Уильям Айриш - Phantom lady

“He withdrew, and hovered around outside on the street, far enough away to command the entrance without any danger of being caught sight of himself. He knew your next stop was slated to be the Casino Theater, but he couldn’t be sure, of course. Couldn’t afford to take it for granted.

“The two of you came out, taxied over, and he taxied over in your wake. He followed you into the theater. Listen to this, it’s an exciting thing. He bought a standing room ticket, as people often do who have only time to catch one act. He stood up back there, at the rear of the orchestra, sheltered by a post, and kept the back of your heads in sight throughout the performance.

“He saw you leave when you did leave. He almost lost you in the crowd when you left, but luck was with him. The little incident of the blind man he missed altogether, for he dared not tread that closely behind you. Your taxi had such a hard time pulling clear of the jam that he was able to keep you in sight from another.

“You led him back to Anselmo’s finally, although he still didn’t know that that was the pivot of the whole thing. Again he loitered outside, for in the closer quarters of the bar he couldn’t have hoped to avoid your spotting him. He saw you leave her there, presently, and could guess by that fact alone, if he hadn’t already, that you’d carried out the threat he’d heard you yell back at the apartment: that you’d invite the first stranger you met along in your wife’s place.

“He had to decide quickly now whether to keep on after you, and run the risk of losing her in the shuffle, or to switch his attention to her, find out just how much good she could do you, how much harm she could do him.

“He didn’t hesitate long. Again his good luck held, and he did the right thing almost by instinct. It was too late to attach himself to you any more with any degree of plausibility. Instead of helping to incriminate you, he’d only be incriminating himself. His ship was being warped out of the pier at that very minute, and he should have been on it by this time.

“So he let you go and he chose her, never dreaming how unerringly right he was, and he bided his time outside, watching her covertly, knowing she could not stay in the bar all night, knowing she would have to have some final destination.

“Presently she emerged, and he drew back out of sight to give her leeway enough. He was shrewd enough not to accost her then and there; he would only be identifying himself to her. In case it turned out she could absolve you, he would only be incriminating himself indelibly for later on by the mere fact of having questioned her on the subject at all, shown any interest in it. So he wisely decided that this was the thing to do: learn her identity and destination first of all, so that he would know where to find her again when he wanted her. That much done, leave her undisturbed for a short while. Then discover, if possible, just how much protection she was able to give you. This by retracing your steps of the evening, seeking to ferret out if possible your original meeting place, and above all how soon after your leaving the apartment the meeting had taken place. Then thirdly, if the weight she could throw in the matter was enough to count, take care of it by a little judicious erasing. Seek her out wherever it was he had traced her to the first time, and ascertain whether or not he could persuade her to remain silent. And if she proved not amenable, he admits there was already a darker method of erasure lurking in the back of his mind. Immunizing one crime by committing a second.

“So he set out after her. She went on foot, for some inscrutable reason, late as the hour was: but this only made it easier for him to keep her in sight. At first he thought it might be because she lived in the immediate vicinity, a stone’s throw away from the bar, but as the distance she covered slowly lengthened, he saw that couldn’t be it. Presently he wondered if it mightn’t be that she had become aware there was someone following her, and was deliberately trying to mislead them, throw them off the track. But even this, he finally decided, couldn’t be the case. She showed absolutely no awareness nor alarm about anything, she was sauntering along too aimlessly, almost dawdling, stopping to scan the contents of unlighted showcases whenever she happened upon them, stopping to stroke a stray cat, obviously improvising her route as she went along, but under no outward compulsion whatever. After all, had she been seeking to rid herself of him, it would have been simple enough for her to have hopped into a cab, or stepped up to a policeman and said a word or two. Several of them drifted into sight along the way and she didn’t. There was nothing left for him to ascribe her erratic movements to, finally, than that she had no fixed destination, she was wandering at random. She was too well dressed to be homeless, and he was completely at a loss what to make of it.

“She went up Lexington to Fifty-Seventh, then she turned west there as far as Fifth. She went north two blocks, and sat for some time on one of the benches on the outside of the quadrangle around the statue of General Sherman, just as though it were three in the afternoon. She was finally driven off from there again by the questioning slowing-up of about every third car that passed her on its way in or out of the park. She ambled east again through Fifty-Ninth, absorbedly memorizing the contents of the art-shop windows along there, with Lombard slowly going mad behind her.

“Then at last, when he almost began to think she intended going over the Queensborough Bridge on foot into Long Island, she suddenly turned aside into a very grubby little hotel at the far end of Fifty-Ninth, and he detected her in the act of signing the register when he peered in after her. Showing that this was as much of an improvisation as all the rest of her meandering had been.

“As soon as she was safely out of sight, he went in there in turn and. as the quickest way of finding out what name she’d given and what room she’d been assigned to, took one for himself. The name immediately above his own, when he’d signed for it, was ‘Frances Miller’ and she’d gone into 214. He managed to secure the one adjoining, 216, by a deft process of elimination, finding fault with the two or three that were shown him at first until he’d secured the one he had his eye on. The place was in the last stages of deterioration, little better than a lodging house, so that was excusable enough.

“He went up for a short while, chiefly to watch her door from the hallway outside his own and convince himself that she was finally settled for the rest of the night and would be here when he came back. He couldn’t have hoped for more proof than he obtained. He could see the light in her room peering out through the opaque transom over the door. He could, without any difficulty in that weatherbeaten place, hear every move she made, almost guess what she was doing. He could hear the clicking of the wire hangers in the barren closet as she hung her outer clothing up. She had come in without any baggage, of course. He could hear her humming softly to herself as she moved about. He could even detect now and then what it was she was humming. Chica Chica Boom, from the show you had taken her to earlier that night. He could hear the trickle of the water as she busied herself preparing to retire. Finally the light went out behind the transom, and he could even hear the creak of the springs in the decrepit bed as she disposed herself on it. He goes into all this at great and grim length in the final draft of his confession.

“He crossed his own unlighted room, leaned out the window, which overlooked a miserable blind shaft, and scrutinized what he could see of her room from that direction. The shade was down to within a foot of the sill, but her bed was in such a position that by straddling the sill of his own and leaning far out, he could see the glint of the cigarette she held suspended over the side of the bed in the darkness in there. There was a drain pipe running down between their two windows, and the collarlike fastening which held it to the wall offered a foot rest at one point. He made note of that. Made note it was possible to get in there in that way, if he should find it necessary, when he came back.