There was a pause. It is never easy to know just what to say on these occasions: and Bulstrode, besides being embarrassed, was completely bewildered. He had supposed Mabelle three thousand miles away.
'Oh – hullo!' he said, untwining himself from Genevieve Bootle.
The dark young man was reaching in his hip-pocket, but Mabelle stopped him with a gesture.
'I can manage, thank you. Mr Murgatroyd. There is no need for sawn-off shot-guns.'
The young man had produced his weapon and was looking at it wistfully.
'I think you're wrong, lady,' he demurred. 'Do you know who that is that this necker is necking?' he asked, pointing an accusing finger at Genevieve Bootle, who was cowering against the ink-pot. 'My girl. No less. In person. Not a picture.'
Mabelle gasped.
'You don't say so!'
'I do say so.'
'Well, it's a small world,' said Mabelle. 'Yes, sir, a small world, and you can't say it isn't. All the same, I think we had better not have any shooting. This is not Chicago. It might cause comment and remark.'
'Maybe you're right,' agreed Ed Murgatroyd. He blew on his gun, polished it moodily with the sleeve of his coat, and restored it to his pocket. 'But I'll give her a piece of my mind,' he said, glowering at Genevieve, who had now retreated to the wall and was holding before her, as if in a piteous effort to shield herself from vengeance, an official communication from the Front Office notifying all writers that the expression 'Polack mug' must no longer be used in dialogue.
'And I will give Mr Mulliner a piece of my mind,' said Mabelle. 'You stay here and chat with Miss Bootle, while I interview the Great Lover in the passage.'
Out in the corridor, Mabelle faced Bulstrode, tight-lipped. For a moment there was silence, broken only by the clicking of typwriters from the various hutches and the occasional despairing wail of a writer stuck for an adjective.
'Well, this is a surprise!' said Bulstrode, with a sickly smile. 'How on earth do you come to be here, darling?'
'Miss Ridgway to you!' retorted Mabelle with flashing eyes. 'I will tell you. I should have been in New York still if you had written, as you said you would. But all I've had since you left is one measly picture-postcard of the Grand Canyon.'
Bulstrode was stunned.
'You mean I've only written to you once?'
'Just once. And after waiting for three weeks, I decided to come here and see what was the matter. On the train I met Mr Murgatroyd. We got into conversation, and I learned that he was in the same position as myself. His fiancée had disappeared into the No Man's Land of Hollywood, and she hadn't written at all. It was his idea that we should draw the studios. In the past two days we have visited seven, and to-day, flushing the Perfecto-Zizzbaum, we saw you coming out of a building ...'
'The commissary. I had been having a small frosted malted milk. I felt sort of faint.'
'You will feel sort of fainter,' said Mabelle, her voice as frosted as any malted milk in California, 'by the time I've done with you. So this is the kind of man you are, Bulstrode Mulliner! A traitor and a libertine!'
From inside the office came the sound of a girl's hysterics, blending with the deeper note of an upbraiding bootlegger and the rhythmic tapping on the wall of Mr Dabney and Mr Mendelsohn, who were trying to concentrate on 'Scented Sinners.' A lifetime in Chicago had given Mr Murgatroyd the power of expressing his thoughts in terse, nervous English, and some of the words he was using, even when filtered through the door, were almost equivalent to pineapple bombs.
'A two-timing daddy and a trailing arbutus!' said Mabelle, piercing Bulstrode with her scornful eyes.
A messenger-boy came up with a communication from the Front Office notifying all writers that they must not smoke in the Exercise Yard. Bulstrode read it absently. The interruption had given him time to marshal his thoughts.
'You don't understand,' he said. 'You don't realize what it is like, being marooned in a motion-picture studio. What you have failed to appreciate is the awful yearning that comes over you for human society. There you sit for weeks and weeks, alone in the great silence, and then suddenly you find a girl in your office, washed up by the tide, and what happens? Instinctively you find yourself turning to her. As an individual, she may be distasteful to you, but she is – how shall I put it? – a symbol of the world without. I admit that I grabbed Miss Bootle. I own that I kissed her. But it meant nothing. It affected no vital issue. It was as if, locked in a dungeon cell, I had shown cordiality towards a pet mouse. You would not have censured me if you had come in and found me playing with a pet mouse. For all the kisses I showered on Miss Bootle, deep down in me I was true to you. It was simply that the awful loneliness ... the deadly propinquity... Well, take the case,' said Bulstrode, 'of a couple on a raft in the Caribbean Sea ...'
The stoniness of Mabelle's face did not soften.
'Never mind the Caribbean Sea,' she interrupted. 'I have nothing to say about the Caribbean Sea except that I wish somebody would throw you into it with a good, heavy brick round your neck. This is the end, Bulstrode Mulliner. I have done with you. If we meet on the street, don't bother to raise your hat.'
'It is Mr Schnellenhamer's hat.'
'Well, don't bother to raise Mr Schnellenhamer's hat, because I shall ignore you. I shall cut you dead.' She looked past him at Ed Murgatroyd, who was coming out of the office with a satisfied expression on his face. 'Finished, Mr Murgatroyd?'
'All washed up,' said the bootlegger. 'A nice clean job.'
'Then perhaps you will escort me out of this Abode of Love.'
'Oke, lady.'
Mabelle glanced down with cold disdain at Bulstrode, who was clutching her despairingly.
'There is something clinging to my skirt, Mr Murgatroyd,' she said. 'Might I trouble you to brush it off?'
A powerful hand fell on Bulstrode's shoulder. A powerful foot struck him on the trousers-seat. He flew through the open door of the office, tripping over Genevieve Bootle, who was now writhing on the floor.
Disentangling himself, he rose to his feet and dashed out. The corridor was empty. Mabelle Ridgway and Edward Murgatroyd had gone.
A good many of my relations, near and distant (proceeded Mr Mulliner after a thoughtful sip at his hot Scotch and lemon), have found themselves in unpleasant situations in their time, but none, I am inclined to think, in any situation quite so unpleasant as that in which my nephew Bulstrode now found himself. It was as if he had stepped suddenly into one of those psychological modern novels where the hero's soul gets all tied up in knots as early as page 21 and never straightens itself out again.
To lose the girl one worships is bad enough in itself. But when, in addition, a man has got entangled with another girl, for whom he feels simultaneously and in equal proportions an overwhelming passion and a dull dislike – and when in addition to that he is obliged to spend his days working on a story like 'Scented Sinners' – well, then he begins to realize how dark and sinister a thing this life of ours can be. Complex was the word that suggested itself to Bulstrode Mulliner.
He ached for Mabelle Ridgway. He also ached for Genevieve Bootle. And yet, even while he ached for Genevieve Bootle, some inner voice told him that if ever there was a pill it was she. Sometimes the urge to fold her in his arms and the urge to haul off and slap her over the nose with a piece of blotting-paper came so close together that it was a mere flick of the coin which prevailed.
And then one afternoon when he had popped into the commissary for a frosted malted milk he tripped over the feet of a girl who was sitting by herself in a dark corner.
'I beg your pardon,' he said courteously, for a Mulliner, even when his soul is racked, never forgets his manners.
'Don't mention it, Bulstrode,' said the girl.
Bulstrode uttered a stunned cry.
'You!'
He stared at her, speechless. In his eyes there was nothing but amazement, but in those of Mabelle Ridgway there shone a soft and friendly light.
'How are
you, Bulstrode?' she asked.
Bulstrode was still wrestling with his astonishment.
'But what are you doing here?' he cried.
'I am working on "Scented Sinners." Mr Murgatroyd and I are doing a treatment together. It is quite simple,' said Mabelle. 'That day when I left you we started to walk to the studio gate, and it so happened that, as we passed, Mr Schnellenhamer was looking out of his window. A few moments later his secretary came running out and said he wished to see us. We went to his office, where he gave us contracts to sign. I think he must have extraordinary personal magnetism,' said Mabelle pensively, 'for we both signed immediately, though nothing was further from our plans than to join the writing-staff of the Perfecto-Zizzbaum. I had intended to go back to New York, and Mr Murgatroyd was complaining that his boot-legging business must be going all to pieces without him. It seems to be one of those businesses that need the individual touch.' She paused. 'What do you think of Mr Murgatroyd, Bulstrode?'
'I dislike him intensely.'
'You wouldn't say he had a certain strange, weird fascination?'
'No.'
'Well, perhaps you're right,' said Mabelle dubiously. 'You were certainly right about it being lonely in this studio. I'm afraid I was a little cross, Bulstrode, when we last met. I understand now. You really don't think there is a curious, intangible glamour about Mr Murgatroyd?'
'I do not.'
'Well, you may be right, of course. Good-bye, Bulstrode, I must be going. I have already exceeded the seven and a quarter minutes which the Front Office allows female writers for the consumption of nut sundaes. If we do not meet again ...'
'But surely we're going to meet all the time?'
Mabelle shook her head.
'The Front Office has just sent out a communication to all writers, forbidding inmates of the Ohio State Penitentiary to associate with those in the Leper Colony. They think it unsettles them. So unless we run into one another in the commissary ... Well, good-bye, Bulstrode.'
She bit her lip in sudden pain, and was gone.
It was some ten days later that the encounter at which Mabelle had hinted took place. The heaviness of a storm-tossed soul had brought Bulstrode to the commissary for a frosted malted milk once more, and there, toying with – respectively – a Surprise Gloria Swanson and a Cheese Sandwich Maurice Chevalier, were Mabelle Ridgway and Ed Murgatroyd. They were looking into each other's eyes with a silent passion in which, an observer would have noted, there was a distinct admixture of dislike and repulsion.
Mabelle glanced up as Bulstrode reached the table.
'Good afternoon,' she said with a welcoming smile. 'I think you know my fiancé, Mr Murgatroyd?'
Bulstrode reeled.
'Your what did you say?' he exclaimed.
'We're engaged,' said Mr Murgatroyd sombrely.
'Since this morning,' added Mabelle. 'It was at exactly six minutes past eleven that we found ourselves linked in a close embrace.'
Bulstrode endeavoured to conceal his despair.
'I hope you will be very happy,' he said.
'A swell chance!' rejoined Mr Murgatroyd. 'I'm not saying this beasel here doesn't exert a strange fascination over me, but I think it only fair to inform her here and now – before witnesses – that at the same time the mere sight of her makes me sick.'
'It is the same with me,' said Mabelle. 'When in Mr Murgatroyd's presence, I feel like some woman wailing for her demon lover, and all the while I am shuddering at that awful stuff he puts on his hair.'
'The best hair-oil in Chicago,' said Mr Murgatroyd, a little stiffly.
'It is as if I were under some terrible hypnotic influence which urged me against the promptings of my true self to love Mr Murgatroyd,' explained Mabelle.
'Make that double, sister,' said the bootlegger. 'It goes for me, too.'
'Precisely,' cried Bulstrode, 'how I feel towards my fiancée, Miss Bootle.'
'Are you engaged to that broad?' asked Mr Murgatroyd.
'I am.'
Ed Murgatroyd paled and swallowed a mouthful of cheese sandwich. There was silence for a while.
'I see it all,' said Mabelle. 'We have fallen under the hideous spell of this place. It is as you said, Bulstrode, when you wanted me to take the case of a couple on a raft in the Caribbean Sea. There is a miasma in the atmosphere of the Perfecto-Zizzbaum lot which undoes all who come within its sphere of influence. And here I am, pledged to marry a gargoyle like Mr Murgatroyd.'
'And what about me?' demanded the bootlegger. 'Do you think I enjoy being teamed up with a wren that doesn't know the first principles of needling beer? A swell helpmeet you're going to make for a man in my line of business!'
'And where do I get off?' cried Bulstrode passionately. 'My blood races at the sight of Genevieve Bootle, and yet all the while I know that she is one of Nature's prunes. The mere thought of marrying her appals me. Apart from the fact that I worship you, Mabelle, with every fibre of my being.'
'And I worship you, Bulstrode.'
'And I'm that way about Genevieve,' said Mr Murgatroyd.
There was another silence.
'There is only one way out of this dreadful situation,' said Mabelle. 'We must go to Mr Schnellenhamer and hand in our resignations. Once we are free from this noxious environment, everything will adjust itself nicely. Let us go and see him immediately.'
They did not see Mr Schnellenhamer immediately, for nobody ever did. But after a vigil of two hours in the reception-room, they were finally admitted to his presence, and they filed in and stated their case.
The effect on the President of the Perfecto-Zizzbaum Corporation of their request that they be allowed to resign was stupendous. If they had been Cossacks looking in at the office to start a pogrom, he could not have been more moved. His eyes bulged, and his nose drooped like the trunk of an elephant which has been refused a peanut.
'It can't be done,' he said curtly. He reached in the drawer of his desk, produced a handful of documents, and rapped them with an ominious decision. 'Here are the contracts, duly signed by you, in which you engage to remain in the employment of the Perfecto-Zizzbaum Corporation until the completion of the picture entitled "Scented Sinners." Did you take a look at Para. 6, where it gives the penalties for breach of same? No, don't read them,' he said, as Mabelle stretched out a hand. 'You wouldn't sleep nights. But you can take it from me they're some penalties. We've had this thing before of writers wanting to run out on us, so we took steps to protect ourselves.'
'Would we be taken for a ride?' asked Mr Murgatroyd uneasily.
Mr Schnellenhamer smiled quietly but did not reply. He replaced the contracts in the drawer, and his manner softened and became more appealing. This man knew well when to brandish the iron fist and when to display the velvet glove.
'And, anyway,' he said, speaking now in almost a fatherly manner, 'you wouldn't want to quit till the picture was finished. Of course, you wouldn't, not three nice, square-shooting folks like you. It wouldn't be right. It wouldn't be fair. It wouldn't be co-operation. You know what "Scented Sinners" means to this organization. It's the biggest proposition we have. Our whole programme is built around it. We are relying on it to be our big smash. It cost us a barrel of money to buy "Scented Sinners," and naturally we aim to get it back.'
He rose from his chair, and tears came into his eyes. It was as if he had been some emotional American football coach addressing a faint-hearted team.
'Stick to it!' he urged. 'Stick to it, folks! You can do it if you like. Get back in there and fight. Think of the boys in the Front Office rooting for you, depending on you. You wouldn't let them down? No, no, not you. You wouldn't let me down? Of course you wouldn't. Get back in the game, then, and win – win – win ... for dear old Perfecto-Zizzbaum and me.'
He flung himself into his chair, gazing at them with appealing eyes.
'May I read Para. 6?' asked Mr Murgatroyd after a pause.
'No, don't read Para. 6,' urged Mr Schnellenhamer. 'Far, far better not
read Para. 6.'
Mabelle looked hopelessly at Bulstrode.
'Come,' she said. 'It is useless for us to remain here.'
They left the office with dragging steps. Mr Schnellenhamer, a grave expression on his face, pressed the bell for his secretary.
'I don't like the look of things, Miss Stern,' he said. 'There seems to be a spirit of unrest among the "Scented Sinners" gang. Three of them have just been in, wanting to quit. I shouldn't be surprised if rebellion isn't seething. Say, listen,' he asked keenly, 'nobody's been ill-treating them, have they?'
'Why, the idea, Mr Schnellenhamer!'
'I thought I heard screams coming from their building yesterday.'
'That was Mr Doakes. He was working on his treatment, and he had some kind of a fit. Frothed at the mouth and kept shouting, "No, no! It isn't possible!" If you ask me,' said Miss Stern, 'it's just the warm weather. We most generally always lose a few writers this time of year.'
Mr Schnellenhamer shook his head.
'This ain't the ordinary thing of authors going cuckoo. It's something deeper. It's the spirit of unrest, or rebellion seething, or something like that. What am I doing at five o'clock?'
'Conferencing with Mr Levitsky.'
'Cancel it. Send round notice to all writers on "Scented Sinners" to meet me on Stage Four. I'll give them a pep-talk.'
At a few minutes before five, accordingly, there debouched from the Leper Colony and from the Ohio State Penitentiary a motley collection of writers. There were young writers, old writers, middle-aged writers; writers with matted beards at which they plucked nervously, writers with horn-rimmed spectacles who muttered to themselves, writers with eyes that stared blankly or blinked in the unaccustomed light. On all of them 'Scented Sinners' had set its unmistakable seal. They shuffled listlessly along till they came to Stage Four, where they seated themselves on wooden benches, waiting for Mr Schnellenhamer to arrive.
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