Night Has a Thousand Eyes

by Cornell Woolrich

  Thus for half an hour past, and thus in all likelihood for half an hour yet to come.

  And then suddenly he had ignited into full, over-all motion. It wasn’t just a stirring, a shift. From the static, without transition, he was amove all over. For no apparent reason, at no apparent cause. Not a sound came in from outside, not a sight. He moved quickly, as though the impulse, the mental detonation that had set him off, were an urgent one. His chair scraped back, he was standing fully erect, he was looking toward the door. There was no one in it, no one beyond it on the outside, no indication of anyone approaching even at a distance, no sign of life whatever, within, without.

  Yet he moved. He made haste away from table and chair, leaving untouched coffee and unpaid marker behind, and bore down toward the door, as if about to make his way hurriedly through it to the outside.

  Halfway there, he checked himself, as though a counter-warning to the first one had overtaken him. He looked about behind him, as if in search for a substitute to the aperture he’d been about to hasten through, and which was now useless to him for some invisible reason. There were two telephone booths against the wall, toward the back. He veered over that way, cutting through a subsidiary lane between tables, followed the wall, and entered the rearmost of the two. He sat down within it, and the impulse seemed to flow all out of him, and he was quiescent again. He didn’t disconnect the instrument, he didn’t immediately close the door. He sat there as if waiting for a briefly allotted space of time to pass.

  It passed. It was about two minutes in length, not less.

  The first full minute, nothing happened. Then the ascending whine of rubbered wheels rounding a corner could be heard. Very faint, hardly anything. Then brakes gripping, somewhere just outside. Still almost as faint, still easy to miss. Then a heavy shoe striking open sidewalk.

  The two minutes was up. The revolving door fluxed and two men entered one behind the other. One was Dobbs, one was Sokolsky. Their faces looked tired and harassed. They weren’t speaking to each other, acted as though they’d grown tired of that, come to the end of that, a full hour ago. Dobbs pushed his hat farther back on his head, in a sort of limp acquiescence of failure.

  They each plucked a pasteboard from the round rubber mat on the counter in front of the cashier.

  When they were halfway toward the back, halfway toward where he sat ensconced, and not until then, the man in the booth drew the slide closed. Dobbs, in the lead, glanced momentarily at his projecting hand as it did so, then indifferently away again.

  A light went on over him, making the whole interior of the booth glow a dull yellow. It powdered the crown of his hat and his shoulders like sprinkled corn meal. He looked up at it but he let it alone. He turned his head a little, so that the back of his neck was to the outside room. As though the blank wall he was now facing wearied him with its monotony, he took a stub of yellow pencil from his pocket and busied himself tracing an abstract geometrical design on it, with minute draftsmanlike attentiveness to each shading stroke. It had no meaning, it was purely hypothetical in outline. He continued it industriously, nevertheless. At times he would break off, and look at it critically, as though deciding whether it suited him or not. Then he would resume again. His unfeigned absorption in it was the epitome of enforced idleness; but of an idleness experienced in surroundings of perfect security. He was utterly relaxed; he did not once look around. It was as though he knew ahead of time that interruption was not to occur, was a guaranteed impossibility, and therefore had no concern about it.

  Dobbs and Sokolsky were carrying mugs of steaming coffee away from the counter now, still one behind the other. Dobbs, in the lead, came to the table where the man now in the booth had sat, and stopped at it, about to sit down there in turn. It may have been the fact that the chair before it was already partly withdrawn and therefore offered less effort in seating oneself upon it than the matching chairs at surrounding tables, which were thrust closely in under them and would have had to be pulled all the way back. But then seeing the discarded mug of coffee, he hesitated, continuing to hold his own aloft. Next he picked up the cardboard ticket left lying there beside it, held it for an instant to show Sokolsky, as if confirming the fact that someone else had a prior claim upon this table, put it down again where he’d found it. They went on one table more, sat down at the immediate next one.

  They took seats on opposite sides of it, facing each other, but they still didn’t speak to each other, they didn’t look at each other. They had the expressions of men who are sick of the whole world and everyone in it.

  Dobbs looked down at his brown-streaked coffee mug, Sokolsky looked up at one of the milky light bowls studding the ceiling. The trajectories of their looks missed each other by a mile. But they also missed what they hit, didn’t take in anything.

  They sugared their coffees, copiously and dejectedly, from the patented container, that simply had to be reversed and shaken. They lifted and partly drank them, Sokolsky still looking upward, Dobbs downward. Then they set the mugs down again heavily, still partly filled. The coffee was too hot to be drunk all at once. Sokolsky wiped his lips with the side of his hand. Dobbs took out a battered cigarette package, shook it upward so that the single cigarette it still held jumped through the gap torn in it at one side of the top.

  He mouthed it, but then he didn’t bother lighting it after all, as though to do so would give him no real pleasure. He took it out and looked at it as though there was something very disappointing about it. Then he dropped it into the moat running around his saucer, and it turned brown and wet half the way up, like a siphon.

  The man in the booth was correcting some of his own handiwork now. He had reversed the pencil stub, was conscientiously erasing a marginal detail of his design. Then he leaned close, blew at the place he’d just been frictioning, to remove any particles of eraser that might conceivably have adhered. The surface he had chosen to work upon now restored, he resumed sketching. He seemed to have forgotten the existence of the outside room.

  Sokolsky had got to the bottom of his coffee now. He wiped his lips again, but with a gesture more of apprehension than of fastidiousness. He spoke for the first time since they had entered.

  “You want to do it?” he said. “Or you want me to?”

  Dobbs seemed to require no explanatory preamble to understand the remark.

  “I’ll do it,” he said glumly. “One of us has to.”

  He got up from the table, turned, went back toward the booths. He didn’t look directly at them as he neared them; he’d seen before that they were there, and that sufficed him apparently. Then, too, there was a colored porter, now, mopping the floor in that section of the room. He had shoved some of the tables aside to make clearance. The crouched figure, the bucket that it was necessary to avoid overturning, the moist area that had to be traversed watchfully to avoid slipping upon, may have all combined to deflect his eye as he arrived before the booths.

  He reached for the door grip of the one that was occupied, the one that was lighted, and swung that back in lieu of its neighbor. Then the back of a neck, almost against his blundering shirt front, confronted him as he raised foot to step in.

  The man in it didn’t turn his head. All he did was desist for a moment, hold his pencil point back from its handiwork, as if passively waiting for the intrusion to be discontinued.

  “Sorry,” Dobbs blurted, and recoiled. He swung the door closed on him again, and entered the one alongside.

  The pencil point rejoined the wall, resumed its meticulous tracings of the same lines over and over, to give them body, to give them firmness.

  Through the thin lateral partition came the jangle of a deposited coin, and then the ricocheting of a dial. One long swift stroke. Then a voice, guardedly: “Headquarters, please.” After that it was audible only at intermittent intervals, not only because it was pitched so low, but because of the frequent, halting pauses it seemed to be constrained to, due perhaps to incessant interruption.

 
“Not a sign of him—

  “Been trying our best—

  “Been running our heads off—

  “I know, lieutenant, but we’re doing the best we can—

  “Yes, sir—

  “Yes, sir—

  “Yes, sir, lieutenant—

  “Yes, sir—”

  Sokolsky was standing outside the booth now. He put the flat of his hand out, at one point, as a brief support to his uneasiness of posture, and it rested against the glass paneling of the second booth, not the first one, the one Dobbs was in. Then he withdrew it again, and a steamy smear remained behind, inflicted by the nervous moisture of his skin. The man within turned his face briefly outward to look, and the evanescent print that had remained dimmed the lower part of his features, like a filmy transparent mask over which his eyes peered unobstructed. Then he turned his face wallward again, and the stigma evaporated.

  Dobbs stepped out, and they stood there for a moment outside the two booths. “He gave me hell. I wish you could’ve heard.”

  Sokolsky mangled his own lower lip worriedly.

  “He’s going to break every one of us,” Dobbs went on. “It’s bring him in or else.”

  A throttled gulp of dismay percolated from Sokolsky’s throat. “What does he think, we’re holding out on him?”

  “Let’s get going,” Dobbs concluded. “It’s not going to do us any good lousing around here.”

  The profile and its satellite rind of cuticle swept from the glass, and a pair of shadow-blobs glanced fanwise across it, after a momentary time lag.

  They made their way down the side of the room toward the doorway ahead, still in the same order in which they’d entered, Sokolsky at heel.

  “Don’t forget the checks,” Sokolsky said. Dobbs digressed toward where they had been sitting.

  Again he came first to the table that had been occupied before their entrance, picked up that ownerless check by mistake. Then, noting, cast it down, this time with a fillip of impatience; went on, picked up the two rightful ones, and rejoined his teammate at the cashier’s desk. A register cymbaled, and they had gone.

  The man in the booth was fumbling in his pocket. He brought out two dimes, a quarter, several pennies, scanned them in the palm of his hand. Then he returned them, stood up.

  He opened the door of the booth and came outside. He went up front to the cashier’s desk.

  “Give me a couple of nickels, please,” he said meekly, and put one of the dimes down.

  The cashier made change for him with an ungracious scowl. He picked the nickels up and went back toward the booth again.

  The door swirled once more and Dobbs had come in again. He palmed down change in front of the cashier. “Give me a pack of cigarettes,” he said impatiently. “I forgot to get ’em when I was in here just now.”

  The other man’s shoulder, elbow, hip were just receding into the gap of the booth. The slide shuttled closed over them.

  Dobbs snatched up the cigarettes and bolted out again. The tormented door spun once more, came around empty.

  In the booth a deposited coin clanged. Then a dial rustled. One long swift stroke. “Headquarters, please,” a submissive voice said.

  19

  End of Police Procedure

  TEN-FIFTY-ONE. MCMANUS IS in his office, alone. The same one in which he had them all lined up before him—was it two days or was it two months ago?—and gave them their assignments and instructions. He’s by himself now, under a cone-light making a great white triangle, its base flat on his desk. He’s poring over a report. On his left are two more he’s just finished poring over. On his right are three, maybe four, he hasn’t come to yet. All the men have reported. All about the same thing.

  His coat is off, and his tie is off, and he’s made a bird’s nest of his hair, still plentiful for a man his age. On the desk is his pocket watch, sitting open, lid reared. His eyes keep going from report in hand to it, and back to report in hand again.

  McManus is time-harassed, too; as time-harassed as anyone else in this affair. And he hates it. He’s not used to working against a deadline. He’s never had to before.

  He finishes the report. He punctuates it by a heavy, frustrated clout of his fist to the desktop. He did that with the first two, too. No good, don’t lead anywhere. He discards it, takes up the next one.

  The phone rings. It’s been doing that on an average of every four or five minutes, for hours, and now its beginning to pick up speed if anything. It’s only from the desk sergeant outside, though, this time. “No,” he says, “I’m up to my neck in here. Switch it to somebody else.”

  He takes up the new report, starts reading. But his mind is still on the one before, something has lingered. He drops the new one, goes back to the old, reshuffles his hair in the meantime.

  Then he drops the old, after a refresher glance, picks up the phone. “Go out and bring in that rummage-shop owner. Spitzer. I want to talk to him myself. You can’t tell me he didn’t know those shoes were in the window. No, never mind. It’s too late.”

  And even if he did, he thinks, how much further are we? The point is, how did Tompkins? Always that same stone wall. In all these reports. No matter which direction you start out in, you always end up in the same place.

  He finishes the next report; punctuates it with the same pummel of thwarted dissatisfaction.

  Ten-fifty-three. Call from Molloy, upstate. More details on the escaped-lion episode. “The mother of a kid of about eight or nine just brought him in by the back of the neck to the local constable’s office. I was present. He was still squalling from the lambasting he’d been given at home. He admitted lighting a firecracker, throwing it into the lions’ cage, and running for his life.”

  “Then what’s the score?”

  “It stinks from paradox. Two of them were sold, see, I told you that. One to Hughes, one to this kid. Hughes had murder in his heart, the kid just mischief. The kid just happened to pick on the selfsame thing that Hughes himself intended to do. Only the kid beat him to it. Hughes had the chain around the side trap filed through, all in readiness and waiting; left loosely draped to look like it was still intact. But he didn’t have his wife standing there in position yet, in front of the cage, waiting for him ‘to show up.’ The lion came to meet him halfway, instead of waiting for him to get there. Just a little too soon, that’s all. But the method was his identically, firecracker and all. Stinks with paradox, like I said.”

  “It has nothing to do with our case, anyway.”

  “Except that the lion’s still at large. And slowly working closer to Shawn’s base of operations. A report came in just now before I picked up the phone that a couple petting in a car had the daylights scared out of them by what they took to be an enormous tawny dog, running out at them, then diving back into cover again. The spot they indicated is only about five miles from the northern boundary of the Reid estate.”

  “Do something about it, will ya!” McManus exclaims shrilly. “Aren’t there any State Police up that way? Head it off!”

  He hangs up, and no sooner does than it rings right back again. Desk sergeant outside again. “How many times do I have to tell you, Hogan? I’m busy!”

  Ten-fifty-seven. Call from Dobbs, this time. Breathless, anxious to redeem himself. “I think we’ve nailed him, lieutenant. Somebody answering his description was just seen entering a house at Fourteen Dexter Street. It’s just two blocks over from where we lost him earlier today. No, we didn’t see him ourselves, but we’re not taking any chances, we’ve got the place sealed up tight, back and front.”

  “Don’t do anything until I get there. Sit tight. I’m going to take charge of it myself. I’m leaving right now.”

  He jumps up, sidesweeps all the reports, finished and unfinished alike, together into the discard, grabs for his hat, grabs for his coat, and starts for the door. He comes back and grabs for his watch. Two to eleven. Sixty-two minutes to go. He snaps the lid shut, shoves it into his coat, which still isn’t on his b
ack. His tie he lets go altogether.

  It rings again before he can get away from the desk. The desk sergeant, for about the third time in a row. He kills it quick, without listening. “Not now, Hogan. I’m on my way out.”

  He goes out fast. It starts to ring again no sooner has he closed the door, but this time he keeps going, wrestling into his coat along the way.

  The desk sergeant tries to stop him as he flits past the vestibule outside, still struggling with his coat.

  “Lieutenant—”

  “Some other time, Hogan. Can’t you see I’m in a hurry?”

  “What’ll I do about this guy, lieutenant?” the sergeant calls after him in a stage whisper, shielding his mouth with the edge of his hand. “He says he’s been phoning you all day and now he’s pestering me to get in to see you—”

  A forlorn-looking figure that has been slumped patiently on a bench against the far wall straightens up a little inquiringly. “Is that him—?”

  McManus flicks a brief look that way in transit, keeps going. “Find out what he wants. Sick him on somebody else.”

  “He won’t say. I tried that. He won’t see anyone but you.”

  “Then throw him out,” McManus concludes, and by that time is already out himself.

  A moment later, on the steps outside, someone comes after him, touches him placatingly on the sleeve.

  “Beat it,” McManus growls, swinging his arm free. “You heard what I just told the sergeant, didn’t you?” He goes on down the steps.