Корнелл Вулрич - A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

“You’ve been saying for nearly an hour now,” he objected, “that you expect your friend any minute. Well, he isn’t here yet.” He came to an abrupt decision. “Come on, let’s go,” he ordered. “I didn’t dance with you all evening to turn you over to someone else! I’m taking you home myself.”

“Leave here with you?” she gasped. “Why, I should say—”

“Come on, no use arguing about it,” he repeated impatiently, and taking her by the elbow lifted her to her feet.

After all, she decided, it was no more than Walter deserved for being so late. He’d kept her waiting here for him for nearly an hour. “You’d make a good kidnaper,” she told him tartly. But at the same time she inconsistently let him lead her toward the entrance and out of the place. It was rather nice for a change to have your mind made up for you. It put the blame for whatever you did on the other person and not on yourself. It made you feel carefree and irresponsible.

“Well,” she said ungraciously as they reached the street, “now that you’ve had your way, what next?” And shot him a look that was meant to be cold and disapproving.

“We’ll go and get something to eat,” he said.

“No we won’t,” she said immediately. “I’m not hungry.”

“I am,” he told her, “so we’ll get something to eat.”

“Didn’t I just tell you—?” she began. By the time she was through telling him, they were already seated at a table somewhere.

“And a chicken sandwich for the lady,” he informed the waiter.

“Nothing of the kind!” Ivy corrected bitingly. “I’m not having a thing.”

“And like I just told you, a chicken sandwich for the lady.”

The man nodded and went to get the order; he seemed to have no doubt as to which voice of the two was the deciding one.

“He can bring it,” said the irate Ivy, “but that doesn’t mean I’m going to eat it!”

Somewhat later, after she had replaced her fork on the empty plate, they stood up to go. “He thinks he’s good,” she told herself knowingly. “I simply changed my mind, that was all.”

On the way to her house they passed a jewelry store, the same one Walter always stopped to look at whenever he brought her by there.

“Wait a minute. Let’s see what they’ve got here,” he said. But he didn’t have as much trouble as Walter did making up his mind, he did not bother calculating how long it would take at the rate of five dollars down and five a week or anything like that. All he did was point to the very biggest diamond ring on the tray and say: “There’s a beaut. Want me to get you that?”

“Are you crazy or something?” she gasped. “We’ve only seen each other tonight for the first time!”

He looked at her in surprise. “What’s wrong about that?” he wanted to know. “Isn’t that the way to do things, right on the dot? I happen to like you!”

That was the way she had always felt about it herself — make life a breathless, thrilling thing. But this was going too far.

“Not so fast, slow down,” she said coldly.

“Why, we’re just cut out for each other.” But she had turned resolutely away from the window and wasn’t listening any more. “I’m going to get that for you,” he said briskly, coming after her, “that one I just showed you.”

“Better forget it,” she smiled. “It’s priced too high.”

“When I want something,” he said stubbornly, “I go ahead and get it!”

They passed the lamp-post on the corner.

“I enjoyed myself tonight,” she said suddenly, without being asked.

All he said was “What’d you expect?” as though that was to be taken for granted; it was needless to mention a thing like that.

“But, Ivy,” her friend asked when she let her in a few minutes later, “what on earth possessed you to pound on the door the way you just did? Didn’t you have your key with you?”

“Yes,” gasped Ivy, “but I didn’t have time to use it. It’s a good thing you came to the door when you did!”

“That’s not like you at all,” her friend persisted. “And poor Walter has been ringing up constantly all evening long saying he couldn’t locate you—”

“Walter?” said Ivy with an effort. “Oh, yes — I forgot.”

She had a mid-afternoon station at the Old Dutch Corner the next day. As she was walking along leisurely toward the restaurant in the two o’clock sunshine, something made her stop and stare in surprise. There was the familiar jewelry shop, but quite a change had come over it. Two boards, crossed to form an X, protected the place where the glass showcase had been until now. And where the glass showcase had been, there were just splinters and jagged ends sticking out of the frame, with the sidewalk below it well iced with innumerable fragments of broken glass. A policeman on guard before the doorway kept advising loiterers to move on and not stand there.

Which advice Ivy took herself only when she found herself being addressed in person. Held up! she thought, continuing reluctantly on her way. I wonder what Walter will say when he hears about it? Then suddenly a horrible intuition that had nothing whatever to do with Walter flashed through her mind and was quickly dismissed. “I’m imagining things,” she told herself. “He wouldn’t dare.”

She entered the Old Dutch Corner, made her way to the back, and descended the narrow stairs that led down to the waitresses’ locker-room. When she came up again, she was in the muslin frock and peaked cap. “The six tables along the wall in back,” the manager directed her. “And fill the sugar bowls. People have been putting wet spoons in them all morning.” Into the fray she plunged for the next five or six hours. Endless hours of serving tomato-juice, finger-bowls, and all that went in between. Until ten came, and she was through.

She had just scratched off her last meal-check and was turning to go downstairs and take off her uniform when a new customer pushed through the revolving doors. She groaned inwardly and waited to see if he would sit at her station. That would mean another half-hour. But he didn’t select any table at all. Instead he leaned intimately across the cashier’s desk. She glanced over in surprise, thinking he must have a pretty bad cold the way his scarf was thrown up over his chin. Then she saw the cashier raise his hands; his face was white and drawn. He stayed that way without moving, while the customer reached over and did something to the drawer on the inside of the counter where the money was kept.

After that things began to happen too quickly for Ivy to grasp what it was all about. The blast of a whistle sounded faintly outside on the street somewhere. The two or three diners in the place stood up excitedly, craning their necks; a chair fell over backwards. A voice, the voice of that man up front, barked out: “Just stay where you are, all of you!” The revolving door began to spin violently around, and two policemen could be seen flattened against it in a hurry to get in from the outside. On top of all this there was a crashing, shattering noise, as though a giant firecracker had gone off, only much louder than that even, followed by a sound of scampering feet going toward the back, where there was a delivery-exit on the side-street. But by now Ivy was crouching down under a table, her head bunched between her shoulders, as a precaution against whatever might come next.

There were, however, no further explosions like the first one; instead everyone in the place began talking at once, and there was an incessant rushing from front to back and back to front. “He got out the back way!” she heard someone say. She straightened up and ventured out into the open once more. The whole front of the restaurant was boiling with excitement. The night-manager, greatly upset, was conferring with one of the policemen.