So here are the American detectives. Among them you’ll find a detective with five degrees after his name and a detective with no name at all, a detective who is in the Social Register and a detective who swills sherry on Skid Row, a detective who was born 2000 years after his case and a detective who died six weeks before his solution. They’re all part of the American detective story — and the American detective story today is something to make the most devout internationalist feel a certain stirring of chauvinistic satisfaction.
ANTHONY BOUCHER
I Won’t Take a Minute
by Cornell Woolrich
This is the only DICK GILMAN story. But GILMAN is blood brother to BURGESS in Phantom Lady and DENNY in “Cocaine” and all the other hardheaded professionals who have enough humanity to believe the impossible. The terror of the impossible is Woolrich’s special field; and he’s played as many variations on the Lady-Vanishes situation as Ellery Queen has on the dying message or John Dickson Carr on the locked room. You’ll find this variation one of the most terrible, with that enormous impact of the everyday-gone-wrong that is peculiarly Woolrich: the story of a man who simply watched his girl go to deliver a parcel (she wouldn’t take a minute), and then — all at once, no Steffie.
She was always the last one out, even on the nights I came around to pick her up — that was another thing burned me up. Not with her of course, but with her job there. Well, she was on the last leg of it now, it would be over with pretty soon. We weren’t going to be one of those couples where the wife kept on working after the marriage. She’d already told them she was leaving anyway, so it was all settled. I didn’t blame her for hanging on up to the very end. The couple of extra weeks pay would come in handy for a lot of little this-ems and that-ems that a girl about to settle down always likes to buy herself (knowing she’s going to have a tough time getting them afterwards). But what got me was, why did she always have to be the last one out?
I picketed the doorway, while the cave-dwellers streamed out all around me. Everyone but her. Back and forth and back and forth; all I needed was a “Don’t Patronize” sign and a spiel. Finally I even saw the slave-driver she worked for come out, but still no her. He passed by without knowing me, but even if he had he wouldn’t have given me any sunny smiles.
And then finally she came — and the whole world faded out around us and we were just alone on the crowded sidewalk. I’ve heard it called love.
She was very good to look at, which was why I’d waited until I was twenty-five and met her. Here’s how she went: first a lot of gold all beaten up into a froth and poured over her head and allowed to set there in crinkly little curls. Then a pair of eyes that — I don’t know how to say it. You were in danger of drowning if you looked into them too deep, but, boy, was drowning a pleasure. Yes, blue. And then a mouth with real lines. Not one of those things all smeared over with red jam.
She had about everything just right, and believe me I was going to throw away the sales-slip and not return the merchandise once it got up to my house.
For trimmings, a dark-blue skirt and a short little jacket that flared out from her shoulders, and a kind of cockeyed tam o’shanter. And a package. I didn’t like the looks of that package.
I told her so the minute I stepped up and took off my hat, while she was still looking down the other way for me. “What’s that?”
She said: “Oh, Kenny, been waiting long? I hurried up all I could. This? Oh, just a package. I promised His Nibs I’d leave it at a flat on Martine Street on my way home.”
“But you’re not going home. I’ve got two ducats for ‘Heavens-abustin’ and I was gonna take you to Rafft’s for dinner first; I even brought a clean collar to work with me this morning. Now this is going to cut down our time for eating to a shadow—”
She tucked her free hand under my arm to pacify me. “It won’t take any time at all, it’s right on our way. And we can cut out the fruit-cup or something.”
“Aw, but you always look so classy eating fruit-cup,” I mourned.
But she went right ahead; evidently the matter had already been all settled between us without my knowing about it. “Wait a minute, let me see if I’ve got the address straight. Apartment 4F, 415 Martine Street. That’s it.”
I was still grouching about it, but she already had me under control. “What are you supposed to do, double as an errand-girl, too?” But by that time we were halfway there, so what was the use of kicking any more about it.
“Let’s talk about us,” she said. “Have you been counting the days?”
“All day. Thirteen left.”
“And a half. Don’t forget the half, if it’s to be a noon-wedding.” She tipped her shoulders together. “I don’t like that thirteen by itself. I’ll be glad when it’s tomorrow, and only twelve left.”
“Gee you’re cute,” I beamed admiringly. “The more I know you, the cuter you get.”
“I bet you won’t say that a year from now. I bet you’ll be calling me your old lady then.”
“This is it,” I said.
“That’s right, 415.” She backed up, and me with her. “I was sailing right on past it. See what an effect you have on me?”
It was the kind of building that still was a notch above a tenement, but it had stopped being up-to-date about 1918. We went in the outer vestibule together, which had three steps going up and then a pair of inner glass doors, to hold you up until you said who you were.
“All right, turn it over to the hallman or whoever it is and let’s be on our way.”
She got on that conscientious look that anything connected with her job always seemed to bring on. “Oh no, I’m supposed to take it right up personally and get a receipt. Besides, there doesn’t seem to be any hallman...”
She was going to do it her way anyway, I could see that, so there was no use arguing. She was bent over scanning the name-plates in the brass letter-boxes set into the marble trim. “What’d I say that name was again?”
“I dunno, Muller or something,” I said sulkily.
“That’s it. What would I do without you?” She flashed me a smile for a bribe to stay in good humor, then went ahead scanning. “Here it is. 4F. The name-card’s fallen out of the slit and gotten lost, no wonder I couldn’t find it.” She poked the button next to it. “You wait downstairs here for me,” she said. “I won’t take a minute.”
“Make it as fast as you can, will you? We’re losing all this good time out of being together.”
She took a quick step back toward me. “Here,” she said, “let this hold you until I come down again.” And that mouth I told you about, went right up smack against mine — where it belonged. “And if you’re very good, you may get a chaser to that when I come down again.”
Meanwhile the inner vestibule-door catch was being sprung for her with a sound like crickets with sore throats. She pushed it open, went inside. It swung shut again, cutting us off from one another. But I could still see her through it for a moment longer, standing in there by the elevator-bank waiting to go up. She looked good even from the back. When the car came down for her, she didn’t forget to turn around and flash me another heartbreaker across her shoulder, before she stepped in and set the control-button for the floor she wanted. It was self-service, nobody else in it.
The door closed after her, and I couldn’t see her any more. I could see the little red light that told the car was in use, gleaming for a few minutes after that, and then that went out too. And there wasn’t anything left of her.