Cornell Woolrich - Nightwebs (A Collection of Stories)

He must have seen something in the other’s face.

“Well, if you won’t give it to me of your own accord, how about letting me try to win it from you? How about giving me a chance, a sporting chance? I’ll give odds. If you win, I’ll go out of here without another word. If I win, just one more night for a finale, six hours more until the club closes down at four?”

He took out a pair of dice. Clicked and cast them. Bent and picked them up without seeing what they’d made.

“What do you think this is?” the detective said. “Rolling them to see who buys the drinks at a bar?”

“Be a sport,” Jones said in a strangely husky, throbbing voice. “I’m your prisoner anyway. This doesn’t alter the main idea. Hold out your hand.”

The detective didn’t move but Jones reached for his hand and put the dice in his palm.

“Are they straight?” the detective asked drily.

“They’re straight,” Jones said. “I make three thousand a week here, American. When you’re in that bracket, it’s the fun you want out of them, not the money. If they were loaded, I couldn’t get any fun out of them.”

“I see what you mean,” the detective said.

“Go ahead,” Jones said. “I’ll take the highest odds you can stack against me. So high they’re impossible to beat. One throw. One throw apiece.”

The detective was still fiddling with them.

“Those odds aren’t so steep,” he said drily. “Suppose I pitch a three or four? You’ve got eight chances against one to better it.”

“You didn’t get me. Not like in the game. One throw, I said. And I have to make your point. Repeat it in my own throw.”

“You can’t do it,” the detective said firmly. He was beginning to vibrate the dice a little in his palm. “It can’t be done. You know that yourself. Why do you want to make it so tough for yourself?”

“Because I’m a fatalist,” Jones answered. “And I want to find out if I’m meant to have this one last night or not. This is my way of pinning fate down and finding out the answer.”

“Now I know they’re spiked,” the detective said skeptically.

“There’s the phone. Call down and order another pair.”

The detective went over to it, put his hand on it, watched Jones.

Then he came away again. “Now I know they’re on the up,” he said.

“Throw,” Jones pleaded. “I can’t stand much more of it.” He wiped off his forehead.

“I haven’t made any agreement,” the detective warned him. “I haven’t made my bargain with you.” But he was starting to beat them up, first slowly, then faster and hotter. “This is between you and fate, strictly.”

“I know,” Jones said. “But I’m beginning to know you.”

The detective suddenly let go of the dice with a jerk, and they landed. They turned up a two.

Jones didn’t move, didn’t even go over to where he could read them.

“What was it?” he asked from where he was.

The detective told him, picked them up. “That’s a bad point,” he said grimly. “I don’t think ‘fate’ and you have much chance. That’s the toughest point of the lot. If it had been an eight, for instance, you could have made it with maybe two fours, six and two, five and three—”

“I know how the combinations run,” Jones answered quietly. “But maybe it’s just as well. Now I’ll find out for sure whether fate wants me to have this one last night or not. Now there’ll be no mistake about it.”

The detective handed him the dice. But then Jones just stood there holding them, for such a long time that finally the detective suggested: “Now you’ve lost your nerve. Now you want to call it off.”

Jones shook his head slowly. “You don’t call fate off like that. What is to be, is to be. I’m just wondering which answer’s waiting for me, that’s all.”

He started to pump his hand. Then he opened it toward the floor, and the cubes flew out, and hit. The detective, watching him, saw him keep his eyes closed as he did so.

He opened his eyes, and without moving, said: “Read them for me.”

The detective went over and got down, knuckling one hand to the floor. He stayed that way a minute, much longer than he needed to just read them. Then he gathered them together and got up. He still didn’t say anything.

“Why is your face so white and strange-looking?” Jones said.

“I’d like to keep these,” the detective said. “Do you mind?” He went ahead and put them in his pocket without waiting for the owner’s permission.

“What was it?” Jones asked.

The detective took a deep breath. “It was a two,” he said, his voice a trifle bated.

Jones sank down suddenly in the chair, as though his legs had collapsed.

“I sure was meant to have that night,” he said, staring sightlessly before him.

The detective took out a handkerchief and patted it across his upper lip. “I never saw anything like that,” he admitted.

Jones looked up at him finally, focusing his gaze from far away.

“How about it?” he said.

The detective kept him waiting. He took out the manacles, and weighed them in the center of his hand, and threw them up, and caught them. Then he put them away again. He took out a .38, and checked it, and let Jones see that it was loaded. He let it lie flat in his hand for a moment, and gave it an emphatic smack with his other palm.

“You don’t get a second break,” he said. “Is that understood? You don’t get any warning to halt and come back. You just get all six of these slugs at once, straight through the back. You’re in my custody, and I have the legal right to do that to you. I wouldn’t even be questioned for it.

“So be careful how you bend to get a drink of water from a cooler. And be careful how you move your hands, even if it’s just to take up the saxophone. And be careful where you stand, when you’re around me. I may not like it, but you’ll be dead before you find it out. If you want it that way, you can have it. You don’t get a second break.”

He put the gun away.

“But you do get a first. You get your one last night in Barcelona.”

Jones exhaled slowly. “You can tell you’re not from — down around there,” was all he said.

After a moment or two he got up from the chair.

“It’s not taking on death that’s tough, it’s leaving off life. I better change my collar. It got all wilted since we came in here.” He opened a cigarette case, looked in it. “I guess there’s enough here to hold me until morning. After that—” He made a gesture of throwing it away.

“What’s your name?” he added, evening the wings of his tie. “Do you mind?”

“Not at all,” the detective answered. “Freshman. Kendall Freshman.”

Jones nodded his head toward the closed door.

“Do they have to know? The other fellows?”

“Not particularly. I’m not a press agent, I’m just a dick.”

Jones poured a jigger of brandy, shot it through his teeth. Then he squared his shoulders, turned to face the door.

“I’m ready. Let’s go. Just one more night of being king.”

Freshman tapped his pocket. “Remember, one false move, and the king is dead.”

There was a round of introductory handshaking in the outside room, sponsored by Jones.

“Meet my friend Mr. Freshman. He’s sticking with me from now on.”

No one asked any questions; it seemed as if, in their business, they were used to people drifting in, from nowhere; drifting on again, to nowhere.

Each man’s world was his own. They let him be.

Jones broke it up. “Come on, let’s travel. It’s almost club time.”

They got rid of the girls by the simple expedient of dropping them then and there. Henderson gave his street pick-up a farewell pat on the flank in parting, but the rest didn’t even bid theirs that much of a good-by.