Cornell Woolrich - Nightwebs (A Collection of Stories)

“It was pretty good, I’ll give it that. If they’d only left his face alone. I don’t think my suspicions would have been awakened in the first place. They spoiled it by overdoing it; just a mere inference of how he’d died wasn’t enough — they had guilty consciences, so they wanted to make sure of getting their point across, hitting the onlooker in the eye with it. And that was the one thing he’d never had in life — a sense of humor. The joke wasn’t really in the book after all. The joke was on them.”

“A fine how-d’ye-do,” Mike Travis scowled at his blubbering sister across the kitchen table. “I come down here for a little rest and a breath of sea-air, and I run into this smelly mess! Right in my own family. You could have knocked me over with a feather! And that’s a fine way to hear it, too, from the kids on the street when I asked them the way to your house!”

“I wrote you,” gurgled Mrs. Murray. “Didn’t you get my let—?”

“No,” barked Travis, jerking his cup away. “And quit crying into my coffee, it’s weak enough as it is!”

“I thought maybe you could do something for him, working with a private detective agency like you do,” sniffled Mrs. Murray.

“Used to, y’mean! I was let out only last week, that’s why I’m here. After the depresh is over everywhere else, it suddenly hits the investigation business as an afterthought. And at my age, too!” His face grew beet-red to the roots of his snow-white hair and his cigar-stub jerked from the left corner of his mouth to the right without his lifting a finger at it. “Too old, they think! Not up-to-date enough!”

His sister was the sort who could always spare a word for somebody else’s troubles, even in the midst of her own. “You could fall back on barbering; you once took a course in that, didn’t you, before you went into the detective business?” She dabbed her apron to her face and went back to her grief once more. “Frank’s a good lad, he wouldn’t kill anybody in cold blood like that. I know he didn’t do it.”

“Suppose you tell me just what happened,” said Mike impatiently. “I ain’t in the fortune-telling business.”

His sister took a deep breath. “Well, you know how crazy he is about dancin’. There’s no harm in that, is there? Well, one night—” and she launched into the past.

The rich girl hurried through the crowded lobby, holding her breath for fear of being recognized and stopped. Just when she thought she had made it, as she came out of the hotel, she met Arnold face to face. Her parents weren’t with him for once.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she explained hastily. “Arnold, don’t let on you saw me go out. I’ll explain when I come back—”

He put out his hand and tried to stop her. “A girl your age shouldn’t be out alone, at this hour, with a diamond bracelet like that on your wrist. Be careful, Sylvia, this is a bad town. Let me go with you—”

She turned away. “I can take care of myself. And if you breathe a word about this, I’ll never speak to you again.”

As she lost herself in the crowd moiling slowly along the thronged Boardwalk, she had a feeling that he was coming after her, keeping her in sight. But she didn’t look back.

Young Murray was waiting for her just outside the Million Dollar Pier and he had the admission tickets in his hand. He didn’t look like he could afford even the fifty-cents apiece it cost to enter. She took his arm with a smile and they went in.

It stretches way out over the Atlantic, and most of it is the big dancing-pavilion under colored lights. But at the back there is a verandah or promenade-deck, purposely left dark at all times. And along both sides there are two more. Anyone who’s ever been there knows the set-up.

They had nothing to check, so they stepped right off and went to it. After about five minutes, she slipped the diamond bracelet off her wrist and asked him to carry it in his pocket for her. “The catch needs to be fixed, I’m afraid I’ll lose it,” she said. “Don’t let me go home without it, they’re real.”

He gave her a look when he heard that, but he did what she asked. She’d only known him for three nights — but she was very young, and he danced so well.

When they stopped for a minute between numbers, a girl with too much eyeshadow on came over to where they were standing clapping.

“You can’t ditch me like this!” she said to Murray. “Doing pretty good for yourself, aren’t you!” She turned to the girl then, and her voice rose to a yell. “Watch yourself with this guy, Miss Millionbucks! Remember I told you so. He’s death to dames!” Everyone around them heard her say it.

Somebody came after her and pulled her away, but she shouted back: “I’ll fix you, Murray, if it’s the last thing I do!”

“Brrh!” the rich girl said, and pretended to shiver. But many a truth is spoken in jest.

Half an hour later they left the floor together, he and she, to rest for awhile. They went out on the darkened end of the Pier, away from all the lights and noise. There was no one around out there just then. No one ever saw her alive again.

Yet how could anything happen to her, with hundreds of people within reach of her voice? Thoughts of death must have been very far from her mind. But a noisy jazz-band can drown out the loudest scream. The tune it was pounding out was “I’m The Boogy Man.”

She murmured, “I’m thirsty, will you get me a drink of water?”

As he got up, he leaned across the back of her deck-chair and slipped both arms around her shoulders, in a double embrace from behind. She turned to look up at him. A cloud hid the moon for a moment, and they were both in pitch-darkness.

The eye-shadow girl came out on the left-hand “porch” of the Pier with someone, to get a breath of air. The moon was behind a cloud and the water was black.

“Wait, I’m not through with him!” she burned. “I’ll get even—” She broke off suddenly and grew rigid. “What was that? D’ja hear that splash just then? Sounded like someone fell in.”

“Just a wave slapping up against one of the piles,” the fellow with her said.

“It came from down the end there. Let’s go look.”

She hurried away from him and turned the corner. She didn’t come back and he finally had to go after her. When he got there she was leaning over the railing scanning the water.

Just then the moon came out again. She jerked back and caught him by the sleeve. “You look, is there anything down there? I thought I saw a white arm reaching up out of the water just now!”

Silvery patches appeared here and there, dazzling to the eyes. “It’s the reflection of the moon,” he said.

“Guess you’re right. But gosh, it had me for a minute! Let’s go back and dance.”

As she turned to go, she saw something lying on a deck-chair, a tiny ball of white, and stopped to pick it up. A girl’s handkerchief dropped by somebody, a costly one too. She was a thrifty soul and she took it with her; once it was laundered it would be as good as new. Her companion, who had gone ahead, didn’t see her do it.

As she followed him in to the dance-floor, she said once more: “I’ll get even with that two-timer yet!”

Meanwhile, someone had tapped Frank Murray on the shoulder as he bent over the water-cooler beside the illuminated fish-tanks at the rear of the dance-floor. Even before he looked up to see who it was, some of the water spilled out of the wax-paper cup he was filling; his hand didn’t seem to be very steady.

His eyes lifted, and he didn’t know the man.

The other’s voice was dangerously low. “You came in here an hour ago with a girl in a white satin dress. What’ve you done with her? I’m taking her back with me, she doesn’t belong in a place like this. Now, don’t fool around with dynamite. I don’t know if she’s told you her name or not, but that’s Sylvia Reading, the chain-store man’s girl.”