Even after he lost his initial embarrassment, Dewey confirmed my first opinion of him. He not only possessed no more worldly experience than his sister, he seemed to have read nothing in his life but comic books and pulp magazines. Mentally, he seemed to be still in his teens.
I decided that if Dewey were capable of earning his own living, as Helen had suggested in her letters, it would have to be by some manual endeavor. Probably he could make a go at farm labor, since he’d been raised on a farm, but I doubted that he’d even make a howling success at that. He had the physique for it, though, even if he did lack the brains. He exuded the rugged good health of outdoor living, his youthful face still showing sun wrinkle about the eyes even after six months off the farm.
When the check came, Helen started to fumble at her cheap cloth purse. I smiled at her.
“I invited you and your brother to lunch, Helen.”
She stopped fumbling and looked at me, her eyes wide behind their glasses. Then she smiled back.
I guessed it was probably the first time in her life a man had ever taken her to lunch.
As we all moved back toward the lobby, I said, “Now that we’re all acquainted, suppose all four of us go up to my room and discuss what we want to come of this meeting.”
For the first time since she had begun to relax, Helen blushed again. But she said in a steady enough voice, “All right, Sam.”
There were only two chairs in my room. I let Helen have the easy chair, Mavis the straight one and I told Dewey to sit on the bed. I remained standing myself.
I started out by saying, “Helen, we both know that at least half the reason for this meeting is that we’re both lonely people and we hoped we’d find in the other a suitable spouse. I don’t know what your opinion of me is, but you’re everything I expected to find and a little more.”
“Oh, I think you’re very nice,” she blurted, then blushed furiously.
I said, “Even though we liked each other right off, I’m sure neither of us wants to decide on the basis of such a short look. You planning on staying over here tonight?”
Helen said, “Well, I don’t know. We didn’t really make any plans. I mean—” She trailed off and looked at her brother, who merely gazed back at her vacantly.
“Why don’t you let me see if I can get you and Dewey rooms here at the hotel?” I suggested. “Then we can spend all afternoon and this evening getting acquainted. Meanwhile, we’ll just table marriage talk until morning.”
“All right,” Helen said. She seemed both relieved at the postponement and slightly disappointed at the same time.
Picking up the phone, I got the desk and discovered that there was a pair of connecting rooms available right across the hall from Mavis’s and mine. I told the clerk to hold them for a Mr. Dewey Larson and a Miss Helen Larson, who’d be down to register for them later.
When I hung up, I said, “While we’re getting acquainted, there isn’t any reason I can’t explain the business partnership end of this thing, in case we decide to get together. I’ve been checking a number of small businesses recently. In fact one was in Independence, only a few miles from here, which is what brought me and my sister up this way. It petered out, though. The best prospect seems to be a farm appliance store up in West-field, New York.”
Helen said, “Farm appliances. Oh, I’d like that. I know something about them.”
Opening my suitcase, I got out the correspondence concerning the business and showed it to Helen. She read it all carefully, paying particular attention to the financial statement Herman Gwynn had sent. When she got to the copy of my letter to the Westfield Chamber of Commerce and its reply, she looked up at me with an expression of startled respect.
“I would never have thought of writing to the Chamber of Commerce,” she said. “You really know a lot about business things, don’t you?”
Mavis said primly, “Sam will make an excellent businessman. He should have been in business for himself long ago, but he’s never had the stake to get started.”
“Here’s the way I figure it if we do manage to take over the business,” I said. “If we both work in the store, we can let the bookkeeper-clerk go and boost our net income to seventy-five hundred a year.”
In detail I went over the same figures I had explained to Mavis. When I finished, I could see that Helen was already sold.
“How about Dewey?” she asked. “Could he take the place of the clerk they have now?”
I glanced at Dewey, who sat with his large-knuckled hands dangling between his knees, looking like a handsome version of Mortimer Snerd. If I’d actually planned to invest in a business, I wouldn’t have hired him to sweep the place out. But since I had no intention of finally closing the deal, a promise was easy.
“Sure,” I said. “According to the financial report, the male clerk gets two thousand and eighty dollars a year, which comes to forty dollars a week. Dewey might as well get it, and we’d still have the same net profit. He’d just be on salary, though. It isn’t a large enough business for more than two partners.”
“Oh, Dewey wouldn’t expect an interest in the business,” Helen assured me. “The folks left the farm just to me anyway, so the money from its sale is all in my name.” She glanced at Mavis timidly, “How about your sister?”
“I’ll get some kind of stenography job,” Mavis said. “Don’t worry about me being a burden on you. I’ve always paid my share of the expenses with Sam.”
Helen blushed. “I didn’t mean that,” she said flusteredly. “I mean, it hardly seems fair putting my brother in the store and leaving you out.”
“I wouldn’t clerk in a store where you have to stand on your feet all day for half-interest in the business. I’ll get a job, all right.”
CHAPTER XIV
HELEN seemed relieved that this problem was settled. She turned back to me. “If we decide to—to come to an agreement, Sam, how will we work it about the money? I mean the five thousand we each put up?”
“I’ve actually got about eight thousand,” I said. “A little less since I bought a car. And I understand from your letters that you’ve got about the same amount. What I planned in case we do decide to get married was to move up to Westfield and rent a house for the four of us. I’d want to take about six weeks to study the business and get acquainted with the community, so we’d be sure we liked living there, before I closed the deal. But we can’t just string this Gwynn man along for six weeks without showing some evidence that we’re at least capable of buying him out if we decide we want to. We’d each deposit five thousand in a joint savings account at the local bank. With that as evidence of our financial position, I can arrange with the bank for the fifteen-thousand balance we’ll need as a mortgage loan, without actually signing anything until we definitely decide. But once even oral arrangements are made, I can ask the bank to inform Gwynn that we’re in a financial position to close the deal.”
“What’s a joint account?” Helen asked. “I don’t know much about business.”
“One in both our names. The pass book would be made out to ‘Samuel Howard or Mrs. Helen Howard.’”
Her cheeks reddened a little at the “Mrs. Helen Howard.”
“Then it would take both our signatures to draw it out?” she asked.
“No. Either one of us could. We could have an account requiring both signatures by making it read ‘Samuel Howard and Mrs. Helen Howard’ instead of or, but it wouldn’t be very smart. If I happened to die suddenly, the whole account would be frozen until the estate was settled. This way it’d be frozen for a time anyway, but only until you could get a court order authorizing you to draw on it.”
I didn’t point out that if she happened to die suddenly, the same situation would obtain.
She said, “If we do get—if we decide to get married, what would you want me to do? About my money, I mean. If we’re going clear off to New York State, I couldn’t leave my money in the bank here. But I wouldn’t want to carry that much around in cash.�
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“Naturally not. What bank’s your money in?”
“One in St. Joseph.”
“Well, when you draw it out—” I paused to grin at her. “Or, rather, if you draw it out, ask for the whole thing in a single bank draft. I have a bank draft for seven thousand, plus enough in traveler’s checks to get us married and up to Westfield. When we get there we’ll each put five thousand in a joint savings account and the balance in a joint checking account.”
“That sounds all right,” she said in a relieved tone. “I’m ashamed of myself for knowing so little about business and financial things. I’m afraid I’ll have to depend on you to tell me what to do all along the way.”
That suited me fine.
We dropped the subject of business then, and spent the rest of the afternoon and that evening getting acquainted. On my suggestion that Helen and I could get to know each other better if we spent some time alone, we left Mavis in Dewey’s company and went off together.
It was a brisk but sunny day, and for most of the afternoon we just drove around and talked. As time passed I found the woman a more and more pleasant companion. Once her initial shyness had completely worn off, I discovered she could converse quite freely within her limited experience, and that she had a quiet but warm sense of humor.
She even became a little more attractive physically, though she hardly started my pulse fluttering. Seated in the car, the impossible dress she wore for some reason hung a little differently than when she was seated in a chair or standing. While it could hardly be described as clinging to her body even then, I could see that beneath her open coat it gave a faint impression of soft curves concealed under its looseness. If Mavis could manage to get her a dress designed to flatter whatever figure she had, she might look quite presentable.
Her hair was unusually soft and glossy, I noted also. A different hairdo might improve her a hundred percent. And once when she slipped off her glasses to clean the lenses, I was surprised to discover that her features in profile were really excellent. Her teeth were nice, too, small and even and white.
I started making mental notes of the changes I wanted Mavis gently to induce in order to make the woman look less like a fugitive from the back woods.
Mavis and Dewey weren’t expecting us back before ten o’clock. Helen and I had dinner at a downtown restaurant and afterward went to a picture show. When we finally got back to the hotel at ten, I knew it was in the bag. Helen’s eyes were shining and she was chattering as freely as a debutante at her coming-out party.
She seemed a little amazed at herself at being able to get along with a man so unreservedly, but it didn’t amaze me. Getting women to relax and learn to like me was my business.
I cinched it by leaning down and gently kissing her on the lips when I left her in front of her door. She blushed to the roots of her hair and stood there staring at me as though she didn’t know what to do or say.
I took her key from her unresisting hand, unlocked the door, and handed the key back to her.
“Good night, Helen,” I said, smiling at her. “See you in the morning.”
She was still standing in the hall staring after me, a radiant expression on her face, when I keyed open my own door. Then she turned quickly and entered her room.
Mavis was still up and waiting for me to come in. She had left both doors of the connecting bath open, and the moment I entered my room, she appeared in the bathroom doorway. She merely looked at me inquiringly.
Locking the door to the hall, I said, “We’re in. Right after breakfast tomorrow I’ll drag her downtown for the license and blood tests. There’s a three-day waiting period here, so we won’t be able to get married until Sunday. Meantime I’ll have her go back to St. Joseph, pack up her stuff, close out her bank account and come back here to wait it out.”
“I suppose as usual I’ll have to prod her into different clothes and a beauty treatment,” Mavis said without enthusiasm.
“You don’t think I’d take her to Westfield as she is, do you? The whole town would figure it was a shotgun marriage. Tomorrow morning I’ll manage to break her glasses accidentally. Naturally I’11 insist on paying for new ones. You go along for the fitting and pick out better-looking frames. By Saturday they ought to be ready if you insist on quick service. The same day you pick them up, you can help her shop for a wedding outfit. I don’t have to tell you what to buy. You’ve had enough experience.”
“Yes,” Mavis said. “I love making your women presentable so they won’t be a public embarrassment to you.”
She pushed the door shut with the barest suggestion of a slam and went back to her room.
But ten minutes later, after I was in bed, she returned dressed in the plain woolen wrap-around robe she had substituted for her usual filmy negligees when she assumed the role of my sister. By the way it hugged her body, I could tell she had nothing on under it. She stood in the bathroom doorway, her figure silhouetted by the light behind her, and simply waited.
“No,” I said. “Not with them right across the hall.”
“Both our doors are locked,” Mavis said tonelessly.
“Sure. But on the off-chance that Helen decides on a midnight tête-à-tête, it would sound fine for her to hear you scrambling back to your own room when she knocked on the door, wouldn’t it? Starting right now, you’re my sister twenty-four hours a day, every day, until the deal’s finished.”
This time there was more than a mere suggestion of a slam when she closed the door.
Everything went off as I had scheduled it the next morning. At breakfast I told Helen frankly I thought we’d make a good marriage partnership. Helen blushed, looked at her brother for approval, and when he indicated interest in nothing but his eggs, admitted in a low voice that she thought so, too.
Mavis offered me congratulations and wished Helen happiness, both in a dry voice which irritated me, but whose tone seemed to be missed by Helen in her mixture of confusion and happiness. Dewey then came back to earth long enough to realize what was going on, seemed to think something was expected of him, and after thinking it over, tentatively offered me his hand.
I shook it heartily and said, “Thanks, Dewey. You can be best man, if you will. And Mavis maid of honor, if Helen wants her.”
“Oh, I do,” Helen cried.
Tenderly I looked into Helen’s eyes, then gave a little chuckle. “Honey, your glasses are so dirty, I don’t know how you see through them. Let me give them a wipe.”
Reaching out with both hands, I lifted them from her face. Then, negligently holding them by one earpiece with my left hand, I whipped a handkerchief from my breast pocket with my right so enthusiastically, the end of the handkerchief swept the glasses from my loose grip and hurled them a dozen feet away. They landed on the asphalt-tile floor and shattered.
“I’m so sorry,” I said contritely, pushing back from the table and going to recover the pieces.
Both lenses were broken and the frame was bent in two places.
When I returned to the table and handed the wreckage to Helen, I said in an embarrassed voice, “Looks like my first gift to you is going to be new glasses. We’ll go downtown and get them this afternoon.”
Mavis came through on cue. “I’ll take her to an optician,” she offered. “I can help her pick out the frames.”
Helen insisted that the accident wasn’t my fault and that she’d buy the new glasses herself.
“That’d be silly,” I said. “What difference does it make who pays? Everything we have is going to be joint assets in a few days.”
She admitted the logic of that. Then she said, “I’ll have to be led around until the new glasses are ready. I run into things without them. And we can’t possibly get married until then.”
“Why not?” I asked.
She smiled at me shyly. “I’m so blind without glasses, I’m afraid I might marry the wrong man.”
She may have been as nearsighted as she claimed, but it hadn’t affected the appearance o
f her eyes. Without the glasses on I was startled to discover they had the depth and color of sapphires.
Spontaneously I said, “Why you have beautiful eyes, Helen.”
Helen turned bright red. Her gaze darted in all directions in an attempt to cover her embarrassment at the unexpected compliment, which in all likelihood was the first bit of flattery she had ever heard from a man.
Mavis’s lips thinned into a disapproving line. I gave her a sharp glance and she smoothed the expression away. With an effort to sound friendly, she said, “You do have pretty eyes, Helen. It’s a shame you have to wear glasses.”
The rest of the day Helen was kept fairly busy. After breakfast I took her downtown, applied for a license and we had our blood tests. That took most of the morning. In the afternoon Mavis took her to an optician, where a long wait, the eye examination and the selection of frames used up most of the rest of the day.
Helen readily agreed to my suggestion that she return to St. Joseph only long enough to pack and close out her bank account. I decided to drive her up on Friday morning instead of sending her by bus, as it was only fifty-two miles. Dewey decided he’d go back too in order to pack his own stuff instead of making Helen do it, and as Mavis didn’t care to be left all alone, in the end all four of us went.
I wasn’t enthusiastic about being seen by anyone Helen and Dewey knew, but the risk wasn’t too great. She and Dewey had no really close friends, and apparently not even many acquaintances aside from their landlady. Mavis and I avoided meeting the landlady by the simple expedient of waiting in the car while Helen and Dewey collected their things and said good-by to the woman.
They didn’t seem to have many worldly possessions. Dewey lugged out only two large suitcases and one small one to load in the trunk.
Dewey, Mavis and I all waited in the car when Helen went into the bank to close out her account. When she came out, she proudly showed me the bank draft.
She had had it made out to Mrs. Helen Howard.
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