Jack and Susan in 1913

by Michael McDowell

  Millie Perks was hiding behind an urn, visible to Jack but not to the masked men.

  CRACK. CRACK. CRACK.

  The guns fired again and smashed the cameras.

  A fourth masked man, shorter than the others, entered. He halted when he saw Jack and pulled a pistol from his pocket. Raising it in his right hand, he took aim.

  With his other hand, he drew down the mask from his face.

  Even upside down, Jack had no difficulty recognizing Hosmer Collamore.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  “NO!” SHOUTED one of the masked men. “No killing!”

  Hosmer paused. Slowly he lowered his arm.

  “Get them out of here,” Hosmer said, pointing at the three cowering cameramen. “Him, too,” he added, indicating Fane, who slowly regained consciousness, but rolled and groaned on the floor.

  “What about that one?” asked another of the masked men, pointing at Jack.

  “You make sure the fires are set in the offices,” said Hosmer. “I’ll take care of him.”

  Soon the barn was cleared of everyone except Hosmer and Jack. The former Cosmic cameraman slowly approached where Jack hung upside down, his head six feet from the floor.

  Hosmer stood beneath him, looked up and smiled.

  Sweat dripped off Jack’s face into Hosmer’s eyes, and Hosmer wiped the liquid away.

  Hosmer reached up, and pressed the barrel of his revolver against Jack’s temple.

  “I’ve always hated you,” Hosmer hissed. “I have often dreamed of finding you in just such a position as this.”

  Jack, having a gag in his mouth, could only respond with a muffled, throaty sound.

  “You are tall, and I am not. You are good-looking, and I am not. I wore clothes that were new and expensive, and did not look as good in them as you looked in patched trousers and threadbare jackets. Susan Bright only laughed at me even though I wanted desperately for her to like me. She fell in love with you even when she didn’t wish to. I worked a camera for seven years, day in and day out, and you looked at the camera once and found out a way to improve it, and that improvement—if you had managed to hold on to the patent—would have made you a rich man. On top of everything, I discovered that you were born to a rich family, and you threw it all away. I was born poor, and have struggled all my life to get what little I do have. It seems to me that those are very good reasons for being glad to see you in this position now.”

  Perspiration now poured into Jack’s nose, and then was caught in his windpipe. He jerked and coughed with such vehemence that the cloth gag exploded from his mouth.

  “Hosmer,” said Jack, “I smell smoke.”

  “That’s the studio,” said Hosmer. “It’s on fire. Soon this building will be on fire as well. Buildings burn even quicker and easier in California than they do in New York.”

  “You set the Cosmic fire in New York,” said Jack.

  “Yes,” said Hosmer.

  “You were a spy for the Patents Trust,” said Jack.

  “Yes,” said Hosmer, smiling and spinning the revolver’s bullet chamber. The chamber was filled.

  “You stole my drawings and turned them over to the Trust, and they patented my invention.”

  “Yes,” said Hosmer.

  “Now I suppose you’re going to shoot me.”

  “No,” said Hosmer. “I’m going to let you burn to death.”

  With small comfort, Jack thought that he would probably suffocate from the smoke before he actually felt the tongues of flame on his body. The walls of a building burn before the floor. This was of little consolation to him, nor did it matter that the gag was now gone.

  “Help! Help!” he shouted, but no one came.

  The smell of smoke grew stronger.

  “I’m leaving now,” said Hosmer, who still stood just beneath Jack. “Sweet dreams. Or whatever it is people say before you’re about to go to sleep forever. It’s a pity you and Susan couldn’t make it up before now. I’ll make sure I offer her my condolences tomorrow.”

  “Susan and I were to be married today,” said Jack.

  “I’ll bring flowers then,” said Hosmer, with an unpleasant, upside-down grin.

  Behind Hosmer, Jack could see smoke seeping in through the wall of the barn where it was attached to the other building.

  Jack shook the perspiration from his eyes once more. When they had cleared, he caught sight of Millie Perks, who was now hiding beneath an ornately carved table pushed over to one side. “Millie!” he shouted. “Run.”

  The child, obedient to a fault, had been waiting for just such a command to seek safety and she hurtled out of her hiding place toward the open door.

  Hosmer saw the sudden movement out of the corner of his eye, and he turned instinctively with his revolver, cocking it as he did so. Raising it to the hurrying, tiny figure of the little girl who had witnessed all and heard all, Hosmer started to squeeze the trigger.

  Gathering all the force of his will, his strength, and his balance, Jack folded up his body and jerked on his rope, swinging violently to the side. He opened his mouth wide, and then clamped his jaws shut.

  Jack’s teeth closed on the skin of Hosmer’s ear.

  The revolver went off, but the shot flew wild.

  Millie Perks screamed and dashed out through the door.

  Hosmer tried to pull himself away from Jack, but Jack only gripped harder with his jaws on Hosmer’s ear. If Hosmer pulled any harder, then the ear would be torn away.

  Shouting in agony, Hosmer swung his arm around and slapped his revolver into the side of Jack’s head.

  Jack’s head reeled to one side, but he did not open his jaws. He could taste the cameraman’s thick, salty blood in his mouth.

  “Let go!” Hosmer screamed. “Let go or I’ll shoot you!”

  “Jack!” shouted another voice—a female voice—from the door of the barn.

  Through the haze of perspiration that blinded his eyes, Jack made out Susan’s figure in the doorway. He heard her coughing from the smoke. He could see that she was carrying something, and whatever it was, she dropped it down to the floor.

  It was Tripod.

  Growling furiously, the dog flew to the center of the barn.

  Susan commanded the dog, “Hosmer! Attack Hosmer! Not Jack.”

  Tripod had no intention of obeying that command, but Jack was suspended six feet from the ground. To get to him, the terrier had to climb up Hosmer Collamore, whose ear was still caught in Jack’s mouth.

  Dogs are not known for their climbing skills, and it must only be supposed that dogs with fewer than four legs have a harder time scaling heights than dogs possessing the full complement of limbs. So great was Tripod’s dislike of Jack Beaumont that he fairly flew up Hosmer Collamore, dragging paws and nails into the fabric of the cameraman’s trousers and shirt, in order to get to Jack’s neck, so invitingly and vulnerably displayed.

  With his ear caught between Jack’s jaws, and his flesh being rent in a dozen places by the sharp claws and wooden leg of the terrier, Hosmer Collamore was mad with pain. He cried out and raised the revolver at the dog and fired.

  The bullet plowed right through Tripod’s leg—

  Tripod’s wooden leg—

  —snapping it in half.

  Sensing the aggression in this action, Tripod stopped in his ascent and sunk his teeth into Hosmer’s wrist, shaking it till the revolver dropped from his grasp.

  Susan ran forward and snatched the weapon up from the floor. She cocked it again, and trained it on Hosmer’s heart.

  “All right,” she said. “Tripod, get down. Jack, let go of Hosmer’s ear. Hosmer, if you make one move toward me, you’re going to be whistling out of your neck.”

  Tripod slid down Hosmer’s body, using his claws as a drag this time. On the ground, he listed seriously toward the back on his shattered artificial leg.

  Jack gratefully released Hosmer’s ear, then spat out Hosmer’s blood on to the floor.

  Hosmer dropped to the floor
, cupping his injury with his hand and moaning.

  “Can you get me down?” asked Jack plaintively.

  “Tell me how,” said Susan.

  An unrolled canvas depicting a mountain range, which had been hung against the wall nearest the studio, burst suddenly into flame. Behind it, Jack saw that the entire back wall of the barn was burning. Acrid, suffocating smoke rolled toward them, and Jack very nearly lost sight of Susan.

  “That wheel over there has a lock on it,” said Jack, motioning toward the wheel that Perks had turned to raise Jack to his present position. “Unfasten the lock, and turn the wheel slowly.”

  Susan backed over to the wheel, keeping the revolver still trained on Hosmer, who was now examining the wounds Tripod had inflicted beneath his trousers and vest.

  “Don’t move, Hosmer,” said Susan. But the lock mechanism on the pulley system was intricate, and Susan had to put down the revolver in order to manage it.

  The wounded cameraman saw his opportunity to flee the burning building. He got to his feet, and stumbled toward the barn door, now a menacing rectangle of fire.

  Susan, keeping her priorities straight, struggled with the lock on the wheel, and finally got it unfastened. Slowly she started to lower Jack to the floor. Tripod stood directly below Jack, leaping up on his three legs and snapping his jaws menacingly.

  “Tripod!” Susan shouted. “Stop that! Hosmer’s the one you want. Go after Hosmer!”

  Ignoring this, the dog continued to snap at Jack’s descending head.

  “Tripod,” shouted Susan hysterically, “if you don’t go after Hosmer and leave Jack alone, I will never forgive you, and when Jack and I go off on our honeymoon, I’m going to leave you with Ida!”

  The terrier, as if he understood every word, cast one more glance of regret and angry frustration at Jack’s head, and then bounded across the barn toward Hosmer—as quickly as he could on three-and-a-half legs.

  Having stopped with fright at the burning doorway, Hosmer was about to plunge through when Tripod leaped and snagged the seat of his trousers. The cameraman went down in a billow of smoke.

  Jack’s head plunked against the barn floor, and then the rest of him settled on the rough wooden planks. The floor was hot.

  Susan rushed over and tried to release Jack from his bonds, but the complicated knots in the barbed wire made this an impossible task. “Spread your legs,” Susan commanded.

  “I can’t. They’re tied together!” Jack cried.

  “Try,” said Susan. She took the revolver, pressed the barrel between Jack’s ankles, and fired at the knotted ropes.

  Jack saw powder singe holes in his stockings and felt it burn his ankles.

  His feet were free, though his legs, torso, and arms remained bound with the rope and barbed wire, and he was still lying on the smoking floor of a barn that was burning beyond redemption.

  “I’m going to try to lift you up,” said Susan, hurrying around and grabbing him by the shoulders. Using all her strength, and with as much help as he could provide under the circumstances, they managed to get Jack up off the floor and on to his knees.

  “I can’t get up,” he said, choking with the smoke that now filled the barn. They were lost in its whiteness, illuminated from above. “I can’t even see the door.”

  “Tripod!” called Susan. “Bark!”

  Tripod barked from outside the doorway.

  “That way!” cried Susan.

  “But I can’t move!” protested Jack. “I’m still tied up.”

  “Try not to breathe,” whispered Susan, and she pushed him down to the floor again.

  Jack gulped in some smokeless air that remained in a layer a couple of inches from the floor.

  Then he felt a jerk, as his legs were suddenly pulled around, and his cheek and neck were scraped against the rough, uneven floor of the barn. He raised his head to prevent further abrasions.

  Grabbing the ends of the rope that were still tied tightly around him, Susan began to drag Jack across the barn. He weighed nearly seventy pounds more than she. It was nearly impossible for her to breathe, and the spurs of the barbed wire caught in dozens of places along the rough-hewn boards of the floor. Still Susan pulled.

  Coughing, snagged every foot or so, short of breath, torn and stretched, nearly smothered by the mattress wrapped around his body, with clothing that was already smoking, Jack was pulled to the burning door of the barn and safety. Tripod, barking continuously, guided Susan out of the building.

  When Jack reached the outside, he rolled in the cool earth and tumbled down an incline into a bed of sweet-smelling flowers. A few moments later, Susan knelt beside him and wiped his face with the hem of the dress she was to have worn at her wedding.

  “You saved my life,” he said.

  “Tripod brought down Hosmer,” Susan replied. “And the police have arrested him.”

  Just then, Junius Fane appeared over her shoulder, staring down at Jack. The director wore a bandage jauntily over one ear. “Jack, I’m glad you’re all right. Hosmer and his friends did such a good job on our cameras today that I’m afraid we’re going to have to do that scene over.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  JACK SAT ON the curb across from the burned buildings. Susan helped him peel off his padding. It stuck in places where the barbed wire had pierced through and bloodied his skin. Junius Fane came across the road to them, more jauntily than they could have expected, under the circumstances.

  “Well, Hosmer’s been arrested for attempted murder,” said Fane cheerfully. “That ought to pick up your spirits.”

  “It always seems like we’re starting over,” said Jack.

  “Not so bad as all that,” said Fane. “I’d only rented the livery stable, and everything inside was insured.”

  “But the prints—the negatives,” Susan protested. “They’re irreplaceable.”

  “Exactly,” said Fane. “That’s why I keep copies of everything in my house. They’re stacked in the back bedroom, and we can have everything reproduced. In ten days’ time, we’ll be good as new and in full production again.” Fane checked his watch. “Are you two about ready?”

  “Ready for what?” asked Jack. “I feel like I’m ready for a nice quiet grave in a cool green graveyard is what I’m ready—aggggghhh!”

  “Stop bellowing,” said Susan. “That’s the last of it.”

  “Ready for what?” Jack repeated as he gasped for breath through gritted teeth.

  “For the wedding, you dolt,” said Susan.

  Half an hour later, Junius Fane’s Speedking Sixty drew up before a tiny house in the suburb of Culver City, which was as quiet and as sedate as many people wished Hollywood was. Several huge old orange trees surrounded the house and a tangle of roses grew across the front and up on to the roof; the place desperately wanted a coat of paint. A sign on the door read “Justice of the Peace.”

  The justice of the peace was a pudgy, middle-aged man with pomaded hair, a pursed smile, and eyeglasses with tiny round purple lenses. It was difficult to tell whether the odor inside the house emanated from the roses outside or some powder that the gentleman wore on his skin. He gasped in astonishment when the wedding party entered his parlor.

  “It’s the Lovers of the Decade!” he exclaimed. “Oh, Lord, I wish Ma was here today. Ma usually acts as my witness, but I was told you were bringing two with you, so she went out to have her hair curled. The Pacific Ocean takes the curl right out of a lady’s hair, as I’m sure you have noticed. Wait till she discovers who was here, and who got married today! Miss Conquest, I admire you exceedingly. Mr. Beaumont, there is no other word for it, you are a man’s man, I tell Ma that all the time. In Plunder, when you was dragged beneath that car, it was the most thrilling thing I ever saw in my life, and I said to Ma, ‘Ma,’ I said, ‘Mr. Beaumont is a man’s man.’ I have lived in California for eleven years, and Ma has been out here six, and it is a different place, let me tell you, since you movies came in. Miss Conquest, you are very lovely toda
y.”

  “This is my new frock from The Crimson Stain Mystery,” Ida said. “It is made from my own sketch, and I chose the bolt of cloth myself.”

  “And that is really your dog,” sighed the justice of the peace, seeing Tripod asleep in Ida’s arms. “He is very well behaved.”

  “Gave him a sleeping draft,” Ida explained chummily, “else he’d be right at Jack’s throat. Jack and Tripod—well, they’re not exactly friends of the bosom.”

  “Oh, Lord,” exclaimed the justice, in barely restrained ecstasy, “this is the first time I have ever entertained true stars in my house. Is Photoplay going to take a photograph of the rose-covered wedding bower? This used to be an orange grove, but then there was these houses built here, and I moved in and started witnessing documents and marrying people and Ma suggested I plant roses to make it more appropriate. I have a photograph of the place, for couples that wants one for a souvenir, and usually I charge a dollar, but I can let you have it for free, and perhaps I should send one to Photoplay? Their address is listed inside, and it wouldn’t be no trouble.”

  “No,” Mr. Fane put in quickly. “This is to be a private ceremony. That is why we came here, because it’s out of the way. We don’t want—”

  “But Miss Conquest and Mr. Beaumont are the Lovers of the Decade! All America will want to see a picture of the rose-covered cottage in which they was wed!”

  “Ida is not the bride,” Susan said dryly. “I am.”

  The justice of the peace stared at Susan as if she had just risen up out of the floor.

  Jack put his arm around Susan. “I’m marrying this woman, Susan Bright,” said Jack. “Ida is here as a friend and witness.”

  “And to hold the damn dog,” Ida interjected.

  The justice of the peace shook his head ruefully, as if the shenanigans of moving-picture people were quite beyond him.

  “Are you sure, Mr. Beaumont?” he asked, casting a doubtful eye at Susan, whose frock was as simple as Ida’s getup was ornate.

  Jack hesitated a moment, and Susan jabbed him in the ribs. “Quite sure,” he said.