Literary Noir: A Series of Suspense: Volume Two by Cornell Woolrich

Author:Cornell Woolrich [Woolrich, Cornell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Suspense, Noir, pulp, mystery, sy-fy, crime, Cornell Woolrich, William Irish, horror
Publisher: Renaissance Literary & Talent in collaboration with the proprietor
Published: 2018-05-11T07:00:00+00:00

8

'SHAUGHNESSY, MINUTES after his Bellanca has kissed the hard-packed earth of the Shanghai municipal airport, is already on one of the airport phones asking for the Broadway; Mansions. Seven weeks out of Shanghai, seven weeks back in the red mountains of Szechuan, China's "wild west," piloting the great General Yang around, dropping a few well-placed bombs for him, and trans-shipping machine-gun parts inland from below Ichang, which is as far as the river boats can go No commission in Yang's fighting-forces, nothing like that—just his own crate, his own neck, payment in American gold dollars, and a leave of absence whenever he feels like it, which happens to be right now. Seven weeks is a plenty long time.

He's still in the crumpled slacks and greasy khaki shirt he left the interior in, but under them a triple-tiered money-belt, twice around the chest and once across the waist, packed with good solid chunky gold eagles, outlawed at home now but as good as ever over here. Fifteen-thousand dollars' worth; two thousand a week salary, and a thousand bonus for obliterating a caterpillar tank that General Yang didn't like the looks of. Not bad, two thousand a week. But seven weeks is still a long time, any way you look at it.

Her voice comes over the wire throbbing with expectancy; every time it's rung she's hoped it was he—and now at last it is.

"O'Shaughnessy." A love song in one word. She's never called him by anything but that.

"Just grounded. I've brought back fifteen-thousand-worth of red paint with me. Turn the shower on, lay out my dude-clothes, and get ready for a celebration!"

He just lingers long enough to see his plane put to bed properly, then grabs a cab at the airport-gate. "The Settlement," and forgetting that he's not inland any more, that Shanghai's snappier than Chicago, "Chop-chop."

"Sure, Mike," grins the slant-eyed driver. "Hop in."

A change has come over the city since he went away, he can feel that the minute they hit the outskirts, clear the congested native sections, and cross the bridge into the Settlement. Shanghai is already tuning-up for its oncoming doom, without knowing it. A city dancing on the brink of the grave. There's an electric tension in the air, the place never seemed so gay, so hectic, as tonight; the roads opening off the Bund a welter of blinking, flashing neon lights, in ideographs and Latin letters alike, as far as the eye can see. Traffic hopelessly snarled at every crossing, cops piping on their whistles, packed sidewalks, the blare of saxophones coming from taxi-dance mills, and overhead the feverish Oriental stars competing with intercrossed searchlight beams from some warships or other on the Whang-poo, Just about the right town and the right night to have fifteen thousand bucks in, all at one time.

He says: "Hold it, Sam," in front of a jewelry store in Bub

bling Well Road, lopes in, comes out again with a diamond solitaire in his pocket.

The skyscraper Mansions shows up, he vaults out, counts windows up to the tenth floor, three over from the corner.

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