Cornell Woolrich
Savage Bride
Chapter One
His Name was Lawrence Kingsley Jones. He was just like any man, like you, like me; and yet, this is what happened to him:
In the room, just darkness, broken by the squared outline of a moonlit window, with its spectral complement lying flat upon the floor beneath it. Outside, silence, a countryside asleep under a star-punctuated sky. Inside and out, both, tension, a brooding hush, as if action were being held in check, waiting for some given signal to start.
Silhouetted against the window was a girl’s hand, holding pinned to one side a curtain that was like smoky chiffon shadow. Just under the hand, the curve of a shoulder could be detected; just over it, the profile of a watching face. But nothing moved, neither hand nor shoulder nor face; they were all motionless, waiting for the signal that had been promised, that was to come.
Suddenly it came. The signal had been given. A car horn blatted just once, in curt interrogation, from the roadway out in the middle distance that ran past the grounds of the house. A splash of yellow, rayed out by the swerving of a pair of headlights, flickered briefly across the darkness in a semicircle, and went out again.
The pane slipped upward, tempered to a stealthy little squeak, softer than a mouse would make. Outside there was a faint crunching footfall on gravel. Then, directly below the window, a man’s voice sounded in cautious query. “Ready?”
The figure in the window square spoke for the first time. “I can’t get out. He locked the door of my room. I heard him turn the key in it. He’s downstairs in the back, someplace. They’ve both been watching me like hawks all day, as though they suspected something.”
“Where’s the other one?”
“Cotter? He’s not here right now. He took their car and went somewhere about nine. He hasn’t come back yet.”
Her whisper became unsteady, shook all over “Larry, Larry, I’m so frightened. I’ll never be able to.”
“You still want to, don’t you?”
“More than anything I know. Don’t leave me here, don’t leave me.”
“There must be some way of getting you out of there. I’ll see if I can find a ladder.”
“There’s one the gardener uses. You know where that greenhouse is, around at the back?”
Grass-blurred footsteps drew away around the turn of the house, died out. The figure at the window pivoted around to face the room behind her, stood there tautly listening to the inner sounds of the house. A little bureau clock went tick, tick, tick in the darkness near her, as if to say: “Get out, get out, get out while you can.”
There was a smothered clout, as of a pole striking lightly against the clapboard just below the window.
She whirled around in terrified urgency. “He’s coming up! Oh, Larry, what’ll we do? I hear him. He’s locking up for the night down there.”
The man spoke steadyingly, reassuringly, from the foot of the ladder he had now reared. “Don’t lose your head. We’ll make it. Throw your things down first. I’ll carry them over to the car.”
“I haven’t anything. Just take me, just me myself!”
“All right, easy now. Sit on the sill and swing yourself over to this side. I’m holding it steady for you. That’s it. Now reach down backward with your foot. There’s the top rung right under you.”
Her second foot came to rest beside the first. “He’s on the stairs already! He’s coming up! I can hear his hand slapping on the rail!”
“Sh-h-h,” he urged her soothingly. “Don’t stand there listening. You’re out. Another one. Now just one more. That’s the lady. You’re down. You’re in my arms.”
She turned as they closed about her and buried her face against him in frightened relief.
“You’re safe,” he whispered consolingly. “You’re free. I’ve got you.”
He led her across the black, moon-frosted grass; out through an iron-barred gate left narrowly ajar between two granite plinths that broke a high-topped iron picket fence, close-set and forbidding. He hurried her down the road a few yards, to where a gently slimmering roadster stood waiting, over to one side. He armed her protectively into the seat, got in after her. The door made a sturdy, defiant thud. “They’ll never get you back again now.”
As he floored the accelerator, and the night swept back behind their ears, he turned to her without a word and blotted out her mouth in a long-drawn kiss. “Our wedding kiss,” he murmured.
The house he had stolen her from was pulled out of sight behind them, like something jerked on lead strings. The road ahead swirled toward them like a tracer bullet. Her unbound hair streamed out behind her over the back of the seat, like something impregnated with electric current, alive, crackling, with their fugitive speed.
The whole night was in a hurry, rushing past them. Only the stars and moon held steady, weren’t running away.
She looked back once. She said above the wind, “When Cotter gets back, they may come after us and — and try to—”
“Let them,” he said tersely. “They’ll never catch us. You’re mine for keeps now.”
“Larry,” she said presently, glancing at him wonderingly. “What’s the world like?”
“You’re going to see it. I’ll show it to you.” He snapped on the car radio. Pulsing, brassy music welled up into their faces. “That’s the world, hear it?” He gave the dial a twist. Laughter flooded out, an audience roaring at something funny that had just been said. “And that’s the world.” He twisted it a second time. A woman’s scream winged out like a knife slashing between them, punctuated by two or three hollow-sounding revolver shots. He quickly clicked the radio off. “And that’s the world, too,” he muttered in an unwilling undertone.
Chapter Two
A fanlight overhead lighted up murkily at the continued thumping. There was a juggling with the bolt, and the door opened. A silver-haired man, with rimless glasses and pendulous red turkey-gobbler throat, stood looking at the two men.
“Land sakes, couldn’t you hold your horses?” he said querulously.
“Has there been a young couple here tonight?” the older of the two fired at him.
“There’ve been several. I’m a justice of the peace.” He smiled deprecatingly.
“Dark-haired girl, olive-skinned. And the man with her was fair-haired. Giving the names of Mitty Fredericks and Lawrence Jones?”
“Yep, they were,” the justice nodded. “Not more than three quarters of an hour ago. Fact, they were the last ones here tonight.”
“And you — you did it? It’s already over?”
“I married them, yes,” the justice told him succinctly. “That’s what I’m here for.”
The older one turned and gave his companion a look of utter calamity. “Too late,” he said dismally. “It’s already been done.”
The second one stirred his breath with an expressive, long-drawn whistle.
The justice looked troubled, plucked at his wattled throat. “Nothing wrong, is there? Are you two relatives?”
“In a way,” said the older man limply. “I’m professor Fredericks. She was my ward.”
The justice plucked some more. “Their license seemed to be in order,” he said defensively. “Took it out in Baltimore two or three days ago, waited the required length of time. I didn’t see any reason not to accommodate them.”
“Baltimore, did you say?” the younger of the two repeated sharply. He turned his eyes inscrutably toward Fredericks for a moment.
“That’s right. I can only go by what documents are shown to me. I ain’t no mind reader, you know, mister.” The justice seemed more and more unsure of himself in the face of their accusing silence. He had shifted his plucking now to the topmost button of his bathrobe. “She gave her age as eighteen,” he added in final, faltering vindication.