Jack and Susan in 1913 (30 page)

“Yes,” murmured Jack, as he was handed the doll wrapped in a blanket. He exchanged a glance with Susan, who was standing beside the director.

“Right,” Fane said to Susan, “remember that we have to account for that baby somewhere along the way.”

“I'll make it one of Ida's cousins. She's supposed to be taking care of it,” said Susan. “We can show it again in the kitchen scene that's to be shot tomorrow.”

“Westermeade!” called Fane. “Are you ready?”

Westermeade had been driving the motorcycle up and down, practicing his maneuvers. This actor's disappointment at not yet having been able to run Jack down was manifest. Mr. Perks—the other gentleman whose teeth Jack had loosened—was vigorously practicing standing in the sidecar and swinging the yard-long piece of hard pine provided him by props.

Jack stood just inside the door of the studio, swilling down his sixth glass of brandy. They had all been generous glasses, and he now felt their effect on his head and on his balance. His left leg was stiff with the newly tightened splint, so that he now had an idea of what Susan had suffered with her broken leg. He was dirty and dusty from his two previous trips across the road. He stared down into the face of the doll he was holding in the blanket, and was distressed to see its waxen face melting in the heat.

“Are you all right?” asked Susan, coming in the door and leaning close to him and whispering. She'd already checked to make certain no one saw her.

He gave her a quick kiss. “Just remember, if anything happens to me, it's entirely your fault.”

“Ready?” the director called from outside. Jack heard Westermeade's motorcycle revving impatiently farther up the street.

“Camera!” shouted Fane, and after counting to three, Jack pushed open the door, and hurtled once again out on to Sunset Boulevard.

The supernumeraries in the scene drew back in alarm, and pointed at him. Jack reeled into the street with the waxen infant, stared with horror at the oncoming motorcycle—stared in real horror, for it was almost upon him, and Perks was swinging mightily with his club.

Jack jumped forward, lost his balance, and spun crazily as the motorcycle whizzed by.

Jack stumbled, clutching the infant against his chest and dragging his splinted leg. He was halfway across the street.

The motorcycle screeched to a circling halt at the other end of the blocked-off passage and then headed back for him.

A truck and two automobiles passing on the open side of the boulevard slowed down to watch the progress of the filming. Jack pitched and weaved in the middle of the street. The curb and safety seemed far away.

The motorcycle bore down behind him again, and Perks again wildly swung the club. Jack jumped to avoid it, but not far enough and he caught the end of the club in the middle of his back.

It propelled him forward against the side of one of the passing automobiles. His foot hit the running board, and the waxen infant flew out of his arms into the lap of the lady passenger, who threw up her arms and screamed. The man behind the wheel, alarmed, dragged suddenly on the brakes.

Jack was thrown off the car, back into the street.

“Wonderful!” screamed Fane. “Keep going!”

The driver then took off as quickly as his machine would let him, and the woman stared stuporously at the melting baby in her arms.

Jack was sprawled in the dust as the motorcycle came at him again. He tried to get up and run, but the splint on his leg prevented his doing more than rolling out of the way. As he rolled in the direction of a second automobile, he lurched forward, grabbing hold of the bumper.

He was pulled out of the way of Westermeade's tires just in time. Perks, in trying to swipe at Jack once more with the stick, lost his balance and tumbled out of the sidecar headfirst on to the pavement. Westermeade, off balance with the sudden loss of weight, and looking behind him to see what happened, plunged into a knot of the supers, who scattered with screams that would never be heard in the completed print of the silent
Plunder
.

Jack let go the bumper of the car when he was past the blockade a hundred feet or so farther down the street. Releasing his grip, he rolled out of the way, gasping for his breath, and thinking that he had just made up for any terrible thing he had ever done to Susan Bright.

Junius Fane himself went over to help Jack up.

“That was it,” said Fane. “That was it without a doubt. We're not going to have to do it again.”

“Good,” said Jack, looking down at his body. There was no blood that he could see, but his clothes were in tatters.

“Take the rest of the day off,” said Fane. “And rest up. Tomorrow we'll be driving out to Santa Monica beach. You'll get knocked on the head and then tossed off the pier in the path of a speedboat. After that you'll be tied up, thrown in a trunk, and buried in the sand at low tide. And Friday morning we'll go out to the ostrich ranch. I know there's been some trouble between you and Susan, but you'll have to admit—that girl has one splendid imagination.”

J
ACK NEARLY DROWNED in the water off the Santa Monica pier, while dozens of spectators from the adjacent roller-skating ballroom watched breathlessly for him to rise again after the speedboat flew over his head. He nearly suffocated in the trunk buried briefly in the sand a few hundred yards down the beach. Susan tried to show her indifference as to whether Jack lived or died by taking a few shots in a shooting gallery on the pier. The next day, he was nearly pecked to death by a flock of ostriches, while Susan and Ida nonchalantly shopped for plumes in the small shop attached to the ranch.

When
Plunder
was finished on Saturday, Fane examined all the footage of the fledgling actor and pronounced it very fine. Susan and Jack watched the reels, too—from opposite sides of the room. Susan made more than one disparaging comment on Jack's inability to register the proper range of emotions.

“But it's what I
want
,” Fane argued. “I want a man stalwart in the face of every danger. A man who quails before no difficulty, a man for whom mortal danger is as common and as little a thing as…as breakfast.”

Jack gingerly prodded the bruises on his torso, his extremities, and the back of his head. “Miss Bright evidently believes that a man should be like a woman, and reveal everything in a gush of emotion,” said Jack in a bitter tone. “Miss Bright ought to learn that a man cannot always give himself away in that manner.”

“Exactly,” said Fane. “Susan, didn't you see how tender he was with Ida? How he kissed her at the wedding, and caressed her neck at the wedding dance? He registered his love for Ida in a perfectly manly way. Hosmer, thank you!”

A few minutes later, giving an arm to each, Fane took Jack and Susan down the hall to Susan's office. Tripod was standing on Susan's desk, and as if he had only been waiting for the chance, he took a flying leap at Jack's neck the minute the three of them stepped through the door. But dogs with three legs are not balanced, and Tripod's aim was off. He flew into Junius Fane's arms. “Write a part for a three-legged dog that leaps,” Fane commanded Susan. Then he went on, “Next week we'll be shooting that Mixon farce you and he devised on the train out. It's a little thin, so what I'd like you to do is write in a little romance—”

“Mr. Beaumont and Ida?” Susan questioned. “Ida won't work with Manfred. Says it's beneath her dignity to appear in the same frame with a fat man.”

“Not with Ida,” Fane said thoughtfully, “with Miss Songar. Miss Songar is very short, and Jack is very tall. Miss Songar is Manfred's niece and heir to a fabulous fortune. She is very short and has a three-legged dog that leaps. This dog leaps upon command, does he not?”

“He'll leap at Mr. Beaumont with or without a command,” said Susan.

“Good enough,” said Fane. Turning to Jack, he explained, “This will give you some range as an actor. We've tried you out in melodramatic danger, and now we'll stick you into a comedy and see if you come up breathing.”

“I have no doubt,” said Susan, “that Mr. Beaumont will prove himself to be as ridiculous as you may please.”

“Yes,” returned Fane blandly, “I have every confidence in my new discovery. So, Susan, today is Saturday, and I'm going into Los Angeles for a couple of days—business,” he explained vaguely. “I'd like you to write the new scenes for the picture next week, and I'd like to see an outline for a three-reeler to be shot the following week.”

“It's been written, Mr. Fane, for Miss Songar and Mr. Perks.
The Cameo
.”

“No,” said Fane, “I'm giving that to an assistant. I want you to write something for Jack and Ida. More thrills.” He thought for a moment. “Set it in a forest. We could go up into the mountains for a couple of days. Half the scenes interior—a prospector's cabin, a general store, the timber baron's palatial home, you know the sort of thing I mean—and the other half of the scenes exterior, mountain forests. Ida is the Timber Queen—not a bad title, either—who's had all her land stolen from her by the evil Timber Baron. She's only got five acres left, and they burn down. Write a forest fire, Miss Bright. I don't believe I've ever seen a forest fire in a moving picture. Jack here is a prospector, down on his luck, who discovers diamonds and gold on her five acres once the forest fire has cleared away the trees. They're set upon by a bandit when they go into town to sell the diamonds and gold. They're tied up and left to die. A group of wild Indians—there're a band of Indians here in Hollywood who rent out for ten dollars a day, fifteen of 'em—come up and start using Jack and Ida for target practice. Jack gets loose, somehow or other, kills all the Indians, and unmasks the bandit—who turns out to be the Timber Baron, and he's really Jack's father. Or uncle. Or something. The title will be
The Timber Queen
. There, Susan, I've practically done your work for you, so you might as well have the thing on my desk Monday morning.”

“Yes, Junius.”

“And if I leave you two alone together now, you won't claw one another, will you?”

“I have Tripod to protect me,” said Susan, taking the dog from Fane.

“If that dog works out next week, write him into
The Timber Queen
as well. I like animals in moving pictures.”

That afternoon Jack and Susan returned to their neighboring bungalows by different routes, at different times. True to his word, Junius Fane drove off toward Los Angeles. A few minutes later, Jack, looking out of his window and hoping for a glimpse of Susan, saw Ida Conquest slip quietly out of the house, and tiptoe with ostentatious stealth across the yard and disappear around the corner.

Jack had little doubt that Junius Fane's snappy Speedking Sixty was waiting for her, out of sight of the Cosmic bungalows.

A few moments later, there was a knock on the door of Jack's room. “Jack?” Hosmer called, “are you in there?”

Jack opened the door. There stood Hosmer, hat and satchel in hand. “I've got a cousin in Pasadena. Pretty thing. Thought I'd visit her. Be back tomorrow night. Can you get along?”

“I think so,” Jack said with a grin.

Jack listened for the front door to close. Then he went to the living room and peered out the window and watched until Hosmer was out of sight. Jack waited five minutes to make sure neither he nor Ida returned, then he crept out of the house, and whipped across the yard to Susan's back door.

Tripod's infuriated barking announced Jack's presence.

Susan immediately opened the door and pulled him into the kitchen. She threw Tripod into the dining room and put a chair against the door. “Ida's gone. Till tomorrow night,” she said.

“So's Hosmer. I think Ida went off with Fane.”

“I'm sure she did,” said Susan. “And I think Hosmer probably went off to do something about the stolen patent.”

“He said he was going to visit a cousin in Pasadena, but I'll bet you're right,” said Jack. “And in that case, I probably ought to follow him.”

“Probably,” said Susan hesitantly.

“On the other hand, he may really have a cousin in Pasadena.”

“It's probably too late to go after him anyway, now,” said Susan.

“Yes,” Jack agreed readily, then added with a crimson blush, “I bought three sets of sheets this week.”

“I don't think we should risk Hosmer's coming back unexpectedly,” said Susan.

Jack's face fell.

“So let's stay here,” said Susan. “Tripod!” she called through the closed doorway. “If you see Ida coming back, bark!”