He knew that it had stopped at the station, and that a slender, girlish figure was alighting, with a smile for the porter and a gay word for the conductor who had carried her back and forth for years upon her occasional visits to the city a hundred miles away. Now the chauffeur was taking her bag and carrying it to the roadster that she would drive home along the wide, straight boulevard that crossed the valley — utterly ruining a number of perfectly good speed laws.
The headlights of a motor car turned in at the driveway. Guy went to the east porch and looked in at the living room door, where some of the family had already collected. “Eva’s coming!” he announced.
With a rush the car topped the hill, swung up the driveway, and stopped at the corner of the house. A door flew open, and the girl leaped from the driver’s seat. “Hello, everybody!” she cried.
Snatching a kiss from her brother as she passed him, she fairly leaped upon her mother hugging, kissing, laughing, dancing, and talking all at once. Espying her father, she relinquished a disheveled and laughing mother and dived for him.
“Most adorable pops!” she cried, as he caught her in his arms. “Are you glad to have your little nuisance back? I’ll bet you’re not. Do you love me? You won’t when you know how much I’ve spent, but oh, popsy, I had such a good time! That’s all there was to it, and oh, momsie, who, who, who do you suppose I met? Oh, you’d never guess — never, never!”
“Whom did you meet?” asked her mother.
“Yes, little one, whom did you meet?” inquired her brother.
“And he’s perfectly gorgeous, “ continued the girl, as if there had been no interruption; “and I danced with him — oh, such divine dancing! Oh, Guy Evans! Why how do you do? I never saw you.”
The young man nodded glumly.
“How are you, Eva?” he said.
“Mrs. Evans is here, too, dear,” her mother reminded her.
The girl curtsied before her mother’s guest, and then threw her arm about the older woman’s neck.
“Oh, Aunt Mae!” she cried. “I’m so excited; but you should have seen him, and, momsie, I got the cutest riding hat!” They were moving toward the living room door, which Guy was holding open. “Guy, I got you the splendiferousest Christmas present!”
“Help!” cried her brother, collapsing into a porch chair. “Don’t you know that I have a weak heart? Do your Christmas shopping early — do it in April! Oh, Lord, can you beat it?” he demanded of the others. “Can you beat it?”
The colonel was glancing over the headlines of an afternoon paper that Eva had brought from the city.
“What’s new?” asked Custer.
“Same old rot,” replied his father. “Murders, divorces, kidnappers, bootleggers, and they haven’t even the originality to make them interesting by evolving new methods. Oh, hold on — this isn’t so bad! ‘Two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of stolen whiskey landed on coast,” he read. ‘Prohibition enforcement agents, together with special agents from the Treasury Department, are working on a unique theory that may reveal the whereabouts of the fortune in bonded whiskey stolen from a government warehouse in New York a year ago. All that was known until recently was that the whiskey was removed from the warehouse in trucks in broad daylight, compassing one of the boldest robberies ever committed in New York. Now, from a source which they refuse to divulge, the government sleuths have received information which leads them to believe that the liquid loot was loaded aboard a sailing vessel, and after a long trip around the Horn, is lying somewhere off the coast of southern California. That it is being lightered ashore in launches and transported to some hiding place in the mountains is one theory upon which the government is working. The whiskey is eleven years old, was bottled in bond three years ago, just before the Eighteenth Amendment became a harrowing reality. It will go hard with the traffickers in this particular parcel of wet goods if they are apprehended, since the theft was directly from a government bonded warehouse, and all government officials concerned in the search are anxious to make an example of the guilty parties.’
“Eleven years old!” sighed the colonel. “It makes my mouth water! I’ve been subsisting on home-made grape wine for over a year. Think of it — a Pennington! Why my ancestors must be writhing in their Virginia graves!”
“On the contrary, they’re probably laughing in their sleeves. They died before July 1, 1919,” interposed Custer.” “Eleven years old-eight years in the wood,” he mused aloud, shooting a quick glance in the direction of Guy Evans, who suddenly became deeply interested in a novel lying on a table beside his chair, notwithstanding the fact that he had read it six months before and hadn’t liked it. “And it will go hard with the traffickers, too,” continued young Pennington. “Well, I should hope it would. They’ll probably hang ‘em, the vile miscreants!”
Guy had risen and walked to the doorway opening upon the patio.
“I wonder what is keeping Eva,” he remarked.
“Getting hungry?” asked Mrs. Pennington. “Well, I guess we all are. Suppose we don’t wait any longer? Eva won’t mind.”
They had finished their soup before Eva joined them, and after the men were reseated they took up the conversation where it had been interrupted.
During a brief moment when she was not engaged in conversation, Guy seized the opportunity to whisper to Eva, who sat next to him.
“Who was that bird you met in L. A.?” he asked.
“Which one?”
“Which one! How many did you meet?”
“Oodles of them.”
“I mean the one you were ranting about.”
“Which one was I ranting about? I don’t remember.”
“You’re enough to drive anybody to drink, Eva Pennington!” cried the young man disgustedly.
“Radiant man!” she cooed. “What’s the dapper little idea in that talented brain jealous?”
“I want to know who he is,” demanded Guy.
“Who who is?”
“You know perfectly well who I mean — the poor fish you were raving about before dinner. You said you danced with him. Who is he? That’s what I want to know.”
“I don’t like the way you talk to me; but if you must know, he was the most dazzling thing you ever saw. He—”
“I never saw him, I don’t want to, and I don’t care how dazzling he is. I only want to know his name.”
“Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place? His name’s Wilson Crumb.” Her tone was as of one who says: “Behold Alexander the Great!”
“Wilson Crumb! Who’s he?”
“Do you mean to sit there and tell me that you don’t know who Wilson Crumb is, Guy Evans?” she demanded.
“Never heard of him,” he insisted.
“Never heard of Wilson Crumb, the famous actor-director? Such ignorance!”
“Did you ever hear of him before this trip to L.A?” inquired her brother from across the table. “I never heard you mention him before.”
“Well, maybe I didn’t,” admitted the girl; “but he’s the most dazzling dancer you ever saw — and such eyes! And maybe he’ll come out to the ranch and bring his company. He said they were often looking for such locations.”
“And I suppose you invited him?” demanded Custer accusingly.
“And why not? I had to be polite, didn’t I?”
“You know perfectly well that father has never permitted such a thing,” insisted her brother, looking toward the colonel for support.
“He didn’t ask father — he asked me,” returned the girl.
“You see,” said the colonel, “how simply Eva solves every little problem.”
“But you know, popsy, how perfectly superb it would be to have them take some pictures right here on our very own ranch, where we could watch them all day long.”
“Yes,” growled Custer; “watch them wreck the furniture and demolish the lawns! Why, one bird of a director ran a troop of cavalry over one of the finest lawns in Hollywood. Then they’ll go up in th
e hills and chase the cattle over the top into the ocean. I’ve heard all about them. I’d never allow one of ’em on the place.”
“Maybe they’re not all inconsiderate and careless,” suggested Mrs. Pennington.
“You remember there was a company took a few scenes at my place a year or so ago,” interjected Mrs. Evans. “They were very nice indeed.”
“They were just wonderful,” said Grace Evans. “I hope the colonel lets them come. It would be piles of fun!”
“You can’t tell anything about them,” volunteered Guy. “I understand they pick up all sorts of riffraff for extra people — I.W.’s and all sorts of people like that. I’d be afraid.”
He shook his head dubiously.
“The trouble with you two is,” asserted Eva, “that you’re afraid to let us girls see any nice-looking actors from the city. That’s what’s the matter with you!”
“Yes, they’re jealous,” agreed Mrs. Pennington, laughing.
“Well,” said Custer, “if there are leading men there are leading ladies, and from what I’ve seen of them the leading ladies are better-looking than the leading men. By all means, now that I consider the matter, let them come. Invite them at once, for a month — wire them!”
“Silly!” cried his sister. “He may not come here at all. He just mentioned it casually.”
“And all this tempest in a teapot for nothing,” said the colonel.
Wilson Crumb was forthwith dropped from the conversation and forgotten by all, even by impressionable little Eva.
As the young people gathered around Mrs. Pennington at the piano in the living room, Mrs. Evans and Colonel Pennington sat apart, carrying on a desultory conversation while they listened to the singing.
“We have a new neighbor,” remarked Mrs. Evans, “on the ten-acre orchard adjoining us on the west.”
“Yes — Mrs. Burke. She has moved in, has she?” inquired the colonel.
“Yesterday. She is a widow from the East — has a daughter in Los Angeles, I believe.”
“She came to see me about a month ago,” said the colonel, “to ask my advice about the purchase of the property. She seemed rather a refined, quiet little body, I must tell Julia — she will want to call on her.”
“I insisted on her taking dinner with us last night,” said Mrs. Evans. “She seems very frail, and was all worn out. Unpacking and settling is trying enough for a robust person, and she seems so delicate that I really don’t see how she stood it all.”
CHAPTER 5
The bungalow at 1421 Vista del Paso was of the new school of Hollywood architecture, which appears to be an hysterical effort to combine Queen Anne, Italian, Swiss chalet, Moorish, Mission, and Martian. You are ushered directly into a living room, whereupon you forget all about architects and art, for the room is really beautiful, even though a trifle heavy in an Oriental way, with its Chinese rugs, dark hangings, and ponderous, overstuffed furniture. Across from you, on a divan, a woman is lying, her face buried among pillows. When you cough, she raises her face toward you, and you see that it is very beautiful, even though the eyes are a bit wide and staring and the expression somewhat haggard. You see a mass of black hair surrounding a face of perfect contour. Even the plucked and pencilled brows, the rouged cheeks, and carmined lips cannot hide a certain dignity and sweetness.
“The same as usual?” she asks in a weary voice.
Your throat is very dry. You swallow before you assure her eagerly, almost feverishly, that her surmise is correct. She leaves the room. Probably you have not noticed that she is wild-eyed and haggard or that her fingers are stained and trembling, for you, too, are wild-eyed and haggard, and you are trembling worse than she.
Presently she returns. In her left hand is a small glass phial, containing many little tablets. As she crosses to you, she extends her right hand with the palm up. It is a slender, delicate hand, yet there is a look of strength to it, for all its whiteness. You lay a bill in it, and she hands you the phial. That is all. You leave, and she closes the Oregon pine door quietly behind you.
As she turns about toward the divan again, she hesitates. Her eyes wander to a closed door at one side of the room. She takes a half step toward it, and then draws back, her shoulders against the door. Her fingers are clenched tightly, the nails sinking into the soft flesh of her palms; but still her eyes are upon the closed door. They are staring and wild, like those of a beast at bay. She is trembling from head to foot.
For a minute she stands there, fighting her grim battle, alone and without help. Then, as with a last mighty efforts, she drags her eyes from the closed door and glances toward the divan. With unsteady step she returns to it and throws herself down among the pillows.
Suddenly she leaps to her feet and rushes toward the mantel.
“Damn you!” she screams, and, seizing the clock, dashes it to pieces upon the tiled hearth.
Then her eyes leap to the closed door; and now, without any hesitation, almost defiantly, she crosses the room, opens the door, and disappears within the bathroom beyond.
Five minutes later the door opens again, and the woman comes back into the living room. She is humming a gay little tune. Stopping at a table, she takes a cigarette from a carved wooden box and lights it. Then she crosses to the baby grand piano in one corner and commences to play. Her voice, rich and melodious, rises in a sweet old song of love and youth and happiness.
Something has mended her shattered nerves. Upon the hearth lies the shattered clock. It can never be mended.
Her name — her professional name — is Gaza de Lure. You may have seen her in small parts on the screen, and may have wondered why some one did not star her. Two years ago she came to Hollywood from a little town in the Middle West — that is, two years before you looked in upon her at the bungalow on the Vista del Paso. She was fired by high purpose then. Her child’s heart, burning with lofty ambition, had set its desire upon a noble goal. The broken bodies of a thousand other children dotted the road to the same goal, but she did not see them, or seeing, did not understand.
Stronger, perhaps, than her desire for fame was an unselfish ambition that centered about the mother whom she had left behind. To that mother the girl’s success would mean greater comfort and happiness than she had known since a worthless husband had deserted her shortly after the baby came — the baby who was now known as Gaza de Lure.
There had been the usual rounds of the studios, the usual disappointments, followed by more or less regular work as an extra girl. During this period she had learned many things — of some of which she had never thought as having any possible bearing upon her chances for success.
For example, a director had asked her to go with him to Vernon one evening, for dinner and dancing, and she had refused, for several reasons - one being her certainty that her mother would disapprove, and another the fact that the director was a married man. The following day the girl who had accompanied him was cast for a part which had been promised to Gaza, and for which Gaza was peculiarly suited.
In the months that followed she had had many similar experiences, until she had become hardened enough to feel the sense of shame and insult less strongly than at first. She could talk back to them now, and tell them what she thought of them; but she found that she got fewer and fewer engagements. There was always enough to feed and clothe her, and to pay for the little room she rented; but there seemed to be no future, and that had been all that she cared about.
And then she had met Wilson Crumb. She had had a small part in a picture in which he played lead, and which he also directed. He had been very kind to her, very courteous. She had thought him handsome, notwithstanding a certain weakness in his face; but what had attracted her most was the uniform courtesy of his attitude toward all the women of the company. Here at last she thought, she had found a real gentleman whom she could trust implicitly; and once again her ambition lifted its drooping head.
The first picture finished, Crumb had cast her for a more important part in anot
her, and she had made good in both. Before the second picture was completed, the company that employed Crumb offered her a five-year contract. It was only for fifty dollars a week; but it included a clause which automatically increased the salary to one hundred a week, two hundred and fifty, and then five hundred dollars in the event that they starred her. She knew that it was to Crumb that she owed the contract — Crumb had seen to that.
Very gradually, then — so gradually and insidiously that the girl could never recall just when it had started — Crumb commenced to make love to her. At first it took only the form of minor attentions — little courtesies and thoughtful acts; but after a while he spoke of love — very gently and very tenderly, as any man might have done.
She had never thought of loving him or any other man; so she was puzzled at first, but she was not offended. He had given her no cause for offense. When he had first broached the subject, she had asked him not to speak of it, as she did not think that she loved him, and he had said he would wait; but the seed was planted in her mind, and it came to occupy much of her thoughts.
She realized that she owed to him what little success she had achieved. She had an assured income that was sufficient for her simple wants, while permitting her to send something home to her mother every week, and it was all due to the kindness of Wilson Crumb. He was a successful director, he was more than a fair actor, he was good-looking, he was kind, he was a gentleman, and he loved her. What more could any girl ask?
She thought the matter out very carefully, finally deciding that though she did not exactly love Wilson Crumb she probably would learn to love him, and that if he loved her it was in a way her duty to make him happy, when he had done so much for her happiness. She made up her mind, therefore, to marry him whenever he asked her, but Crumb did not ask her to marry him. He continued to make love to her; but the matter of marriage never seemed to enter the conversation.
Delphi Collected Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs (Illustrated) (Series Four Book 26) Page 748
