The Black Angel

by Cornell Woolrich

  “The Oregon Bar on Third above Forty-ninth, around twelve-thirty, answer a call for ‘Flo Ryan’ in the second pay booth.”

  “Go on. No, don’t look at it.” He pinned it down to the table.

  “Ladies’ room of the Mimi Club over on Eighth, near Columbus Circle, ask the attendant if she knows Beulah——”

  “You left out something.”

  “Any time from two on.”

  “Just one more. Come on, get some speed into it.”

  I groped, finally recalled it. “The Gem all-night movie house on Forty-second, from three o’clock on, last row in the balcony to the left-hand side; ‘Did I drop my scarf under this seat?’”

  I drew a deep breath.

  “You didn’t mention the total,” he said with something like a baleful threat in his eyes. He’d summed up the amounts.

  “One thousand,” I said.

  “Well, keep that in mind. I wouldn’t advise you to show up here short——” He didn’t finish it.

  I was supposed to come back here with a thousand dollars; I was supposed to get it at these various places. That was the most I knew; the sight of the gun there at hand, imminent, even though he didn’t touch it again after that once, its reptilian little bore pointed at me from first to last, drove all coherency of thought beyond those two points out of my mind, wouldn’t let my faculties mesh them into any sort of consecutive meaning.

  “Give it to me.” He took the piece of paper from me. He struck a kitchen match and burned it to a crisp, shifting his hold on it as it flamed so that it was all consumed. Then he crumbled it between his hands, rolling it like a sort of black meal, until there was nothing of it, just the streaks it had left on his palms. Then he cleaned these by spitting into them and stroking them down his sides.

  Some doctor, I thought, controlling the grimace that tried to distort my face.

  My eyes sought the gun in veiled speculation. True, it was so close to him he had only to shift his wrist, and I was at the far side of the table, but if I distracted his attention to some distant point in the room and made a quick grasp for it——

  Suddenly it had sidled over the edge of the table, was gone, without, however, dropping of its own free weight to the floor, and his hand came up again, empty, from wherever it had withdrawn to, drummed there where it had been.

  It wouldn’t have done me any good, anyway, I realized; I couldn’t force what I wanted out of him simply at gun point. As the gun point left him it would simply be retracted again. It had to come by some more valid means.

  “Doctor, I——”

  I didn’t finish it, because I didn’t know what I’d wanted to say.

  He seemed to, however. “All right, here,” he said grudgingly. He handed me a filthy-looking ten-dollar bill. “That comes off,” he said.

  He rose and his arm went out toward the paper-dimmed light. “Now hurry up and get out.”

  He let me open the door and cross the threshold. Then the light was gone, and the scene had never existed at all; everything that had been said, everything that had been done, the way it had all looked became a bad dream, badly remembered.

  His footsteps sounded after me as I groped my way down the long, Stygian passage, thrusting it behind me with a continuous motion of one arm. I was frightened of those close-at-hand footsteps of his, fully as frightened again as I had been on the way in; I wanted to break into a run, to fly from them, but I curbed myself, telling myself there was a barrier ahead that would only block me if I did and undo me, to be brave and keep my nerve up a moment longer and then it would be past. Just a moment longer and then it would be past; it would be over; I would be out.

  And behind me the footfalls crunched, stealthily surly, at my heels.

  It came at last, and he opened it at last, and then as my body almost tried to lurch out, it was in such an ecstasy of impatience, he stayed me with a curt downward chop of his arm and looked carefully about first.

  Then finally the brake of his arm dropped and I was free to go. “Monday night, same time,” he said gutturally. “See that you don’t forget to show up.”

  I clambered up the two steps to sidewalk level.

  The last thing he said to me was, “Watch it.”

  It was said without compunction, without any fellow feeling of risk shared in common whatever; in a harsh, cruel, calloused sort of way; almost, it was a minor threat in itself. As if: “Be careful of yourself; you’re to be the means of bringing me money; that’s all I care about.”

  I was hurrying up the street now on curiously stiff legs. And as the numbness wore off, for that was what it was, I knew they were going to become weak, refuse to hold me any more. I must get a seat on a bus before that happened. One came to the stop without much delay, fortunately, and the two things blended: the end of my own nervous energy and the thrusting under me of a leather-covered tier to sink back on. So that momentary collapse was averted.

  I’d come out of there alive. Nothing had happened to me. That was all I could realize at first. Almost, that was all that mattered. I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs. I levered down the bus window beside me to breathe it deeply. Passengers around me turned their heads, annoyed; to them it was a draft, chilly, uncomfortable. To me it was free, grateful, restoring.

  That was a dangerous sort of relief. It blurred the memory of many details. It cast a film over the issue. Above all, it made only that one house the focus of danger and construed all current surroundings as thenceforth innocuous, not to be questioned or looked at askance.

  It made a man who happened to be waiting for the same train underground that I was the following evening and eyed me once or twice as he roamed about the tunnel platform just what such a thing would have always been to me, no more: a man who happened to be waiting for the same train underground that I was.

  For danger was now foolishly locked in a watertight compartment, a cell, at Mordaunt’s house and could not be anywhere else. Just a man in a nondescript suit, wearing a nondescript hat—I think it was brown; no, gray; no, I didn’t know what it was—who stood before a mirrored chewing-gum purveyor clamped to a post and eyed his own face. Only his face was a little too far over to one side to be contained entirely within the mirror, and I was in the distance beyond, seated waiting upon the bench, so that his range of vision must have automatically taken me in.

  He disappeared when the downtown train came fuming in; there were many cars to choose from, after all, but this was post factum in any case. He had already disappeared from my thoughts some time before; in fact, had never entered them.

  And if, on changing over to the East Side line to get down to Canal Street he materialized a second time, in the closer confinement of the shuttle train, my quarantine of all danger within Mordaunt’s house made this nothing, made it just a coincidence. Hundreds of people a day, every hour, changed from the West Side to the East Side lines. Why shouldn’t he?

  There were more cars to choose from again, once the shuttle was done with, and again he disappeared.

  My decision to go down there, to carry out the unsavory expedition that had been assigned to me, was predicated upon the following line of reasoning: I needed at the very least another interview with Mordaunt, if possible several more. I had obtained nothing the first time, and yet I had obtained the promise of everything. He had known Mia Mercer; he had not acted in the capacity of personal physician to her but in some illicit relationship. There was every hope of a motive lurking there if I was just given time to unearth it. A motive, and perhaps even proof itself. A man who would interview an intended accomplice with a revolver bared upon the table would almost certainly not hesitate to smother one to death who had crossed him or jeopardized him in some way. Very well; I could not hope for a second interview with him unless I first discharged his errand. Therefore, I was on my way to discharge it this Sunday night, this night of peace and rest in New York.

  Oh, I was under no illusions as to its basic nature. And yet I was curiously naïve, e
ven after the lengthy scene that had passed between us. I realized perfectly that it was some sort of criminal enterprise; the sums of money I was to receive told that, and, above all, the elaborate precautions taken to preserve anonymity both on the parts of those I was to contact and on the part of myself. And yet, difficult as it is to believe, I was still unsuspecting of its exact category. I thought it must be money owed to him for some sort of unlawful services rendered—and this could have been anything from falsifying records to performing criminal operations—and that he could not safely collect otherwise than in this indirect manner. My mind, in the torrent of other details, had developed a curious blind spot; it glossed over those packets that had passed between us as a meaningless stopgap offered by him solely to make our interview plausible. In other words, should he be brought up short and queried, ever, he could say he had treated me only as a doctor treats a patient, had prescribed for me, had given me some sedative, headache powder, strengthener, or whatever it was, for my spells of dizziness and would have my word to corroborate his and perhaps some office or desk jotting to show for it as well.

  Wise, therefore, and yet blind at the same time, I neared the Spotless Cafeteria. I looked in as one who takes a moment to decide what food she will select before entering.

  It was surprisingly well filled with people at this hour; all the choicer tables near the front had their occupants, and though many seemed to have finished their collations long ago they lingered on, chatting in groups of two and three. It seemed to be used, like many such a place, almost as much for social purposes as for eating purposes.

  I thought: “He wants me to go in here. I’m to get money in here.” I swung the circular door around and pulled a pasteboard tab from the dispenser that stood like a tollgate just within. A bell reverberated shrilly, but no one even turned his head to look; it pealed like that every-time anyone entered.

  I took a tray and trucked it along the rail before the counters. The paper that he’d burned had said “shredded wheat.” I couldn’t see any. When I had reached the end I even retreated back the way I had come for some little distance to make sure I hadn’t overlooked it. Finally I had to call over the attendant behind the counter and ask him if they hadn’t any.

  “No,” he said, “but I can open a package for you; we got some inside for the morning turnover.”

  He came back in a moment from their larder or whatever it was with two of the familiar little oblong cakes on a plate.

  He said while he was punching my ticket, “We used to get calls for this late at night. A customer used to come in and ask for it like you every once in a while, but he hasn’t been around in a long time now. It’s really a breakfast food.”

  I wondered if he knew that it was a signal. I looked at him and he didn’t seem to, seemed to be talking just out of friendliness, but I couldn’t be sure.

  I put it on my tray and went over and sat down at the very last table against the wall.

  The bell chimed and a man came in and went over and drew himself a cup of coffee from the spigot in the wall. His back was to me, but he looked vaguely like the same man I’d seen twice before since leaving my own place tonight. I decided that must be just a mistaken impression; coincidences don’t run in threes like that.

  I’d finished crumbling the substance, and it made a little mound, like dried leaves, in the middle of my platter. I wondered whether I was supposed to eat it. I wasn’t particularly anxious to. Although I may not have been gripped by fright as I had been at the doctor’s house, I was fairly tense and wishing it were over.

  The man with the cup of coffee had submerged into the crowd of heads. However, remote as he was from me, there was a diagonal passage of clearance still left between us, so that I could still see him where he now sat, and he could have still seen me had he cared to. But he refrained from looking in my direction, became intent on his own immediate concerns, so that all I could see was the downturned crease of his hat crown. However, it occurred to me that there was a striking similarity in general vagueness between him and the person I had already glimpsed twice on the trains coming here ton——

  Before I could pursue this speculative train of thought any further a newspaper had suddenly opened before me across the table, and there was someone sitting there. No bell had rung, so he must have been in the place already.

  He was scanning a headline fixedly. It only takes a limited time to read a headline, but his eyes remained upon it steadily, never dropping down to the further matter below.

  I could feel my heart quicken a little.

  He was sitting sidewise to me, the way most readers do at confined little tables like that. I could see a segment of his profile in the gap between newspaper screen and the wall at the back of his head.

  “Got it?” he slurred without twitching a facial muscle. For a minute I almost thought he was mumbling over something he’d read to himself, the way some newspaper readers do, it was emitted so deftly.

  Before I could answer he had already tired of waiting.

  “What’s matter, didn’t he tell you about me?”

  “Yes, but I don’t know who——”

  Before I could finish speaking he had again tired of waiting.

  “What’s matter, ain’t you got nothing? Didn’t he give you nothing?”

  “Well, he only gave me——”

  He was conditioned to a hairspring tautness.

  “Don’t take so long. I can’t hold this paper like this all night. There’s other people in here. You new?”

  “What do you want me to do?” I said helplessly.

  “Push your bag over this way.” He raised one elbow from the table top to allow it passage underneath without disturbing his newspaper.

  Mesmerized by the strangeness of the whole thing, I prodded it forward until it had overbalanced on his side. His legs scissored together and arrested it, still without fluctuating the outspread newssheet.

  One hand left its margin, letting the table support it at that end. Though it wavered a little and threatened to crumple, it remained upright, stiffened by its own bulky width.

  I heard the smothered sound of the catch snapping open. There was a sense of stealthy activity that remained invisible, was more in his breathing than anything else. Then suddenly, with vicious recoil, “Where’s what he gave you?”

  “He only gave me something for my——Pull that zipper across.”

  The catch snapped closed again. His nostrils were pinched with the receding fury that had choked them for a minute.

  The bag was suddenly back where it had been; his finger grip was back at the margin of the newspaper again. The two phenomena, black and pink, reappeared almost simultaneously, so swiftly was it done, though one must in the nature of things have preceded the other.

  Before I knew it the enshrouding paper was gone; he was gone with the swiftness of a dream. Only the winged doors were spinning around empty, showing black night through them where he’d flitted out a moment ago.

  I drew the retrieved bag down to my own lap and examined it under shelter of the table line. One of the packets the doctor had given me was gone. There was a bone-shaped crush of money down in its depths, tight at the waist, as if from long, convulsive hand pressure. Two hundred and fifty dollars, when I had paired and counted it.

  I looked sightlessly up in a sort of belated terror only striking now. There must be something in those——“You knew,” I said to myself accusingly; “you knew all along, but you didn’t want to admit it to yourself. You wanted to keep your conscience from hindering you in carrying through your own purpose, to which this is a necessary preliminary. So you stamped the thought down. You wanted to make it some crime you could disassociate yourself from, such as a fee for some illicit operation.”

  I looked around me appalled, far more frightened now that he’d gone than I had been while I was still sitting scarcely two feet away from him.

  No one in the place was looking at me. The busman behind the counter was busie
d at his duties, eyes down. The cashier within his little glass cubicle was reading a paper while he waited between departing customers. That man with the cup of coffee was holding it very steady, looking down into it, as though he had detected a speck in it. Not at me, into his cup. Then he went ahead and drank, completing the movement he seemed to have arrested for a moment. Detected. Arrested. That was simply my mind, using the first thought expressions that came to hand without stopping to examine them.

  I got up and I made my way out in turn, sick and shaken and feeling a thousand years old; my shoulders clammy and weighted down, as if all the filthy, disinterred evil there was in the world had been dumped out upon them.

  My resolve not to go on to the next place, now that I knew, was short-lived. Various factors played their part in canceling it, like snatches of inner voice, rallying me each one in turn. “I’d go ahead doing even this for you, Kirk.” “I’ve done it once already; there can be no greater harm in repeating it than there was in doing it the first time.” “I can’t go back unless I do.” “These people are not the victims of it; they are the professional distributors, retailers, so to speak.” And lastly, there was a sort of glimmering of enlightenment that seemed to come of it, this hesitancy of mine, that did more than anything else in sending me onward. She had refused to go to the next place—metaphorically speaking, for she hadn’t tramped from place to place afoot; she had been a luxurious lady—but she had refused to go onward at some point or other, and a pillow had come down over her face, to blot out any retained memory of that “next place,” to stifle any future revelation of it.

  And if the very act of what I was engaged in produced the motive itself, intact, like that, so that all that was still needed was proof of the deed, how could I refuse to proceed? It would have been the grossest treachery to my own aims.

  The Oregon Bar, then, on Third above Forty-ninth, in the first half-hour after twelve that same night. It was deep and narrow, like an alcove piercing the building it was situated in. It was dark with a sort of colored darkness that was the tint of it. Although there were lights, and they were dusky orange, copper-rose, and other similar feverish hues, it was the darkness you were conscious of more than them; its overall cast was dimness, a confettilike twilight.