Black Curtain by Cornell Woolrich Read Free Book Online Page B

bottom, as gently as he was able to control it. He leaned over the opening, scared stiff she mightn't be able to get out at the lower end. No light showed, but a loose swaying reached him that told she had left it. He brought it up again fast, climbed awkwardly into it, posterior first, still hanging onto the control rope. He went down jerkily, plummetlike. The crash of their entry above, as the remnants of the door finally flattened before them, blended with the crash of his own striking bottom, obliterating it. He landed with a thud that jarred his teeth and smote his hipbones.
     
    She was standing there holding the chute vent open for him. He came tumbling out on hands and knees to the basement floor level, two or three feet below the dumbwaiter bottom.
     
    He struck matches to guide them through the surf of cellar darkness. His foot struck a discarded baby carriage, but its own wheels shifted it away without causing him to overturn across it. Another time a small freshet of lumps of coal, piled in a corner, sidled down, punching his toes cruelly.
     
    Overhead they could hear, with an eery sensation of unreality, the scurry of searching footsteps scattering from room to room, trampling through the flat. The sound came down blurredly through the flimsy horizontal partition. There must have been at least a half dozen of them, judging by the activity.
     
    "They'll know," he murmured bitterly. "Your bed was still warm. They'll be down in a minute. Quick, darling, quick!"
     
    "What is it, Frank, what is it?" she lamented, still unnerved.
     
    They found the fireproof, nailhead-studded door that led up into the other building, guarded only by a lateral bolt. But on their side, fortunately, on their side. He got it open. Cemented steps faced them, making an angular turn. There was a night light somewhere up at their head. They trod warily up, he in the lead. The janitor's living quarters were located over in the other building, their own building, so one added hazard was eliminated. For economy's sake, the same boiler, the same furnace, the same basement, had been made to serve both houses. To some unknown contractor's parsimony, or limited allotment, they owed their chance of escape.
     
    There was still another door bounding these stairs at their upper end. He opened it slightly, listened carefully for sounds of activity out in the hall beyond or on the upper house stairs. Silence. The hunt hadn't reached this building yet. They came out together like two wraiths, hands linked defensively--a hatless, collarless man and a frightened, bare-legged young woman in a fox-trimmed coat.
     
    There was a low-powered wall light shining just within the street entrance. He broke hands, left her where she was, crept edgewise out toward it, inserted two fingers within the wire guard around it, and turned it until he had interrupted the current, plunged them into shielding darkness once more. The street loomed up more visible in contrast. He motioned her forward in the dark, and she must have seen the beckoning silhouette of his arm against the street. She came on. •
     
    "You go first. You have a better chance alone than with me. They don't know what you look like. Don't look back toward our place, and don't look around in here. Just walk toward the corner, minding your own business."
     
    She took a preliminary step out through the outermost glass storm door, within the guiding circle of his arm. He craned his neck, but the street seemed empty of figures up toward their own entrance at the moment; he couldn't see a sign of activity, hostile or otherwise. He urged her gently forward, like someone teaching a child to walk unaided.
     
    "Go on, honey. Go on, like I asked you to. Quick, in another minute it may be too late--"
     
    A plaintive sob was her obedience. Then he was standing there alone, and she was striking out, her shoes making a quiet little ticking along the pavement. That slight, nervous hurry that a respectable woman