Cornell Woolrich - Nightwebs (A Collection of Stories)

Murray wasn’t holding the cup straight enough, more water slopped out of it. His wrist was jerking like a piston. His voice was steely enough when it came, though. “I know all about who she—” His teeth clamped tight and bit off the rest of it short. Finally he said, “You’re wasting your time. She left half-an-hour ago.”

“No, that doesn’t go,” the stranger said. “You were taking that drink to her, see? You’re too crummy to spend a penny on yourself, you’d put your mouth right down on the tap, but for her you’d shoot a whole Lincoln-head at once. She’s out there in back, I guess, waiting for you.” He didn’t wait for the answer.

The cup folded up in Murray’s fist and the water spurted out and he went after him.

She wasn’t out there. The other guy was standing there in the dark squinting all around and calling, “Come on, Syl, snap out of it. If your people ever find out about this—”

He hardly turned his head at all to meet the sudden onslaught. There was a smack, and Murray was staring dazedly up at him, stiff-armed against the floor.

“I learned to box at Princeton,” the stranger informed him, fastidiously shaking out his cuff, “not in poolrooms.” He swooped down on him all at once, straightened up again, holding something in his hand. Something that sparkled. “What’s this, that fell out of your pocket? Seems to me I’ve seen it before.” He turned the bracelet slowly around. “So she went home half-an-hour ago, did she? And left this with you for a souvenir, I suppose. You robbed her while you were dancing with her, you little sewer-rat!”

Murray scrambled to his feet, face whiter than the moonlight. The palsy that had afflicted his wrist awhile ago had now spread to his whole body. His tone had changed to one of frightened pleading. “I didn’t, Jack, I swear I didn’t! Don’t start anything like that, gimme a break, will ya? She handed it to me to hold for her. I left her waiting out here only a minute ago—”

“A five-thousand-dollar, piece of jewelry she handed to you? Oh, of course! Just like that — I don’t think!”

But Murray didn’t wait to hear any more. A sense of his own predicament swept over him suddenly. That blind, unreasoning fear of the law, that claustrophobia, that the young, the poorly educated, are always more susceptible to than others, struck him like lightning. The sight of the diamonds in the other’s hand seemed to rob him of all reasoning power. He turned and fled in silent panic out toward the crowded dance-floor and the escape that lay beyond.

But Arnold’s rasping shout had reached it ahead of him. “Stop that man! Hold him, somebody!”

As the fugitive flashed out under the pitiless, revealing lights, zigzagging like a black bullet crashing through a bouquet of flowers, the music was already dying into a succession of discordant notes and the packed dancers were coming to an uncertain stop all over the huge place.

Arms reached out to grab him, always just too late. In his wake sprawling figures stumbled to regain their balance. But his impetus began to slow, the size of the crowd was against him.

And then a small, vindictive satin slipper slithered out between his racing feet like a spoke. He plunged flat on his face, with such force that his own legs went curling up in back of him, in what was almost a forward-somersault. When the shock had cleared, his eyes followed that treacherous little slipper from the floor on up to the malignant face of the eye-shadow girl. He was lying within five yards of the outer lobby, that would have led to the Boardwalk and freedom — if he had made it. She and her partner had been the last of all the couples barring his way!

“Thanks, pal, that was something to be proud of!” he panted, chin on floor.

He was jerked to his feet and pummeled around a lot before the pier attendants could extricate him. A couple of blue-coats were already rushing in from the Boardwalk outside, with a noisy mob of celebrators at their heels.

“Hold him, now!” warned Arnold, “until I have a chance to find out—” He raced to a booth and dialed Sylvia Reading’s hotel.

Murray was moaning, “Oh my God, I didn’t do anything!” when he came back. They were all standing around him thick as bees.

“He’s a dip, he lifted a twenty-grand bracelet,” someone volunteered. Its value had quadrupled inside of five minutes. The Pier manager was blue in the face, with two windmills for arms. “You couldn’t take him nowhere else, you gotta hold jail right here in the middle? Look, millions of ’em in here without a ticket! Shoo, go home! No more dancing! We close for the night! I sue the municipality!”

Arnold came back slow and came back white. “She hasn’t gone back there, I just had her people on the wire! And it’s only a couple of blocks’ walk from here. She’s vanished!”

“You the complainant?” a cop asked. “What charges — theft?”

“My fiancée — ask him what he did with her. I saw her come in here with him with my own eyes, now she’s gone, no trace of her! The bracelet was in his pocket—”

“Look in his other pocket, maybe you’ll find the girl,” someone wisecracked.

“Better still,” a harsh voice said, “look in the water, out at the end there.” The little lady with the eyeshadow edged her way forward with business-like determination. Twice as much eyeshadow wouldn’t have softened her eyes just then. “I saw him with her. And a little later I was outside there myself, and I heard a loud splash in the water. Ask this guy with me. Then when I go look, I see a white arm sticking up out of the water. And I picked this up.”

She held up a crumpled ball of handkerchief. Her baleful basilisk-eyes never once left Murray’s shivering face.

Arnold caught at it, his face went gray. “That’s hers,” he whispered. “Look in the corner, see the S and R embroidered there. Sylvia Reading. Smell it. Gardenia — what she always used.” They had to hold him back from Murray. “You asked what charges? Suspicion of murder. I’ll bring the accusation myself. That girl is gone!”

A sudden hush fell on the crowd. Murray’s choked whimper was all that could be heard as they dragged him away. Over and over: “I didn’t do anything, I didn’t do anything—”

Sylvia Reading’s body was washed up on the beach down at Ventnor two days later, obviously carried there by the current. Arnold identified it at once. The satin dress hadn’t even lost its sheen yet. The very rouge that had outlined her mouth could still be discerned; “waterproof” was its trademark. The autopsy showed that she had been in the water those two full days. And there was only a little water in her lungs; life had not been quite extinct when she was thrown in . She had been garrotted, strangled to death, with the silken shoulder-straps of her own dress, caught from behind in a noose, and twisted. The marks showed plainly on her throat.

Murray, whom she had last been seen alive with, was indicted for murder in the first degree and held for trial. He had stopped saying “I didn’t do anything” now. It had gotten him too many wallops. He didn’t say anything at all any more.

“Well, if he didn’t he probably did something else some other time,” commented Mike Travis unfeelingly, and stood up. He reached for his hat. “He oughta get a good swift kick anyway, going there night after night to dance like a jack-in-the-box!”

Mrs. Murray had uncovered one eye, hopefully. “Where you going?” she sobbed.

“Down to the morgue,” said Mike grudgingly.

As the door banged after him she gave a deep sigh. Strangely enough, it sounded like a sigh of relief and renewed confidence.

Sylvia Reading lay there on the slab like a statue, and her beauty was only a memory now, and all her father’s millions couldn’t bring her back again. Mike stood looking down at her.