At a late hour that afternoon the war council of the incorporators of
Linda Lee Inc. stalled on dead centre.
Prolonged discussion had failed to suggest any means of salvaging the
argosy of their fortunes from speedy foundering. No sort of success had
rewarded the quest of a navigator at once competent and free to take
command of the venture which Nolan had bungled and abandoned; so far as
could be determined, there was none such at liberty. And when Lucinda
had once more iterated her unshakable refusal to countenance overtures
looking toward the reinstatement of Nolan, silence spellbound the four
gathered together in that tiny, ill-furnished room which served Lontaine
as an office, the silence of spiritual discouragement and mental
enervation.
Fanny alone seemed quick with an elfin fire which enabled her to skim
lightly the surface of that slough of despond in which the others were
one and all so sadly bogged. Perched on the writing-bed of Lontaine's
war-worn desk, she sat swinging pretty legs in the space between the
pedestals, and smoking a cigarette, her abstracted but amused gaze
roving out through the single window, the most elusive and illegible of
smiles flickering about her paint-smeared lips.
Against an end of the desk leaned Iturbide--bidden to the conference
because of his wide and intimate knowledge of directors--with hands
plunged deep into trouser pockets, his oval face of olive tint wearing
that sullen cast which in the Latin is so often indicative of nothing
worse than simple thoughtfulness.
In a common chair tilted back against the opposite wall Lontaine sat
absently worrying his scrubby moustache with an exquisitely manicured
thumb and forefinger. His look, too, was sullen, but with the sullenness
of fears aggravated by patience worn thin and threadbare. He had not
said or suggested as much by syllable or glance, yet Lucinda felt that
he held her solely responsible for the break with Nolan, and was weary
of the whole business to boot, and heartily wished himself out of it.
But she regarded him without sympathy if with little resentment: his
suggestion and his insistence had first wrung from her a reluctant
consent to try her luck in pictures, his mismanagement alone (who had
plighted such brave work of his superior intelligence!) had been
responsible for the engagement of Nolan; now it was for him to find some
way out for them all.
But the most curious of her impressions concerning Lontaine was one that
seemed absurdly unfair, yet one from which she could by no means divorce
her imagination, a feeling at once unfixable and insistent, that at
heart Lontaine didn't really care, that he was contemplating quite
callously the threatened wreck of his fair hopes and fine promises, was
more concerned with enigmatic premonitions of a nature wholly personal
and selfish.
Lucinda herself occupied the desk-chair of the president. Profound
weariness temporarily held her faculties in suspense. Her least formless
thoughts were of the evening to come, when she and the Lontaines were to
dine with Summerlad in Beverly Hills. She was deciding to be beforehand
with Harry and Fanny, that she might have a little time alone with Lynn.
Relentless association of ideas stirred up thoughts of Bel, speculations
as to whether he had heard as yet, and what he had said, or what he
would say and think when he did hear. Nothing would please him more than
to see her pretensions collapse like a house of cards. Well ... her
temper grew hard with defiance ... he would be disappointed if he
counted on her heart faltering at this juncture. No matter how black the
present outlook, she would go through to the end, be it sweet or as
gall, and bow to the verdict of the public only, never to the blind
bludgeonings of mischance.
For a little she pondered in mild puzzlement the riddle of Bel's
relations with Nelly Marquis, recalling a scene that recently had been
enacted by those two without their knowledge that she was near. A few
nights since (last Tuesday, in fact; easy to date, because Lynn had
attended the boxing-matches at Vernon, as he did every Tuesday, leaving
Lucinda with an evening empty) she had been sitting alone on the veranda
of the Hollywood, in a chair near the entrance but at the same time well
back in the shadows, when Bel brought Nelly home at an hour indicating a
late and leisurely dinner.
His car had swung up the drive to stop at the main entrance to the
hotel, but neither Bel nor the girl made any move to alight. Unconscious
of or else indifferent to observation, they had remained in the rear
seat, pursuing a tense discussion, its nature unknown since only the
confused rumour of their voices reached the ears of the onlooker; Bel
forcing the argument, advocating Heaven-knew-what with a great deal of
intensity, not much like his insouciance of everyday, while the girl, on
her part, treated all his recommendations and prayers with an air of
trifling, semi-coquettish, faintly derisive. But Bel's attitude wasn't
in the least loverlike, more that of a man discharging a duty which he
found distasteful but still couldn't bring himself to neglect, something
that had to be attended to no matter how thankless....
The dispute continued for several minutes without appearing to get
anywhere; and presently Bel leaned forward and spoke to his chauffeur
round the side of the tonneau wind-shield, whereupon the car rolled out
into the street and stopped again at the curb. Then Bel got down and
helped Nelly out, and the two of them sauntered up and down the
sidewalk, now visible, now hidden by the fretted screen of subtropical
growths, but always with their heads close together, always with Bel
maintaining his air of almost passionate seriousness, and always with
the girl lightly obstinate and teasing.
In odd contradiction to this impression of her, Lucinda set the memory
of Nelly's face viewed at close quarters when, having parted with
Bellamy, she hurried up the drive and into the hotel, passing without
noticing Lucinda. Then the illumination from the lobby, escaping through
the front door, had shown her countenance printed with the look of a
damned soul hunted to its last gasp, a look to haunt one's dream with a
sense of terror abject and unabated, of savage passions unappeased and
unappeasable.
What all this had meant, Lucinda couldn't guess. Of one thing only she
felt fairly confident: it hadn't been a lover's quarrel.
Curious that one's mind should revert to that memory, at a time when it
ought by rights to be exclusively occupied with one's own, peculiar, and
never more critical embarrassments....
Altogether without warning Lucinda found herself staring into the
homely, greasy grin of Isadore Zinn.
The owner of the studios, without troubling to knock, had opened the
door far enough to permit the introduction of his head and nothing more
of his person. For a moment or two he held this posture playfully,
looking from one to another of the unhappy four with a leer at once
inquisitive, knowing, and hideous. Then he thrust the door wide open,
came in, and shut it behind him.
"Hello, people!" he saluted affably. "How you making out?"
"Ah, that good Mr. Zinn!" Fanny airily replied. "If you really must
know, we're not."
Iturbide stirred and shook his head, smiling gravely. "We talk and talk
all day, Mr. Zinn," he said gently, "but we don't get some place. You
want to know why? Because there is no place for us to get."
"It's an impasse," Lontaine stated. Then remarking Zinn's nonplussed
stare, he interpreted: "We're all in a blind alley, you know."
"Bet your life I know you are," Zinn agreed vigorously. "That's what I
butted in to see you about. If I ain't in the way...." The four made
reassuring noises. "I was thinking maybe they was something I might do
to help out."
"I'm afraid not, Mr. Zinn, thank you," Lucinda replied with regretful
gratitude. "That is, unless you can find us a director."
"Funny. That's just what I was going to suggest." The instant stir of
animation encouraged him to grin more abominably than ever. "Lay my
hands on the very man you want inside five minutes; only they's one
catch to it--he's under contract to somebody else."
"Then I don't quite see--" Lucinda began. But Lontaine interrupted: "You
mean we can buy the fellow's contract, what?"
Zinn wagged his head. "Not a chanst," he uttered in lugubrious
accents--"not a chanst. I wouldn't sell that boy's contract for no
amount of money you'd want to name. Best little comer't ever breathed
hard into a megaphone, and I got him so's he'll eat out of my hand right
now, and I'm going to get at least two good pictures out of him before I
let him loose to get all ruined up by kind treatment. Wally Day's the
lad I'm talking about. Got everything a guy ought to have to make a loud
splash in pictures except the big-head, and he'll get that, too--all you
got to do's give him time. Just now he's the only man I know could pull
you out of the hole you've got yourselves into."
"But what's the use of tantalizing us?" Lucinda demanded fretfully--"if
Mr. Day's services can't be begged, bought, or borrowed----"
"Well, I just got an idea maybe we could come to some sort of agreement
about letting Wally finish up your picture. Like this, now: I been
watching you people, the way you work, the way you been doing things,
and seen a lot of your rushes, and I got an idea maybe I know how to
make your picture right, maybe I and Wally could fix it up between us.
Now listen: you've spent a bale of green money, I don't know how much,
but a lot, maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars, maybe more. That's
all right. We don't have to worry about that till I come to look at your
books----"
"Look at our books!" Lontaine expostulated.
Zinn pacified him with a gross hand that patted the air. "Sure I got to
look at your books, ain't I, if I sit in on this production? What I mean
is like this: You sell me the production as is, story, continuity, Miss
Lee's contract, all your properties 'n' everything, and I'll pay you
fifty per cent what it cost you to date, cash money. Then I and Wally
and Miss Lee here'll go ahead and finish up, and it won't cost you
anything more, Miss Lee, and I'll give you ten per cent. the net
profits. Meanwhile you"--he nodded to Lontaine--"can be fussing around
and taking your time about finding a studio all your own and getting all
set to use Miss Lee again when I and Wally are done with her. If that
ain't a sporting offer, I don't know. What you say?"
Lucinda looked dubiously to Lontaine. His eyes had suddenly grown more
stony and staring than she had ever seen them, and she fancied that he
had lost a shade of colour; but he met her glance with a quick nod and
said in a husky voice: "I agree with Mr. Zinn, Linda."
"You advise----!"
"I think he's made a very handsome offer. It--it's a clear and easy way
out for us. You can't lose as much as you stand to under our present
arrangements, assuming things shouldn't turn out as well as we've been
hoping, and you may make some money. And, as he points out, it will
give us time to look around and make up our minds just what we want to
do next. If I were you, I'd accept."
Lucinda delayed another moment, then turned to Zinn with a smile. "Very
well, Mr. Zinn. If Mr. Lontaine's agreeable, I don't mind...."
"Fine business!" Zinn held out a mottled, hairy paw. "I and you don't
need any writing between us, do we, Miss Lee? Your word's good enough
for me, all right...."
His hand was warm and moist and strong....