Neither was confidence in his infallibility encouraged by a habit to which he, like most directors, proved lamentably prone, of improvising improvements on the story as he went along. All of a sudden, while directing a scene, Nolan was wont to break out in a profuse inspiration, and incontinently some well-remembered bit of business or episode from an old stage success would be interjected into or substituted for incidents really germane to the original plot. That this practice as often as not produced results in conflict with the fundamental mechanics of the story, if it missed throwing them out of kilter entirely, seemed to be a consideration of minor consequence.
Thus Nolan laboured long and passionately to persuade Lucinda it would benefit the story to engraft on it a scene wherein she would figure as a lonely prisoner in a garret, menaced by hordes of hungry rats. This regardless of the fact that there was no garret in the original story, nor any room for one, and no reason why the young person portrayed by Lucinda should be imprisoned in one, but solely because Nolan happened to fancy a resemblance between her and an actress whom he had several years before directed with great success in a garret scene with rats ad lib.
That the rats didn't work their way into the picture eventually, whether Lucinda wanted them or not, was mainly due to Nolan's misfortune in failing to think of them before his star began to show symptoms of what he called the swelled-head; that is to say before, having worked several weeks under his direction, Lucinda began to suspect that Nolan wasn't really sole custodian of the sacred mystery of motion-picture making, and to assert herself modestly as one whose views ought to have some weight with a director whose pay came out of her own pocket.
Nor is she to this day ready to believe that Nolan, left to himself, would not ultimately have overborne all opposition and had his willful way with the rat episode.
But it was neither because of this instance, nor because of other arbitrary changes that Nolan made in the story, that Lucinda first learned to mistrust his ability, but because of the appalling ignorance which he betrayed concerning what she believed should be matters of general knowledge, such as rudimentary principles of social usage.
Since the story they were concerned with had to do with people of fashionable New York transacting the business of life in their homes and public rendezvous, Lucinda thought it important that their manners should conform to approved convention; but Nolan was so little learned in such matters, and his impatience with them was so wholehearted, that she presently abandoned all effort to correct him, and in a fatalistic spirit endeavoured to comfort her misgivings with his customary rejoinder to advice in any form: "Ah, what's it matter? Ninety per cent. of your audiences are solid bone from the neck up, and the rest wouldn't think they'd got their money's worth unless they found something to beef about in a picture. Why worry about little things like that? Life's too short, and we're wasting time!"
So Lucinda schooled herself to suffer in silence when she saw men of alleged gentle breeding offer women their left arms to escort them from the drawing to the dining rooms of Fifth avenue or when two bickered in public as to which should escort to her home a woman married to a third, and when Nolan posed a pair of lawless lovers in the foyer of a restaurant and instructed them to register unutterable emotion by holding hands, in the view of hundreds, and swelling their tormented bosoms until (as Fanny described it) they resembled more than anything else a brace of pouter pigeons shaking the shimmy.
She held her peace even when Nolan directed a father and his son, both presumptive adepts in the social life of New York, to pause on meeting, when each was decently turned out in morning-coat and top hat, strike attitudes of awed admiration, solemnly wheel each other round by the shoulders and, wagging dumbfoundered heads over the sight of so much sartorial splendour, exclaim—in subtitles to be inserted in the film—"Some boy!" "Some Dad!"
And when a woman in a scene with Lucinda parted from her, uttering an injunction put in her mouth by Nolan, "Don't forget, dearie—tea at the Ritz at one o'clock," Lucinda, conceiving this to be a slip of the tongue, said nothing. But when later she viewed in the projection-room that sequence of scenes roughly assembled, with what are termed "scratch titles," in place, and read the words as quoted, and on making enquiry learned that they had been copied verbatim from Mr. Nolan's continuity, she ventured to remonstrate.
"But, Mr. Nolan, tea is a function for four o'clock or later all the world over."
"That's so, Miss Lee? Well, what d'you know about that? Guess I must've been thinking about luncheon."
"But your subtitle introducing the restaurant sequence later on says 'Tea at the Ritz.'"
"That's right. I remember now, I meant tea, not luncheon. It's that way in the book."
"But in the restaurant scenes the tables are covered with cloths and the waiters are serving all sorts of dishes, course meals."
"What's the matter with that?"
"Why, nothing is served for tea but tea itself and toast and perhaps little pastries."
Nolan grinned sheepishly and scratched his head. "I guess we're a terrible lot of roughnecks out here on the Coast, Miss Lee—not onto fine points like that. But it's all right: we'll change the subtitles to read luncheon instead of tea."
"But you've just shown me lunching at another restaurant. It isn't reasonable to make me eat two luncheons in one day."
"That's easy. We'll make the subtitle read: 'Luncheon at the Ritz the next day.'"
"I hate to keep on objecting, Mr. Nolan, but the situation depends on these people meeting at tea the very day they lunched together."
"Well, if we can't fix it with a subtitle, we'll have to change the situation, then. We can't go back and shoot those scenes all over again, it'd cost too darn much; and anyway we haven't got time."
Having kept the Linda Lee organization awaiting his convenience for five weeks after the date upon which he had agreed to begin directing for it, Nolan was now with the utmost sang-froid trying to jam through in one month an undertaking for which he would, going his normal gait, require all of two; partly because he was being paid by the job instead of by the week, in part because his services for the next picture had not been bespoken and he was flirting with a bid from the East, an offer contingent upon his being able to leave Los Angeles not later than a set date, finally and not in the least part for another reason altogether, a peculiarly private one.
He wasn't happy in his present circumstances, his vanity was deeply wounded, and the wound was not likely to heal so long as he must continue in the humiliating position to which he had been reduced by Lucinda's insusceptibility to his charms of person. Nolan had all along looked forward to this engagement with considerable animation, because Lucinda was a type new to him and he counted on learning about women from her, too. The trouble was, he hadn't in the least suspected that she was to prove not only new but unique in his experience. He knew what it was to be resisted, and didn't mind that so much, finding it at worst flattering. Once or twice since becoming a director he had even met with the appearance of indifference, and had had the fun of showing it up for what it really was. But this was the first time in many years that any woman with whom he had been brought into professional contact had proved not so much indifferent to him as unconscious that he boasted any attractions calling for even such negative emotion. Nolan needed some time to appreciate that this unprecedented and outrageous thing could really be, and when he did he was hurt to his soul's marrow. By nature buoyant, he found himself growing morose; by reputation the best-tempered of directors, he heard himself snapping at his subordinates like the veriest martinet of them all. Worse yet, Lucinda seemed not even to reckon him a genius at his calling. An unheard-of state of affairs and one intolerable to a man of his kidney. He wanted more than he had ever wanted anything to be quit of her for good and all and at the earliest possible moment.
For the indignities which he felt had thus been put upon him in a fashion wholly uncalled-for there was, of course, reparation proffered in Fanny Lontaine's indisputable awareness of him. And even as Lucinda, Fanny too was clearly "class." On the other hand, she had a husband, undeniably an ass, puffed up out of all reason with self-importance, but still and for all that a husband. Besides, having set his heart on a star, Nolan conceived it to be inconsistent with his dignity to content himself with a satellite. So he sulked and could not be comforted.
Necessarily the picture suffered through the languishing of his interest; and Nolan, foreseeing the professional and public verdict, did his best to forestall it by privately letting it be known he'd been a dumb-bell to tackle the job of making an actress out of a rank amateur, only for the jack involved he would never have tried it. And then the story they'd asked him to do—! One of these society things, you know: no punch, no speed, no drama, nothing but five reels of stalling, clothes and close-ups, padding for a lot of lines; a regular illustrated dialogue. What could you do with a story like that, anyway?
More openly, in the course of time, as he grew acutely self-conscious of inability to cope with what he chose to deny, the dramatic possibilities intrinsic in the story of a father who falls in love with the woman loved by his own son, a woman whom he has sworn to expose as unworthy to be his son's wife, Nolan spoke of the production in the studio as "this piece of cheese."
His name ranked high on the roster of America's foremost photoplay directors. Whenever one of the Los Angeles cinema houses booked a picture of his making the bill-boards of the town heralded in twenty-four sheet posters the coming of "A Barry Nolan Production"; frequently the lettering of this line over-shadowed that in which the name of the star was displayed, invariably it dwarfed the name of the story.
After witnessing several of these offerings, Lucinda began to wonder why....
But that distrust of Barry Nolan's competency which troubled Lucinda's mind almost from the very outset of their association had yet to crystallize on the Saturday when Summerlad was expected home; and her disposition toward the director was rendered only the more amiable when, toward noon, he informed her that he wouldn't need her again till Monday morning.
Nevertheless it threatened to prove a long afternoon to an impatient woman, and Lucinda, wanting company to help her while it away, promptly petitioned for Fanny's release as well.
Fanny, however, was busily employed, as she had been ever since early morning, waiting for Nolan to put her through a scheduled five-minute scene which would round out her full day's work. But Nolan graciously promised to set her free in another hour, and then—to get rid of Lucinda's presence, which instinct was already beginning to warn him was silently skeptical of his claims—artfully suggested that she might like to review the rushes of yesterday's camera-work.
Assuming that she would find the projection-room empty, Lucinda made her way to it without bothering to remove her make-up, but on opening the door saw a fan-like beam of turbid light wavering athwart its darkness, and would have withdrawn, had not Zinn's thick and genial accents hailed her from the rear of the long, black-walled, tunnel-like chamber.
"Come right on in, Miss Lee. We'll be through in a minute. Just running some of the fillum come through from Joe Jacques yesterday. Maybe you'd like to see it. 'Sgreat stuff that boy Summerlad's putting over this time."
Murmuring thanks, Lucinda groped her way—bending low, that her head might not block the light—to one of the arm-chairs beneath the slotted wall which shut off the projection-machines in their fire-proof housing.
When her vision had accommodated itself to the gloom, she made out several figures in other chairs, sitting quietly behind ruddy noses of cigars and cigarettes. At a table to one side the glow of a closely shaded lamp disclosed an apparently amputated hand hanging with pencil poised above a pad, ready to note down anything the traffic of the screen might suggest to Zinn. The latter was conversing in undertones with somebody in the adjoining chair, and the rumble of their voices was punctuated now and again by a chuckle which affected Lucinda with a shiver of uncertain recollection. But she couldn't be sure, in that mirk she could by no means make out the features of Zinn's companion or even the shape of his head, and the surmise seemed too absurd....
She was none the less perturbed to a degree that hindered just appreciation of the admirable work of Lynn Summerlad, whose shadow, clad in the rude garments of a lumberjack, was performing feats of skill and daring against a background of logging-camp scenery; and thanks to her misgivings, as much as to the custom of taking and retaking again and again even scenes of minor importance, had grown well weary of watching Lynn bound frantically from log to log of a churning river to rescue Alice Drake from what seemed to be desperately real danger in the break-up of a log jam, when abruptly the shining rectangle of the screen turned blank, the beam of clouded light was blotted out, and a dim bulb set in the black ceiling was lighted to guide the spectators to the door.
Then, with a fluttering heart, Lucinda identified her husband in Zinn's companion; and anger welling in her bosom affected her with momentary suffocation, so that she was put to it to reply when Zinn, leering hideously, presented Bellamy.
"Shake hands with Mr. Druce, Miss Lee: new tenant of mine, going to work here same as you, just signed a lease for space to make his first production."
"What!"
At that monosyllable of dismayed protest, Lucinda saw Zinn's little eyes of a pig grow wide with surprise; which emotion, however, might have been due quite as much to what Bellamy was saying.
"But I am fortunate, Mr. Zinn, in already having the honour of Miss Lee's acquaintance." Bellamy took possession of her hand. "How do you do, Linda? So happy to see you again—looking more radiant than ever, too!"
"Is that so? You two know each other! Whyn't you tell me?"
"Wasn't sure it was this Miss Lee I knew until I saw her."
"Well, well! Ain't that nice! You ought to get along together fine, both working in the same studio and everything."
Lucinda found her voice all at once, but hardly her self-possession. "It isn't—it can't be true! Bel: it isn't true you're——!"
"Afraid it is, Linda." Bel's smile was lightly mocking. "The picture business has got me in its toils at last. Only needed that trip out here to decide me. Now I'm in it up to my ears. Something to do, you know."
"But not—not as an actor?"
"Bless your heart, no! All kinds of a nincompoop but that. No: I'm coming in on the producing side, forming a little company and starting in a modest way, as you see, on leased premises, with the most economical overhead I can figure. If I make good—well, I understand Mr. Zinn is willing to sell his studio, and I'll be wanting one all my very own."
"Any time you want to talk business, Mr. Druce, you know the way to my office. Don't stand on ceremony, and don't let nobody kid you I'm into a conference and can't be disturbed by anybody who wants to buy me out of this Bedlam: just walk right in, slap the cheque-book down on my desk, and unlimber the old fountain-pen; you'll find me willing to listen to reason. Well: got to get along, folks. They're going to run some of Miss Lee's rushes now. Maybe you'd like to look at them, if she don't mind."
"I hope very truly she won't," Bellamy said, smiling into Lucinda's eyes.
Lucinda uttered a faint-hearted negative: no, she wouldn't mind. No other way out till they were alone.... But her heart was hot with resentment of the way that Bel was forever forcing situations upon her in which she must accept him on his own terms.
Immediately the door had closed behind Zinn, however, Bel's manner changed, his show of assurance gave place to diffidence or its fair semblance.
"I'm sorry, Linda—I really don't mean to be a pest——"
"Then why are you here? Whywon'tyou keep out of my way?"
"Give me half a chance, I think I can make you understand——"
"You had that chance weeks ago, and deliberately refused it. Do you imagine I will give you another opportunity to affront me as you did?"
"But surely you got my note——"
"What note?"
"The note I sent to the Hollywood, explaining I was called East on two hours' notice, but would return as soon as I could; begging you to consider our interview merely postponed——"
"If you sent any such note, I could hardly have failed to receive it."
"But Linda! I did send it, an hour before I left, by special delivery—'pon my word I did!"
"Possibly," Lucinda suggested with laboured scorn, "you misaddressed it, forgetting which of your numerous feminine acquaintances you were writing to."
"I addressed it," Bel insisted stoutly, "to Mrs. Bellamy Druce."
"If so, that explains it. They know me at the hotel only as Linda Lee."
"How was I to know that?"
"Your sources of information concerning me seem to be fairly busy and accurate."
"I'm sorry if you've been annoyed"—Lucinda cut in a short laugh of derision—"no, really I am! But I had to——"
"Wait!" Lucinda had become aware of a head framed in the little window of the projection-booth and regarding them with a smile of friendly interest. "Not now—later."
"All ready, Miss Lee," said the operator, unabashed—"if you are, I mean."
"Yes, thank you, quite ready." As she settled back into her chair and Bellamy placed himself by her side she added in a guarded tone: "As soon as I've looked these scenes over, we can go to my dressing-room...."
The ceiling light winked out, stuttering rays thrashed through the dark to paint in black and white those winsome gestures which Lucinda had described before the camera. But her interest in her pictured self for once had lapsed, vanity itself was for the time being wholly in abeyance, she watched without seeing the play of light and shadow, and when it faded from the screen could not have said what she had seen.
Weird, to sit there in the dark with the man beside her who had once filled all her heart that was now filled with longing for another....
When the screen once more shone blank and the ceiling light flashed on, Bel was smiling cheerfully.
"No wonder you fell for the screen so hard, Linda: you're exquisite, and no mistake. If you stick at it, never fear; it won't be long before you'll be wiping the eyes of the best of them."
"Thank you," she said stiffly—"but I don't think I want that. I only want a life I can live and hold my self-respect."
"And you come to Hollywood to find it?"
She flushed darkly and with an angry movement got up. "Please come."
Her maid was waiting in the dressing-room, but Lucinda sent the woman to explain to Mrs. Lontaine that they might be a few minutes delayed, and told her not to come back till sent for. Alone with Bellamy, she showed him a face on fire with challenge.
"You said you wanted to explain, Bel; you won't get another chance."
He nodded soberly. "Quite realize that. But this once will do, can say all I want to in three minutes. Then you're free to call it quits for good, if you like."
That posed her rudely. Did he mean—could it be possible he meant he had become reconciled to the rift in their relations? Had the arrow she had loosed into the dark, that night when Bel had broken his appointment with her, flown straight to the mark? Was Bel really "cured?" He had that look; there was deference without abasement in his bearing, if regret now and then tinged his tone it conveyed no hint of repining. By every sign he was doing very well without her.
"Can you doubt that's what I'll 'like,' Bel? Or what must I do, more than I've already done, to prove I ask nothing better than to call it quits for good with you?"
"Oh, you've done all that was needed, thanks. I'm convinced—have been for some weeks, if you want to know—in fact, from the moment when I found out you'd lost your head over a movie actor."
"Indeed?" Lucinda mastered an impulse to bite her lip. "And have you anything to say about that?"
"Not a blessed thing. That's your affair."
"Pity you didn't know in time to spare you the trip."
"I'm not sure, Linda. Knowing you as I did, I don't think I'd have believed anything I didn't see with my own eyes——"
"Anything so greatly to my discredit, of course!"
"Easy, Linda! I didn't say that. You know best what you want—that's something nobody else can ever tell one. I'm not criticizing, I'm merely explaining."
"And very good of you, I'm sure."
But Lucinda had not been able to utter the taunt without a tremor.
Bellamy gave his head a stubborn shake and stepped nearer. "Please don't be angry because of anything stupid I may say. You see, you misunderstand me: I came out here that first time dead-set to win you back at any cost, still madly in love with you, absolutely unable to conceive of a life that didn't pivot on you, Linda. I was prepared to give you any pledges you could possibly ask——"
"Did you flatter yourself any pledge you could give would mean anything to me, when you'd broken your word so often?"
"I hoped I could make you understand what a blow your leaving me had been, how it had brought me to my senses at last, jolted me up on the water-wagon, where I've been ever since—I haven't had a suspicion of a drink, Linda, since that night you ran away—and made me see what an unspeakable rotter I'd been, fooling around with women as I had. That's another thing I cut out like a shot. I haven't looked sideways at another woman since...."
"Not even after discovering I'd fallen in love with another man?"
"Not even after that. Somehow casual women don't mean anything to me any more—I mean, casual flirtations. They're too damn stupid—silly waste of time. I guess I had to be squiffy as I used to be most of the time, not to be bored by them. Oh! I'm not saying I shan't ever fall in love again, just as you have; but when I do, it will be the real thing, Linda—not the simple cussedness that makes a child play with a gun because he knows it's loaded."
"This is all very interesting, I'm sure. But after all, it doesn't explain—now, does it?"
"It explains why I followed you out here the first trip, why I had to see you in another man's arms, kissing him, and then hear all the small-town gossip about you two before I'd believe...."
"There is gossip, then?"
"What do you think? According to all reports, you've been going it, rather, you and this chap Summerlad—'stepping out together,' as they say in Hollywood."
Lucinda affected a shrug of indifference: Bel mustn't guess she cared what people said.
"But I am still waiting to hear why you've come out this time; what it means when you hire quarters here in the studio where I am working daily, and pretend you're going into the producing business. You may be able to make Zinn believe that tale; at least, he won't ask embarrassing questions so long as you put money in his pocket; but you can hardly expect me—!"
"You're wrong there, Linda. I'm just as much in earnest about becoming a producer of good motion-pictures as you are about becoming a star. I got a little look into the game that fascinated me, in those two days while I was killing time, waiting for the night you'd set for our talk. You ought to be able to understand: you were fascinated yourself at first sight."
"But you—! Bellamy Druce dabbling in the motion-picture business!"
"Well, what price Mrs. Bellamy Druce in the same galley?"
"No, Bel: frankly, I don't believe you. You're here with some wild idea you can influence me to do what you wish—whatever that is, since you say you've given up wanting me to come back to you."
"Oh, as to that—absolutely!"
"Then why must you set up your shop here, where we can't help running into each other half a dozen times a day?"
"Because there isn't another inch of stage to be hired in all Los Angeles today. I've had a man looking round for me ever since my first visit, he's tried every place. The only thing I could do to avoid renting from Zinn was to build, and that meant a longer wait than I wanted. Ask anybody who knows the local studio situation, if you doubt what I say."
"So you didn't come out this time with any idea of seeing me at all, Bel?"
"Of course, I did. I had to see you. Things couldn't rest as they were, especially after you'd taken up with this Summerlad. I'm assuming you're serious in that quarter, of course."
"And what has that to do—?"
"Just this: I don't like it. As I say, if you want to run around with a movie actor, that's your affair; but so long as you remain my wife, it's my affair, too. Don't forget it's my name you're trailing through the muck of this sink-hole of scandal."
She flamed at him—"Bel!"—but he wouldn't heed.
"You don't suppose you're going to get away with the Linda Lee thing much longer, do you? If all these people don't know it's an assumed name now, they jolly soon will. How do you suppose I found out you were up to this game? No: not through detectives, but simply by calling on your friend, Ben Culp, the man who first put this picture bee in your bonnet. Nelly Guest gave me that cue, and I thought Culp might know something helpful. Well: he did, when I called he had on his desk a trade paper that carried a report of the incorporation of Linda Lee Inc. Did you imagine anybody would need more than that name, coupled with Lontaine's as president of the company? Culp himself was the first to tumble to it.... And that's what I'm here to ask you. If you're going through, if you're bent on leading the life you have been leading ever since you fell in with these people, be good enough to keep my wife's name out of it! Get your divorce and get it soon. That's all I have to ask of you."
Lucinda replied with a slow inclination of her head.
"What you want is my dearest wish," she said. "Depend on it, Bel, I shan't waste a day, I'll take the first train I can catch for Reno, after finishing this picture."
"That's simply splendid of you!" Bellamy declared heartily. "Anything I can do to help along, of course—just let me know."
"I'll be glad if you'll go now," Lucinda told him. "I think I've had about all I can stand for one day."
"Then good bye, my dear—a thousand thanks!"
Lucinda told Fanny that, when the dressing-room door had shut Bellamy out, she "didn't know whether to laugh or to cry"; though it's true that the laugh, if any, being admittedly on herself, she was the more moved to weep. And for some minutes she stood in thought, with a curiously uncertain expression, a look that, trembling between a smile and a frown, faithfully reflected a mind that couldn't readily choose between relief and chagrin. In the end throwing herself into a chair, she hid her face in her hands and shook with mirth which she really wasn't able to control, all the while aware that, but for the assurance of Lynn's love to cushion the shock to self-esteem, tears instead must have been her portion.
After all, one couldn't deny that it had been a facer, that complete snub Bel had administered to her expectations with his cool relinquishment of all pretense of claim upon her, barring that which was his beyond dispute, his right to demand the speediest feasible dissolution of their bonds.
"And you really think divorce is what he's after?" Fanny doubted darkly, having duly turned the matter over in her mind.
"I'm sure you'd think so, if you had heard him."
"I don't know.... Of course, he was your property long enough, you ought to know his wretched little ways. But I wouldn't trust any man to mean what he says to a woman under such circumstances."
"Fanny! how long is it since you set up to be such a cynic?"
"As long as I've been an honest married woman, darling. I think the first thing a woman with her wits about her learns, once she begins to convalesce from that foolish bride feeling, is that men are just as treacherous as we are in affairs of the heart, so-called. Anyway, if your Bellamy were mine, he'd wait a long time for me to give him his freedom, precisely as long as he insisted on sticking round and making me uncomfortable.... The most outrageous proceeding I ever heard of!"
"I don't see through Bel, myself," Lucinda admitted. "You'd think it would be the last thing he'd do. Of course—I'll speak to Harry about it tonight—we can't stay, we'll have to move as soon as we finish this picture."
"We're lucky to be as well along as we are, in that case. Barry Nolan said today he expected to finish up in two weeks more."
"Then there's no time to be wasted. Your husband will have to begin looking for new studio accommodations right away; though I haven't the least idea where we'll find them, if Bel told the truth."
"It's barely possible he did, of course. And then it's equally possible that he's taking advantage of the demand exceeding the supply to force you out of the business, assuming you'll quit Zinn's even if it involves suspending production, rather than be made miserable by seeing him every day. In which case, of course, he'll have some other scheme ready to make it difficult if not impossible for you to resume."
"Heavens! what a wild-eyed theory, Fanny!"
"Any more wild-eyed, pray, than the facts in the case?—than what Bellamy has done in leasing space in the same studio with a woman whom he has every reason for wishing to avoid, if one can believe a word he says! Cindy: don't tell me you believe Bellamy Druce ever left New York, his home and his friends, to come out here and muck about Hollywood because he likes it, or because he's discontented with having been no better than a drone all his life long and wants to redeem himself by doing something worth-while? Ifthat'shis motive, in Heaven's name! what made him pick out the motion-picture business?"
"It is funny," Lucinda confessed. "I don't pretend to understand...."
No more did she. But the seeds of suspicion that conversation planted took root readily and flowered into a dark jungle of strange, involuted fancies in which fears ran wild until Lynn Summerlad came home to charm them all asleep. Lucinda only needed to see him, indeed, to forget her troubles altogether and become once more the voluntary thrall of a species of intoxication as potent to her senses as a drug.
The Lontaines had arranged a supper party at Santa Monica in Summerlad's honour for that night, but considerately had neglected to preface it with dinner. So the lovers had the hours till eleven to themselves. At seven Summerlad called, finding his way unannounced to Lucinda's sitting-room. She went to his arms with a cry of joy, buried her face on his shoulder, clung to him as if she would never let him go.
"I've missed you so, Lynn, I've missed you so!"
He seemed startled and unmistakably affected by the artlessness of this confession, and held her close, comforting her with all the time-old and tested responses of the lovers' litany, with a tenderness in his voice more deep and true than he had ever sounded in the most impassioned moments of his wooing.
"But, my dearest girl! you're trembling. What is it? Tell me...."
"It's so wonderful to have you back, Lynn. Don't ever leave me for so long again."
"You tempt me to," he laughed indulgently. "I think you've learned to love me better while I've been away than you did in all the while that I was here!"
She answered with an odd little laugh of love and deprecation: "I really think I have...."
They dined at Marcelle's, not the happiest selection for their first few hours together, for the place was thronged with picture-folk, as it is always of a Saturday, and acquaintances were continually running over to their table to tell Summerlad how glad they were to see him back. Practically the only moments they had alone were when they danced; so they made excuse to leave early, that they might drive to Santa Monica by the most round-about way.
Nothing was wanting to endue that drive with every illusion of a dream. Spring was so well advanced that the night air, windless, was as warm as it would ever be in Summer. There was again a moon, as on that first night when Summerlad had driven Lucinda and the Lontaines home from dinner at his bungalow and on the way had turned aside to show Lucinda from that high place in the hills all the provinces of her new kingdom mapped out beneath her. Summerlad's car, its superb motor in perfect tune, made light of speed laws on lonely roads far from the main-travelled ways that link the towns. On the back seat, snuggled into the hollow of Summerlad's arm, Lucinda rested a long time in contented silence, watching the molten magic of the night fling itself at their faces, dissolve, blend into rushing shadows, and sweep behind, to music of cloven air like fairy laughter. How could she ever have been so stupid as to harbour a thought disloyal to this land of dim enchantment?
"It is too perfect," she murmured at length, "too sweet to last. It can't last, I know it can't!"
"Why not? So long as we love, what's to prevent all beauty lasting?"
"Life. I mean"—it took all her courage to speak of what she had till then purposely kept back—"Bellamy."
Summerlad's arm tightened protectingly around her. "What about him? Has he come back? Been annoying you any way? Tell me about it."
She told him her version of that noon-hour meeting at the studio, Summerlad swearing softly beneath his breath as he listened.
"So you see, my dear—as I said—it can't last. We can't continue to work together in the same studio, with Bel spying on us, or able to do so any time he happens to want to. I'll have to move—you can't, of course, because your contract is with Zinn himself. And I imagine—in fact, I'm sure—the best thing for us both is for me to leave Los Angeles altogether for at least six months."
"Go away from Los Angeles? From me! Linda, you can't mean it."
"Only to make it possible to be nearer to you when I come back, dear. I mean, I must go to Reno, where I should have gone in the first place. If I had, these impossible conditions Bel has brought about could never have been."
"Oh, damn your husband!"
"I don't know: he's making things awkward for us, truly, but perhaps in the end we'll be grateful to him. If it weren't for Bel, it's quite likely I'd keep on putting off my divorce rather than be separated from you for so long. But after all, what are six months, when they earn us the right to spend all our lives together afterwards?"
Lynn made no answer, other than to hold her more tightly. She twisted round to look up into his face. The moonlight showed it set in a scowling cast.
"What's the matter, Lynn? Don't you think as I do about Reno?"
"Of course," the man muttered. "But I don't fancy your being away from me so long. Six months! Anything can happen in six months."
The car was swinging into the streets of Santa Monica. Lucinda gave him her lips.
"Let's forget it for tonight. Kiss me again while there's time."
The restaurant to which the Lontaines had bidden them was the one in those times most favoured by the froth of the picture colony for its weekly night of carnival; an immense pavilion by the sea, but too small by half for the crowds that besieged it toward midnight every Saturday, pathetically keen to rub shoulders with celebrity in its hours of relaxation from arduous labours before the camera. When Lucinda and Summerlad arrived the velvet rope across the entrance was holding back a throng ten deep, a singularly patient and indefatigable lot, its faces all turned in hope toward the lights beyond, eager to catch the eye of the proprietor, though informed by sad experience that the reward would be what it always was for those who had failed to make reservations, a coldly indifferent shake of the head and nothing more. Through this fringe prayers and elbows opened a sullen way till Summerlad's unusual height won recognition from within, and he passed through with Lucinda to a place where pandemonium set to jazz ruled under light restraint.
Round the four walls and encroaching upon the cramped floor for dancing, tables were so closely ranked that passage between them was generally impracticable. It seemed little short of miraculous that so many people could be crowded even into that huge hall, incredible that they should care to be. Yet everybody of any consequence in the studios was there, and everybody knew everybody else and called him by his first name—preferably at the top of his lungs. Much fraternizing went on between the tables, much interchange of the bottles of which at least one was smuggled in by each male patron as a point of honour, against the perfunctory prohibition of the management posted in staring letters at the entrance. An insane orchestra dominated the din by fits and starts, playing snatches of fox-trots and one-steps just long enough at a time to permit a couple to make half the round of the dance floor at the meditative gait imposed by the mob massed upon it, then stopping to let a leather-lunged ballyhoo bullyrag the dancers into contributing their cash as a bribe for further measures. When the musicians rested and the floor was cleared, impromptu exhibitions of foolery were staged by slapstick clowns and applauded with shrieks and cat-calls. The women present, mostly young—for the camera has little use for years beyond the earliest stages of maturity—exhibited themselves in every degree of undress short of downright déshabille. Masculine Hollywood as a rule thriftily saves its evening clothes for service under the Kliegs.
Lontaine's party, a large one, comprising the most influential members of the colony with whom he and Summerlad were on agreeable terms, had been long enough in session already to have become individually exalted and collectively hilarious. Summerlad it took to its bosom with shouts of acclaim, and he seemed to find it easy to catch the spirit of the gathering. But Lucinda sat with it and yet apart from it, a little mused. She could not drink enough to be in tune with her company, and would not if she could. A sense of frustration oppressed her. Before her dreaming eyes the pageant passed again of hills and fields asleep in sweet glamour of moonlight, breathing pastoral fragrance upon the night. She had been happy half an hour since. Here in this heady atmosphere of perfumed flesh, tobacco reek and pungent alcohol, the idyl of her evening grew faint and fled. While the man she loved had no regrets.
In a moment of disconcerting lucidity she saw him as a strange man, flushed with drink and blown with license, looking on other women with a satyr's appraising eyes, bandying ribald wheezes with the lips she had so lately kissed. And she winced and drew away, recalling that abandon of affection with which she had given herself to his embrace at the hotel, feeling of a sudden soiled and shop-worn as from common handling.
A strange man, a man she had known but a few brief weeks!
Covertly watching him, she saw Summerlad in the middle of a passage of persiflage start and fall silent, his lips in an instant wiped bare of speech. And following the line of his stare, she espied, at some distance, at a table near the edge of the dance-floor, Bellamy sitting with a woman.
He saw her but made no sign more than to intensify his meaning smile, and immediately returned courteous attention to his companion.
At this last Lucinda stared in doubt for several seconds, she was so changed. But finery that shrieked of money spent without stint or taste could hardly disguise the wild and ragged loveliness of Nelly Marquis.
In a freak of unaccountable reluctance to believe it was really the Marquis girl, Lucinda looked a second time. More than a month had passed since that brief, distressing chapter of their acquaintance, which Lucinda had put out of mind so completely that her efforts to recall the features of the other conjured up only a foggy impression of a shabby, haggard, haunted shadow, by turns wistful and feebly defiant, that bore what might be no more than chance likeness to this figure of flaunting extravagance at Bellamy's table.
A question forming on her lips, Lucinda turned back to Summerlad, but surprised the tail of his eye veering hastily away, and fancied a shade of over-elaboration in the easy, incurious air he was quick to resume; as if he wished her to believe he either hadn't noticed those two or else saw no significance in their association on terms apparently so intimate and mutually diverting.
So she held her tongue for a while, till the comforting suggestion offered that Lynn in all probability had but sought to spare her feelings....
She stole another glance across the room. By every indication Bellamy found his company most entertaining; he was paying her sallies a tribute of smiling attention which she as evidently found both grateful and inspiring. It was plain that she had had enough to drink and something more; but on that question she held strong views of her own, and while Lucinda was looking drained her highball glass and with an air peremptory and arch planted it in front of Bellamy to be replenished; a service which he rendered with the aid of a pocket flask—adding to his own glass, however, water only.
Not thatthatnecessarily meant anything. Bellamy knew the chances were that Lucinda was watching him. Still, one had to admit he was showing none of those too familiar symptoms; in that gathering, where the cold sober were few and far between, Bel looked conspicuously so. Was he, then, to be believed when he insisted he had finally foresworn alcohol in remorse for having driven Lucinda to leave him? One wondered....
Summerlad was eyeing her with a quizzical air. Lucinda managed half a smile.
"Having a good time, Linda?"
"I can't complain." A slight movement of shoulders rounded out the innuendo.
Summerlad made a mouth of concern. "Tired, dear? Want to go home?"
"Afraid Fanny and Harry wouldn't like it...."
Was one unfair in reading disappointment where Lynn wished solicitude only to be read?
"How about another little drink?" Lucinda shook her head decidedly. "Well, then: what say we dance?"
She surveyed the crowded floor dubiously. "It's an awful crush, I'm afraid...." Nevertheless she got up and threaded the jostling tables with Lynn at her heels: anything for respite from the racket the Lontaines and their crew were kicking up.
Odd, how those two, so quiet and well-behaved when she had first met them in New York, had let go in this demoralizing atmosphere of what Fanny had rechristened the loose and windy West. Odd, but in a way quite British. The Anglo-Saxon temperament inclines to lose its head once the shackles of home-grown public opinion are stricken off. Long ago a wise man pointed out that there wouldn't be any night life in Paris worth mentioning if it weren't for strict enforcement of the early closing law in London....
It was an awful crush. Few better dancers than Lynn Summerlad ever trod a ball-room floor, but even he was put to it to steer a safe course in that welter. It was, after all, not much of an improvement on sitting still and trying to appear unaware of Bellamy and that weird Marquis creature. Lucinda felt sure, now, she had not been mistaken about the girl, but concluded to ask Lynn anyway; and her lips were parting with this intention when she heard a hiss of breath indrawn and looked up to see Lynn's face disfigured by a spasm of pain. In the same instant he stopped short, in the next he groaned between set teeth.
"Have to get out of this, I'm afraid," he grunted. "My foot—somebody with a hoof like a sledge-hammer landed on it just now. That wouldn't matter, only the confounded thing got caught between a couple of logs while we were doing that river stuff. The swelling went down several days ago, and to tell the truth I'd forgotten about it.... But this reminds me plenty!"
He had an affecting limp on the way back to their table, where he delayed long enough to tell his story and receive commiserations, then announced that, though desolated to leave such a promising young party, he would have to get home and out of his shoes before he could hope to know another instant's ease. If the Lontaines wouldn't mind seeing that Lucinda got back to the Hollywood all right....
The Lontaines were ready enough to undertake that responsibility, but Lucinda wouldn't hear of staying on. Lynn's chauffeur could as well as not take her to the Hollywood after dropping Lynn in Beverly Hills.... She was glad enough of the excuse, of course, but she did resent, what she couldn't help covertly looking for on the way out, the sardonic glint in Bel's eyes.
Really, Bel's effrontery seemed to know no limit. To protest at noon that "casual women" meant nothing to him any more, and at midnight to make public parade of his interest in a demi-rep! On top of that, to give his wife that odious look of understanding when she passed him with Summerlad, a look implying privity to some indecorous secret involving them!
Simmering indignation rendered her demeanour unsympathetic, perhaps, while Lynn was being made as comfortable as might be in his car, with the shoe removed from his poor hurt foot and the latter extended on one of the forward seats. And for some minutes after they had got under way she maintained, in the face of inquisitive sidelong glances, a silence which Lynn seemed loath to break. But in time it began to wear upon his nerves.
"Cross, sweetheart?" he enquired gently. "I'm sorry you let me drag you away——"
"It isn't that," Lucinda replied, almost brusquely. "I wasn't enjoying myself, anyway—wanted to leave almost as soon as we arrived."
"Then what is it?"
She asked evasively: "How's your foot?"
"Much better, thanks. Guess I must've dislocated one of the smaller bones, in that logging stunt. It doesn't feel just right. I'll get an osteopath in tomorrow morning and see what he makes of it."
"It really was hurt while we were dancing, then?"
"What do you think? That I'd make a fuss like that and spoil my party just for fun?"
"I thought possibly you were pretending on my account."
"You mean, because your husband was there."
"So you did see him, after all."
"Yes—but rather hoped you hadn't."
"He wasn't alone, Lynn."
"I noticed that, too."
"It was Miss Marquis, wasn't it?"
"Yes, Linda—afraid it was."
"Afraid——?"
"Your amiable husband's in for an interesting life, if that young woman has got her claws into him."
"Lynn: where do you suppose the girl has been all this time, since that night she left the hotel?"
"Good Lord! how should I know?"
"People don't drop out of sight like that in Hollywood. One keeps meeting them if they're in Town, one can't help it—there are so few places to go. It seems funny she should disappear so completely for—how long is it? four weeks? five?—and then turn up in Bel's company."
"It is funny," Summerlad agreed in a tone that rang true.
"I'm only wondering where he fell in with her."
"Well," Lynn submitted: "I daresay if you were to ask him...."
"Or if you were to ask her!"
But immediately Lucinda repented her resentment of what she had hastily taken to be an attempt to becloud impatience with ill-timed levity. For Lynn treated her to the reproof of a sulky silence, in which he persisted till she felt constrained, in self-justification, to adopt the very tone that had vexed her.
"Or don't you think that would be a good idea, Lynn?"
The man shifted in his corner till he sat half-facing her, his manner seriously defensive.
"Look here, Linda! I've known a long time you suspected there was something between this Marquis girl and me—or had been——"
"Wait a minute, Lynn: I may be stupid, women in love usually are, they say; but that thought never crossed my mind before the moment when, back there in the restaurant, I saw you didn't want me to know you'd seen her."
"Then it must have been my conscience, I guess." Lynn fumbled for and found her hand beneath the rug that covered their knees. "You see——"
"Oh, I see!" Lucinda snapped, and drew her hand away.
"No, you don't——"
"But I do, Lynn: and I'm quite reasonable about it. Only, I presume, I needed this to make me understand the kind of man I'd given my heart to."
"That's unfair. You know perfectly, nine times out of ten the man isn't to blame. Besides——"
"Say, rather, I have wit enough to know the causes underlying every form of human relationship are obscure past comprehending.... It isn't a question with me of blame or excuse, it's just a feeling that's suddenly come over me, a thought come home I've been refusing to think ever since we fell in love, Lynn, that I've committed my life to the care of a man who can never be wholly mine, whom I must always share with his memories of other sweethearts."
"Well, but what aboutmyfeelings? Do you suppose it makes me happy to be all the time reminded that Bellamy Druce——?"
"Please, dear, don't. Forgive me—I couldn't help it. Besides, there's this to be said: if I did love another man before I met you, he was the only one; while you have known so many loves like—like this Marquis girl—not, you know, not quite——"
"Oh, I get you!" Summerlad laughed harshly. "You don't have to be more plain-spoken. And I can't deny you've got some excuse. On the other hand, if you love me, you must love me for what I am, not as I might have been if I'd stuck to pounding the ivories in Winona's leading nickelodeon."
"Pounding the ivories?"
"Playing piano in a moving-picture theatre in a Wisconsin village."
"I thought you told us, one night, you'd never done any work before going into pictures?"
"Wouldn't call that work," Summerlad explained in haste and not too convincingly. "Work is something that puts real money in the old pay envelope. I'd be ashamed to tell you what the nickelodeon handed me Saturday nights. But it was just a sort of a lark for me. The regular orchestra was an old schoolmate of mine and when he went on his vacation I doubled for him, you see. Of course my folks kicked like steers about my taking a common job like that, but I thought it was fun; and watching the screen for music cues put it into my head I could show 'em something if I ever got a chance in pictures...." Here Summerlad was troubled by a dim reminiscence of some statement with which this account, likewise, failed to jibe, and sheered back to his former thread of argument. "Anyway, you're all wrong about Nelly Marquis. She's one that didn't happen, if you've got to know the truth."
"Oh!" Lucinda commented without emotion—"didn't she?"
"Along with a hundred others I get the credit for——"
"I daresay, by Hollywood standards, 'credit' is the right word."
"Oh, hang it all, Linda! youmustunderstand. A man in my line.... Oh, you know how it is.... There'll always be women ready to make fools of themselves over any man who manages to get a certain degree of prominence. And an actor has got to keep in the public eye. Men are just as bad, for that matter; they'll run in circles around an actress, simply because she's on the stage, who can't hold a candle for looks or good disposition to the little girl who lives two doors away on their home street. I met Nelly Marquis shortly after I'd made my first real dent in pictures. She'd come out here to try her luck, after some experience on the legitimate stage. She was so hard hit I used to be afraid to leave the house until I'd sent out scouts to make sure the coast was clear. I've always thought that trouble of hers was more than half responsible for her mania about me."
"What trouble?"
"Dope. She's a hop nut. Coke—cocaine's her big bet. That's what her friend the doctor boggled about telling you—must've been the trouble, that time you found her stretched out: an overdose. I didn't like to tell you because—well, frankly, I didn't want you to think I knew so much about the girl."
"Oh, what a pity!"
"I can't hold myself responsible——"
"But why should you?"
"I mean, I don't believe it was simply disappointment drove her to it.... Hang it! I can't seem to help talking like an ass tonight. What I'm trying to say is this: Nelly took to the dope after I'd met her, but only, I believe, because she got in with the wrong crowd. That's easy in Hollywood. It's hard to tell till you are in with them. And there's an awful lot of that sort of thing goes on more or less quietly out here. They lead one another on. When they've tried everything else they take a chance on the hop to see if there's really anything in it; and then they're gone. They drift into little cliques and have parties, ether parties and that sort of thing, you know, where they choose one by lot to stay off the stuff and watch the others to make sure nobody strangles to death while they lie around him in a circle——"
Lucinda lifted her hands to her ears. "Please, Lynn, please! I don't want to hear any more. It's too dreadful!"
"I'm sorry. I only wanted you to understand why I felt I had to warn you against Nelly. She's unfortunate, God knows, but she's dangerous, too. They all are, once the stuff gets a hold on them, there's nothing they won't do, no lie they won't tell...."
"And this is what goes on in this earthly paradise!"
"It isn't California, it isn't Hollywood, it's human nature, one sort of human nature. You'll find the same thing going on in every big city; read the newspaper accounts of the campaign against the drug traffic. Only, out here we know more about it, because the studios make it more or less one big village, and it's hard to keep anything quiet, talk will get about...."
They were drawing near the cross-road that led to Summerlad's bungalow. He bent forward and spoke to the driver, and the car held on toward Hollywood.
"I'm taking you home first, Linda. My foot isn't troubling me now to speak of, and.... Well: talking about how rapidly gossip spreads made me think it would be better you shouldn't be seen driving up to my place with me at this time of night."
With a stabbing pain of loneliness and penitence, Lucinda perceived that she had only Lynn's love and consideration to rely upon for salvation from the gins and pitfalls of this outré world in which she lived, self-outlawed from her kind. No one else cared, not another soul in all Los Angeles would lift a hand in her behalf save at the dictates of self-interest.
And in a sudden passion she turned and clung to him again, begging forgiveness for her suspicions and complaints. And Summerlad soothed her, patting gently the head that rested on his shoulder, smiling over it confidentially at the smiling midnight moon.
Lucinda dated from that Saturday the dawn of a fortnight when everything went wrong for her with such regularity that, in the end, the burden of its crosses grew too sore, the woman had been something more than merely mortal whose stores of fortitude and forbearance had not run low.
Naturally she blamed Bellamy....
In a way he asked for this, giving her too little chance to forget that the sunlight had been kind before his shadow fell again athwart her eyes. Now when skies were overcast and the wind had a tooth, Bel figured in the picture as a sort of stormy petrel, forever to be seen wheeling somewhere within the vague of the horizon.
Fare where she would on diversion bent, Lucinda seemed fated always to encounter Bel, and too often in the company of the Marquis girl; while at the studio it didn't matter much which way she turned, she could hardly avoid the sight of her husband buzzing about on the business of his new enterprise, and apparently finding it all great fun.
To one who recalled the dilettante Bellamy of New York days, there was matter enough for amazement in the gusto he had lately discovered for work that nothing required him to do, in the amount of real energy, enterprise and executive ability which he was contributing to this new amusement. For Lucinda refused to take seriously his infatuation with the motion-picture business; it wasn't real, she insisted to herself, it wouldn't last, he was putting it on just to plague her....
None the less he went to work with a will, and took little more than a week to assemble a producing unit, engage a company of players, and cause camera-work to be begun under the direction of one who, observed occasionally and from a distance, conveyed a refreshing impression of quiet authority.
Inasmuch as special sets could hardly have been designed and erected on such short notice, most of the company's first activities were staged away from the studio, "on location," and Lucinda knew nothing of them save through hearsay. Gossip had it, however, that Bellamy was employing no star to carry his initial production, but was rather making a "special"—the term which the motion-picture trade reads to mean a picture basing its claims solely on the strength of its story as interpreted by a well-balanced cast. Glimpses of Nelly Marquis in make-up, now and then, warranted the assumption that she had been given a part in the picture.
But their paths seldom crossed, notwithstanding that they were using the same studio, and when it did the young woman somehow always happened to be possessed by an abstraction too profound to permit of her seeing Lucinda.
Bel, on the other hand, was already ready with a smile and a friendly hail—"The top of the morning to you, Miss Lee! 'Tis hopeful I am the work, God bless it! is doing well"—or some similar absurdity; but never a hint that there had ever been any terms between them other than the most formal.
Gratitude for this much consideration rendered it no more easy to respond in the same spirit. Lucinda had never known anything more baffling than the absence of any justifiable grounds for objecting to Bel's presence in the studio. For if it were her privilege to seek to become a star of the cinema, it was equally his to launch out as a producer....
The daily disappointment that waited on efforts to find other quarters aggravated her sense of hardship. Lucinda learned to listen impatiently for the expressions of despair which unfailingly wound up Lontaine's reports: "If we've got to clear out of this—I don't know, Linda—I'm afraid it means either buy or build." She began to be afraid it did. Studio accommodations were reported never to have been so much in demand on the Coast. Every available stage was doing double duty, two companies crowding their activities wherever possible into a space formerly reserved for one. Neither knew they any rest by night, when belated souls would see the great roofs of glass livid with the incandescence of Cooper-Hewitt tubes, burning like vast green opals against the dense blue-black of early morning skies.
The tidal wave of the cinema craze that in those years swept the world was rearing its golden crest to its giddiest height; and the people of the studios rode in glee where the aureate spindrift blew, reckless of the law that every wave that lifts must fall, too drunk with money, altitude and speed to know that already, beneath their very feet, the crest was curving in upon itself, the fanged rocks were waiting.
Zinn, wily campaigner that he was by instinct and training, shrewd reader of signs and portents illegible to the general, foresaw the coming débâcle and—when he had made every provision against being overwhelmed in it—assumed in private the prophet's mantle.
"Been a good game while it lasted," he observed to Lucinda one day, "but it's on its way now, all right. I was reading a piece in the paper last night, all about how California seen three big booms, that time when they discovered gold, next a real estate speculation craze, and now the movin'-pictures. The first two blew up, same as this will before long. I guess I and you are lucky fools to of got a look in while the going was good."
"Lucky?" Lucinda questioned dubiously.
A grin of indescribable irony glimmered on the swarthy, shrewd features. "Something to tell the kiddies about when they gather around your knee, Miss Lee: 'What Grandma done and seen in the wild old days in Hollywood.'"
"I don't know about that. And what makes you think times will ever be different?"
"Take it from me, little lady, things can't hold up much longer the way they been in pictures. Nobody with a brain in his bean would look for it. Trouble is, nobody like that would take the fillum business serious when it was learning to walk. Now it's wearing long pants and driving its own machine, it's no use expecting it to listen to what brains got to tell it. All the same, if it don't—goodnight!
"Ah, I see what's going on all the time! Audiences sick of punk pictures and putting up a howl for better, producers combing the world for authors, artists, dramatists, all the people what have got the stuff pictures need to make 'em good—and the old guard back here dug in and ready to die before they'll surrender the trenches to anybody that knows more'n they do. And why wouldn't they? It's meat and drink and gasoline to them to keep things going like they are. Where'd be the sense in them giving the glad hand to the guy who's got it in him to do them out of a nice soft job?
"Take authors, now. We're having a big run on authors just't present. The producer figures anybody who's got brains enough to write a novel that won't wobble if a person gives it a hard look, ought to have brains enough to do as good with a picture story. But does he get a chanst? Don't make me laugh. The poor simps come out here on every train with their eyes shining, full of joy and pep on account of what the producers promised they was going to let 'em do in pictures. And every train takes 'em back. What's the answer?
"The answer gen'ly's a bird in ridin'-breeches and a property high-brow, calls himself director-general or something gaudy like that—same bird's been making the pictures the producers want to make better. He gives Friend Author the glad smile and a hard look and starts right in telling him all what he can't do in pictures. Author wants to know how come. 'Because I say you can't, and I know everything they is to know about pictures.' Author asks producer what about it. Producer says, says he: 'If my director-general says you can't, stands to reason you can't. Say: how do you get this way? I brought you out here to learn you to make pictures, not for you to learn my director-general.' Author sees the point and fades back East. Director-general tells producer: 'Too bad about that poor fish, but he didn't savvy the picture angle, and I couldn't make him see it nohow.'
"Or take another case. Producer buys a big story, like, now...."
"Paradise Lost," Lucinda suggested mischievously.
"Who wrote it?"
"John Milton."
"Never heard of him. Make a good picture?"
"I'm afraid it would be difficult. But it's a big story."
"All right. Producer hands this, now,Paradise Lostto his scenario editor. She reads it, turns pale around the gills, sends out an emergency call for the director-general, says to him, says she: 'Listen, sweetheart, this'll be a knock-out if it ever gets on the screen the way it's wrote. The guy what wrote this knew pictures before they was invented.' Director-general says: 'Gosh! that won't never do, or first thing you know we'll have this boob Milton on the lot telling us our business. Stew up the continuity to suit yourself, pet, and leave the rest to me.' Fin'lyParadise Lostgets on the screen as 'A Cyril de Menthe Production entitled Sex Against Sex, by Queenie Hoozis, featuring Hope Honeybunch with bathroom fixtures by Joseph Urban and telephones hidden by Sherlock Holmes, suggested by a magazine story by J. Milton.' If it gets by, Queenie and Cyril cop the credit. If it falls down they tell the producer they done their best, but he'd ought to of known better, it ain't no use trying to make pictures only from stories framed special for the screen by somebody who cut their eye-teeth on a strip of celluloid—like Queenie. Every time anything like that happens the fillum business takes a long stride forward—towards the end of its rope."
"Still, I don't quite see——"
"It comes down to this, Miss Lee: nothing short of an earthquake's ever going to jar the Queenies and Cyrils loose from their jobs and give brains a chanst to horn in."
"But if you see all this so clearly, Mr. Zinn, why don't you start the indicated reforms yourself?"
"Who, me? Naw, naw, little lady; quit your kidding. I don't know enough. Me try to sit in with sure-enough brains? Say! I seen the way you looked when I wanted to know who wroteParadise Lost. No: Isadore Zinn belongs in with the rest of the bunch that's been good enough up to about now but's got to be junked before pictures will get a chanst to be any better'n they ought to be. Oh, I ain't got no kick coming; I've made mine and put it away where nothing real mean's ever going to happen to it; and when the sky falls on Hollywood it'll find me some other place, playing pinochle and absolutely innocent of the entire fillum business."
"You don't seriously believe that will ever happen."
"It'll happen just as quick's Wall Street wakes up to the way it's been gypped—and it's moaning and tossing in its sleep right now. Wall Street put up its good money because pictures made half-way on the level earned more and earned it quicker'n any other investment they could find. Wall Street didn't worry none about what graft was being gotten away with as long's they thought they was going to get their money back and a hundred per cent. profit every so often. But that was yesterday, when audiences would shell out cheerful and sit through anything because pictures moved. Today they're still lining up at the box-office, but only because they can't believe the day won't never come when they'll maybe see something worth their time and coin. Tomorrow they'll be saying, 'Show me!' before they'll dig up as much's a thin dime. And that's when Wall Street's due to tumble to it, they's only one way for it to save its investments in the fillum game, and that is take hold of it and run it like a honest-to-goodness business. And when that happens, when the fancy salaries get pared down to the quick, and the good graft's all gone, and there ain't no way no more for the assistant property-man to charge the upkeep of his lady-friend's limousine to overhead, and the director what wants money to build ancient Rome with and burn it down for a showy interlude to a society comedy will only get the hearty laugh—why, along about that time a terrible lot of people are going to find out California's a cold, hard place, spite of the climate and all, and a heap of highly hand-painted automobiles is going to be dumped on the used-car market in Los Angeles."
Some disturbing mental echo of this screed one day inspired Lucinda to devote several painful hours to totting up her bank account, a duty which she had been religiously forgetting for months, and whose performance brought to light the fact that she had already given Harry Lontaine cheques to his order in the sum of two-hundred and ten thousand dollars, to be cashed by him and deposited to the credit of Linda Lee Inc.
If she felt slightly dashed by this discovery, it was less because of the money involved—for she had from the first been prepared to pay more dearly for her whistle than Lontaine had declared it would cost—than because the end was not yet, the first picture remained unfinished, many heavy payments on account of it were still to be met, and her private extravagances, added to the financing of Linda Lee Inc., had left little worth mentioning of the money which Harford Willis, at her requisition, had paid into her drawing account in New York.
It was now necessary to write Willis and ask him to find her more money; and that involved, as a matter of simple courtesy to that old friend and a devoted steward of her interests, explanations which she would much rather not make just yet.
But her only other course was to consult Lontaine in the faint hope that out of the sums entrusted to him there might be enough left in the company's treasury to see it through the present production. And this she hesitated to do because of an intuitive feeling that he would take this as directly challenging his competency to handle her money if not his good faith. Lontaine was such a sensitive soul.... However, he spared her the pain of deciding to do nothing, for the next time they met he blandly advised Lucinda that the company could do with another twenty thousand as soon as she could find time to draw the cheque; and on learning that it would have to wait a few days, or until she could hear from Willis, seemed considerably discountenanced; or else fancy misled her.