Modern Screen (Jan-Dec 1960)

■ The hotel detective raced for the elevator lobby. "Woman just told me about three guys walking in here with tommy guns," he said. "Who were they?" The elevator boy — new on the job — shrugged. "Don't know," he said. "I just took them where they told me — twelfth floor." "Get me up there," the house dick said, "and quick!" The corridor of the twelfth floor was quiet — for a moment. Then the detective heard the voices, loud and lusty, from a room a few yards away. It sounded like trouble, all right. The detective rushed over to the door. "Open up in there," he shouted. "Come on . . . Open up!" Slowly, the door did open. A pair of mischievous eyes looked up into the detective's. "Hi," a voice said, softly. "Paul Anka!" the detective said, recognizing the culprit, who happened to be drenched with water from head to toe. "What's going on here?" Paul explained. "Sir," he said, pointing into the room, "my buddies and I, we're in town for a few days to cut some records . . . and because we had nothing to do. but nothing, we decided to have a li'l ole water fight ... so we went out a little while ago to buy some water guns, and — " He went on and on explaining, until the detective put up his hand and sighed. "All right, Paul, all right," he said, "fool around a little bit more, if you have to . . . But please, try not to get too much of that juice on the walls or anything." He turned and began to leave the room. He was just about out, in fact, when he felt a dash of something— strangely water-like — hit him in the neck. "Who did that?" he asked, turning back around. The three boys stared at him, the picture of angels. "What . . . who . . . how?" they asked, their guns planted firmly at their sides. The detective couldn't help laughing. And then he walked out — backwards, this time. Paul Anka's Tommy Gun friend said. "I told you I was only kidding. Lunch was on me." "Thank you," Beverly said. Then she bent and kissed her friend, quickly. "Excuse me if I was — " she started to say. "Never mind," her friend said. "I know how you must feel right now." Beverly turned, and began to walk away. And her girlfriend, watching her, thought: "God, protect this poor lost kid. . . ." All that's left of the man she loved The doctor was a busy man. He minced no words. "Miss Aadland," he said, after he'd completed his examination, "there is no way of telling immediately whether you're pregnant or not. We just don't know yet. It takes a laboratory report and that won't be back here in this office till tomorrow. Tomorrow morning at nine. Now why don't you go home and try to relax and give me a ring then? Tomorrow — nine o'clock. That's all I can say to you now. Good-bye, Miss Aadland. . . ." Beverly stood at the door of Errol Flynn's house. She hadn't been here since that night, three weeks earlier, when they'd left for Vancouver, together. She'd thought, when he died, that she would never come back to this house. Not alone. Not without him. But she did not feel alone now. Inside her, she knew, somewhere deep inside her, lay the little germ of the baby that was hers and Errol's. It didn't matter to her that the doctor she'd seen a few hours earlier had been evasive about the whole matter. Baby doctors, for all the humanity they tended, were men of science, she figured. They never said yes or no to anything, she knew, till they'd checked with their test tubes, their blood specimens, their rabbits and mice, their laboratory reports: till they'd scratched their graying heads and studied these reports and come to their 'conclusions.' Well, she thought now, let the men of science do their scratching, their checking. But she — she was a woman. And women knew these things, instinctively. As she knew now. That inside her, somewhere, lay that child of hers and Errol's. As she knew, too, that, though her lover and husband-to-be was dead and gone, she was no longer alone. . . . She opened the door and entered the house. She flicked a switch that turned on all the lights downstairs. She walked through the foyer, past the living room to the right, past the raised dining room to the left, to the sunroom in the rear of the house — the room that had been their room, complete with shining checkered linoleum and wellstocked bar and big fat TV and view of the pool, and with the old soft couch. PHOTOGRAPHERS' CREDITS The photographs appearing in this issue are credited below page by page: 9 — Globe; 10 — Globe; 11 — Nat Dallinger of Gilloon, Larry Schiller, Frances Orkin; 12-13 — Nat Dallinger of Gilloon, Globe; 14 — UPI: IS — Gene Trindl of Topix, Gary Wagner; 16— Wide World, UPI; 19 — Globe, Wide World; 20-21 — Bill Crespinel of Combine, UPI; 22-23 — Topix, Pictorial Parade; 26 — Bruno of Hollywood: 2829 — Don Ornitz of Globe; 30-33 — Larrv Schiller of Globe; 34-35 — Larry Schiller, Globe; 36-37 — Dick Miller of Globe; 38-39 Larry Schiller of Globe, Brown Bros.; 40-41 — Dick Miller of Globe, Wide World; 42 — Del Hayden of Topix; 44-45 — Globe; 47 — Jacques Lowe; 48 — Wide World.