Cornell Woolrich - The Dog with the Wooden Leg

The traffic roar suddenly died out to a pulsing of waiting motors, there was a sharp click from the automatic light stanchion on the opposite corner, and Dick nudged him over the curb and on. Marty listened all the way over, but nothing followed across the asphalt. He climbed the opposite curb, the light switch clicked back again to green. Then just before the waiting motors raced into motion, and before they grew loud enough to drown it out, there was a quick passage of steps across, hurrying to beat traffic and therefore more unguarded.

About two dozen in succession, as clear as a bell, and Marty drank in every last one of them. A slight tick went with them, so there were metal tips on the soles. The fellow came down a little heavier on one foot than the other, one was a counterpoint to the other. And lastly and most important, Marty had counted three between each two footfalls, so that meant the man had good long legs; that gave Marty his pace. A medium-height man was usually two; a shorty, one. Three would be easy to keep track of, no matter how many other footsteps cluttered up the sidewalk. Three wasn’t often met with, three meant he was a good six feet or over. Marty had got all he needed out of that one incautious passage against the traffic light. He, the shadower, knew he was following a blind man, so he should have known better.

All the way down the first block that step, one-two-three, step, one-two-three, hung on after them, not so far behind as in the park, but at about ten yards distance now. Sometimes other steps blotted it out, but it always came through again to Marty’s keen ears. He stopped, just to make doubly sure, to test it, and it alone of all the others, stopped, too.

He knew that if he went up to a cop and complained someone was following him, the first thing the cop would say was: “But you’re blind. How can you tell if someone is or not?” Or if to humor him, the cop escorted him up to his own door, that would be the very thing Marty didn’t want, that would reveal where he lived.

“I’m not licked yet,” he muttered grimly to the dog. “I’m going to lose him if it takes all night. After all, I’m one up on him; I know that he’s tailing me, but he doesn’a know that I know. Pop Sabbatino’s market has a back entrance on an alley. He’ll see us go in there, but he’ll never see us come out again.”

The third crossing after the park was where he had to turn off the straightaway to get to Sabbatino’s; he knew that much. But he had to get the idea across to Dick. Dick was training to lead him home the shortest way; he didn’t know anything about detours. And if the watcher in the background noticed them disputing about it, he’d catch on what was up right away.

Marty turned left. Dick immediately got in front of him and tried to block him, head him back in the way they had been going.

“Cut it out,” Marty whispered tensely; “he’ll see you. Sabbatino. Sabbatino, Dick. Don’t you get it?”

The dog had been there with him, of course, on errands for Celia. But Dick wasn’t used to going there from the park, he was used to going there from the flat. He wouldn’t budge, thinking Marty had lost his bearings and it was up to him to set him right. And behind them, eyes were watching every move the two made, as they jockeyed stubbornly for leadership.

Suddenly Marty remembered a phrase Celia usually tacked on at the end of her instructions: “And a piece of liver for Dick.” He repeated it now.

The dog understood, gave in. They trudged up the side street toward their new destination.

There was a moment or two of silence in their wake.

“He’s watching us from the corner, letting us have our heads,” said Marty shrewdly.

Then on it came again, step, one-two-three, step, one-two-three. The dog nudged Marty aside again, toward a smell of oranges and fresh green vegetables, and the sidewalk underfoot changed to wooden flooring sprinkled with sawdust. A cash register trilled somewhere nearby.

A booming Italian voice hailed them heartily. “Hello, Marty! What’sa it gonna be tonight?”

“Just stopped in to say hello,” said Marty noncommitally. No sense taking Sabbatino into his confidence; the latter would probably tell him he was just imagining things. All these people with eyesight were always so sure they knew better than a blind man. He drummed his fingers on the glass counter top for a minute or two, to give the shadower time to look in and reassure himself that he was in there; then he would probably cringe back out of sight again, like a cat watching a mouse hole.

“Anyone looking in from the street?” Marty asked finally.

“Huh? Nomebody.”

“Sure? Take another look.”

“Issa no one there,” insisted the bewildered Sabbatino.

“Then take me over to the back door, Sabbatino; I’ll go out that way.”

“What’s a matt,’ you in troub’?” But the storekeeper did as he asked.

“No,” said Marty, “I’m not in trouble, and I aim to stay that way. Just sick of people gaping at me and Dick. Anyone looking in yet?”

“I can’t a tell, canno see the street from here, issa counter full of can’ goods ina way.”

“Good,” said Marty. “If anyone steps in the next ten-fifteen minutes and asks you what became of me, you never saw me, you don’t even know who I am.”

The back door of Sabbatino’s closed behind them, and Dick led him down a narrow delivery passage between two buildings to the next street over. They rounded the corner of that and rejoined the street they lived on, but above their house now, and not below it. Marty stood and listened a minute. Silence all around them; they’d finally thrown that step, one-two-three, off the track.

“It worked,” Marty exulted. “Now hurry up; let’s get in out of the open while we have the chance!”

The two of them all but ran the remaining distance to their door, Dick nearly tripping him up when it came time to turn him aside finally toward the right entrance. Marty lurched inside, drew a great breath of relief as he felt the walls of the narrow entrance hall safe around him and knew that he was screened from the street.

“I don’t know what that was all about,” he panted, “but I sure didn’t like it, and I’m staying indoors from now on!”

He was still out of breath from that last headlong race to sanctuary, when he finally got upstairs to the flat. Celia was already home and worried about him.

“Gramp,” she scolded, “what happened to you? You were never this late before! I was scared sick! Don’t you ever do that again!”

He decided not to tell her about those mysterious footsteps that had followed him; it would only frighten her, and she had things hard enough without adding to her worries. Besides, he was safe now, he’d outwitted whatever the danger was, so there was no need to alarm her. “I guess we sat there a little too long,” he mumbled penitently.

“Well, sit down: supper’s been ready for half an hour.”

All through the meal he was unusually silent, trying to figure out what that could have been. What reason could anyone have, first, to try to creep up on him in the park, and then to follow him along the streets with the obvious purpose of finding out where he lived? He had no enemies; there was no neighborhood gossip of hoarded wealth attached to his name to arouse any malefactor’s cupidity, they all knew Celia worked hard for a pittance every week. Who could it have been, and what could he have wanted?

The harder Marty tried, the less sense he could make out of it. Celia noticed his preoccupation after awhile.