Adventure Tales, Volume 6

by John Gregory Betancourt

  “What’s come over him?” said the president to the director. “He used to get stories written by his friends, turn down everything from the department, make us pay five hundred dollars for the stories—and then split with his friends. That’s the old stall; what’s this new wrinkle?”

  “Damned if I know,” groaned the director. “It’s got society stuff in it, and only last week he said he’d never touch society stuff again. And there ain’t any punch, not a bit; it’s one o’ them bleedin’-heart things, and it ain’t got—”

  “It’s got Reever Keene in it,” snapped the president, “and that’s enough to put it across anywhere. Do you get me?”

  The director departed, weeping.

  Worse was to come, however. Reever Keene sold his gorgeous car, and showed up with a plain green-black affair—not even a victoria top to it! Lola refused to ride in the wretched thing, and Keene swore; and the end of this matter was a fine quarrel which the press-agent featured without the least opposition.

  And then came the first of the month and the new story.

  The story was a society story, right enough. For three days. the company was on location at the Billingkamp residence—you remember, of course, Billingkamp’s Canned Soups—and the exteriors were gorgeous affairs.

  The trouble was that Reever Keene had been reading some highbrow stuff, and insisted on wearing his silk hat without any of the rakish tilt which is so fetching to the screen folk; and he insisted on throwing out the beautiful white roadster with red upholstery which the director had provided, and used his own sobersides of a car—and other things like that.

  In between times the quarrel with Lola was deftly adjusted, the date was set for the wedding, and duly featured by the press-agent.

  After that the company came back to the studio, the remainder of the picture being interior sets—and then the trouble really began. Reever Keene had instructed the property-men about the drawing-room set; the director had done likewise. Props, seeing himself between the devil and the deep sea, provided both sets, and left the principals to scrap it out. Which was wise.

  Reever Keene took one look at the director’s set, and ordered it off the stage. The director was inspecting Reever Keene’s set, and Keene met him in the act.

  “My Lord!” said the director. “I don’t know anything about motion-pictures; I’m just a poor simp who’s spent all his life in the game. Look—for the love of Heaven, look!”

  “Get down to cases, you,” growled Keene. “Never mind the high-art stuff, now. Just be sensible and tell me what’s wrong!

  The director swallowed hard and waved his hand at the set. It had been assembled with a good deal of trouble. There was an imitation Rubens; there was a real set of imitation armor that looked from the camera considerably like fifteenth century. The rest was deeply rich velvet and hangings.

  “As man to, man,” said the director, “I’ll put it to you, Keene. How do you think this dark stuff is going to take? All to the bad! It can’t be done, man! You’ve got to have contrast. Now, can’t you realize that this picture has got to show a society home? A real swell home. None of your junk, but stuff that spells money. They eat it, the people do!”

  “If you knew the money we’d spent on this set,” began the property-man plaintively. But Keene interrupted.

  “What would you suggest, then?”

  “Just what I ordered set up!” returned the director. “Statuary. A nude on the wall. Some o’ this here lacquered Chinese furniture—we got Bent’s whole store to draw on, and you know the best people ain’t buying anything else but lacquered, which shows up like real money. Then that high-colored rug, and so forth. It’ll be toned down fine in the film, Keene.”

  “Maybe so, maybe so,” said Reever Keene.

  “And then these here costumes. I been reading over your directions.” The director tapped the papers in his hand, with growing boldness. “I notice you got white neckties with evening clothes; you know’s well as I do they don’t make contrast. Then you got the society dames ordered to cut out the low-neck stuff—What the hell gives you such a notion of society, anyhow? Don’t you know they run around half naked? And no jewels. My Lord! If I was to run out such a picture the society papers would give me plain hell!”

  “If you had ever read them at all,” said Keene dryly, “you’d see they do that, anyhow.”

  A few minutes later the president sent for Reever Keene.

  “Take a cigar, Reever,” he said genially. “Now, we’ll have to cut out this fussing between you and Bob, see? He’s a damned good director; I’m not paying him twenty-five thousand dollars for nothing.”

  “Let him mind his own business, then,” said Keene, a little white around the jaw. “I’ve got a good picture, and he’s not to spoil it.”

  “Sure not,” agreed the president affably. “But see here, now. He’s contracted to put out your pictures, ain’t he? All right. And he’s got the say.”

  “In other words,” said Keene slowly, “I’ll have to stand for his directing in this picture, eh?”

  “Sure. His contract is up in three months. If you want, I’ll put you in charge of your own directing after that.”

  “Then stop work on this picture until he’s out of it.”

  “Can’t do it; Reeve—we’re a week behind on the next release, and it’s got to be rushed. That’s why I’m putting it up to. you straight to work in with him now, and we’ll work in with you later, see?”

  Reever Keene nodded curtly.

  “I’ll try,” he said. “ But—I won’t promise.”

  “The hell he won’t!” laughed the president later, when he was recounting the conversation to the director. “Like the rest of them—throwing a big bluff so he can strut around the Screen Club and tell how he handed it to me! Well, that’s one way of managing these here stars, believe me! This guy’s getting more money than the President of these here United States. Is he going to chuck his job?”

  “Not him,” said the director confidently. “Besides, he’s under contract to us, and if he broke the contract—”

  “He’d be finished, absolutely!” declared the president. “He’s no fool!”

  The president was playing both ends against the middle, which is a wise game—sometimes.

  IV

  Reever Keene had been too long in the movie game, and was taking too much money out of it, to have any artistic temperament—that is, when he was on the lot. Movie folk have to keep their temperament out of business.

  Still, when Keene saw what his director was doing to the abalone-pin story, and realized that he could not prevent its being done, he boiled with inward and suffocating rage. After three days he was so stifled with fury that he was ready for an outbreak.

  He had put Jim Bleeker into that story, and when he saw how the director was handling Jim Bleeker, despite all protests, his fury became white-hot.

  On the fourth morning he drove to the studio without opening his private mail. Once in his dressing-room, he glanced over the letters while he was making up; but, for him, that mail resolved itself into just one letter. He propped it in front of him and read it over again:

  DEAR MR. LARRIGAN:

  Within a few days I am leaving for Europe to take part in reconstruction work. I could not leave without writing you to express anew my very deep appreciation of all your thoughtful kindness to Jim. I know from his letters what your friendship meant to him, and I have learned from other comrades of your great devotion toward the end. Thanks seem but a little thing to offer; yet, believe me, my thanks and appreciation come from the soul.

  I know nothing of your financial position or status in civil life, and I do not wish you to think that I am insulting so deep and pure a thing as your friendship with Jim. However, I am enclosing a card from my attorneys, who are fully instructed to honor it in any way. If you should ever be in need of advice or aid, it will give me great happiness to know that you will make use of this card as though it had been handed you by your fr
iend,

  JIM BLEEKER

  “Bless her sweet heart,” muttered Reever Keene, tearing the card across and tossing it into his waste-basket. He smiled a little, as he thought of his twenty thousand dollars in cash, buried where no one would ever detect it; and of the Kansas oil stock, held by a friend, which brought in itself a comfortable income. Everybody in the business thought that Reever Keene blew all he had, like every one else; but Aloysius Larrigan knew better.

  He read the letter again, fingering the blister pearl in his scarf, and forgetting his make-up completely. Once more he was standing in that house, half a block off Fifth Avenue; once more he was living through that moment when Mrs. Bleeker had handed him that scarf-pin, with her quiet, steady voice, and her brave, stricken eyes.

  The thought of it made him sit very quiet, staring at the letter. In all his life he had never experienced a moment such as that; no not even when Jim had died, beside him! It had been a moment of the spirit; a moment of absolute integrity, of purity, of unsullied sweetness.

  That moment had assoiled many long-soiled years. It had grown upon Larrigan ever since, had grown larger, had grown to mean much more than he had dared admit. Now this letter had come to bring it before him again in all its larger aspects.

  He made up mechanically and went out on the lot; for an hour he acted mechanically, obeying the director without protest, without thought. Then, during a change in the set, he went to his dressing-room.

  Lola was there, standing at his table, reading the letter. Something went cold inside Reever Keene, and he stepped forward as if to take it from her. But she turned upon him, a flood of passion in her face.

  “Well,” she observed with a sneer, “I guess I got your number now, Mr. Larrigan! Lady signs herself Jim Bleeker, does she? Maybe we’re goin’ to hear a lot of things that happened—”

  “You’re making a mistake, Lola,” said Reever Keene.

  “Mistake, am I?” She shook the letter at him with sudden passion. “Maybe I don’t know a chicken’s writing when I see it, huh? Well, if you think I’m a fool, this ends it! You can go along with your Jim Bleeker all you damn please! When you get ready to talk turkey to me—”

  Lola drew off the walnut diamond and laid it, very carefully, on the corner of the dressing-table under Reever Keene’s nose. The whole action was very statuesque and very dramatic; at least, was so intended.

  An instant later Lola uttered a despairing shriek. Reever Keene had seized the walnut diamond and had hurled it through the open window—hurled it with a swing that sent it glittering through the air to Heaven only knew where!

  “Ends it, eh?” snapped Keene. “Then I’m blamed glad of it! So-long!”

  Lola fainted as he vanished, and immediately the dressing-corridor was filled with figures answering her final dramatic shriek. Reever Keene went outside and climbed into his plain green-black car and drove down the street to his lodgings.

  Once there, he wiped the paint from his face, with a curse, and began to pack up his things. He paid his landlady. He burned Mrs. Bleeker’s letter over the oil- stove. Then he threw his stuff together in the rear of the car, and drove down to the bank, where he drew what money he kept deposited there.

  This finished, he went to the central gasoline station and turned over his car to be filled with gas and oil, and to be loaded with sundry extra five-gallon cases of the same.

  While he was watching these affairs being brought to conclusion he heard a wild hail and saw the president’s car stopping at the curb, and the president himself descending, red and perspiring of face.

  “Hey, Keene!” demanded the magnate heatedly. “ What the devil’s struck you? They said you blew out o’ the studio like a wild man and quit work! Get on back there—”

  “Go to hell!” snapped the star. “I’ve quit being Keene. I’m Aloysius Larrigan, see? And don’t get fresh, you!”

  “What! Where you going?”

  “I’m going to Kansas, where I got business,” retorted Larrigan. “Hurry up with them two cans of oil, over there! And blow up the extry tires while you’re about it, partner.”

  The president seized him by the arm.

  “Look here, you!” he exploded violently. “Are you quittin’ on the job—quittin’?”

  “I am,” said Larrigan coldly.

  “By Heaven, if you bust this contract I’ll see to it that you never get another job in front of any damned camera in the world!” raved the other. “I’ll—”

  “You,” said Larrigan, “and your contract, and your seventeen companies, and your directors, and your money, and your whole damn camera battery, and your entire double-dashed motion-picture industry—go to hell! I’m done! Mustered out!”

  He shoved a greenback at the gasoline, dealer, climbed into his car, and went. The president gazed after him with eyes of dulled, glazed despair.

  “Bein’ in the army—that’s what done it for him—ruined the best star in the whole damned works!” he murmured dismally. “Damn the Kaiser!”

  THE DEVIL’S HEIRLOOM, by Anthony M. Rud

  I.

  “Cube” Lacey found Sherrod Guest, his partner and associate in the Searchlight Agency, profoundly excited. Guest, a chunky little man with the cheeks and complexion of a cherub, was pacing back and forth the width of the single, partitioned office, brushing away moisture of anxiety from his high forehead—a forehead which did not find its border of tired little blond hairs till it reached the exact center of its owner’s crown.

  “Thank heavens, you’ve come!” exploded Guest, wheeling to confront Lacey as the latter strode into the room.

  “Landlord been around?” demanded Lacey, grinning wryly as he pried out a thin roll of twenties from his trousers pocket. Along with the bills came an empty sack of tobacco and two pennies, one of which fell to the floor. “A hundred was the best I could charge Lehmann, though it was worth at least an additional fifty. Otherwise he’d have held me up a week or two. This’ll give us a ten-spot on which to eat, beside paying the rent. Any clients come in since I left?”

  Guest’s mouth had opened soundlessly half a dozen times in the attempt to speak. Now he gestured aside the money both of them so sorely needed, granting it only a tolerant nod, and pushed Lacey down into a squeaky swivel.

  “Listen to your bright little sunbeam!” he adjured. “Our big client’s sent for us, for you, I mean! I didn’t know whether you’d get back today or next week, so I tried to sell him myself, but no, that wouldn’t do. Kuban Lacey was the only detective he’d have anything to do with. So you beat it down to the sidearm, fill up on beans and excelsior, and hop a cab for—hm, let me see—3217—”

  “A cab?” interjected Cube incredulously. “Not this starved sleuth! You and I can’t afford flourishes of that kind—yet. No, I’ll save the extra three simoleons for ham-ends while we’re waiting for somebody to kill or kidnap somebody else in a mysterious manner, and demand our services.” He opened the tobacco sack, whisked a paper out of its cover, and poured a dusty pinch of yellow flakes, evening it with practised forefinger. “But who is this personage for whom you’d brave the lean and hungry wolf?”

  “It’s that cranky North Shore millionaire, that hermit chap. If’s he’s got any kind of a case for us—” stuttered Guest, convincingly. He often had difficulty starting a sentence when sincerely excited, though little else than an epochal event could bring him to this state.

  “His name?” interrupted Lacey, an odd, almost belligerent expression appearing in the set of clean, square jaw and narrowing of eyes.

  “I didn’t say. Name’s Noah Lacey—same as yours. He’s the old codger who owns that estate up north with all the grounds landscaped in brick. Made his fortune out of manufacturing brick; or, at least, inherited the business and the first instalment of the money from his father. The Laceys have been doing that since about the time Chicago was a frontier post, I guess. Sure he isn’t any relative of yours?”

  The last was asked in jesting manner, for no one k
new better than Sherrod Guest how poverty-stricken both his partner and himself had been since deserting the comfortable reportorial jobs they had held. Oddly, the question brought a wry grimace to Lacey’s lips, however.

  “I’m afraid you’re due for a disappointment here, old man,” he answered, watching sympathetically as the glow of buoyancy faded from Guest’s expression. “Noah happens to be my uncle—the only other surviving Lacey of our branch in the world. I never have met him. He and my father had a terrific quarrel years and years ago. Think it concerned repairs on a small building they owned jointly, or some such trivial matter. Dad had been disowned, anyway, and perhaps was a little touchy concerning relations with Noah, who was grandfather’s favorite. Anyway, Noah and dad never spoke again to each other. Personally I have no hard feelings toward my uncle, but I have not gone near him since coming to Chicago simply because in the past twenty-five years he has become disgustingly rich. He’d be certain that I simply was trying to ingratiate myself. As a matter of fact I don’t want his money.”

  Guest’s pacing had slowed. Now he sank dejectedly to the edge of a desk. “Fifty or a hundred bucks of it wouldn’t hit us badly just now,” he suggested with a feeble attempt at a smile for this statement which was nothing but the sad truth. After making a considerable name for themselves in crime investigation as reporters—but no money, save their salaries, and one moderate-sized reward which had gone to set them up in business—they had secured only small, unlucrative scraps of work. The first year had been a constant struggle to meet overhead expense and still eat.

  “True enough!” agreed Lacey with an exhalation of breath. “I doubt like the mischief that old Noah has any use for a detective or that if he had he would employ us. Still, beggars can’t be choosers. I’ll call him up and see what he wants.” His hand reached for the telephone.

  “Not much you won’t!” ejaculated Guest, bouncing into action and wrestling the instrument from Lacey’s hands. “We may not have the ghost of a chance at any of your esteemed uncle’s business, but just the same right now you haven’t a thing in the world to do. I have to go to court tomorrow, and I believe Myers has another one of his flea-bite cases for me. Said he’d drop around to talk it over at three o’clock. If you telephoned Uncle Midas you’d be just as apt to tell him to trot around here and hand you his business on a gold plate. Nope! You hustle out, grab a motor bus if you won’t take a taxi, and don’t waste a minute! Somehow I feel the squirmings of a life-sized poker hunch deep down inside me. I know I’m not much good at five-card whist, but—” He ended his sentence with a comical gesture, half shrug and half peremptory nod.