Collected Fiction (1940-1963)

by William P. McGivern

  “You’ve got me all wrong,” he managed to croak hoarsely, “I don’t even know this girl you’re raving about. I’ve only seen her twice.”

  Potterson smiled insinuatingly and nudged him in the side with his elbow.

  “Okay, okay,” he winked. “You’ve only seen her twice. But you managed to make a terrific impression in just that time.” The smile faded from his face and was replaced with an expression of sulky envy. “I wish I knew what you had on the ball,” he muttered.

  “I wish I did too,” Howie cried despairingly.

  IN a few minutes the long sleek car drew to a smooth stop before the modest frame boarding house in which Howie lived. As they walked up the carpeted stairs to Howie’s third floor room, he tried again.

  “You men are wasting your time,” he said pleadingly, “I can’t give you any contracts or anything. I don’t even know who or where this girl you want is.”

  “You hear that,” Potterson said over his shoulder to the four men who followed him, “he doesn’t know where she is.”

  The men chuckled.

  “He probably can’t even get in touch with her,” Potterson added between panting breaths.

  The men chuckled again.

  Howie shrugged despairingly. Nothing he could say or do it seemed would convince him that he was telling the truth.

  He stopped before his door, inserted the key and stepped back to allow Potterson and his four shadows to precede him into the room.

  Howie followed them in, closed the door behind him and stopped short, his eyes popping open incredulously.

  For reclining seductively on his bed like a contented leopard was the darkhaired nemessis who had so hopelessly scrambled up his life in the past hour. She had kicked off her high heeled pumps and now she wriggled her toes and glanced up at him through a strand of blue-black hair that had fallen over her eyes.

  “Hello, honey,” she cooed.

  “W—what are you doing here?” gasped Howie.

  Potterson took his eyes from the brunette reluctantly.

  “Let’s get down to business,” he said drawing a sheaf of papers from his inner coat pocket. “We’re prepared to go as high as necessary, so there shouldn’t be any trouble.”

  Howie collapsed into a chair. Strangling sounds came from his throat.

  The dark haired enchantress slipped gracefully from the bed and crossed to Howie and settled slinkily onto his lap. Her round white arm found its way around his neck, pulling him closer to her.

  “Don’t!” Howie strangled.

  Potterson stared at him incredulously for a moment and then spread several impressive looking documents on a table next to the chair.

  “A thousand a wqek to start,” he said crisply, “with a raise each year for the duration of this seven-year contract. Satisfactory?”

  “Please,” Howie said miserably, “I’m not—”

  “Okay,” Potterson said hastily, “we’ll make it two thousand to start with.”

  “But—”

  “Four thousand!”

  “Mr. Potterson,” Howie said desperately, “this joke has gone far enough.”

  “Four thousand dollars a joke?” Potterson shouted. “I’ll show you who’s joking! Ten thousand dollars!”

  HOWIE groaned. His resistance was gone. No one would listen to him. Everybody was insane. Nothing made sense any more. The only reason and sanity left in the world belonged to Mazie Slatter. And she would have none of him. He was dimly aware that they were shoving a pen into his hand, that he was signing documents by the dozen. But he was oblivious to it all. The only thought in his mind, the only desire in his heart was Mazie.

  “There,” Potterson cried triumphantly. “No one will ever break these contracts. They’re iron-clad and air-tight. It’ll cost us money, but it’s worth it to have her under exclusive contract for everything.”

  “Brilliant work, Mr. Potterson,” one of his shadows commented.

  “Stroke of genius, sir,” another added.

  “Yes indeed,” the remaining two put in simultaneously.

  Howie was caught up then in a tornado of turbulent action and excitement.

  “We leave for the coast in three hours,” Potterson barked. “Be ready. We’ll work out a complete build-up campaign in the meantime. Don’t forget. Be at Union Station in three hours.”

  Howie tried feebly to protest, but the situation was out of his hands and control now. Hollywood methods were in the saddle. He was dragged to his feet, hustled to the car, raced from ticket agency to haberdasher and back again, with all the furious confusion of Hollywood itself.

  The whole thing had become a kaleidoscopic nightmare in which pinwheels and pyrotechnics exploded constantly. In one interval of sanity he got away long enough to phone Rupp’s Drug Store, but the clerk told him that Mazie Slatter had left the store and there was no way he could get in touch with her.

  The papers had the story before they left. There were pictures of Potterson, Howie and all the yes men but not one single picture of the beautiful darkhaired girl. She was in the drawing room of the streamliner swathed to the ears in all-concealing veils. That was the build-up. She was heralded as the most glorious, glamorous, gorgeous creature ever to be signed by Colossal Films. But no pictures were to be taken until the dramatic unveiling at the depot in Hollywood. It was a dodge designed to create suspense and it was evidently succeeding. There were reams of copy about the mysterious veiled girl in the afternoon papers. And when the sleek streamliner pulled from the station hundreds of fans and curiosity seekers lined the tracks cheering and shouting.

  Everyone was happy and excited and expectant but Howie. He sat glumly in his compartment feeling as if the bottom had dropped completely out of the safe, comfortable world he had known.

  Just a few short hours ago he had been safe, secure and moderately happy. Now he was suddenly surrounded by a whirlpool of Hollywood maniacs and in the proximity of the glamorous, frightening dark-haired girl who acted toward him as if he were the personification of a hero from the pages of Ideal Romances.

  As the wheels of the streamliner clicked swiftly over the rails bearing him inexorably toward his destiny in Hollywood, he wondered dazedly how it would all end . . .

  TWO days later as the train was approaching the sprawling, stuccoed station at Los Angeles, Howie had found no answer to his gloomy speculations. He had spent the time in transit scampering from his compartment to the diner and back, furtively dodging the efforts of the bewitching brunette to inveigle him into her drawing room.

  The door of his compartment suddenly banged open and Howie started furtively. But it was Potterson’s moonlike face that appeared.

  “Better be getting ready,” he barked. “We’re due in L.A. in about twenty minutes. I’ve just received word that the reception is all set to go off with a bang. We’ve got the mayor, dozens of stars and notables and half the town down at the station waiting for us. It’ll be the biggest moment in the history of publicity build-ups when we unveil Collossal’s latest star. I’m telling you the town will go wild. Now you get down to her drawing room and see that she’s ready.”

  “But—”

  “No ‘buts’ ” Potterson snapped. With every foot that slid back under the wheels Potterson became more and more the infallible, dynamic Producer. He had on a brightly-checked sport coat and a crimson scarf which he wore like a uniform.

  “Get moving,” he ordered.

  Reluctantly Howie got moving. As he reached the door to the brunette’s drawing room he was aware that the palms of his hands were damp and cold.

  Summoning all of his courage he knocked timidly. A lilting voice answered him and then the door was opened and the girl appeared.

  Howie gaped. She was wearing a loose flowing white gown that blended with the creamy white of her skin and set off her dark hair stunningly. Standing before him, an inviting smile on her lips she looked like a sorceress of seduction.

  “Just wanted to tell you,” Howie gulped, “we
’re about there.”

  The girl reached out and took Howie’s hand, drew him into the drawing room.

  “Now just a minute,” he spluttered, “I’ve—”

  The girl closed the door after him, leaned against it, her head tilted back to expose the long column of her throat.

  “You’re always in such a hurry,” she pouted. “But we can be together for these last few minutes anyway. You don’t find it disagreeable being alone with me do you?”

  Howie’s will power was meeting its Waterloo. For three days he had been as noble as Galahad, but this provocative proximity was too much for him. Mazie receded into a vague blur in his consciousness.

  Hardly knowing what he was doing he took the dark-haired girl into his arms and kissed her, thoroughly and completely. For a delirious instant the girl returned his embrace and it was like nothing he had ever known or dreamed in his life.

  Then he got the surprise of his life!

  For the girl suddenly and forcefully shoved him away, laughing gloatingly.

  HOWIE staggered back and collapsed into a chair. He stared at her scornful features in silent, hurt amazement.

  “You thought you could resist me,” she blazed angrily. “No man in three thousand years has done that. But your indifference has been grossly insulting. For that insult you will pay dearly.”

  Howie stared at the girl, silent and stunned.

  She seemed to be changing before his eyes. Her eyes were angry pools of smouldering flame and her features were hardening into a cold white mask of fury.

  “W—who are you?” he quavered weakly.

  “The Leanhaun Shee!” the word sounded like the hiss of a whip. “I live on love. My life is sustained by the devotion of men. Devotion that is as fatal to them as the sting of the adder. But I received one curse from my father that decrees that any man who resists me shall become my master. As long as you were indifferent to my charms I was your slave. Now, by your weakness and capitulation, you have become mine.”[*]

  “That’s illegal,” Howie said, desperately clutching at straws. “Lincoln abolished all that sort of stuff. You’re—”

  “Silence,” the girl commanded. “Rise.”

  “N—no,” Howie objected weakly.

  “Rise!”

  Howie stood up. He didn’t want to, but some power other than his own trembling legs did the job for him.

  “What do you want?” he stammered.

  “Your love and your life,” the Leanhaun Shee answered softly, moving toward him. “The only man who resisted me as long as you, was Marc Antony. I didn’t mind that so much because he was occupied with Cleopatra and that was respectable competition even for me. But you, you sniveling worm, preferred that washed-out horror at the drug store to me. For that poor taste you will pay bitterly.”

  “No,” Howie cried, backing from the creature.

  She was growing taller before his eyes, it seemed. Her beauty was vanishing, and in its place a cold, ruthless passion was appearing. In the whiteness of her face her eyes were large saucers of violet flame.

  “You are mine,” she whispered.

  In desperation Howie’s distracted senses brought one name before his mind, forced one name through his terror-stiffened lips.

  “Mazie!” he howled. “Mazie. Help me!”

  As if this cry were the cue to invisible stage hands in invisible stage wings, the door to the drawing room was flung violently open and Mazie’s lumpy, belligerent figure marched onto the scene.

  NOTHING could have shocked Howie to a greater extent. His cry had been an instinctive, hopeless appeal and now, it was miraculously answered.

  “Mazie,” he choked, “save me.”

  Mazie surveyed the situation with a jealous glare.

  “Like I thought,” she snapped. “The minute my back is turned this thing,” she paused to flick a contemptuous glance at the dark-haired enchantress, “tries to steal you right from my arms.” The Leanhaun Shee was as still and silent as if she were carved from cold white marble. Only her eyes were alive and they were like the windows of hell.

  “Tell her to go,” she said tonelessly to Howie. “We are leaving.”

  “Oh, no you ain’t,” Mazie cried shrilly. “If you think I’m lettin’ Howie slip away from me a second time you’re nuttier than a fruit cake.”

  She wheeled to Howie.

  “When I seen your pictures in the paper at home, telling about how you was to become a movie big-shot I suddenly realized that I was wrong about you. If I’d known that I would have gone to that show with you. I followed you to—to tell you that.”

  Howie was a simple soul and in his tormented state this sounded logical and—wonderful.

  “Gosh,” he said. “Would you, Mazie?”

  “Sure, Honey,” Mazie cooed. “You’re just my type, Big Boy.”

  Howie clasped her to his breast fervently. With her in his arms he felt as strong as Hercules—or Mark Antony.

  “Come!” the Leanhaun Shee said softly.

  Howie wavered. Mazie snuggled her peroxided head closer to him.

  “We’re goin’ to be awful happy out here,” she sighed. “In pictures and everything.”

  “You bet we are,” Howie said decisively. He felt as if he had emerged from a nightmare into a sane and sunny world again. He felt strong and sure of himself.

  “Get out,” he said to the Leanhaun Shee. “Can’t you see we’d like to be alone?”

  For a silent instant the Leanhaun Shee glared at him furiously. Then her expression softened. She shrugged her beautiful shoulders wearily.

  “I must be slipping,” she said thoughtfully. “When Marc turned back to Cleo, there was some excuse for it. But,” she looked distastefully at the back of Mazie’s streaky blonde head, “in this case there’s no consolation for me at all. I might have known better than to choose a soda jerker, though.”

  With a quick angry motion she whipped the white gown about her shoulder, stepped back and—vanished!

  HOWIE blinked his eyes incredulously, There was no doubt of it. She had disappeared as completely as a whiff of white smoke in a breeze.

  But he had no time to wonder about that.

  For an impatient fist was pounding on the door and a loud voice was demanding.

  “Hurry up in there. We’re waiting for you.”

  Howie recognized Potterson’s voice with a chill start of terror.

  The star, the Leanhaun Shee was gone. There was no one to take her place. His knowledge of the law was fuzzy, but he realized guiltily that he had signed contracts and legal documents guaranteeing the appearance of the glamorous brunette in pictures.

  And she was gone. Vanished forever, he knew intuitively.

  That was a relief, but what about the contracts he had signed? Panic mounted in his breast. He was out of one frying pan into another. As things stood, Potterson could throw him in the bastile and then throw the key away.

  “Oooooh,” he groaned.

  “What’s the matter?” Potterson yelled anxiously. “Anything wrong in there?”

  It was then that the change came over Howie Lemp. His jaw hardened and his spine stiffened. For he suddenly though somewhat irrelevantly, remembered that he and Marc Antony had something in common. And no man with a kinship to a hero of Marc Antony’s caliber can be bluffed by a simple matter of pulling a fullgrown and fullblown movie star from his sleeve.

  “There’s nothing wrong,” he snapped, and there was new authority in his voice. “I’ll—we’ll be right with you.”

  THE band was playing “California Here I Come” and the depot was a noisy spectacle of cheering humans and gay bunting. Officials and dignitaries were present in droves. Flood lights flashed over the spectacular scene, picking out faces of famous stars and directors.

  It was Hollywood at its colorful, sensational best.

  “Stormy” Potterson was on the bunting-bedecked improvised stage finishing the speech of introduction.

  “. . . and so,” he boomed, �
��we feel that tonight we are welcoming to our midst one who will speedily fulfill all of the glorious expectations we have for her. In my opinion this girl of beauty and charm and talent will take her place in stardom’s uppermost niche. That is why it gives me such great pleasure to give to you, her very first audience, Colossal’s future Star of Stars!”

  A spotlight stabbed at the platform revealing in its bright glare a heavily-veiled figure. Applause broke out from all sides of the depot. It swelled up, higher and higher, then at a signal from Potterson it faded away to a tense expectant murmur.

  With lumbering grace Potterson escorted the heavily draped figure to the edge of the stage, and with a solemnly dramatic gesture drew aside the veil and cast it to the floor.

  And in the garish light of the stabbing beacon, Hollywood had its first introduction to the sallow face and streaky hair of Mazie Slatter!

  A blanket of incredulous silence settled over the crowd.

  And then as Mazie shook her hands over her head like a conquering fighter the storm broke.

  Roaring, rocking waves of laughter surged up from the crowd completely drowning out Potterson’s enraged bellow. It grew louder and more unrestrained by the second. Men clung to each other helplessly and some of them rolled to the floor, doubled up with merriment. It was a bedlam of buffoonery, an earthquake of mirth.

  Off to one side of the howling, giggling crowd there was a lone, sad figure. Howie Lemp was not laughing.

  IT HAD seemed like a good idea at the time to substitute Mazie for the exotic Leanhaun Shee, but things were not working quite as he had hoped. In fact things were terrible. And, he decided as he saw Potterson’s huge figure lumbering toward him, they were destined to get much worse!

  “I’ll throw you in jail,” Potterson was screaming. “I’ll have you tarred and feathered, drawn and quartered, and flung to the buzzards. No man alive can do what you’ve done to me. Made me the laughing stock of the whole industry. Where is the girl? Where is she? If you don’t produce Mazie Slatter, I’ll have you hung for kidnaping.”

  “Mazie Slatter?” Howie echoed blankly. “That’s Mazie Slatter on the platform.”