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.”