“It’s murder, but keep on. I just love it.”
“When did you start collecting Shorehams?”
“Three-four-five years ago, when you first came out. You made quite an impression on me in those days.”
“Oh in those days.”
“Even if I don’t like your last pictures.”
“Not even Meridian 1212?”
“Specially not Meridian 1212. That cheap, gum-chewing, lolly-gagging telephone operator you were in that picture just made me sick. You know the best picture you ever made?”
“Cavell?”
“The Glory of Edith Cavell was the best picture that ever was made, if you ask me. I saw it at least twenty times, and I know it by heart, some of it. And how anybody that could make a picture like that could turn around and make some of this junk you’ve been in, like Sarong Girl and Love Pirate, and I Took the Low Road and Swing Chum. I don’t know, and specially I don’t know how you could do it. You called it right just now. You mean plenty to me, or did anyway. And I don’t mind telling you, here lately you’ve been giving me the colic bad.”
He wasn’t smiling, but had turned solemn, and so in a moment did she. After a long, grave silence she said: “You believe in pictures, don’t you?”
“I believe in the good they can do.”
“I’d like you to know I hated those parts just as much as you did. But, I’ve been working for men that don’t believe in anything about pictures but the money they can make out of them, and Sylvia Shoreham in a tight sarong sells tickets. I had to wear that sarong. It was that kind of contract. But now, I’m happy to say, that’s all over.” Haltingly, she explained a little about her commitments, and the relation they bore to the man who would be her husband for an hour or so longer, or until the court of this state handed down its decree of divorce. “So you see, it’s a little more complicated than you think. It’s been all mixed up with a marriage, and a contract, and a lot of personal things that got pretty messy, but that you had to do something about. That’s why today is a pretty important day with me. Everything’s been pretty well straightened out, and while the papers will say divorce, it’ll really be a little Declaration of Independence, so far as I’m concerned. Sort of a Battle Cry of Freedom. This afternoon Sylvia Shoreham starts a new life.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
“So you can keep right on talking.”
“I probably said too much already.”
“You said what I’ve been needing terribly to hear. I think you believe in a lot of things that Hollywood never heard of, and that I’ve got to learn all over again if I’m going to do with my life what I want to do with it. So you can begin exactly where you left off. Tell me more about Cavell. And I promise to listen to every word you say.”
Before he could say, however, his phone rang, and the conversation indicated an impending visitor. She wigwagged that she was going, but he shook his head. When he hung up he said: “That wasn’t anybody but the major. I’m going in the army as soon as I can make my deal, and we generally argue an hour every morning. They’ll make me a colonel if I go with the mules, but I’m not keen on remount.”
“What do you want?”
“What I want is to fly. I love it. But I’m thirty-two and that’s too old, and besides a man ought to do in this war what he can do. Moving stuff in rough country is what I’m good at, so I guess it’s the S. O. S.”
“Will you have lunch with me?”
“Will a colt eat sugar?”
“I have a sister with me, that’s seen me through this ordeal of the divorce. I’d think I want her to meet you. She’s younger than I am, and prettier.”
“She must be a sight.”
“Then, I’ll expect you? At the hotel? Around one?”
“At one sharp I’ll be there.”
They gave each other a long smiling glance, and then she flitted out with the light skip of an actress who has taken a great many exits. She was a patter of feet, a wave of the hand, and a ripple of hair as she went through the outer office; just the same, three names hung in the air as she was gone, and three delighted men looked at each other and said, gee that sure was one swell gal.
Chapter Two
She was really going to a lawyer’s, to await whatever formalities might be indicated on his return from court. But on her way she stopped, to indulge a weakness that had developed during her stay in this city where she was obtaining her divorce: the hazarding of $100 at games of chance before taking up the serious business of the day. The establishment that she entered never closed, its employees working in three shifts of eight hours each, and while it was typical of such places locally, it differed from the great gambling houses of the world, having little of the cold elegance that usually goes with them. Rather it offered gambling along cut-rate lines, and indeed, with the sunlight streaming in, it had some of the petty glitter that one associates with a downtown drugstore. Painted in all sorts of colors, and with all sorts of mirrors in their navels, were whole batteries of slot machines, operating at 5-&-10c limits, and having their licenses framed beneath them; along the walls were electric Keno boards, and in front of them long troughs filled with corn, for keeping score. Wheels of fortune were everywhere, some of them the noisy old-fashioned kind, with a leather finger clicking between the whirling pegs and real money under their numbers; others silent, a revolving light serving all necessary purposes. Every hour on the hour a functionary circulated with a bucket, into which the clientele dropped the tickets that had been issued them for drinks bought at the bar; a few minutes later there was a drawing, and the holder of the winning number received $5.
Then of course, there were the roulette wheels, faro layouts, poker tables, dicing pits, and other mahogany-and-baize installations for the carriage trade, as well as racing results for all.
Sylvia Shoreham’s arrival was an event, even in this preoccupied place, and the proprietor hurried forward to meet her. His name was Tony, and he was a grandson of one of the Italian charcoal burners of the sixties, who settled the Sierras to furnish various cities with their fuel, and then left the horde of descendants who so largely populate that part of the country today. Like most gamblers, he took pride in not looking like a gambler; he wore the habiliments of a prosperous undertaker, and would have been astonished to learn that God doesn’t see much difference. His rocky face breaking into a smile, his thick body inclined at a deferential angle, he advanced briskly, counting chips with his own lily-white hands. “Baronessa!”
“Just an hour or two longer, Tony.”
“Ah, today is the day?”
“It’s being done now, let us hope. Then the Baroness Adlerkreutz becomes plain Sylvia Shoreham again, and only too glad to be back with the vulgar herd.”
But before she could accept her chips, an attendant hurried up, a girl with a green baize apron over her stomach, and said: “There was a message for you, Miss Shoreham. The hotel called, and said your husband is in town, and wants you to ring him at this number.”
She handed Sylvia a slip and went back to her dice game. Tony said: “Come into my office, Miss Shoreham. You don’t look so good. You look like you better sit down quick.”
He led her into a redwood-and-leather office, seated her, and opened a window. But when he produced a bottle of brandy she waved it away. “No thanks, Tony. I’m not sick or anything. It’s just—”