“How are you going to cash it if I leave you waiting at the altar?” I asked her teasingly.
Her face fell, and for a moment I thought she didn’t know I was joking. Then she said timidly, “I really haven’t the right to use the name yet, have I?” and I realized she was only concerned because I might think her too forward.
I said with a smile, “It’ll be your legal name by the time you get around to cashing it in Westfield. I’m not going to leave you at the altar.”
It amused me that she actually looked relieved.
CHAPTER XV
ON THE way back to Kansas City I casually delved into what Helen had told people in St. Joseph about her plans.
I learned she had told her landlady she was getting married and moving to New York State, but hadn’t told her to whom, or where in New York State. She hadn’t mentioned anything at all to anyone else.
That afternoon, while I lined up a justice of the peace who was willing to marry us on Sunday, Mavis took Helen shopping for her trousseau. Whatever they bought, they didn’t bring it back to the hotel with them, for Helen returned wearing the same shapeless dress she’d had on when we met and had worn ever since. She seemed quite excited, however, though she refused any information aside from a mysterious reference to some alterations being made.
Saturday was the big day for Helen. She went off with Mavis right after breakfast, announcing that she wouldn’t be back until five P.M. When I inquired what was going to take all day, Mavis explained that they had to pick up the new glasses, had several clothes fittings scheduled, and that Helen had a three-o’clock hairdressing appointment.
Helen was wide-eyed with excitement.
“I’ve never before been in a beauty shop,” she confessed naïvely just before she and Mavis left.
My slightly ill-fitting suit having served its purpose of not making me look too smooth to be believable, I got out the plain dark business suit I’d also brought along and sent it out to be pressed. It too was ready-made, but of good quality and fit. A slight increase in sleekness can be expected of a man on his wedding day.
Then I got a haircut, taking Dewey along with me in the hope that he’d do the same. He didn’t take the hint, however, but sat and read comic books while he waited. When I stepped out of the chair, I decided to employ a frontal attack.
“Aren’t you going to get your hair cut for the wedding?” I asked him.
“Huh?” he said.
Getting up, he looked in a mirror, seemed surprised at the length of his hair and climbed into the barber chair I had vacated without further comment.
I told the barber to cut it close.
The result was remarkable. With a decent haircut the boy would have been almost handsome except for the stupid look on his face.
Dewey had worn the same shiny blue serge suit he had on when we met ever since I had known him. It was much too tight and sadly in need of pressing. I asked him if he wanted to get it pressed before the wedding.
“I got another one up in my room that’s already pressed,” he said.
Nothing could turn him into a sleek and sophisticated best man, nor hide his farm upbringing, I realized. But seemingly he was at least going to make the attempt to be presentable.
My preparations for the wedding didn’t take nearly as long as Helen’s. I was all through by eleven o’clock in the morning. I spent a dreary day in Dewey’s company.
I didn’t know what Helen’s habits were, but Mavis was always prompt. When she said they’d be back at five, I knew she meant right on the dot.
I decided to wait for them in the lobby.
Dewey had gone up to his room, finally, and left me to enjoy the lack of his company. At five I was waiting alone by the cigar counter, a spot which gave me a good view of both the front and side doors into the lobby. I’d been there about five minutes, glancing up each time either door opened, but it was always someone else coming in.
Exactly at five the revolving door at the side of the lobby spun, and I glanced that way expecting to see Helen and Mavis. But it was a woman alone, a slim and sleek blonde with an upsweep hairdo and harlequin glasses, dressed in a clinging white knit suit and a yellow three-quarter length coat which hung open to show the smooth lines of her body. Idly I admired her figure as she crossed the lobby, then my admiration turned to faint puzzlement.
Part of my puzzlement was due to the way she was teetering on her high heels, as though she found balance difficult and was in danger of turning an ankle at any moment. The rest was due to the fact that she was bearing direcdy at me.
When she got within five feet, my puzzlement turned to utter astonishment. The woman was Helen Larson, and she was very nearly a raving beauty.
Stopping directly in front of me, she smiled tentatively. I made no attempt to close my mouth as I slowly looked her over from head to foot.
Mavis’s taste in clothes had always been excellent, but this time she had outdone herself. I had expected her to find Helen something which would compliment her figure. But the knit dress did more than just flatter it. Helen’s figure didn’t need flattery. The dress clung to her body, revealing everything the shapeless sack she had worn previously concealed.
The concealment had been a crime.
High-heeled shoes rounded out calves as perfect as a Varga girl’s, and they were encased in sheer nylon instead of the drab cotton she had worn that morning. But the most startling change was from the neck up.
Expertly-applied makeup had brought out the delicate lines of her face, and a splash of red lipstick made a flame of her full-lipped mouth. Her upswept hair and the harlequin glasses added the final touch.
I breathed, “Why, you’re beautiful!”
She clasped her hands and laughed as delightedly as a child.
I hadn’t seen the revolving door rotate a second time. My eyes had been too busy with Helen. But now at my side Mavis said in a grim voice, “I told her you’d say that when you saw her.”
I glanced at Mavis. She wasn’t looking at me. She was staring at Helen, and the expression on her face wasn’t pleasant.
The four of us had dinner in the hotel restaurant, as usual. Dewey looked astonished for about thirty seconds when he saw the transformation his sister had undergone, but then he seemed to adjust to it and accept it as a matter of course.
I wondered if an atomic attack would wipe the doltish expression off his face for any length of time.
Helen herself was a delightful mixture of glamour girl and child. She was by far the smartest-looking woman in the dining room, but her mannerisms were still those of an unsure youngster on her first date. For one thing, she had difficulty walking on her high heels. For another, she couldn’t quite believe her own transformation, and kept gazing surreptitiously at a mirror on the wall which reflected our table.
Evenings, the Croissant dining room had a three-piece orchestra consisting of a piano, drums and a horn man who alternated between a saxophone, clarinet and trumpet. The tables were arranged so as to leave a small space for dancing, and I asked Helen if she would like to dance.
She looked at me and said in a stricken voice, as though she thought I would immediately call off our wedding plans, “I don’t know how.”
It struck me as so funny that the most beautiful woman in the room had so successfully concealed her beauty for thirty-two years that she’d never even been on a dance floor, I laughed aloud. Helen looked so woebegone I had to apologize.
“I’ll teach you after we’re settled in Westfield,” I assured her.
Though Helen was two years older than Mavis, she gave the impression of being much younger. Not just younger than the prim, spinsterish woman Mavis was now, but even younger than Mavis was when dressed in feminine clothes and practicing all the tricks she knew. This wasn’t a matter of physical appearance so much as a difference in manner. Mavis, as her real self, left no doubt in any man’s mind that she was a mature, experienced woman of the world. Helen possessed the intriguing freshness
of a teen-ager.
It occurred to me that it had been the similar quality of youthful innocence which had first attracted me to Mavis years back.
We didn’t do anything after dinner because of the full day ahead of us on Sunday. When we parted in the upper hall to go to our separate rooms, Helen whispered to me in a tone of confidence, “You know, Sam, I have a wonderful feeling that with you I’m finally going to begin to live.”
I thought wryly that it would have been more accurate if she had said she was finally going to begin to die.
The thought stuck with me long after I got to bed, and for some reason it made me restless. It couldn’t have been conscience, for I killed whatever conscience I had years ago. It just seemed a shame to have to destroy so much beauty after bringing it to life.
None of the others had been able to attain more than passable looks, even under Mavis’s expert tutelage. And some had verged on the edge of ugliness.
We were married at four o’clock Sunday afternoon, with Dewey and Mavis standing up for us. In her white knit suit Helen made a lovely bride. The J.P’s wife cried a little.
Afterward, we had a mild celebration in the hotel cocktail lounge, then dinner as usual. It was only eight o’clock when we left the restaurant.
In the lobby Mavis announced somewhat coolly that she was going to bed early and went upstairs. After a moment Dewey seemed to get the idea too, and went off also, leaving Helen and me alone.
Helen gazed at me in sudden panic.
Giving her a reassuring smile, I went over to the desk and had a few moments’ conversation with the clerk.
When I rejoined her, Helen asked fearfully, “What were you doing?”
“Canceling your room,” I said easily. “I registered you in mine.”
When she gazed at me wide-eyed, I said, “I explained to the clerk that we’d just been married. Don’t look so alarmed. It’s all quite legal.”
She gave me a tentative smile. “I’m not scared,” she said bravely.
With Mavis as a standard, the most repugnant part of my past lonely-heart marriages had always been the wedding night, for the women were invariably either fat or bony, and dreadfully inhibited on top of it.
Helen was as beautifully proportioned as a Greek statue, and while she was rather becomingly frightened at first, her inhibitions melted with astonishing speed. Once she was able to relax, I discovered a fiery passion in her which amazed me.
For the first time in the five years we had been married, I found myself comparing one of my temporary wives to Mavis and relegating Mavis to second place.
Another thing that surprised me, though it hardly disturbed me, was that Helen wasn’t a virgin. Few of my wives ever had been, which had often led me to the reflection that even the plainest woman is unlikely to escape at least some sex experience if she lives long enough. But it did surprise me in Helen’s case because of the isolated farm life she had lived. I wondered what drifting farm hand or itinerant drummer had been the lucky man, and what momentary dreams he had brought into her drab life at the time. Dreams which inevitably must have faded to the wry realization that she had served only as a temporary relief from boredom when the man moved on and she never heard from him again.
CHAPTER XVI
EARLY MONDAY morning we checked out of the hotel and started the long drive to Westfield, New York. I figured the total distance at nine hundred and twenty miles, and planned to make it in two days, stopping over approximately halfway at Indianapolis. Mavis and I had to alternate on all the driving, as both Dewey and Helen said they couldn’t drive.
Tuesday morning I sent a wire from Indianapolis to Herman Gwynn telling him that we’d arrive some time that evening. We reached Westfield about seven P.M. and had dinner in a restaurant on Main Street. I asked our waiter to recommend a hotel and he told us to try the Greystone a block up the street.
I suspected this was the only hotel in town, but nevertheless it proved an excellent suggestion. It wasn’t very modern, but it possessed a wonderfully homey smalltown atmosphere, and the rooms were immaculate.
After we were settled, I phoned Herman Gwynn at his home, told him we’d arrived safely, and made an appointment to see him at the store at nine in the morning.
I took Helen along with me the next morning. In the past I had always kept my temporary wives in the background as much as possible in order to discourage possible speculation as to why a man of my pleasing if not handsome appearance and my apparent sound common sense had ever taken such a colorless spouse. But I didn’t have to hide Helen. I found myself actually wanting to show her off.
Mavis had picked three dresses for her, plus accessories, including three pairs of shoes. Today she wore a plain blue wool dress a trifle more conservative than the white knit one, but still one that didn’t hide her figure. Neat suede pumps with lower heels than the shoes of her wedding outfit created a smart effect without making her wobble as though she were on stilts. A blue cloth coat and a cute little felt hat completed the outfit.
Mavis knew how to shop for clothes, and Helen’s transformed appearance bore little resemblance to the cost of the clothing. Mavis had picked items more for style than lasting quality, on the assumption that they wouldn’t be in use for more than a few weeks. The total outlay for Helen’s entire trousseau had only been about a hundred and fifty dollars.
But on Helen they looked like Saks’ Fifth Avenue.
Herman Gwynn proved to be a plump, friendly man nearing seventy. He was obviously impressed by both Helen and me, in that order.
“Glad to meet both of you, Mr. and Mrs. Howard,” he said, pumping my hand and grinning with open admiration at Helen. “Your husband warned me he might bring along a new bride, and now I’ve met you, I can see why he wasn’t sure. Must have had to pry you away from a dozen other suitors.”
Helen blushed prettily at the compliment, but she didn’t look as totally at a loss as she would have a few days before. Already she was beginning to get used to being beautiful.
“I had to get her drunk and marry her before she sobered up,” I told the old man.
Gwynn chuckled. “I hope you’ll both be as happy as my wife and I have been for near on to fifty years of married life. If we arrange a deal, maybe you’ll be happy in the same place.”
He took us around the store then. It wasn’t a large place, having about a thirty-foot front and a fifty-foot depth. It was arranged much like the average hardware store, except that a good many of the items offered for sale were heavier equipment than would ordinarily be found in a hardware store. In the case of large items such as cream separators, there was only one of each in stock. Gwynn explained that he kept them as display models only, and ordered each time a sale was made.
The sales clerk was a brisk young man in his early twenties named Harold Manning. Gwynn explained that he was relatively new and was looking around for some job with more future, so that his possible layoff wouldn’t be much of a handicap to him. The female bookkeeper presented more of a problem, however, he said. She was a middle-aged spinster named Ida Kroll, and had been an employee of the store for fifteen years.
When I told him I planned to replace her with Helen in the event we took over the store, he said, “Well, she ought to be able to get another job easy enough. I’d give her a top reference. Don’t let her influence your figuring.”
After we finished our initial inspection of the place, I asked, “How big a hurry are you in to dispose of this business, Mr. Gwynn?”
He rubbed his plump chin. “Well, I dunno. Sooner I get rid of it, the sooner I can move my wife to a warmer climate. She’s got neuritis so bad, she’s had to spend most of the winter on her back the last couple of years. Just what you mean?”
“We’re both pretty enthusiastic about the setup,” I explained. “Even more so, now that we’ve seen the place and got a glimpse of the town. But we’re utter strangers in these parts, and we want a chance to see how we like the town itself before we jump into a business
which is going to tie us here permanently. What I had in mind was to rent a house here and take our time looking over the business and the town before we made the final move.”
“How long a time?” he asked dubiously.
“Say six weeks. Meantime I’d make all arrangements with the bank, so that as soon as papers are signed you could get your full purchase price. Matter of fact, I was going to ask you to step over to the bank with me now and settle that part.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t object to your taking that long,” Gwynn said, brightening. “With the Christmas holidays coming up, we wouldn’t move that soon anyway. Sure, I’ll be glad to introduce you at the bank.”
At the Westfield branch of the Chautauqua National Bank and Trust Company of Jamestown, things went as smoothly as I expected. When we went in to talk to the manager, I let my exhibits do most of my talking for me.
The branch manager was a quiet-spoken man of middle age named Bradford Crane. First I handed him my bank draft for seven thousand dollars and Helen’s for eight thousand, explaining that we wanted to open a joint savings account for ten thousand and a joint checking account for the balance. Then I showed him my copy of my letter to the Westfield Chamber of Commerce and the Chamber’s reply. And finally I placed on his desk the neatly forged character and credit references vouching for my honesty and my varied experience in retail merchandising.
I wasn’t worried about any of the references being checked. When a man starts talking business by opening accounts totaling fifteen thousand dollars, even a conservative banker isn’t likely to be suspicious of him. Particularly when the loan he asks for is on a local business with which he can’t possibly abscond, and the bank would be fully protected by the mortgage even if the borrower defaulted.
Bradford Crane didn’t even hesitate. When he had finished studying my array of documents, he said, “I don’t think you’ll have to worry about backing if you decide to take over the store, Mr. Howard. This bank will be glad to do business with you.”
That completed the first phase of my plan by establishing in Herman Gwynn’s mind that I not only meant business, but was financially capable of swinging the deal. And it hadn’t cost me a thing.
Kiss and Kill Page 11
