Children of the Ritz by Cornell Woolrich

Author:Cornell Woolrich [Woolrich, Cornell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Cornell Woolrich, Children of the Ritz, Jazz Age
Publisher: Renaissance Literary & Talent in conjunction with the proprietor
Published: 2019-07-18T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

EWEY RETURNED TO find Angela gone. Every light in the place had been turned on and left that way, in typical Angela fashion. And entering the bedroom, still pervaded by the expensive scent she had used, he saw a large uncovered cardboard box, lined with pale blue tissue paper, thrown carelessly against the wall. He examined the cover, which lay on the bed. "Maison Ira." It was the box her famous gold evening frock had originally come in, the day after they left the hotel. He remembered the name. Yes, that was the place all right. The dress she had had on when he had last seen her was hanging lifelessly over a chair.

He rested his hand on it for a moment. She was in this gold creation that he had never seen but had heard so damned much about. And you didn't wear things like that to go out by your own sweet self, or to walk down the street in either. Two-timing was what they called that, when a wife went out in other company. He began to get pale around the lips and grow cold around the wrists and something started in to thump behind his ears. War signals.

He twitched open the wafer-like green-gold drawer of her Louis XVI toilet table and rummaged blindly in it, ferociously determined to find something compromising, no matter what it was, to prove that he was right about her. Cigarette coupons, rouge-stained handkerchiefs, an orange tin of incense cones, a stick of old-rose sealing wax black at the tip, a buffalo nickel, and a ring with the stone missing from it. Not a thing. He tried to shove the slab in again and it jammed. The whole table quivered gracefully and the mirror blurred, and the liquid contents of the toiletry bottles flung themselves up into corners and streamed down again along the inside faces of the glass. Blank knickknacks.

He left it the way it was, went into his own room, sat down, flung one knee across the other, and scowled at the wall opposite. Two minutes passed and he was on his feet again, restlessly tramping back and forth between their two rooms. He went to the door of the apartment, opened it, and stood looking out, childishly expecting her to bob up in the elevator as though summoned on the instant by the lamp of an Aladdin. What he got instead was much less satisfactory. The taunting sugary strains of a lament much beloved of the day and hour crept out through the door on the right like honey oozing over smooth stones. "Sweetie went away and she didn't say where, she didn't say when, didn't say why."

A thunderous crash and Dewey was back in his own apartment again behind closed doors. But not for long. In less than no time the door was open again and he was on his way down the carpeted corridor, hatless and taking determined strides. He rang for elevator service and waited, about as peaceful as Vesuvius.

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