Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, December 1956 — page 52: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

to him-and hadn’t, moreover, been unreasonable about legal commit- ments and such things, and one thing you didn’t do, you didn’t break the heart of your child- hood sweetheart who’d practically prayed to you and made you feel like God, “The truth is,” he said, “I’ve al- ready got a permanent arrange- ment.” “You mean you're already mar- ried?” Moira said. “No,” he said, “not exactly. It’s only that I’ve got things set up ~ with this girl sort of permanently.” “Well,” she said briskly, “you can get it unset permanently, or you can stay away from me per- manently, and in the meanwhile you don’t need to come back until you've made up your mind about it one way or the other.” The trouble was, she meant it. Freddie sweat it out for a week or ten days, thinking she’d give in eventually, but it finally got across to him that this limber blonde Moira wasn’t a giving-in kind of woman, and he went to see the Duke. He respected the Duke and was willing to take his advice on most matters, but in this case the Duke couldn’t see that he had any problem. “Tt’s simple,” the Duke said. “You unload this dame, that’s all.” “The truth is,” Freddie said, “[’ve got a soft spot in my heart for her and don’t want to do it.” “In my opinion,” the Duke said, “a soft spot in the heart is the same as a soft spot in the head.” This struck Freddie as being pretty sharp, one of those little epi- grams you sometimes read and re- member, and he decided ‘that it was true. The only thing to do was to get it over with quickly, the same way you jerked a piece of tape off a hairy spot, and he went up to the apartment with all the blond furniture and the bar in it. Maddy was waiting for him, like she always was, even when he hadn’t been around for a week or more, and they had a couple of drinks and got to talking, and after a while he had a third drink and thought he was ready to tell her. “Look, baby,” he said, “there’s something you got to know.” “What is it?” she said. “Well,” he said, “it’s pretty damn important to both of us.” She looked at him with her eyes sort of clouded up and solemn, waiting for him to tell her what it was that was so important, and he got to remembering all the things that had happened, feeling her knee at the football games and taking her to the dance in the cheezy voil and having her the first time out tHere by the river, and he couldn’t come out with it, it was simply impossible, and pret- ty soon she said, “Are you in trou- ble again, honey? If you’re in trou- ble, I want to be in it with you,” and that tore it for sure. She was a genuine lady, that’s what she was, 50 ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE COMICLOOOLKS sO