Cornell Woolrich - Nightwebs (A Collection of Stories)

“When’d you do it?”

“The last time, when you made me and the girl bring her in here. Up to then I kept rubbing her face with alcohol each time he brought her back to the door, but it didn’t seem to help her any. I knew I should of gone out and reported it to Pasternack, but he — that feller you know — begged me not to. He begged me to give them a break and not get them ruled out. He said it didn’t matter if she acted all limp that way, that she was just dazed. And anyway, there wasn’t so much difference between her and the rest any more, they were all acting dopy like that. Then after you told me to bring her in the last time, I stuck my hand down the back of her dress and I felt something hard and round, like a carbuncle or berl, so I put a little gauze application over it. And then me and her decided, as long as the contest was over anyway, we better go out and tell you—”

“Yeah,” he scoffed, “and I s’pose if I hadn’t shown up she’d still be dancing around out there, until the place needed disinfecting! When was the first time you noticed anything the matter with her?”

She babbled: “About two thirty, three o’clock. They were all in here — the place was still crowded — and someone knocked on the door. He was standing out there with her in his arms and he passed her to me and whispered, ‘Look after her, will you?’ That’s when he begged me not to tell anyone. He said he’d—” She stopped.

“Go on!” snapped Smitty.

“He said he’d cut me in on the thousand if they won it. Then when the whistle blew and they all went out again, he was standing there waiting to take her back in his arms — and off he goes with her. They all had to be helped out by that time, anyway, so nobody noticed anything wrong. After that, the same thing happened each time — until you came. But I didn’t dream she was dead.” She crossed herself. “If I’da thought that, you couldn’t have got me to touch her for love nor money—”

“I’ve got my doubts,” Smitty told her, “about the money part of that, anyway. Outside — and consider yourself a material witness.” If the old crone was to be believed, it had happened outside on the dance floor under the bright arc lights, and not in here. He was pretty sure it had, at that. Monahan wouldn’t have dared try to force his way in here. The screaming of the other occupants would have blown the roof off. Secondly, the very fact that the floor had been more crowded at that time than later had helped cover it up. They’d probably quarreled when she tried to quit. He’d whipped out the pencil and struck her while she clung to him. She’d either fallen and killed herself on it, and he’d picked her up again immediately before anyone noticed, or else the Falvey woman had handled her carelessly in the washroom and the impaled pencil had reached her heart.

Smitty decided he wanted to know if any of the feminine entries had been seen to fall to the floor at any time during the evening. Pasternack had been in his office from ten on, first giving out publicity items and then taking a nap, so Smitty put him back on the shelf. Moe, however, came across beautifully.

“Did I see anyone fall?” he echoed shrilly. “Who didn’t? Such a commotion you never saw in your life. About half-past two. Right when we were on the air, too.”

“Go on, this is getting good. What’d he do, pick her right up again?”

“Pick her up! She wouldn’t get up. You couldn’t go near her! She just sat there swearing and screaming and throwing things. I thought we’d have to send for the police. Finally they sneaked up behind her and hauled her off on her fanny to the bleachers and disqualified her—”

“Wa-a-ait a minute,” gasped Smitty. “Who you talking about?” Moe looked surprised. “That Standish dame, who else? You saw her, the one with the bum pin. That was when she sprained it and couldn’t dance any more. She wouldn’t go home. She hung around saying she was framed and gypped and we couldn’t get rid of her—”

“Wrong number,” said Smitty disgustedly. “Back where you came from.” And to the cop: “Now we’ll get down to brass tacks. Let’s have a crack at Monahan—”

He was thumbing his notebook with studied absorption when the fellow was shoved in the door. “Be right with you,” he said offhandedly, tapping his pockets, “soon as I jot down — Lend me your pencil a minute, will you?”

“I–I had one, but I lost it,” said Monahan dully.

“How come?” asked Smitty quietly.

“Fell out of my pocket, I guess. The clip was broken.”

“This it?”

The fellow’s eyes grew big, while it almost touched their lashes, twirling from left to right and right to left. “Yeah, but what’s the matter with it, what’s it got on it?”

“You asking me that?” leered Smitty. “Come on, show me how you did it!” Monahan cowered back against the wall, looked from the body on the floor to the pencil, and back again. “Oh no,” he moaned, “no. Is that what happened to her? I didn’t even know—”

“Guys as innocent as you rub me the wrong way,” said Smitty. He reached for him, hauled him out into the center of the room, and then sent him flying back again. His head bonged the door and the cop looked in inquiringly. “No, I didn’t knock,” said Smitty, “that was just his dome.” He sprayed a little of the alcohol into Monahan’s stunned face and hauled him forward again. “The first peep out of you was, ‘I killed her.’ Then you keeled over. Later on you kept saying, ‘I’m to blame, I’m to blame.’ Why try to back out now?”

“But I didn’t mean I did anything to her,” wailed Monahan. “I thought I killed her by dancing too much. She was all right when I helped her in here about two. Then when I came back for her, the old dame whispered she couldn’t wake her up. She said maybe the motion of dancing would bring her to. She said, ‘You want that thousand dollars, don’t you? Here, hold her up, no one’ll be any the wiser.’ And I listened to her like a fool and faked it from then on.”

Smitty sent him hurling again. “Oh, so now it’s supposed to have happened in here — with your pencil, no less! Quit trying to pass the buck!”

The cop, who didn’t seem to be very bright, again opened the door, and Monahan came sprawling out at his feet. “Geez, what a hard head he must have,” he remarked.

“Go over and start up that phonograph over there,” ordered Smitty. “We’re going to have a little demonstration — of how he did it. If banging his conk against the door won’t bring back his memory, maybe dancing with her will do it.” He hoisted Monahan upright by the scruff of the neck. “Which pocket was the pencil in?”

The man motioned toward his breast. Smitty dropped it in point first. The cop fitted the needle into the groove and threw the switch. A blare came from the amplifier. “Pick her up and hold her,” grated Smitty.

An animal-like moan was the only answer he got. The man tried to back away. The cop threw him forward again. “So you won’t dance, eh?”

“I won’t dance,” gasped Monahan.

When they helped him up from the floor, he would dance.

“You held her like that dead, for two solid hours,” Smitty reminded him. “Why mind an extra five minutes or so?”

The moving scarecrow crouched down beside the other inert scarecrow on the floor. Slowly his arms went around her. The two scarecrows rose to their feet, tottered drunkenly together, then moved out of the doorway into the open in time to the music. The cop began to perspire.

Smitty said: “Any time you’re willing to admit you done it, you can quit.”

“God forgive you for this!” said a tomb-like voice.

“Take out the pencil,” said Smitty, “without letting go of her — like you did the first time.”