In an interlude of difficulty to beggar all believing, response to
Lucinda's forbearance all at once swept like a great wind over those
treacherous emotional shallows, kicking up their still unsettled dregs
of hysteria, storming in wild squalls of gratitude, remorse and shame,
driving shoreward that frail, crank pleasure-craft which was the soul of
Nelly Marquis, leaving it at the last stranded in a slough of self-pity
and abasement, where it rested in maudlin wreckage, weeping, lamenting,
calling out upon its shabby gods for that they had forsaken it.
Early in this scene Lucinda made shift to get the woman, half-leading,
half-dragging her, into the bedchamber where the seizure might spend
itself unheard by passers in the public corridor. But for a tedious
while after she had persuaded her to lie down she made no headway toward
stemming her transports; and sitting on the side of the bed, suffering
Nelly to cling to her hands, seeking to pacify her whenever in a lull
she could make words tell, learned enough from her maunderings to sicken
one with the very thought of love.
As if what had been had left her in need of this last disenchantment!...
Sheer persistence in the end proved tranquillizing, the woman ceased to
toss and writhe continually, her communications became more lucid. But
she wouldn't hear of being left alone for a nap, she wouldn't release
Lucinda's hands, she wouldn't heed suggestions that it might perhaps be
well for her to get up and change to the clothing which Lucinda had
provided. Time enough for that, she argued, when Mr. Druce had been and
gone. Maybe Lynn hadn't been as much hurt as Lucinda believed. If he
hadn't, he could be depended upon to move heaven and earth to save his
fair name in the esteem of picture fans from the odium that must attach
to it should the news get out that he had been shot up by a discarded
wife. Anyway, they couldn't tell anything for certain till Mr. Druce had
kept his promise to report the surgeon's verdict.
Besides, if it came to the worst, if it turned out that Nelly would have
to cut and run for it, the later the hour at which she left the hotel
the better, the fewer people there would be about to see her go....
It had been agreed that it would never do for Lucinda to ask for the key
to the side door. But if she chose to stroll out through the lobby,
accompanied by a young woman well cloaked, the chances were that the
latter would pass unquestioned as some friend who had dropped in to
spend the evening with her.
"But are you quite sure you feel strong and well enough to drive the car
yourself?" Lucinda misdoubted for perhaps the hundredth time, though for
the first openly.
The woman on the bed gave her hand a small jerk of petulance. "Don't you
worry your head about me, Mrs. Druce," she insisted. "I'll be all right.
I can drive any make of car there is, and I know all the roads out of
Los Angeles like a book. Why, when me and Lynn was living together, we
didn't hardly ever have any use for a chauffeur."
"Where will you go, then?"
"Up North, I guess, by the Coastal Highway. I can make Santa Barbara by
morning easy. But I don't know, maybe I might go right through to
Frisco. That's where I want to get, you know. It ought to be easy to lie
low in a town like Frisco. Anyhow, wherever I decide, I'll shoot you a
wire first thing, telling you where I left the car. I only wish I didn't
have to take it, somehow it don't seem right. But there! maybe I won't
have to.... And unless I do, there wouldn't be any sense in my leaving
all my clothes here and everything, would there? What time is it now? A
person would think Mr. Druce wouldn't be much longer, wouldn't they? I
suppose you wouldn't want to call up Lynn's house and ask...."
"I'd rather not."
"I kind of thought you'd feel like that about it. It would look too much
like worrying about Lynn, wouldn't it?" Lucinda made no reply, and after
a moment of dumb staring at the ceiling a shadow of complacency modified
Nelly's fretful look. "I guess it's all over with Lynn now, as far as
you're concerned, isn't it?"
"Yes," Lucinda said with the slowness that spells restraint--"as far as
I'm concerned, it's all over."
"I'm awfully sorry," the girl asserted, her voice in turn carrying the
colour of complacency--"I mean, sorry for you. You must've been awfully
stuck on Lynn."
"Yes...." To offset a choke in her voice Lucinda added with a hard
laugh: "Awfully!"
"It's terrible to have to give up a man like Lynn.... Don't _I_ know!"
Lucinda bluntly changed the subject. "What will you do now?" she
asked--"I mean, after this blows over. Will you go on with your picture
work in the East?"
"I don't know.... I guess not.... Nobody's likely to give me another
chance.... Lynn isn't going to be able to keep the truth from leaking
out inside the business, of course; and he's terribly popular, his
friends will take good care I don't get another job. I guess I've gone
and fixed it for myself in the picture business, all right, no matter
what.... Unless, of course, I might maybe change my name or something."
"But this picture my husband is making: he won't be able to go on with
it with you out of the cast, I presume."
Nelly laughed outright. "I guess that won't worry Mr. Druce a terrible
lot. You don't suppose he cares two whoops what happens to that picture
now, do you?"
"Why not? Why did he start making it, unless?..."
"Why don't you know, Mrs. Druce? I'd 've thought you'd 've been wise to
that dodge all along. All Mr. Druce went into the film business for was
to be near you."'
"You believe that?"
"Why!"--the girl laughed again--"it's just as plain as paint to anybody
in the know; I mean, anybody that knows you two are married but living
separate on account of some row or something. All Mr. Druce cares about
pictures a person could put in their eye and never know it. He just
wanted a good excuse to be near you and take care of you in case
anything ... like tonight ... or if he thought you was beginning to take
Lynn too seriously or anything.... Anyway, that's how I figured it from
the very first. He had it doped it would cramp Lynn's style to see me
around the studio all the time, and maybe make him break it off with
you. And so did I. Only I guess neither of us guessed how hard Lynn had
fallen for you."
"You haven't told me how my husband happened to engage you."
"Well, he just went after me and wouldn't take no for an answer. He's
like that, you know. Of course, I don't know what the trouble was
between you two, but I don't see how you ever stood out against a man
like him, Mrs. Druce."
"Where were you when he found you?"
"Back home. You see, after Lynn gave me that hundred ... and what
happened ... I was afraid to stay in Hollywood, I didn't know what else
he might do to me. And besides, I simply couldn't stand seeing you
stepping out with him all the time, it made me simply wild. So I went
right back to Findlay."
"Findlay?"
"The place in Ohio where my people live."
"And that's where Mr. Druce found you?"
"I'd only just got back when a man came to town, Mr. Roberts he said his
name was, and said he'd got me a swell offer to go back to the Coast and
act for a new company just starting. I kind of thought there was
something fishy about it, because I never was much in pictures; and why
should they send somebody all the way to Findlay to get me when they
could 've got plenty just as good right here in Hollywood? Anyhow, I was
afraid of Lynn, so I said nothing doing. Next I knew, Mr. Druce himself
come to see me and said I'd got to go back to Hollywood with him and
make pictures and I could write my own contract. Of course, as soon's I
heard his name, I tumbled to what it was all about; and I thought if you
got to seeing a lot of your husband you'd give Lynn the air ... chuck
him, I mean ... and maybe ... Ah! _I_ don't know...."
She was quiet for a moment, in wide-eyed, wondering abstraction.
"Somehow I never got over being crazy about Lynn, you know," she said in
a quieter tone than she had yet used--"not even when he treated me
meanest."
In this pensive mood she mused on: "You know, sometimes I think it's all
wrong the way women, like you and me, take everything a man wants to
hand out to us, just to hold him. They keep telling you it's the only
way; but the way it looks to me, it hardly ever works ... I mean, unless
the man's crazy about you, like Mr. Druce....
"Of course, I know it isn't any of my business, Mrs. Druce, but I
haven't got any hard feelings towards you on account of Lynn and all,
not any more, and I'm perfectly sincere when I say _I_ think you'll be
making one big mistake if you don't make it up with Mr. Druce as soon's
ever you can now...."
The house telephone came to Lucinda's rescue: Mr. Druce was calling, if
Miss Lee would be kind enough to overlook the lateness of the hour....
Lucinda promised to get rid of Bel as soon as she could, and in return
exacted the girl's promise to rest quietly and not worry. Then she shut
herself out into the sitting-room, and had almost immediately to answer
the door.
Bel's light motor-coat hung from his shoulders with empty sleeves, by
which device he was able to make no parade of the fact that his right
arm was in a sling. His features were drawn and grey, his speech slow
with weariness, but his eyes keen, steady and (Lucinda made sure,
looking sharply) wholly unsentimental; while his greeting,
characteristically abrupt--"Still up, eh?"--was accompanied by ironical
recognition of her unchanged evening costume.
"I waited up for you," Lucinda replied sufficiently to both words and
look. "How's your arm?"
"Nothing to brag about, but no worse than I thought. A bit stiff and
sore, that's all."
"You look fearfully tired, Bel. Won't you sit down?"
Irony again tinged his flying smile. "No, thanks. Won't stay but a
minute. I promised, so here I am. But I'm dog-tired, and as soon as I've
turned in my report, I'll cut along."
"Well?..."
"He's got one chance in a thousand to pull through. Say what you like
about that young woman--she can shoot. Only one shot went wrong, merely
smashed his shoulder. One of the others just missed his heart, the third
drilled through his lungs. Wouldn't give a great deal for all the show
he's got."
Grim watchfulness was rewarded by her slight start, a swift darkening of
Lucinda's eyes, but no flinching, after an instant a slow nod, nothing
more. "Nothing to say?" Bellamy demanded in pitiless humour.
"Thank you for letting me know."
"And that's all?"
"Was there something you expected me to say, Bel? Sorry to disappoint
you...."
"Well: you knew the fellow better than I----"
"If it interests you, you may as well know now what I didn't--not before
tonight."
"You didn't know Summerlad was married----?"
"If another man dared ask me that question, I think even you would
resent it."
"Perhaps. Daresay it's the husband's astigmatic point of view. However,
I didn't mean to be offensive."
"Do you seriously ask me to believe that, Bel?"
"Damn it, Linda! you always did have the faculty of putting me in the
wrong."
"Isn't it more true that you haven't yet mastered the faculty of always
putting yourself in the right?"
"Perhaps we'd better let it go at that. One thing's certain, I'm none
too happy in my efforts to express myself tonight. Daresay I'd better
clear out before I make things worse...." Nevertheless he delayed. "That
girl ... she got away. Not a trace...."
"Are they--is anybody looking----?"
"The police have got that job in hand. I had rather a time with them,
you know. They didn't fancy my story at all, at first, couldn't see why
the devil I had let Nelly escape. The circumstance that she'd shot me in
the arm didn't seem to carry any weight; in fact, I gathered they didn't
put it beyond me to shoot myself in the right arm to divert suspicion.
Only one thing saved me: Nelly had thoughtfully lost her handbag outside
the window, with an extra clip of cartridges in it."
"She must have meant to make sure.... I mean, it wasn't an affair of
impulse, then?"
"Oh, she'd had in mind what she meant to do for a long time. I don't
know how long, but she let a hint fall the other night, when she'd had a
bit more drink than she needed, and I spent the best part of the evening
trying to talk her out of it. She fobbed me off with a half-promise in
the end; but I wasn't satisfied. And tonight, when she wasn't on hand to
keep a dinner appointment, and one of the bellhops told me he'd seen her
boarding a trolley for Beverly Hills.... Well: my chauffeur says we
broke all existing records, getting out to Summerlad's. Why we weren't
arrested neither of us knows. Lucky...."
Bel's words trailed off into a thoughtful mumble, he seemed momentarily
lost in study of the rug on which he stood, then roused and put his hand
to the door-knob.
"If it matters," he announced--"possibly you'd care to know--we've
telegraphed Summerlad's people in his home town, Terre Haute----his
mother and sister. The family name appears to be Slade. We thought he
ought to have them with him...."
"'We'?"
"Zinn and I."
"You told Mr. Zinn?"
"Called him up first thing. Naturally. Nobody had a better right to know
what had happened, holding Summerlad under contract as he does. He came
right out, calling himself bad names for being in the picture business,
and took charge. It was mostly thanks to him I was able to get away as
soon as I did."
"Does he know the full story, Bel?"
"All that matters. But your part's still a dead secret between the four
of us--including my chauffeur and Summerlad's Jap. I think those two
have been well enough paid.... It remains to get hold of your man and
make him forget he drove you out there for dinner and didn't bring you
home. If you'll give me his address...."
"Perhaps I can attend to that better than you, Bel; without making it
necessary to explain how you happen to be interested, I mean."
"You won't forget? This affair will be all over town before morning."
"I'll call Ben up at his home as soon as you've gone."
"Very well, then. I presume that brings us to good-night."
"But Bel...." Bellamy reclosed the door and turned back with weary
patience. "About that poor girl...."