The Chinless Wonder
by Stanley Abbott
The story that follows is the second in our mini-series of tales from AHMM that were adapted by Alfred Hitchcock for his television series. It was aired on March 1, 1965, on The Alfred Hitchcock Hour under the title “Wally the Beard,” having first been published in AHMM in the January, 1965, issue. — ED.
Walter Mills was twenty-five and fed up, “browned off” as he put it, with life and with himself. Since he was seventeen, he had worked in a solicitor’s office near Piccadilly, slowly working himself up from the high stool of a junior clerk to the desk of a bookkeeper.
For eight years he had carried out his routine work without complaint, but under the surface he burned with a sense of injustice. Rich clients left behind the tantalizing whiff of a rich cigar or an elegant perfume, and in his imagination they lived romantic and adventurous lives. He envied them, for he had never had a girl. He was convinced the secret was money. So for a couple of years he had been quietly embezzling small sums in such a way that it was impossible to detect.
One day he left the office at lunchtime to buy a suit. It was really the suit that started it all, a smart Glen Urquhart check. If the salesman hadn’t been so insistent, Walter Mills wouldn’t even have thought of trying it on; he had never worn anything but hard-wearing greys and blacks. But when he saw himself in the three-way mirror, he was amazed at the difference it made. He hesitated when the salesman produced a smooth, olive green hat with a smartly shaped brim to go with it — he never wore a hat. He turned to look at himself and caught sight of his face in the side mirror. He looked away quickly, but the sharp-eyed salesman had noticed.
“Why, that suit makes a new man of you, sir,” he exclaimed with calculated amazement. Walter Mills had taken the lot. Self-satisfied, he didn’t go back to the office.
But when he put the checked suit on in his garret room, high among the roofs overlooking the River Thames, and looked at himself in the cracked wardrobe mirror, his doubts returned. Timidity stared back at him with pale blue eyes. It was his chin, or rather the lack of it, that was the trouble; it just faded into his neck. He looked, as a callous army sergeant had once said, like “a chinless wonder that couldn’t pull the skin off a rice pudding.” The checked suit couldn’t conceal that, and he began to regret buying it. He couldn’t wear it to a job, and he didn’t go anywhere.
With only books for company, Walter spent each night in his room in the roof, lonely, bitter, and seething with dreams of the lovely women he saw in magazines or the pin-ups on his walls. He longed for something more than mere existence; but he had no friends. He knew his looks didn’t give him a chance.
At one time he had tried to grow a beard, but it had been a straggly failure. Thinking of it as he studied himself in his smart new suit and hat, he wondered if he couldn’t get a beard such as actors wore.
He remembered there was a famous theatrical costumiers on Wardour Street. He said he was an actor, and whether they believed him or not, a beard was produced to match his coloring. He was shown how it attached with a self-adhesive; it could be put on or taken off at any time quite easily. When it had been trimmed short and given a smart naval cut, the effect when he looked in the mirror was almost unbelievable; the weak, timid looking Walter Mills had disappeared.
As he walked down Piccadilly he imagined everybody was looking at him. But when he realized that no one was the slightest bit interested, he stared fascinated at his reflection in the shop windows. The set of his shoulders altered and he held his head higher. He decided to walk home along the Embankment beside the river. When he came to the Black Swan, a pub on the corner of Corson Street where he lived and which he’d never entered before, he went in without hesitation and ordered a drink.
It was pleasant sitting up at the bar with a bright fire in the grate. Through the window he could see the clock tower of Big Ben just lit up across the river. The barmaid came and leant her elbows on the counter in front of him. He’d heard people calling her Mabel. She was a country looking girl with a high color and fine brown eyes.
“Are you off a ship?” she asked softly.
“No, I live up the street here.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she smiled. “I hadn’t seen you here before; I took you for a naval man.”
He was delighted at this. “You’re not far wrong,” he lied. “I was in the merchant navy, but I’ve just moved here.”
“That’s the life for a man,” she said admiringly.
After he’d had another drink, Walter found himself shooting a line about the roaring forties and the head waters of the Amazon. It all came from books, for Walter Mills never had been any farther than the Tower of London on a pleasure boat.
A couple at the bar joined in, and for more than an hour he kept them entertained. The girl wasn’t a patch on his pin-ups, and he guessed she was older than he was, but she had a nice complexion and soft dark hair.
“You made a hit with Noreen,” Mabel said when they had left.
“Was that her husband?” he asked.
Mabel gave a short laugh. “Curly? No, but he’d like to be. Noreen’s one of the lucky ones. Doesn’t have to work; she’s got money, enough not to worry about it.”
As he walked up the street to his lodgings, he laughed to himself. How easily people were taken in. He was thinking of Noreen and wondering what her last name was when it occurred to him that it would be a good idea if he had a new name. Walter Mills was too ordinary. He would like to be Captain somebody, but perhaps that was too risky. What about Marshall? That had something — Phillip Marshall.
Walter was mounting the steps to the front door when he saw his landlady coming up the area steps from the basement. It was dark and in the street light Mrs. Jones was looking at him suspiciously. In his new get-up he was obviously a stranger to her.
“Wot d’you want?” she called.
“I’m a friend of Mr. Mills,” he replied in a tone lower than his usual one. “Is he in, do you know?”
“ ’E’s never out so ’e must be in. Wot’s your name?”
It was ready on the tip of his tongue. “Marshall,” he replied.
“Well, ’e’s under the roof if you want to go up,” and with a sniff she turned away.
Up in his garret he smiled to himself as he took off the beard and rubbed his face. If he could fool Mrs. Jones, he could fool anybody. She wasn’t easily deceived.
To be a gentleman of leisure, to get up when he liked and do what he liked, was a new sensation for Walter Mills. With five hundred embezzled pounds in his savings account, he had no intention of getting a job till he had to. And if he had anything to do with it, he decided, he’d never have to. He had often dreamed of marrying a rich woman and lying around all day. Other people managed it. Why shouldn’t he? And if he couldn’t cut out Curly, there were plenty of fish in the sea besides Noreen.
But he found to his surprise that Mabel was right. Noreen Harper had fallen for him. Though he had to admit she wasn’t much compared to his dream girls, he could hardly credit his luck that he even had a girl, never mind one with a nice income and a smart looking sports car.
He was soon taking her about to restaurants and fancy places in the West End that he wouldn’t have thought of going into before. Once when they were having a drink in the Black Swan, Curly came over and sat with them. Walter didn’t like the sharp way he dressed or the cold, hard-eyed look Curly gave him, and he was pleased when Noreen gave him the hint to push off.
Only one problem troubled him, his landlady. Whenever he went out dressed as Phillip Marshall, Walter had to creep down the stairs and slip out when he was certain Mrs. Jones was busy in the basement kitchen. Once he’d met her on the stairs and had hurried past, saying he had been up to see Mr. Mills. He knew if she got wind of what he was doing, it would be all over the neighborhood. They would hear of it at the Black Swan, and that would put paid to his romance with Noreen. He didn’t dare risk that. He decided to move at night, when no one was about.