Ober came out last, blowing smoke out of his gun.
Merrill slurred Harriman’s body off his gun, and stood up shakily in the middle of all of them. The desperado lay squinting up at the marquee overhead, a black trickle threading out of one ear.
The captain was almost incoherent with rage. He shook his fist in Merrill’s face; acted like he was going to throw himself at him bodily. “I oughta demote you for insubordination! What the devil do you mean by deliberately disobeying my orders? I told you to commandeer a cab and tail him, not pull off a flying-trapeze act out here on the sidewalk!”
It was mostly relief — blowing off high-pressure steam after the terrible suspense.
“We got him, didn’t we?” Merrill blazed. “It was a cock-eyed idea, getting a cab. He could’ve pinged me from the back the minute he got suspicious and then where’d—” He stopped. Betty was squeezing his arm warningly. He caught on what the squeeze meant: we’ll be needing your salary after next June, so shut up.
He did. And he looked up at the marquee while the captain went ahead getting things off his chest and they all stood around and listened. It said up there in screamy fiery letters: Double Feature, Most Exciting Show in Town, Your Money’s Worth for 40c.
“Yeah,” he thought grimly, “that was no lie, either.”
Afterword to “Double Feature”
“Double Feature” (Detective Fiction Weekly, May 16, 1936) is one of the earliest and most vivid and breathless of Woolrich’s action whizbangs. A memorable thriller hung on a simple peg of plot, with a big-city movie palace as the setting and with emotions and action in perfect counterpoint — who but Woolrich could have pulled it off?
The Heavy Sugar
“Gee, the coffee in this dump is sure rank!” Tom Keogh thought to himself, putting down the cup and running a dubious tongue about the lining of his mouth. The stuff tasted as if they’d lowered one bean on a thread into the whole boiler, held it there a minute, then pulled it out again. And if he didn’t like it he could leave it there and go somewhere else. They didn’t care.
Which was why he sat there nursing it, with both hands around the hot cup. There wasn’t any place else he could go, whether he liked it or not. This mug of so-called java had taken his last nickel. The jitney was still in his pocket, the etiquette of cafeterias being what it is, but that punched-out 5 on his check meant it didn’t belong to him any more.
Outside it was raw and drizzling. In here there was steam heat — a little of it over in the corner by the radiator, where he was. As long as he could make the coffee last he could stay.
He took another gulp, and this time the flavor was that of an old inner-tube soaked in boiling water. It was scalding hot, which was all you could say.
“That guy over there,” he told himself dully, “doesn’t seem to mind it. He’s going back for more.”
The only other customer in the place looked too well-dressed to be drinking terrible coffee in a joint like this. But he had emptied his first cup hastily and gone back to the counter for another. He left the first one where it was, wet spoon sticking up out of the hefty sugar bowl that each greasy table was provided with. When he came back again with the fresh cup he sat down at a different table.
Keogh, watching idly, saw him plunge his spoon into the new sugar bowl, stir it around vigorously, and bring up a little.
“He wants his sugar from underneath, to be sure no dust has gotten on it,” Keogh thought, and quit watching for a while. He had his own troubles to think about.
An abrupt movement brought his eyes back that way again in less than two minutes. The guy was on his way back to the counter for a third cup! The second one stayed on the table, still about a quarter full, to judge by the steam threading up from it.
“Maybe his sense of taste is shot!” Tom Keogh thought. On the way back to a table, the fellow shot a glance over him, as if to see whether he was being watched or not. Keogh dropped his eyes. He wasn’t afraid to be caught watching, but people don’t like to be stared at. He didn’t himself.
When he looked again, the other had chosen still a third table to go to with his new cup. Again he stirred up the contents of the sugar bowl until it threatened to overflow the edges.
This time Keogh watched him closely when he put the cup to his lips. He gulped as though he couldn’t get rid of it quickly enough, but there was no real enjoyment on his face. A wry expression, like there had been on Keogh’s own, accompanied the act.
“Why, he doesn’t really want to drink it; he’s only pretending to!” Keogh exclaimed to himself. And in addition, he saw, the man was beginning to look worried, tense.
A minute later he saw this peculiar coffee fiend move his cup out beyond the edge of the table, look to see if the counterman was watching, and then deliberately tilt it and let most of the liquid trickle noiselessly to the floor. The counterman went back behind the steam kitchen just then. The night manager, up front by the cash register, had his face buried in a paper and wasn’t giving attention to anybody unless they tried to get out the door without paying.
The man with the coffee cup slipped quickly out of his seat and moved to a fourth table, cup and all, this time without getting a refill. Again he churned the sugar bowl hectically, as though he had a gnawing sweet tooth. But the worry on his face was beginning to look like dismay.
Keogh got it finally, just about as quickly as any one else would have, barring a professional detective.
“He isn’t interested in drinking coffee!” he told himself knowingly. “He’s looking for something in those sugar bowls, working his way around the room table by table!”
He didn’t care much for sugar himself. He’d only been interested in getting something warm inside him when he first sat down. He’d just scraped a little sugar lightly off the top of the bowl. Now he picked up his spoon second time and gripped it purposefully. No reason why he shouldn’t join in the treasure hunt himself, and try to find out what the fellow was after.
Maybe it was only a love note left for him by some sweetie with a jealous husband, using a sugar bowl for a post office. The other customer didn’t look like a ladies’ man, though, and there were better ways than that.
Maybe it was something else, something that wouldn’t be any use to him, Keogh, even if he did find it — a little packet of cocaine, for instance. The guy didn’t have that pasty look, though. Ugly and tough and healthy described him better. And then again, maybe it wasn’t even in here, whatever it was. Maybe this wasn’t the place where it was hid at all. Still, there was nothing like taking a crack at it for oneself.
He folded back the metal flap in the lid of the bowl. Waiting until he was sure the other guy wasn’t looking at him, he spaded his spoon deeply in. It hit the bottom. He stirred surreptitiously, as he’d seen the other do. The grains of sugar swirled, coruscated under the light, gleamed, twinkled, all but sparkled. Wait — they had sparkled, here and there!
Little lumps showed up, a whole coil of them. He dredged one out with the tip of his spoon, and all the rest came after it. Sugar rolled off, the lumps caught fire one by one, and he was holding a necklace of priceless diamonds dangling in the air!