King Kong (1932)

by Delos W. Lovelace

  "Taxi," he called. And when one pulled up to the curb with screeching brakes he ordered, "The nearest restaurant. And snap into it."

  Half an hour later, in a white tiled lunch room around the corner, he still wore his air of triumph. In the chair opposite him, the girl sat behind a white barricade of empty plates and cups. She had not spoken while she ate, and Denham had not spoken either. Leaning forward on folded arms, he had stared in thankful contentment at her face.

  It was more than a beautiful face, although it was beautiful, with the well moulded clearly defined features in which his cameraman's eye had immediately rejoiced. Large eyes of incredible blueness looked out at him from shadowing lashes; the ripe mouth had passion and humor; the lifted chin had courage. Her skin was transparently white; and not, Denham decided, because she was so plainly under-nourished. That marvelous kind of skin belongs with the kind of hair which foamed up beneath her shabby hat. This was of pure gold. If Denham had been poetical, which he was not, he might have pictured it spun out of sunlight.

  Facing his intent, gratified stare, she smiled.

  "I'm a different Ann Darrow now," she said.

  "Feeling better, eh?"

  "Yes, thank you. You've been wonderfully kind."

  "Don't give me too much credit," Denham said bluntly. "I'm not spending my time and money on you just out of kindness."

  All the humor and most of the smile faded out of Ann's face. She shivered a little. Denham ignored her reaction.

  "How come you're in this fix?"

  "Bad luck, I guess. There are lots of girls just like me."

  "Not such a lot who've got your looks."

  "Oh, I can get by in good clothes, perhaps." Fear was still in Ann's smile. "But when a girl gets too shabby ..."

  "Any family?"

  "I'm supposed to have an uncle ... somewhere."

  "Ever do any acting?"

  "A few extra jobs in the moving picture studio over at Fort Lee. Once I got a real part. The studio is closed down now."

  He hazarded one more question.

  "Are you the sort of city gal who screams at a mouse and faints at a snake?"

  "I'm a country gal ... Er, I wouldn't exactly choose to pet a mouse. But I killed a snake ... once."

  Denham squared his shoulders again in an even plainer triumph, and stood up.

  "Listen, sister. I've got a job for you."

  Ann stood up too, and meeting Denham's gaze returned it steadily and waited.

  "When you're fed up, and rested, and all rigged out, you'll be just the type I want."

  "When ... when does the job start?"

  "Now. This minute. And the first thing you do is get some new clothes. Come on. We ought to find the Broadway shops still open."

  "But ... but what is the job?"

  "It's money, and adventure, and fame. It's the thrill of a lifetime. And a long sea voyage that starts at six o'clock come morning."

  Ann sat down again and soberly shook her head. There was no fear in her face now. Instead there was a good-humored tolerance which she seemed able to call up easily from long practice.

  "No! I'm sorry ... But I can't ... I do want a job so ... I was starving ... But I can't ..."

  "What?" cried Denham, and stared at her in amazement; then he laughed and reached for the cigarette he hadn't remembered to smoke since leaving the swarthy one's booth. "Oh, I see! Nope, sister. Nope. You've got me wrong. This is strictly business."

  "Well," said Ann apologetically. "I didn't want any ..."

  "Any misunderstanding. Sure. Sure you didn't It's all my fault, for getting excited and not explaining. So here's your explanation. I'm Denham. Ever hear of me?"

  "Y-yes. Yes. You make moving pictures. In jungles and places."

  "That's me. And I've picked you for the lead in my next picture. We sail at six."

  "Where to?"

  "I daren't tell you that for a While, Ann. It's a long way from here. And before we reach it, there'll be a long voyage, easy living, the warm blue sea, soft moonlight on the water. Think, Ann! No matter what comes at the finish, isn't that better than tramping New York? Afraid every night that the next morning will find you in the gutter?"

  "No matter what comes at the finish," Ann whispered. "It's better."

  "I'm square, Ann," Denham added. "And I'll be square with you. No funny business."

  "You can't tell me yet what I'm to do?"

  "Keep your chin up and trust me," Denham told her and held out his hand.

  Ann looked at him for a long direct moment. Denham looked back at her. He was always lucky, he reminded himself, his grateful gaze sliding again over her bright hair, her perfect face, her graceful well proportioned figure.

  When his eyes came back to hers, Ann put her hand into his with a grave smile.

  Chapter Three

  Ann came wide awake in the narrow berth and for a little could not remember how she had got there. All she could think of was that this was the first morning in weeks that she had not awakened to hunger. Wondering what had happened to hunger, she recalled last night's amazing encounter and sat up. She laughed aloud when she spied beside her berth the bowl of apples.

  Denham had bought them at the last moment, adding their bulk to a pile of dress boxes, shoe boxes and hat boxes that overflowed the taxi.

  "And here's a bowl to put 'em in," he had said. This last when they came aboard, long after midnight, past the Wanderer's solitary watchman and a plainly suspicious old fellow with a cold red nose, who stood on the pier.

  Bowl of apples in hand, she had tiptoed after Denham down a dim brief alley.

  "This will be your cabin," he had said. "You'll find a key inside. Got it? Fine! Good night, sleep tight! And make it a long one. If I see you around before late afternoon I'll have the Skipper put you into irons."

  Ann brushed her foaming bright hair back from bright eyes and looked at the tiny clock which was an item in her cabin's equipment. It was a little short of eight. She had been in bed, then, some five or six hours. But except for this last little cat-nap she hadn't slept at all. She yawned and laughed again. A girl only half as excited as she was could scarcely have slept. And since there was no likelihood that she would be any less excited for hours she decided to go on deck, defying the irons of Mr. Denham's skipper.

  He, she recalled from Denham's brief account of his assistants, would be Captain Englehorn. He was old and gruff, but nice. Driscoll, the mate, was young and gruff, Denham said, but a good sort, too.

  She swung slim legs over the edge of the berth, stood up and went to the open porthole. Denham's promised departure had unquestionably been made at the scheduled six o'clock. New York had vanished. Land was visible low down on the horizon to the stern. But off-ship and forward there was only water. Calm water, beneath a soft, placid sky. The snow of the night before had vanished and along with it the threat of stormy weather. The temperature was up so much that standing there, in no more than her thin night-gown, Ann was not very cold.

  Turning away from the porthole, Ann fingered the night-gown with delight.

  "Buy whatever you like, sister," Denham had said. "You'll still come cheap, compared to what I'd have had to pay anybody off Broadway or out of Hollywood. Shoot the works."

  So, bearing in mind that she would be away from shops for months, Ann had taken him at his word. Night-gowns. Underthings. Stockings. Even lounging pajamas. And coats and dresses and hats. And finally enough oddments to stock a beauty specialist. And here they all were, in a tottery mountain of boxes that the Wanderer's earnestly throbbing engines threatened to bring down about her knees at any moment.

  She decided to open just one; and as a consequence of that surrender to pleasure it was nine o'clock and past before she closed the door of her cabin and stepped out into a deserted passageway.

  Under a new coat she wore her own old dress because she did not want Denham to think her too eager to seize her newly found luxury. But under the dress was a fresh, an immaculate silken smoo
thness which caressed her from shoulders to toes.

  "Really," she thought as she emerged onto the deck, "it's a downright pity they don't have automobiles on a ship. This is exactly the time for one to give me a little bump and turn me into an accident victim. I've never been in such a beautiful state of preparedness."

  The deck was almost as deserted as the passageway had been. Even a lady land-lubber did not need long to conclude that the officers and crew, having cleared away the business of departure, had gone about their various concerns below. Only one person was visible. Over in a sheltered corner, full in the warm rays of the climbing sun, sprawled a veritable Methuselah of a sailor, a brown, stringy, bald, old codger who hummed as he tied knots for the benefit of a chattering monkey.

  Softly, Ann drew close. And because the old sailor had such a friendly face, and because she herself was feeling so happy, she dropped suddenly down beside the monkey morsel and cried, "Teach me, too."

  "Yessum!" said the old sailor calmly. From the twinkle in his eye Ann felt sure he had heard her very first, sly step. And from his calm tone she realized that news of her coming had been spread by the Wanderer's midnight watchman. "Of course!" said the old sailor. "But first and foremost, introductions. Me, I'm Lumpy. This, she's Ignatz...."

  "And I, I'm Ann Darrow."

  "Kerrect as kin be," declared Lumpy. "And this," he went on, doing bewildering and deft things with his rope, "is a runnin' bowline. Up. Over. And through. Here, you try it."

  Ann took the rope, but instead of beginning her lesson she gazed out to the green, gently tumbling sea.

  "Oh, Lumpy," she breathed, "isn't it wonderful to be here?"

  "Ruther be blowing foam off a tall one in Curly's place any day," Lumpy said frankly, "and I'll betcha Ignatz here'd think the top of a cocoanut tree nineteen times wonderfuller. But everybody to their own taste."

  "Oh, of course," Ann conceded, "it won't always be as lovely. I suppose when the sea is rough it's pretty bad."

  "It's better," Lumpy admitted dryly, "when you can order the weather. And working hours," he added, rising hastily as a whistle blew.

  Warmed to laziness by the sun, Ann kept to her sheltered nook with Ignatz as Lumpy ran off. On the whistle's dying note several other sailors nipped briskly forward while from quarters aft, not far from the companionway by which Ann had got to the deck, came the whistle's owner. This was a young man so intent upon his work that he failed to detect his partly hidden audience of one.

  At sight of this young man, Ann's interest in the situation quickened considerably. His long, well muscled body, his strong dark face, his general air of being master and knowing it, challenged her, but in a fashion which she found not at all unpleasant. This, she decided, would be Driscoll, and as he took a position which presented to her a broad, rakish back, she stood up to secure a better view.

  He wore, this Driscoll, an officer's cap and a magnificent black woolen shirt he never could have bought out of a sailor's wage. Otherwise he was dressed not very differently from the men he proceeded to put nimbly to work.

  What this work might be was not wholly clear to Ann, except that it had to do with an open hatch, an enormous box some distance away, and what seemed to be a completely baffling tangle of ropes. It was such a complete tangle that Ann moved out a bit in order to watch more easily.

  Meanwhile Driscoll continued to issue rapid orders. One sailor let a rope-end fall, and showed no intention of picking it up.

  "No! No!" Driscoll shouted. "Carry that line aft!" Backing up to gesture in the proper direction he drew so close to Ann that almost she could have reached out and touched his shoulder. "Aft, aft, you farmer! Back there."

  His arm swung back with a full furious sweep, and its finger tips struck stingingly across Ann's face. She staggered to her sun-warmed nook and almost fell. Ignatz broke into a mad chatter.

  "Who the ..." As he wheeled about and sighted Ann, Driscoll checked himself and started over more mildly. "What are you doing up here? You're supposed to be sleeping."

  "I just wanted to see," Ann explained. She spoke meekly because she knew the fault had been hers.

  "Well, I'm sorry." Driscoll looked sheepishly at his fingers. "I hope the sock didn't land too hard."

  "Not at all," Ann cried, so vigorously that they both laughed.

  "So!" said Driscoll after a little pause. "You're the girl Denham found at the last minute."

  "An awfully excited one at this minute," Ann smiled. "It is all simply bewildering. And I've never been on a ship before."

  "And I," replied Driscoll in a change of voice which recalled to Ann that he could be gruff, "have never been on a ship with a woman before."

  "I guess you don't think much of a woman on a ship, do you?"

  "Not to make any bones about it, she's usually a cockeyed pest."

  "I'll try not to be," Ann said flushing.

  "You've got in the way once, already," Driscoll reminded her unsparingly. "Better stay below."

  "What? Not the whole voyage?" Ann cried, and had to laugh.

  The mate's eyes looked into hers and looked away.

  "You can come up once in a while," he granted, struggling to suppress a grin. "Say, does that sock in the jaw hurt anymore? It was a clinger."

  "I can stand it. Life's been mostly socks in the jaw for me."

  Ann's tone was suddenly bitter, and Driscoll looked at her again, more closely.

  "If it's been like that," he said, "we'll have to do something about it. I'll tell you. Come up on deck any darn time you please."

  Once more their eyes met, and Ann, in faint confusion, bent to pick up the chattering Ignatz, as Denham stepped out of the quarters aft.

  "I thought I ordered you to sleep the clock around?" he cried.

  "Impossible! I was much too excited to sleep."

  "I see you've got acquainted with a couple of the crew already."

  "Yes! I find the mate a little uncontrollable. But Ignatz is peaceable and friendly."

  Denham gazed at Ignatz thoughtfully.

  "Beauty," he murmured to himself. "Beauty and the Beast!"

  "I never claimed to be handsome," Driscoll protested. "But ..."

  "Not you, Jack. Ignatz. See how quiet he has grown. He never was that quiet before, not even in old Lumpy's arms."

  "Beauty," Denham repeated to himself after a pause. "Beauty and the Beast. It certainly is interesting. It most certainly is."

  "What?" Driscoll asked.

  "You'll find out in plenty of time, Jack."

  Denham turned to Ann.

  "Since you're up, let's find out where we stand. I'll make some screen tests of you. Go down into the cabin. Captain Englehorn will show you the boxes that hold the costumes. Dig out any one that pleases you. By the time you get it on and add some makeup, we'll have plenty of light for the camera."

  Ann set Ignatz down.

  "Think you know the right make-up for outdoor shots?" Denham asked.

  "I think so," Ann said, trying to hide her nervousness. "I won't be long."

  When she had gone Driscoll turned to his employer with a little frown.

  "She seems like a fine girl."

  "I'd swear to that, Jack."

  "Not the kind you usually find on a trip like this."

  "A lot better."

  "I - I wonder if she really ought to be going, Mr. Denham?"

  Denham gazed at his mate for a moment in a mixture of puzzled and impatient affection.

  "Come along," he said at length. "Help me set up the camera."

  They got at this while the crew went about stowing the freight which Driscoll's blow on Ann's face had interrupted. Both pieces of work were finished as Ann came back.

  She had found the costume boxes right enough. She wore now a glamorous something different by far from the nondescript dress of her first appearance. A curious primitive something blended of soft rustling grasses and softer, iridescent silken strips. Where it failed to cover her, the flesh of her arms and legs flashe
d in ivory contrast to the brown of the grasses and the brightness of the cloth.

  "She looks like some sort of queer bride," Driscoll muttered.

  Denham showed a surprising delight over that impulsive tribute.

  "Sure enough?" he asked. "Do you really think so, Jack?"

  Driscoll nodded.

  "But not the bride of just a plain ordinary man?" Denham pressed him.

  "No. Not of ... not of ... it sounds insane to say it, but she doesn't seem like the bride of any man that ever lived ... of somebody, something else, rather ..."

  "It's my Beauty and the Beast costume," Denham explained with creative pride.

  "Whatever it is," Ann came up, "it is the prettiest costume of the lot."

  "Right!" cried Denham. "Stand over there."

  "I'm nervous, Mr. Denham. Suppose I don't photograph to suit you?"

  "No chance of that, sister. If I hadn't been sure of that you wouldn't be aboard. We've got nothing to worry about but the minor problem of the best angles."

  Ann smiled hopefully, and moved in obedience to her director's gesturing hand. Driscoll, from a flank, clapped his hands soundlessly to tell her that in his opinion she had no need to be concerned. Lumpy and a half dozen sailors, rapidly augmented by another dozen, gathered attentively in the rear. Ignatz, on Lumpy's shoulder, chipped in a soft interested cry at intervals. And finally the moustached Englehorn appeared and from jaws working deliberately over a piece of plug cut threw Ann a slow, encouraging smile.

  "Profile first!" Denham ordered. He squinted through the view-finder, threw the camera over and locked it. "Now! When I start cranking hold it a minute. Then turn slowly to me. Look at me. Look surprised. Then smile a little. Then listen. Then laugh. All right? Camera!"

  Ann obeyed. It was easier than she had expected; no different, indeed, than she had done often at the Fort Lee studio. From behind Denham the sailors' comments began to drift up.

  "Don't make much sense to me."

  "But ain't she the swell looker?"

  "Wonder if he's going to use me in his picture?" Lumpy queried.

  "With cameras costing what they do? Not a chance, Lumpy. He couldn't take the risk."