Cornell Woolrich - Nightwebs (A Collection of Stories)

“Straight ahead of you,” she scowled, halting outside the door. “Do you need a road-map?”

“C’mon, I’m not going in there alone,” he said, and gave her a shove through the forbidden portal.

She was stretched out on the floor where they’d left her, a bottle of rubbing alcohol that hadn’t worked uncorked beside her. His face was flaming as he squatted down and examined her. She was gone all right. She was as cold as they’d said and getting more rigid by the minute. “Overtaxed her heart most likely,” he growled. “That guy Pasternack ought to be hauled up for this. He’s morally responsible.” The cop, less well-brought-up than Smitty, stuck his head in the door without compunction.

“Stay by the entrance,” Smitty instructed him. “Nobody leaves.” Then, “This was the McGuire kid, wasn’t it?” he asked his feminine companion.

“Can’t prove it by me,” she said sulkily. “Pasternack kept calling her Rose Lamont all through the contest. Why don’t-cha ask the guy that was dancing with her? Maybe they got around to swapping names after nine days. Personally,” she said as she moved toward the door, “I don’t know who she was and I don’t give a damn!”

“You’ll make a swell mother for some guy’s children,” commented Smitty following her out. “In there,” he said to the ambulance doctor who had just arrived, “but it’s the morgue now, and not first-aid. Take a look.”

Number 14, when he got back to where they all were, was taking it hard and self-accusing. “I didn’t mean to do it, I didn’t mean to!” he kept moaning.

“Shut up, you sap, you’re making it tough for yourself,” someone hissed.

“Lemme see a list of your entries,” Smitty told Pasternack.

The impresario fished a ledger out of the desk drawer and held it out to him. “All I got out of this enterprise was kicks in the pants! Why didn’t I stick to the sticks where they don’t drop dead from a little dancing? Ask me, why didn’t I?”

“Fourteen,” read Smitty. “Rose Lamont and Gene Monahan. That your real name, guy? Back it up.” 14 jerked off the coat that someone had slipped around his shoulders and turned the inner pocket inside out. The name was inked onto the label. The address checked too. “What about her, was that her real tag?”

“McGuire was her real name,” admitted Monahan, “Toodles McGuire. She was going to change it anyway, pretty soon, if we’dda won that thousand” — he hung his head — “so it didn’t matter.”

“Why’d you say you did it? Why do you keep saying you didn’t mean to?”

“Because I could feel there was something the matter with her in my arms. I knew she oughtta quit, and I wouldn’t let her. I kept begging her to stick it out a little longer, even when she didn’t answer me. I went crazy, I guess, thinking of that thousand dollars. We needed it to get married on. I kept expecting the others to drop out any minute, there were only two other couples left, and no one was watching us any more. When the rest-periods came, I carried her in my arms to the washroom door, so no one would notice she couldn’t make it herself, and turned her over to the old lady in there. She couldn’t do anything with her either, but I begged her not to let on, and each time the whistle blew I picked her up and started out from there with her—”

“Well, you’ve danced her into her grave,” said Smitty bitterly. “If I was you I’d go out and stick both my feet under the first trolley-car that came along and hold them there until it went by. It might make a man of you!”

He went out and found the ambulance doctor in the act of leaving. “What was it, her heart?”

The A.D. favored him with a peculiar look, starting at the floor and ending at the top of his head. “Why wouldn’t it be? Nobody’s heart keeps going with a seven- or eight-inch metal pencil jammed into it.” He unfolded a handkerchief to reveal a slim coppery cylinder, tapering to needle-like sharpness at the writing end, where the case was pointed over the lead to protect it. It was aluminum — encrusted blood was what gave it its copper sheen. Smitty nearly dropped it in consternation — not because of what it had done but because he had missed seeing it.

“And another thing,” went on the A.D. “You’re new to this sort of thing, aren’t you? Well, just a friendly tip. No offense, but you don’t call an ambulance that long after they’ve gone, our time is too val—”

“I don’t getcha,” said Smitty impatiently. “She needed help; who am I supposed to ring in, potter’s field, and have her buried before she’s quit breathing?”

This time the look he got was withering. “She was past help hours ago.” The doctor scanned his wrist. “It’s five now. She’s been dead since three, easily. I can’t tell you when exactly, but your friend the medical examiner’ll tell you whether I’m right or not. I’ve seen too many of ’em in my time. She’s been gone two hours anyhow.”

Smitty had taken a step back, as though he were afraid of the guy. “I came in here at four thirty,” he stammered excitedly, “and she was dancing on that floor there — I saw her with my own eyes — fifteen, twenty minutes ago!” His face was slightly sallow.

“I don’t care whether you saw her dancin’ or saw her doin’ double-hand-springs on her left ear, she was dead!” roared the ambulance man testily. “She was celebrating her own wake then, if you insist!” He took a look at Smitty’s horrified face, quieted down, spit emphatically out of one comer of his mouth, and remarked: “Somebody was dancing with her dead body, that’s all. Pleasant dreams, kid!” Smitty started to bum slowly. “Somebody was,” he agreed, gritting his teeth. “I know who Somebody is, too. His number was Fourteen until a little while ago; well, it’s Thirteen from now on!”

He went in to look at her again, the doctor whose time was so valuable trailing along. “From the back, eh? That’s how I missed it. She was lying on it the first time I came in and looked.”

“I nearly missed it myself,” the intern told him. “I thought it was a boil at first. See this little pad of gauze? It had been soaked in alcohol and laid over it. There was absolutely no external flow of blood, and the pencil didn’t protrude, it was in up to the hilt. In fact I had to use forceps to get it out. You can see for yourself, the clip that fastens to the wearer’s pocket, which would have stopped it halfway, is missing. Probably broken off long before.”

“I can’t figure it,” said Smitty. “If it went in up to the hilt, what room was there left for the grip that sent it home?”

“Must have just gone in an inch or two at first and stayed there,” suggested the intern. “She probably killed herself on it by keeling over backwards and hittin the floor or the wall, driving it the rest of the way in.” He got to his feet. “Well, the pleasure’s all yours.” He flipped a careless salute and left.

“Send the old crow in that had charge in here,” Smitty told the cop.

The old woman came in fumbling with her hands, as though she had the seven-day itch.

“What’s your name?”

“Josephine Falvey — Mrs. Josephine Falvey.” She couldn’t keep her eyes off what lay on the floor.

“It don’t matter after you’re forty,” Smitty assured her drily. “What’d you bandage that wound up for? D’you know that makes you an accessory to a crime?”

“I didn’t do no such a—” she started to deny whitely.

He suddenly thrust the postage-stamp of folded gauze, rusty on one side, under her nose. She cawed and jumped back. He followed her retreat. “You didn’t stick this on? C’mon, answer me!”

“Yeah, I did!” she cackled, almost jumping up and down. “I did, I did — but I didn’t mean no harm. Honest, mister, I—”