“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 friend,
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
