The bungalow at 1421 Vista del Paso was of the new school of Hollywood
architecture, which appears to be a hysterical effort to combine Queen
Anne, Italian, Swiss chalet, Moorish, Mission, and Martian. Its plaster
walls were of a yellowish rose, the outside woodwork being done in
light blue, while the windows were shaded with striped awnings of
olive and pink. On one side of the entrance rose a green pergola--the
ambitious atrocity that marks the meeting place of landscape gardening
and architecture, and that outrages them both. Culture has found
a virus for the cast iron dogs, deer, and rabbits that ramped in
immobility upon the lawns of yesteryear, but the green pergola is an
incurable disease.
Connecting with the front of the house, a plaster wall continued across
the narrow lot to the property line at one side and from there back
to the alley, partially inclosing a patio--which is Hollywood for
back-yard. An arched gateway opened into the patio from the front. The
gate was of rough redwood boards, and near the top there were three
auger holes arranged in the form of a triangle--this was art. Upon
the yellow-rose plaster above the arch a design of three monkeys was
stenciled in purple--this also was art.
As you wait in the three-foot-square vestibule you notice that the
floor is paved with red brick set in black mortar, and that the Oregon
pine door, with its mahogany stain, would have been beautiful in its
severe simplicity but for the little square of plate glass set in
the upper right hand corner, demonstrating conclusively the daring
originality of the artist architect.
Presently your ring is answered, and the door is opened by a Japanese
“schoolboy” of thirty-five in a white coat. You are ushered directly
into a living room, whereupon you forget all about architects and
art, for the room is really beautiful, even though a trifle heavy in
an Oriental way, with its Chinese rugs, dark hangings, and ponderous,
overstuffed furniture. The Japanese schoolboy, who knows you, closes
the door behind you and then tiptoes silently from the room.
Across from you, on a divan, a woman is lying, her face buried among
pillows. When you cough, she raises her face toward you, and you see
that it is very beautiful, even though the eyes are a bit wide and
staring and the expression somewhat haggard. You see a mass of black
hair surrounding a face of perfect contour. Even the plucked and
penciled brows, the rouged cheeks, and carmined lips cannot hide a
certain dignity and sweetness.
At sight of you she rises, a bit unsteadily, and, smiling with her
lips, extends a slender hand in greeting. The fingers of the hand
tremble and are stained with nicotine. Her eyes do not smile--ever.
“The same as usual?” she asks in a weary voice.
Your throat is very dry. You swallow before you assure her eagerly,
almost feverishly, that her surmise is correct. She leaves the room.
Probably you have not noticed that she is wild-eyed and haggard, or
that her fingers are stained and trembling, for you, too, are wild-eyed
and haggard, and you are trembling worse than she.
Presently she returns. In her left hand is a small glass phial,
containing many little tablets. As she crosses to you, she extends her
right hand with the palm up. It is a slender, delicate hand, yet there
is a look of strength to it, for all its whiteness. You lay a bill in
it, and she hands you the phial. That is all. You leave, and she closes
the Oregon pine door quietly behind you.
As she turns about toward the divan again, she hesitates. Her eyes
wander to a closed door at one side of the room. She takes a half step
toward it, and then draws back, her shoulders against the door. Her
fingers are clenched tightly, the nails sinking into the soft flesh
of her palms; but still her eyes are upon the closed door. They are
staring and wild, like those of a beast at bay. She is trembling from
head to foot.
For a minute she stands there, fighting her grim battle, alone and
without help. Then, as with a last mighty effort, she drags her eyes
from the closed door and glances toward the divan. With unsteady step
she returns to it and throws herself down among the pillows.
Her shoulders move to dry sobs, she clutches the pillows frantically in
her strong fingers, she rolls from side to side, as people do who are
suffering physical torture; but at last she relaxes and lies quiet.
A clock ticks monotonously from the mantel. Its sound fills the whole
room, growing with fiendish intensity to a horrid din that pounds upon
taut, raw nerves. She covers her ears with her palms to shut it out,
but it bores insistently through. She clutches her thick hair with both
hands; her fingers are entangled in it. For a long minute she lies
thus, prone, and then her slippered feet commence to fly up and down as
she kicks her toes in rapid succession into the unresisting divan.
Suddenly she leaps to her feet and rushes toward the mantel.
“Damn you!” she screams, and, seizing the clock, dashes it to pieces
upon the tiled hearth.
Then her eyes leap to the closed door; and now, without any hesitation,
almost defiantly, she crosses the room, opens the door, and disappears
within the bathroom beyond.
Five minutes later the door opens again, and the woman comes back into
the living room. She is humming a gay little tune. Stopping at a table,
she takes a cigarette from a carved wooden box and lights it. Then she
crosses to the baby grand piano in one corner, and commences to play.
Her voice, rich and melodious, rises in a sweet old song of love and
youth and happiness.
Something has mended her shattered nerves. Upon the hearth lies the
shattered clock. It can never be mended.
If you should return now and look at her, you would see that she was
even more beautiful than you had at first suspected. She has put her
hair in order once more, and has arranged her dress. You see now that
her figure is as perfect as her face, and when she crossed to the piano
you could not but note the easy grace of her carriage.
Her name--her professional name--is Gaza de Lure. You may have seen her
in small parts on the screen, and may have wondered why some one did
not star her. Of recent months you have seen her less and less often,
and you have been sorry, for you had learned to admire the sweetness
and purity that were reflected in her every expression and mannerism.
You liked her, too, because she was as beautiful as she was good--for
you knew that she was good just by looking at her in the pictures; but
above all you liked her for her acting, for it was unusually natural
and unaffected, and something told you that here was a born actress who
would some day be famous.
Two years ago she came to Hollywood from a little town in the Middle
West--that is, two years before you looked in upon her at the bungalow
on the Vista del Paso. She was fired by high purpose then. Her child’s
heart, burning with lofty ambition, had set its desire upon a noble
goal. The broken bodies of a thousand other children dotted the road to
the same goal, but she did not see them, or seeing, did not understand.
Stronger, perhaps, than her desire for fame was an unselfish ambition
that centered about the mother whom she had left behind. To that mother
the girl’s success would mean greater comfort and happiness than she
had known since a worthless husband had deserted her shortly after the
baby came--the baby who was now known as Gaza de Lure.
There had been the usual rounds of the studios, the usual
disappointments, followed by more or less regular work as an extra
girl. During this period she had learned many things--of some of which
she had never thought as having any possible bearing upon her chances
for success.
For example, a director had asked her to go with him to Vernon one
evening, for dinner and dancing, and she had refused, for several
reasons--one being her certainty that her mother would disapprove, and
another the fact that the director was a married man. The following day
the girl who had accompanied him was cast for a part which had been
promised to Gaza, and for which Gaza was peculiarly suited. As she was
leaving the lot that day, greatly disappointed, the assistant director
had stopped her.
“Too bad, kid,” he said. “I’m mighty sorry; for I always liked you. If
I can ever help you, I sure will.”
The kindly words brought the tears to her eyes. Here, at least, was one
good man; but he was not in much of a position to help her.
“You’re very kind,” she said; “but I’m afraid there’s nothing you can
do.”
“Don’t be too sure of that,” he answered. “I’ve got enough on that big
stiff so’s he has to do about as I say. The trouble with you is you
ain’t enough of a good fellow. You got to be a good fellow to get on in
pictures. Just step out with me some night, an’ I promise you you’ll
get a job!”
The suddenly widening childish eyes meant nothing to the shallow mind
of the callow little shrimp, whose brain pan would doubtless have burst
under the pressure of a single noble thought. As she turned quickly and
walked away, he laughed aloud. She had not gone back to that studio.
In the months that followed she had had many similar experiences, until
she had become hardened enough to feel the sense of shame and insult
less strongly than at first. She could talk back to them now, and
tell them what she thought of them; but she found that she got fewer
and fewer engagements. There was always enough to feed and clothe her,
and to pay for the little room she rented; but there seemed to be no
future, and that had been all that she cared about.
She would not have minded hard work--she had expected that. Nor did she
fear disappointments and a slow, tedious road; for though she was but
a young girl, she was not without character, and she had a good head
on those trim shoulders of hers. She was unsophisticated, yet mature,
too, for her years; for she had always helped her mother to plan the
conservation of their meager resources.
Many times she had wanted to go back to her mother, but she had stayed
on, because she still had hopes, and because she shrank from the fact
of defeat admitted. How often she cried herself to sleep in those
lonely nights, after days of bitter disillusionment! The great ambition
that had been her joy was now her sorrow. The vain little conceit that
she had woven about her screen name was but a pathetic memory.
She had never told her mother that she had taken the name of Gaza
de Lure, for she had dreamed of the time when it would leap into
national prominence overnight in some wonderful picture, and her
mother, unknowing, would see the film and recognize her. How often
she had pictured the scene in their little theater at home--her
sudden recognition by her mother and their friends--the surprise, the
incredulity, and then the pride and happiness in her mother’s face! How
they would whisper! And after the show they would gather around her
mother, all excitedly talking at the same time.
And then she had met Wilson Crumb. She had had a small part in a
picture in which he played lead, and which he also directed. He had
been very kind to her, very courteous. She had thought him handsome,
notwithstanding a certain weakness in his face; but what had attracted
her most was the uniform courtesy of his attitude toward all the
women of the company. Here at last, she thought, she had found a real
gentleman whom she could trust implicitly; and once again her ambition
lifted its drooping head.
She thought of what another girl had once told her--an older girl, who
had been in pictures for several years.
“They are not all bad, dear,” her friend had said. “There are good and
bad in the picture game, just as there are in any sort of business.
It’s been your rotten luck to run up against a lot of the bad ones.”
The first picture finished, Crumb had cast her for a more important
part in another, and she had made good in both. Before the second
picture was completed, the company that employed Crumb offered her
a five-year contract. It was only for fifty dollars a week; but it
included a clause which automatically increased the salary to one
hundred a week, two hundred and fifty, and then five hundred dollars in
the event that they starred her. She knew that it was to Crumb that she
owed the contract--Crumb had seen to that.
Very gradually, then--so gradually and insidiously that the girl could
never recall just when it had started--Crumb commenced to make love
to her. At first it took only the form of minor attentions--little
courtesies and thoughtful acts; but after a while he spoke of
love--very gently and very tenderly, as any man might have done.
She had never thought of loving him or any other man; so she was
puzzled at first, but she was not offended. He had given her no cause
for offense. When he had first broached the subject, she had asked him
not to speak of it, as she did not think that she loved him, and he had
said that he would wait; but the seed was planted in her mind, and it
came to occupy much of her thoughts.
She realized that she owed to him what little success she had achieved.
She had an assured income that was sufficient for her simple wants,
while permitting her to send something home to her mother every week,
and it was all due to the kindness of Wilson Crumb. He was a successful
director, he was more than a fair actor, he was good-looking, he was
kind, he was a gentleman, and he loved her. What more could any girl
ask?
She thought the matter out very carefully, finally deciding that though
she did not exactly love Wilson Crumb she probably would learn to love
him, and that if he loved her it was in a way her duty to make him
happy, when he had done so much for her happiness. She made up her
mind, therefore, to marry him whenever he asked her; but Crumb did not
ask her to marry him. He continued to make love to her; but the matter
of marriage never seemed to enter the conversation.
Once, when they were out on location, and had had a hard day, ending by
getting thoroughly soaked in a sudden rain, he had followed her to her
room in the little mountain inn where they were stopping.
“You’re cold and wet and tired,” he said. “I want to give you something
that will brace you up.”
He entered the room and closed the door behind him. Then he took
from his pocket a small piece of paper folded into a package about
an inch and three-quarters long by half an inch wide, with one end
tucked ingeniously inside the fold to form a fastening. Opening it, he
revealed a white powder, the minute crystals of which glistened beneath
the light from the electric bulbs.
“It looks just like snow,” she said.
“Sure!” he replied, with a faint smile. “It is snow. Look, I’ll show
you how to take it.”
He divided the powder into halves, took one in the palm of his hand,
and snuffed it into his nostrils.
“There!” he exclaimed. “That’s the way--it will make you feel like a
new woman.”
“But what is it?” she asked. “Won’t it hurt me?”
“It’ll make you feel bully. Try it.”
So she tried it, and it made her “feel bully.” She was no longer tired,
but deliciously exhilarated.
“Whenever you want any, let me know,” he said, as he was leaving the
room. “I usually have some handy.”
“But I’d like to know what it is,” she insisted.
“Aspirin,” he replied. “It makes you feel that way when you snuff it up
your nose.”
After he left, she recovered the little piece of paper from the waste
basket where he had thrown it, her curiosity aroused. She found it a
rather soiled bit of writing paper with a “C” written in lead pencil
upon it.
“‘C,’” she mused. “Why aspirin with a C?”
She thought she would question Wilson about it.
The next day she felt out of sorts and tired, and at noon she asked him
if he had any aspirin with him. He had, and again she felt fine and
full of life. That evening she wanted some more, and Crumb gave it to
her. The next day she wanted it oftener, and by the time they returned
to Hollywood from location she was taking it five or six times a day.
It was then that Crumb asked her to come and live with him at his Vista
del Paso bungalow; but he did not mention marriage.
He was standing with a little paper of the white powder in his hand,
separating half of it for her, and she was waiting impatiently for it.
“Well?” he asked.
“Well, what?”
“Are you coming over to live with me?” he demanded.
“Without being married?” she asked.
She was surprised that the idea no longer seemed horrible. Her eyes and
her mind were on the little white powder that the man held in his hand.
Crumb laughed.
“Quit your kidding,” he said. “You know perfectly well that I can’t
marry you yet. I have a wife in San Francisco.”
She did not know it perfectly well--she did not know it at all; yet
it did not seem to matter so very much. A month ago she would have
caressed a rattlesnake as willingly as she would have permitted a
married man to make love to her; but now she could listen to a plea
from one who wished her to come and live with him, without experiencing
any numbing sense of outraged decency.
Of course, she had no intention of doing what he asked; but really
the matter was of negligible import--the thing in which she was most
concerned was the little white powder. She held out her hand for it,
but he drew it away.
“Answer me first,” he said. “Are you going to be sensible or not?”
“You mean that you won’t give it to me if I won’t come?” she asked.
“That’s precisely what I mean,” he replied. “What do you think I am,
anyway? Do you know what this bundle of ‘C’ stands me? Two fifty, and
you’ve been snuffing about three of ’em a day. What kind of a sucker do
you think I am?”
Her eyes, still upon the white powder, narrowed.
“I’ll come,” she whispered. “Give it to me!”
She went to the bungalow with him that day, and she learned where he
kept the little white powders, hidden in the bathroom. After dinner she
put on her hat and her fur, and took up her vanity case, while Crumb
was busy in another room. Then, opening the front door, she called:
“Good-by!”
Crumb rushed into the living room.
“Where are you going?” he demanded.
“Home,” she replied.
“No, you’re not!” he cried. “You promised to stay here.”
“I promised to come,” she corrected him. “I never promised to stay, and
I never shall until you are divorced and we are married.”
“You’ll come back,” he sneered, “when you want another shot of snow!”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she replied. “I guess I can buy aspirin at any drug
store as well as you.”
Crumb laughed aloud.
“You little fool, you!” he cried derisively. “Aspirin! Why, it’s
cocaine you’re snuffing, and you’re snuffing about three grains of it a
day!”
For an instant a look of horror filled her widened eyes.
“You beast!” she cried. “You unspeakable beast!”
Slamming the door behind her, she almost ran down the narrow walk
and disappeared in the shadows of the palm trees that bordered the
ill-lighted street.
The man did not follow her. He only stood there laughing, for he knew
that she would come back. Craftily he had enmeshed her. It had taken
months, and never had quarry been more wary or difficult to trap. A
single false step earlier in the game would have frightened her away
forever; but he had made no false step. He was very proud of himself,
was Wilson Crumb, for he was convinced that he had done a very clever
bit of work.
Rubbing his hands together, he walked toward the bathroom--he would
take a shot of snow; but when he opened the receptacle, he found it
empty.
“The little devil!” he ejaculated.
Frantically he rummaged through the medicine cabinet, but in vain. Then
he hastened into the living room, seized his hat, and bolted for the
street.
Almost immediately he realized the futility of search. He did not know
where the girl lived. She had never told him. He did not know it, but
she had never told any one. The studio had a post-office box number
to which it could address communications to Gaza de Lure; the mother
addressed the girl by her own name at the house where she had roomed
since coming to Hollywood. The woman who rented her the room did not
know her screen name. All she knew about her was that she seemed a
quiet, refined girl who paid her room rent promptly in advance every
week, and who was always home at night, except when on location.
Crumb returned to the bungalow, searched the bathroom twice more, and
went to bed. For hours he lay awake, tossing restlessly.
“The little devil!” he muttered, over and over. “Fifty dollars’ worth
of cocaine--the little devil!”
The next day Gaza was at the studio, ready for work, when Crumb put
in his belated appearance. He was nervous and irritable. Almost
immediately he called her aside and demanded an accounting; but when
they were face to face, and she told him that she was through with him,
he realized that her hold upon him was stronger than he had supposed.
He could not give her up. He was ready to promise anything, and he
would demand nothing in return, only that she would be with him as much
as possible. Her nights should be her own--she could go home then. And
so the arrangement was consummated, and Gaza de Lure spent the days
when she was not working at the bungalow on the Vista del Paso.
Crumb saw that she was cast for small parts that required but little
of her time at the studio, yet raised no question at the office as to
her salary of fifty dollars a week. Twice the girl asked why he did not
star her, and both times he told her that he would--for a price; but
the price was one that she would not pay. After a time the drugs which
she now used habitually deadened her ambition, so that she no longer
cared. She still managed to send a little money home, but not so much
as formerly.
As the months passed, Crumb’s relations with the source of the supply
of their narcotic became so familiar that he could obtain considerable
quantities at a reduced rate, and the plan of peddling the drug
occurred to him. Gaza was induced to do her share, and so it came about
that the better class “hypes” of Hollywood found it both safe and easy
to obtain their supplies from the bungalow on the Vista del Paso.
Cocaine, heroin, and morphine passed continually through the girl’s
hands, and she came to know many of the addicts, though she seldom had
further intercourse with them than was necessary to the transaction of
the business that brought them to the bungalow.
From one, a woman, she learned how to use morphine, dissolving the
white powder in the bowl of a spoon by passing a lighted match beneath,
and then drawing the liquid through a tiny piece of cotton into a
hypodermic syringe and injecting it beneath the skin. Once she had
experienced the sensation of well-being it induced, she fell an easy
victim to this more potent drug.
One evening Crumb brought home with him a stranger whom he had known
in San Francisco--a man whom he introduced as Allen. From that evening
the fortunes of Gaza de Lure improved. Allen had just returned from the
Orient as a member of the crew of a freighter, and he had succeeded
in smuggling in a considerable quantity of opium. In his efforts to
dispose of it he had made the acquaintance of others in the same line
of business, and had joined forces with them. His partners could
command a more or less steady supply of morphine, and cocaine from
Mexico, while Allen undertook to keep up their stock of opium, and to
arrange a market for their drugs in Los Angeles.
If Crumb could handle it all, Allen agreed to furnish morphine at fifty
dollars an ounce--Gaza to do the actual peddling. The girl agreed on
one condition--that half the profits should be hers. After that she had
been able to send home more money than ever before, and at the same
time to have all the morphine she wanted at a low price. She began to
put money in the bank, made a first payment on a small orchard about a
hundred miles from Los Angeles, and sent for her mother.
The day before you called on her in the “art” bungalow at 1421 Vista
del Paso she had put her mother on a train bound for her new home, with
the promise that the daughter would visit her “as soon as we finish
this picture.” It had required all the girl’s remaining will power to
hide her shame from those eager mother eyes; but she had managed to do
it, though it had left her almost a wreck by the time the train pulled
out of the station.
To Crumb she had said nothing about her mother. This was a part of her
life that was too sacred to be revealed to the man whom she now loathed
even as she loathed the filthy habit he had tricked her into; but she
could no more give up the one than the other.
There had been a time when she had fought against the domination of
these twin curses that had been visited upon her, but that time was
over. She knew now that she would never give up morphine--that she
could not if she wanted to, and that she did not want to. The little
bindles of cocaine, morphine, and heroin that she wrapped so deftly
with those slender fingers and marked “C,” “M,” or “H,” according to
their contents, were parts of her life now. The sallow, trembling
creatures who came for them, or to whom she sometimes delivered them,
and who paid her two dollars and a half a bindle, were also parts of
her life. Crumb, too, was a part of her life. She hated the bindles,
she hated the sallow, trembling people, she hated Crumb; but still she
clung to them, for how else was she to get the drug without which she
could not live?