The B. M. Bower Megapack

by B. M. Bower

  Instead of that he spluttered and stormed like a scolding woman. He lifted first one puttee and then the other, and he shook his fist, and he nodded his head violently, and finally was constrained to lift the leather-banded Stetson from his blond hair and wipe the perspiration from his brow with a lavender initialed handkerchief. He said a great deal in a very few minutes, but it was too involved, too incoherent to be repeated here. Luck gathered, however, that he meant to sue the Acme Company for about nine million dollars damages to his feelings and his reputation, if The Soul of Littlefoot Law was released in its present form. He battered at Luck’s grinning composure with his full supply of invectives. When he perceived that Luck’s eyes twinkled more and more while they watched him, and that Luck’s smile was threatening to explode into laughter, Bently Brown shook his fist at the two of them, shrilled something about seeing his lawyer at once, and went out and slammed the door.

  “Lor-dee! He’d make a hit in comedy, that fellow,” Luck observed placidly, and lighted the cigar he had been holding. “What’s he mean—’ sue the company’?”

  “He means sue the company,” Martinson retorted grimly. “That clause in the contract where we agree to produce his stories in a manner befitting the quality and fame of these several stories in fiction; he’s got grounds for action there, and he’s going to make the most of it. He’s sore, anyway. Some one’s been telling him he practically made us a present of his stuff.”

  “Hell!” said Luck. “Why didn’t you say so?”

  “Why didn’t you say that you were turning that stuff into farce-comedy?” Martinson came back sharply. “I could have told you it wouldn’t get by. I knew Brown wouldn’t stand for anything like that; and I knew he could put the gaff into us on that ‘manner befitting’ clause.”

  “It’s a wonder you wouldn’t have jarred loose from some of that wisdom,” Luck observed tartly. “You never gave me any dope at all on this Bently Brown person. You handed me the junk he stung you on—and believe me, as drama he’d have stung you with it as a present!—you handed it to me to film. I made the most of it.”

  “You made a mess of it,” Martinson corrected peevishly.

  “You laughed,” Luck pointed out laconically. Then his eyes twinkled suddenly. “‘Laugh and the world laughs with you,’” he quoted shamelessly, and took a long, satisfying suck at his cigar.

  “The world won’t step up and pay damages to Bently Brown,” Martinson reminded him, “if that picture is released as it stands. How many have you made, so far?”

  “I’m finishing the third; getting funnier, too, as they go along.”

  “You’ve got to cut out that funny business. You’ll have to retake this whole thing, Luck; make it straight drama. We can’t afford a lawsuit, these hard times—and injunctions tying up the releases, and damages to pay when the thing’s thrashed out in court. You’ll have to retake this whole picture. Nice bunch of useless expense, I must say, when I’ve been chasing nickels off the expense account of this company and sitting up nights nursing profits! We’ll have to cut salaries now, to break even on this fluke. I’ve left the payroll alone so far. That’s the worst of a break like this. The whole company has got to pay for every blunder from now on.”

  Luck’s eyes hardened while he listened. He did not call his work a blunder, and the charge did not sit well coming from another.

  “Buy off Bently Brown,” he advised crisply. “Offer him a new contract, naming this stuff as comedy. Advertise them as the famous comedies of Bently Brown, the well-known author. Show him some good publicity dope along that line. Give him the credit of making the stories live ones. This series will be a money-maker, and a big one, if ever they reach the screen. You’re old enough in the business to know that, Mart. You saw how this film hit the bunch, and you know what it takes to rouse any enthusiasm in the projection room. And take it from me, Mart—this is straight!—that’s the only way in God’s world to make that series take hold at all. As drama the stuff is hopeless. Absolutely hopeless. It’s only by giving it the twist I gave it that it will get over. You do that, Mart. You kid this Bently Brown into being featured as the humorist of the age, and pay him a little something for swallowing his disappointment as a dramatic author. I’ll go ahead with my boys, and we’ll deliver the goods. You do that, and you’ll be setting up nights counting profits instead of nursing them!”

  Martinson began to stir up the litter on his desk,—another bad-weather sign. “I can’t waste time talking nonsense,” he snapped. “I’ve got plenty to do without that. That stuff has got to be retaken; every foot of it, if you’ve gone on burlesquing the action. I happen to know that Brown wouldn’t consider such a compromise. You’ve made a bad break, and I believe you made the first one when you brought that bunch of cowboys back with you. If they can do straight dramatic acting, all right; if not, you’d better let them out and start over with professionals.”

  For a peaceable man, Martinson was angry. He had taken some trouble in smoothing down the ruffled temper of Bently Brown, even before viewing the trial run of the picture. Martinson hated disputes as a cat hates to walk in fresh-fallen snow, and the parting tirade of Bently Brown had affected him unpleasantly.

  For a full two minutes Luck smoked and did not speak, and as he had done once before, Martinson repented his harshness when it was too late. “Personally, your version struck me as awfully funny,” he began placatingly.

  “Who gives a cuss how it struck you personally?” Luck stood up with unexpected haste. “You trim and truckle to every one that comes along with a gold brick, and that’s why you have to sit up nights to nurse the profits. If you had a little stiffening in your back, the profits would show up better. You paid good money for this bunch of rot, and turned it over to me to whip into a profitable investment. You can make the rounds of the studio and get a vote on whether I’ve done it or not. Put it up to your Public; they’ll mighty soon let you know whether the film’s a money-getter. If it is, your business as general manager and president of the Acme Film Company is to get Bently Brown in line for the production to go on. A clause such as you mention in the agreement with him shows a bigger blunder on your part than anything I’ve done or ever will do. If you’d had as much sense as Ted, you’d have kept that clause out. If you’d had half as much brains as the comedy burro out in the corral you’d never have loaded up with that stuff, anyway; you’d have seen at a glance that it was rotten.

  “Now, I’ve shown what I can do with those stories. I’ve taken your bad bargain and put it into a money-making shape. As to the break I made in getting those boys out here, you’ll have to show me—that’s all. They seem, to have made good all right, judging from the way that film took with the crowd. And if you ask my opinion as a director, they beat any near-professional on the Acme pay roll. My work, and their work, goes right along as it has started—or it stops. If you want those stories worked up in a lot of darned, sickly, slush melodrama, you can set some simp at it that don’t know any better.” Luck stopped and shut his teeth together against some personal remarks that he would later feel ashamed of having uttered. He turned to the door, swallowed hard, and forced himself to a dignified calm before he spoke again.

  “You know my phone number, Mart. By seven in the morning I’ll expect to hear from you. You can tell me then whether I’m to go ahead with these stories the way I’ve started, or whether to pull out of the Company altogether. One or the other. I’ll want to know in the morning.” Then he went out.

  “Dammit, who’s running this company—you or I?” Martinson called after him heatedly. But Luck was already standing on the steps and hoisting his umbrella against the drizzle, and he did not give any sign that he heard.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “THERE’S GOT TO BE A LINE DRAWED SOMEWHERES”

  By seven o’clock in the morning,—since that was his ultimatum,—Luck was standing in his bare feet and pajamas, acrimoniously arguing with Martinson over the telephone. Usually he was up at six, but he
was a stubborn young man, and the day promised much rainfall, anyway. He would have preferred sunshine; the stand he meant to take would have had more weight in working weather. But since he could not prevent the morning from being a rainy one, he permitted more determination to slip into his tones.

  Martinson had spent an unpleasant evening with Bently Brown, or so he declared. He had called up several stockholders of the Acme, and had talked the matter over with them, and—

  “Well, cut the preamble, Mart,” snapped Luck, trying to warm one foot by rubbing it with the other one. “Do I go on with the work, or don’t I?”

  “From the looks of the weather—” Mart began to temporize.

  “Weather cuts no figure with this matter. You know what I mean. What’s the decision?” Luck scowled at the pretty girl on his wall calendar, and began to rub his right foot with the left and to curse the janitor with that part of his brain not occupied with the conversation.

  “Well, listen. You come out to the office, after awhile, and we’ll go into this matter calmly,” begged Martinson. “No use in letting that temper of yours run away with you, Luck. You know we all—”

  “What did Bently Brown say? Did you put the proposition up to him as I suggested?”

  “Luck, you know I told you Brown wouldn’t consider—”

  “Say, Mart, get all those rambling words out of your system, and then call me up and tell me what I want to know!” And Luck hung up the receiver and went shivering back to bed. From the things he said to himself, he was letting that temper of his run away with him in spite of Martinson’s warning.

  He had just ceased having spasms of shivering, and had found his warm nest of the night, and was feeling glad that it was raining so that he could stay in bed as long as he liked, when the phone jingled shrilly again. Had he been certain that it was Martinson, Luck would have lain there and let it ring itself tired. But there is always the doubt when a telephone bell calls peremptorily. He waited sulkily until the girl at the switchboard in the office below settled down to prolong the siege. Luck knew that girl would never quit now that she was sure he was in. He crawled out again, this time dragging the bedspread with him for drapery.

  “H’l-lo!” There was no compromise in his voice, which was guttural.

  “Luck? This is Martinson. You are to retake all of the Bently Brown pictures which you have made so far, under the personal supervision of Bently Brown himself, who will pass upon all film before accepted by the company. This is final.”

  “Martinson? This is Luck. You and Bently Brown and the Acme Film Company can go where the heat’s never turned off. This is final.”

  Whereupon Luck slammed the receiver into its brackets, trailed over to a table and gleaned “the makings” from among the litter of papers, programs, “stills,” and letters, and rolled himself a much-needed smoke. He was sorry chiefly because he had been compelled to use such mild language over the telephone. It would be almost worth a trip to the office just to tell Martinson without stint what he thought of him and all his works.

  He crawled back into bed and smoked his cigarette with due regard for the bedclothes, and wondered what kind of a fool they took him for if they imagined for one minute that he would produce so much as a sub-title under the personal supervision of Bently Brown.

  After awhile it occurred to him that, unless he relented from his final statement to Martinson, he was a young man out of a job, but that did not worry him much. Of course, if he left the Acme Company, he would have to look around for an opening somewhere else, where he could take his Happy Family and maybe produce.…

  Right there Luck got up and unlocked his trunk, which was also his chest of treasures, and found the carbon copy of his range scenario. He had not named it yet. In thinking of it and in talking about it with the boys he had been content to call it his Big Picture. If he could place himself and his Big Picture and his boys with some company that would appreciate the value of the combination, his rupture with the Acme Company would be simply a bit of good luck. While he huddled close to the radiator that was beginning to hiss and rumble encouragingly, he glanced rapidly over the meagerly described scenes which were to his imagination so full of color.

  “Pam. bleak mesa—snow—cattle drifting before wind. Dale and Johnny dis. riding to foreground. Reg. cold—horses leg-weary—boys all in—”

  To Luck, sitting there in his pajamas as close as he could get to a slow-warming steam radiator, those curtailed sentences projected his mental self into a land of cold and snow and biting wind, where the cattle drifted dismally before the storm. Andy Green and Miguel Rapponi were riding slowly toward him on shuffling horses as bone-weary as their masters. Snow was packed in the wrinkles of the boys’ clothing. Snow was packed in the manes and tails of the horses that moved with their heads drooping in utter dejection. “Boys all in,” said the script laconically. Luck, staring at the little thread of escaping steam from the radiator valve, saw Andy and the Native Son drooping in the saddles, swaying stiffly with the movements of their mounts. He saw them to the last little detail,—to the drift of snow on their hatbrims and the tiny icicles clinging to the high collars of their sourdough coats, where their breath had frozen.

  If he could get a company to let him put that on, he would not care, he told himself, if he never made another picture in his life. If he could get a company to send him and the boys where that stuff could be found—

  Well, it was only eight o’clock in the morning, a rainy morning at that, when all good movie people would lie late in bed for the pure luxury of taking their ease. But Luck, besides acting upon strong convictions and then paying the price without whimpering, never let an impulse grow stale from want of use. He reached for the fat telephone directory and searched out the numbers of those motion-picture companies which he did not remember readily. Then, beginning at the first number on his hastily compiled list, he woke five different managers out of their precious eight-o’clock sleep to answer his questions.

  Whatever they may have thought of Luck Lindsay just then, they replied politely, and did not tell him offhand that there was no possible opening for him in their companies. Three of them made appointments with him at their offices. One promised to call him up just as soon as he “had a line on anything.” One said that, with the rainy weather coming on, they were cutting down to straight studio stuff, but that he would keep Luck in mind if anything turned up.

  Then I suppose the whole five called him names behind his back, figuratively speaking, for being such an early riser on such a day. Not one of them asked him any questions about his reasons for leaving the Acme; reasons, in the motion-picture business, are generally invented upon demand and have but a fictitious value at best. And since it is never a matter of surprise when any director or any member of any company decides to try a new field, it would seem that change is one of the most unchanging features of the business.

  Luck had no qualms of conscience, either for his treatment of Martinson and his overtures, or for his disturbances of five other perfectly inoffensive movie managers. He dressed with mechanical precision and with his mind shuttling back and forth from his Big Picture to the possibilities of his next position. He folded his scenario and placed it in a long envelope, hunted until he found his rubbers, took his raincoat over his arm and his umbrella in his hand, and went blithely to the elevator. It was too stormy for his machine, so he caught a street car and went straight to the bungalow where the Happy Family were still snoring at peace with the world and each other.

  Still Luck had no qualms of conscience. He lingered in the kitchen just long enough to say howdy to Rosemary Green who was anxiously watching a new and much admired coffee percolator “to see if it were going to perk,” she told him gravely. He assured Rosemary that he had come all the way out there in the hope of being invited to breakfast. Then he went into a sleep-charged atmosphere and gave a real, old-time range yell.

  “Why, I saw that peaked little person with Mr. Martinson,” Mrs. Andy rem
arked slightingly at the breakfast table. “Was that Bently Brown? And he has the nerve to want to stand around and boss you—oh, find, me an umbrella, somebody! I shall choke if I can’t go and tell him to his silly, pink face what a conceited little idiot he is!” (You will see why it was that Rosemary Green had been adopted without question as a member of the Happy Family.) “I hope you told him straight out, Luck Lindsay, that these boys would simply tear him limb from limb if he ever dared to butt in on your work. Why, it’s you that made the picture fit to look at!”

  Luck let his eyes thank her for her loyalty, and held out his empty cup for more coffee. “I came out,” he drawled quietly, “to find out what you fellows are going to do about it. Of course, they’ll get somebody else to go ahead with the stuff, and you boys can stay with it—”

  “Well, say! Did you come away out here in the rain to insult us fellers?” Big Medicine roared suddenly from the foot of the table. “I’ll take a lot from you, but by cripes they’s got to be a line drawed somewheres!”

  “You bet. And right there’s where we draw it, Luck,” spoke up the dried little man who seldom spoke at the table, but concentrated his attention upon the joy of eating what Mrs. Andy set before him. “I come out here to work for you. That peters out, by gorry I’ll go back to chufferin a baggage truck in Sioux, North Dakoty. Kin I have a drop more coffee, Mrs. Green?”

  While Rosemary proudly brought her new percolator in from the kitchen and refilled his cup, Luck Lindsay sat and endured the greatest tongue-lashing of his life. Furthermore, he seemed to enjoy the chorus of reproaches and threats and recriminations. He chuckled over the eloquence of Andy Green, and he grinned at the belligerence of Pink and the melancholy of Happy Jack.

  “I don’t guess you’re crazy to work under Bently Brown,” he finally managed to slide into the uproar. “Do I get you as meaning to stick with me—wherever I go?”