This is Mr. Krassin, a friend of the family. I don’t know your name—”

“Nelson.”

Krassin just looked at him watchfully.

The dick said: “Sorry to trouble you. I just wanted to ask you a couple questions about your husband. About what time was it he had the accident?”

“You know that better than I,” she objected. “You were the one came here and told me.”

“I don’t mean Avram, I mean Edwards, in Detroit — the riveter that fell off the girder.”

Her face went a little gray, as if the memory were painful. Krassin’s face didn’t change color, but only showed considerable surprise.

“About what time of day?” he repeated.

“Noon,” she said almost inaudibly.

“Lunch-time,” said the dick softly, as if to himself. “Most workmen carry their lunch from home in a pail—” He looked at her thoughtfully. Then he changed the subject, wrinkled up his nose appreciatively. “That coffee smells good,” he remarked.

She gave him a peculiar, strained smile. “Have a cup, Mr. Detective,” she offered. He saw her eyes meet Krassin’s briefly.

“Thanks, don’t mind if I do,” drawled Nelson.

She got up. Then, on her way to the stove, she suddenly flared out at the two kids for no apparent reason: “What are you hanging around here for? Go in to bed. Get out of here now, I say!” She banged the door shut on them, stood before it with her back to the room for a minute. Nelson’s sharp ears caught the faint but unmistakable click of a key.

She turned back again, purred to Krassin: “Nick, go outside and take a look at the furnace, will you, while I’m pouring Mr. Nelson’s coffee? If the heat dies down, they’ll all start complaining from upstairs right away. Give it a good shaking up.”

The hairs at the back of Nelson’s neck stood up a little as he watched the man get up and sidle out. But he’d asked for the cup of coffee, himself.

He couldn’t see her pouring it — her back was turned toward him again as she stood over the stove. But he could hear the splash of the hot liquid, see her elbow-motions, hear the clink of the pot as she replaced it. She stayed that way a moment longer, after it had been poured, with her back to him — less than a moment, barely thirty seconds. One elbow moved slightly. Nelson’s eyes were narrow slits. It was thirty seconds too long, one elbow-motion too many.

She turned, came back, set the cup down before him. “I’ll let you put your own sugar in, yes?” she said almost playfully. “Some like a lot, some like a little.” There was a disappearing ring of froth in the middle of the black steaming liquid.

Outside somewhere, he could hear Krassin raking up the furnace.

“Drink it while it’s hot,” she urged.

He lifted it slowly to his lips. As the cup went up, her eyelids went down. Not all the way, not enough to completely shut out sight, though.

He blew the steam away. “Too hot — burn my mouth. Gotta give it a minute to cool,” he said. “How about you — ain’t you having any? I couldn’t drink alone. Ain’t polite.”

“I had mine,” she breathed heavily, opening her eyes again. “I don’t think there’s any left.”

“Then I’ll give you half of this.”

Her hospitable alarm was almost overdone. She all but jumped back in protest. “No, no! Wait, I’ll look. Yes, there’s more, there’s plenty!”

He could have had an accident with it while her back was turned a second time, upset it over the floor. Instead, he took a kitchen match out of his pocket, broke the head off short with his thumbnail. He threw the head, not the stick, over on top of the warm stove in front of which she was standing. It fell to one side of her, without making any noise, and she didn’t notice it. If he’d thrown stick and all, it would have clicked as it dropped and attracted her attention.

She came back and sat down opposite him. Krassin’s footsteps could be heard shuffling back toward them along the cement corridor outside.

“Go ahead. Don’t be bashful — drink up,” she encouraged. There was something ghastly about her smile, like a death’s head grinning across the table from him.

The match-head on the stove, heated to the point of combustion, suddenly flared up with a little spitting sound and a momentary gleam. She jumped a little, and her head turned nervously to see what it was. When she looked back again, he already had his cup to his lips. She raised hers, too, watching him over the rim of it. Krassin’s footfalls had stopped somewhere just outside the room door, and there wasn’t another sound from him, as if he were standing there, waiting.

At the table, the cat-and-mouse play went on a moment longer. Nelson started swallowing with a dry constriction of the throat. The woman’s eyes, watching him above her cup, were greedy half-moons of delight. Suddenly, her head and shoulders went down across the table with a bang, like her husband’s had at the automat that other night, and the crash of the crushed cup sounded from underneath her.

Nelson jumped up watchfully, throwing his chair over. The door shot open, and Krassin came in, with an ax in one hand and an empty burlap-bag in the other.

“I’m not quite ready for cremation yet,” the dick gritted, and threw himself at him.

Krassin dropped the superfluous burlap-bag, the ax flashed up overhead. Nelson dipped his knees, down in under it before it could fall. He caught the shaft with one hand, midway between the blade and Krassin’s grip, and held the weapon teetering in mid-air. With his other fist he started imitating a hydraulic drill against his assailant’s teeth. Then he lowered his barrage suddenly to solar-plexus level, sent in two body blows that caved his opponent in — and that about finished it.

Out in the wilds of Corona, an hour later, in a sub-basement locker-room, Alexander Hill — or at least what was left of him — was saying: “And you’ll lemme sleep if I do? And you’ll get it over real quick, send me up and put me out of my misery?”

“Yeah, yeah!” said the haggard captain, flicking ink out of a fountain pen and jabbing it at him. “Why dincha do this days ago, make it easier for us all?”

“Never saw such a guy,” complained Sarecky, rinsing his mouth with water over in a corner.

“What’s that man signing?” exploded Nelson’s voice from the stairs.

“Whaddye think he’s signing?” snarled the captain. “And where you been all night, incidentally?”

“Getting poisoned by the same party that croaked Avram!” He came the rest of the way down, and Krassin walked down alongside at the end of a short steel link.