Free The Door Into Summer by Robert A. Heinlein

as you alleged, you might have a point. But they were not. You transferred that stock to Belle for value received.”
    “Huh? What value? Where’s the canceled check?”
    “There didn’t need be any. For services to the company beyond her duties.”
    I stared. “What a lovely theory! Look, Miles old boy, if it was for service to the company and not to me personally, then you must have known about it and would have been anxious to pay her the same amount—after all, we split the profits fifty-fifty even if I had…or thought I had…retained control. Don’t tell me you gave Belle a block of stock of the same size?”
    Then I saw them glance at each other and I got a wild hunch. “Maybe you did! I’ll bet my little dumpling made you do it, or she wouldn’t play. Is that right? If so, you can bet your life she registered the transfer at once…and the dates will show that I transferred stock to her at the very time we got engaged—shucks, the engagement was in the Desert Herald —while you transferred stock to her when you put the skids under me and she jilted me—and it’s all a matter of record! Maybe a judge will believe me, Miles? What do you think?”
    I had cracked them, I had cracked them! I could tell from the way their faces went blank that I had stumbled on the one circumstance they could never explain and one I was never meant to know. So I crowded them…and had another wild guess. Wild? No, logical. “How much stock, Belle? As much as you got out of me, just for being ‘engaged’? You did more for him; you should have gotten more.” I stopped suddenly. “Say… I thought it was odd that Belle came all the way over here just to talk to me, seeing how she hates that trip. Maybe you didn’t come all that way; maybe you were here all along. Are you two shacked up? Or should I say ‘engaged’? Or…are you already married?” I thought about it. “I’ll bet you are. Miles, you aren’t as starry-eyed as I am; I’ll bet my other shirt that you would never, never transfer stock to Belle simply on promise of marriage. But you might for a wedding present—provided you got back voting control of it. Don’t bother to answer; tomorrow I’m going to start digging for the facts. They’ll be on record too.”
    Miles glanced at Belle and said, “Don’t waste your time. Meet Mrs. Gentry.”
    “So? Congratulations, both of you. You deserve each other. Now about my stock. Since Mrs. Gentry obviously can’t marry me, then—”
    “Don’t be silly, Dan. I’ve already offset your ridiculous theory. I did make a stock transfer to Belle just as you did. For the same reason, services to the firm. As you say, these things are matters of record. Belle and I were married just a week ago…but you will find the stock registered to her quite some time ago if you care to look it up. You can’t connect them. No, she received stock from both of us, because of her great value to the firm. Then after you jilted her and after you left the employ of the firm, we were married.”
    It set me back. Miles was too smart to tell a lie I could check on so easily. But there was something about it that was not true, something more than I had as yet found out.
    “When and where were you married?”
    “Santa Barbara courthouse, last Thursday. Not that it is your business.”
    “Perhaps not. When was the stock transfer?”
    “I don’t know exactly. Look it up if you want to know.”
    Damn it, it just did not ring true that he had handed stock over to Belle before he had her committed to him. That was the sort of sloppy stunt I pulled; it wasn’t in character for him. “I’m wondering something, Miles. If I put a detective to work on it, might I find that the two of you got married once before a little earlier than that? Maybe in Yuma? Or Las Vegas? Or maybe you ducked over to Reno that time you both went north for the tax hearings? Maybe it would turn out that there was such a marriage recorded, and maybe the date of the