Mr. Lobel in his private office was telling it to Vice President Quinlan and Secretary-Treasurer Geltfin, the only two among his a.s.sociates that his messenger had been able to find about the executive department at the moment. He continued:
"Coming like a complete shock, you could "a" knocked me down with a feather, I a.s.sure you. For a minute I couldn"t believe it. This doctor he has to say it to me twice before I get it into my head.
Shocking--huh? Sudden--huh? Awful--what? You bet you! That poor girl, for her my heart is bleeding. Dead and gone like that, with absolutely practically no warning! It don"t seem possible! Taken down day before yesterday, the doctor says, and commenced getting from bad to worse right away. And this morning she goes out of her head and at two-forty-five this afternoon all of a sudden her heart gives out on her and she is dead before anybody knows it. Awful, awful!"
Mr. Lobel wagged a mournful poll.
"More than awful--actually it is horrifying!" quoth Mr. Geltfin. Visibly at least his distress seemed greater than the distress of either of the others. "All off alone up there by herself in some little rube town it must come to her! Maybe if she had been down here with specialists and surgeons and nurses and all she would "a" been saved. Too bad, too bad!
People got no business going away from a big town! Me, I get nervous even on a motor trip in the country and--"
"Everything possible which could be done was done," resumed Mr. Lobel.
"So you don"t need you should worry there, Geltfin. The doctor tells me he can"t get no regular trained nurse on account there is so much sickness from this flu and no regular nurses there anyway, but he tells me he brings in his wife which she understands nursing and he says the wife sticks right there day and night and gives every attention. There ain"t nothing we should reproach ourselves about, and besides we didn"t know even she was sick--n.o.body knew.
"Dead and gone, poor girl, and not one week ago--six days, if I got to be exact--she is sitting right there in that same seat where you"re sitting now, Geltfin, looking just as natural and healthy as what you look, Geltfin; looking just as if nothing is ever going to happen to her."
Mr. Geltfin had hastily risen and moved nearer the outer door.
"An awful thing--that flu!" he declared. "Lobel, do you think maybe she could "a" had the germs of it on her then?"
"Don"t be a coward, Geltfin!" rebuked his senior severely. "Look at me how I am not frightened, and yet it was me she seen last, not you!
Besides, only to-day I am reading where that big doctor in Cincinnati, Ohio--Silverwater--says it is not a disease which you could catch from somebody else until after they have actually got down sick with it. Yes, sir, she sits right there telling me good-by. "Mr. Lobel," she says to me--I had just handed her her check--"Mr. Lobel," she says, "always to you," she says, "I should be grateful. Always to you," she says, "I should give thanks that two years ago when I am practically comparatively unknown you should "a" given me my big chance." In them very words she says it, and me setting here at this desk listening at her while she said so!
"Well, I ain"t lost no time, boys. Before even I sent to find you I already got busy. I"ve got Appel starting for up there in half an hour in my car to take charge of everything and with orders to spare no expense. The funeral what I am going to give that girl! Well, she deserves it. Always a hard worker, always on the job, always she minds her own business, always she saves her money, always a perfect lady, never throwing any of these here temperamentals, never going off in any of these here highsterics, never making a kick if something goes wrong because it happens I ain"t on the lot to run things, never----"
It threatened to become a soliloquy. This time it was Quinlan who interrupted:
"You said it all, Lobel, and it"s no need that you should go on saying it any more. The main points, I take it, are that we"re all sorry and that we"ve lost one swell big a.s.set by her dying--only it"s lucky for us she didn"t take ill before we got through shooting The She-Demon."
"Lucky? Huh! Actually, lucky ain"t the right word for it!" said the president. "When I think of the fix we should "a" been in if she hadn"t finished up the picture first, I a.s.sure you, boys, it gives me the shivers. Right here and now in the middle of being sorry it gives me the shivers!"
"It does, does it?" There was something so ominous in Mr. Geltfin"s sadly ironic remark--something in tone and accent so lugubriously foreboding that his hearers swung about to stare at him. "It does, does it? Well, all what I"ve got to say is, Lobel, you"ve got some shivers coming to you! We"ve all got some shivers coming to us! Having this girl die on us is bad business!"
"Sure it is," agreed the head, "but it might be worse. There"s one awful big salary cut off the pay roll and if we can"t have her with us no longer there"s n.o.body else can have her. And the profits from that last picture should ought to be something positively enormous--stupendous--sensational. Listen! I bet you that from the hour we release----"
"You ain"t going to release!" broke in Geltfin, his wizen features sharpening into a peaky mask of grief.
"Don"t talk foolishness!" snapped Mr. Lobel. "For why shouldn"t we be going to release?"
"That"s it--why?" Mr. Quinlan seconded the demand.
"Because you wouldn"t dare do it!" In his desire to make clear his point Mr. Geltfin fairly shoveled the words out of himself, bringing them forth overlapping one another like shingles on a roof. "Because the public wouldn"t stand for it! Always you brag, Lobel, that you know what the public want! Well then, would the public stand for a picture where a good, decent, straight girl that"s dead and will soon be in her grave is for six reels doing all them suggestive vampire stunts like what you yourself, Lobel, made her do? Would the public stand for calling a dead woman names like she-demon? They would not--not in a thousand years--and you should both know it without I should have to tell you! With some pretty rough things we could get by, but with that thing we could never get by! The public, I tell you, would not stand for it. No, sir; when that girl died the picture died with her. You just think it over once!"
Out of popped eyes he glared at them. They glared at him, then they looked at each other. Slowly Mr. Lobel"s head drooped forward as though an unseen hand pressed against the back of his neck. Quinlan casting his eyes downward traced with one toe the pattern of the rug under his feet.
On top of one sudden blow, heavy and hard to bear, another now had followed. Since Lobel had become one of the topnotchers with a reputation to maintain, expenses had been climbing by high jumps, but receipts had not kept pace with expenses. There were the vast salaries which even the lesser drawing cards among the stars now demanded--and got. There were war taxes, excess profit taxes, amus.e.m.e.nt taxes. There was to be included in the reckoning the untimely fate of Let Freedom Ring, a vastly costly thing and quickly laughed to death, yet a smarting memory still. Its failure had put a crimp in the edge of the exchequer.
This stroke would run a wide fluting of deficit right through the middle of it.
The pall of silence lasted no longer than it has here taken to describe how it fell and enveloped them. Mr. Geltfin broke the silence without lifting the prevalent gloom. Indeed his words but depressingly served to darken it to a very hue of midnight.
"Besides," he added, "there is anyhow another reason. We know what a nice clean girl she was in private life. We know that all them wild romance stories about her was cooked up in the press department to make the suckers believe that both on and off the screen she was the same.
But she wasn"t, and so I for one should be afraid that if we put that fillum out she"d come back from the dead to stop it!"
He sank his voice, glancing apprehensively over his shoulder.
"Lobel, you wouldn"t dare do it!"
"Lobel," said Quinlan, "he"s right! We wouldn"t dare do it!"
"Quinlan," admitted Lobel, "it"s right--I wouldn"t dare do it."
In that same instant of his confession, though, Mr. Lobel bounded out of his chair, magically changing from a dumpy static figure of woe into the dynamo of energy and resourcefulness the gla.s.sed-in studios and the out-of-door locations knew.
"I got it!" he whooped. "I got it!" He threw himself at an inner door of the executive suite and jerked it open. "Appel," he shouted, "don"t start yet! I got more instructions still for you. And say, Appel, you ain"t seen n.o.body but only Quinlan and Geltfin--eh? You ain"t told n.o.body only just them? Good! Well, don"t! Don"t telephone n.o.body! Don"t speak a word to n.o.body! Don"t move from where you are!"
He closed the door and stood against it as though to hold his private secretary a close prisoner within, and faced his amazed partners.
"It"s a cinch!" he proclaimed to them. "I just this minute thought it up myself. If I must say it myself, always in a big emergency I can think fast. Listen! n.o.body ain"t going to know Monte is dead; not for a year, not maybe for two years; not until this last big picture is old and worn out; not until we get good and ready they should know. Vida Monte, she goes right on living till we say the word."
"But--but--"
"Wait, wait, can"t you? If I must do all the quick thinking for this shop shouldn"t I sometimes get a word in sideways? What I"m telling you, if you"ll please let me, is this: The girl is dead all right! But n.o.body knows it only me and you, Quinlan, and you, Geltfin, and Appel in this next room here. Even the doctor up there at Hamletsburg he don"t know it and his wife she don"t know it and n.o.body in all that town knows it. And why don"t they know? Because they think only it is a woman named Sarah Gla.s.sman that is dead. Actually that sickness no doubt changed her so that even if them rubes ever go to see high-cla.s.s feature fillums there didn"t n.o.body recognize her. If they didn"t suspect nothing when she was alive, for why should they suspect something now she is dead? They shouldn"t and they won"t and they can"t!
"What give me the idea was, I just remembered that when the doctor called me up he spoke only the name Gla.s.sman, not the name Monte. He tells me he calls up here because he finds in her room where she died a card with the name Lobel Masterfilms on it. And likewise also I just remembered that in the excitement of getting such a sad news over the telephone I don"t tell him who really she is neither."
"Holy St. Patrick!" blurted Quinlan, up now on his feet. "You mean, Lobel----"
"Wait, wait, I ain"t done--I ain"t hardly started!" With flapperlike motions of his hands Mr. Lobel waved him down. "It"s easy--a pipe.
Listen! To date her salary is paid. The day she went away I gave her a check in full, and if she done what always before she does, it"s in the bank drawing interest. Let it go on staying in the bank drawing interest. So far as we know, she ain"t got no people in this country at all. In the old country, in Hungary? Maybe, yes. But Hungary is yet all torn up by this war--no regular government there, no regular mails, no American consuls there, no nothing. Time for them foreigners that they should get their hands on her property one year from now or two years or three. They couldn"t come to claim it even if we should notify them, which we can"t. They don"t lose nothing by waiting. Instead they gain--the interest it piles up.
"Should people ask questions, why then through the papers we give it out that Miss Vida Monte is gone far off away somewhere for a long rest; that maybe she don"t take no more pictures for a long time. That should make The She-Demon go all the better. And to-morrow up there in that little rube town very quietly we bury Sarah Gla.s.sman, deceased, with the burial certificate made out in her own name." He paused a moment to enjoy his triumph. "Boys, when I myself think out something, am I right or am I wrong?"
He answered his own question.
"I"m right!"
By the look on Quinlan"s face he read conviction, consent, full and hearty approval. But Geltfin wavered. Inside Geltfin superst.i.tion wrestled with opposing thoughts. Upon him then Lobel, the master mind, advanced, dominating the scene and the situation and determined also to dominate the lesser personality.
"But--but say--but look here now, Lobel," stammered Geltfin, hesitating on the verge of a decision, "she might come back."
"Geltfin," commanded Lobel, "you should please shut up. Do you want that we should make a lot of money or do you want that we should lose a lot of money? I ask you. Listen! The dead they don"t come back. When just now you made your spiel, that part of it which you said about the dead coming back didn"t worry me. It was the part which you said about the public not standing for it that got me, because for once, anyhow, in your life you were right and I give you right. But what the public don"t know don"t hurt "em. And the public won"t know. You leave it to me!"
It was as though this argument had been a mighty arm outstretched to shove him over the edge. Geltfin ceased to teeter on the brim--he fell in. He nodded in surrender and Lobel quit patting him on the back to wave the vice president into activity.
"Quinlan," he ordered as he might order an office boy, "get busy! Tell "em to rush The She-Demon! Tell "em to rush the subt.i.tles and all! Tell "em to rush out an announcement that the big fillum is going to be released two months before expected--on account the demand of the public is so strong to see sooner the greatest vampire feature ever fillumed."
Quinlan was no office boy, but he obeyed as smartly as might any newly hired office boy.
If it was Mr. Lobel"s genius which guided the course of action, energizing and speeding it, neither could it be denied that circ.u.mstance and yet again circ.u.mstance and on top of that more circ.u.mstance matched in with hue and shade to give protective coloration to his plan.