PEGGY IN HOLLYWOOD

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 March 1939, Page 10

PEGGY IN HOLLYWOOD

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT. COPYRIGHT.

BY

MRS PATRICK MACGILL.

CHAPTER XXV. (Continued).

The lawyer sent a rapier-keen glance into first Finklesteen’s and then Opal’s miserable, apprehensive faces. “Not to waste too much of my own and Mr Lewisohn’s time, Miss Orth, will you tell us just why you paid' 3000 dollars to Mr Finklesteen to frame Mr Whitley on a charge of manslaughter, hiring Captain Davis and this boy here,” a brief glance embracing those at the back of the room was directed towards them, “and Dr Gillett, who, I find, was struck off the rolls for disgracing his profession two years ago. as accomplices?” he asked, as smoothly and unemotionally as if he had been asking why Opal had not turned up at a certain dinner party.

The question recalled the night on the gambling boat at Long Beach so vividly to David that he experienced a feeling of actual nausea and inwardly wished that the lawyer would not perform the cat and mouse act quite so efficiently. He wanted to get the unwholesome tangle straightened out so that he could board the train to New York and Peggy.

“I. guess it was the usual fool woman’s reason—l fell in love with him,” said Opal, miserably. David shifted uncomfortably in his seat and again experienced what was an absurd emotion of pity, considering all the circumstances. But the feeling fled at the lawyer’s next words. “And do you consider yourself a fit woman to marry a young man of integrity like Mr Whitley, and be the mother of his children?” The keen eyes, as well as the stern voice, fairly blazed the question at Opal Orth.

• The silence in the room grew so heavy that even the breathing of its occupants seemed noisy. There was no reply to the pointed question. “Well, Miss Mary Slater, to give you your right name, I have your full record here, and it isn’t pretty reading. Four convictions for larceny, one for blackmail—the sentence was five years in that case —one of a nature that is seldom named, and the last was for defrauding an old man who trusted you of one hundred thousand dollars. He died broken-hearted because you had so worked on his feeling that he loved you. I suppose you had salted the money away, and not spent it as was stated at the trial?” Without waiting for a reply, the cold, cutting voice concluded, “and with all this behind you, you considered yourself quite a suitable bride for Mr Whitley?” Turning to Finklesteen, whose face was ashen, he next addressed him. “You are equally culpable with Miss Slater, but certainly your record is not quite so unsavory.” Some papers on the desk were consulted. “Two cases of petty theft before the age of 19, and a sentence of 18 months in Sing Sing for running a bogus agency. Afterwards, so far as is known, straight until now.”

Finklesteen’s face, which had been working horribly throughout the recital, suddenly broke up; he seemed entirely to lose grip of himself, to forget that he was a man. He made a pitiable sight grovelling at David’s feet, begging in a voice broken with sobs, not to be prosecuted. “I’ve got a wife and three lovely children, with a fourth on the way,” he blubbered, the tears raining down his face. “I’ve kept straight for their sakes for eight years, until now—and it was because the studio did not take up my option that I had to keep hand in glove with this woman to hold my job!” “Get up, you yellow rat!’ The command came from Lewisohn. David had risen from his seat and walked to the window. He felt that his nerves would not stand much more of that sort of thing. He felt stifled by Hollywood; the stench of the things that men were willing to do to each other in order to get and keep in the picture swim sickened him to the very marrow of his bones. He turned round sharply, and addressed the lawyer. “Could you tell these people the terms on which we are willing to deal with them and get this unpleasant matter over?” he asked quietly, but with that in his voice that compelled obedience. “Certainly, Mr Whitley.” The lawyer was enjoying himself dealing with the criminals in the cat-and-mouse fashion that was his especial accomplishment. But David and Lewisohn were his clients and likely to be very good ones —not these rakings and scrapings of the gutter. His attitude became judicial, impartial. Pushing aside the heap of papers containing the records of Opal Orth and her fellows, he once more addressed the snivelling, heartsick, miserable little crowd of criminals. “All this should have taken place in open court, as I desired and advised,” he told them. “However,” he went on, in the tone of one who has washed his hands of a certain aspect of a matter, “I am instructed to obtain your signatures to this paper giving all the details of the crime from beginning to end, and to inform you all that should you even attempt to molest or annoy or in any way interfere with the plans of Mr Whitley or Miss Rooney or Mr Lewisohn, you will find that this has only been a temporary shelving. of the matter. As for you, Miss Orth, the money that it has cost you to film a play to which you had no rights is better out of your hands than in them. Perhaps it will teach you that even from the point of view of self-interest honesty is still by far the best policy. You will sign here, please,” indicating the space left for Opal’s signature

which at the lawyer’s command, was “Mary Slater,” her true name, with “known as Opal Orth" beside it. “You next, Mr Finklesteen.” Sam Finklesteen’s shaky hand rendered his signature almost illegible, but he scrawled it, nevertheless. Next came the doctor, then the captain, and lastly, the boy who had shammed death, against whom there was no criminal record, and on whose cheeks the tears were still wet. As he turned to leave the table, Lewisohn called him, “Got a job?” he asked, brusquely. “No, sir,” said the boy. in a frightened voice, hardly above a whisper. “Got any people or any money?” “No, sir.” “Come and see me tonight at eight o’clock,” Lewisohn scribbled his address on a card. “Bad for a boy to get in with a bunch like that.” the kindly old Jew observed to David, in an aside.

Sam Finklesteen, as he was about to go, came across and offered his hand to David. “I want to thank you for giving me this chance, Mr Whitley, for the sake of my wife and little children,” he began, in a fawning, whining voice.

David ignored both the hand and the man and looked out of the window. Something seemed suddenly to break loose in Lewisohn. His friend Jon knew that he had stood as much as he was capable of standing, that he would presently be unable to hold himself in leash.

"Get out. you dirty scum—get out!” he roared, taking a lunge at Finklesteen, missing him and getting to the door just as Finklesteen scuttled through it and out into the lobby. “Mr Lewisohn and you, too, Mr Whitley—and you, too, sir,” motioning to Jon, “come and wait in here for a few minutes.” The lawyer led the way to a little inner room that was generally used by nobody but himself.

“The air outside is a bit cooler and cleaner now,” he announced a few minutes later. It was his way of saying that Opal and her fellows had gone.

Over a drink and a cigar the law.yer asked, “I suppose you'll stop in Hollywood, now, won’t you, Mr Whitley? The papers have certainly done “Success” proud. You’ll have all the studios falling at your feet now.” “Let them fall,” was David’s tense reply. “No, we have another plan in mind, haven’t we, Oscar?” turning to Lewisohn, who might have sat for an advertisement of “Contentment” to iudge by his beaming* smiles and affable manner.

“Yes, we are going into production on our own, ‘Success Enterprises, Inc.’ How that sound?”

“Fine,” said the lawyer heartily, pouring another drink. “But I guess we’ve all had enough of Hollywood to last for a bit, and we are going to make London our headquarters. “That so? Well, I’ve always liked to do business with people from England,” said the lawyer emphatically. Seven o’clock that night saw David and Lewisohn and the ever-faithful Jon, together with the remainder of the “Success” company, on the same train that had carried Peggy a month previously supposedly to New York. Everybody who had ever met David, and a good many who had not, turned up at the station to say good-bye with cigars and books and bottles of gin and whisky, all of which he promptly passed over to the company farther down the train.

“Funny what ‘Success’ will do for a man, ain’t it?” asked Lewisohn, shifting his cigar and gazing, not bitterly but quite unemotionally, at the gang of people being herded back from the edge of the platform, all eager for one of their smiles, all anxious for a share of what “Success” had brought, if not now, then in the future when Lewisohn should return to Hollywood. “I didn’t think, when I noticed Peggy’s pretty blue lamps on the train for the first time that they were going to light the way to London for me,” observed Lewisohn, when at last, to David’s great satisfaction, they were leaving Hollywood for New York. CHAPTER XXVI. Peggy had chose an all blue toilette for David’s arrival at the New York apartment which she rented by the week, with Mrs Ralston installed as her housekeeper. She had been thankful for the chance that had thrown the little woman in her-way, for Mrs Ralston, with two boys and a girl on the stage, knew all about theatrical life, especially as it was lived in New York.

“When you are married, keep me on as your maid, dearie. I should dearly love it,” she begged Peggy, to whom she had taken a violent liking. Douglas Gillmore had written several, times from his family home in Missouri, asking not to be forgotten. But the situation between Peggy and David had been cleaned up by long distance telephone, and now, with ‘Success’ received so splendidly by Hollywood. and herself a star, with David and dear old Oscar Lewisohn on their way to her, there seemed little else for her to wish for.

“They should be here any minute now. Ah, there they are, dearie! A taxi is stopping at the door! Is my cap all right?” glancing at the dainty bow of muslin in her hair that masqueraded as a cap. “Of course it is, goose! Go and open the door.”

They were alone together, their arms around each other, their cheeks touching, while now and then, suddenly, ecstatically, their lips met and clung toaether. “It all seems like a dream—going to Hollywood and getting mixed up with all those queer people —Opal-Orth and Sam Finklesteen and the rest. Then, dear old Oscar Lewisohn and Jon, and the people up at Idyllwild! Oh, how I would have loved to have seen them all on the stage!" Peggy laughed gaily. “Let’s not talk about them, Peggy. Let’s talk about us,” begged David, in the manner of all lovers since Time began. As they talked, Peggy’s eager, impressionable soul surged with high, splendid hopes. In 'going to Hollywood, she felt that she had been down to the floor of life, had seen the emotions that represented the foundations just as they were, ugly and unashamed. She and David would be married in the Little Church Around the Corner tomorrow. If they, could build upon that rock of knowledge and mutual understanding, they would build their lives so that nothing—neither Time nor circumstances, nor the follies of other human beings, could destroy them.

Peggy placed her hand over David’s as it lay idly UDon his knee, and into her heart stole that Peace which passeth understanding, which the world can neither give nor ever can take away. (THE END).