Читать книгу: «Linda Lee, Incorporated: A Novel», страница 22

Bel's words trailed off into a thoughtful mumble, he seemed momentarily lost in study of the rug on which he stood, then roused and put his hand to the door-knob.

"If it matters," he announced – "possibly you'd care to know – we've telegraphed Summerlad's people in his home town, Terre Haute – his mother and sister. The family name appears to be Slade. We thought he ought to have them with him…"

"'We'?"

"Zinn and I."

"You told Mr. Zinn?"

"Called him up first thing. Naturally. Nobody had a better right to know what had happened, holding Summerlad under contract as he does. He came right out, calling himself bad names for being in the picture business, and took charge. It was mostly thanks to him I was able to get away as soon as I did."

"Does he know the full story, Bel?"

"All that matters. But your part's still a dead secret between the four of us – including my chauffeur and Summerlad's Jap. I think those two have been well enough paid… It remains to get hold of your man and make him forget he drove you out there for dinner and didn't bring you home. If you'll give me his address…"

"Perhaps I can attend to that better than you, Bel; without making it necessary to explain how you happen to be interested, I mean."

"You won't forget? This affair will be all over town before morning."

"I'll call Ben up at his home as soon as you've gone."

"Very well, then. I presume that brings us to good-night."

"But Bel…" Bellamy reclosed the door and turned back with weary patience. "About that poor girl…"

He looked startled. "That sounds like pity."

"Can one think of her in any other spirit? Have you any notion what will happen to her?"

"Nothing's going to happen to her – if I can find her before the police do."

"You don't mean you'd help her get away, Bel?"

"If it takes every dollar I've got in the world. Do you realize what it means if she's caught and put on trial – either for murder or attempted murder, as it turns out – in a case that's going to get the publicity this is bound to? Do you imagine it will be possible then to keep your name out of it? She's bound to tell her story in self-defense; and inasmuch as she's good-looking enough to be acquitted on one pretext or another, in all probability, the chances are in another six months she'll be starring in a film based on a re-hash of this pretty little affair."

"Then you will help me? I can count on you, Bel?"

"Help you?"

"Help get her away."

Bellamy started excitedly. "Mean to say you know where Nelly is?"

"She's here, Bel. She came straight to me, half-mad with anxiety on your account. It seems she's grateful to you for kindness – "

"And you didn't throw her out?" Bel interrupted, staring.

"She made me understand… And she was so bewildered, so terrified… I couldn't blame her, Bel; and I couldn't have put her out in any event."

"In there?" Bellamy nodded toward the bedchamber and, receiving a nod in reply, strode quickly to the door and threw it open.

The room was a pocket of darkness and, when the lights had been turned on, proved to be tenantless.

The nightly breeze from the hills was bellying the curtains at one of the windows that opened on the street. Lucinda ran to it and leaned out.

No sign of the car that by her order had been left standing before the side door, nearly an hour since…

XLII

Lucinda slept that night – and that she slept at all crossed her presentiment – but fitfully, in spells of profound and wasting lethargy broken by wretched watches of half-waking dread under the dominion of the incubus that agonized her dreams, that phantasm of the land-bird lost, spending its slender strength against the cruel vasts of night and sea and storm…

Toward morning exhaustion claimed her absolutely, sponging out every care, and for some hours her slumbers were unbroken. But she woke up as it were against her will, heavy of heart and without sense of having rested.

Sluggish resentment crawled in her mind, that she should feel so worn and old whose first moments after sleep were as a rule her happiest, when she would lie serene, luxuriating in whole refreshment and with normal optimism very like a child's looking forward to the day, making plans to fill in with small pleasures every hour that wasn't to be devoted to her work.

There was still the feel of immaturity in the day, the chilly souvenir of night which so frequently renders the mornings of Southern California sickly, before the sun finds strength enough to burn away the high fog that, like a thief in the dark, is wont to steal in after sundown from the sea.

What, then, had awakened her so far in advance of the customary hour?

Something hideous and hateful skulking like a torpid snake in the shadows beyond the threshold of consciousness, some foul shape that she instinctively shrank from calling up…

The bedside clock struck nine, and Lucinda started up in a flutter excited by the thought that she would yet another time be late and so afford fresh reason for dissension with her director … then sank back to her pillow, cringing from memories that came trooping in the wake of the reminder that she was to know no more of Barry Nolan in her life…

No more of Nolan, no more of Nelly, no more of Lynn … no more of Love…

With a convulsive movement she flung over in the bed and lay almost prone, her face snuggled into bare arms whose pure lustre lent fire to the crimson that glowed in a lunette of cheek, the one ear visible, even in her neck's sleek loveliness.

Things that Nelly had told her, resting on that very bed, plain tales of the life that Lynn by preference had led, related in the flat and toneless accents of emotional prostration, therefore the more likely to be free from overstatement; things Lynn himself had owned inadvertently or injudiciously at the urge of vanity craving greater prestige in her sight; things that she knew of her own experience with the man, little circumstances of their association that had threatened its harmony, things she hadn't liked and wilfully had been blind to, denied, or disbelieved: all swam up from the deeps of memory to float like scum upon the surface of her consciousness.

Lonely and restless, starving for affection and all too eager to snatch at shadow and proclaim it substance, self-dedicated victim of a ready-made infatuation…

And she had called that Love!

What dishonor, what humiliation, what reproach!

What an escape! and at what cost!.. a cost not yet all paid, and which if she would she might not pay alone, but must see others pay in part for her, Nelly and Lynn perhaps with their lives, Bel too in his way, in another way Zinn … all called upon to lay down things they held dear that she might have her lesson, that she might learn Love is never lightly to be won, no, nor put by, either…

In the room adjoining she could hear her maid quietly moving about, tidying up, with presently a chirrup of the telephone, then a guarded mumble as the woman answered.

She was hanging up when Lucinda, dragging on a négligé, flung open the communicating door.

The maid said Mr. Zinn had called up, and gaped to see Lucinda's glance grow dull and the spirit of her entrance pass abruptly into apathy.

Sinking wearily against the door-frame, she desired to know what Zinn had wanted.

"He asked if you was up yet, ma'm, and when I told him no, he said it didn't matter, would I kindly take the message, he couldn't keep his date with you to look at the rushes today, and maybe not tomorrow, he'd give you a ring 'safternoon and let you know."

"Very well," Lucinda said without interest… "I'll have my bath, please."

Waiting for the water to be drawn, she wandered to a window. The high fog still held the day against the sun, a dense, cold pall of grey, as flat as a metal plate, closing out the blue, closing in an atmosphere lifeless and bleak.

She thought of Lynn fighting for his life, perhaps losing, perhaps already still in defeat.

And Nelly … at whose fate one could only guess…

She recalled that bright hour of sunset, so clear and warm, through which she had motored in gladness toward his arms whom she had called her beloved, that hour in the dread light of this so weirdly unreal, so inconceivably remote; and the old, embittered plaint of Abdu-el-Yezdi found a melancholy echo in her heart:

"Strange that Life's Registrar should call

That day a day, this day a day." …

Bel came in about ten, by that many sleepless, active, anxious hours more jaded than when she had seen him last. Road-dust powdered his face and hands and lay caked in the folds of his coat, and he carried the arm in the sling with more open confession of acute distress. Lucinda herself opened for him, and he met her eyes with a short nod.

"You've found her, Bel? Where?"

He glanced round the room, caught sight of the maid through the open door to the bedchamber, and indicated her with a brusque jerk of his head.

Lucinda called the woman. "You've had no breakfast?" she added.

"No time. Been on the road all night. Just got in."

"Let me order you something…"

"Well … I would be glad of a cup of coffee – nothing else, thanks."

Lucinda sent the maid on the errand, and as soon as they were alone gave intuition voice: "Bel: something has happened to her? she's dead?"

With a weary nod, Bel dropped into a chair. "We got as far as Santa Barbara without picking up a sign," he said. "It was getting daylight then, and I made up my mind we'd taken the wrong road, that Nelly had lied or changed her mind about the way she meant to go. But she hadn't. When we turned back we found her … what had been her…"

He bent forward with his sound elbow on his knee, covering his eyes as if to hide their reminiscent horror.

"There had been an accident?"

"She ran your car off the road at a turn and over a low cliff to a rocky beach. Must have been killed instantly. If so, it was a mercy, for nobody had noticed the wreck till a few minutes before we turned up. I happened to catch sight of the crowd on the beach and made my chauffeur stop…"

He didn't look up, and neither spoke again till the maid returned. Then Lucinda made another pretext to get rid of her for another while, apparently to her considerable annoyance.

"How much does she know?" Bellamy asked, as the woman took herself off with an aggrieved flounce.

"There's been nothing for her to know, Bel," Lucinda returned without resentment.

"I didn't mean … I was merely wondering if she knew where you were expecting to dine last night. She must have helped you dress."

"I don't recall saying…"

"Better give her a good present and make her understand a tight mouth pays."

"Very well."

Bel sipped his coffee, frowning. "Heard anything from your friends the Lontaines this morning?"

"Not yet. Fanny will call up, of course, or come round to see me as soon as she hears."

"Risky to wait. Better get hold of her at once, let her hear about this business first of all from you, and tell her she's got to protect you if she has to lie like Sapphira."

"But surely we can count on Fanny's discretion!"

"Can we?" Bel's grin was skeptical. "I'm not so sure. Nolan knew last night you'd been due at Summerlad's for dinner. Told Zinn he had his information from Mrs. Lontaine."

"Barry Nolan! I don't understand…"

"Only know what Nolan told Zinn. Stopped in at the studio just now, saw Zinn for a few minutes… By the way" – Bel's manner was studiously casual – "it may interest you to know, the latest reports say Summerlad's holding his own."

"I am glad," Lucinda said simply. And Bel's eyes wavered under her level regard, lightly charged as it was with contempt. "You were telling me about Nolan…"

"Zinn says he telephoned all over Los Angeles last night trying to locate Nolan – because he and Summerlad had always been so close – but had no luck till about three this morning, when Nolan got home and found Zinn's message waiting for him. Then he hurried over to the bungalow – with at least three sheets in the wind, according to Zinn – and the first question he asked was where you'd been when the shooting took place. Zinn swore you hadn't been there, and the Jap backed him up nobly… But there you are, if you're asking for proof that your friend Fanny tells everything she knows."

Lucinda coloured resentfully. "I am sure," she insisted, "Fanny never dreamed of hurting me when she told Mr. Nolan – whatever it was she did tell him. But it's easy enough to find out…"

She took up the telephone, but had to wait, receiver at ear, several minutes before the Lontaine's number answered. Then a voice with a drowsy sound, like a tired and husky imitation of Fanny's: "Yes? Hello! who is it?" And when Lucinda made herself known a brief stammer prefaced a shift to honeyed accents: "Oh! is it you, Cindy darling? Heavens! what time is it?"

Lucinda named the hour, heard Fanny give a smothered exclamation, and added: "Did I wake you up?"

"I was simply dead to the world when the telephone rang," Fanny declared with an equivocal giggle. "The poor dear eyes are hardly open even now."

"I'm so sorry, dear. I supposed of course… Is Harry there?"

The reply came readily and without suggestion of uncertainty: "Why, no, darling: he isn't."

"Are you sure?"

"Quite – "

"I mean," Lucinda persisted, in some perplexity, "if you've just waked up, you've hardly had time to find out."

"Oh!" Fanny interrupted herself with an uneasy laugh. "Oh, but I know he isn't! I … he … I mean to say, darling, Harry must have gone out quite early. I mean … O dear!" An audible yawn and then an apologetic noise. "I'm simply drugged with sleepiness, Cindy. What I'm trying to say is, I was awake when Harry left the house, but went to sleep again. Have you tried the studio? If he isn't there, I'm sure I haven't the remotest notion where he can be." Then with a quite unmistakable accent of apprehension: "Why, darling? is something the matter?"

"I'll explain when I see you," Lucinda temporized – "if you wouldn't mind running round to the hotel when you've had your breakfast."

"Mind, darling! I'll simply fly into my clothes, be there in no time at all."

The meditative expression with which Lucinda put the telephone aside drew from Bellamy the direct question: What had Fanny said?

"It wasn't what she said, it was the funny, embarrassed way she said it. As a general thing, Fanny's as transparently candid as – as a plate of glass."

Bellamy made a doubting mouth. "You're pretty thick, you two," he supposed – "you tell her everything?"

Irritation in a gust shook Lucinda till her voice shook in sympathy.

"Really, Bel! you seem fairly possessed by desire to believe my life out here full of things an honest woman would want to hide."

"No," Bellamy dissented slowly. "But I do seriously believe – in fact, know – you haven't always been altogether discreet, you've done things here, without a moment's thought, you'd have hesitated a long time before committing yourself to at home."

"You forget this is now my home. What Fifth Avenue holds inconvenable isn't anything to bother about on Sunset Boulevard."

"Well … if life has taught me anything, Linda, it is that it never does to trust too much to the good will of one's friends. We're all too exclusively creatures of selfishness: self always comes before the claims others may have or impose on us. It pleases us no end to believe our friends so devoted that they'd put our interests before their own; but when the test comes, as a general thing, we find out we've been self-deluded."

"How funny, Bel: you philosophizing!"

"That isn't philosophy, it's common sense based on observation of the underside of human nature… I'm not blaming you for clinging to your friends, or standing up for them, I'm only anxious you shan't suffer from finding them out."

"I fancy I know Fanny, at least," Lucinda retorted severely.

"You think you do. And I don't dispute your superior knowledge of every side of her but one, the side she shows only to the men she picks out to flirt with."

"For example, yourself."

"Exactly."

Lucinda openly enjoyed an instant of malicious amusement. "Do you really believe you're learning to see through women at last, Bel?"

"You'll admit I've served a long apprenticeship" – Bellamy gave a deprecating grunt – "enough to have learned something."

"And now you're warning me against the wiles of my best friend!"

"I'm warning you against all such adventurers… Oh, yes! the Lontaines are just that, both of them. Chances are they haven't got a dollar between them they didn't get from you. Neither did Mrs. Fanny set her cap for me just to keep in practice, she gets enough of that in other quarters. No: she had another motive, and it wasn't any way altruistic."

"What was it, then?"

"Think I can leave that to your intelligence. I've never noticed you were – one might say – dense concerning the psychology of your sex, Linda."

Indignation threatened to find expression in a rush of tears, but Lucinda winked them back.

"I do wish you wouldn't try to make me angry with you – "

"I'm only trying to tell you, one can't afford to trust anybody in this world except those who have nothing to gain through cultivating one's friendship."

" – Just now, when I've so much to be grateful to you for, when you're doing – have done so much to save me from the consequences of my folly – "

"Ah! you realize that."

"Both my folly" – Lucinda nodded gravely – "and all you're doing to repair it. So this once I won't resent your calling my friends adventurers."

Bel chuckled as he got up. "Because you know in your heart that's what they are, neither more nor less… Think I'll be getting along now. I want sleep badly, and I must stop in at the studio first and have a word with Lontaine, if he's there. And then I need Nolan's address."

"You're going to see him. Do you think that wise?"

"I won't permit him to spread gossip about your being with Summerlad last night."

"Do you think he'll admit your right to dictate?"

"I don't imagine it will be news to him that you're my wife, if that's what you mean. Your friend the actor seems to have been tolerably busy crowing about his conquest of Mrs. Bellamy Druce – always, of course, in strictest confidence. Zinn knew all about you before I appeared on the scene. And Nolan was Summerlad's bosom pal…"

The thrust told shrewdly, rewarding Bel with a fugitive moment of sardonic satisfaction. Then the courage with which Lucinda took punishment exacted his admiration.

"But I'm afraid," she said quietly, "you won't have much success with Nolan, even if he does recognize your right to interfere."

"How so?"

"He has too little reason to feel well-disposed toward me."

"On account of your quarrel with him yesterday…"

"I didn't know you knew."

"Who in Hollywood doesn't, do you suppose?" Bel snorted. "Gossip travels like grass fire, out here. I heard five different versions yesterday, myself, before your cameraman told mine what I imagine was the approximate truth."

"Then I presume you know, as well, about my new arrangement, with Mr. Zinn taking over the production?"

"Yes?"

The single syllable of assent carried the rising inflexion of enquiry as well. Lucinda mildly curious, replied that she had merely been wondering…

"Well, I'm wondering, too," Bel countered, eyeing her intently. "Of course you understand that arrangement's not necessarily to be considered binding till you've signed up."

"We shook hands on it," said Lucinda: "I gave Mr. Zinn my word. Why?"

"Oh, nothing; unless what's happened since has had some effect on your attitude, I mean, made your bargain with Zinn seem less desirable. In that case, of course, I'll be glad to use whatever influence I may have with him…"

The tensing of her body betrayed the temper in which Lucinda met his suggestion. "What you really mean is: Have I changed my mind about continuing in pictures, because of this dreadful accident to Lynn?"

Bel's eyes and mouth tightened. "It's not an unnatural supposition, that you may have concluded you've had enough."

"Enough, Bel?"

"Of both…"

"That can't be anything but calculated impertinence!"

"Call it what you like. Nothing I could say would convince you to the contrary. Does it matter?"

"Then your suggestion doesn't deserve my notice."

"In that event" – Bel smiled in a knowing fashion difficult to tolerate – "I've got my answer, plain enough: you're bent on going on."

"Have you any objection?"

"If I thought my views had any weight with you I might be tempted to tell you."

"You'd waste your time – if you think I don't know what you'd say."

His brows circumflexed a mocking: "So?"

"You want me to give it up."

"Well" – he stressed a shrug – "one would think you'd seen enough of this sort of thing to satisfy even your curiosity."

"You think I had no other motive?"

"Plus gratification of your vanity – the inevitable factor in every human equation."

"You don't believe my work means anything to me for its own sake?"

"Are you asking me to believe you consider this a life worth while? Or that any success it may purchase is worth the sacrifice?"

"What sacrifice, pray?"

"Of the woman you might yet be, if you'd give up this nonsense."

"I think you must mean the woman I might have been before your conduct killed her in me!"

Bel made a wry face as he stooped to pick up his motor-coat. "This conversation is degenerating into a wrangle in which I have the traditional chance a snowball has in the place where motion-pictures were spawned. A husband, even a deserted one, is always in the wrong… Mind lending me a hand, Linda? Can't quite manage this with one arm."

At once angrily and gently Lucinda draped the motor-coat over his shoulders. "Generalizing on the hardships of husbands," she suggested sweetly, "is hardly an excuse for making it your specialty to be always in the wrong."

"I feel that, you know." Bel replied with lips that twitched – "feel it like everything… I'm to understand, then, my wishes mean nothing to you?"

Lucinda gave a little, silent laugh, and in silence for a moment gazed on Bellamy, her eyes unreadable. Nor was there the hostility he had expected in the tone in which she asked: "Have you any reason to advance, why your wishes should influence me?"

"If you know of none, Linda – no."

"I know of nothing that counterweighs the persecution you've been subjecting me to, ever since you found out where I was hiding from you – persecution that ended last night in a tragedy. I can't forget that, if you hadn't bribed that unfortunate girl to come back – "

"If I hadn't!" Bel interrupted – "and God knows I regret what came of that as bitterly as anybody! – if I hadn't brought Nelly back here, you might still be playing fast and loose with Summerlad's ambition to make you his mistress. Got anything to say to that? You know now, at least, he never intended anything else. And yet, if looks could kill, you'd strike me dead where I stand for having presumed to be as wise in advance as you've been made by the event! And because I made the mistake of trying to stage-manage things so you would presently find out for yourself what a rotter you were throwing yourself away on, instead of chancing your deeper hatred by telling you outright what every other soul in Hollywood knew – running the risk of seeing you go straight to his arms to prove your indifference to me – because of that error of judgment you'll see me damned before you'll give up a mode of life for which you're about as well fitted as – as I am for that of the Kingdom of Heaven!"

"You forget, what I don't, Bel," Lucinda said slowly, "that it was you who made the mode of life with which I was content impossible for me. If this life I've taken up here is in some sense a makeshift, it's all I've got to take the place of all I had. And now you'd rob me even of it! And one thing more you forget: If I should give in to your wishes and leave Hollywood today, I would only be doing what you say you want to prevent, confessing by flight that my only real interest in my picture work was my greater interest in Lynn Summerlad. For that reason alone – and not, as you believe, to spite you – I've got to and I'm going to go on to the end of this present production at least. After that … I don't know…"

Discountenanced, "I hadn't thought of that," Bel owned squarely. "You may be right…"

"I am; but even if I weren't, it wouldn't be any use your trying to force me to forego my chance at a career in pictures just to get rid of you. Believe me, Bel, it's no good. Give it up, give up this producing blind – I know it's only a blind – and go back where you belong. And leave me to do my best with what I have – with what you've left of my happiness. And remember you have my faithful promise to set you free as soon as the courts will grant me a divorce."

"That's your last word, Linda?"

"My last word to you, Bel – I hope."

He hesitated, the muscles of his face working beneath its day-old stubble; and for a moment, reading truly or mistakenly the look in his eyes, from which all anger had died out, Lucinda was in deadly fear lest he were on the verge of making one last appeal in another key, one which she was, in that time of emotions, ill-prepared to deal with.

Then flinging out his hand in the salute of the vanquished, Bel bowed and, whirling on a heel, left her – left Lucinda for once at a loss, intuition inextricably hobbled by a mat of doubts.