“Well get Mr. Monsen upstairs,” said Dr. Cardiff
“I’m quite able to get upstairs…”
Miss Trainor, who was a grave, slow-thinking girl, notwithstanding the very special delights that showed in her face, seldom yielded to intuition. But she could not dismiss a persistent doubt as to whether Dr. Cardiff had his fingers on the pulse of this business. She felt this even more strongly next day as she hesitated outside the kitchen door.
It was Margerilla’s day off and she heard Miss Hapgood’s increasingly ineffectual voice.
“Mr. Monsen, you can’t cook with a temperature of 103 degrees.”
“Think of the Huns,” Emmet suggested irrelevantly, chopping at a steak. “They used raw meat for their saddles all day—that broke down the fibres.”
“Mr. Monsen!’
Miss Trainor sighed—he had seemed such an attractive man—and went in with her news.
“Miss Halliday’s secretary phoned. Miss Halliday started out here half an hour ago.”
“Hold her downstairs,” he exclaimed, dropping the meat-chopper.
In his bedroom he had Miss Hapgood sponge him with a wet towel, and by attaching himself to her like a pilot fish to a shark, collected some clothes to wear.
This was a moment in his life. It had been Elsa’s face on a screen in Ceylon that told him he was a fool to leave her—Elsa’s expression as she met him on the dock three days ago that made him sure. Now he must face her only to stall, conceal, evade—because he did not know what was in the dark next day, next hour.
“We haven’t had a temperature,” said Miss Hapgood—and as if the announcement were a signal, Emmet and all his immaculate clothes were instantaneously drenched with sweat.
“Try to match everything I’ve got on,” he ordered. “She’ll be here any minute.”
Miss Trainor knocked with the announcement that the guest was below and Emmet pressed her into service to collect another outfit. He redressed gingerly in the bathroom and went downstairs.
Elsa Halliday was a brunette with a high warm flush that photographed, and long sleepy eyes full of hush and promise. With the exception of Hedy Lamarr, she had made the swiftest rise in pictures of the past two years. Emmet did not kiss her, only stood beside her chair, took her hand and looked at her—then retreated to a chair opposite, momentarily thinking less of her than of his ability to control the damp on brow and chest.
“How are you?” Elsa asked.
“Much better. Let’s not even talk about it—I’ll be up and around in no time.”
“That’s not what Dr. Cardiff said.”
At this Emmet’s undershirt was suddenly wet.
“Did that ass talk about me?”
“He didn’t say much. He told me you ought to take care of yourself.”
Emmet managed to tack away from the subject.
“You’ve done some grand work lately, Elsa. I know that—though I’m a couple of pictures behind. I’ve seen you in movie houses where only a few people could read the dubbed titles—but I’ve watched their eyes and their lips move with yours—and seen you hold them.”
She stared into an imperceptible distance.
“That’s the romantic part,” she said. “How much real good you can do to people you will never meet.”
“Yes,” he answered.
She must not make remarks like that, he thought, recalling the plots of Port Said Woman and Party Girl.
“You have the gift of vividness,” he said after a minute. “Like the fifteenth century painters who discovered motion where there was no motion—”
He realized he was beyond her and retreated quickly:
“At the time when you and I were very close your beauty used to frighten me.”
“When I dreamed about us getting married,” Elsa supplied, coming awake.
He nodded.
“I used to feel like those bankers who try to be seen with opera singers—as if they’d bought the voice like a phonograph record.”
“You did a lot for my voice,” Elsa said. “I still have the phonograph and all the records, and I may sing in my next picture. And the Picasso prints—I still tell people they’re real—though I’ve developed a lot of taste now: I get inside information about which paintings are going to be worth anything. I remember when you told me a painting could be a better investment than a bracelet—”
She broke off suddenly.
“Look Emmet—that isn’t why I came out here—to talk about all those old things. We may be shooting again tomorrow and I wanted to see you while I could. You know—catch up? Really talk about everything—you know?”
This time it was Emmet who was scarcely listening. His shirt was now drenched and, wondering when there would be dark evidence on his shirt collar; he buttoned up his light coat. Then he was listening sharply.
“Two years is two years, Emmet, and we might as well get to the point. I know you did help me and I certainly did lean on you for advice. But two years—”
“Are you married?” he asked suddenly.
“No. I am not.”
Emmet relaxed.
“That’s all I wanted to know. I’m not a child. You’ve probably been in love with half the leading men in Hollywood since I’ve been gone.”
“That’s what I haven’t done,” she answered, almost tartly. “It shows how little you know about me, really. It shows how far people can drift apart.”
Emmet’s world was rocking as he answered.
“That could mean either there’s been nobody—or else that there’s somebody in particular.”
“Very much in particular.” As if ashamed of the emphasis her voice became less brisk. “It’s awful telling you this, when you’re sick and maybe going—I mean, it’s an awful hard position for a girl. But I’ve been so busy: in pictures you’re just an ottoman—you’ve got no more control of your time than if you were a shop girl type or—”
“You going to marry this man?” Emmet interrupted.
“Yes,” she said defiantly. “But I don’t know how soon—and don’t ask me his name, because you might be delirious sometime—and these columnists would drive a girl crazy.”
“This isn’t something you decided within the last week?”
“Oh, I decided a year ago,” she assured him, almost impatiently. “Couple of times we planned to go to Nevada. You have to wait four days here—”
“Is he a solid man—will you tell me that?”
“Solid is his middle name,” said Elsa. “Catch me tying myself to some shyster or drunk. Next January I move into the big money myself.”
Emmet stood up—he could now time the moment when the damp would arrive at the lining of his coat.
“Excuse me,” he said.
In the pantry he steadied himself at the sink, then tapped on the secretary’s door.
“Get rid of Miss Halliday!” he said, catching a glimpse of his face—white, hard, and haggard in a mirror. “Tell her I’m sick—anything—get her out of the house.”
Hating compassion from anyone, he hated the face of the Trainor girl as she rose from her desk.
“Do it quickly!” he added unnecessarily.
“I understand, Mr. Monsen.”
He went on out, feeling for the pantry sink, then for the swinging door, the back of a kitchen chair. A speech of contempt ran through his head in savage rhythm: “I never think much of a man who reaches for a glass of whiskey every time anything goes wrong.”
But he turned to the closet where there stood a brandy bottle.
III
A rash youth taking down his first few gulps of spirits is moved to a blatant expressionism: an Englishman climbs, an Irishman fights, a Frenchman dances, an American “commotes”—though the word is not to be found in the dictionary.
Thus it happened to Emmet—he commoted. It was in the bag from the instant that the cognac tumbled into contact with his burning fever—and it gathered momentum while he sat on the side of his bed with Miss Hapgood trying to extricate him from his soaking clothes. He suddenly vanished—and almost as suddenly reappeared from the clothes-closet, clad in a sort of sarong surmounted by an opera hat.
“I am a Cannibal King,” he said. “I am going down into the kitchen and eat Margerilla.”
“This is her day off, Mr. Monsen.”
“Then I am going to eat Carlos Davis.”
In a moment he was on the telephone in the hall asking Mr. Davis’ butler if his employer could please come right over.
Hanging up the receiver Emmet leaped nimbly aside to avoid a jab of Miss Hapgood’s syringe.
“No, you don’t!” he wiggled a finger at her. “I’m going to act in full control of all faculties. Need all my strength.”
To test this last quality he suddenly bent down and plucked out a spoke of the bannister railing.
The ease of the operation fascinated him. He leaned over and plucked out another—and then another. It was like a nightmare where one detaches one’s own teeth with uneasy awe.
The course of the operation led him downstairs. He kept in his hand one single spoke with which he intended to render Mr. Davis unconscious as he entered the door—in anticipation of preparing and eating him.
However he made a single miscalculation. When in the vicinity of the kitchen he remembered the brandy bottle and had some short swift traffic with it—almost immediately he found, or lost, himself upon a sack of potatoes under the kitchen sink, his bludgeon beside him, his black silk crown awry.
Fortunately he was not conscious of the events of the next few minutes—of how Miss Trainor looked into the twilit garden and saw Carlos Davis making a shortcut across it with the intention of entering his tenant’s house through the rear door—nor of how Miss Trainor stepped outside the kitchen screen to intercept him.
“Hello there! Cheerio! And all that. Monsen wanted to see me, and I always say visit the sick.”
“Oh, Mr. Davis, just after Mr. Monsen called you, his brother phoned from New York. Mr. Monsen wants to know if he
