Jack and Susan in 1913

by McDowell, Michael

  Therefore, he concluded, all the money he had in the world was the five hundred dollars given to him by Susan Bright (through the agency of Hosmer Collamore) for the rights to the patent on the motion picture camera.

  He wondered if it would make a difference to Susan to know that he was now exactly what he had represented himself to be—an impecunious inventor, whose sole resource was the money he’d got from her anonymous generosity. She probably wouldn’t believe him if he told her, and, he reflected ruefully, he couldn’t blame her for that.

  Jack began to pack his belongings, then realized there was no point in maintaining the imposture of a threadbare wardrobe any longer. Though he was in no financial condition to buy anything, he had much better clothing in his apartment on Twenty-third Street. He stopped packing, looked around the room, and his mind again returned to Topic A: How to find Susan?

  To find her, he must also find Hosmer, which would probably be easier. The first step would be to find out what happened to the Cosmic Film Company. The company seemed to have vanished from its former burnt-out premises, and the operator at Telephone Central only knew that the phones had been removed, and there was no new number for Cosmic. Still, it seemed unlikely that such a large and prospering enterprise would go out of business overnight and simply disappear without a trace, so he allowed himself some hope that he would be able to find it in a day or so.

  He stuffed his ten dollars into his pocket and had his hand on the knob of the door when there came a knock.

  Jack opened the door and found himself staring into the faces of two persons he had never seen before—a large man and a not much smaller woman of middle age, dressed in what appeared to be their Sunday best.

  With an explosive sigh, the woman dropped to her knees in the doorway, grabbed Jack’s hand, and covered it with kisses. Before astonished Jack could protest, the man had grabbed his other hand and began pumping it so vigorously that Jack feared a wellspring would gush from the top of his head.

  “Madam, please…”

  Ignoring Jack’s protest, the woman on her knees rubbed her cheek over the back of Jack’s hand and then kissed it some more. Hosmer’s old apartment across the hall already had a new tenant, an old man with arthritic shaking hands, who now opened his door and peered out disapprovingly.

  “Thank you, sir,” said the man who was still heartily shaking Jack’s hand. “Thank you. I thank you, my wife here thanks you on her knees, our children at home—there’s five of ’em—they’d be here to thank you too except two of ’em has the mumps and the other three was looking peaked, and Mary here thought it best they not come with us, though they was a-achin’ to.”

  “Do you have the right apartment?” asked Jack. “Maybe you want Mrs. Jadd upstairs.”

  “John Beaumont,” said the visitor, still pumping, “John Beaumont, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I bless the day your mother first laid eyes on your father’s brow.”

  “I blesses the bed that cradled your infant form,” said the woman, staring up at Jack with tears in her eyes.

  “Who are you?” asked Jack.

  “The Cosmic watchman,” said the man solemnly.

  Suddenly it all made sense.

  “Where is the young lady?” cried the wife. “We wants to thank her too.”

  “Please come in and sit down,” said Jack abruptly. “I need your help.”

  Husband and wife glanced uneasily at one another. To them, help meant money.

  “Don’t worry,” said Jack, who immediately understood those looks, having learned a few things living life as a straitened mechanic, “it has nothing to do with money.”

  Husband and wife came into the room. Jack asked their names, and found that they were Mr. and Mrs. Kosdercka—but everyone called them Mr. and Mrs. K.

  “No more about saving your life, Mr. K., please,” said Jack, “because if you can help me, you’ll have paid me back more than fully. I just need the answer to one question: Where is the Cosmic Film Company?”

  Mr. and Mrs. Kosdercka looked at each other. Mr. K. looked down at the floor and said, “I don’t know.”

  “You do know,” said Mrs. K. “Tell the young man. I’d be weeping over your grave right now if it wasn’t for this gentleman and his young lady friend.”

  Mr. Kosdercka still hesitated. “Not supposed to tell. Not even supposed to know.”

  “It’s because of the young lady who helped to save your life that I’m asking. She was abducted,” said Jack, not even blushing at the lie, “by a man employed by Cosmic, and I was hoping that, by speaking to Mr. Fane or someone, I could find the villain who made off with her.”

  Mrs. K.’s eyes widened at the romance and intrigue of the thing.

  Mr. K. considered the business. “You know Mr. Fane, do you?”

  “We had business dealings,” said Jack, truthfully. “And now I need to find him, that’s all.”

  “They all took off.”

  “That’s obvious. But where did they go?”

  “Didn’t want nobody to know,” said Mrs. K.

  “The Trust,” whispered Mr. K. leaning forward conspiratorially, as if representatives of that organization might be eavesdropping from an adjoining room.

  “That’s why they decamped? To avoid the Trust?”

  Both Mr. and Mrs. K. nodded.

  “Where did they go?” asked Jack. “Brooklyn?”

  Mr. K. shook his head. “Across the Hudson.”

  “New Jersey?”

  “California,” said Mrs. K. and slapped at her husband’s hand for his deception.

  “California? The whole company?”

  “Some place where they grow oranges. Can’t recall the name.”

  “Hollywood,” Mrs. K. supplied.

  Jack could not believe that Susan had run off with Hosmer Collamore with the intention of marrying the man. Logic dictated that Susan Bright had simply gone to ground. Perhaps she had moved to another part of Manhattan; or was residing above some laundry in Brooklyn; or had gone home to Connecticut to nurse her wounds. That’s where he should be searching for her—in rooms above laundries, and in small rustic hotels in rural Connecticut.

  But there are times when inspiration supersedes logic. This was one of them. Jack knew that he wouldn’t find Susan in those places but in a place called Hollywood in California.

  The town was so small it didn’t even appear in his pocket atlas. So despite logic and deduction and probability to the contrary, Jack withdrew his five hundred dollars from the bank and purchased a train ticket for Los Angeles.

  He packed two small valises of his better clothes from the Twenty-third Street apartment. Then he went back up to the Fenwick with a briefcase and dumped all his papers and plans and drawings into it.

  Then he discovered that the final drawings he’d executed for the patent application on his camera improvement were missing. Evidently during his tenure in the hospital they’d been stolen from his room. He then understood why the door of the room had been wide open on his return. The thief hadn’t even bothered to close it again.

  Anyone with those drawings could patent the camera, and reap all the monetary benefits that accrued from any use of the device.

  “Damn,” cried Jack, plugging his hat on his head and flying out the door. His train left in half an hour.

  Jack fretted in his seat before the train departed Pennsylvania Station. He steamed in the dark tunnel beneath the Hudson River. He stewed through Newark and Elizabeth. Life, he concluded with bitterness, was one damn thing after another.

  He could have stayed in New York and tried to find the thief who’d purloined those drawings, but Susan would be ever farther away. Her distrust of him would deepen with time. Or worse, she’d forget him. He had to find her again as soon as possible. He couldn’t afford precious days tracking down a robber, of whose identity he had no idea whatever.

  It probably was another of the Trust thugs. Thomas Alva Edison, that revered white-haired old man, had somehow hear
d of Jack’s invention—spies in the Cosmic studios, perhaps—and had hired some graduate of Blackwell’s Island to get into Jack’s apartment. The inventor of the light bulb now sat in a comfortable chair in Fort Lee, studying Jack’s drawings, and chuckling to himself—as frantic, distracted Jack rode in a cheap compartment on the train headed for Washington, D.C.

  Jack questioned the conductor as to whether any film company troupe had recently ridden the train, but the man said no. Of course, the Cosmic Film Company could have taken any number of different trains, or even a different line, for that matter—or had made no impression as a group of travelers. When the train stopped at Trenton, Jack got off and put the same question to several station employees, and again received a negative reply. But in turning away from the ticket seller’s cage, Jack caught sight of a familiar face, in a tinted postcard tacked to a board. It was Ida Conquest, in her costume as the Aeroplane Girl, and the card was signed.

  “That postcard,” Jack demanded of the ticket agent. “That girl—”

  “Oh yes, she did come through here. Could tell that one was an actress, all right. A fine figure of a young woman. Selling the cards out of her pocketbook, and only charged a dime—including the autograph.”

  “When did she come through?”

  “Today’s Wednesday. Not Tuesday. Not Sunday, ’cause I wasn’t on. Must have been Monday.”

  That was all the ticket seller could tell Jack but he knew that he was on the right track. He imagined them all traveling together—Ida Conquest and Junius Fane, Manfred Mixon and Miss Songar, the cameramen and the chemists, Hosmer and Susan. All on their way to that town in California, too small and insignificant to have its name on the map.

  He was two days behind them, but if he managed to catch every possible connection, and maybe if the company decided to rest a day somewhere, then he might very well catch up with them before they reached California. But even if they stayed the same distance ahead of him, he could not imagine that he would have any difficulty in finding them once they’d reached their destination.

  Train journeys were usually boring, but Jack, even in the midst of his anxiety, felt that he was on an adventure. On that night back in January, when he’d so innocently sat in the third row of the orchestra of the New Columbia Theatre, he was just John Austin Beaumont, managing director of the prestigious and long-established firm of Beaumont, Beaumont, and Beaumont. He had admired a young actress, as many rich young men admired pretty young actresses, and as such young men do, he’d sent a note around to her dressing room. After that, not a thing in the world had gone as he could have predicted.

  And now only a few short months later, Jack was without a job, without an income, was engaged to a woman who had skipped out in the company of another man, and he was sitting in a railway car at the beginning of a journey that was going to take him all the way across the American continent.

  The train arrived at Union Station in Washington, D.C., and Jack got off. He was now forced to make an important decision. He could take the northern route to California, that is, by way of Chicago. Or else he could take the more southern route, from Washington to St. Louis, and from there across the prairie and the desert. This was supposed to be a tedious and dreary ride, though it was cheaper.

  Jack, having known Junius Fane and being acquainted with his methods of doing business, judged that he was a man to choose tedious, dreary, and cheap above anything else, so Jack purchased a ticket for an express train to St. Louis. Perhaps, if the Cosmic Film Company had been forced by circumstance to take a train that made frequent stops, Jack would gain a day on Susan.

  The train was scheduled to leave in another hour, at eight o’clock in the evening. It would arrive in St. Louis fifteen hours later—a prodigious speed—stopping only in Louisville, Kentucky. He went into the railway station saloon and downed a brandy and soda in honor of Susan Bright. He downed another to the eternal damnation of Hosmer Collamore.

  Jack devoured a ham sandwich, drank another brandy and soda, and made his way to platform 12, where his train waited, steam hissing from under it on to the platform. The train originated here at Union Station, so he was able to climb on without delay. His reserved seat was in a quiet, out-of-the-way spot next to a window. He looked for a few minutes at the Tauchnitz Edition he’d picked up in a bookstall in the station, but it couldn’t hold his interest. The brandy made him sleepy, and he watched his fellow passengers saying their good-byes to relatives and friends and then boarding the train. Jack couldn’t keep his eyelids open, and he nodded off for a few minutes, under the genial effects of the brandy. He was jolted awake by the simultaneous blast of the train whistle and the shrill laughter of a child.

  Jack opened his eyes.

  In the seat just opposite him was a little boy, about seven years old Jack guessed, wearing a velvet suit with pearl buttons, in imitation of the child hero of some dreadful touring company production of Little Lord Fauntleroy. The boy was standing on the seat, pointing out the window and giggling in a near hysterical fashion. The boy’s mother, seated across the aisle, and evidently believing her maternal responsibility ended with the velvet suit, made no attempt to quiet the child.

  Jack turned and looked out to see what had so excited the child. Another train was situated on the other side of the platform, and it too was filling with passengers, as could plainly be seen through the lighted windows.

  One of those passengers was a great fat man, who was now struggling with two enormous suitcases—trying to get both himself and the suitcases down the narrow aisle. He was bumping heads and knocking hats askew, and one of the cases had just spilled open, scattering clothing everywhere.

  Jack laughed too, and was still laughing as his train gave another whistle, then a lurch and began slowly moving on its way to St. Louis.

  Then suddenly the laugh froze on Jack’s face, for he realized that the fat man causing all the trouble in the other train was Manfred Mixon, the Fabulous Funny Fellow of Cosmic Features.

  The entire Cosmic group probably was in that train not twenty feet away on the other side of the platform.

  Jack stared frantically out at the lighted windows as the express for St. Louis picked up speed. Then, there in a car toward the front, Jack saw Susan. She sat with her chin on her hand, staring at Hosmer Collamore, who was leaning toward her, holding up something small and sparkling.

  Was it a ring?

  Jack jumped up from his seat, pushed Little Ford Fauntleroy out of the way, and clawed at the window.

  “Susan! Susan!” he shouted.

  She couldn’t have heard him, of course, over the clattering of the train, and through the barriers of windows, but Tripod was there. Tripod heard Jack’s anguished cry, or caught sight of Jack’s anguished face, or intuited Jack’s anguished presence. Tripod leapt up onto the seat beside Susan, and began barking furiously out the window.

  Susan turned, and at the last possible moment, she caught sight of Jack.

  The image remained frozen in Jack’s mind; Susan’s eyes wide in surprise and disbelief, her black hair glistening beneath the yellow light of the train compartment, her mouth open in astonishment.

  The St. Louis Express pulled out of Union Station and hurtled Jack Beaumont through the Maryland countryside and on across America.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  ALL THROUGH THAT dark night, Jack stared at Little Lord Fauntleroy—who snored in a way Jack couldn’t remember that seven-year-old children snored—and thought of Susan Bright.

  Susan Bright in the railway carriage, sitting across from Hosmer Collamore, and Hosmer holding up something small and bright and shiny—doubtless an engagement ring.

  The train that bore Susan and Hosmer, Jack had learned from the conductor, was also headed for St. Louis, but by a different, slower route. Susan’s train would meander along to the north, halting at every milk-stop hamlet across Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. The Cosmic Film Company would arrive approximately six hours after Jack. Not only had Jack ca
ught up with Mr. Junius Fane and company, he had leapt over them!

  During the half-hour stop in Louisville, Jack stayed on the train and munched hot corn brought through by a boy in a jacket that was too short in the arms and trousers that were too long in the legs. He leaned out of the window and guzzled down a tin of coffee that scalded his throat. Whenever he’d traveled by train before, he’d gone first-class, and he’d dined on linen and silverware in the dining car. His West Sixtieth Street playacting quickly had become real indeed, and this “being without” was not a pleasant sensation. Once every couple of minutes he surreptitiously touched the wad of bills in his pocket—all his money in the world—to make certain it was still there.

  Not long after the train left Louisville, it began to get light outside, and as he stared out the window at alternating patches of forest and field, and the occasional small town, Jack laid plots.

  Susan had seen him.

  Susan had recognized him.

  Susan would be expecting him in St. Louis.

  She might even find a way to keep him off the train to Los Angeles.

  She might herself linger behind and take a different train out. There were all kinds of possibilities.

  If Jack could somehow get on the same train as Susan he knew that in the two and a half days that the journey to California required he could convince her that she still loved him and that she ought still to marry him—despite former deceptions, despite Hosmer Collamore’s protestations, despite Tripod’s innate distrust of him. Jack had somehow to forestall Susan’s efforts—efforts she was sure to make—in avoiding him.

  By the time the train pulled into St. Louis, Jack thought he had found a workable plan, but he had only six hours to implement it.

  When the train arrived in St. Louis, Jack hurried off, checked his luggage, asked a few directions, and then went out into the city. Fortunately, the station was centrally located, and in less than four hours he had visited a used-clothing store, a pharmacist’s, a barber’s, a store catering to the wants of the theatrical profession, and a veterinarian’s office.