They Call Me Patrice
by Cornell Woolrich
Chapter One
She climbed the rooming-house stairs like a puppet dangling from slack strings. She was about twenty, with small, well-turned features, but her cheeks were a little too thin. Blond hair hung listlessly, as though no heed had been paid to it for some time past. The heels of her shoes were a little run over.
She managed the three flights, somehow, stopped at the door and took out a key. A wedge of white protruded under the door; it lengthened into an envelope as the door swept back above it. She picked it up. Her hand shook. She seemed to come alive a little.
Only her name, no address. She moved to the middle of the room, snapped on the light. She ripped hastily along the top of the envelope, and her hand plunged in. It held no message. She turned it over and shook it.
A flutter of paper came down on the table.
A five-dollar bill. Just an anonymous five-dollar bill, with Lincoln’s picture on it. And a strip of railroad tickets, running consecutively from starting-point to terminus, the way they do. The first coupon was marked “New York”; here, where she was now. The last was marked “San Francisco.” San Francisco, which she’d left one day two years ago.
There was no return. It was for a one-way trip.
The envelope fell to the floor. Her hands clasped each other nervously but somehow with purpose too. A little gold circle came off one of her fingers, and dropped to the floor. It rolled in a circle and came to rest under the edge of her foot. It was as though she were grinding it down into the shoddy carpet.
She brought out a battered valise, placed it on the bed, and threw back the lid.
Her face kept twitching intermittently, as if it were struggling to burst forth into some kind of emotion. For a moment or two it seemed that it might be weeping, when it came. But it wasn’t.
It was laughter.
Laughter should be merry and vibrant and alive.
This wasn’t.
The train had already left the Chicago station and she hadn’t yet found a seat. She struggled down car-aisle after car-aisle, swaying, jostled from side to side. The aisles were full of standees.
None of the seated men she passed offered her a seat. Their places had been too hard-won on a transcontinental train where anyone who stood, stood for hundreds of miles, through half-a-dozen states.
She’d been too late at the gate in the station, and too late getting on the train. The crowd had spilled past her. She’d been too slow, and too tired, and a little too helpless with her leaden valise. No more cars now. This was the last. Choked from end to end like all the rest. She stopped midway through the car. She could see there weren’t any seats vacant.
She set down the valise, and settled herself on its edge, the way she saw so many of the others doing. But it was lower than a seat would have been, and harder to settle down upon. She floundered badly and almost fell. Then when she’d settled down she let her head rest wearily against the nearest seat-back.
The tilt of her head gave her only a downward view into the little patch of floor-space in front of the seat. A pair of man’s brogues and a diminutive pair of kid pumps rested side by side. The brogues slung one above the other, the owner’s legs coupled at the knee. The pumps were cocked pertly, ankles crossed.
Nothing happened for a moment. Then one of the pumps edged over and dug sharply at the man’s ankle. A newspaper rattled. Both brogues swivelled slightly aisleward, as if their wearer’s upper body had turned in the seat to take a look.
Then they came down flat and he stood up. He came out through the seat-gap and motioned her in.
“Take my place for awhile.”
She tried to demur with a faint smile.
“No, go ahead,” he said heartily. “That’s quite all right.”
She stood up and accepted the offered seat.
The couple were both young, only a little older than she was, pleasant, friendly-looking. The girl had red-gold hair, fluffed out around her face. She had a beautiful mouth, which alone was sufficient to make her lovely looking, drawing all notice to itself as it did. When it smiled, everything smiled with it. Her nose crinkled, and her eyebrows arched, and dimples appeared in each cheek. She looked as though she smiled a lot.
She was smiling at Helen now, to put her at ease. Her fingers toyed with her wedding-ring. It had a row of diamonds, with a sapphire at each end of the row of stones. A lovely ring, one she was obviously proud of.
“I appreciate this very much,” Helen said.
The young husband said, “Guess I’ll go out on the platform for a smoke.”
His wife glanced around to make sure he’d left them. Then she dropped her voice confidentially. “I could tell right away. That’s why I made him get up.”
Helen didn’t say anything. What could she say?
“Me too,” the wife added. She turned her ring around a little more, gave it a caressing little brush.
They were both chatting away absorbedly by the time the husband reappeared ten minutes later. He acted mysterious. He looked cautiously left and right as if bearing tidings of highest secrecy, then whispered, “Pat, they’re going to open up the dining car in a couple minutes. One of the porters just tipped me off. I think we better start moving up that way if we want to make it. There’ll be a stampede on as soon as word gets around.”
The wife jumped to her feet.
He immediately soft-pedaled her with the flats of both hands, in comic intensity. “Sh! Don’t give it away, what are you trying to do?”
She tiptoed out into the aisle, as though the amount of noise would give away the secret.
She pulled at the sleeve of the girl beside her in passing. “You come with us,” she whispered.
“What about the seats? We’ll lose them.”
“Not if we put our baggage in them.” The girl still hesitated.
The wife seemed to understand; she was quick that way. She sent him on ahead, to break trail. Then as soon as his back was turned, bent low over the seat in whispered reassurance. “He’ll look after the check, I’ll see that he does.”
“No, it isn’t that—” the girl faltered.
“Hurry up, we’ll lose him.”
She guided Helen lightly forward with a friendly hand.
“You can’t neglect yourself now, of all times,” she remonstrated in an undertone. “I know.”
They secured seats together in the dining car, which was crowded as soon as the doors were opened, just as he had foreseen. The unlucky ones had to wait in the aisle outside.
“Just so we won’t sit down to the table still strangers,” the wife said, cheerfully unfolding her napkin, “he’s Hazzard, Hugh, and I’m Hazzard, Patrice.” The dimples showed up. “Funny name, isn’t it?”
“Be more respectful,” her young husband grumbled, without lifting his nose from the bill-of-fare.
“What’s your name?”
“Georgesson.”
She smiled at the two of them. It wasn’t a very broad smile, but it had depth and meaning.
“You’ve both been awfully friendly to me.”
She looked down at the menu card the steward had handed her, so they wouldn’t detect the emotion that made her lips tremble.
The lights had gone out in the car. All but those tiny, subdued ones over each individual seat. The three were already old friends by now.
“She just came out,” Patrice reported, eyes fastened watchfully on a door far down the aisle in the dim distance. “Come on, do you want to come with me, Helen? Quick, Hugh, the overnight-case.” She prodded him heartlessly in the ribs.
“All right, take it easy,” Hugh grunted sleepily.