Kitabı oku: «Linda Lee, Incorporated: A Novel», sayfa 19

XXXVI

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…

XXXVII

Harry Lontaine got home at a late hour for one who had it in mind to bathe, dress, and put in appearance for an eight o'clock dinner several miles away. So was the tempo of his gait unhurried as he left the blue-and-white car waiting at the curb and passed up the straight-ruled sidewalk of cement between the tutelary orange trees of the bungalow he rented furnished. And on its miniature veranda he delayed for several minutes, motionless, with his face lifted thoughtfully, even a shade wistfully to the sky in which the afterglow of sunset pulsed like dreams of youth reviewed across the desert years of middle-age…

Other than this shy colour of regret, however, nothing of the trend of his thoughts, nothing of their nature, escaped the eyes, steel-blue and dense, in that lean, hard mould of features, never more self-contained, never more British than in this moment.

And presently he roused, but without change of countenance, and went on into the combination living and dining-room to which the best part of the dwelling was given over.

Here, where the dusk held close and still, Lontaine, when he had made a light, wasted no more time than was required for a stop at the buffet to treat himself to a considerably stiffer drink of pseudo-Scotch than the law allowed, or – seeing that the law allowed none at all – his superficial necessities seemed to call for.

Before the door which gave upon the more private quarters of the house, however, he hung for some time in seeming reluctance to proceed, a suspicion of strained attentiveness in his deliberation. From beyond came never a sound. Eventually he pushed the door open.

Immediately he saw Fanny. Bathed in a great glare, she sat in her dressing-room facing a long mirror of three panels; decked out en grande toilette, wearing every jewel she possessed, groomed to the finest nuance of perfection; a brilliant and strangely immobile figurine of modern femininity, with bobbed hair like burnished brass, milk-white bosom and arms rising out of a calyx of peach-blow taffeta, jewels stung to iridescent life by that fierce wash of light.

As if hypnotized by so much bright loveliness, she continued steadfastly to gaze upon her reflected self; even when she heard Lontaine at the door and the mirror placed him behind her in the doorway, she did not move by so much as a trembling eyelash. Only when he spoke, her lips parted in answer, though still she neither turned nor ceased to contemplate the vision in the glass; as if this last were something precious but tricksy, something that might incontinently vanish forever from her ken did she but for a single instant turn her eyes away.

In a voice that strained without success to sound easy and natural, Lontaine said: "Ah, Fanny! dressed already, eh? Must be later than I thought."

"It's past half-past," Fanny replied without expression.

Lontaine glanced nervously at the back of his wrist. "Right you are. Never dreamed time was getting away from me like that."

"You have been … busy, yes?" his wife enquired with a distinctly satiric accent.

"Rather. Gassing with Zinn, you know – "

"To be sure." The satiric inflexion was now more marked. "The life-saver."

"Not a bad name for him, that." Lontaine chuckled with, however, an unconvincing brevity. "Daresay Linda looks on the little beast in that light, at all events. Had a thousand details to discuss with him … ah … naturally."

"Naturally." Fanny's tone had become again illegible.

"That's what – ah – delayed me. Have to rush for it now – what? – or Summerlad'll be vexed."

"You really think so? With Cindy there to console him?"

"Something in that, no doubt. Still" – Lontaine made as if to go to his own room, but lingered – "it's hardly the thing to be so much behind time. See here, old girl: you're all dressed… I say! but you've laid it on a bit thick tonight, haven't you?"

"Don't you like the way I look, Harry?"

"Never more ravishing in all your life – "

"That's good."

"Good? Afraid I don't follow. What's got into you tonight, Fanny? You've rigged yourself out for the opera instead of a simple little dinner…"

"I wanted something to remember myself by," Fanny mysteriously informed the mirror to which her attention continued constant.

"What do you mean by that?" Lontaine paused for answer, but Fanny was dumb. He essayed another short, confused laugh. "You know, Fan, sometimes you think of the damnedest things to say."

"Yes: don't I?"

He recognized one of her mulishly enigmatic moods.

"Mean to say," he harked back – "since you're quite ready – what's the matter with your cutting along and explaining I'll be delayed a bit? Tell them not to wait dinner for me…"

"And you?" The movement of enameled lips was imperceptible.

"I'll be along later, of course, as soon as I've dressed. You can send the car back for me. Why not?"

"Why not?"

But Lontaine took this inscrutable echo for assent, and with a grunt of relief disappeared into his dressing-room. A series of clicks sounded as he turned on lights. Still the woman seated before the mirror didn't move. But her interest centered no longer upon what she saw; though she did not avert her eyes from the glowing figure painted in those still, shallow depths, all her attention now was concentrated in another faculty: she was listening.

She heard Lontaine moving about, chair-legs scrape a hardwood floor, the snap of the bathroom light. A pause followed, then a clashing noise of bottles and toilet articles impatiently shifted upon their glass shelf. After that, Lontaine's returning footsteps. Then he reappeared in the doorway.

"Hello! Thought you were going on ahead."

"Presently," Fanny replied in brittle accents. "Plenty of time. Something the matter?"

"Can't find my razors."

"No." At last the woman broke her pose: her counterfeit in the glass nodded gravely to the man behind her. "No," she iterated – and he had the flying thought that her voice had never vibrated so sweetly – "and you won't find them, either, Harry. They're in a safe place, it's no good your hunting for them."

"What!" Lontaine advanced one single, sudden stride. "What's that for?"

"I thought it might save trouble. You see, Harry, I haven't forgotten that hideous scene we had in London, last time you decided it was all up with you, there wasn't anything to do but cut your throat. I didn't see any sense in going through all that again."

After a full minute of silence Lontaine uttered heavily: "I see you've guessed…"

"There have been so many of these crises in our life together, Harry, I ought to know the signs – don't you think?"

The man stumbled to a chair, and bent a louring countenance over hands savagely laced. "What else can I do?" he muttered. "I'm in a hole there's no other way out of…"

"There are steamers every so often from San Francisco, for Honolulu, China, Japan, the South Seas…"

"No use. They'd get me by wireless if they ever allowed me to go aboard. Zinn … I'm sure that Jew devil suspects … insists on getting at the books first thing tomorrow."

"How much have you got into Cindy for?"

Lontaine said stupidly: "Eh? What's that?"

"How much have you … borrowed, Harry?"

"Fifty thou – perhaps a bit more."

Following another little silence, Fanny gave a curt laugh, left her chair and, standing at the dressing-table, began slowly to strip off her jewels, her sunburst brooch, her flexible bracelets, the pearls that had been her mother's, all her rings, even that slender hoop of platinum and diamonds which she had never removed since the day of her marriage.

"Stocks?" she enquired quietly. Lontaine replied with a dour nod and grunt. "Somebody's sure-fire tip, of course, some 'deal' that couldn't lose…" He grunted again. "Never learn anything from experience, do you, Harry? I've often wondered about the kink in your mind that makes you such a giddy come-on, eager to risk everything, even your honour, on the gossip of stock-market touts no better than yourself… Ah, well! it can't be helped, I suppose. You are what you are – and in my way, God knows, I'm no better. It's all been a ghastly failure, hasn't it, Harry? If I'd been a stronger woman, I might have made it another story for you; if you'd been more of a man, you might even have saved me…" Lontaine lifted his hand sharply, but his eyes wavered and fell under her level, ironic stare. "But it's no good crying now, nothing can change our natures at this late day."

She crossed to him and paused, looking down not unkindly at his bowed head and shoulders.

"I don't love you, Harry, and you don't love me. It's funny to think we ever did – isn't it? All the same, we've been through the rough together so often, I presume it's only natural I should be fond of you in this funny, twisted fashion. I don't want you to go away thinking I blame you…"

"Go away?" Lontaine groaned. "Where can I go, they wouldn't find me? I'd rather be dead than a convict!"

"Don't worry: I'll soon talk Cindy round, persuade her not to be too hard on you. She's fond of me, poor dear! and won't find out I'm as rotten as you are till you're at a safe distance. Here…" She bent over and poured that coruscating wealth of jewelry into the cup of Lontaine's hands. "These ought to see you a long way…"

"What!" Lontaine jumped up, staring in daze at the treasure in the hands that instinctively reached out to Fanny, offering to give back her gift. But she stepped away and stood with hands behind her, shaking her head so vigorously that the glistening short locks stood out like a brazen nimbus. "But, you, Fanny – what will you – ?"

"Never fear for me, Harry." She fixed his puzzled eyes with a smile of profoundly ironical significance. "I'll get along…"

"But these … every blessed trinket you own!.."

"I'll get others."

His jaw dropped. She continued to posture lightly before him, an exquisitely fragile and pretty shape of youth deathless and audacious, a dainty spirit of mockery temptingly incarnate, diabolically sage, diabolically sure of the potency of her time-old lures… What she had urged was true enough, too true; idle to let scruples on her account work his undoing. Let her alone and she'd get along, no fear, she'd get other jewels when she wanted them, just as she'd said, she'd go far… At heart as wanton as he was weak…

He felt a creeping tide of blood begin to scorch his face, and avoided the cynical challenge of her eyes.

"If you're content," he mumbled … "daresay there's nothing more to be said."

She nodded gayly, repeating the word "Nothing!" in a flute-like note of mirth. Hanging his head, he began wretchedly to stuff the plunder into his pockets, muttering half to himself: "What a pity! If only I could have had a bit of luck; if only we could have hit it off – !"

"If you hurry," she reminded him, "you can catch the night train for San Francisco, you can just about make it."

"Well…" He glanced uneasily at her, and again was conscious of the heat in his cheeks. "So it comes to this at last … eh? … good-bye!"

"Good-bye," she repeated, amiably casual.

"I daresay…" He gave a dubious chuckle. "Daresay it's stupid but, well, the usual thing, you know…"

"Usual thing?" she parroted, with faintly knitted brows.

"To kiss good-bye."

"You'll miss your train."

He developed a moment of desperately sincere emotion: "Fan! you've been a perfect brick to me, a perfect brick. I feel like a dog, leaving you like this."

"Oh!" she said, as one indulges a persistent child – "if you really want to kiss me, Harry, go ahead."

Nevertheless she turned her mouth aside, his lips brushed only her powdered cheek. Then she stepped back to her mirror and with a puff made good her imperceptible damage done by the caress. The glass showed Lontaine's shadow slinking out. She heard him blunder through the living-room, the slam of the screen-door. And her hand fumbled, the powder-puff dropped unheeded, mist drifted across her vision, she gasped a breathless "Damn!" Tears meant a wrecked make-up…

Though there was need enough for haste if he were to carry out the plan she had made for him, Lontaine dragged slowly down the walk, with a hang-dog air, the hands in his pockets fingering the price of the last sorry shreds of his self-respect. In the darkness the flesh of his face still burned with fire of shame…

Beside the car he halted and rested with a hand on the door for so long a time that the chauffeur grew inquisitive.

"Where to, Mr. Lontaine?"

"No, by God!" Lontaine blurted into the man's astonished face, and whirling about, strode hastily back to the bungalow.

As he drew near he could hear Fanny's voice. She was at the telephone in the living-room, calling a number he didn't catch; Summerlad's no doubt. One had forgotten all about that wretched dinner. Then the connection was established, and he paused with foot lifted to the lower-most of the veranda steps. It couldn't be possible Fan was talking to Summerlad, in that voice whose tenderness called back old times…

"Hello? Is it you, dear? Fanny… First chance I've had… Poor darling! I've been aching to see you all day and tell you how I sympathized… Yes, any time you please, as soon as you like… No: he won't mind, he … I mean, I'm all alone. Besides, we had a little talk tonight, came to an understanding. He won't be in our way after this, ever again, Barry dear…"

Something amused her, peals of musical laughter hunted Lontaine down the walk. "Union Pacific Station!" he cried, throwing himself into the car. "Drive like hell!"