Читать книгу The Trufflers - Merwin Samuel, Webster Henry Kitchell - Страница 7

WHEN Hy set out for dinner, a little later, he found Peter sitting on a bench in the Square.

“Go in and get your overcoat,” said Hy. “Unless you’re out for pneumonia.”

“Hy,” said Peter, his color vivid, his eyes wild, “we can’t let those brutes play with Sue; like that. We’ve got to save her.”

Hy squinted down at his bamboo stick. “Very good, my son. But just how?”

“If I could talk with her, Hy!.. I know that game so well!”

“You could call her up – ”

“Call her up nothing! I can’t ask to see her and start cold.” He gestured vehemently. “Look here, you’re seeing Betty every day – you fix it.”

Hy mused. “They’re great hands to take tramps in the country, those two. Most every Sunday… If I could arrange a little party of four… See here! Betty’s going to have dinner with me to-morrow night.”

“For God’s sake, Hy, get me in on it!”

“Now you just wait! Sue’ll be playing to-morrow night at the Crossroads, It’s Saturday, you know.”

Peter’s face fell.

“But it gives me the chance to talk it over with friend Betty and perhaps plan for Sunday. If Zanin’ll just leave her alone that long.”

“It isn’t as if I were thinking of myself, Hy…”

“Of course not, Pete.”

“The girl’s in danger. We’ve got to save her.”

“What if she won’t listen! She’s high-strung.”

“Then,” said Peter, flaring up with a righteous passion that made him feel suddenly like the hero of his own new play – “then I’ll go straight to Zanin and force him to declare himself! I will face him, as man to man!”

Thus the two Seventh-Story Men!

At moments, during the few weeks just past, thoughts of his anonymous letter had risen to disturb Peter; on each occasion, until to-night, to be instantly overwhelmed by the buoyant egotism that always justified Peter to himself. But the thoughts had been there. They had kept him from attempts to see Sue, had even restrained him from appearing where there was likelihood of her seeing him; and they had kept him excited about her. Now they rose again in unsuspected strength. Of course she would refuse to see him! He slept hardly at all that night. The next day he was unstrung. And Saturday night (or early Sunday morning) when Hy crept in, Peter, in pajamas, all lights out, was sitting by the window nursing a headache, staring out with smarting eyeballs at the empty Square.

“Worm here?” asked Hy guardedly.

“Asleep.”

Hy lighted the gas; then looked closely at the wretched Peter.

“Look here, my son,” he said then, “you need sleep.”

“Sleep” – muttered Peter, “good God!”

“Yes, I know, but you’ve got a delicate job on your hands. It’ll take expert handling. You’ve got to be fit.”

“Did you – did you see Sue?”

“No, only Betty. But they’ve been talking you over. Sue told Betty that you interest her.”

“Oh – she did! Say anything else?”

“More or less. Look here – has anything happened that I’m not in on? I mean between you and Sue.”

Peter shivered slightly. “How could anything happen? I haven’t been seeing her.”

“Well – Sue says you’re the strangest man she ever knew. She can’t figure you out. Betty was wondering.”

Hy was removing his overcoat now. Suddenly he gave way to a soft little chuckle.

“For Heaven’s sake, don’t laugh!”

“I was thinking of something else. Yes, I fixed it. But there’s something up – a new deal. This here Silverstone saw Any Street last night and went dippy over Sue. Betty told me that much but says she can’t tell me the rest because it’s Sue’s secret, not hers. Only it came out that Zanin has dropped the idea of bringing you into it. Silverstone bought supper for the girls and Zanin last night, and this afternoon he took Zanin out to his Long Beach house for the night, in a big car. And took his stenographer along. Everybody’s mysterious and in a hurry. Oh, there’s a hen on, all right!”

“So I’m out!” muttered Peter between set teeth. “But it’s no mystery. Think I don’t know Silverstone?”

“What’ll he do?”

“Freeze out everybody and put Sue across himself. What’s that guy’s is his. Findings is keepings.”

“But will Sue let him freeze Zanin out?”

“That’s a point… But if she won’t, he’ll he wise in a minute. Trust Silverstone! He’ll let Zanin think he’s in, then.”

“Things look worse, I take it.”

“A lot.”

Hy was undressing. He sat now, caught by a sudden fragrant memory, holding a shoe in midair, and chuckled again.

“Stop that cackle!” growled Peter. “You said you fixed it.”

“I did. Quit abusing me and you’ll realize that I’m coming through with all you could ask. We leave at eleven, Hudson Tunnel, for the Jersey hills – we four. I bring the girls; you meet us at the Tunnel. Zanin is safe at Long Beach. We eat at a country road house. We walk miles in the open country. We drift home in the evening, God knows when!.. Here I hand you, in one neat parcel, pleasant hillsides, purling brooks, twelve mortal hours of the blessed damosel, and” – he caught up the evening paper – “‘fair and warmer’ – and perfect weather. And what do I get? Abuse. Nothing but abuse!”

With this, he deftly juggled his two shoes, caught both in a final flourish, looked across at the abject Peter and grinned.

“Shut up,” muttered Peter wearily.

“Very good, sir. And you go to bed. Your nerves are a mess.”

Into Peter’s brain as he hurried toward the Tunnel Station, the next morning, darted an uninvited, startling thought.

Here was Zanin, idealist in the drama, prophet of the new Russianism, deserting the stage for the screen!

What was it the Worm had represented him as saying to Sue… that she would be enabled to express her ideals to millions where Isadora Duncan could reach only thousands?

Millions in place of thousands!

His imagination pounced on the thought. He stopped short on the street to consider it – until a small boy laughed; then he hurried on.

He looked with new eyes at the bill-boards he passed. Two-thirds of them flaunted moving-picture features… He had been passing such posters for a year or more without once reading out of them a meaning personal to himself. He had been sticking blindly, doggedly to plays – ninety per cent, of which, of all plays, failed utterly. It suddenly came home to him that the greatest dramatists, like the greatest actors and actresses, were working for the camera. All but himself, apparently!.. The theaters were fighting for the barest existence where they were not surrendering outright. Why, he himself patronized movies more often than plays! Yet he had stupidly refused to catch the significance of it… The Truffler would fail, of course; just as the two before it had failed. Still he had, until this actual minute, clung to it as his one hope.

Millions for thousands!

He was thinking now not of persons but of dollars.

Millions for thousands.

He paused at a news stand. Sprawled over it were specimens of the new sort of periodical, the moving-picture magazines. So the publishers, like the theatrical men, were being driven back by the invader.

He bought the fattest, most brightly colored of these publications and turned the pages eagerly as he descended into the station.

He stood half-hidden behind a pillar, his eyes wandering from the magazine to the ticket gate where Hy and the two girls would appear, then back to the magazine. Those pages reeked of enthusiasm, fresh ideas, prosperity. They stirred new depths within his soul.

He saw his little party coming in through the gate.

The two girls wore sweaters. Their skirts were short, their tan shoes low and flat of heel.

They were attractive, each in her individual way; Sue less regular as to features, but brighter, slimmer, more alive. Betty’s more luxurious figure was set off almost too well by the snug sweater. As she moved, swaying a little from the hips, her eyelids drooping rather languidly, the color stirring faintly under her fair fine skin, she was, Peter decided, unconscious neither of the sweater nor of the body within it… Just before the train roared in, while Sue, all alertness, was looking out along the track, Peter saw Hy’s hand brush Betty’s. For an instant their fingers intertwined; then the hands drifted casually apart.