Rear Window by Cornell Woolrich Read Free Book Online

dialed his precinct-house then and there in the dark, working the slots in my lap by memory alone.   They didn't make much noise going around, just a light click.   Not even as distinct as that cricket out there——
      "He went home long ago," the desk sergeant said.
      This couldn't wait.    "All right, give me his home phone number."
      He took a minute, came back again.   "Trafalgar," he said.   Then nothing more.
      "Well?   Trafalgar what?"   Not a sound.
      "Hello?   Hello?"   I tapped it.   "Operator, I've been cut off.   Give me that party again."   I couldn't get her either.
      I hadn't been cut off.   My wire had been cut. That had been too sudden, right in the middle of——And to be cut like that it would have to be done somewhere right here inside the house with me.   Outside it went underground.
      Delayed action.   This time final, fatal, altogether too late.   A voiceless ring of the phone.   A direction-finder of a look from over there.   "Sam" seemingly trying to get back in a while ago.
      Suddenly, death was somewhere inside the house here with me.   And I couldn't move, I couldn't get up out of this chair.   Even if I had gotten through to Boyne just now, that would have been too late.   There wasn't time enough now for one of those camera-finishes in this.   I could have shouted out the window to that gallery of sleeping rear-window neighbors around me, I supposed.   It would have brought them to the windows.   It couldn't have brought them over here in time.   By the time they had even figured which particular house it was coming from, it would stop again, be over with.   I didn't open my mouth.   Not because I was brave, but because it was so obviously useless.
      He'd be up in a minute.   He must be on the stairs now, although I couldn't hear him.   Not even a creak.   A creak would have been a relief, would have placed him.   This was like being shut up in the dark with the silence of a gliding, coiling cobra somewhere around you.
      There wasn't a weapon in the place with me.   There were books there on the wall, in the dark, within reach.   Me, who never read.   The former owner's books.   There was a bust of Rousseau or Montesquieu, I'd never been able to decide which, one of those gents with flowing manes, topping them.   It was a monstrosity, bisque clay, but it too dated from before my occupancy.
      I arched my middle upward from the chair seat and clawed desperately up at it.   Twice my fingertips slipped off it, then at the third raking I got it to teeter, and the fourth brought it down into my lap, pushing me down into the chair.   There was a steamer rug under me.   I didn't need it around me in this weather, I'd been using it to soften the seat of the chair.   I tugged it out from under and mantled it around me like an Indian brave's blanket.   Then I squirmed far down in the chair, let my head and one shoulder dangle out over the arm, on the side next to the wall.   I hoisted the bust to my other, upward shoulder, balanced it there precariously for a second head, blanket tucked around its ears.   From the back, in the dark, it would look — I hoped——
      I proceeded to breathe adenoidally, like someone in heavy upright sleep.   It wasn't hard.   My own breath was coming nearly that labored anyway, from tension.
      He was good with knobs and hinges and things.   I never heard the door open, and this one, unlike the one downstairs, was right behind me.   A little eddy of air puffed through the dark at me.   I could feel it because my scalp, the real one, was all wet at the roots of the hair right then.
      If it was going to be a knife or head-blow, the dodge might give me a second chance, that was the most I could hope for, I knew.   My arms and shoulders are hefty.   I'd bring him down on me in a bear-hug after the first slash or drive, and break his neck or collarbone against me.   If it was going to be a gun, he'd