Free The Girl Who Kept Knocking Them Dead by Hampton Stone

without things out there. She wanted him to have everything all the other boys had. She’d be sending him money from time to time and any time he needed any, he was to just write to her. She could send more.
    “Modeling,” Gibby said. “Didn’t that worry you? You were in the army. You were seeing pin-ups and calendars.”
    Bannerman crimsoned. For a moment he looked as though he were going to fly into a rage and wade into Gibby, but he quickly took a fresh hold on himself and then it was the sad smile again. This time it was definitely a pitying smile.
    “You never knew Ellie,” he said. “We’d been through all that when she first came to New York. I’d written and told her I didn’t like the idea of New York and I didn’t like the idea of her being with anyone who worked as a model. I knew Ellie wouldn’t do anything like that but after all what did Ellie know? The way I saw it this Grace Williams was probably doing just that, posing for those calendar pictures and Ellie not having the first idea of anything like that. I felt I had to explain it to her and I did.”
    Little sister had answered that letter and her answer had been reassuring. In the first place, it had demonstrated to him that time hadn’t been standing still while he had been away. Little sister knew all that there was to be known about modeling. There were the models he had in mind. She knew about them, but no nice girl would do that sort of work. Her friend Grace had marvelous hair and that was all anyone ever photographed of Grace, her hair. She posed for shampoo ads and home permanent ads and hair tint ads. It was always hair. Ellie had sent him a sheaf of magazine clippings and there hadn’t been one in the lot that would have brought even the faintest whistle from even the most lupine of his buddies. It had all been Grace’s crowning glory.
    “Of course,” he said, his face freezing a bit with disapproval, “it was all different colors in all the different ads, but I realized that would be part of the job. Still when Ellie wrote me that she was modeling herself I was mighty glad it was hands and not hair. I wouldn’t have liked it if Ellie had to dye her hair different colors all the time, especially some of those colors like strawberry or that very white blonde.”
    “Ellie was just hands?” Gibby asked.
    “Just hands. She sent me a flock of clippings of the ads. Gloves, nail polish, rings, cuticle remover, stuff like that. Sometimes it wasn’t anything that had to do with hands really except that they used hands, like a perfume ad where the picture was just Ellie’s hands holding up a crystal ball. The perfume was called Oriental Magic.”
    He wasn’t saying that he hadn’t worried. She was still alone in the big city. As time went on, however, and Ellie continued writing and everything seemed to be going splendidly, he had grown to believe that little sister could really take care of herself and he had worried less. Her move to Manhattan had been a good example. She had explained about Queens being quite far away from things and how she had a long walk to either the subway or the bus through quiet and lonely streets. She had been most particular to make him understand that quiet in New York was not like quiet at home in River Forks. New York was a city of strangers and some of these strangers were sinister. It was better to live in a part of town where there would always be lots of people around, especially for a young girl alone.
    The first New York apartment had come while he was still in Korea. Since then there had been a couple of further moves but always in Manhattan. Each time she had explained that the neighborhood had gone down a bit and, being a girl alone, she felt it was best that she should live in only the most respectable neighborhoods.
    “It sounded wonderful,” he said. “She was being so careful and all. I suppose I forgot that in a town like this you can be as careful as careful and still it mightn’t