Night Has a Thousand Eyes

by Cornell Woolrich

  She sprang galvanically to a sitting position, and then her eyelids flew open. The greater alteration preceded the lesser, and not the lesser the greater.

  The room around her was in darkness, but the touch of her finger to the lamp dispelled that. And now there was the light of reality, and everything was in order, everything was in familiar place.

  But terror wasn’t less, terror was even greater, for fresh from the dream she was plunged into a milieu that was strange all over again, at least to the present moment, even though it had been familiar before sleep. And terror-laden as she was, the readjustment wouldn’t take immediate effect.

  The dream-mainspring was still alive within her. To find him, to get to where he was and be safe beside him. She flung herself out of the bed. She knew all the details of everyday action that it was necessary for her to go through, and she went through them. Where her wrap was, and to slip it on, and to put her feet into the mules beside the bed, and to hurry over to the door and fling it open; where his room door was, down the quiet night-laden hall, and that she must go to it and seek him out. All these she knew and carried out, but it was the dream-impulse within her, still all-powerful, that activated her.

  She stumbled out into the hall, still sobbing his name, and as she fled for his door, looked back across her shoulder, remembering where that turn had been in it, in her recent tormented imagery, and where that baleful greenish light—and worse—had slowly materialized, stalking her. There was nothing of that there now, it ended clear and straight at the overlip of the stairs, and shaded electric wall candles, a pair bracketed on each side, cast a kindly, sane light, low enough to be lulling, clear enough to be comforting. But memory still possessed her, the afterglow of fright, and she fled to his door, a furtive slim wraith in billowing blue satin, spreading out behind her like a peacock’s tail. Then she gathered it close about her, and knocked with vibrant, low importunacy, that didn’t break off to wait even for an instant.

  His weight made a single thudding sound within, and then the door had slashed open. So that her last knock, unable to desist, fell upon his chest in a sort of mute, clenched appeal, and her hand lay there.

  His face was frightened. Not for self, but for her, as if he’d already guessed who it must be at first sound of it, before even opening the door. His arms were behind him, stiffly contorted, the elbows akimbo out of sight. A strip of bisecting robe was hoisted to one shoulder; on the other it hadn’t climbed high enough yet. He hitched his backbone, an empty sleeve perked up, and a snub-nosed automatic and a hand came through it, filling it out.

  He swept her close to him with his free arm, and she went willingly. Then he looked about, beyond her, scanning the hall.

  “What is it? What?”

  “A dream, I guess. But I can’t come out of it.”

  “Something in there with you? Want me to look?” And then with briefly narrowed eyes, “You didn’t hear anything, did you?”

  “No. No. Nothing. Just a dream, I guess.”

  “Stand here a minute,” he said. “Stand inside the door.”

  He went down to her doorway and disappeared inside.

  She stood there peering out close along the wall, like a furtive child. It seemed like a long time he was in there. He must have gone over it thoroughly. She could hear the wood framework of the windows creak slightly as he tested the tightness of their closure with pressure of his hands.

  Then finally he came out again, and she was as glad to see him as though he’d been gone an hour.

  “Shipshape,” he said.

  “I don’t know why I should run to you.”

  “I don’t know why you shouldn’t. That’s what I’m here for.”

  He stood there looking at her, and she thought: I’ll have to go in there again. That’s what he expects me to do.

  “Feel better now?” he asked, watching her closely.

  She nodded, and she wondered if the feigned alacrity of the nod fooled him any. Possibly it didn’t, for there was a speculative narrowness to his eyes.

  “Does this thing frighten you?” He glanced down at the gun still weighting his hand.

  “No, I like it. I like you to have it.”

  “Yeah, but I shouldn’t be flourishing it around like in a Western barroom.” He put it away.

  He looked at her. Then he looked down at the waiting doorway. Then he looked back at her again. As though wondering what the best thing was.

  “Want to go back now?” he said tentatively.

  “I don’t know if I can go in there again. I’ll try.”

  “Want me to walk with you as far as your own door?”

  They walked down as slowly, as lingeringly, as if it were an immense distance, instead of a mere few steps.

  “Be all right now?”

  She turned to go in. The room expanded into view again, tinctured with sediment of the dream. She recoiled involuntarily. He must have noticed that.

  “I’ll stand out here,” he said, “until you’re back in bed again. Leave the door the way it is. I won’t look in.”

  He turned his shoulder to the room, and stood there in the open doorway, facing downhall.

  She went on, emboldened. She let the robe drop from her, and crept into the bed again, and drew the covers to her.

  “All right? All right now?” he queried, without turning his head.

  “I can’t do it,” she said suddenly, wincing. “I can’t do it. It’s all right while you’re there, and I know that you’re there, but as soon as I think that you’re not—”

  He turned and he saw that her arms had stretched out toward him, without her being aware of it herself; for as soon as she saw him turn, they had dropped. She was like a child, the dream had swept away all grown-up attributes.

  He strode outright into the room, fanning the door closed backhand as he passed it. “All right,” he said. “Fright such as you’ve got comes first.”

  He drew a chair over to the bedside, sat down in it.

  “See now. Better?”

  Her hands moved uneasily, as though she were holding them back. He stretched out one of his own toward them, and instantly they flew toward it, seized it.

  A fleeting, wan little smile touched her face. The child and her protector. The child and her big brother. Now I’m safe, you’re here. Now I can sleep; you’re here. There always should be someone older, wiser, stronger than I am.

  Her face turned a little and fell away from him down the pillow. She stared a moment, as if at the security she seemed to see down there along the soft snowy undulations. Her eyelids flickered, fell, rose a last time, then fell for good.

  There was silence in the room.

  He sat there docilely, leaning forward from the chair, his extended hand given over to the lonely, pleading clasp of both of hers, wound tight around it in confidence that it would not leave her.

  Everyone must have something to hang on to.

  That smile had come back again to her sleeping face. It stayed there now.

  He reached slowly, cautiously aside with his unpossessed hand and plucked the drop chain of the bedside lamp.

  His face went out.

  10

  Police Procedure:

  Dobbs and Sokolsky

  A POLICE ELECTRICIAN CAME IN at seven-thirty—this was seven-thirty of the morning following the requisitioning of the room—bringing the necessary wiring coiled into a thick circle, and then indented in the middle into a bone-shaped oval to take up less room, and then finally wrapped in newspaper as a camouflage. This tucked under one arm. In his other hand he carried a bulky box, resembling a large-size tool kit, containing the receiving end of the apparatus.

  He gave a single cryptic knock, as brief as it was secretive, and apparently easily identifiable, for the door opened on the second, and closed again behind him with equal immediacy.

  Sokolsky was behind it. Dobbs was crouched knee-high, over in the opposite corner, in what at first glance might have been mistakenly taken for an a
ttitude of the utmost dejection. His face was thrust in toward the joint where the two walls came together, as though he were hiding it. In addition his head was turned sharply downward, almost hidden from sight beneath the curvature of his shoulders. His hands were clasped across the back of his sharply inclined neck, as if to ease the stricture. He was sitting upon his own upthrust heels. A blackened steam or water pipe speared upward before him, disappearing into the ceiling. He was as motionless as an Indian yogi, or holy man, sitting reversed.

  Both inmates of the room had taken off their shoes, to make for soundlessness of tread. But nothing else; not even their coats. Sokolsky not even his hat. They were not in here for domestic purposes, after all. A rather generous yellow-white hole blemished the upended heel of one of Dobbs’ socks, without in any way impairing his efficiency.

  “We can’t do anything yet,” Sokolsky murmured to the technician. “He’s still down there.”

  “Let me look it over a while,” the newcomer said.

  Sokolsky pointed to his footgear. “Watch it. It goes right through.”

  The electrician put his bulky adjuncts down on the bed, removed his shoes. Then he moved softly, and a trifle painfully, about the room, apparently on the lookout for flaws or rents.

  He didn’t seem to find anything of a suitable nature. He tapped the huddled Dobbs on the back at last, and the latter slowly uncoiled and elongated into the stature of a human being, though a painfully stiff and lame one.

  He sought the edge of the bed, and let himself down upon it, and rubbed himself.

  “He’s getting up,” he said. “I just heard the bedsprings sing out. And a turned-on faucet came whining up the pipe.”

  The electrician was down now in Dobbs’ former collapsed position. He straightened up after a moment and came back to them.

  He kicked his thumb backward toward the pipe. “That’ll do. It don’t fit the hole in the flooring made for it, plenty of slack all around it. I can whittle it out even bigger and drop the wire behind the pipe. It’ll look like its shadow when his lights are on.”

  Sokolsky hooked thumb and forefinger together in unspoken symbol of approval. “I’ll give you the go-ahead,” he said.

  He eased the room door open and went out into the hall, shoeless as he was. He tested the stair rail, apparently for slants of downward perspective, in several places along its length, by leaning over it and then drawing himself up again. He finally found a stance with a satisfactory angle, made a cushion of his own crossed arms on the rail, bedded down on them, and stopped being animate. He gave an impression of being able and willing to remain that way all day, if necessary.

  In the room Dobbs, on relief now, continued to massage the calf of his leg. The electrician was straightening the tortured wire out of its circular formation by hand, the rapidly diminishing hoop slung over his arm as he did so. A pair of pliers and a number of other tools had appeared on the outspread newspaper on the bed, arranged in the neat symmetry and precision that always betokens the artisan, the artist who loves his work for its own sake.

  Sokolsky jarred slightly, crouched a little lower. The alteration was scarcely noticeable, could have been taken for an illusion created by the dim light that outlined him so uncertainly. Seconds later, however, a door had plucked open, somewhere below, then closed again with somewhat greater distinctness, and springless footfalls began disheartenedly to descend the stairs, with a looseness of grip that was almost like a flapping sound.

  They dwindled, petered out, the stair well fell silent.

  The electrican had picked up a small, pocket-sized hacksaw and was waiting. He had his wiring arrow-straight now, and paid out in one single length that reached entirely across the room and pointed amputatedly toward the water pipe, ending inches away from this in a small forked tongue that seemed to be trying to fang the slender iron cylinder of its own accord. It lay along the floor, then ran up across the bed, then continued along the floor on the other side. It wasn’t meant to stay there; that was just for accessibility. Every move counted, had been done so many times before.

  Sokolsky reared, breasted the turn of the rail, and began to descend the stairs. He could be seen going down, but he couldn’t be heard. Neither of the other two moved yet. A key picked metallically at a lock, with a deftness that didn’t prolong the sound even to their acutely attuned ears. Then there was silence. Whether a door had been opened or not, it traced no sound on the sensitized air.

  Moments passed. Suddenly Sokolsky was on the stairs again, coming up them. The other two men had advanced as far as their head, meanwhile, prepared to descend. He signaled them not to by crossing hands in front of his face and then spreading them wide apart.

  Nothing was said until the three were joined once more on the upper landing.

  “He’s coming back again,” he whispered. “Get in.”

  They closed the door, relapsed into immobility. Dobbs was back again at the corner orifice.

  Presently he nodded vigorously to the other two, pumped a single finger downward toward the floor a number of times.

  They continued to wait.

  This time Dobbs cast his thumb over-shoulder in the general direction of the outside hall. Sokolsky cautiously eased open the door. Footsteps were descending below somewhere, in the same slovenly manner as before.

  The former procedure repeated itself. Again Sokolsky went first down the stairs, again he went in, again he came out again. This time he snapped his fingers twice. A moment later the other two were down beside him.

  They closed the door of the new room, Tompkins’ room, after themselves.

  “How’d you know he was coming back again?” Dobbs breathed.

  “His pipe was on the table. The bowl was still warm when I felt it. Meant he put it down by mistake, didn’t leave it behind on purpose.”

  The electrician worked rapidly. He clamped a small attachment to the steam pipe in the corner of the room, on the side of it facing the wall. It could still be seen if the eye was already directed over at that exact place along the pipe’s slenderness. Dissatisfied, he drew it all the way down to floor level without releasing it. There, because of a greater depth of shadow, it passed from view. He lit the room light and tested it. It still remained effaced from view; to an even greater extent now, for the pipe itself cast its own shadow backward upon it.

  He went out. There was a slight grating sound at the orifice circling the pipe at ceiling height. It was very sparing, could scarcely be detected. The tip of the saw peered through once or twice, then shyly retired. A few grains of sawdust and plaster spiraled down in a brief spun-sugar trickle. A wire appeared, trailing down beside the pipe; only visible while it continued to move, blending from sight as it stopped.

  The electrician came in again. He drew the wire down farther, attached it to what was already in place down at the floor.

  “Try it for sound,” he said. He went out a second time.

  Sokolsky gazed at Dobbs, as though it was Dobbs he was addressing and not the electrician a full floor above. He kept his voice pitched to their own immediate proximity. “Okay? Can you hear me, Graham?” he said quietly.

  The pipe sounded off, as though somebody’s fingernail had tapped it affirmatively.

  They moved across to the other side of the room.

  “How about over here?”

  The pipe ticked again.

  “Now over here. We don’t want any dead spots. We’re in the corner, left of the door, Graham. Can you get us?”

  The pipe ticked.

  “No blind spots,” Dobbs said.

  The electrician reappeared. He took a blotter from his pocket, allowed a few drops of water from the tap to moisten it, and then pressed it to the floor all about the base of the pipe, where the sediment of sawdust and plaster had fallen earlier. Then he folded it over upon itself and carefully thrust it into his pocket.

  At the door he stopped long enough to join thumb to finger in a circle of successful completion, fluctuated it at
them. “Yours,” he said. He left.

  They left, but not for an hour and a half after. Dobbs was carefully filing something away in his pocket. “These checks from Reid have to be taken out and photostated, then they have to go right back where I found them, fast.”

  “Think he knew they were there? What was the idea salting them away? Twelve thousand dollars’ worth—”

  “He wasn’t hiding them. I think they’ve been left kicking around until he forgot he had them. The places they turned up in showed that. I found one caught between the dresser and the wall, as though it fell down through the back of a drawer. Another was crumpled and had tobacco smears on the back of it, as though he’d used it to wipe off a pipe cleaner.”

  “What kind of a guy is he?”

  “Either very dumb or very smart. And that’s for McManus to decide, not us. I’ll take them over, you get on the earmuffs.”

  At six o’clock the checks were long back, and Dobbs was at the headset, spelling Sokolsky.

  All he got was silence, the silence of an empty room.

  At 6:27 a door opened—over the wire. It closed. Footfalls shuffled about, expired. There was the spongy slap of discarded cloth striking a chair back.

  Nothing moved in the room above, save Dobbs’s right hand, penciling shorthand symbols on a pad. And even that was only occasionally; it lay still more than it vibrated.

  It got dark outside. A thin crescent of light peered around the pipe, where it fitted into the floor. A fingernail paring, no more. Otherwise the room above stayed dark. They could scarcely see even each other in it. Dobbs’s hand traced little curlicues and pothooks in the blackness. He kept his little finger out for a guard, to tell him when he was running off the pad.

  At seven a spoon scraped vigorously at the inside of a pot, emptying it. From then until the half hour, crockery occasionally chinked. Then it rattled, as though several pieces were being gathered together, carried for a distance. Water was discharged with sandpapery force, and the rattling was blended and drowned with accompanying splashes and gurgles. Then the crockery gave thuds of finality, piece by piece, one to a piece.