Hotel Room by Cornell Woolrich

Author:Cornell Woolrich [Woolrich, Cornell]
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The Night of September 30th, 1957

She arrived at about nine, that last night. That last night of the hotel. She came alone in a taxi. It had to take its place in what almost amounted to a conveyor-belt of taxis, each stopping in turn at the entrance, then drawing away again. There was this difference: hers was bringing its fare to the hotel, the rest were all taking theirs from it.

She was very frail and very old, and looked very small the way she sat there in the exact center of the broad rear seat. Her face looked unlined and peaceful, as though care had passed over it lightly.

The driver stopped at the entrance, his car grazing the one ahead as it drew away, the one just in back grazing his as it closed in to wait its turn.

She leaned forward a trifle and asked, “Is it that now?”

He looked at his watch and said, “Yes, ma’am, exactly that.”

She nodded, gratified. “I wanted it to be that exactly.”

“It’s a hard thing to do,” he said. “Let you out somewhere at an exact certain minute. I had to take you around the block three times. That made the meter climb up.”

“I don’t mind,” she reassured him quickly. “I don’t care.” She paid him, and then when he turned in the seat to try and pass the change back to her, she put the flat of her hand up against it. “No, I don’t want anything back,” she said.

“But that was a five,” he said.

“I know it was,” she said imperturbably. “My sight is good.” Then she added, as though that explained her generosity, “I don’t ride in taxis very often.”

He got out and opened the rear door for her and helped her down. She looked smaller than ever standing beside him there on the sidewalk and with two tremendous walls of baggage towering on both sides of her. He got her bag out. She only had one, a very small one, lightweight and old-fashioned. It too looked small, just as she did.

“The place is coming down, you know,” he told her.

“I know it is,” she said. “I can read the papers.” But it wasn’t said with asperity.

“They’re putting up a twenty-six-story office building on the site.”

“Twenty-eight,” she corrected him. Then she gave a contemptuous sniff, presumably intended for office buildings in general and not just the difference of two floors.

She left him and went inside, carrying the bag herself. She stopped at the desk. “I have a reservation for Room 923,” she said. “I engaged it several weeks ago.”

He scanned some sort of a chart he had tacked up there off to one side. “I believe that floor’s already been closed off,” he said. “Won’t one of the lower floors do?”

She was firm. “No. I specified that room, and my reservation was accepted. I had it confirmed. I won’t take any other.”

He went off and spoke to somebody about it. Then he came back and said, “You can have that room.” He presented the register to her for her signature.

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