Phantom lady

by Cornell Woolrich

  “What’re you doing that for?” Lombard asked in the listless voice of someone for whom nothing holds any interest any more.

  “Just a home-made way of figuring out how long ago it happened. I don’t know if it’s reliable or not, if any two of these things burn down at the same rate of speed. Must ask some of the guys about that.”

  He went over, glanced closely at it once, moved away again. The second time he came back he picked it up, looked at it in air like a thermometer, looked at his watch, then tapped it out and discarded it, its purpose served.

  “She fell out exactly three minutes before we got in here. That’s taking off a full minute while I was looking out the window, before I got over to it and measured it. And thafs giving her just one puff, as I took. If she took more then that brings it down even closer.”

  “"It may have been king-size,” Lombard said, from a great distance away.

  “It’s a Lucky, there’s enough of the trademark left down at the mouth end to be visible. Think I would have wasted my time doing it if I hadn’t seen that before I started?”

  Lombard didn’t answer, was back in the distance again.

  “This makes it look as though it was our very ring on the downstairs announcer that killed her.” Burgess went on. “Startled her and caused her to make that false move in front of the window that sent her over. The whole story’s here in front of our eyes, without words. She’d gone over to them and was standing there looking out, possibly in an expansive mood, drinking in the night air, making plans, when the ring came from downstairs. She did something wrong. Turned in too much of a hurry, or with her weight thrown badly. Or maybe it was her shoes did it. This one looks a little warped, unsteady from overlong wear. Anyway, the rug skidded over the waxed flooring. One or both of her feet shot out from under her, riding the rug. The shoe came off completely, went up in the air. She overbalanced backward. It wouldn’t have been anything, if she hadn’t been that close to the open windows. What would have been otherwise just a comical little sit-down became a back somersault into space and a death fall.”

  Then he said, “But what I don’t get, is about the address part of it. Was it a practical joke, or what? How’d she act; you were with her.”

  “Nah, she wasn’t kidding,” Lombard said. “She was serious about wanting that money, it was written all over her.”

  “I could understand her giving you a spiked address that would take you a long time to investigate, so she’d have time to cash the check and beat it. But a thing like this, only a few blocks from here—she might’ve known you’d be back in five or ten minutes. What was the angle?”

  “Unless she figured she could get more from the lady in question herself, more than I was offering, by warning her, tipping her off, and just wanted to get me out of the place long enough to dicker with her.”

  Burgess shook his head, as though he found this unsatisfactory, but he contented himself with repeating what he’d said to begin with. “I don’t get it.”

  Lombard hadn’t waited to listen. He’d turned away and was moving listlessly off to the side, with the dragging shamble of a drunk. The other man watched him curiously. He seemed to have lost all interest in what was going on around him, to have gone completely flat. He arrived at the wall and stood there for a moment before it, sagging, like someone who has been disappointed too often, is finally licked, finally ready to quit.

  Then before Burgess could guess his purpose, he had tightened one arm, drawn it back, and sent it crashing home into the inanimate surface before him, as though it were some kind of an enemy.

  “Hey, you fool!” Burgess yelped in stupefaction. “What’re you trying to do, bust your hand? What’d the walls do to you?”

  Lombard, writhing in the crouched position of a man applying a corkscrew to a bottle, his face contorted more by helpless rage than pain even yet, answered in a choked voice while he nursed his flaming hand against his stomach, “They know! They’re all that’s left that knows now—and I can’t get it out of them!”

  20 The Third Day Before the Execution

  THE last-minute drink he’d gulped just now right after getting off the train at the prison stop wasn’t any help. What could a drink do? What could any number of drinks do? It couldn’t alter facts. It couldn’t turn bad news into good. It couldn’t change doom into salvation.

  He kept wondering as he trudged up the steep road toward the gloomy pile of buildings ahead: How do you tell a man he’s got to die? How do you tell him there’s no more hope, the last ray has just faded out? He didn’t know, and he was on his way right now to find out—by first-hand experience. He even wondered whether it wouldn’t have been kinder not to come near him again at all, to let him go without seeing him this useless one last time.

  This was going to be ghastly, and he knew it. He was in the place now, and he already had the creeps. But he’d had to come, he couldn’t be that yellow about it. Couldn’t leave him dangling in suspense for three agonizing days more; couldn’t let him be led out on Friday night still looking back over his shoulder the whole way, metaphorically speaking, for the last-minute cancellation that would never come now.

  He passed the back of his hand slowly across his mouth as he trudged after the guard up to the second-floor tier. “Am I going to get drunk tonight after I leave here!” he swore bitterly to himself. “I’m going to get so full I’ll be an alcoholic case at one of the hospitals until it’s over and done with!”

  And now the guard was standing by, and he went in to face the music. Funeral music.

  This was the execution right now. A bloodless, white one preceding the other by three days. The execution of all hope.

  The guard’s footsteps receded hollowly. After that the silence was horrible. Neither of them could have stood it for very long.

  “So that’s it,” Henderson said quietly at last. He’d understood.

  The rigor mortis was broken, at least. Lombard turned away from the window, came over and clapped him on the shoulder. “Look, fellow—” he started to say.

  “It’s all right,” Henderson told him. “I understand. I can tell by your face. We don’t have to talk about it.”

  “I lost her again. She slipped away—this time for good.”

  “I said you don’t need to talk about it,” Henderson urged patiently. “I can see what it’s done to you. For the love of pete, let’s drop it.” He seemed to be the one trying to buck Lombard up, instead of vice versa.

  Lombard slumped down on the edge of the bunk. Henderson, being the “host,” let him have it, got up and stood leaning the curve of his back against the wall opposite.

  The only sound in the cell for a while after that was the rustle of cellophane, as Henderson kept continuously folding over the edge of an emptied cigarette package back on itself, until he’d wound it up tight, then undoing it again pleat by pleat until he had it open once more. Over and over, endlessly, apparently just to give his fingers something to do.

  No one could have stood it for long in that atmosphere. Lombard said finally, “Don’t, will you? It’s making me go nuts.”

  Henderson looked down at his own hands in surprise, as though unaware until then what they’d been up to. “That’s my old habit,” he said sheepishly. “I never was able to break myself of it, even in good times. You remember, don’t you? Any time I ever rode a train, the time table would end up like that. Any time I had to sit and wait in a doctor’s or a dentist’s ofl&ce, the magazines would end up like that. Any time I ever sat in a theater, the program—” He stopped short, looked dreamily across at the wall, just over Lombard’s head. “That night at the show with her, I can remember doing it that night too— It’s funny how a little thing like that should come back to me now, this late, when all the more important things it might have helped me to remember all along— What’s the matter, what are you looking at me like that for? I’ve quit doing it.” He threw the tormented wrapper aside, to show him.

  “But you threw it away, of
course? That night with her. You left it behind you, on the seat or on the floor, as people usually do?”

  “No, she kept both programs, I can remember that. It’s funny, but I can. She asked me to let her have them. She made some remark to the effect of wanting to glory in her impulsiveness. I can’t recall just what it was. But I know she kept them, I distinctly saw her put them in her bag.”

  Lombard had risen to his feet. “There’s a little something there, if we only knew how to get at it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s the only thing we know for sure she has in her possession.”

  “We don’t know for sure she still has it in her possession, do we?” Henderson corrected.

  “If she kept it to begin with, then it’s likely she still has it. People either do or don’t keep such things as theater programs. Either they throw them away at once, or they keep them indefinitely, for years after. If there was only some way we could make this thing the bait. What I mean is, it’s the only common denominator linking her to you— because it will have its upper right-hand corners neatly winged back from cover to cover, without missing a page. If we could only get her to come forward with it, without guessing—she will stand revealed to us automatically.”

  “By advertising, you mean?”

  “Something along those lines. People collect all sorts of things; stamps, seashells, pieces of furniture full of worm-holes. Often they’ll pay any price for things that to them are treasures but to others are trash. They lose all sense of proportion, once the collector’s lust gets hold of them.”

  “Well?”

  “I’m a collector of theater programs, say. A freak, an eccentric, a millionaire throwing my money away right and left. It is more than a hobby, it is an obsession with me. I must have complete sets of programs for every play produced at every theater in town, all the way back, season by season. I suddenly appear from nowhere, I open a little clearing depot, I advertise. Word spreads around. I’m a nut, I’m giving away something for nothing. There’s a free for all to get in on it while it lasts. The papers’ll probably puff it up, with pictures; one of those screwball incidents that pop up every now and then.”

  “Your whole premise is full of flaws. No matter how phenomenal the prices you offer, why should that attract her? Suppose she’s well off?”

  “Suppose she no longer is well off?”

  “I still don’t see how she can fail to smell a rat.”

  “To us the program is ‘hot.’ To her it isn’t. Why should it be? She may never even notice those tell-tale little folds

  Up at the corner, or if she does, never dream that they’ll tell us what we want to know. You didn’t remember about it yourself, until just a few minutes ago. Why should she? She’s not a mind reader; how is she going to know that you and I are here together in this cell talking about it right now?”

  “The whole thing is too flimsy.”

  “Of course it’s flimsy,” Lombard agreed. “It’s a thousand to one shot. But we have to take it. Beggars can’t be choosers. I’m going to try it, Hendy. I have a strange feeling that— that this’ll work, where everything else has failed.”

  He turned away, went over to the bars to be let out.

  “Well, so long—” Henderson suggested tentatively.

  “I’ll be seeing you,” Lombard called back.

  As he heard his tread recede outside behind the guard’s, Henderson thought: He doesn’t believe that. And neither do I.

  Boxed Advertisement, All Morning and Evening Papers:

  Turn Your Old Theatre Programs into Money

  Wealthy collector, in town for short visit, will pay over-generous amounts for items needed to complete his sets. Life-long hobby. Bring them in, no matter how old, no matter how new! Specially wanted: music-hall and revue numbers, last few seasons, missing because of my absence abroad. Alhambra, Belvedere, Casino, Coliseum. No job-lots nor second-hand dealers. J. L. 15 Franklin Square. Premises open until ten Friday night, only. After that I leave town.

  21 The Day of the Execution

  AT nine-thirty, for almost the first time all day, the line had dwindled to vanishing point, a straggler or two had been disposed of, and there was a breathing spell, with nobody in the shop but Lombard and his young assistant.

  Lombard slumped limply in his chair, thrust out his lower lip, and blew breath exhaustedly up across his face, so that it stirred the disarranged hair overhanging his forehead. He was in his vest, shirt collar open. He dragged a handkerchief out from the pocket he was sitting on and popped it at his face here and there. It came away gray. They didn’t bother dusting them off before they dumped them in front of him. They seemed to think the thicker the dust, the more highly they would be valued. He wiped his hands on the handkerchief, threw it away.

  He turned his head, said to somebody hidden from view behind him by towering, slantwise stacks of programs, “You can go now, Jerry. Time’s about up, I’m closing in another half hour. The rush seems to be over.”

  A skinny youth of nineteen or so straightened up in a sort of trench left between two parapets of the accumulation, came out, put on his coat.

  Lombard took out some money. “Here’s the fifteen dollars for the three days, Jerry.”

  The boy looked disappointed. “Won’t you be needing me any more tomorrow, mister?”

  “No, I won’t be here tomorrow,” Lombard said brood-ingly. “Tell you what you can do, though. You can have these to sell for waste paper; some rag-picker might give you a few jits for them.”

  The boy looked at him pop-eyed. “Gee, mister, you mean

  you been buying ‘em up for three days straight just to get rid of them?”

  “I’m funny that way,” Lombard assented. “Keep it under your hat until then, though.”

  The boy went out giving him awed backward glances all the way to the sidewalk. He thought he was crazy, Lombard knew. He didn’t blame him. He thought he was crazy himself. For ever thinking that this would work, that she’d fall for it, show up. The whole idea had been harebrained to start with.

  A girl was passing along the sidewalk as the boy emerged. That was the only reason Lombard happened to notice her, because his eyes were on his departing assistant and she cut between them. Nobody. Nothing. Just a girl. A stray pedestrian. She gave a look in, as she passed the doorway. Then, with just a momentary hesitation, probably caused by curiosity, went on again, passed from view beyond the vacant show window. For a moment, though, he had almost thought she was about to enter.

  The lull ended and an antediluvian in beaver-collared coat, black-stringed eyeglasses, and an incredibly high collar came in, walking stick to side. Behind him, to Lombard’s dismay, appeared a cab driver dragging in a small ancient trunk. The visitor halted before the bare wooden table Lombard was using for a desk, and struck a pose so hammy that for a minute Lombard couldn’t believe it was intended seriously, wasn’t just a burlesque.

  Lombard rolled his eyes upward. He’d been getting this type all day long. But never with a whole trunkful of them at a time, until now.

  “Ah, sir,” began the relic of the gas lit footlights, in a richly resonant voice that would have been something if only he’d kept his hands down, “you are indeed lucky that I read your advertisement. I am in a position to enrich your collection immeasurably. I can add to it as no one else in this city can. I have some rarities here that will warm your heart. From the old Jefferson Playhouse, as far back as—”

  Lombard motioned a hasty refusal. “I’m not interested in the Jefferson Playhouse, I’ve got a full set.”

  “The Olympia, then. The—”

  “Not interested, not interested. I don’t care what else you’ve got, I’m all bought up. I only need one item more before I put out the lights and lock up. Casino, last season. Have you one?”

  “Casino, bah!” the old man sputtered in his face, with a little more than just expelled breath. “You say Casino to me? What have I to do with trashy modern revues?
I was once: one of the greatest tragedians on the American stage!”

  “I can see that,” Lombard said dryly. “I’m afraid we can’t do business with one another.”

  The trunk and the cab driver went out again. The trunk’s owner stopped in the doorway long enough to express his contempt by way of the floor. “Casino— thut!” Then he went out too.

  Another short hiatus, then an old woman who had the appearance of being a charwoman came in. She had bedecked herself for the occasion with a large floppy hat topped by a cabbagy rose, that looked as though it had either been picked up from an ashcan or taken out of a storage closet where it had lain forgotten for decades. She had applied a circular fever spot of rouge to the leathery skin of each cheek, with the uncertain hand of one trying to indulge in a long-forgotten practice.

  As he raised his eyes to her, half compassionately, half unwillingly, he caught sight over her rounded shoulder of the same girl as before, once again passing outside the shop, this time in the opposite direction. Again she turned and glanced in. This time, however, she did more than that. She. came to a full halt, if only for a second or two; even went back a single step to bring herself more fully in line with I the open entrance. Then, having scanned the interior, she ] went on. She was obviously interested in what was going on. Still, he had to admit, there had been enough publicity attending the enterprise to make a chance passerby conscious

  of it, cause her to give a second look. There had even been photographers sent around early in the event. And she may have simply been coming back from wherever she had been bound the first time she passed; if you went some place, you usually followed the same route on the way back, there was nothing unusual in that.

  The old drudge before him was faltering timidly, “Is it on the level, sir? You really pay money for old programs?”