The Black Angel (31 page)

I said, “Oh, you've——”

He was looking at it now himself, without seeming to understand what it was. Then he looked up at me, as if to ask me what it was. His eyes looked funny; they weren't right.

First a trembling started. Then retching. That went down deeper than the throat. Deeper than the chest. The stomach. Down through the very legs. Until—it was all of him.

He bolted to his feet, as if his first impulse was to get out of here. Then he checked himself. He leaned against something, as if he couldn't make it. Then he straightened again. Leaned again and straightened again.

I was on my own feet now. “What is it? What's happening to you?”

He kept doubling and straightening again; it was hideous.

“You brought this on,” he heaved. “You should have loved me. Should have loved me, as I did—you. The shock. You brought this on. You brought it on——”

I tried to help him. “Lean on me. Let me get you over here to——”

“And I said
she
was low! Even she left me some guard against herself at least; you crawled into my blood, into my brain. Now I can't get you out and I can't have you either. Well, I
can
get you out, if I have to. There's one sure way that never fails.”

Before I realized what was happening he was trying to get at my throat. But something was the matter with his reflexes; they were faulty. Fluctuations, like a sort of alternating current passing through him, would interrupt the clutch of his arms each time; yet they kept coming back, coming back, as I retreated before him, at first only fighting him off passively, then, as necessity slowly mounted in me, struggling more and more strenuously against him.

“Don't——Not you, Ladd! No, not you! Ladd, you're ill; you don't know what you're doing——”

Foam was suddenly flecking his lips.

“I'm ill,” he said in a terrible, hacking voice, “but I know what I'm doing. I'm going to”—and then he lunged for my throat again—”if I die a minute later myself.”

He had me pressed back against some sharp outline—I think it was that cabinet Flood had brought into the place—and the whole thing rocked in company with our combined weights.

I tried to reason with him, even at this pass. I don't know; terror wasn't absolute, as it had been with Mordaunt or even McKee. It could never be with him. “Don't—haven't I been through enough for one night?” The thing gave behind me, shunted aside, and we were wedged in there, in a little space. A little space, but big enough for dying in.

I kept trying to hold his swollen eyes with mine. “You can't. Look at me well. You loved me, didn't you? You can't do it!”

“I've done it before. I can do it this time too. I'm going to kill you as I killed her.”

“You didn't. Don't you remember? You went there and she was already——It wasn't you. No, Ladd. You said it wasn't——”

“I did. It was. I never told anyone, not even you. I was afraid it would stand between us. Now know it and be damned to you. You've broken me all open.”

I went down on one knee.

“I can't breathe, Ladd. Can't—breathe——”

The room was darkening intermittently, as though fleeting banks of clouds were passing over it. Then it would clear again in between.

“Air—give me air, Ladd. One breath more—only one——”

He held the words down in me; he wouldn't let anything through.

He was swinging my body from side to side now, like a rag doll. I could feel my legs sweeping bonelessly far over one way, then far back the other way again.

Suddenly he let me go, and I was all limp, but alone, without him. A dim pin point of light flickered, like a spark in straw, threatened to go out. Then the straw caught, kindled into renewed brightness. Life was on again.

I kept coughing strangledly and pulling at my own throat, and blurred figures moved before my eyes until they were able to focus properly again.

He was at the open window, on the
outside
of the open window, one hand grasping the frame, wavering there, so ill, so stricken, so alone, against the night. My heart went out to him, the heart he had tried to founder.

The door had sprung open, and there were figures deployed about the inside of it in bated attitudes, frozen still, where each had fallen to a halt at instant of entry. One of them was Flood, though I couldn't think who he was for a moment.

I only knew I had to speak, had to speak quickly; they must hear me in time. I clawed at my own throat to free it.

“Don't shoot,” I pleaded raspingly. “Don't shoot that man!”

I heard their breaths all go
Ihf-f-f!
together in sharp ascent. I turned slowly, and by the time my look had reached it my eyes only told me what I knew already. The window was empty.

Later they had me sitting there huddled, lonely in a chair, one side of my face pressed to the back of it, my eyes staring sightlessly down toward the nothingness on the floor. Oh, I heard all the things they did and said; sometimes they even said them to me, but I seldom answered.

“It's a good thing we got over here when we did.” That was Flood, I guess; I didn't move my eyes to see. “That ownerless car left standing there earlier tonight, when those shots at the Sixty-seventh Street transverse were investigated, was traced to him, and I got word of it. We've been keeping him under fairly constant surveillance, anyway, ever since that first transcript was taken out of the thing here; there was enough on it to warrant that, if nothing else. He's been seen coming around here pretty steadily, even after you'd left, and when we were unable to locate either of you at his own address, for questioning about that McKee business, we thought of this place.”

He gave up, turned away again. I could sense that he was shaking his head to them to express futility.

At one point I heard somebody say to him: “What was that? He acted like he had the bends just before he went over.”

“Epilepsy, I think,” he answered in an undertone. “That's what it looked like to me, anyway.”

I remembered what he'd once told me: “I got ill there one night up in her place. She got frightened and wanted to send for a doctor——” And his sister, trying to say something to me: “He can't tell you this; I'll have to——”

It didn't matter; I would never remember this last scene; the heart is kind that way. I'd only remember a cheerful face across from mine at the Blues-Chaser a hundred years ago, a minute ago, forever.

I got up abruptly and drifted toward the window. Flood didn't understand. “Don't look down there,” he tried to warn me.

“I wasn't going to. I was going to look up——” I didn't finish it. That's where they go in your memories of them; up, not down.

Suddenly, behind me, they brought him back again for just a moment or two. Unwittingly, without intent at cruelty; somebody's idly straying hand must have done it.

“I've done it before. I can do it this time too. I'm going to kill you as I killed her.”

“No, Ladd, it wasn't you. You said it wasn't
——”

“It was. Now know it and be damned to you!”

“It's on there!” I heard Flood exclaim.

For only a moment or two, but I couldn't bear it. I arched my back away from the sound as though a knife had been put into me, then deflated again.

Flood was standing by me, shaking me so I would listen. “You've done it! You've saved your husband. It got on there without your knowing it. It's on there, all you need. Do you hear what I'm saying? Do you understand? You've done what you wanted. He'll be back again. Inbound through Grand Central one of these days——”

I said after him, like a parrot, so he'd stop shaking me: “I've done what I wanted. He'll be back again.”

I turned to him in sudden fearsome supplication, quickened now in turn, but not by the same thing he was. “Please go. All of you.
Please!
Hurry. I can't hold out much longer. Something's going to happen to me, something I don't want you to see.”

He gave a quick order or two. “All right, that's all for now. Carry the whole thing out with you, the way it is. She's been through a lot; she's all in.” He cleared them out and went after them.

I got the door closed, but they didn't go away quickly enough on the other side of it. Two of them were slower than the others.

The tears weren't just wet. They were heavy. They pulled me draggingly downward against the door, face pressed inward to it, while they stormed and raged from me.

I could hear their voices in surreptitious inquiry of one another out there as the sound reached them.

“What's she feelin' bad now for? It came out all right. She got what she wanted, didn't she?”

“I dunno. Unless maybe—say, d'you suppose?—she musta loved him.”

“She must have,” kept echoing through the freshets of my woe; yes, oh yes, she must have. She must have, all right!

11

CLOSING SCENE

T
HIS MORNING HE WAS LEAVING ME AGAIN
.
HE ALWAYS
leaves me. I don't know where he goes, but each time he goes I'm afraid I'll never have him back again. Then when he does come back it's only to leave me once more.

He was leaving me like he always does. Slowly, lingeringly, in that most poignant, hurtful way of all. Each time he goes like that I hear the barman's voice again that night of our first meeting at the Blues-Chaser: “Do it quick is the best way, Mr. Mason.”

Everything that was ever said, that was ever done, that had to do with us at all, like that, keeps coming back again, over and over all the time. They are so few; they must be made to last.

This morning he was leaving me again, drawing away slowly, moving softly backward out of the room, thinking perhaps I was asleep and trying not to disturb me. He was near the door now, that recurrent door that I could never get by, no matter how I ached and strained, that I could never pass through myself. His face was turned to look back at me. Now he was drawing the door slowly closed after himself. Now he would be gone again.

I started upright, arms stretched arrestingly out toward him, to show him I wasn't asleep; he mustn't go like this without at least——“Ladd, wait!” I called out to him. “Don't go! Come back a minute!” The door was all but closed now. I could still see just the outline of his face, slowly dimming behind it. My arms strained out in helpless appeal, while I kept calling after him, more loudly, more heartbrokenly with every breath, “Don't leave me behind! Don't leave me behind!”

And then the miracle did happen; my plea was heard this one time. The cry was answered. His face grew clearer again, came back toward me. He hovered over me, sat anxiously down beside me, tried to quiet my wildly reaching hands by nursing them with his, at last drew me to him and kissed me soothingly on the brow.

My eyes flew open and I was in my husband's arms.

I hid my face against him. I felt him touch his finger to the outward corner of my eye and gently stroke it off, and the touch of it was wet.

“Why are there so often tears in your eyes, like this, when you wake up?” he asked softly. “Who was that you were calling? Who is it hurts you so?”

“Somebody I knew in a dream, I guess.”

“I know you've been through a lot. There's nothing more now.”

“No,” I agreed sadly, “there's nothing more now.”

“Angel Face, don't ever leave me.”

“No. And you won't leave me either, will you? I don't want to be all alone.”

“You're so loyal; you're so mine.”

He's leaning toward me now; his face is close to mine. He's cost me dear, but that's the price, and I won't quibble.

“Angel Face,” he murmurs low.

He always calls me that; that is his name for me. That is a special thing, from him to me, when we are by ourselves.

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copyright © 1943 by Cornell Woolrich

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