'Who are working on "Scented Sinners" now?' he asked.
The secretary consulted a list.
'Mr Doakes, Mr Noakes, Miss Faversham, Miss Wilson, Mr Fotheringay, Mr Mendelsohn, Mr Markey, Mrs Cooper, Mr Lennox and Mr Dabney.'
'That all?'
'There was a missionary who came in Thursday, wanting to convert the extra girls. He started a treatment, but he has escaped to Canada.'
'Tchah!' said Mr Schnellenhamer, annoyed. 'We must have more vigilance, more vigilance. Give Mr Mulliner a script of "Scented Sinners" before he goes.'
The secretary left the room. He turned to Bulstrode.
'Did you ever see "Scented Sinners"?'
Bulstrode said he had not.
'Powerful drama of life as it is lived by the jazz-crazed, gincrazed Younger Generation whose hollow laughter is but the mask for an aching heart,' said Mr Schnellenhamer. 'It ran for a week in New York and lost a hundred thousand dollars, so we bought it. It has the mucus of a good story. See what you can do with it.'
'But I don't want to write for the pictures,' said Bulstrode.
'You've got to write for the pictures,' said Mr Schnellenhamer. 'You've signed the contract.'
'I want my hat.'
'In the Perfecto-Zizzbaum Motion Picture Corporation,' said Mr Schnellenhamer coldly, 'our slogan is Co-operation, not Hats.'
The Leper Colony, to which Bulstrode had been assigned, proved to be a long, low building with small cells opening on a narrow corridor. It had been erected to take care of the overflow of the studio's writers, the majority of whom were located in what was known as the Ohio State Penitentiary. Bulstrode took possession of Room 40, and settled down to see what he could do with 'Scented Sinners.'
He was not unhappy. A good deal has been written about the hardships of life in motion-picture studios, but most of it, I am glad to say, is greatly exaggerated. The truth is that there is little or no actual ill-treatment of the writing staff, and the only thing that irked Bulstrode was the loneliness of the life.
Few who have not experienced it can realize the eerie solitude of a motion-picture studio. Human intercourse is virtually unknown. You are surrounded by writers, each in his or her little hutch, but if you attempt to establish communication with them you will find on every door a card with the words 'Working. Do not Disturb.' And if you push open one of these doors you are greeted by a snarl so animal, so menacing, that you retire hastily lest nameless violence befall.
The world seems very far away. Outside, the sun beats down on the concrete, and occasionally you will see a man in shirt sleeves driving a truck to a distant set, while ever and anon the stillness is broken by the shrill cry of some wheeling supervisor. But for the most part a forlorn silence prevails.
The conditions, in short, are almost precisely those of such a desert island as Miss Postlethwaite was describing to us just now.
In these circumstances the sudden arrival of a companion, especially a companion of the opposite sex, can scarcely fail to have its effect on a gregarious young man. Entering his office one morning and finding a girl in it, Bulstrode Mulliner experienced much the same emotions as did Robinson Crusoe on meeting Friday. It is not too much to say that he was electrified.
She was not a beautiful girl. Tall, freckled and slab-featured, she had a distinct look of a halibut. To Bulstrode, however, she seemed a vision.
'My name is Bootle,' she said. 'Genevieve Bootle.'
'Mine is Mulliner. Bulstrode Mulliner.'
'They told me to come here.'
'To see me about something?'
'To work with you on a thing called "Scented Sinners." I've just signed a contract to write dialogue for the company.'
'Can you write dialogue?' asked Bulstrode. A foolish question, for, if she could, the Perfecto-Zizzbaum Corporation would scarcely have engaged her.
'No,' said the girl despondently. 'Except for letters to Ed, I've never written anything.'
'Ed?'
'Mr Murgatroyd, my fiancé. He's a bootlegger in Chicago, and I came out here to try to work up his West Coast connection. And I went to see Mr Schnellenhamer to ask if he would like a few cases of guaranteed pre-War Scotch, and I'd hardly begun to speak when he said "Sign here." So I signed, and now I find I can't leave till this "Scented Sinners" thing is finished.'
'I am in exactly the same position,' said Bulstrode. 'We must buckle to and make a quick job of it. You won't mind if I hold your hand from time to time? I fancy it will assist composition.'
'But what would Ed say?'
'Ed won't know.'
'No, there's that,' agreed the girl.
'And when I tell you that I myself am engaged to a lovely girl in New York,' Bulstrode pointed out, 'you will readily understand that what I am suggesting is merely a purely mechanical device for obtaining the best results on this script of ours.'
'Well, of course, if you put it like that ...'
'I put it just like that,' said Bulstrode, taking her hand in his and patting it.
Against hand-holding as a means of stimulating the creative faculties of the brain there is, of course, nothing to be said. All collaborators do it. The trouble is that it is too often but a first step to other things. Gradually, little by little, as the long days wore on and propinquity and solitude began to exercise their spell, Bulstrode could not disguise it from himself that he was becoming oddly drawn to this girl, Bootle. If she and he had been fishing for turtles on the same mid-Pacific isle, they could not have been in closer communion, and presently the realization smote him like a blow that he loved her – and fervently, at that. For twopence, he told himself, had he not been a Mulliner and a gentleman, he could have crushed her in his arms and covered her face with burning kisses.
And, what was more, he could see by subtle signs that his love was returned. A quick glance from eyes that swiftly fell ... the timid offer of a banana ... a tremor in her voice as she asked if she might borrow his pencil-sharpener ... These were little things, but they spoke volumes. If Genevieve Bootle was not crazy about him, he would eat his hat – or, rather, Mr Schnellenhamer's hat.
He was appalled and horrified. All the Mulliners are the soul of honour, and as he thought of Mabelle Ridgway, waiting for him and trusting him in New York, Bulstrode burned with shame and remorse. In the hope of averting the catastrophe, he plunged with a fresh fury of energy into the picturization of 'Scented Sinners.'
It was a fatal move. It simply meant that Genevieve Bootle had to work harder on the thing, too, and 'Scented Sinners' was not the sort of production on which a frail girl could concentrate in warm weather without something cracking. Came a day with the thermometer in the nineties when, as he turned to refer to a point in Mr Noakes's treatment, Bulstrode heard a sudden sharp snort at his side and, looking up, saw that Genevieve had begun to pace the room with feverish steps, her fingers entwined in her hair. And, as he started at her in deep concern, she flung herself in a chair with a choking sob and buried her face in her hands.
And, seeing her weeping there, Bulstrode could restrain himself no longer. Something snapped in him. It was his collar-stud. His neck, normally a fifteen and an eighth, had suddenly swelled under the pressure of uncontrollable emotion into a large seventeen. For an instant he stood gurgling wordlessly like a bull-pup choking over a chicken-bone: then, darting forward, he clasped her in his arms and began to murmur all those words of love which until now he had kept pent up in his heart.
He spoke well and eloquently and at considerable length, but not at such length as he had planned. For at the end of perhaps two minutes and a quarter there rent the air in his immediate rear a sharp exclamation or cry: and, turning, he perceived in the doorway Mabelle Ridgway, his betrothed. With her was a dark young man with oiled hair and a saturnine expression, who looked like the sort of fellow the police are always spreading a drag-net for in connection with the recent robbery of Schoenstein's Bon Ton Delicatessen Store in Eighth Avenue.
There was a pause. It is never e
asy to know just what to say on these occasions: and Bulstrode, besides being embarrassed, was completely bewildered. He had supposed Mabelle three thousand miles away.
'Oh – hullo!' he said, untwining himself from Genevieve Bootle.
The dark young man was reaching in his hip-pocket, but Mabelle stopped him with a gesture.
'I can manage, thank you. Mr Murgatroyd. There is no need for sawn-off shot-guns.'
The young man had produced his weapon and was looking at it wistfully.
'I think you're wrong, lady,' he demurred. 'Do you know who that is that this necker is necking?' he asked, pointing an accusing finger at Genevieve Bootle, who was cowering against the ink-pot. 'My girl. No less. In person. Not a picture.'
Mabelle gasped.
'You don't say so!'
'I do say so.'
'Well, it's a small world,' said Mabelle. 'Yes, sir, a small world, and you can't say it isn't. All the same, I think we had better not have any shooting. This is not Chicago. It might cause comment and remark.'
'Maybe you're right,' agreed Ed Murgatroyd. He blew on his gun, polished it moodily with the sleeve of his coat, and restored it to his pocket. 'But I'll give her a piece of my mind,' he said, glowering at Genevieve, who had now retreated to the wall and was holding before her, as if in a piteous effort to shield herself from vengeance, an official communication from the Front Office notifying all writers that the expression 'Polack mug' must no longer be used in dialogue.
'And I will give Mr Mulliner a piece of my mind,' said Mabelle. 'You stay here and chat with Miss Bootle, while I interview the Great Lover in the passage.'
Out in the corridor, Mabelle faced Bulstrode, tight-lipped. For a moment there was silence, broken only by the clicking of typwriters from the various hutches and the occasional despairing wail of a writer stuck for an adjective.
'Well, this is a surprise!' said Bulstrode, with a sickly smile. 'How on earth do you come to be here, darling?'
'Miss Ridgway to you!' retorted Mabelle with flashing eyes. 'I will tell you. I should have been in New York still if you had written, as you said you would. But all I've had since you left is one measly picture-postcard of the Grand Canyon.'
Bulstrode was stunned.
'You mean I've only written to you once?'
'Just once. And after waiting for three weeks, I decided to come here and see what was the matter. On the train I met Mr Murgatroyd. We got into conversation, and I learned that he was in the same position as myself. His fiancée had disappeared into the No Man's Land of Hollywood, and she hadn't written at all. It was his idea that we should draw the studios. In the past two days we have visited seven, and to-day, flushing the Perfecto-Zizzbaum, we saw you coming out of a building ...'
'The commissary. I had been having a small frosted malted milk. I felt sort of faint.'
'You will feel sort of fainter,' said Mabelle, her voice as frosted as any malted milk in California, 'by the time I've done with you. So this is the kind of man you are, Bulstrode Mulliner! A traitor and a libertine!'
From inside the office came the sound of a girl's hysterics, blending with the deeper note of an upbraiding bootlegger and the rhythmic tapping on the wall of Mr Dabney and Mr Mendelsohn, who were trying to concentrate on 'Scented Sinners.' A lifetime in Chicago had given Mr Murgatroyd the power of expressing his thoughts in terse, nervous English, and some of the words he was using, even when filtered through the door, were almost equivalent to pineapple bombs.
'A two-timing daddy and a trailing arbutus!' said Mabelle, piercing Bulstrode with her scornful eyes.
A messenger-boy came up with a communication from the Front Office notifying all writers that they must not smoke in the Exercise Yard. Bulstrode read it absently. The interruption had given him time to marshal his thoughts.
'You don't understand,' he said. 'You don't realize what it is like, being marooned in a motion-picture studio. What you have failed to appreciate is the awful yearning that comes over you for human society. There you sit for weeks and weeks, alone in the great silence, and then suddenly you find a girl in your office, washed up by the tide, and what happens? Instinctively you find yourself turning to her. As an individual, she may be distasteful to you, but she is – how shall I put it? – a symbol of the world without. I admit that I grabbed Miss Bootle. I own that I kissed her. But it meant nothing. It affected no vital issue. It was as if, locked in a dungeon cell, I had shown cordiality towards a pet mouse. You would not have censured me if you had come in and found me playing with a pet mouse. For all the kisses I showered on Miss Bootle, deep down in me I was true to you. It was simply that the awful loneliness ... the deadly propinquity... Well, take the case,' said Bulstrode, 'of a couple on a raft in the Caribbean Sea ...'
The stoniness of Mabelle's face did not soften.
'Never mind the Caribbean Sea,' she interrupted. 'I have nothing to say about the Caribbean Sea except that I wish somebody would throw you into it with a good, heavy brick round your neck. This is the end, Bulstrode Mulliner. I have done with you. If we meet on the street, don't bother to raise your hat.'
'It is Mr Schnellenhamer's hat.'
'Well, don't bother to raise Mr Schnellenhamer's hat, because I shall ignore you. I shall cut you dead.' She looked past him at Ed Murgatroyd, who was coming out of the office with a satisfied expression on his face. 'Finished, Mr Murgatroyd?'
'All washed up,' said the bootlegger. 'A nice clean job.'
'Then perhaps you will escort me out of this Abode of Love.'
'Oke, lady.'
Mabelle glanced down with cold disdain at Bulstrode, who was clutching her despairingly.
'There is something clinging to my skirt, Mr Murgatroyd,' she said. 'Might I trouble you to brush it off?'
A powerful hand fell on Bulstrode's shoulder. A powerful foot struck him on the trousers-seat. He flew through the open door of the office, tripping over Genevieve Bootle, who was now writhing on the floor.
Disentangling himself, he rose to his feet and dashed out. The corridor was empty. Mabelle Ridgway and Edward Murgatroyd had gone.
A good many of my relations, near and distant (proceeded Mr Mulliner after a thoughtful sip at his hot Scotch and lemon), have found themselves in unpleasant situations in their time, but none, I am inclined to think, in any situation quite so unpleasant as that in which my nephew Bulstrode now found himself. It was as if he had stepped suddenly into one of those psychological modern novels where the hero's soul gets all tied up in knots as early as page 21 and never straightens itself out again.
To lose the girl one worships is bad enough in itself. But when, in addition, a man has got entangled with another girl, for whom he feels simultaneously and in equal proportions an overwhelming passion and a dull dislike – and when in addition to that he is obliged to spend his days working on a story like 'Scented Sinners' – well, then he begins to realize how dark and sinister a thing this life of ours can be. Complex was the word that suggested itself to Bulstrode Mulliner.
He ached for Mabelle Ridgway. He also ached for Genevieve Bootle. And yet, even while he ached for Genevieve Bootle, some inner voice told him that if ever there was a pill it was she. Sometimes the urge to fold her in his arms and the urge to haul off and slap her over the nose with a piece of blotting-paper came so close together that it was a mere flick of the coin which prevailed.
And then one afternoon when he had popped into the commissary for a frosted malted milk he tripped over the feet of a girl who was sitting by herself in a dark corner.
'I beg your pardon,' he said courteously, for a Mulliner, even when his soul is racked, never forgets his manners.
'Don't mention it, Bulstrode,' said the girl.
Bulstrode uttered a stunned cry.
'You!'
He stared at her, speechless. In his eyes there was nothing but amazement, but in those of Mabelle Ridgway there shone a soft and friendly light.
'How are you, Bulstrode?' she asked.
Buls
trode was still wrestling with his astonishment.
'But what are you doing here?' he cried.
'I am working on "Scented Sinners." Mr Murgatroyd and I are doing a treatment together. It is quite simple,' said Mabelle. 'That day when I left you we started to walk to the studio gate, and it so happened that, as we passed, Mr Schnellenhamer was looking out of his window. A few moments later his secretary came running out and said he wished to see us. We went to his office, where he gave us contracts to sign. I think he must have extraordinary personal magnetism,' said Mabelle pensively, 'for we both signed immediately, though nothing was further from our plans than to join the writing-staff of the Perfecto-Zizzbaum. I had intended to go back to New York, and Mr Murgatroyd was complaining that his boot-legging business must be going all to pieces without him. It seems to be one of those businesses that need the individual touch.' She paused. 'What do you think of Mr Murgatroyd, Bulstrode?'
'I dislike him intensely.'
'You wouldn't say he had a certain strange, weird fascination?'
'No.'
'Well, perhaps you're right,' said Mabelle dubiously. 'You were certainly right about it being lonely in this studio. I'm afraid I was a little cross, Bulstrode, when we last met. I understand now. You really don't think there is a curious, intangible glamour about Mr Murgatroyd?'
'I do not.'
'Well, you may be right, of course. Good-bye, Bulstrode, I must be going. I have already exceeded the seven and a quarter minutes which the Front Office allows female writers for the consumption of nut sundaes. If we do not meet again ...'
'But surely we're going to meet all the time?'
Mabelle shook her head.
'The Front Office has just sent out a communication to all writers, forbidding inmates of the Ohio State Penitentiary to associate with those in the Leper Colony. They think it unsettles them. So unless we run into one another in the commissary ... Well, good-bye, Bulstrode.'
She bit her lip in sudden pain, and was gone.
It was some ten days later that the encounter at which Mabelle had hinted took place. The heaviness of a storm-tossed soul had brought Bulstrode to the commissary for a frosted malted milk once more, and there, toying with – respectively – a Surprise Gloria Swanson and a Cheese Sandwich Maurice Chevalier, were Mabelle Ridgway and Ed Murgatroyd. They were looking into each other's eyes with a silent passion in which, an observer would have noted, there was a distinct admixture of dislike and repulsion.