Phantom Lady by Cornell Woolrich (Writing as William Irish)

Author:Cornell Woolrich (Writing as William Irish) [Woolrich, Cornell]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: New York, Ace Pub. Corp
Published: 1942-11-19T05:00:00+00:00

"Mr. Lombard?" she inquired.

"That's me."

There was evidently a final customs inspection to be passed before he was cleared for admission. "It is not a press interview, no?"

"No."

"It is not for an autograph, no?"

"No."

"It is not to obtain a testimonial, no?"

"No."

"It is not about some bill that has, er"—she hesitated delicately—"escaped the senorita's mind, no?"

"No."

This last point seemed to be the crucial one; she didn't go any further. "Just a moment." The door closed, then in due course reopened again. This time all the way. "You may come in, Mr. Lombard. The sefiorita will try to squeeze you in between her mail and her hairdresser. Will you sit down?"

He was by now in a room that was altogether remarkable. Not because of its size, nor the stratospheric view from its windows, nor the breath-taking expensiveness of its decor, though all those things were unusual; it was remarkable because of the welter of sounds, the clamor, that managed to fill it while yet it remained unoccupied. It was in fact the noisiest empty room he had ever yet found himself in. From one doorway came a hissing and spitting sound, that was either water cascading from a tap or something frying in fat. Probably the latter, since a spicy aroma accompanied it. Mingled in with this were snatches of song, in a vigorous but not very good baritone. From another doorway, this one of double width and which opened and closed intermittently, came an even more vibrant blend. This consisted, to the best of his ability to disentangle its

various skeins, of a program of samba music coming in over short waves, admixed with shattering shots of static; of a feminine voice chattering in machine-gun Spanish, apparently without stopping to breathe between stanzas; of a telephone that seemed not to let more than two and a half minutes at a time go by without fluting. And finally, in with the rest of the melange, every once in a while there was a nerve-plucking squeak, acute and unbearable as a nail scratching glass or a piece of chalk skidding on a slate. These last abominations, fortunately, only came at widely spaced intervals.

He sat patiently waiting. He was in now, and half the battle was won. He didn't care how long the second half took.

The maid came darting out at one point, and he thought it was to summon him, and half rose to his feet. Her errand, however, was apparently a much more important one than that, judging by her haste. She flitted into the region of the sputtering and baritone accompaniment to shriek warningly, "Not too much oil, Enrico! She says not too much oil!" Then raced back again whence she had come, pursued by malevolent bass tones that seemed to shake the very walls.

"Do I cook for her tongue or do I cook for the shaky clock on the bathroom floor she step on?"

Both coming and going she was accompanied by an intimate garment of feathery pink marabou, held extended in her

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