Merton of the Movies Part 38

He was smitten with a quick and quite illogical fear. Perhaps he would not have to tear up that contract and hurl it in the face of the manager who had betrayed him. Perhaps the manager himself would do the tearing.

Perhaps Baird, after seeing the picture, had decided that Merton Gill would not do. Instantly he felt resentful. Hadn't he given the best that was in him? Was it his fault if other actors had turned into farce one of the worth-while things?

He went to meet Mr. Walberg with this resentment so warm that his greeting of the strange gentleman was gruff and short. The caller, an alert, businesslike man, came at once to his point. He was, it proved, not the representative of a possibly repenting Baird. He was, on the contrary, representing a rival producer. He extended his card--The Bigart Comedies.

"I got your address from the Holden office, Mr. Armytage. I guess I routed you out of bed, eh? Well, it's like this, if you ain't sewed up with Baird yet, the Bigart people would like to talk a little business to you. How about it?"

"Business?" Mr. Armytage fairly exploded this. He was unhappy and puzzled; in consequence, unamiable.

"Sure, business," confirmed Mr. Walberg. "I understand you just finished another five-reeler for the Buckeye outfit, but how about some stuff for us now? We can give you as good a company as that one last night and a good line of comedy. We got a gag man that simply never gets to the end of his string. He's doping out something right now that would fit you like a glove--and say, it would be a great idea to kind a' specialize in that spur act of yours. That got over big. We could work it in again. An act like that's good for a million laughs."

Mr. Armytage eyed Mr. Walberg coldly. Even Mr. Walberg felt an extensive area of glaciation setting in.

"I wouldn't think of it," said the actor, still gruffly.

"Do you mean that you can't come to the Bigart at all--on any proposition?"

"That's what I mean," confirmed Mr. Armytage.

"Would three hundred and fifty a week interest you?"

"No," said Mr. Armytage, though he gulped twice before achieving it.

Mr. Walberg reported to his people that this Armytage lad was one hard-boiled proposition. He'd seen lots of 'em in his time, but this bird was a wonder.

Yet Mr. Armytage was not really so granitic of nature as the Bigart emissary had thought him. He had begun the interview with a smouldering resentment due to a misapprehension; he had been outraged by a suggestion that the spurs be again put to their offensive use; and he had been stunned by an offer of three hundred and fifty dollars a week.

That was all.

Here was a new angle to the puzzles that distracted him. He was not only praised by the witless, but he had been found desirable by certain discerning overlords of filmdom. What could be the secret of a talent that caused people, after viewing it but once, to make reckless offers?

And another thing--why had he allowed Baird to "sew him up"? The Montague girl again occupied the foreground of his troubled musings.

She, with her airs of wise importance, had helped to sew him up. She was a helpless thing, after all, and false of nature. He would have matters out with her this very day. But first he must confront Baird in a scene of scorn and reprobation.

On the car he became aware that far back in remote caverns of his mind there ran a teasing memory of some book on the shelves of the Simsbury public library. He was sure it was not a book he had read. It was merely the t.i.tle that hid itself. Only this had ever interested him, and it but momentarily. So much he knew. A book's t.i.tle had lodged in his mind, remained there, and was now curiously stirring in some direct relation to his present perplexities.

But it kept its face averted. He could not read it. Vaguely he identified the nameless book with Tessie Kearns; he could not divine how, because it was not her book and he had never seen it except on the library shelf.

The nameless book persistently danced before him. He was glad of this.

It kept him at moments from thinking of the loathly Baird.

CHAPTER XIX. THE TRAGIC COMEDIAN

Penetrating the Holden lot he was relieved to find that he created no immediate sensation. People did not halt to point derisive fingers at him; he had half feared they would. As he approached the office building he was almost certain he saw Baird turn in ahead of him. Yet when he entered the outer room of the Buckeye offices a young woman looked up from her typewriter to tell him that Mr. Baird was not in.

She was a serious-eyed young woman of a sincere manner; she spoke with certainty of tone. Mr. Baird was not only out, but he would not be in for several days. His physician had ordered him to a sanitarium.

The young woman resumed her typing; she did not again, glance up.

The caller seemed to consider waiting on a chance that she had been misinformed. He was now sure he had seen Baird enter the building, and the door of his private office was closed. The caller idled outside the railing, absently regarding stills of past Buckeye atrocities that had been hung upon the walls of the office by someone with primitive tastes in decoration. He was debating a direct challenge of the young woman's veracity.

What would she say if told that the caller meant to wait right there until Mr. Baird should convalesce? He managed some appraising side-glances at her as she bent over her machine. She seemed to believe he had already gone.

Then he did go. No good talking that way to a girl. If it had been a man, now--"You tell Mr. Baird that Mr. Gill's got to see him as soon as possible about something important," he directed from the open door.

The young woman raised her serious eyes to his and nodded. She resumed her work. The door closed. Upon its closing the door of Baird's private office opened noiselessly to a crack that sufficed for the speaking voice at very moderate pitch to issue.

"Get Miss Montague on the 'phone," directed the voice. The door closed noiselessly. Beyond it Mr. Baird was presently speaking in low, sweet tones.

"'Lo, Sister! Listen; that squirrel just boiled in here, and I ducked him. I told the girl I wasn't to be in unless he was laughing all over, and he wasn't doing the least little thing that was anywheres near laughing. See what I mean? It's up to you now. You started it; you got to finish it. I've irised out. Get me?"

On the steps outside the rebuffed Merton Gill glanced at his own natty wrist-watch, bought with some of the later wages of his shame. It was the luncheon hour; mechanically he made his way to the cafeteria. He had ceased to rehea.r.s.e the speech a doughtier Baird would now have been hearing.

Instead he roughly drafted one that Sarah Nevada Montague could not long evade. Even on her dying bed she would be compelled to listen. The practising orator with bent head mumbled as he walked. He still mumbled as he indicated a choice of foods at the cafeteria counter; he continued to be thus absorbed as he found a table near the centre of the room.

He arranged his a.s.sortment of viands. "You led me on, that's what you did," he continued to the absent culprit. "Led me on to make a laughing-stock of myself, that's what you did. Made a fool of me, that's what you did."

"All the same, I can't help thinking he's a harm to the industry,"

came the crisp tones of Henshaw from an adjoining table. The rehearsing orator glanced up to discover that the director and the sunny-faced brown and gray man he called Governor were smoking above the plates of their finished luncheon.

"I wouldn't worry too much," suggested the cheerful governor.

"But see what he does: he takes the good old reliable, sure-fire stuff and makes fun of it. I admit it's funny to start with, but what'll happen to us if the picture public ever finds that out? What'll we do then for drama--after they've learned to laugh at the old stuff?"

"Tush, tush, my boy!" The Governor waved a half--consumed cigarette until its ash fell. "Never fear. Do you think a thousand Jeff Bairds could make the picture public laugh at the old stuff when it's played straight? They laughed last night, yes; but not so much at the really fine burlesque; they guffawed at the slap-stick stuff that went with it.

Baird's shrewd. He knows if he played straight burlesque he'd never make a dollar, so notice how he'll give a bit of straight that is genuine art, then a bit of slap-stick that any one can get. The slap-stick is what carries the show. Real burlesque is criticism, my boy; sometimes the very high-browest sort. It demands sophistication, a pretty high intelligence in the man that gets it.

"All right. Now take your picture public. Twenty million people every day; not the same ones every day, but with same average cranial index, which is low for all but about seven out of every hundred. That's natural because there aren't twenty million people in the world with taste or real intelligence--probably not five million. Well, you take this twenty million bunch that we sell to every day, and suppose they saw that lovely thing last night--don't you know they'd all be back to-night to see a real mopping mother with a real son falsely accused of crime--sure they'd be back, their heads b.l.o.o.d.y but unbowed. Don't worry; that reliable field marshal, old General Hok.u.m, leads an unbeatable army."

Merton Gill had listened to the beginning of this harangue, but now he savagely devoured food. He thought this so--called Governor was too much like Baird.

"Well, Governor, I hope you're right. But that was pretty keen stuff last night. That first bit won't do Parmalee any good, and that Buck Benson stuff--you can't tell me a little more of that wouldn't make Benson look around for a new play."

"But I do tell you just that. It won't hurt Parmalee a bit; and Benson can go on Bensoning to the end of time--to big money. You keep forgetting this twenty-million audience. Go out and buy a picture magazine and read it through, just to remind you. They want hok.u.m, and pay for it. Even this thing of Baird's, with all the saving slapstick, is over the heads of a good half of them. I'll make a bet with you now, anything you name, that it won't gross two thirds as much as Benson's next Western, and in that they'll cry their eyes out when he kisses his horse good-bye. See if they don't. Or see if they don't bawl at the next old gray-haired mother with a mop and a son that gets in bad.

"Why, if you give 'em hok.u.m they don't even demand acting. Look at our own star, Mercer. You know as well as I do that she not only can't act, but she's merely a beautiful moron. In a world where right prevailed she'd be crowned queen of the morons without question. She may have an idea that two and two make four, but if she has it's only because she believes everything she hears. And look at the mail she gets. Every last one of the twenty million has written to tell her what a n.o.ble actress she is. She even believes that.

"Baird can keep on with the burlesque stuff, but his little old two-reelers'll probably have to pay for it, especially if he keeps those high-priced people. I'll bet that one new man of his sets him back seven hundred and fifty a week. The Lord knows he's worth every cent of it. My boy, tell me, did you ever in all your life see a lovelier imitation of a perfectly rotten actor? There's an artist for you. Who is he, anyway?

Where'd he come from?" Merton Gill again listened; he was merely affecting to busy himself with a fork. It was good acting.

"I don't know," replied Henshaw. "Some of the crowd last night said he was just an extra that Baird dug up on the lot here. And, on the subject of burlesque, they also said Baird was having him do some Edgar Wayne stuff in a new one."

"Fine!" The Governor beamed. "Can't you see him as the honest, likable country boy? I bet he'll be good to his old mother in this one, too, and get the best of the city slickers in the end. For heaven's sake don't let me miss it! This kid last night handed me laughs that were better than a month's vacation for this old carca.s.s of mine. You say he was just an extra?"

"That's what I heard last night. Anyway, he's all you say he is as an artist. Where do you suppose he got it? Do you suppose he's just the casual genius that comes along from time to time? And why didn't he stay 'straight' instead of playing horse with the sacred traditions of our art? That's what troubled me as I watched him. Even in that wild business with the spurs he was the artist every second. He must have tricked those falls but I couldn't catch him at it. Why should such a man tie up with Baird?"

"Ask me something hard. I'd say this bird had been tried out in serious stuff and couldn't make the grade. That's the way he struck me. Probably he once thought he could play Hamlet--one of those boys. Didn't you get the real pathos he'd turn on now and then? He actually had me kind of teary a couple of times. But I could see he'd also make me laugh my head off any time he showed in a straight piece.