Free Black Alibi by Cornell Woolrich Page B

shoulders outward along her seat to scan the seemingly lifeless rear of the establishment. She shattered the silence with an explosive double smack of her cupped hands. “ Muchacho! We’re in a hurry!” she called imperatively.
    The waiter returned at a trudging walk, his excuse for not hurrying any faster the brimming cup of strongly aromatic tea and glass of lemonade he bore on the tray.
    Marta ducked her chin to the cup, smacked her lips expressively as she raised it again. Conchita, who was sitting facing the thoroughfare outside, kept scanning it, more as though she were on the lookout for something to come along and catch her eye than because something had. Suddenly she gave a little sob of suppressed laughter, flexed one finger toward the outer panorama.
    “You should have seen that! The funniest-looking man just went by. I wonder what he was.”
    Marta, who was sitting back to the road, laboriously swiveled herself around and tried to peer out past the edge of the booth partition behind her.
    She turned back in a moment, shrugged. “I don’t see anyone.”
    A little ripple was going around in her cup.
    “You missed him. He’s gone past now.”
    Marta said, “You do look pale, nina .”
    Conchita did look pale. She wasn’t used to acts of overt treachery against members of her own household. Against anyone, for that matter.
    Another minute or two went by. Marta put down her drained cup.
    “Come pequena , we must go.”
    “Just let’s sit a minute longer. It’s so nice here. I haven’t quite finished my lemonade yet.”
    “The sun is almost all gone. It’ll be dark before we know it. We can’t go in there in the dark—”
    “You look tired, Marta.”
    As though she had only realized it now that the thought had been suggested to her, Marta admitted: “I am tired. I went ‘to six-o’clock Mass this morning.” She sighed self-indulgently. “When one gets to be my age—”
    “Put your head back a minute against the leather padding,” the girl suggested.
    “It wouldn’t look right, out in public like this.”
    “There’s no one but us here to see.”
    The old woman’s head went back almost of its own accord, she closed her eyes gratefully, and gave a deep sigh of relaxation. Her head stayed straight for a minute, erect on her shoulders. Then it slanted over until it had found the angle between the two walls of the compartment, remained leaning against it, supported by one of them. Her breathing started to become more gritty. Her lips parted company slightly, just in the middle.
    The girl sat quietly on opposite her a moment longer. Then she shifted outward along the seat until the impediment of the table had ended, stood up, never taking her eyes off her deputy guardian’s face. The heavy jowls were shaking a little now, with each breath.
    She reached cautiously downward for the mass of flowers beside Marta, scooped them up in the crook of one arm, careful to keep them from rustling too flagrantly. She got them all but one, a long-stemmed white rose which escaped her. She let that remain where it was. To have tried to retrieve it might have cost her all the others.
    She picked her way through the shoal of spool-topped tables, moving like a black-garbed wraith against the dying brightness of the day outside. When she had gained the lateral aisle of clearance that led to the front and out, she motioned the waiter toward her before proceeding along it, at the same time cautioning him with finger to lips.
    “Si, senorita?”
    “My nodriza’s very tired, pobrecita . I’m going to leave her here for a few minutes. Don’t wake her up, please, until I get back. I’m just going across the street. I’ll be back for her in a quarter of an hour.”
    “Just as the senorita orders it,” he murmured respectfully. A refined young girl in mourning from head to foot, an armful of flowers obviously destined for a grave—who could think anything amiss?
    She moved decorously enough until she had gained