Cornell Woolrich - Nightwebs (A Collection of Stories)

He turned back to the one called Moe and sent him headlong out into the auditorium with a hearty shove at the back of the neck. “Now do like I told you,” he said, “while we’re waiting for the telephone repairman to get here. And when their dogs have cooled, send them all in here to me. That goes for the cannibal and the washroom dame, too.” He motioned toward the desk. “Get out your little tin box, Pasternack. How much you got on hand to pay these people?”

It wasn’t in a tin box but in a briefcase. “Close the door,” said Pasternack in an insinuating voice. “There’s plenty here, and plenty more will be coming in. How big a cut will square you? Write your own ticket.”

Smitty sighed wearily. “Do I have to knock your front teeth down the back of your throat before I can convince you I’m one of these old-fashioned guys that likes to work for my money?”

Outside a gun boomed hollowly and the squawking of the phonograph stopped. Moe could be heard making an announcement through the megaphone. “You can’t get away with this!” stormed Pasternack. “Where’s your warrant?”

“Where’s your license,” countered Smitty, “if you’re going to get technical? C’mon, don’t waste any more time, you’re keeping me up! Get the dough ready for the pay-off.” He stepped to the door and called out into the auditorium: “Everybody in here. Get your things and line up.” Two of the three couples separated slowly like sleepwalkers and began to trudge painfully over toward him, walking zig-zag as though their metabolism was all shot.

The third pair, Number 14, still clung together out on the floor, the man facing toward Smitty. They didn’t seem to realize it was over. They seemed to be holding each other up. They were in the shape of a human tent, their feet about three feet apart on the floor, their faces and shoulders pressed closely together. The girl was that clothes-pin, that stringbean of a kid he had already figured for Toodles McGuire. So she was going to be stubborn about it, was she? He went over to the pair bellicosely. “C’mon, you heard me, break it up!”

The man gave him a frightened look over her shoulder. “Will you take her off me, please, Mac? She’s passed out or something, and if I let her go she’ll crack her conk on the floor.” He blew out his breath. “I can’t hold her up much longer!”

Smitty hooked an arm about her middle. She didn’t weigh any more than a discarded topcoat. The poor devil who had been bearing her weight, more or less, for nine days and nights on end, let go and folded up into a squatting position at her feet like a shriveled Buddha. “Just lemme stay like this,” he moaned, “it feels so good.” The girl, meanwhile, had begun to bend slowly double over Smitty’s supporting arm, closing up like a jackknife. But she did it with a jerkiness, a deliberateness, that was almost grisly, slipping stiffly down a notch at a time, until her upside-down head had met her knees. She was like a walking doll whose spring has run down.

Smitty turned and barked over one shoulder at the washroom hag. “Hey you! C’mere and gimme a hand with this girl! Can’t you see she needs attention? Take her in there with you and see what you can do for her—”

The old crone edged fearfully nearer, but when Smitty tried to pass the inanimate form to her she drew hurriedly back. “I–I ain’t got the stren’th to lift her,” she mumbled stubbornly. “You’re strong, you carry her in and set her down—”

“I can’t go in there,” he snarled disgustedly. “That’s no place for me! What’re you here for if you can’t—”

The girl who had been sitting on the sidelines suddenly got up and came limping over on one stockingless foot. “Give her to me,” she said. “I’ll take her in for you.” She gave the old woman a long hard look before which the latter quailed and dropped her eyes. “Take hold of her feet,” she ordered in a low voice. The hag hurriedly stooped to obey. They sidled off with her between them, and disappeared around the side of the orchestra-stand, toward the washroom. Their burden sagged low, until it almost touched the floor.

“Hang onto her,” Smitty thought he heard the younger woman say. “She won’t bite you!” The washroom door banged closed on the weird little procession. Smitty turned and hoisted the deflated Number 14 to his feet. “C’mon,” he said. “In you go, with the rest!”

They were all lined up against the wall in Pasternack’s “office,” so played-out that if the wall had suddenly been taken away they would have all toppled flat like a pack of cards. Pasternack and his shill had gone into a huddle in the opposite corner, buzzing like a hive of bees.

“Would you two like to be alone?” Smitty wanted to know, parking Number 14 with the rest of the droops.

Pasternack evidently believed in the old adage, “He who fights and runs away lives to fight, etc.” The game, he seemed to think, was no longer worth the candle. He unlatched the briefcase he had been guarding under his arm, walked back to the desk with it, and prepared to ease his conscience. “Well, folks,” he remarked genially, “on the advice of this gentleman here” (big pally smile for Smitty) “my partner and I are calling off the contest. While we are under no legal obligation to any of you” (business of clearing his throat and hitching up his necktie) “we have decided to do the square thing, just so there won’t be any trouble, and split the prize money among all the remaining entries. Deducting the rental for the armory, the light bill, and the cost of printing tickets and handbills, that would leave—”

“No, you don’t!” said Smitty. “That comes out of your first nine days profits. What’s on hand now gets divvied without any deductions. Do it your way and they’d all be owing you money!” He turned to the doorman. “You been paid, sunburnt?”

“Nossuh! I’se got five dolluhs a night coming at me—”

“Forty-five for you,” said Smitty.

Pasternack suddenly blew up and advanced menacingly upon his partner. “That’s what I get for listening to you, know-it-all! So New York was a sucker town, was it? So there was easy pickings here, was there? Yah!”

“Boys, boys,” remonstrated Smitty, elbowing them apart.

“Throw them a piece of cheese, the rats,” remarked the girl in shorts. There was a scuffling sound in the doorway and Smitty turned in time to see the lamed girl and the washroom matron each trying to get in ahead of the other.

“You don’t leave me in there!”

“Well, I’m not staying in there alone with her. It ain’t my job! I resign!”

The one with the limp got to him first. “Listen, mister, you better go in there yourself,” she panted. “We can’t do anything with her. I think she’s dead.”

“She’s cold as ice and all stiff-like,” corroborated the old woman.

“Oh my God, I’ve killed her!” someone groaned. Number 14 sagged to his knees and went out like a light. Those on either side of him eased him down to the floor by his arms, too weak themselves to support him.

“Hold everything!” barked Smitty. He gripped the pop-eyed doorman by the shoulder. “Scram out front and get a cop. Tell him to put in a call for an ambulance, and then have him report in here to me. And if you try lighting out, you lose your forty-five bucks and get the electric chair.”

“I’se pracktilly back inside again,” sobbed the terrified darky as he fled.

“The rest of you stay right where you are. I’ll hold you responsible, Pasternack, if anybody ducks.”

“As though we could move an inch on these howling dogs,” muttered the girl in shorts.

Smitty pushed the girl with one shoe ahead of him. “You come and show me,” he grunted. He was what might be termed a moral coward at the moment; he was going where he’d never gone before.