Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, December 1956 — page 51: what you’re looking at

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

stand now and then with one or another of these classy women he knew, the singers and dancers and such, but he was careful not to let Maddy find out about it, her not being hurt by what she didn’t know, and she was the only one he kept up a regular relationship with. He was good to her, and bought her all kinds of fancy clothes and jewelry and stuff with the big mon- ey he was taking in on the cuts, and he even talked once or twice about their getting married some- _. day when he found the time, but he never found it. What it was, he had this soft spot. Everything went along like this for quite a long time, couple of years or so, and chances are it would have gone on for a lot long- er, maybe forever, if it hadn’t been for this long, limber blonde named © Moira. A strip dancer was what she was, but she didn’t take it off in any of these crummy dumps like most of the bump and grind babies work in, and she didn’t even bump and grind, so far as that goes. She had worked out these tricky little routines that she called art, and she moved around and - dropped her panties to high-brow music like Stravinsky or someone like that, and it caught on. She worked the ‘good clubs for a lot of dough and had been married three times without much luck. The point is, she got booked into one of the Duke’s clubs, and Freddie saw her and went for her, hard, A SOFT SPOT FOR MADDY _ and she went for him, too, and things got complicated. What complicated things was Maddy. All the other times Fred- die had gone for someone, it had been on a temporary basis, which was understood and agreeable on both sides, and Maddy hadn’t made | any difference one way or another. As it turned out, though, this Moi- ra had some very peculiar ideas,” which may have been put into her head by undressing to Stravinsky, and one of these peculiar ideas was that a girl ought to have a li- cense to shack up. At first Freddie - couldn’t see this as being essential to the arrangement, and he said so. “Well,” Moira said, “it may. not seem essential to you, but it does to me. You can take it or leave iE “You mean to tell me,” Freddie said, “that there’s nothing doing unless we get married?” “That’s right, honey,’ Moira said. “You' re number ag Of ee goose egg.” By this time, Freddie was in quite a condition over this limber blonde, to say the least, and he was ready to marry her or any- thing else that was necessary to getting things settled satisfactorily, but he kept thinking about Maddy, how she’d take it and all, and he knew she’d take it damn hard. The way he saw it, what with this soft spot he had, she was a kind of childhood sweetheart who'd al- ways loved him and been faithful >2 Gomichbooks7Gco