Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Vol. 14, No. 68, July 1949

Floor, please by Stephen Vincent Benét[3]

Once upon a time (and it was not so many years ago) any attempt on the part of scholars, historians, or mere editors to link the names of great literary figures with the lowly detective story was greeted with impolite noises. Nobel Prize winners and Pulitzer Prize winners writing detective stories? Ridiculous twaddle and insidious propaganda! Yet in the eight short years since EQMM has practised what it has preached, we have proved the truth again and again and again — that literary snobbishness is the sin of critics, not of writers... Consider, if you will, the Nobel Prize winners: six English and American authors have won the most coveted of all literary awards — an award made in the field, may we remind you, of idealistic literature; and of these, five — Rudyard Kipling, Sinclair Lewis, John Galsworthy, Eugene O’Neill, and Pearl S. Buck — have written tales (in the case of O’Neill, dramas) of crime or detection.

Consider, if you will, the winners of Pulitzer Prizes: every single one of the following has appeared in the pages of EQMM — Edith Wharton, Louis Bromfield, Elmer Rice, Marc Connelly, Susan Glaspell, T. S. Stribling, Stephen Vincent Benét, Ellen Glasgow, John Steinbeck, and soon we hope to bring you tales by Oliver La Farge and Robert E. Sherwood.

Oh, the literary snobs have conceded, in their patronizing way, that one of the earliest stories in the Bible is a tale of murder, and that it is possible, from a perverted point of view, to regard Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” as a detective story — indeed, as a psychological thriller; but they laugh off these classical examples as prodigious freaks of nature. Perhaps murder can be judged a freak of nature, but paradoxically the study of murder, in all its fictional forms, is a compellingly instinctive and natural theme — and if murder comes, can the detective be far behind?

Yet the literary snobs, from their ivory towers leaning so Pisa-like in the clouds, look down their long noses at the detective story. But the writers, we repeat, don’t. They recognize the detective story as a difficult and artistic medium, worthy of their sincerest efforts. How else explain that in addition to the famous literary figures mentioned above, EQMM has published detective-crime stories by Mark Twain, W. Somerset Maugham, Theodore Dreiser, H. G. Wells, Ernest Hemingway, J. B. Priestley, William Faulkner, James Hilton, Arnold Bennett, Charles G. Norris, John van Druten — an incomplete roster which does injustice to many other fine writers.

Snobbery, as Berton Braley has said, is the pride of those who are not sure of their position. How different the literary attitude to detective stories would be if the critics themselves could be persuaded to try to write detective stories!

Snobbery, said Isaac Goldberg, is but a point in time. Let us have patience with our inferiors. They are ourselves of yesterday...

Detective-crime stories written by the famous names of literature are usually of two types. Tales like Maugham s“ Footprints in the Jungle,” Glaspell’s “A Jury of Her Peers,” Hemingway’s “The Killers,” Faulkner’s “The Hound,” and Steinbek’s “The Murder” belong to the higher levels, if not the highest levels, of their authors’ literary development. The other type of detective-crime story written by celebrated literary figures belongs to the authors’ salad days — when the writers were doing experimental, transitional, or formative work.

The story by Stephen Vincent Benét which we reprinted previously — “The Amateur of Crime” — was one of Mr. Benét’s early stories, first published in 1927. The Stephen Vincent Benét tale we now offer is an even earlier effort; it first appeared in a pulp magazine in 1924 — yet only four years before john brown’s body, although thirteen years ahead of the DEVIL AND DANIEL WEBSTER.

Admittedly — and we have no hesitation in stressing the fact — “Floor, Please” is not representative of Stephen Vincent Benét’s fully developed talent. Its interest, both for the detective-story reader and the general reader, is chiefly incunabular. But wherever the tale may rank in the scale of Benét’s literary achievement, it proves the catholicity and integrity of the author’s work: for Stephen Vincent Benét, in company with virtually every other well-known and famous figure in literature, was not ashamed to write a detective story, not ashamed to sign his name to it, and not ashamed to have it reprinted many years after it was first written.

“Floor, please!” said Sally Bunch mechanically. Then she smiled. “Why, it’s Mr. Cavendish! Hot, isn’t it, Mr. Cavendish?”

The young man smiled in reply, displaying teeth so white and even that, as his personal stenographer had remarked, “it just wasn’t right they were in a man.” “Yes, it is hot,” he remarked in his pleasant voice.

Sally glowed.

“Those Palm Beach suits now,” she proffered timidly. “I hope you don’t think I’m fresh, Mr. Cavendish, but — well, I got a kid brother — he thought — are they really as cool now as the advertisements make out they are?”

Mr. Cavendish glanced over his quiet, expensive raiment appreciatively.

“Oh, yes, they’re as cool as anything we poor devils of men can wear on a day like this. My floor? Good morning!”

He stepped out of the elevator, smiling. Sally dreamily revolved the wheel that closed the doors and started the elevator up again. As a matter of fact, she had no brother, but chances of a couple of minutes uninterrupted talk with a real gentleman like Mr. Cavendish were few. Even as it was, she had risked something — the proprietors of the Metal Products Building did not encourage talkativeness on the part of its elevator girls. “Complete refinement in deportment,” said the little booklet on Service, “is a more than necessary adjunct for each and every one of our employees.”

Sally sighed. She knew her deportment was not all that it should be, in spite of the correspondence course in The Etiquette of Fashionable Society she had just completed. But how were you ever going to get to know real swell people if you just stood on your feet all day long, like a dummy, and never opened your face?

Sally had been an elevator girl in the Metal Products Building for a little over a year. It was the “refinedness” of the thing — the opportunities for acquiring culture and social polish as well as, possibly, in the future, a real, “Ritzy” husband — that had appealed to her in taking the job in the first place. She not only had the normal American yearnings to rise above the station in which birth had placed her — she had original ideas on how it might be done and was strongly determined to do it.

There were plenty of millionaires who married their private secretaries, their nurses, even their cooks. She read about them in the papers — enviously. But Sally could not spell, sick people made her nervous, and she always got hot when she cooked. Very well, then, why not start a precedent herself? “Wealthy Clubman Weds Elevator Girl. Her Politeness Impressed Me From the First, Says New-made Benedict.”

She could see it all now, with many pictures, on the front pages of all of the papers.

At first, the Metal Products Building had seemed to offer a happy hunting ground. The uniform she had to wear was becoming, the pay acceptable, and clients of wealth and refinement were in evidence throughout. The Metal Products Building was one of the very latest downtown skyscrapers. Hand-wrought bronze register gratings, vast marble columns in the entrance hall, indirect lighting from alabaster bowls; even Sally’s elevator had the air of a Roman boudoir.

“Gee, this is the place for me!” thought Sally, when she first envisaged the ensemble.

But now that a year had passed, she began to wonder. It was easy enough to get acquainted, but most of the acquaintances were the wrong kind — fat, perspiring men who called her “sister” and leered when they were alone with her in the car — scrubby, uninteresting bookkeepers and filing clerks who, if she gave them half a chance, would doubtless display intentions as honorable as they were dull. Really, Sally thought, it was only Mr. Cavendish who kept her on the job.

She sighed again. He was certainly a darb. The perfection of his teeth when he smiled was what had first attracted her, she admitted. Girls were so silly. Or, maybe, it was his looks in general — handsome but manly — he wasn’t one of those pretty-pretty boys. And his clothes! And his heavy, expensive English shoes! And his grand manners! And here he was — couldn’t be more than thirty, and yet he was manager or something of the Continental Perfume Company on the eighth floor. That seemed a funny business, somehow, for a real man like him to be in, but then he had his artistic side, too. They’d talked about things, and he was always so nice and democratic with everybody.

Sally dreamed. To all appearances she opened and shut doors, sped up and down, said “Floor, please!” Really, however, she was rescuing a wounded, but uncomplaining, Mr. Cavendish from a burning building just as they do in the movies. Her reverie was rudely interrupted.

“Well, how’s Nellie, the beautiful cloak model, today?” said a jarring voice.

Sally hardly bothered to turn her head. “Oh. hello, Mr. Considine,” she said wearily. “The nineteenth?”

“Yea, my fair damsel, an’ it please thee,” said the sandy-haired young man with the Irish nose. “Old King Brady is on the trail again, and trouble may be expected to pop almost any time this morning. Say, Sally, when are you off?”

“Five thirty,” said Sally mechanically. “Here’s your floor.”

The young man lingered. “Meet me at the trysting oak!” he murmured with an absurd gesture. “The Merrivale Street entrance, kid. I would have words with thee — words of import and gravity.”

“Fat chance!” said Sally. She slammed the doors and shot upward. Billy Considine, she considered, was just the kind of bird that didn’t get you anywhere! A little, fresh ham detective — an irritatingly unsquelchable hanger-on! No matter if she had had to tell him five times that she’d be a sister to him, tonight she positively wouldn’t — she positively—

Five thirty found her sweeping haughtily out of the Merrivale Street entrance. But a block away she found herself taken affectionately by the arm.

She turned freezingly. “Now, Billy Considine—”

“Aw, Sally, be reasonable!”

“Billy, I told you—”

“Aw, yes, but this is important.” She groaned exasperatedly. “Well?”

“Well, the chief just kicked through with a bonus on that bum check business. So how about Ugugli’s and a couple of cups of red ink?”

“I beg your pardon. I am engaged for the evening.”

“Aw, Sally, you’re not! And then we could go to Harmonyland and shake a little toe or two.”

Sally began to weaken. She loved to dance. “Well, Billy — only, you understand, it’s the last time.”

“Till the next time,” said Billy, and grinned. “Right you are, my queen of the elevator shafts! How’s the beautiful Mr. Cavendish today?”

It took him four subway stops to pacify her, but he managed it. There was something horribly persistent about Billy Considine. Later, discussing the dubious antipasto with which Ugugli’s celebrated dollar dinner began, Sally found it necessary to be polite.

“How’s the work going, Billy?”

“Like a breeze, my fair flower,” said Billy gallantly, “like a Coney Island breeze.” Then he grew more veracious. “And saps out in Hicksville Center think it must be the berries to be a private detective!” he groaned. “Oh, just so exciting and everything. Exciting — blah! This morning I get up in the night to go out and work on a fat Dutchman the chief thinks is up to some funny business or other. I trail him around all day, till Sullivan takes over the job, and the worst thing he does is to take a golf lesson at Mimbel’s, with the thermometer up so high it fairly makes me drip every time I think of him. Then I write my report and quit — and, oh yes — strike the chief for my bonus, and he gives it to me all right, but says I’ve been dead on my feet all month, except for that one piece of luck, and to get busy from now forward, or I’ll be sleeping out in the park. If they’d only give me a real case, once in a while.”

He stabbed viciously at a flaccid slab of pimento. “How about you, Sal? Everything sittin’ pretty?”

“Well, if you think you have a stupid time, Billy Considine! Seems to me every day I live’s just like every other day, except for the date. Sometimes I think if they put me on the other shift — the expresses to the twentieth — things’d be different. But—”

“Oh, there wouldn’t be any difference,” said Billy gloomily. “What’s the use? If I could grab off a big bunch of kale — or get hold of a classy crime — I want to start my own agency, Sal — I know I could get away with it. I’m sick of these routine jobs. But you’ve got to have a rep to—”

Thick, steamy soup replaced the antipasto. They talked on, hardly heeding each other.

“You know what the trouble is with you and me, Sally,” Billy was saying; “the trouble with both of us, we haven’t got enough incen — incentive — that’s the big trouble. Now, Sally — aw, listen, Sally — if you’d—

“Oh, yes, if we got married and had an apartment in the Bronx — and a baby — and a phonograph on the pay-every-month-till-you’re-dead system,” said Sally, with tired scorn. “No, Billy, there’s nothing in it.”

“Aw, Sally, you’re a lot too good for me — don’t I know that? But if we got married we could sort of help each other — two of us. I’d just have to be a success if you married me, Sally. And there’s a lot of jack in this agency business, once you get started right. Won’t you, Sally?”

“You know I’ll help you every way I can, Bill,” said Sally, a trifle moved; “but—”

“Aw, I know,” said Billy acridly; “you needn’t tell me. It’s that Cavendish bimbo — that ya-ya, stuffed shirt, tooth-paste ad of a Cavendish. You used to listen to me before his fairy footsteps came into your life! He’s a—”

“Mr. Cavendish is a gentleman — a real gentleman — a man anyone should be proud to know!”

“Then what’s he doing in a perfume works — playing he’s a geranium? Sounds pretty funny to me.”

“Mr. Cavendish intended to be a painter,” said Sally stiffly. “He has very fine artistic tastes. He—”

“A painter? Yeah, a sign-painter — that’s about—”

“If you persist in insulting my personal friends, Billy—”

“Oh, all right,” grumbled Billy unwillingly. “All right, I’ll lay off. But I got a hunch about this man, Cavendish — I just don’t like him at all.”

They talked forcedly of other things through the rest of dinner, but, by the time they got to Harmony-land, Sally’s ruffled feelings were somewhat soothed. In fact, when she went to bed that night, she admitted that Billy at times could be quite sweet. If he wasn’t so crude he might—

July came — August — and another proposal from Billy, an even more persistent one than usual, this lime.

“Listen — I’ve got my chance! Are you listening to me, Sally? It’s jewels,” he gloated, “stolen jewels. Just like in a book.” They were alone on a bench on Riverside Drive.

“Yes?” said Sally uninterestedly. She was thinking of Mr. Cavendish.

“The chief is wild. The whole department’s up in the air. I can’t tell you much about it — only a job as big as a whale’s been put across. Our client’s one of the biggest bugs in town — he’s had the regular police on it, but they can’t show a thing. There’s a knockout of a reward. They know the crooks must be trying to get the stuff out of the country, but that’s all they know.” He whispered a name.

“Good Lord!” said Sally, impressed.

“Keep your face frozen tight about it, kid — don’t breathe a word! Everybody in the office is after that reward; but it’s my chance, my big chance, and I’m going to collect on it or end up smelling a lily!” He proceeded to more personal topics.

The next evening, as Sally was hurrying toward the subway, she suddenly found Mr. Cavendish at her elbow.

“Oh, Miss Bunch!” He was obviously surprised. “Hotter than ever, isn’t it?”

She nodded; she felt too wilted to speak.

“You’re on your way home?”

“Why, yes, Mr. Cavendish.”

“The subway must be terrible these days.”

“It’s — it’s very hot,” said Sally briefly. She felt a little sick at the thought of the crowded train.

He hesitated. “Miss Bunch” — Sally winced; she hated her name — “I suppose you’d think it rather impertinent of me,” he smiled, “but my car, as it happens — I always drive home from the office — do you live very far uptown?”

“Oh, thank you, Mr. Cavendish, but I couldn’t — I really couldn’t.”

He smiled again. “Why not? It isn’t much to do. I assure you, it makes me feel like a brute, riding back in the open, while you— Come, why not?”

“I couldn’t,” said Sally in a very feeble voice. “Besides, it’s way up on One Hundred and Thirty-fifth Street.”

He looked at her sharply. “Nonsense! You’re tired. Don’t be silly. A breath of air will do you all the good in the world. And, besides — I’ll confess — it isn’t all altruism, Miss Bunch. I wanted to ask you something — a favor.”

“Oh, then I’ll accept,” said Sally gratefully.

The smooth motion of the car — the cool air on her cheeks. She sighed with content, relaxing. They said very little until they were near Central Park, but even in what little he said Mr. Cavendish displayed a graceful formality that thrilled her.

“And now, Miss Bunch,” he said. “If I might ask you—”

“Another letter?” said Sally happily. “Oh, I’d be so charmed.”

“Yes, another letter.” Cavendish glanced about him. His voice sank. “About the same deal, to the same address. No answer. I’ll pick you up in ten minutes at the subway station. Of course, you’ll say nothing?”

“I’d die first,” said Sally.

He laughed. “Oh, it won’t require that. But you know how these business things are — everyone out to cut the next fellow’s throat. Miss Bunch, I hate to impose on your good nature this way, but I know that I can trust you. If I were mistaken—” For a moment his eyes were as blank and chilly as little hailstones. “And then we’ll go for a spin in the Park,” he ended.

“That would be just lovely, Mr. Cavendish,” said Sally with fervor, as she took the letter. It had no address upon it, but she knew where to go.

The man at the desk regarded Mr. Cavendish distrustfully. The officers of the Continental Perfume Company were in conference behind locked doors.

The Continental Perfume Company was a blind; they were the fences of a criminal organization. The letters were written instructions to arrange for the selling of gems to foreign buyers.

“I don’t like this business with the girl, Jim,” said the man at the desk, “Miss Lunch, or whatever her name is. I don’t like it at all.”

“My dear man,” said Mr. Cavendish in his elegant drawl, “trust me — trust me.”

“We’ve dam well got to trust you — all of us,” growled the man at the desk. “You know that, but I don’t like it all the same.”

“Well,” said Mr. Cavendish wearily, “I can’t go. You won’t trust a regular messenger. You say they’re watching all the rest of us. I know the girl, and she’s the safest route we can try. Oh, don’t be a fool, Red! Don’t you see — it’s my idea that—”

“Oh, I see all right,” said the other man with displeasure. “It’s a good enough idea — you always have ideas, I’ll hand that to you, Jim — but how about guarantees?”

“The best,” said Mr. Cavendish. He smiled and picked an imaginary thread from his coat sleeve. “You know about men, my dear man. Leave the women to me.”

Talks with Mr. Cavendish — little errands to do for Mr. Cavendish — once — incredible — dinner with Mr. Cavendish in a small French restaurant off Broadway. This episode Mr. Cavendish considered “venture-some.”

And then the Saturday afternoon in the last week of August. It was hotter than ever, and nearly everyone in the Metal Products Building went off at noon. The big main doors were shut; the only open entrance was the Merrivale Street one, where a sleepy attendant dozed over a register intended to keep track of those who went in and out after hours. Few of the elevators were running; the girls took turns at staying in on Saturday afternoons. This afternoon it was Sally’s turn to stay.

She was startled out of what had begun to be a waking doze by the sudden appearance of Billy Considine hurrying toward her, accompanied by two strangers in big, flat shoes.

“Take us up to your little friend Cavendish’s outfit, Sally,” he said with a magnificent air. “We’ve got the goods on him at last!”

“The goods?” said Sally, stupefied.

“The goods — all wool and a dozen yards crooked. Make it fast, kid — this is a pinch. All set down here, Mike?”

“All set,” said one of the strangers.

“All right — let’s go, Sally!”

The car shot upward. In the seconds of its flight to the eighth floor, Sally thought desperately fast. Billy and the stranger were talking together in absorbed, low voices. There must be some mistake. She must warn Cavendish.

“Here you are!” she said, half sobbing. The car stopped, and she slammed open the doors. Hilly and the stranger dashed out. Instantly she shut the doors behind them, and whirled her wheel. She had left them on the fourteenth floor — six floors above the Continental Perfume Company’s offices. Even if they slid down the banisters, she would be able to warn Mr. Cavendish before they reached him.

At the eighth floor she clanged the doors open again. A cry of terror dried in her throat. Mr. Cavendish stood before her, and his right hand gripped a stubby blue automatic whose little black eye looked directly at her solar plexus.

“Oh, Mr. Cavendish!” she began reproachfully, but Mr. Cavendish seemed far too hurried to chat.

“Down!” Mr. Cavendish mouthed at her. “Down! Make it fast!” His mouth looked tight and cruel.

“Not the ground floor, you little fool! The basement — the basement!” The elevator fell like a stone and stopped. Sally shot the doors back with incapable fingers. Emptiness — gray gloom.

“Thank Heaven!” said Mr. Cavendish, his revolver weaving in front of him. “Where’s the door?”

“There’s a way out around that pile of boxes,” said Sally weakly. “To the right; but — oh, Mr. Cavendish—”

“Keep your mouth shut, you poor little half-wit, or I’ll plug you,” said Mr. Cavendish impolitely.

A footfall — a heavy, solid, official footfall — sounded beyond the pile of boxes. Mr. Cavendish, rattled, was galvanized into furious activity. He leaped back into the elevator and slammed the doors. They shot upward.

A furious buzzing began in the elevator.

“That’s the alarm,” said Sally dully. “They’re going to shut off the juice.”

“Oh, Lord!” said Mr. Cavendish, sourly realizing his recent errors in judgment. “That breaks it. Well—” He seemed suddenly in the grip of a brilliant idea. He dropped the revolver — fumbled horribly in his mouth for an instant, mumbling disjointed phrases. “Try it — nothing else to do — girl worships me — might have enough luck to get—”

Suddenly, violently he was thrusting some object into Sally’s hand — a moist, rough object, full of sharp projections.

“Hi’ ’em!” he gurgled sharply at her. “Hi’ ’em. Goo’ girl! Doe nell. Never ’ell. Ее oo a-er.”

The elevator shot down again toward the ground floor.

“ ’Op!” said Mr. Cavendish imperatively, and Sally stopped.

Half fainting, Sally opened the doors. Mr. Cavendish stepped out with dignity — into the arms of Billy Considine.

“Put ’em up!” said Billy.

Mr. Cavendish’s arms rose slowly to the perpendicular. The stranger named Mike at once began an expert survey of Mr. Cavendish’s pockets.

“Uh ih uh caning uh is ex-or-ary er-or-ance?” began Mr. Cavendish. Billy laughed.

“Say, ‘Ritzy Jim,’ what’s the matter with your talk machine?” he queried. “Run out of gas?”

“Errr,” whirred Mr. Cavendish angrily and fell silent.

“No dope,” said Mike disgruntledly.

Cavendish smiled. The infinitesimal pause that followed was broken by a scream from Sally. She had just looked down at the object that Mr. Cavendish had recently forced into her hand.

“His teeth!” she screamed hysterically. “He gave me his teeth.”

She slumped toward the floor of the car. Mr. Cavendish saw his chance for freedom and took it — to be tackled by the second stranger before he had gone three steps. “Now will you be good?” said the stranger, sitting on his chest.

Sally, reviving in Billy’s arms, opened her eyes and shut them at once.

“His teeth!” she moaned. “His horrible teeth! They’re there! Oh, Billy, take them away!”

“All right, kid,” said Billy, soothing her. “All right, darling. Say, Mike, did you — oh, hot cat!” For Mike, holding Mr. Cavendish’s former teeth in one large hand, was slowly unscrewing a prominent molar from its plate. “Some filling!” he said and grinned.

A thin shell of enamel-like substance lay in his hand — a shell with a curious brilliant core that winked and glittered — a diamond.

“The sparklers,” said Mike. “Now I’d say this fella had the most expensive false teeth in the world, wouldn’t you, Bill?”

“Am!” said Mr. Cavendish violently from the floor.

Then they took him away.

Some weeks later, as Victorian romancers used to remark, a young man and a young woman might have been observed entering a large, official-looking building in downtown New York. The young woman wore a brand-new ring, and every time the young man looked at it he smiled.

“It’s a grand day, today, eh, Sally?” said Billy Considine.

“Billy, dear.”

“And next month there’ll be yet a grander,” proceeded Billy.

“Now, Billy, we may not be married for months and months. You mustn’t hurry—”

“I’m not hurrying you — I’m just telling you,” said Billy comfortably. “You’re not going Cavendishing again, if I can help it, my dear, and you were nearly an accessory, if it hadn’t—”

“Oh, Billy, it was sweet of you to tell them that I’d helped you.”

“You’ll make a grand Mrs. Sherlock yet, Sally, my dear!”

“Floor, please?” said a weary elevator attendant. Sally started.

“Going up!” she began automatically, but Billy interrupted.

“Wherever they keep the marriage licenses, buddy!” he said, with a grin. “And make it snappy!”