Darkness at Dawn : early suspense classics by Cornell Woolrich

Author:Cornell Woolrich [Woolrich, Cornell]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: American, Detective and Mystery Stories
Publisher: New York : P. Bedrick Books
Published: 1989-11-19T05:00:00+00:00

Dark Melody of Madness

At four in the morning, a sccirecrow of a man staggers dazedly into the New Orleans Police Headquarters building. Behind him at the curb, a lacquered Bugatti purrs like a drowsy cat, the swellest thing that ever parked out there. He weaves his way through the anteroom, deserted at that early hour, and goes in through the open doorway beyond. The sleepy desk-sergeant looks up; an idle detective scanning yesterda)r's Times-Picayune tipped back on the two hind legs of a chair against the wall raises his head; and as the funnel of light from the cone overhead plays up their visitor like a flashlight-pwwder, their mouths drop open and their eyes bat a couple of times. The two front legs of the detective's chair come down with a thump. The sergeant braces himself, eager, friendly, with the heels of both hands on his desk-top and his elbows up in the air. A patrolman comes in from the back room, wiping a drink of water from his mouth. His jaw also hangs when he sees who's there. He sidles nearer the detective and says behind the back of his hand, "That's Eddie Bloch, ain't it?"

The detective doesn't even take time off to answer. It's like telling him what his own name is. The three stare at the figure under the conelight, interested, respectful, almost admiring. There's nothing professional in their scrutiny, they're not the police studying a suspect; they're nobodies getting a look at a celebrity. They take in the rumpled tuxedo, the twig of gardenia that's shed its petals, the tie hanging open in two loose ends. His topcoat was slung across his arm originally; now it trails along the dusty station-house floor behind him. He gives his hat the final, tortured push that dislodges it. It drops and rolls away behind him. The cop picks

150 I Cornell Woolrich

it up and brushes it off—he never was a bootlicker in his life, but this guy is Eddie Bloch.

Still it's his face, more than who he is or how he's dressed, that would draw stares an5rwhere. It's the face of a dead man—^the face of a dead man on a living body. The shadowy shape of the skull seems to peer through the transparent skin; you can make out its bone-structure as though an X-ray were playing it up. The eyes are stunned, shocked, haunted gleams, set in a veist hollow that bisects the face like a mask. No amount of drink or dissipation could do this to anyone, only long illness and the foreknowledge of death. You see faces like that looking up at you from hospital cots when all hope has been abandoned—^when the grave is already waiting.

Yet strangely enough, they knew who he was just now. Instant recognition of who he had been came first—realization of the shape he's in comes after that—^more slowly. Possibly it's because all three of them have been called to identify corpses in the morgue in their day. Their minds are trained along those lines.

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