placidly, and lighted the cigar he had been holding. "What's he mean--'
sue the company'?"
"He means sue the company," Martinson retorted grimly. "That clause in
the contract where we agree to produce his stories in a manner befitting
the quality and fame of these several stories in fiction; he's got
grounds for action there, and he's going to make the most of it. He's
sore, anyway. Some one's been telling him he practically made us a
present of his stuff."
"Hell!" said Luck. "Why didn't you say so?"
"Why didn't you say that you were turning that stuff into farce-comedy?"
Martinson came back sharply. "I could have told you it wouldn't get by. I
knew Brown wouldn't stand for anything like that; and I knew he could put
the gaff into us on that 'manner befitting' clause."
"It's a wonder you wouldn't have jarred loose from some of that wisdom,"
Luck observed tartly. "You never gave me any dope at all on this Bently
Brown person. You handed me the junk he stung you on--and believe me, as
drama he'd have stung you with it as a present!--you handed it to me to
film. I made the most of it."
"You made a mess of it," Martinson corrected peevishly.
"You laughed," Luck pointed out laconically. Then his eyes twinkled
suddenly. "'Laugh and the world laughs with you,'" he quoted shamelessly,
and took a long, satisfying suck at his cigar.
"The world won't step up and pay damages to Bently Brown," Martinson
reminded him, "if that picture is released as it stands. How many have
you made, so far?"
"I'm finishing the third; getting funnier, too, as they go along."
"You've got to cut out that funny business. You'll have to retake this
whole thing, Luck; make it straight drama. We can't afford a lawsuit,
these hard times--and injunctions tying up the releases, and damages to
pay when the thing's thrashed out in court. You'll have to retake this
whole picture. Nice bunch of useless expense, I must say, when I've
been chasing nickels off the expense account of this company and
sitting up nights nursing profits! We'll have to cut salaries now, to
break even on this fluke. I've left the payroll alone so far. That's
the worst of a break like this. The whole company has got to pay for
every blunder from now on."
Luck's eyes hardened while he listened. He did not call his work a
blunder, and the charge did not sit well coming from another.
"Buy off Bently Brown," he advised crisply. "Offer him a new contract,
naming this stuff as comedy. Advertise them as the famous comedies of
Bently Brown, the well-known author. Show him some good publicity dope
along that line. Give him the credit of making the stories live ones.
This series will be a money-maker, and a big one, if ever they reach the
screen. You're old enough in the business to know that, Mart. You saw how
this film hit the bunch, and you know what it takes to rouse any
enthusiasm in the projection room. And take it from me, Mart--this is
straight!--that's the only way in God's world to make that series take
hold at all. As drama the stuff is hopeless. Absolutely hopeless. It's
only by giving it the twist I gave it that it will get over. You do that,
Mart. You kid this Bently Brown into being featured as the humorist of
the age, and pay him a little something for swallowing his disappointment
as a dramatic author. I'll go ahead with my boys, and we'll deliver the
goods. You do that, and you'll be setting up nights counting profits
instead of nursing them!"
Martinson began to stir up the litter on his desk,--another bad-weather
sign. "I can't waste time talking nonsense," he snapped. "I've got plenty
to do without that. That stuff has got to be retaken; every foot of it,
if you've gone on burlesquing the action. I happen to know that Brown
wouldn't consider such a compromise. You've made a bad break, and I
believe you made the first one when you brought that bunch of cowboys
back with you. If they can do straight dramatic acting, all right; if
not, you'd better let them out and start over with professionals."
For a peaceable man, Martinson was angry. He had taken some trouble in
smoothing down the ruffled temper of Bently Brown, even before viewing
the trial run of the picture. Martinson hated disputes as a cat hates to
walk in fresh-fallen snow, and the parting tirade of Bently Brown had
affected him unpleasantly.
For a full two minutes Luck smoked and did not speak, and as he had done
once before, Martinson repented his harshness when it was too late.
"Personally, your version struck me as awfully funny," he began
placatingly.
"Who gives a cuss how it struck you personally?" Luck stood up with
unexpected haste. "You trim and truckle to every one that comes along
with a gold brick, and that's why you have to sit up nights to nurse the
profits. If you had a little stiffening in your back, the profits would
show up better. You paid good money for this bunch of rot, and turned it
over to me to whip into a profitable investment. You can make the rounds
of the studio and get a vote on whether I've done it or not. Put it up to
your Public; they'll mighty soon let you know whether the film's a
money-getter. If it is, your business as general manager and president of
the Acme Film Company is to get Bently Brown in line for the production
to go on. A clause such as you mention in the agreement with him shows a
bigger blunder on your part than anything I've done or ever will do. If
you'd had as much sense as Ted, you'd have kept that clause out. If you'd
had half as much brains as the comedy burro out in the corral you'd never
have loaded up with that stuff, anyway; you'd have seen at a glance that
it was rotten.
"Now, I've shown what I can do with those stories. I've taken your bad
bargain and put it into a money-making shape. As to the break I made in
getting those boys out here, you'll have to show me--that's all. They
seem, to have made good all right, judging from the way that film took
with the crowd. And if you ask my opinion as a director, they beat any
near-professional on the Acme pay roll. My work, and their work, goes
right along as it has started--or it stops. If you want those stories
worked up in a lot of darned, sickly, slush melodrama, you can set some
simp at it that don't know any better." Luck stopped and shut his teeth
together against some personal remarks that he would later feel ashamed
of having uttered. He turned to the door, swallowed hard, and forced
himself to a dignified calm before he spoke again.
"You know my phone number, Mart. By seven in the morning I'll expect to
hear from you. You can tell me then whether I'm to go ahead with these
stories the way I've started, or whether to pull out of the Company
altogether. One or the other. I'll want to know in the morning." Then
he went out.
"Dammit, who's running this company--you or I?" Martinson called
after him heatedly. But Luck was already standing on the steps and
hoisting his umbrella against the drizzle, and he did not give any
sign that he heard.
CHAPTER EIGHT
"THERE'S GOT TO BE A LINE DRAWED SOMEWHERES"
By seven o'clock in the morning,--since that was his ultimatum,--Luck
was standing in his bare feet and pajamas, acrimoniously arguing with
Martinson over the telephone. Usually he was up at six, but he was a
stubborn young man, and the day promised much rainfall, anyway. He
would have preferred sunshine; the stand he meant to take would have
had more weight in working weather. But since he could not prevent the
morning from being a rainy one, he permitted more determination to slip
into his tones.
Martinson had spent an unpleasant evening with Bently Brown, or so he
declared. He had called up several stockholders of the Acme, and had
talked the matter over with them, and--
"Well, cut the preamble, Mart," snapped Luck, trying to warm one foot by
rubbing it with the other one. "Do I go on with the work, or don't I?"
"From the looks of the weather--" Mart began to temporize.
"Weather cuts no figure with this matter. You know what I mean. What's
the decision?" Luck scowled at the pretty girl on his wall calendar, and
began to rub his right foot with the left and to curse the janitor with
that part of his brain not occupied with the conversation.
"Well, listen. You come out to the office, after awhile, and we'll go
into this matter calmly," begged Martinson. "No use in letting that
temper of yours run away with you, Luck. You know we all--"
"What did Bently Brown say? Did you put the proposition up to him as I
suggested?"
"Luck, you know I told you Brown wouldn't consider--"
"Say, Mart, get all those rambling words out of your system, and then
call me up and tell me what I want to know!" And Luck hung up the
receiver and went shivering back to bed. From the things he said to
himself, he was letting that temper of his run away with him in spite of
Martinson's warning.
He had just ceased having spasms of shivering, and had found his warm
nest of the night, and was feeling glad that it was raining so that he
could stay in bed as long as he liked, when the phone jingled shrilly
again. Had he been certain that it was Martinson, Luck would have lain
there and let it ring itself tired. But there is always the doubt when a
telephone bell calls peremptorily. He waited sulkily until the girl at
the switchboard in the office below settled down to prolong the siege.
Luck knew that girl would never quit now that she was sure he was in. He
crawled out again, this time dragging the bedspread with him for drapery.
"H'l-lo!" There was no compromise in his voice, which was guttural.
"Luck? This is Martinson. You are to retake all of the Bently Brown
pictures which you have made so far, under the personal supervision of
Bently Brown himself, who will pass upon all film before accepted by the
company. This is final."
"Martinson? This is Luck. You and Bently Brown and the Acme Film Company
can go where the heat's never turned off. This is final."
Whereupon Luck slammed the receiver into its brackets, trailed over to a
table and gleaned "the makings" from among the litter of papers,
programs, "stills," and letters, and rolled himself a much-needed smoke.
He was sorry chiefly because he had been compelled to use such mild
language over the telephone. It would be almost worth a trip to the
office just to tell Martinson without stint what he thought of him and
all his works.
He crawled back into bed and smoked his cigarette with due regard for the
bedclothes, and wondered what kind of a fool they took him for if they
imagined for one minute that he would produce so much as a sub-title
under the personal supervision of Bently Brown.
After awhile it occurred to him that, unless he relented from his final
statement to Martinson, he was a young man out of a job, but that did not
worry him much. Of course, if he left the Acme Company, he would have to
look around for an opening somewhere else, where he could take his Happy
Family and maybe produce....
Right there Luck got up and unlocked his trunk, which was also his chest
of treasures, and found the carbon copy of his range scenario. He had
not named it yet. In thinking of it and in talking about it with the
boys he had been content to call it his Big Picture. If he could place
himself and his Big Picture and his boys with some company that would
appreciate the value of the combination, his rupture with the Acme
Company would be simply a bit of good luck. While he huddled close to
the radiator that was beginning to hiss and rumble encouragingly, he
glanced rapidly over the meagerly described scenes which were to his
imagination so full of color.
"Pam. bleak mesa--snow--cattle drifting before wind. Dale and Johnny dis.
riding to foreground. Reg. cold--horses leg-weary--boys all in--"
To Luck, sitting there in his pajamas as close as he could get to a
slow-warming steam radiator, those curtailed sentences projected his
mental self into a land of cold and snow and biting wind, where the
cattle drifted dismally before the storm. Andy Green and Miguel Rapponi
were riding slowly toward him on shuffling horses as bone-weary as their
masters. Snow was packed in the wrinkles of the boys' clothing. Snow was
packed in the manes and tails of the horses that moved with their heads
drooping in utter dejection. "Boys all in," said the script laconically.
Luck, staring at the little thread of escaping steam from the radiator
valve, saw Andy and the Native Son drooping in the saddles, swaying
stiffly with the movements of their mounts. He saw them to the last
little detail,--to the drift of snow on their hatbrims and the tiny
icicles clinging to the high collars of their sourdough coats, where
their breath had frozen.
If he could get a company to let him put that on, he would not care, he
told himself, if he never made another picture in his life. If he could
get a company to send him and the boys where that stuff could be found--
Well, it was only eight o'clock in the morning, a rainy morning at that,
when all good movie people would lie late in bed for the pure luxury of
taking their ease. But Luck, besides acting upon strong convictions and
then paying the price without whimpering, never let an impulse grow stale
from want of use. He reached for the fat telephone directory and searched
out the numbers of those motion-picture companies which he did not
remember readily. Then, beginning at the first number on his hastily
compiled list, he woke five different managers out of their precious
eight-o'clock sleep to answer his questions.
Whatever they may have thought of Luck Lindsay just then, they replied
politely, and did not tell him offhand that there was no possible opening
for him in their companies. Three of them made appointments with him at
their offices. One promised to call him up just as soon as he "had a line
on anything." One said that, with the rainy weather coming on, they were
cutting down to straight studio stuff, but that he would keep Luck in
mind if anything turned up.
Then I suppose the whole five called him names behind his back,
figuratively speaking, for being such an early riser on such a day. Not
one of them asked him any questions about his reasons for leaving the
Acme; reasons, in the motion-picture business, are generally invented
upon demand and have but a fictitious value at best. And since it is
never a matter of surprise when any director or any member of any company
decides to try a new field, it would seem that change is one of the most
unchanging features of the business.
Luck had no qualms of conscience, either for his treatment of Martinson
and his overtures, or for his disturbances of five other perfectly
inoffensive movie managers. He dressed with mechanical precision and with
his mind shuttling back and forth from his Big Picture to the
possibilities of his next position. He folded his scenario and placed it
in a long envelope, hunted until he found his rubbers, took his raincoat
over his arm and his umbrella in his hand, and went blithely to the
elevator. It was too stormy for his machine, so he caught a street car
and went straight to the bungalow where the Happy Family were still
snoring at peace with the world and each other.
Still Luck had no qualms of conscience. He lingered in the kitchen just
long enough to say howdy to Rosemary Green who was anxiously watching a
new and much admired coffee percolator "to see if it were going to perk,"
she told him gravely. He assured Rosemary that he had come all the way
out there in the hope of being invited to breakfast. Then he went into a
sleep-charged atmosphere and gave a real, old-time range yell.
"Why, I saw that peaked little person with Mr. Martinson," Mrs. Andy
remarked slightingly at the breakfast table. "Was that Bently Brown?
And he has the nerve to want to stand around and boss you--oh, find, me
an umbrella, somebody! I shall choke if I can't go and tell him to his
silly, pink face what a conceited little idiot he is!" (You will see
why it was that Rosemary Green had been adopted without question as a
member of the Happy Family.) "I hope you told him straight out, Luck
Lindsay, that these boys would simply tear him limb from limb if he
ever dared to butt in on your work. Why, it's you that made the picture
fit to look at!"
Luck let his eyes thank her for her loyalty, and held out his empty cup
for more coffee. "I came out," he drawled quietly, "to find out what you
fellows are going to do about it. Of course, they'll get somebody else to
go ahead with the stuff, and you boys can stay with it--"
"Well, say! Did you come away out here in the rain to insult us fellers?"
Big Medicine roared suddenly from the foot of the table. "I'll take a lot
from you, but by cripes they's got to be a line drawed somewheres!"
"You bet. And right there's where we draw it, Luck," spoke up the dried
little man who seldom spoke at the table, but concentrated his attention
upon the joy of eating what Mrs. Andy set before him. "I come out here
to work for you. That peters out, by gorry I'll go back to chufferin a
baggage truck in Sioux, North Dakoty. Kin I have a drop more coffee,
Mrs. Green?"
While Rosemary proudly brought her new percolator in from the kitchen and
refilled his cup, Luck Lindsay sat and endured the greatest
tongue-lashing of his life. Furthermore, he seemed to enjoy the chorus of
reproaches and threats and recriminations. He chuckled over the eloquence
of Andy Green, and he grinned at the belligerence of Pink and the
melancholy of Happy Jack.
"I don't guess you're crazy to work under Bently Brown," he finally
managed to slide into the uproar. "Do I get you as meaning to stick with
me--wherever I go?"
"You get us that way or you get licked," Weary, the mild-tempered one,
stated flatly. "You can fire us and send us home, but you can't walk off
and leave us with the Acme, 'cause we won't stay."
That was what Luck had ridden twelve cold, rainy miles to hear the Happy
Family declare. He had expected them to take that stand, but it was good
to hear it spoken in just that tone of finality. He stacked his cup and
saucer in his plate, laid his knife and fork across them in the old range
style, and began to roll a cigarette,--smoking at the table being another
comfortable little bad habit which Rosemary Green wisely and smilingly
permitted.
"That being the case," he began cheerfully, "you boys had best go over
with me now and give in your two weeks' notice. I'm director of our
company till I quit--see? I'll arrange for your transportation home--"
"Aw, gwan! Who said we was goin' home?" wailed Happy Jack distressfully.
"Now, listen! You're entitled to your transportation money. That doesn't
mean you'll have to use it for that purpose--sabe? It's coming to you,
and you get it. There's a week's salary due all around, too, besides the
two weeks you'll get by giving notice. No use passing up any bets like
that. So let's go, boys. I've got an appointment at one o'clock, and I
may as well wipe the Acme slate clean this forenoon, so I can talk
business without any come-back from Mart, or any tag ends to pick up.
Grab your slickers and let's move."
That was a busy day for Luck Lindsay, in spite of the fact that it was a
stormy one. His interview with Mart, which he endured mostly for the sake
of the Happy Family, developed into a quarrel which severed beyond
mending his connection with the Acme.
It was noon when he reached his hotel, and his wrath had not cooled with
the trip into town. There were two 'phone calls in his mail, he
discovered, and one bore an urgent request that he call Hollywood
something-or-other the moment he returned. This was from the Great
Western Film Company, and Luck's eyes brightened while he read it. He
went straight to his room and called up the Great Western.
Presently he found himself speaking to the great Dewitt himself, and his
blood was racing with the possibilities of the interview. Dewitt had
heard that Luck was leaving the Acme--extras may be depended upon for
carrying gossip from one studio to another,--and was wasting no time in
offering him a position. His Western director, Robert Grant Burns whom
Luck knew well, had been carried to the hospital with typhoid fever which
he had contracted while out with his company in what is known as Nigger
Sloughs,--a locality more picturesque than healthful. Dewitt feared that
it was going to be a long illness at the very best. Would Luck consider
taking the company and going on with the big five-reel feature which
Burns had just begun? Dewitt was prepared to offer special inducements
and to make the position a permanent one. He would give Burns a dramatic
company to produce features at the studio, he said, and would give Luck
the privilege of choosing his own scenarios and producing them in his own
way. Could Luck arrange to meet Dewitt at four that afternoon?
Luck could, by cancelling his appointment with a smaller and less
important company, which he did promptly and with no compunctions
whatever. He did more than that; he postponed the other two appointments,
knowing in his heart that his chances would not be lessened thereby.
After that he built a castle or two while he waited for the appointment.
The Great Western Company had been a step higher than he had hoped to
reach. Robert Grant Burns he had considered a fixture with the company.
It had never entered his mind that he might possibly land within the
Great Western's high concrete wall,--and that other wall which was higher
and had fewer gates, and which was invisible withal. That the great
Dewitt himself should seek Luck out was just a bit staggering. He wanted
to go out and tell the bunch about it, but he decided to wait until
everything was settled. Most of all he wanted the Acme to know that
Dewitt wanted him; that would be a real slap in the face of Mart's
judgment, a vindication of Luck's abilities as a director.
What Luck did was to telephone the hospital and learn all he could about
Burns' condition. He was genuinely sorry that Burns was sick, even though
he was mightily proud of being chosen as Burns' successor. He even found
himself thinking more about Burns, after the first inner excitement wore
itself out, than about himself. Burns was a good old scout. Luck hated to
think of him lying helpless in the grip of typhoid. So it was with mixed
emotions that he went to see Dewitt.
Dewitt wanted Luck--wanted him badly. He was frank enough to let Luck see
how much he wanted him. He even told Luck that, all things being equal,
he considered Luck a better Western director than was Robert Grant Burns,
in spite of the fact that Burns had scored a big success with his _Jean,
of the Lazy A_ serial. You cannot wonder that Luck's spirits rose to
buoyancy when he heard that. Also, Dewitt named a salary bigger than Luck
had ever received in his life, and nearly double what the Acme had paid
him. Luck spoke of his Big Picture, and when he outlined it briefly,
Dewitt did not say that it seemed to lack action.
Dewitt had watched Luck with his keen blue eyes, and had observed that
Luck owned that priceless element of success, which is enthusiasm for his
work. Dewitt had listened, and had told Luck that he would like to see
the Big Picture go on the screen, and that he would be willing to pay him
for the scenario and let him make it where and how he pleased. He even
volunteered to try and persuade Jean Douglas, of _Lazy A_ fame, to come
back and play the leading woman's part.
"That's one thing that has been bothering me a little," Luck owned
gratefully. "Of course I considered her absolutely out of reach. But with
her for my leading woman, and the boys holding up the range end as
they're capable of doing--"
Dewitt gave him a quick look. "Yes, my boys are able to do that," he said
distinctly. "They have been well trained in Western dramatic work."
Luck braced himself. "When I mentioned the boys," he said, "I meant
my boys that I brought from the Flying U outfit, up in Montana. They
go with me."