Rear Window Read Free

down into another part of the room, and straightened again with an armful of what looked like varicolored pennants at the distance at which I was.   He went back behind the V and allowed them to fall across the top of it for a moment, and stay that way.   He made one of his dips down out of sight and stayed that way a good while.
      The "pennants" slung across the V kept changing color right in front of my eyes.   I have very good sight.   One moment they were white, the next red, the next blue.
      Then I got it They were a woman's dresses, and he was pulling them down to him one by one, taking the topmost one each time.   Suddenly they were all gone, the V was black and bare again, and his torso had reappeared.   I knew what it was now, and what he was doing.   The dresses had told me.   He confirmed it for me.   He spread his arms to the ends of the V, I could see him heave and hitch, as if exerting pressure, and suddenly the V had folded up, become a cubed wedge.   Then he made rolling motions with his whole upper body, and the wedge disappeared off to one side.
      He'd been packing a trunk, packing his wife's things into a large upright trunk.
      He reappeared at the kitchen window presently, stood still for a moment.   I saw him draw his arm across his forehead, not once but several times, and then whip the end of it off into space.   Sure, it was hot work for such a night.   Then he reached up along the wall and took something down.   Since it was the kitchen he was in, my imagination had to supply a cabinet and a bottle.
      I could see the two or three quick passes his hand made to his mouth after that.   I said to myself tolerantly: That's what nine men out of ten would do after packing a trunk — take a good stiff drink.   And if the tenth didn't, it would only be because he didn't have any liquor at hand.
      Then he came closer to the window again, and standing edgewise to the side of it, so that only a thin paring of his head and shoulder showed, peered watchfully out into the dark quadrilateral, along the line of windows, most of them unlighted by now, once more.   He always started on the left-hand side, the side opposite mine, and made his circuit of inspection from there on around.
      That was the second time in one evening I'd seen him do that And once at daybreak, made three times altogether.   I smiled mentally.   You'd almost think he felt guilty about something.   It was probably nothing, just an odd little habit, a quirk, that he didn't know he had himself.   I had them myself, everyone does.
      He withdrew into the room, and it blacked out.   His figure passed into the one that was still lighted next to it, the living room.   That blacked next.   It didn’t surprise me that the third room, the bedroom with the drawn shade, didn’t light up on his entering there.   He wouldn't want to disturb her, of course — particularly if she was going away tomorrow for her health, as his packing of her trunk showed.   She needed all the rest she could get, before making the trip.   Simple enough for him to slip into bed in the dark.
      It did surprise me, though, when a match-flare winked some time later, to have it still come from the darkened living room.   He must be lying down in there, trying to sleep on a sofa or something for the night He hadn't gone near the bedroom at all, was staying out of it altogether.   That puzzled me, frankly.   That was carrying solicitude almost too far.
      Ten minutes or so later, there was another matchwink, still from that same living room window.   He couldn't sleep.
      The night brooded down on both of us alike, the curiosity-monger in the bay window, the chain-smoker in the fourth-floor flat, without giving any answer.   The only sound was that interminable cricket
      I was back at the window again with the first sun of morning.   Not because of him.   My mattress was like a bed of hot coals.   Sam found me there when he came