Black Curtain by Cornell Woolrich Read Free Book Online

through the window from the night sky outside.
     
    He put his cigarette out and lay back and turned over. He couldn't go back to sleep. That dream had finished him. He turned the other way, then the other way, a hundred other ways, but he couldn't regain sleep.
     
    Presently he felt like smoking again, wanted to move around. He sat up and found his slippers. He didn't own a robe, so he put on his trousers instead, and felt his way toward the door, got it open without any noise, and closed it after him from the other side.
     
    He put on a small light in the other room -- simply so he wouldn't jar into anything and rouse Virginia--and started walking back and forth.
     
    How long is this going to keep up, anyway? he asked himself. What am I going to do about it? I've got to do -something- about it sooner or later. I can't just--
     
    He stopped by the window, looked out.
     
    Suddenly the cigarette fell from his lips.
     
    He jumped over to the wall, killed the light. Then he approached the window again, stealthily, edging up to it sidewise along the wall until he could look out--at what he thought he'd seen the first time.
     
    There seemed to be a man standing there, directly opposite, facing these windows in a surveyor's line of directness. He was in the black silt of a shadow that filled a wall indentation like sand blown into a niche. It might have been just an optical illusion, giving the shadow's border the rounded likeness of a shoulder, then lower down a hipbone.
     
    As he peered, trying to decide, a faint flow of motion had altered the silhouette. The rounded scallops of the shoulder, the hip, drew subtly inward, disappeared into the heart of the shadow mass, leaving a clean-cut knife line of dark that should have been there in the first place but hadn't been.
     
    So that, by its very disappearance, what had caught his eye betrayed itself as being a reality. If it had been an illusion it would have remained in sight.
     
    He had to get out of here. He had to get out of here fast. His last hiding place had been found at last. It was coming now. It was here. In fifteen minutes. In half an hour. It was upon him.
     
    He tiptoed out and listened at the front door. There was a low voice murmuring somewhere beyond, as though some amorous swain were loitering out there in the hail taking a lingering leave-taking of his girl; only Townsend knew that it was no swain. That wasn't love whispering out there, that was violence and hate and very possibly death. -He- had others with him. They were all around the place, getting set, getting ready to rush it. Any minute now.
     
    He swung around and looked toward the oblivious bedroom doorway, that contained all he loved in the world. "I've got to get her out of here," he thought distractedly. "I don't want her to get mixed up in it. I don't want it to happen in front of her--whatever it is."
     
    He went into the darkened bedroom, leaned over her, found her ribboned shoulder. He pressed it gently, trying not to startle her too much. Then he shook it, more urgently, until she was fully awake.
     
    "Virginia, can you hear me? Don't be frightened."
     
    She sat up. The soft perfume of her hair was about him.
     
    "You've got to get out of here. I want you to come with me right now. No, don't light up, they may be able to look in and see us through the back window."
     
    She was on her feet now, a silken shadow beside him. "They? Who?"
     
    "Just your coat. Here, I've taken it down for you. Just put your feet into shoes the way they are, there's no time--"
     
    "Don't," she whimpered plaintively, "you're frightening me."
     
    He sought her lips with his, to give her courage. "Do you love me?"
     
    "How can you ask?" Her voice was a frightened whisper.
     
    "Then will you trust me enough just to follow me blindly, without asking any questions? I don't know the answers myself. I only know what I'm doing is right. Ready? Come on."
     
    He went back to the outside door again, she behind