CORNELL WOOLRICH “Soda Fountain.” Appeared in The Saint Thriller Journal,” March 1960. Reprinted from Liberty, October 11, 1930, as “Soda-Fountain Saga.”
John Spanish is a soda jerk, an outline of a job which can not exist anymore, and if it does, it’s a job not practically as widespread because it was once. (I’m not as up on issues like this as I was, both.) He’s uncommonly good at this job, or no less than he thinks he’s, and it’s fairly obvious that he actually does affect all the highschool women who come swarming in when college lets out.
All however one among them, and maybe she isn’t actually a schoolgirl. She by no means is available in with books, and she or he treats Spanish with undisguised non-interest. He tries his greatest, however, no, the woman isn’t , Then for a few days in a row, she meets a person on the counter. A person she is aware of effectively, Spanish catches on to that immediately. In type of futile gesture, however he can’t assist himself, he fixes the lady’s companion a particular drink. A doozy, you would possibly say.
The subsequent day, the lady is available in, with a suitcase. “What did you do to my husband?” she calls for. He gulps, figuratively if not bodily.
And simply the place is that this story going, the reader wonders. I’ll cease right here and say no extra however solely remind you that this is a criminal offense story. A minor one, true, and whereas it was written early in Woolrich’s profession, and considerably amateurishly phrased every now and then, with an ending that wanted just a bit extra punch to it, it has a modicum of a cuteness whereas not being completely fluff both.
And whereas I’m not completely constructive, and there’s no info supplied as a blurb in reprint model I learn, however this seems to be Cornell Woolrich’s very first crime story. Not his first printed story – there have been a few dozen tales he had wrote earlier than this one, showing in magazines resembling School Humor and the like – however I’m positive completely satisfied I got here throughout it late final night time, for all the causes talked about above.
