The Black Angel by Cornell Woolrich Page B

pat, and then another.
    I forced myself up from the chair by pushing my arms against the top of it, and then I moved around it toward him until my knees brought up against the edge of the bed.
    His eyes stayed down. He repeated that flat-handed pat atop the bed. Meaning “Down; down here beside me.” I glanced at the pillows and then back to him. I put my knee to the bed and sank down on my side.
    Our heads were very close together now, though our bodies lay extended in opposite directions, his form overlapping one side of it, mine the other.
    His hand reached upward toward the head of the bed and drew one of the pillows out of position by its corner, and he started shifting it down toward me like that, flat along the surface of the bed.
    I looked steadily up at the ceiling. I thought: “In another minute a great white mass will drop down over me, obliterating everything.”
    â€œAnd you’re sure you saw him?” his voice murmured close to my ear.
    â€œI saw all there was to see of him. What do you want? Why did you ask me to come closer to you like this?”
    And now the pillow would leap up and then come hurtling down.
    Instead he inserted it under the back of my head and took his hand off it; left it there, as a partial support for my head, a resting place. Perhaps it was a form of bribery; I don’t know. “Tell me who he was,” he said in a husky whisper. “I want to know. I’ve got to know.”
    And if it had been he, he wouldn’t have to know; he would know already.
    The tension slowly siphoned from the air and left a sort of vacuum behind it. I felt all limp and starchless. My forehead was damp. I closed my eyes in momentary exhaustion.
    The knock on the door came while they were shut like that. The test period was over. Marty just turned his head, not understanding. This was to have saved my life. “Yes,” I called out weakly. A hotel boy looked in, and I told him to get some cigarettes or something; I don’t remember.
    I tried to analyze my own feelings. He stood acquitted now. What further, what greater certainty could there ever be than this? And yet to my surprise, along with the sense of disappointment, of frustration, that was rightly there, there was a sneaking, almost shamefaced sense of relief. I thought to myself with wonderment: “My God, I must actually have developed a liking for this poor devil to feel the way I do about it.” Or maybe it was just a sense of sportsmanship, a repugnance at the idea of delivering the final blow to someone who was down already.
    I got up presently and went over toward the tarnished glass framed over the bureau. My legs were still a little rocky under me from my recent crisis. “I may as well go now,” I reflected; there was nothing for me here any more. I had as much proof as I could hope for.
    I was forgetting him. I was forgetting I’d left him in mid-conversation, so to speak. I was forgetting that what to me was a topic over and done with to him was a topic broken off short. He got off the bed in turn, came up behind me. I felt his hand on my arm, but I didn’t turn; I continued adjusting my hat.
    â€œTell me who he is; tell me.”
    â€œWhy? What satisfaction is it to you to know? There’s a man in jail for it already, and they’re going to execute him for it soon——”
    â€œThat isn’t enough; that’s no good to me. I’m not the state. Whaddo I care who the state kills for it? I’m the one who loved her. I want to know who really did it, whose hands really did it! You can’t transfer a thing like that from one guy to another. The one who really did it stays the one who really did it, no matter who the state takes it out on!”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œYou said you did. You said you saw him.”
    â€œI just said that.”
    â€œYou’re trying to back out now. You think I’m just a Bowery bum, not worth