Jack and Susan in 1913

by Michael McDowell

  Mr. Fane rose from his chair and went up close to the sheet on the wall. Susan’s laughing face was displayed across the back of his jacket, like some maniacal harpy. He stood aside and peered at the images.

  He moved to the back of the room, near Susan, and conferred in a low voice with Hosmer. He peered at the projector and sat down near Susan and watched the rest of the reel.

  “Now run it again,” he said. The film ran free of the spool and flapped against the metal projector as Hosmer turned it off. “Use a different machine.”

  In the few minutes it took Hosmer to set up the new machine, Mr. Fane occupied himself with a little notebook and a stub of a pencil. Jack, a few feet in front of Susan, did not turn around. Susan’s leg began to itch, and it felt as if she still had the cast on it.

  The lights were turned out again, and Hosmer began the film once more. Susan could scarcely bear to watch. She turned halfway in her chair and only glanced at the images out of the corner of her eye.

  The door at the back of the room opened softly, and an ample figure rustled in. It was Ida Conquest. In the dim light Susan could see she had not yet removed her powder, and her face had a ghostly glow.

  “That’s enough,” said Mr. Fane, standing up as the reel once again came to an end. Hosmer turned on the overhead light in the room.

  Jack turned around at last and looked at Junius Fane.

  “Mr. Beaumont,” the owner of the company said, “I must say I was dubious about your idea. I didn’t expect it to work, and I wasn’t even certain that I wanted it to. But you’ve convinced me. I could see no jiggle. Not when I stood at the back of the room, not when I looked up close. It makes our present pictures look as if they’d been shot out of the back of a moving taxicab. Congratulations.”

  Jack grinned. Susan saw beads of sweat forming on his forehead at the hairline.

  “Hosmer,” Mr. Fane asked, “you assure me that you shot these scenes in the normal way?”

  “Yes, sir, just as I shoot them here—just as I shoot them for you.”

  Fane nodded thoughtfully, then sat down and took out a fountain pen and a sheaf of bank checks. “Mr. Beaumont, I’m going to write you a check for five hundred dollars. I’d like you to install your device in every camera owned by the Cosmic Film Company.” Jack beamed. “I would also advise you, sir, to patent this device as quickly as possible. If you can retain control of this thing, you will be a very rich man.”

  Hosmer winked his congratulations, and Ida threw an actress’s warm smile. Mr. Fane said no more, but his five-hundred dollar check had spoken eloquently enough.

  Having turned down an invitation to dine with Junius Fane and Ida, Susan and Jack were left alone in the small, windowless room. Jack turned backward on his narrow straight-backed chair. A single Edison bulb burned in a lonely socket in the ceiling.

  “I’m very happy for you,” said Susan in a strained voice. She was, too.

  Jack nodded. “Susan’s Serial—is that what you called it?”

  She wanted to turn away from his gaze, but she couldn’t.

  “You didn’t even change the names,” he said flatly.

  She didn’t reply.

  “Hosmer has figured out that you’re the Young Lady in High Society, you know,” said Jack. “I saw it in his eyes. I don’t think Mr. Fane knows—yet.”

  “What about Ida?” Susan asked.

  “If she hasn’t pieced it together, I’m sure Hosmer will tell her.”

  “No more secrets,” said Susan, with the sour taste of irony in her mouth.

  “I have to confess something to you,” said Jack.

  “Confess?”

  “Yes. Remember when you gave me that scenario to bring to Mr. Fane you asked me not to read it?”

  “Yes,” Susan said a bit uncertainly.

  “Well, I read it anyway.”

  “What? You mean…you mean to say you knew…that you’ve known…that you’ve been…”

  He nodded. “Not only that,” he continued, his face blank, his voice a monotone, “I knew that they were shooting the last scene today—the one where Jack asks Susan to marry him.”

  She threw her purse at him.

  He ducked to dodge it, lost his balance, and tumbled off the chair to the floor, breaking a leg of the chair in the process.

  “You knew!” Susan screamed, paying no attention to his fall.

  “I knew,” he admitted, an amused glitter in his eyes.

  “You…you deceived me!” Then she felt silly for having said that. It was just the sort of thing young women in magazine serials always said midway through the installment. “But why didn’t you—”

  “I was just following the scenario,” said Jack. “I had to wait till my invention was sold before I could ask you to marry me.”

  Susan stood rooted to the spot with anger and frustration. Jack was still struggling, not very successfully, to get up from the floor.

  “I am so angry,” said Susan.

  “Why? You were the one who wrote the scenario. I was only playing my part.” He hadn’t gotten all the way up from the floor; he remained on one knee. “I have a splinter,” he said, picking at the cloth of his trousers. “So do you know yours?”

  “My what?”

  “Your part,” Jack said. “Let me refresh your memory. I’m on my knee—just as I am now. I ask you to marry me. For a moment you register confusion. Then you register love for me. And then the title card is cut in, and it reads—”

  “The title card reads: Oh yes, Jack, gladly.”

  Sitting in the small windowless room with the single harsh Edison bulb in the ceiling they held hands and talked on and on. Jack described the moment when he first dared hope that she cared more for him than she did for Hosmer Collamore. Susan expressed disbelief that Jack would ever have regarded the cameraman as a rival. Misunderstandings were untangled. Small arguments were laid to rest. Happy insights were revived and shared.

  “It’s late,” Jack said at last, as if he were afraid that their happiness would not persist beyond the confines of this narrow chamber.

  Susan glanced down at the watch that was pinned upside down to her shirtfront. “Half-past ten.”

  “They’ve probably forgotten about us,” said Jack. “We didn’t come in here till nearly seven, and by then most everyone had already gone.”

  “Could we be locked in?”

  “No,” said Jack, “there must be someone about. Hosmer said there’s now a watchman.”

  Jack went to the door of the room and opened it. The laboratory floor of the Cosmic Film Company was completely dark. The windows had been blacked over, and not even light from the street entered the building. Weak yellow light spilled out of the projection room behind Jack and Susan, but this served to illumine not much more than a strip of black wall ahead of them. Worktables and cabinets were nothing more than bulky black outlines arrayed across the wide expanse.

  “I feel foolish,” said Susan.

  “A simple mistake,” said Jack. “I don’t imagine the night watchman is going to mistake us for Trust hoodlums—if we can find him.”

  “The elevator’s over there somewhere,” Susan said, pointing off toward her right. “Should I switch off this light? It’s not doing us much good anyway.”

  Jack nodded, but it was so dark Susan couldn’t see the nod, so he said, “Yes, switch it off.”

  She switched it off and pulled shut the door of the projection room. Then, hand in hand, they groped their way carefully in the direction of the elevator. Jack succeeded in kicking over a wastebasket, knocking a stack of files off a desk, and jamming his thigh against a corner of a table. Susan progressed without mishap until they got nearly to the elevator.

  Then Susan tripped over something and pitched headlong to the floor.

  “Are you all right?” Jack cried out.

  “Yes,” said Susan softly, “something broke my fall.”

  “What?” asked Jack, helping her to her feet.

  “A body.
”

  “He’s breathing,” said Jack, having found the man’s face and applied his ear close against it.

  “Do you think it’s the watchman?”

  “It must be,” said Jack in a low whisper, shaking the man’s shoulders. “But he’s got a bad lump on the back of his head which means that maybe we’re not alone here.”

  Susan swallowed audibly, then whispered, “Maybe we should try to call the police. I’ll see if I can find a phone.”

  Jack shook the unconscious form again. The man groaned, but he didn’t come to.

  Susan found a desk, but there was no telephone on it; she fumbled her way over to another. Just then there came a shrieking, grinding, metallic noise. “What is that?” said Susan, no longer whispering.

  “The elevator,” said Jack. “It’s going down.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know,” said Jack. “Maybe someone’s leaving the building—or maybe someone’s on the ground floor and is on the way up.”

  Susan wiped her now sweaty hands across the second desk and knocked a telephone to the floor. The operator’s tinny voice was distant: “Central. Central.” Susan got down on her hands and knees and crawled around the desk till she found the receiver.

  “Please connect me with the police,” Susan said urgently.

  “Thank you,” said the operator with odd formality, and on the other end, a telephone rang.

  “Headquarters,” immediately said a voice on the other end.

  Susan sighed with relief. “Yes, I’m at Twenty-seven West Twenty-seventh Street, at the Cosmic Film Company and the watchman here has just been knocked unconscious. Could you please send somebody right away? We—”

  “Twenty-seven what?” the policeman asked.

  “Twenty-seven West Twenty-seventh Street. We—”

  “Who is we?”

  “My name is Susan Bright, and—”

  “Susan!” called Jack.

  “Just a moment,” said Susan, putting her hand over the mouthpiece. “What is it?” she called out.

  “Do you smell something?”

  Susan breathed in deeply and then uncovered the mouthpiece.

  “Twenty-seven West Twenty-seventh Street?” the policeman was asking.

  “Yes,” said Susan, “and send the fire brigade as well.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE to tell where the smoke was coming from, but from the growing acridness in the air they presumed that the fire was near.

  This became more than a presumption when they saw a dull glow at the far end of the room toward the front of the building.

  Then, to their horror, there was an explosion. Evidently a cache of chemicals used in processing film had been ignited.

  Flames roared behind the door for a moment and then began pouring out into the room.

  Jack and Susan’s faces were red and garish in the light of the fire. At least now they could see. Jack rushed over to the elevator and pulled the lever that summoned up the lift. But there was no responding noise of grinding machinery.

  He pulled the lever again as Susan tried to rouse the unconscious watchman.

  “They must have cut out the elevator machinery as well,” said Jack.

  “Then we’ll have to use the stairs,” said Susan.

  “A good idea,” Jack said, “but it would be a better one if the stairs weren’t on the other side of the fire. I’ve used them several times when I’ve been here and not wanted to wait for the elevator.”

  “Maybe we can slide down the elevator cables,” said Susan.

  “Another good idea,” said Jack. “Do you want to throw the watchman over your shoulder, or shall I? Or should we just leave him here to burn?”

  The night watchman was a huge man.

  “All right,” said Susan. Another, larger explosion came, and it sounded like it blew out some windows in the front, which gave the fire new oxygen. “I’ve come up with two bad ideas, you come up with one good one.”

  The whole far end of the room was bright and hot now, and giving off a dull roar. The open entrance to the stairs that led down to safety was now brightly and frustratingly illuminated.

  Near them was a long narrow table, that held half a dozen film-splicing machines, evenly spaced down its length. Jack ran down the length of the table, hurling the machines to the floor. When it was clear he went over to the watchman, reached under the unconscious man’s arms, and dragged him across the floor to the table.

  “All right, Susan. Take his feet.”

  The two tried to lift the dead weight from the floor, but sank down under the watchman’s bulk.

  They tried again, and this time they succeeded. With loud groans they got him over the lip of the table and onto the scarred surface.

  “Now what?” said Susan. “Is he more comfortable up here?” Then she added, in an apologetic tone, “I’m sorry. I’m always sharp when I find myself in mortal physical danger.”

  “I understand,” said Jack gallantly. “Now we push the table.” And he began to do just that.

  “Where?”

  “Into the fire.” He pointed toward the open stairway door beyond the wall of orange flame and roiling black smoke.

  She looked at him, opened her mouth to say something, didn’t say it, closed her mouth, and put her shoulder into it.

  They pushed the table straight across the floor, and into the flames.

  The long narrow table reached across the barrier of burning chemicals, the forward legs drawing along little flaming channels with them. The fire was so hot that Jack and Susan could already smell the charring wood on the underside of the table.

  The watchman lay on the center of the table, flames leaping up on either side.

  “Up you go,” said Jack, and he lifted Susan up on to the table before she had a chance even to think.

  Susan began to limp down the table, but found her way blocked by the watchman, whose girth did not allow her a safe foothold on either side.

  “Go on!” shouted Jack above the roar of the flames.

  As lightly as she could, Susan pressed her good foot on to the chest of the watchman and sprang forward.

  She stumbled sideways, her other leg swinging dangerously close to the flames. She managed to make her way to the end and climbed down on to the floor on the other side.

  “I’m all right, Jack!” she shouted.

  Jack now stood with his feet planted on either side of the watchman’s head, preparing to leap to safety.

  “Oh, no,” said Susan, for at that moment, the watchman’s eyes popped open—and immediately filled with fear and confusion. His hands flew out at his sides into the flames, shot back up again.

  At that moment, Jack leaped.

  Instinctively, and perhaps thinking that Jack was the person who had attacked him, the watchman grabbed Jack as he hurtled over. Jack’s leap was broken, and he fell sideways, tumbling into the flames.

  All the nurses wore blue-and-white skirts, and Susan remembered two or three of them from her own stay in Bellevue.

  “How is your leg?” one of them asked quietly. It was past midnight, and the hospital was as quiet as it ever got. Most of the patients were asleep.

  “Mended,” said Susan. “I’m here to visit a friend.”

  “Which one?”

  “Mr. Beaumont.”

  “Oh, yes,” said the nurse, who had a figure like Ida Conquest’s. “The concussion.”

  “Is he very bad?”

  “Burns on his arms and neck. He comes around now and then. He’ll be all right. Speak to the doctor, though. I’m not supposed to know anything.” She wandered off down the dark corridor.

  The doctor was in the room with Jack, and Susan had been told she could go in just as soon as he was finished.

  It was Susan who had dragged Jack out of the flames, flipped him over, pulled him out of his burning jacket, and shoved him down the stairs out of immediate danger. Susan also had gone back into the burning room
and led out the bewildered watchman by the hand. She’d gotten them down as far as the second-floor landing before the police and fire brigade showed up and took over for her. Jack had been taken away on a stretcher.

  That had been only a few hours ago.

  Susan had talked to the police at headquarters on Grand Street, drunk three cups of coffee, devoured a ham sandwich, and taxied up to Bellevue. Standing there now in the hospital corridor, she was suddenly aware that all her clothing stank of oily smoke.

  “Miss—” The hand touching her shoulder startled her. She turned to find herself staring into the strained face of Junius Fane.

  “Miss Bright,” said Susan.

  “I’m told I’ve you to thank that more damage wasn’t done and the upper floors were preserved,” Mr. Fane said. “Though I’m not certain what you and Mr. Beaumont were doing there at that hour.”

  “Jack and I lost sight of the time, Mr. Fane.” She thought of a convenient lie, and then said: “Jack had come up with an idea for an improvement on the projectors as well, and was—”

  “I don’t really care why you were there, what matters is that you called the fire brigade. And you saved the watchman’s life, too, I hear. Is Mr. Beaumont badly injured?”

  “Well,” said Susan, “he was unconscious, and there are some burns, but—”

  “I came to thank him.”

  “I think we should be able to go inside in a few minutes,” said Susan.

  There was a moment of silence between them, then Mr. Fane said, “This evening, after we left the projection room, Colley told me something very interesting.”

  Susan looked up sharply at the owner of the film company.

  Junius Fane smiled. “He told me that he suspected that you were our fabled Young Lady in High Society.” Susan didn’t answer. “Does that silence signify yes? Or does it mean no?”

  “It signifies yes,” admitted Susan with a small smile.

  Junius Fane glanced at her, appeared to consider the business for a moment, then laughed, and grasped Susan’s hand, shaking it heartily. “The Patents Trust has done a lot to try and put me out of business, but you have done as much—and more—to keep me in business.”