Эд Макбейн - Strangers When We Meet

“Sure. I am twenty-one, you know.”

Linda giggled and pressed herself to his arm.

They spent two nights in adjoining rooms at a motel on the outskirts of town. On the first night Hank leaped out of bed when he thought he heard Linda calling him. He stood by the door between their rooms for a long time, listening. Then he opened the door and looked into the room. Linda was sleeping peacefully. He closed the door and went back to bed.

On Friday, August twenty-third, at 2:30 P.M., they were married by a Protestant minister in the back of an antique shop. They thought they might spend the night in Baltimore but decided instead to come back to New York. They had dinner in the city and then sent off wires to their parents. When they checked into the Waldorf-Astoria, they were surprised no one asked them for a marriage certificate. At 9:30 P.M., in their room on the sixth floor, they consummated their marriage. They were very happy.

It looked as if the siege in the New York apartment was going to be a long one, and so the covers were taken off the furniture.

Larry was not looking forward to a long siege. The weekend had somehow come and gone, and it was Monday already and the honey-mooners had still not been located. On Thursday night he and Maggie were supposed to leave for their trip. Nervously, he watched time rushing by as Sam Gottleib, the Harder’s attorney, tried to find Linda and Hank.

Working on the assumption that the honeymooners were in hiding, Gottleib avoided calling the better hotels. He checked the motels in New Jersey and on Long Island, the second-rate hotels nestled in New York’s West Forties, and then the hotels in the out-lying suburbs of Westchester. It was not until Tuesday morning that he reluctantly began calling the first-class New York hotels. By this time Larry’s impatience had reached the breaking point. Trapped in the Harder apartment, he had not been able to reach a telephone. Maggie still did not know that his own plans for the weekend had materialized. She didn’t even know they were meeting, no less where or when.

The first hotel Gottleib called on Tuesday morning was the Waldorf.

In two minutes, after three days of fruitless search, he was connected with Hank MacLean. As calmly as he could over the screeches of Mrs. Harder in the background, he demanded that the couple return at once to the arms of their parents. Mrs. Harder insisted on speaking to Linda, but Gottleib wisely restrained her. He did not want her to frighten the girl into real hiding.

By twelve noon on Tuesday, both families were gathered to greet the fugitives. The gathering had all the outward appearances of a wedding party, with none of the inner warmth or happiness. Mrs. Harder served sandwiches. Her brother Fred, who had been divorced twice and knew about such things as these, opened a bottle of bourbon without being invited to do so and poured himself a before-lunch drink. Not wishing to seem rude, Mrs. Harder asked the rest of those present if they would care for a drink. Sam Gottleib and Joshua MacLean, Hank’s older brother who was a med student at Cornell, accepted. The other men declined. David kept asking Eve if someone had died.

At twelve-thirty the front doorbell sounded. Mrs. Harder began weeping. Mr. MacLean, Hank’s father said, “There, there.” Mr. Harder went to open the door. Linda, wearing an orchid pinned to her suit, smiled and went into her father’s arms. Mr. Harder took Hank’s hand and whispered, “Congratulations. Take care of her, do you hear?” and then they went into the living room.

The sight of her despoiled daughter sent Mrs. Harder into a fresh wave of hysteria. Mr. MacLean, a thin man of sixty, with white hair and pale blue eyes, kept saying over and over again, “There, there. There, there.” His wife Martha, was a red faced woman who seemed rather annoyed by all the fuss. She could see nothing whatever wrong with her son. Any girl’s mother, it seemed to her, should have been delighted to have him as a son-in-law.

Linda went directly to Eve.

Eve rose, and the sisters embraced, and Eve was surprised to find herself holding Linda so tightly. Again she warned herself not to become too involved, but still she held her sister close and wished her happiness and silently wished, too, that the marriage were not starting on the bitter note Mrs. Harder had introduced. There was so much yet that Linda had to learn, to experience, and it should have started happily, the way her own marriage to Larry had started. And thinking back to the start and the joy she had known, she felt a new rush of sadness, and over Linda’s shoulder she saw Larry and wondered again if she could have been so wrong about the man she loved.

“Where were you married?” Gottleib asked suddenly.

Linda turned. The lawyer was a heavy-set man in his middle fifties. A Phi Beta Kappa key hung on a gold chain across his vest. He wore a brown pin-stripe suit and a silk rep tie. He wore spectacles which had slipped halfway down his nose. He carried his head cocked to one side in a perpetual expression of mild skepticism.

“We were married in Maryland,” Hank said.

“Then you were married illegally,” Gottleib said triumphantly. “The Maryland state law requires that the girl—”

“We know the state law,” Hank said firmly.

“Then you must know that your wife committed perjury when she falsely represented—”

“We’re married now,” Hank said.

“I want it annulled,” Mrs. Harder said quietly.

Linda turned to her mother. “Why?” she asked.

“Because you’re both children. We’ll have no trouble annulling the marriage. You’re underage. Once we point this out to—”

“I’m not a child, Mama,” Linda said with calm dignity.

“Just because you spent a few nights in a hotel room—” Mrs. Harder started, and Mr. Harder sharply said, “Patricia! Stop it!”

“I want it annulled,” Mrs. Harder repeated.

“And we don’t,” Linda said.

“It doesn’t matter very much what you want, young lady,” Gottleib pointed out.

“Now, now,” Henry MacLean said, “I think the kids should decide for—”

“Mr. MacLean,” Mrs. Harder said, “Let’s not complicate the issue. My daughter is underage. That’s quite enough for me, and quite enough for Mr. Gottleib, and quite enough for the state of Maryland. There’s no reason to—”

“Patricia, you are talking like a fool,” Mr. Harder said.

“Alex—”

“Now just keep quiet for a minute, can’t you?” He frowned at his wife, and she looked up at him with her own frown. “The kids got married. All right, let’s not jump off the deep end screaming annulment, annulment.” He turned to Hank. “How do you expect to support her, Hank?”

“I’ve already got a part-time job, Mr. Harder,” Hank said. “And I’ll be graduating next semester.”

“I’ll work too,” Linda said. “Until Hank graduates.”

“For that matter,” Mr. MacLean said, “I’ll help Hank until he gets on his feet. I think Linda’s a fine girl, and I wouldn’t want—”

“She’s not even out of high school,” Mrs. Harder said. “Suppose she has a baby?”

“So she’ll have a baby,” Mr. Harder said. “Is there anything wrong with married people having babies?”

“I’ll be a grandmother who never even attended her own daughter’s wedding. How could you do this to me, Linda? Am I a bad mother? Have I ever—”

“Mama, Mama.”

“ Eve didn’t do this. Why did you have to do this?”

“Mama, I love him,” Linda said.

“Oh, don’t talk to me about love,” Mrs. Harder said.

“What’s wrong with their being in love?” Mrs. MacLean wanted to know.

“They’re children! What do they know about—”