Free Black Curtain by Cornell Woolrich Page A

might be just a block or two from a sector that would have paid him real dividends if he had begun to investigate it. Or he might be the whole span of the city away.
     
    Or even suppose his premise was the correct one, and Tillary Street had played a fixed part in one phase of his past life? Even so he was relying on the laws of chance, of coincidence, wasn't he? And they might just not work out in his favor. For instance, suppose the one or two people around here who could have reoriented him had themselves drifted away by now? If they weren't around here any more, then the street was no earthly good to him just as a street. Or those who had had reason to seek him out down here, if there were any such, might have already done so--during the interim of his absence. Not finding him, they might take it for granted he was gone for good and would never come back to Tillary Street. He might stay here a thousand years without ever getting a glimpse into that unknown past.
     
    One night, hopeless with continued lack of success, he charted a rough map of the immediate vicinity and tried to determine by a rough system of surveying just which near-by points of departure and destination might use Tillary Street as a short cut, or timesaver, or line of least resistance. But it wouldn't work out. Too many outside factors, that were still beyond his knowledge, entered into it. He would have had to know what his own former habits were, the nature of the errand he had been on at the time, and so on. He didn't know any of those things. In itself, as a mere geographical convenience, the use of the street as a short cut seemed to be ruled out. You could go down the parallel streets on each side of it just as quickly and a very great deal farther. It led from nowhere to nowhere. It began where it did for no reason and ended where it did just as irrationally, after four blocks of existence. It wasn't even a diagonal or transverse linking two nonparallel points; it adhered to the same foursquare pattern as all the other intersections about it.
     
    He crumpled up the sheet of paper and threw it away, after long, laborious hours of struggle. The past wasn't easy to regain. There were no road maps showing you which way it lay. And meanwhile time was running out.
     
    Although his lodging was taken care of for a while yet, the residue of the dishwashing money petered out within two days. He struggled on for another twenty-four hours after that without a penny, living on gratuitous cups of coffee slipped across the counter to him, when the boss wasn't looking, by employees of the various places where be had been a paying customer until now. They couldn't be expected to repeat that more than once, however. Tillary Street lived on a shoestring, and the five cents would have been taken out of their own wages if they had been detected. The fortuitous circumstance of a restaurant being without a dishwasher, or a shop being without a sidewalk barker at the precise moment when he needed a job, didn't recur a second time and wasn't likely to. That had been just a freak of timing. He wasn't looking for permanent employment--he had his full-time job cut out for him-- so he didn't go out of the neighborhood. And in it, there was nothing to be found. But still he had to eat. The first day, already, of this forced abstention he was starting to feel hollow in the pit of the stomach and weary at the back of the legs as he prowled his useless, elusive beat.
     
    He'd had all along, and still had, on him that flashy-looking cigarette case that had turned up in his pocket on this very street after the accident that day. He had kept it on his person all the weeks he'd been back living with Virginia, instead of hiding it away somewhere in the flat. Possibly to spare her the worry the sight of its strangeness might have caused her if she'd found it. It had accompanied him automatically the night of his flight, and it was the only thing on his person now that had even a