Cornell Woolrich: The Dog with the Wooden Leg

But the soft tread never resumed, was left hanging in midair, as it were. As two, three, four minutes ticked by, the sense of expectancy, of waiting for it to continue from where it had left off, began to get on Marty’s nerves. He didn’t turn his head that way, because in his case that wouldn’t have helped; he had no vision to project. But he did sit with his head slightly bowed, listening with every nerve in his body. “What the devil happened to that fellow, was he snatched bodily up into the air?” he thought.

He reached down finally and lightly explored the side of Dick’s head. The dog’s ears were stiffly perked, its muzzle was pointing that way. So Dick’d heard it, too. A little uneasiness began to tinge what until now had just been idle curiosity with Marty. Whoever that was he’d heard approaching furtively along the path, that person was still around some place, taking pains not to let himself be heard. Why?

Marty didn’t move there on the bench, but he was as alive as a dynamo inside himself, straining his ears to catch every slightest vibration. Suddenly he was rewarded. A slight hiss reached him, not distinct enough even to be a rustle; the sound grass makes when a foot is moved through it. But what was important was, it was much nearer than where the footfalls had last sounded from, and it was no longer anywhere near the path, it was around well in back of them now.

So somebody was stalking him, lurking back there in the lengthening shadows of the park. Again why? What did he want from a helpless old blind man sitting on a bench? Uneasiness became fear, as a twig snapped, still nearer than the first warning rustle of grass had been. The skulker was doing his best not to be heard, and he was being pretty successful at it, only two little revelatory sounds in all that distance that he’d covered since leaving the open path, and even those two an ordinary person would have missed entirely.

Marty was breathing a little quicker now, but he still hadn’t moved a muscle. He knew it was hopeless to try to get up and run for it. What chance had he against even the slowest pursuer? To cry out for help would be equally futile; the twilight must be deepening every moment, the governesses and the children had all gone long ago, he could tell by the utter, complete silence there was no longer a living soul around this part of the park, Dick, of course, would be able to give a good account of himself if it came to the worst, but a knife or weighted club might enter into it, and he didn’t want harm to come to his faithful companion.

The best strategy was the old, old one of pretending unawareness and tap-tapping away in slow retreat, if he was allowed to. To show that he was on guard would only bring on whatever threatened all the quicker. He thrust the decoy cup a little farther from him along the bench. “If he’s figuring on holding me up, let him see I haven’t taken in a cent since I’ve been sitting here.” But somehow he had a feeling that the shadowy presence back there behind him wasn’t a mere footpad; he wouldn’t have gone to all that trouble. He would simply have snatched up the tin cup and run off.

Dick gave a sudden, single resentful bark. Marty understood it perfectly.

“So he’s hiding behind a tree or something, and you caught him looking out at us, huh?” he breathed. Then in an unnaturally loud voice, to cover up the warning signal, he exclaimed: “What’s the matter, boy, you getting hungry?” He felt for the dog’s collar, gave it a restraining tug, whispered: “Sh, Dick, quiet. I know all about it. Come on; let’s get out of here.”

He got up from the bench with elaborate slowness, pointed his stick to the ground, took a preliminary shuffle or two into mid-path, but he was quivering inside like a compass needle. Dick took up his position against the outside of his master’s right leg; he had a job to do now, and the mysterious skulker was forgotten. Besides, his master had ordered him to be silent, and one command was all Dick ever needed.

They advanced slowly some twenty yards down the path, and nothing happened. Had they left him lurking back there, or was he creeping on after them? It was important to know that, and there was only one way of finding out: reproducing the original utter stillness that had betrayed his presence. Even the slight tap of Dick’s leg, the shuffle of his own feet, was enough to mar that. But Marty was as cagy in his way as anyone.

He stopped short, stooped over, pretending to pick up and examine a nonexistent twig lying in the path and which he had felt through the worn sole of his shoe. Actually he was listening as he had never listened before, with not a move from Dick to disturb him. Was that tread coming on after him? Nothing for a long minute. Then—

Shuh-chuh. It was. A grain of grit or two between the furtively oncoming sole and the pathway cement made a microscopic grinding sound that was all that Marty needed. As tiny a noise as the beak of a bird pecking at a grain of corn. So tiny that maybe the very man himself who made it didn’t hear it. But then he didn’t have Marty’s ears: no one else did.

So he was back on the path again, and at about the position of the bench they had just quitted. Would he close in, now that his attempt at creeping up behind them and ambushing them had been frustrated by their getting up and moving away? No, evidently not. Not another sound came, so seeing them halted there ahead of him, he had evidently halted, too, was waiting for their next move. It was a regular cat-and-mouse play. The skin on the back of Marty’s neck crawled involuntarily. It wasn’t physical fear; as said before, he had Dick with him. It was the eeriness, the inexplicability of the thing, that had him terrified. It was no footpad, he was sure of that by now, or he would have made his larcenous attack before Marty could get any closer to the perimeter of the park and the safety of lights and passers-by; and he hadn’t. Was it some maniac?

Marty pretended to throw the imaginary twig he had been fiddling with away and struck out once more, still slowly, calmly, to all appearance unaware that he was being followed.

“Take it easy, now, boy,” he whispered to the dog. “If we can make that exit, I think we’ll be all right. He won’t come on any farther than that.”

Slowly they followed the twisting roundabout course of the pathway, and twice more Marty stopped to listen, once pretending to adjust Dick’s collar, another time pretending to retie his own shoelace. Evidently the nemesis had learned his lesson by that single revelatory bark Dick had given back there; he stayed so far behind them that even the dog wasn’t aware of his presence any more. But Marty could hear that soft whisper of a tread each time, feeling its way after them, stopping way back there when they stopped, but never quickly enough to avoid one last betraying footfall that sent its message to Marty.

“If I only had your eyes or you only had my voice,” he sighed to Dick.

The hum of traffic outside the park, far off at first, slowly drew nearer, louder, finally swirled protectively about them with a roar and a reek of gasoline as they came out the entrance and Dick nudged him to a stop at the curbing. There were pin points of sweat on Marty’s face.

“We made it,” he murmured.

Where was the stalker now? Was he standing there just inside the entrance behind them, looking frustratedly out after them, beyond his reach? Would he turn around and slink back into the evil shadow that had conjured him up? Or would he keep on after them, right up to their own door, right up to where they lived? “How’ll I know?” Marty said to himself, with renewed apprehension at the thought that he might be unwittingly bringing home some danger to Celia. “How’ll I be able to tell, with dozens of other footsteps around me, unless I identify his tread first?” And there hadn’t been enough of it to go by so far; not two good clear-cut steps in succession.