She was now a gorgeous white blonde, with huge eyelashes and a delicious cupid’s bow, even more beautiful in all her pink English flesh than she was upon the screen. She wore pale blue silk and pearls. She was drenched in Mitsouko. I was again entirely intoxicated, hypnotised by her exquisite beauty, her aura of glamour. She listened with few comments, eating as I told her my story, every so often urging me to elaborate or continue. She was horrified at what had happened. ‘I just thort you an’ yore bint ‘ad decided America wasn’t good enough fer yer and orf yer went, back to wherever it was. Cor, you poor littel bugger! I can let yer ‘ave a few dollars, if yer like.’
I told her that I was provided for at the moment, though I did ask discreetly for the name of a reliable cocaine supplier. I felt it was high time I refuelled my brain. She put me in touch with a well-known actor who, down on his luck, was supplementing his income working as an agent for a big-time dealer and meanwhile told me her own story, which explained much of what had been mysterious. The very day she had left me at the airfield she had met a handsome young man who, like Hever, was a partner in a film company. ‘The only difference is, Ivan, that this feller was also bloody good-lookin’, in a sleazy sort of way. Like old Trotsky used to be before ‘e started takin’ ‘isself so fuckin’ seriously. I ‘ear ‘e’s in France now, by the way. Them blokes was orlways squabblin’ amongst themselves. Gord, it got borin’ towards the end!’ And then she smiled, remembering some comic incident of those terrible Civil War years when she had helped me out of more than one difficulty. She did not know what had happened to Hever or my steam car. ‘It only larsted a fortnight an’ then I met me Swede, Wolfgang. ‘E sounds like a kraut, but ‘e ain’t. Well, ‘Ever was bitter, I’ll say that much. Very bitter reelly. Took against me an’, I suppose, you. ‘E wrote this stuffy note, talking abart breach o’ promise an’ rubbish like that. Said ‘e wasn’t bloody surprised we’d skipped and we was bofe a pair o’ blackmailin’ scoundrels and he didn’t give a damn ‘oo said wot abart ther fuckin’ KKK, ‘e was buggering off ter Europe and after that he was goin’ ‘untin’ in Africa. Innit amazin’ ‘ow many poor bleedin’ animals get killed jes’ ‘cause some bloke don’t get the rumpo ‘e’s after!’
‘He said nothing of my car?’
‘Not in as many words, Ivan. But I’d guess yer can forget abart that one.’
‘It would have made him millions,’ I said. ‘And me, too, of course.’ I would go to Long Beach tomorrow, gain access to my invention, and perhaps drive it away. Technically, according to our contract, the car was our joint property, but with Hever abroad I must quickly find a new backer. I explained this to Mrs Cornelius, who said I should do what I liked. She’d mentioned, she said, my name as a script-writer and actor to her friend Wolfgang Sjöström, the famous Swedish ‘Sex Director’ who had arrived in Hollywood just as Hays came into office and had, ever since, been gloomily frustrated by what he called ‘the bourgeois kinema’.
He was interested in employing me. I was grateful for her kindness but explained my destiny lay with the conquest and harnessing of the forces of nature for the greater benefit of mankind. Only necessity had made me a play-actor.
She seemed a little disappointed, even sceptical, but she said the chance was always there if I wished to take it. Sjöström had a contract with Goldwyn Studios to make two pictures a year, but he also was a partner in DeLuxe. He could put plenty of small parts my way. I could earn some money while I worked on my inventions. I promised her I would consider this idea.
An hour or two after we had finished the meal and the black servants had cleared it away, ‘Wolfy’ Sjöström came in. I was surprised at his weight. I had visualised someone altogether slimmer and more romantic. Yet clearly Mrs Cornelius saw in this bulky Norseman a hero! I must say I did not care for him much myself. His features had fallen into the deep lines of anxiety neurosis and even when he smiled one had the impression of a man in the throes of indigestion. He seemed condescending and over-eager to me and I suspected that Mrs Cornelius had exaggerated my artistic achievements, especially when he made reference to my books and expressed the breathless piety that some day the American public would be ready for the Philosophical Novel. Of course, my natural frankness made me want to tell him that I was no writer but a practical engineer who merely needed a little financial backing to astonish the world, but, not to embarrass Mrs Cornelius, I remained silent, and soon he had left for another room with my friend. She came back alone about ten minutes later and slipped a few screws of paper into my hand. She had found me the cocaine. Now I understood everything and was grateful. The chauffeur would take me back to the Hollywood Hotel. She would telephone me in a day or so, to see how I was settling, she said, but she evidently did not understand how baffled and unhappy I was concerning Esmé. Unenthusiastically she promised to ask around and find out where Meulemkaumpf, at least, might be discovered.
In greatly improved humour I returned through dreaming groves and gardens to my hotel and spent the night drawing up fresh plans. In the morning I would visit my old landlord to reclaim the belongings Mrs Cornelius told me he was retaining in lieu of rent. Then I would take a Red Car down to Long Beach and gain access to my steam auto. In all justice the Pallenberg Flyer was mine. Let Hever raise what devils he dared, I would take possession of her come what may!
Next morning I arrived at the Long Beach docks where our machine sheds were. Stretching almost to infinity along the concrete quays and bays, the pumps, cranes and oil-derricks were like skeletal dinosaurs, the salt air was crazy with the screech and growl of labouring machines, thick with the stink of a blue industrial haze mingling with the harbour’s cool December air, drifting over water as blue and flat as new-forged steel beneath the winter California sun. Our own sheds had scarcely changed save for a board now advertising something other than Golden State Engineering Developments. Inside the main shed a few mechanics were repairing a little seaplane whose floats had evidently struck the water at the wrong angle. One of the young men, whose overalls bore a profound stratum of stains, had a familiar look to him. Politely I hailed him from just inside the doors. It was Willy Ross, the bright-eyed foreman who had done so much to help get the PXI ready for the road. He looked up, squinting in the light, and then grinned as he recognised me. He came forward, wiping his fingers on a rag, and put out an almost clean hand for me to shake. ‘We all thought you were dead or gone back to Europe, Mr Pallenberg. It’s good to see you. What’s the story?’