Rendezvous in Black

by Cornell Woolrich

  He didn’t answer. He looked her straight in the eyes, deep in the eyes.

  They didn’t say anything more, either one of them.

  Then the dance was over.

  Morrissey was waiting alone by the Carlton clock this time. It was late. The crowd had thinned out. They were going to miss the show. He fidgeted; went to the entrance to look for her, came back disappointed; went to the entrance, came back agonized. He looked at the clock too much, he looked at his watch too much. That didn’t help. They gained a minute, every minute, and that was all they could tell him, either one of them.

  It was the death-watch of a date; that final stretch when it’s about to expire into a full-fledged stand-up, give up the ghost. You can’t keep it alive just by waiting there: it takes two to keep it alive. But you wait there anyway, trying to give it adrenaline.

  He smoked too much, and he used up all his cigarettes; then he bought another pack, and he smoked them too much. And didn’t half finish what he began.

  A hundred thousand men before him had been through what he was going through now. But that didn’t help; to him it was just like the first time. It was excruciatingly brand-new.

  Then suddenly—a whirl of leopard collar, of flaring green coat, spinning around in the wings of the door—and there she was.

  She was forgiven, it was over; it was all right before she’d even reached him, even opened her mouth.

  She came in alone. Well, naturally; this had been rigged as a single date. Miss Philips had dropped out, piqued. And that had made Jack de trop.

  Her mien was sober. A little wan, you might even say. When she greeted him she smiled, but the smile soon died.

  “Gee, I didn’t think you were coming any more! What happened?”

  She couldn’t get up much vigor. “Oh, I don’t know—” she said lackadaisically. And then: “I’m here.” As if to say, What more do you want?

  He didn’t press her further. They had headaches sometimes, he’d heard vaguely; they weren’t like men. They were more variable, they went up and down like barometers.

  The curtain had already gone up when they found their seats.

  “Like it?” he said between the acts.

  She wasn’t explosively enthusiastic. “It’s sort of cute,” she said tepidly.

  Then the show was over. “The Bamboo Grove again?” he suggested. “How about it?”

  “No, no Bamboo Grove tonight,” she said. “I’m not in the mood. I think I’d rather go straight home.”

  “But—”

  She gave him a look, and he saw danger in it. He flagged a cab.

  On the ride back she said two words. “Thanks,” and then “Thanks.” To a cigarette, and to his lighter.

  When they got out, he took her over to the doorway. But when he tried to kiss her, she turned her head slightly—looking to see if she had her key—and her lips evaded him. You can’t stretch in a kiss, or it loses all grace, all spontaneity; it has to descend where you directed it, or it’s spoiled. His was spoiled.

  He caught on at last, three hours late. “What is it, what have I done, Madeline?”

  “You haven’t done anything, Bill.” She looked at him, almost as if she now realized for the first time that it was he who had been with her all along. She added, “And believe me, that’s the truth.”

  “Then why is it—? You’re acting different.”

  She had her key in, as though that was the main part of it to her. He put his hand over hers, the one with the key in it, and held it that way, to keep her a moment longer.

  “People change,” she said pensively.

  Her hand squirmed, under his, trying to free itself so it could work the key.

  “But Madeline, Madeline—you’re breaking me up, you’re doing things to me. Don’t leave me out here like this—give me something to hang on to—”

  She freed her hand, and turned the key, and got the door open. “What can I do?” she said pessimistically. “Say I love you?”

  “Can’t you?” he said, suddenly frightened pale.

  She shook her head, very slowly, a very little. And that was her good night.

  She closed the door, and went up the stairs disheartenedly.

  She went to her own room first, and took off her things as though they weighed a thousand tons and dragged her whole frame down.

  Then she looked at herself in the glass, and looked away again, as if she was ashamed of that girl.

  She went out into the hall, and up front to her mother’s room. The sitting room part of it, anyway, where her mother usually remained up reading after her father had gone to bed.

  It was lighted and cheery and her mother was up reading. Her mother looked thirty, and Madeline looked thirty-two. Or acted it, anyway.

  “Hello,” she said leadenly. “Back.”

  “How was the show?” her mother asked.

  “Was there a show?” she answered dully.

  Her mother gave her a quick knowing little look; then held her peace.

  “Well, now that I’ve made a station announcement, I guess I’ll go to bed.”

  She turned around and went out.

  She halted, turned, came in again.

  “Well, good night,” she said lamely.

  “Good night, dear,” her mother said readily.

  She turned around and went out.

  She halted, turned, came in again.

  “Yes, dear?” her mother said patiently.

  Madeline bit her lips, as though she knew they were about to waste their time. Then she relented, and let them have their say anyway.

  “Nobody called, I suppose;—did anybody?”

  “Yes, a young man did. He didn’t leave any name. Just asked, ‘Is Madeline there?’ and before I could ask him who he was he’d hung up.” Then she added, not very wittily, “Somebody you know, I guess.”

  “Yes,” Madeline agreed. “Somebody I know, I guess.”

  Her hand made a little start toward the region of her heart, but didn’t complete it. Suddenly, she wasn’t old, she wasn’t tired any more. She was a child on Christmas morning. Her eyes lit up as though a switch had been thrown behind them. “Oh yes,” she said, “somebody I know! Somebody I know!”

  She seized her mother, unaccountably, and hugged and kissed her feverishly. And she laughed as she did so—laughed with a curious sobbing effect. Then she turned and fled like one possessed out of the room and down the stairs to where the phone was. She dialed a number. She made the wheel go around so fast it sounded like rain hitting a tin bucket.

  A voice answered.

  She said, “Was it you?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Oh, I knew it was, I knew it was!”

  “I didn’t want to,” he said. “I tried not to. But Madeline, I can’t hold out any longer.”

  “Oh, Jack, I can’t hold out either. It’s no use, no use. Everything was so still all night long. And now all I hear is music, coming from everywhere at once. Oh, Jack, for the first time in my life, I think, I’m falling desperately in love—” Then she begged piteously, “Jack, don’t hurt me too much, will you?”

  “The clock at the Carlton,” he suggested softly.

  “Yes,” she said, half deliriously. “Oh, yes—yes. Any time you say, any night—from now on.”

  She came down the stairs ready to go out, and she found that her father had somebody closeted with him in the library. She could hear the voices. Some stranger. Some man he’d brought home with him. Some business friend or associate, perhaps. She caught a glimpse of him as she passed the doorway. Someone she’d never seen before.

  She shrugged the matter off. It held no interest for her.

  Her mother suddenly appeared from nowhere, stopped her as she’d reached the front door and was about to open it. Her mother acted frightened. Well, awed by something or about something. Taut.

  “He wants to see you. He wants you to go in here.”

  “I’m just leaving. Four-star date. Tell him I’ll s
ee him when I come back.”

  “No, it’s something important. You’d better go in, Mad. I promised I’d send you to him the minute you—”

  Whether she would have or not, she wasn’t sure herself. But suddenly he’d heard their voices and appeared in the library entry.

  “Madeline,” he said. “Come in here, please.” And he wasn’t smiling.

  She went in.

  Her mother attempted to follow at her heels.

  “Not you, my dear,” he said inflexibly, and closed the door in her face.

  The other man got up.

  Her father was taking it big, whatever it was. His color wasn’t good, and he kept mopping his brow in one place, right over one eye, though it needed it elsewhere as well.

  “My daughter, Mad, this is Inspector Cameron.”

  A detective, of all things! She was annoyed at being detained like this, by such an oddity. They belonged in newspaper items. The sort of items you didn’t read. Not in the library of your own home—acting like actual people.

  “Sit down,” her father said. “This is important.”

  They looked at each other, he and the interloper. As if to say, Do you want to ask her or shall I?

  Her father was the one who did, finally. “Have you met anyone new lately?”

  She pushed her brows up until they were center forehead. She let that serve for her answer.

  “That’s a perfectly simple question, Madeline. Don’t fence with us. We’re dead serious about this.”

  The detective rephrased it. “Have you met anyone lately whom you didn’t know previously, who wasn’t included before now in your circle of friends, Miss Drew?”

  Something warned her, Say no. “No,” she said.

  “You’re sure, Madeline?” her father insisted anxiously. “At anyone’s house, at some party, in some restaurant—?”

  “Through somebody else,” the detective put in. He spread his hand. “Like, say, introduced to you by somebody you know already. A very close friend or—”

  She turned her head his way, briefly, and flattened him to a run-over dime. “Oh, should you be introduced? I usually walk along the street and drop my hankerchief.”

  He turned all colors of the rainbow and tried to screw himself into his chair.

  “Who’re you meeting tonight, Madeline?” her father asked appeasingly.

  She’d been ready for that since the question before. “Someone whom I was not introduced to,” she said. “He sat down in the seat next to me, and some of my belongings were on it, and he apologized, and that’s how we became acquainted.”

  The detective stiffened, leaned forward. She loved it.

  “Oh, I forgot to add that I was fifteen, and he was sixteen, and we were both in first-year high. Bill Morrissey.” And she rose to leave.

  They both slumped. She loved that too.

  Her father looked at the detective inquiringly.

  “You’d better tell her, Mr. Drew,” Cameron said quietly. “I think you’d better tell her.”

  “Tell me what?” she challenged.

  “You’re in some danger from a man, Madeline—”

  “What man?”

  “Well, we don’t know exactly who he is—”

  A derisive note sounded from her. “If you don’t know who he is, then how do you know I’m in danger from him? Well, what sort of danger? Oh, I suppose the usual kidnaping-for-ransom routine. It’s getting so you haven’t arrived, you’re really nobody at all, until you’ve been kidnaped for ransom at least once. It’s like being listed in Bradstreet’s.”

  “Danger of your life, Miss Drew,” the detective said patiently.

  She made a gesture of mock melodramatic dismay, crossing her arms over her shoulders and stepping back. “Well, if I see anyone peering at me from under a broad-brimmed black hat, I’ll let you know.”

  “You won’t know him, Miss Drew.”

  “I won’t even know him when I see him? Really, Inspector—”

  “Madeline—” her father started to say, but she’d opened the door and eluded them.

  Her mother was still hovering around outside. “What did they want, dear? What was it? They wouldn’t tell me.”

  She had to curb herself. They’d come to the library entrance after her and were both standing there at her back. She simply shook her head at her mother, incapable of speaking. Or afraid to trust herself.

  It was only when the front door had closed behind her that she let herself go. She emitted a whoop of laughter. She fairly staggered. That was the funniest thing she’d ever heard.

  She was laughing so hard she could hardly see to get herself a taxi. It was a death on her make-up, the way her eyes were tearing.

  It took the better part of the ride for it to wear off. She laughed nearly the whole way to where she was going.

  He refilled her glass. “What else did they say?” he prompted. He was enjoying it as much as she was. That was the nice thing about him, he always shared your moods with you. When you were giddy, he was giddy too.

  She sputtered so she blew nearly half the champagne out of her glass. “They sat there with faces this long.” She gestured across her midriff. She dropped her voice to a mock basso profundo. “ ‘Have you met anyone new lately, Mad?’ Tell the truth, doesn’t that sound just like the end man in a minstrel show throwing a straight line?”

  He nodded. He showed his teeth straight across, from corner to corner of his mouth, and his shoulders went up and down in a risible palpitation.

  “ ‘You tell her, Inspector.’ ‘No, you tell her, Mr. Drew.’ Then after all this build-up, when they finally got to what it was they wanted to tell me—” She hid her face behind outspread fingers and shook with hilarity. “They didn’t know who he was, or what he looked like. I wouldn’t know him either, even when I saw him. Really, either my father has lost his sense of humor completely or—”

  He was enjoying himself so hugely that he became downright silly in the effort to prolong their mood still further. “Maybe they mean me. After all, I am someone you’ve met only lately. You’d better watch out, I’ll bite.” And he pretended to snap his teeth at her, like a dog.

  That was all she needed. She threw her head back and fairly screamed. “Oh, don’t start me off again,” she pleaded. “My ribs ache. I can’t take it any more.”

  On his side of the table, his own head went back and he brayed right along with her.

  “Murder,” he gasped.

  Everyone in the place was looking their way, with half envious smiles of sympathetic approval.

  “Not a care in the world,” someone said. “I love to see a young couple enjoy themselves like that, while they can. They’ve got plenty of time for heartaches later.”

  He was just finishing up with his dressing for the evening when there was a knock at the apartment door.

  He dropped the necktie he was holding as suddenly as though electric current had just shot through it. He made a swift dive over toward a chest of drawers. He shot the middle one out of it. A gun momentarily flashed into view, then disappeared again. His hand came away from his back pocket, empty.

  He went toward the door and he said batedly, “Who’s there?”

  “Bill Morrissey,” a voice answered curtly from the other side.

  He let out his breath slowly, with a sort of silky sound. Then he unlocked the door, opened it.

  Morrissey came in. Morrissey gave him a rather long-drawn stare, that started from over the threshold, went all the way around him in a long arc, and ended up on the other side of him, in the center of the room. His eyes never once quitted him during that whole time.

  “I’m sorry, Bill, I’m going out.”

  “With my girl.”

  Munson didn’t answer for a minute. He tried a half smile. But it was for himself, not for Morrissey. It wasn’t extended to Morrissey; it wouldn’t have been accepted if it had been. “Are you sure you’ve got the straight on that?”

  Morrissey’s eyes never flicker
ed. “I’m sure.”

  “I don’t think you have. You just said, ‘You’re going out with my girl.’ I’m going out, all right. But not with your girl. That’s the part you’re balled-up on.”

  “I’m balled-up-hell,” Morrissey said in a cold sing-song. “You’re going out with Madeline Drew. If you say you’re not, you’re a liar.” The adjective he used to modify the noun was unprintable.

  Munson nodded slightly. “I’m going out with Madeline Drew,” he said. “Now we’ve finally got it straightened out. Where does the ‘your girl’ part come in?” He waited a moment. “And you’ve come here to do what about it?”

  “I’ve come here to punch your head off.”

  “All right, Bill,” Munson said mildly. “All right, go to it. If that’ll get her back to you.” He gave another of those smiles that were for himself again.

  “It may not get her back,” Morrissey said, narrowing his eyes wickedly, “but it’ll make me feel a lot better than I do now.” He backed toward the door from where he was. With hands behind his back he felt for the key, and when he’d found it, turned it and locked the door. Then took it out and shunted it into his pocket. His eyes had never left Munson’s while he was doing this, and his teeth were bared, but not in a smile.

  “Put up your hands,” he prompted with a misleading appearance of geniality. Probably suggested by the fact that his teeth were showing so widely.

  “Don’t let’s be formal,” Munson said ironically. “If you’re going to sock me, then sock me with them down.”

  He made no move to defend himself. Nor yet to retreat either. He stood there half lounging, with his elbows supporting him against the top of the dresser.

  Morrissey’s face was yellow with bile. His coat rippled down him to the floor, somewhat like an up-ended snake shedding its skin. “You think you’ll take her away from me? Well I won’t let you!”

  Munson shook his head slightly, almost as if he pitied him. “You fool,” he said softly. “You can’t take people away from someone, unless they want to be taken away. Don’t you know that yet?”

  Morrissey strode in close, swung at him viciously. It caught him on the side of the face, and since the bureau was supporting him at his back, he cartwheeled sideward into a crumpled heap.