The Black Angel by Cornell Woolrich Read Free Book Online

them up to that place , but I didn’t know that, and at first sight of them hanging over his arm, empty, it gave me a horrible twinge, as though—it was over and he was gone already. I took them and I signed something and thanked him and closed the door. And if I let out all the stops afterward, that was just between me and those clothes of his.
    I knew, though, as I lay there, face burrowing into the folds of his jacket, that I could never be so utterly, heart-brokenly, abandonedly forlorn again as I was there in that little room, with just the light bulb overhead to see me. From then on, whether there was hope or not, whether there was a chance or not, the curve was bound to be upward. Things could never look so dismal to me again. You can only cry like that once. Once and for one man. I gave him that. That was my testament of love.
    Afterward, I remember, I was sitting dully on the edge of the bed, stroking the empty sleeve of his coat across my lap and slowly pulling myself together after the recent drenching outburst. The things that had been in his pockets that last night were in a couple of little manila envelopes, fastened to a buttonhole of the coat. I detached them and emptied them out. The money he’d been carrying and his wrist watch and his key holder, and even his seal ring, were in one. And less valuable things in the other. A chromium pencil (that had always been out of lead) and a business letter or two and a laundry ticket with a Chinese character on it, standing for shirts that were still waiting for him somewhere and that he’d never call for now.
    It was like a poignant rosary of the commonplace, to pay out these things one by one before my eyes.
    And a battered package of his brand of cigarettes, with still the same two leftovers in it that must have been in it that night. Oh, they were so honest, these police! They wouldn’t touch a convicted man’s last two cigarettes. But they’d send him, for something he hadn’t done, up to meet his——
    And a pair of those lucky-number counterfoils from the last time we’d been to a show together. You know the kind. You detach the stubs and drop them in a box on your way in. And then a week from Thursday, if that particular number happens to be drawn——The remark he’d made that night came back to me: “I never had any luck with one of these stunts yet!” He hadn’t been lucky in more things than that, poor boy.
    The envelopes were empty now. The pitiful collection was all spread out on my lap. No, wait—one last thing. It came sidling out at a shake of the envelope.
    Nothing. The ultimate in valuelessness. A folder of matches. Even that they’d conscientiously returned to me. Everything, everything but him himself they’d seen to it that I got back.
    It was one of hers , in the bargain. I recognized it by the turquoise cover, the inevitable double M . One superimposed on the other, so that it really looked like a single M with double outlines.
    That, I couldn’t help thinking, was rubbing it in a little, although most of the sting was gone at this late day. He must have picked it up to use the last time he was there and then absent-mindedly put it into his own pocket instead of returning it to wherever it had been lying. As anyone might be apt to do. And here it was now, in my palm. About all that was left of her pitiful, ephemeral glamour. That had expressed itself, thought the quintessence of elegance was to stamp initials wholesale all over everything—on match covers and highball glasses and, I supposed, lingerie. I didn’t hate her. I found, tonight, I never had. I’d been badly frightened for an hour or two that day. And ever since I’d just been sorry for her. Still, I got a peculiar mordant satisfaction from shredding the remaining match or two that were all that still clung to this battered token. Striking them, to flash transiently for a moment, like she