“Did you look thoroughly? Through all your bags?”
“My things are on the train. But I know it was in its own case and that was on my arm.”
“Suppose it slipped out—“
“It couldn’t,” she insisted. “The case has a patent catch—it couldn’t just open and close again.”
“It must be in your baggage.”
“Oh no!” With sudden suspicion she turned toward Judy, “Where is it? I want it back now!”
“I certainly haven’t got it.”
“Then where is it? I’ll have you searched—”
“Be reasonable, Velia,” Chris said.
“But who is she? Who is this girl? We don’t know.”
“At least come in the side parlor here,” he urged.
She was on the edge of collapse.
“I want her searched.”
“I don’t mind,” offered Judy. “I’ve only got the coat and sweater you lent me. I threw away the old dress on the train, it wasn’t worth saving. And I couldn’t very well have swallowed it.”
“You see, she knows, Chris. She knows that thieves swallow the jewels they’ve stolen.”
“Don’t be absurd!” he said.
While the search was being conducted by the telephone girl under Velia’s close supervision, Bennie Giskig, one of the supervisors of Bijou Pictures, drove up at the door. He encountered Chris in the lobby.
“Ah, good,” he said, in the cocksure manner that Chris had come to associate with his metier, a manner sharply different from those who actually wrote and directed the pictures. “Good to see you, Chris. I want to talk to you. That’s why I drove here. I am so busy a man. Where is Velia—I want to see her even more. Can we start right away—I have business back in Hollywood.”
“There’s a little trouble here,” Chris answered. “Bennie, I found a girl for you. She’s with us.”
“All right. I’ll look at her in the car—but we got to get started back.”
“And also I’ve got the story.”
“So.” He hesitated. “Chris, I must tell you frankly plans have changed a little since we started on that. It’s such a sad story,”
“On the contrary, I’ve found it can be a very cheerful story.”
“We can talk about it in the car. Anyhow Velia goes into another production first, right now, almost today—”
At this moment the latter, all upset and tearful and at a loss, came out of the coatroom, followed by Judy.
“Bennie,” she cried, “I’ve lost my big diamond. You’ve seen it.”
“So? That’s too bad. It was insured?”
“Not for anything like its real value. It was a rare stone.”
“We must start now. We can talk it over in the car.”
She consented to be embarked and they set out for the coast up and over a hill and then down into a valley of green morning light with rows of avocado pear trees and late lettuce.
Chris let Bennie unburden himself to Velia about the immediacy of her picture—a matter which in her distraught condition she scarcely understood at all.
Then he said:
“I still think my story’s better than that one, Bennie. I’ve changed it. I’ve learned a lot since I started on this trip. This story is called ‘Travel Together.’ It’s more than just about hoboes now. It’s a love story.”
“I tell you the subject’s too gloomy. People want to laugh now. For instance in this picture for Velia we got a—”
But Chris cut through him impatiently.
“Then I’ve wasted my month—while you’ve changed your mind.”
“Shulkopf couldn’t reach you, could he? We didn’t know where you were. Besides you’re on salary, aren’t you?”
“I like to work for more than salary.”
Bennie touched his knee conciliatingly.
“Forget it. I’ll set you to work on a picture that—”
“But I want to write this picture, while I’m full of it. From New York to Dallas I was on the freights—”
“Who cares about that though? Now wouldn’t you rather ride along a smooth road in a big limousine?”
“I thought so once.”
Bennie turned to Velia as if in good humored despair.
“Velia, he thinks he would like to ride the freights and—”
“Come on, Judy,” Chris said suddenly, “Let’s get out. We can make it on foot.” And then to Bennie, “My contract was up last week anyhow.”
“But we were going to renew—”
“I think I can sell this somewhere else. The whole hobo idea was mine anyhow—so I guess it reverts to me.”
“Sure, sure. We don’t want it. But Chris, I tell you—”
He seemed to realize now he was losing one of his best men, one who had no lack of openings, who would go far in the industry.
But Chris was adamant.
“Come on, Judy. Stop here, driver.”
Absorbed in her loss to the exclusion of all else Velia cried to him: “Chris! If you find out anything about my diamond—if this girl—”
“She hasn’t got it. You know that. Maybe I have.”
“You haven’t.”
“No, I haven’t. Goodbye Velia. Goodbye Bennie, I’ll come up and see you when this play’s a smash. And tell you about it.”
In a few minutes the car was a dot far down the highway.
Chris and Judy sat by the roadside.
“Well.”
“Well.”
“I guess it’s shoe leather and hitch-hike again.”
“I guess so.”
He looked at the delicate white rose of her cheeks and the copper green eyes, greener than the green-brown foliage around them.
“Have you got that diamond?” he asked suddenly.
“No.”
“You’re lying.”
“Well then, yes and no,” she said.
“What did you do with it?”
“Oh, it’s so pleasant here, let’s not talk about it now.”
“Let’s not talk about it!” he repeated astonished at her casual attitude—as if it didn’t matter! “I’m going to get that stone back to Velia. I’m responsible. I introduced you, after all—”
“I can’t help you,” she said rather coolly. “I haven’t got it.”
“What did you do with it? Give it to a confederate?”
“Do you think I’m a criminal? And I certainly would have to have been a marvelous plotter. To’ve met you and all.”
“If you are, you’re finished being one from now on. Velia’s going to get her diamond.”
“It happens to be mine.”
“I suppose because possession is nine points of the law—Well—”
“I didn’t mean that,” she interrupted with angry tears. “It belongs to my mother and me. Oh, I’ll tell you the whole story though I was saving it. Father owned the Nyask Line and when he was eighty-six and so collapsed we never let him steam around to his west coast office without a doctor and nurse—he broke away one night and gave a diamond worth eighty thousand dollars to a girl in a nightclub. He told the nurse about it because he thought it was gay and clever. And we know what it was worth, because we found the bill from a New York dealer—and it was receipted.
“Father died before he reached New York—and he left absolutely nothing else except debts. He was senile—crazy, you understand. He should have been at home.”
Chris interrupted.
“But how did you know that was Velia’s diamond?”
“I didn’t. I was going West to find a girl named Mabel Dychenik—because we found a check made out to her for ten dollars in his bank returns. And his secretary said he’d never signed a check except the night he ran away from the ship.”
“Still you didn’t know—” He considered. “After you saw the diamond. I suppose they’re pretty rare.”
“Rare! That size? It was described in the jeweller’s invoice with a pedigree like a thoroughbred’s. We thought sure we’d find it in his safe.”
He guessed: “So I suppose you were going to plead with the girl and try to litigate.”
“I was—but when I met a hard specimen like Velia, or Mabel, I knew she’d fight it to the end. And we have no money to go into it. Then, last night, this chance came—and I thought if I had it—”
She broke off and he finished for her:
“—that when she cooled down she might listen to reason.”
Sitting there Chris considered for a long time the rights and wrongs of the thing. From one point of view it was indefensible—yet he had read of divorced couples contending for a child to the point of kidnapping. What was the justice of that—love? But here, on Judy’s part, what had influenced her action was her human claim on the means of her own subsistence.
Something could be done with Velia.
“What did you do with it?” he demanded suddenly.
“It’s in the mails. The porter posted it for me when we stopped in Phoenix this morning—wrapped in my old skirt.”
“My God! You took another awful chance there.”
“All this trip was an awful chance.”
Now, presently, they were on their feet, walking westward with a mild sun arching up behind them.
“Travel Together,” Chris said to himself, abstractedly, “Yes, there’s the title of my script.” And then to her, “And I have title on you to be my girl.”
“I know you have.”
“‘Travel Together’”, he repeated, “I suppose that’s one of the best things you can do to find out about another person.”
“We’ll travel a lot, won’t we?”
“Yes, and always together.”
“No. You’ll travel alone sometimes—but I’ll always be there when you come back.”
“You better be.”
