"Ah, that good Mr. Zinn!" f.a.n.n.y 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 impa.s.se," 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 b.u.t.ted in to see you about. If I ain"t in the way...." The four made rea.s.suring 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 grat.i.tude. "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, a.s.suming 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....
x.x.xVII
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 pa.s.sed 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 f.a.n.n.y. 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 bra.s.s, 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 gla.s.s; 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, f.a.n.n.y! dressed already, eh? Must be later than I thought."
"It"s past half-past," f.a.n.n.y 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. Ga.s.sing 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." f.a.n.n.y"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, f.a.n.n.y? You"ve rigged yourself out for the opera instead of a simple little dinner...."
"I wanted something to remember myself by," f.a.n.n.y mysteriously informed the mirror to which her attention continued constant.
"What do you mean by that?" Lontaine paused for answer, but f.a.n.n.y was dumb. He essayed another short, confused laugh. "You know, Fan, sometimes you think of the d.a.m.nedest 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...."