Jack and Susan in 1913 (31 page)

Jack and Susan did not stir from Susan's bungalow the rest of Saturday and all day Sunday. Tripod's growling grew hoarse at Susan's bedroom door. Toward evening, Jack staggered home. Ida Conquest returned half an hour later, and Junius Fane drove up the street five minutes after that.

Hosmer Collamore, it turned out, did not return on Sunday night at all. When Jack discovered this on Monday morning, he was annoyed on two counts. First, Susan might have spent the night with him without fear of discovery. Second, Jack and Susan's suspicion that Hosmer's absence had to do more with the stolen patent than with a pretty cousin in Pasadena was strengthened.

When Hosmer didn't show up for work at the studio, Fane ranted for a few minutes, fired Hosmer
in absentia
, and stuck Hosmer's apprentice in his place.

So, even without Hosmer, Manfred Mixon's new farcical epic proceeded apace. Susan sat in her office in the morning and quickly typed out the new scenes for Jack, Miss Songar, and Tripod. Fane read them while eating his sandwich at lunch, approved them, sent them over to props for the procurement of the necessary furnishings for the three scenes that were to be filmed that afternoon.

Manfred Mixon's “front parlor” was actually three canvas walls, a threadbare rug, and three or four pieces of old-fashioned velvet-upholstered furniture, perched on a stage on a Hollywood hillside. Jack was very tall and moony, Miss Songar was very short and coy, and Tripod threw himself at Jack at every opportunity—tearing at his trouser cuffs, clamping his teeth down on his watch, and worrying his shoe as if it were a sewer rat.

When his work was finished, Jack crept down the hill toward the back of the studio. Slipping into the thick shrubbery behind the old livery stable, he sidled along the wall until he came to the window of Susan's office. He tapped at the glass.

Susan got up from her desk, shut the door, and went over to the window.

“How did you do?” she asked.

“Well, Fane says that he's going to ask you for a couple of scenes for me to play with Mixon, so I suppose I did well enough. So did Tripod. Every time Fane told him to attack, he attacked.”

“I spoke to the men in the laboratory this afternoon. They said that Hosmer came here to the studio yesterday.”

“Then he wasn't in Pasadena.”

“He stayed for about an hour, and then left. They don't know what he was doing. Do you think we ought to warn Mr. Fane?”

Jack shook his head. “Not yet. Maybe Hosmer was just clearing out. Despite what we think of him, he's a good cameraman. Maybe he just got an offer somewhere. The studios out here make a practice of stealing from one another. I suppose they have to have a little excitement now that they're so far away from the Patents Trust.”

“Oh, no!” said Susan.

“What?”

“You don't suppose that's who Hosmer is working for, do you? And has been all along? And that your patent went to them?”

“I don't know,” said Jack. “But if he was working for the Trust, then I don't think we've heard the last of him.”

W
HEN JACK GOT back to his bungalow that day, he found no sign of Hosmer himself. But there was evidence that he'd been there: He'd returned for his clothes—and for good measure he had taken a few of Jack's personal items and all the food in the cupboards.

Nothing more was heard of Hosmer that week.
Plunder
was edited and spliced together. Positives were made, and every title card added the Cosmic Film Studio's new California address at the bottom. Publicity distributed with the prints extolled the lengths to which Cosmic had gone in order to establish a new plateau of moving-picture realism. The breathtaking holdup had been filmed on a genuine Kansas prairie, and the thrilling scene in which Jack Beaumont, the new Cosmic Hero, was dragged down Sunset Boulevard was true and real in every respect, and the couple in the car were genuine, unsuspecting citizens of Hollywood, California, the new home of the Cosmic Film Studio.

A second page of publicity concerned the romance between Jack Beaumont and Ida Conquest, “The Lovers of the Decade.” Jack was touted as having been born to a patrician American family, having been educated at Yale, and having been a broker on Wall Street for some years before turning to moving-picture acting as his true profession. Ida Conquest had been born of parents well-known on the classical stages of London and Paris, had worked as a child with the immortal actors of the English stage, and had turned down offers of marriage from titled Europeans.

Jack's biography was gospel. Ida's contained not one iota of truth.

Photoplay
magazine had recently begun running photographs of moving-picture stars and wanted a photograph of Jack Beaumont and Ida Conquest. It was thought wonderfully romantic by the editor that Jack and Ida lived in adjoining bungalows in Hollywood. The problem was that the barren yards were not particularly attractive as a backdrop. At Cosmic's expense, therefore, Junius Fane hired a team of gardeners to landscape the two adjoining bungalows. One day when Jack and Susan returned from the studio, they found that they were now living in rose-bowered cottages. Grass had been planted in the front yard. Exotic evergreens shaded the windows. Climbing roses spilled over the doorways. Colorful flowers hedged the new stone walks to the street. A gleaming white picket fence had been erected on the property line between the two houses. (The surroundings of the other bungalows on the street, of course, remained nothing but dust.) Jack stood on his walk, and Susan and Tripod—on a short leash—stood on theirs, and looked at one another in astonishment.

“Just like the illustrations in the weekly serials,” said Susan.

“Marry me and we'll live in a vine-covered cottage,” said Jack.

Tripod howled in vigorous protest.

“Shhh!” cried Susan, and she hurried inside.

The next morning, Jack and Ida were photographed at the doorways of their respective bungalows, waving and smiling at each other. Then the two “Lovers of the Decade” met and modestly kissed across the gleaming picket fence chastely separating the houses.

Plunder
and
The Timber Queen
proved to be the greatest successes yet for the Cosmic Film Studio, and to Manfred Mixon's indignation and fury, the Fabulous Fat Funny Fellow was eclipsed in box office earnings by the Lovers of the Decade. Jack's salary was trebled, to $135 a week, and Junius Fane allowed Jack to keep the bungalow solely to himself. Susan's salary, in recognition of her writing these masterpieces of the genre, was doubled to $110 a week, and Fane hired an assistant for her. (Her assistant was a cross-eyed fifteen-year-old girl with typing ability.) It was not known what recompense Ida Conquest received, but Susan soon noticed new diamond earrings and an entirely new wardrobe in the latest fashion.

Nothing was heard from Hosmer Collamore. Susan telephoned every film company in the area, asking if the man were employed there, but she had no luck in finding what had become of him. Jack visited a lawyer who agreed to investigate whether the camera improvement had yet been patented, and if so, in whose name. But despite this uncertainty regarding the stolen invention, Jack and Susan could hardly help being happy. At night, after Ida had crept next door to Fane's bungalow, Susan crept next door to Jack's. Tripod was left alone in the house, wandering disconsolately all night long—
pad pad pad tap
—through the darkened bungalow.

The nights in California were hot and windy in the last week in June. It might have been too hot for Jack and Susan to lie together in the same narrow bed, had Jack not bought a new electrical contraption—an oscillating fan—and set it on a chair next to them. Crickets had taken up residence in the climbing roses outside the windows, and when it was otherwise still, they could hear the rhythmic pumping of the oil wells nearby.

“Are you jealous?” Jack asked.

“Jealous of what?” Susan asked in surprise.

“Of Ida. Those
Photoplay
pictures, Fane's puffery to the distributors and exhibitors. The fact that Ida and I shoot half a dozen love scenes a week now, and every time you take a stroll out to the stages, what you see is me kissing Ida.”

“Oh, yes,” said Susan, “I'm frantically jealous of Ida. What do you think?”

“I think we should get married.”

“Why?” asked Susan.

“Because we sleep together every night.”

“Before you came along, I slept with Tripod every night.
He
didn't run out after a license.”

“What if we had children?”

“They would be good-looking and intelligent,” said Susan.

“But we'd want them legitimate.”

“That's why you want to get married, for the sake of children we don't have?”

“No, of course not. The reason I want to get married is that I love you.”

“Ah,” said Susan into his ear. “That's the same reason I want to marry you.”

The next evening, Susan asked Ida if she wouldn't bring Junius Fane over for a few minutes after dinner.

“Me?” exclaimed Ida. “What on earth do I have to do with Mr. Fane? Just because he lives next door to us doesn't mean I have any influence with him!”

Jack, who was sitting in the living room of Susan's bungalow in his shirtsleeves, a glass of iced tea in his hand, laughed and said, “Ida, Susan and I know what's going on. We'd be blind if we didn't.”

“What?” screeched Ida. “Nothing is going on! Mr. Fane is a married man and my employer!”

Jack glanced at Susan, then spoke: “Come on, Ida, you and I are the Lovers of the Decade. Shouldn't that inspire a little confidence between us?”

Ida Conquest looked at Jack, and then she looked at Susan, and slowly a small idea dawned in her brain. “There is something going on here, too, isn't there?”

“There most certainly is,” said Susan.

“I should have known it,” crowed Ida. “I should have known there was a reason that damned dog was barking so much!”

So that night, about ten o'clock, four persons gathered in the living room: the president, owner and principal director of Cosmic Films; the Lovers of the Decade; and the head of the story department. Susan said, “I have an announcement. Jack and I are getting married.”

Fane said, “But you hate each other.”

“Nevertheless,” said Susan, “Jack has asked me to marry him and I have agreed.”

Fane thought about this for a few minutes, evidently considering what effect it would have on the business. “It's not going to look good for the Lovers of the Decade if one of them is married to someone else,” he pointed out.

“They could keep it a secret,” Ida suggested. “Or at the wedding Suss could dye her hair, and wear a long veil and we could take pictures and pretend it was me.”

Fane considered this suggestion with evident seriousness.

“No,” said Jack. “I don't think that's a wonderful idea.”

“Could we keep it a secret?” asked Fane. “For the time being, I mean. Till the Lovers of the Decade are played out.”

“How much of a secret?” asked Jack.

“Just quiet.”

“How quiet?” asked Susan.

“Get rid of that dog,” Ida suggested. “That would make it a lot quieter.”

For once, Junius Fane seemed careful in his speech. “Ah, if you two would consent to…ah, carry on as you've been carrying on for a while longer, I'll double your salaries.”

“You knew!” cried Ida. “How did you know? I
lived
with Suss and I didn't know!”

Jack and Susan exchanged glances, conferring silently over Fane's offer.

“Treble our salaries,” said Jack.

Fane hesitated only a moment. “Done.”

“Done,” agreed Susan. Jack would be making nine times, and she six times what they'd started out with at Cosmic.