Read Online Into The Night by Cornell Woolrich - Free Book Online Page A

there.
    Throughout the song and the two or three that followed, she kept thinking, But this isn't enough. How do I get to know her? Get to really know her? Send her a fan note, saying I admire her, want to meet her? That's only good for a smile, a handshake, a few polite phrases, and then I'm expected to be on my way again. When men wanted to meet a performer, they became stage-door J ohnnies. That's what I'll do, she decided. Become something on that order, but with a slightly different purpose in mind. I'll become a stage-door Jenny.
    She waited just long enough to gauge the applause. It wasn't thunderous, it wasn't crashing, it wasn't that kind of place. But it was warm and friendly, like soft summer rain belting a tin shed. They liked her, which is always half the battle.
    From the outside the place was so inconspicuous you could easily have missed it. There was no canopy, no doorman, no conveyor belt of arriving or departing taxis. There was a very modest neon in handwriting script that spelled "Intime" over the door, and to one side a sandwich board on an easel that simply said "Adelaide Nelson, song-stylist," and had her photograph on it and the name of the combo, "The Partners Three."
    After a few minutes of standing about uncertainly in front of the place, she got a cab by forfeit, so to speak. One drove up, unloaded, and she got in and sat down before the seat was even cool.
    The driver finally glanced around inquiringly, after waiting for her to give the destination of her own accord.
    "I'm waiting for someone to come out," she told him, "so just stand awhile. Do you see that vacant slot up past the car just ahead of us? See if you can slide in there; that'll leave the entrance clear."
    He did so, with a dexterity and sleekness only a professional cabman could have shown. That took her out of the direct line of Adelaide Nelson's vision when she would come out. She tested for range of visibility on several people who came out ahead, and found she could see them perfectly at that distance by looking through the rear window with a half turn of her head.
    The driver smoked and toted up his logbook.
    She just sat watching and waiting.
    "Turn out the light," she said suddenly.
    Adelaide Nelson had a fur scarf slanted carelessly over one shoulder, and no hat. Madeline got a perfect look at her. She had the same wait Madeline had had. At one point she even started up toward the cab Madeline was in, although its dome light was plainly off. Madeline cowered back into a corner. Before the woman could reach Madeline's cab, another one came gliding by, and she hailed and stepped into that instead.
    Madeline said, "See that cab that woman just got into right in back of us? Just follow that the rest of the way from here."
    "One of those things," he said noncommittally.
    "You don't have to crowd it, but don't lose it either."
    He was one of those rhythm drivers. He'd learned to time himself and space himself so that he took each light just before it changed, didn't have to stop once.
    The lead cab got blocked off by a transverse bus at one crossing and lost the light, so he had to let himself lose it too and stay back in company with it. After that, the beat was lost and neither one of them got across a single light without stopping. But they both stayed together on the same block each time.
    The pilot cab finally stopped, Adelaide Nelson got out, transacted her fare, and went inside a building under a long dark green sidewalk canopy.
    "What's the number on that?" Madeline asked, peering closely at it.
    "Two-twenty."
    She'd already made it out for herself by that time.
    "All right, now you can keep going." She gave him her own address.
    "That was it?" he asked blankly.
    "That was it."
    She knew more was coming. It did.
    "She take your fellow away from you, is that the angle?"
    "I don't have any fellow to take. And if I did, and he took that easy, she could keep him."
    The papier-mâché briefcase she'd bought in Woolworth's. The