A Kiss Before Loving by Mack Reynolds

Author:Mack Reynolds [Reynolds, Mack]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4405-6313-3
Publisher: F+W Media
Published: 2012-12-16T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

HE HAD TO FIND BIGELOW. First of all, he had to talk to somebody and Bigelow Warren was the only friend he could think of. Besides wanting advice on his present situation with Connie, Shell was worried about the burly cartoonist. The idea had been that the other was to return immediately to the George Fifth after the Four Flushers Club banquet.

He’d expected Bigelow to do some drinking at the affair, but the other had assured him that he’d return to the suite before taking off for any further rounds of the town. And you could usually trust Bigelow, even when drinking, to abide by a promise.

The trouble probably was that the big man had gotten mixed up again in time and location. He probably figured it was a week earlier than reality — or even a week later. After a certain point, Biggy could manage to lose track of what year it was.

Connie was gone. Off to the Champs Elysées shops to find a party dress, one suitable for announcing their engagement in. There was a double element in the distress he felt about her. He could hardly admit it to himself, but somehow the feeling for Connie wasn’t the same. The years had done something to the relationship. Attractive she was, more than ever, but … well, something seemed gone.

It was pushing toward noon. He and Connie had slept late after the heavy drinking and late hours of the night before.

He racked his brains. Where would Bigelow be this time of day? He had no idea if the cartoonist had been drinking steadily since the night before, or if he’d holed up somewhere, either with a friend, one of the new contacts he’d made at the Four Flushers Club last evening, or with some streetwalker. Shell well knew that after a few days of drinking, Bigelow Warren would often develop a taste for a woman — and by Shell’s standards, his taste wasn’t very good.

That was one of the things Shell had often wondered about in his cartoonist friend. Bigelow seemed to have little, if any, interest in the charms of the women he came in contact with in either his business or his social life. Oh, he was courteous enough, charming enough — everybody liked Biggy — but even those women who made the most obvious plays for the big man, never seemed to get anywhere.

Not that there seemed to be anything wrong in that department. He operated lustily enough with the professionals you could pick up around Pigalle at night or in the vicinity of the Madeleine in the afternoon.

But the question now was, where in the devil was the man?

It was a question which had presented itself before, all too often, and Shell went into his routine. He phoned those bars where he knew the help was acquainted with Warren — and drew a blank. That was bad. He was hoping the other was at Harry’s New York Bar, Fred Payne’s in Montmartre, or possibly the Flore or the Deux Magots in the St.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.