Silbro is a little independent that used to be a parachute-jumper, and Jack Hornison had invited him to Malibu Beach for the week-end, to use his cottage while he and the family was away. It cost eighty thousand dollars, and is more like a duke’s palace than a cottage; so of course Silbro, with a set like that that wasn’t costing him anything, he no sooner got there on Saturday afternoon, than he brought in a whole truckload of cameras and punks, and began shooting a lousy short called “Malibu Nights,” working both nights and all day Sunday to get it done before Hornison would get back on Monday. When he saw Kennelly, he grabbed him around the neck like he was a long-lost brother.
“Tim!” he says. “The very one I was looking for! I was beating it into Hollywood after you, and ain’t that a break I ran into you here!” It was a break, all right, but he hadn’t thought of Kennelly until just that second. He was beating it into Hollywood for anybody he could pull out of a night-club, after what had happened — but when he saw Kennelly, why, Kennelly was the one he was looking for.
“Yeah?” says Kennelly. “What’s on your mind?”
“Tim,” says Silbro, “would you do something for me? Would you lead me a number? Just one number, that was made to order for you, and actually written for you, and if you don’t believe me you can ask Manny Roberts, that put it up for me, and he’ll tell you the same.”
“I don’t know,” says Kennelly. “I’m pretty busy right now.”
An actor, if he hadn’t had a meal for a week, and you told him you were doing “Macbeth,” and wanted some real eating in the banquet-scene, and would he eat the chow while the rest of them were speaking their pieces, he would have to say he couldn’t consider anything but Banquo’s ghost, because of course a ghost is the one part in show business that don’t eat.
“But get a load of it, Tim!” Silbro urged. “Listen how it goes.”
“I’ll think about it. See me tomorrow.”
“But Tim! I mean now! The cameras are waiting for you! I’m sunk if I don’t finish up tonight, and Buddy Sadler has broke a leg! He went swimming this afternoon, and now he’s got the pip! He can’t sing! You got to do it for me!”
“I thought you said it was written for me.”
“It was wrote for you, but we didn’t know where you was. We had to take Buddy, and now he has laid down and died. Tim, five hundred for the job, and feature billing.”
“Not tonight, Silbro. Not tired like I am. Look at me. I just came off the set.”
“Tim, I’ll give you a grand, and star billing. Don’t you get it? I got to finish tonight, or I’m sunk!”
You understand how this was. Kennelly had three bucks in his pants, and maybe two more in the bank. He wanted it the worst way, but the great soul of the actor just wouldn’t let him say yes. He’d have been shaking his head yet if this girl, this Polly Dukas you read about in the papers, hadn’t put her head out of Silbro’s car. She was driving him to Hollywood, because he was so shot he couldn’t even find the gear-shift.
“Please, Mr. Kennelly,” she says. “I’ve been wishing all this time, just to work in a picture with you. Won’t you do it? Just for me?”
“Are you in it?” says Kennelly.
“I do the tap-dance,” she says.
Well, of course that was different. They fixed it up pretty quick; then Silbro, he didn’t mean that Kennelly should get away from him, so he sent Polly with him while he went up to get his evening clothes, where he had left them at Happy’s. Everybody brings their own clothes when they work for Silbro.
“You don’t know what you’ve done for me,” she says as they drove up the drive. “It’s my first chance in pictures.”
“O. K.,” says Kennelly. “Glad to do it for you.”
“Of course I know it doesn’t mean anything to you. But it does to me. I just wanted you to know how grateful I am.”
“I wouldn’t say that. Of course in one way it’s just another picture. But an actor ought never be ashamed to do his best. It ought to be new to him. Just a little bit.”
“I’ll always remember that, Mr. Kennelly.”
“What’s your name?”
“Polly. Polly Dukas.”
“Well, Polly, if I go in there, I’ve got to do a lot of handshaking that’ll take all night. It’s a little party in my honor, and I walked out on it. So suppose I park out back here, and you slide in and get the grip. Then we can blow quick. O. K.?”
“That’s funny.”
“What’s funny?”
“That you can just walk out on a party in your honor. I hope I get that famous.”
“After you’ve been a star awhile, you get a little fed up on parties in your honor.”
“I don’t think I ever would.”
“Just tell Happy you’ve come for my grip. And for the love of Pete, don’t get him out here or we’ll never get away.”
“I won’t.”
He parked and cut his lights, and she slipped in the house, where the party was just getting good. He lit a cigarette, and sat there watching the limb of a tree, where it was waving at him in the wind. He was feeling all excited, because even if it was only a lousy short, it gave him the chance he had been praying for. But then all of a sudden a funny feeling began to go over him. The smoke from his cigarette was going straight up, so there wasn’t any wind. The limb was thick as your arm, but it was limber in the middle. It didn’t have any leaves on the end of it, but had a tassel. Then it popped in his mind that he had heard somewhere that a guy up near Happy had a private zoo. Then it popped in his mind about those horses squealing. Then he remembered about that door, and he knew what he was looking at.
The car was an open roadster, and he was afraid to step on the starter, and he knew he didn’t dare sit in it. He opened the door easy, and slid out.
Just then Polly came back, with the grip. “I didn’t even see him,” she says. “I got one of the servants to get it for me.”
He took hold of her. “Don’t run and don’t yell,” he whispered. “But we got to get in the house quick. There’s a lion on that wall.”
She didn’t make a sound, and they started out. But the lion saw what they were up to, jumped down and slid around between them and the house. They backed away, and he came on. He came on two or three steps at a time, and in between he would crouch down on his belly. One of those times Kennelly grabbed Polly up, turned, and lined for the swimming-pool. It was about twenty feet away. The lion sprang, but they fell into the water a few inches ahead of him, and he skidded to a stop on the edge. Lions don’t like water much.
They stood up and waded out to the middle, in water about up to their waists. The lion began pacing up and down, at the side of the pool. Inside, they could hear the party going on, the jazz band playing, guys singing, women laughing.
“I’m going to call for help,” she says after a minute.
“No, you’ll get all those people out here, and it’ll be murder.”
“But they’re waiting for us.”
“They’ll have to wait.”
“We’ve got to do something. We can’t just stand here.”
“Somebody’ll come out in a minute. We’ll tell them quiet what it is, and get them to call the police.”