THE MOON LIGHTED the oil fields. It shone and was reflected off the roofs of the little row of houses. Tripod, anxious and growling low, patrolled the yards and occasionally barked beneath Jack’s window.
Jack and Susan lay together on the bare mattress. For a long time they were silent, and then they talked for a while, and then they were silent again.
When they did talk, they went over every moment they’d been apart. Jack’s misery, Jack’s desperation, Jack’s fever to find Susan again, Jack’s despair. Susan’s anger, Susan’s disappointment, Susan’s fear that Jack would not come after her to California, Susan’s doubts as to his trustworthiness.
She rubbed her head against his chest. “I never knew you had hair here,” she said. “And so much of it, too. Tell me who you are, tell me where you came from, what you did before you knew me, tell me the lies you told me, and tell me what the truth really was.”
“All right. I’ll start at the beginning. I was born in Elmira, New York…”
He didn’t get much further in his story. Half an hour later, he resumed, and Susan learned Jack’s whole, true story.
“But why didn’t you tell me all that from the beginning?”
“Because if I had, you would have thought I was just another rich young Wall Street broker, seeking a dalliance with a compliant actress. You wouldn’t have had anything to do with me, would you?”
“No,” Susan admitted, “I wouldn’t have. That’s exactly what I thought about Jay Austin.”
“So I had to pretend to be an impecunious tinkerer. And in fact, that’s what I became.”
“And now you’re an impecunious actor,” said Susan. “You don’t even have sheets for your bed.”
“Well, we could—”
The noise of a door closing in another part of the bungalow startled Jack into silence. “Hosmer,” he said. He reached to the floor for his watch and checked the time. “It’s past eleven.” Jack started to get out of the bed. “No time like the present. Let’s confront him about the invention.”
“Shhh,” said Susan. “No. Not yet. He’d only deny it. I’ve got an idea. You and I pretend that nothing’s changed. That we dislike and mistrust each other. I suspect that the reason Hosmer volunteered to share this bungalow with you is so that he can keep an eye on you. He was very particular to take this bungalow, next to mine, because I think he wanted to keep an eye on me as well. Well, let’s let him keep an eye on us—and we’ll keep an eye on him.”
“I don’t know if I can keep up a deception like that.”
“If you could fool me for months, you can fool Hosmer Collamore for a few weeks. We’ll find out what he’s hiding and whether or not he stole your plans.”
“But—”
“I don’t mind your lying,” said Susan, “as long as you’re not lying to me.”
Susan put on her clothes and Jack carefully lowered her out the rear window, taking care not to disturb or alert Hosmer, whom they heard moving about in his own room.
“Don’t bark, Tripod. I’m all right,” she cautioned in a low voice.
Jack leaned out the window. Susan stood on the dry earth, and they kissed.
“Get some sheets,” she said, and then crept toward home.
The next morning, Jack watched Susan and Ida climb into the back of Junius Fane’s automobile for the trip to the northern side of Hollywood and the Cosmic Film Studio, as it was now officially called.
“Wish we could afford an automobile,” said Hosmer, suddenly appearing beside Jack, and tucking his shirttail into his trousers. “I’ve got my eye on a Saxon ‘Four’.”
“Someday we will be able to afford one,” said Jack, “if money falls down the chimney.”
“Money doesn’t fall down the chimney. Not in California—where there are no chimneys,” Hosmer laughed.
“Perhaps I’d have money,” said Jack, “if I hadn’t signed away my interest in that invention. I hope Susan makes a fortune on it,” he said blandly. He mentioned nothing of the plans having been stolen from his room; indeed, he tried to make it seem as if he had not noticed anything at all was amiss.
Hosmer cleared his throat. “Is it already being manufactured? Your invention, that is?”
“I don’t know,” returned Jack easily, as if it were a matter that no longer concerned him. “Susan has the plans. I suppose it’s up to her to have the thing patented, produced, and sold. But if I were she, I’d do it as quickly as possible, because it’s the sort of idea that any clever person with a little mechanical aptitude could come up with.”
“Then you haven’t asked Susan about it,” said Hosmer carefully. “About her plans for the device.”
“Susan won’t speak to me,” said Jack. “Not on that or any other subject. It’s out of my hands. I’ll tell you the truth, Hosmer: West Sixtieth Street is a bad dream to me, and I’d just as soon not be reminded of anything having to do with that place or with my time there. For better or worse, I’m no longer a broker or an inventor. I’m apparently an actor. And, speaking of that, it’s time for you and me to get on up to the studio. After all, Mr. Westermeade has to run me down with his motorcycle this morning.”
Besides the offices of the staff, inside the Cosmic Film Studio were two enormous rooms for the use of the carpenters and mechanics, as well as the laboratories where the film was developed, cut, spliced together again, and reproduced as a print. As in New York, much of this work could have been done outside, but Fane still thought he saved money and maintained control by keeping everything under his own eye. On the hillside behind the studio the carpenters had already built half a dozen wooden platforms. Sheets of muslin had been spread over the top of these to filter the strong sunlight. The Cosmic Film Studio was about to swing into action once again.
Ida wore a wedding dress, and Jack was in tails. He was made up with white powder and lip rouge, and he felt exceptionally foolish, standing on a threadbare rug, on a wooden stage, with canvas walls meant to represent someone’s front parlor in Connecticut. The California sun burned high overhead, and when he looked above and beyond the painted canvas he saw row on row of suburban homes, oil wells, groves of orange and lemon trees, and in the distance, the glistening Pacific Ocean.
He had only to mouth the words spoken to him by the preacher, and he had to kiss Ida. Susan watched from her station behind Fane’s chair. The kiss was filmed three times, for Fane didn’t think that Jack put enough feeling into it on the first two attempts. Jack closed his eyes and thought of the night before, and Susan. Then he was able to kiss Ida with enough fire.
Two more scenes were shot on the hillside stages that morning: a wedding dance in which Jack’s height and innate clumsiness were exploited and a scene in a dry goods store with Jack purchasing the ingredients for a wedding cake. Manfred Mixon provided a few moments of characteristic comedy.
“You are doing splendidly,” said Junius Fane to Jack as the company broke for lunch.
“The kiss was very fine,” added Ida. “The third one, I mean.”
“Yes it was very fine,” said Fane. “I shall look forward to seeing it on celluloid. Colley,” he said, turning to the cameraman, “see if we can’t have this footage sometime this afternoon. Jack, don’t eat too much now, we’re going to have you dodging motorcycles, and you’re going to want to be moving fairly quickly.”
Susan had suggested to Jack that maybe Fane would let her tone down some of the wilder action that she had devised for Jack in the Plunder scenario, but Jack said that he thought it would be best to keep up the appearance of warfare between the two of them. Jack knew that every precaution was taken to ensure the safety of the actors in the moving pictures. “Not every precaution,” Susan warned him. “Be very careful. I’d be extremely distressed to find myself a widow before we were even married.”
So Jack didn’t eat anything for lunch. At one o’clock, the company and the cameras moved to the other side of the studio and out on to Sunset Boulevard. One side of the street was blocked off and the automobile traffic, accustomed to such unannounced inconveniences, squeezed along the other side of the boulevard for an hour or so.
“It’s simple,” Fane told Jack. “Mr. Westermeade, the villain, is on a motorcycle. You’ve just been drugged with opium and you’re trying to get to the doctor for an antidote. The doctor’s office is across the street, but Mr. Westermeade is trying to make certain that you don’t get there by running you down. And remember, as a result of the opium, you’re reeling.”
“Yes,” said Jack, “I think I understand.”
The cameras were loaded, Mr. Westermeade was set up on his motorcycle at the end of the blocked-off half of the street, and Jack was given the signal to begin the action.
Jack reeled out of the door of the studio—supposedly the livery stable where he’d been held hostage for twenty-four hours—and lurched into the street. Westermeade took off on his cycle and headed for Jack. Jack looked down the street, registered shock and dismay, and then stumbled to the other side before the motorcycle got anywhere near him.
“Not quite what we needed,” said Fane. “Props! Put a splint on Jack’s right leg. Underneath his trousers.”
As props was occupied in this operation, Fane explained, “You’ve just been drugged and they’ve shot you in the leg. It’s not a serious injury, and it will get better quickly, but for now it’s going to make it more difficult for you to get across the street. Also, I’d like you to drink a couple of glasses of brandy. It will lend verisimilitude to your reeling.”
The scene was shot again.
Jack once more reeled out of the livery stable/studio and into the street. He tried to reel as he would have if he had drunk six glasses of brandy instead of just two. The splint on his leg helped, for he tended to spin on it a little. Westermeade came very close to running him over this time. Jack jumped out of the way just in time, fell, got up, and raced forward to the other side of the street.
“Almost,” judged the director. “That was almost it. Props! Two more glasses of brandy for Jack. And do we have a bucket for that cycle?”
Props looked around for the sidecar and attached it to the motorcycle.
“Good,” said Fane. “Now, Mr. Perks will sit in the bucket—and give him a big stick. And we need a doll, have we got a doll somewhere?”
In another few minutes a stick, a doll, and Mr. Perks had been gathered together, and Fane came over to Jack and said, “We’re changing it a little. You’ve had a double dose of drugs—and you might as well take another glass of brandy before we begin. Also, you’ve come across an abandoned child with the croup that you have to get to the doctor. Mr. Westermeade is going to come at you with the motorcycle, and Mr. Perks in the bucket has a large stick that he’s going to try to knock you in the head with. We don’t want to make this crossing the street to look too easy. How’s that splint? Still in place?”
“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.”