ALM02 The Death of a Celebrity

by Hulbert Footner

  Bea smoothed her gloves. “I’m quite looking forward to this dinner,” she murmured. “I expect to enjoy myself. I suppose Gavin will put Garrett at his right hand and me at his left. Then we’ll see.”

  Mack drew his lips back. “All right! But don’t forget that a man can stand only so much!”

  “What on earth are you talking about?” she said, turning to him. He refused to answer her. “Are you going to carry on like this every time a man acts as if he liked me?”

  “I don’t care about any other man. It’s only this man . . ,”

  “He’s your oldest friend.”

  “So much the worse.”

  Bea shrugged elaborately. “I don’t see how I can act any differently. I certainly can’t set out to keep Gavin Dordress at arm’s length. He’s your partner. It’s absolutely essential to you.” Mack said nothing. “I should think you’d be glad to help him get rid an incubus like Garrett. It would be tragic if he gave her the lead in his new play. She’s finished. Worse than tragic, it would be bad for business.”

  “All right,” said Mack. “But you keep out of it.”

  “What’s the new play about?” she asked. “I don’t know.”

  “You announced it a week ago.”

  “That’s a routine matter. It’s not finished, I haven’t seen it, and he has told me nothing about it.”

  “Does he intend to give the lead to Garrett?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, are you going to let him give her the part?”

  “I never interfere with the casting of a Dordress play.”

  “Don’t be a fool!” said Bea sharply. “Let us face realities. Do I or do I not get this part?”

  “Better wait and see the play.”

  “That’s got nothing to do with it. There has to be a leading woman’s part and I’m going to play it. It’s the next step in my career. I’ve been planning this for years.”

  “Was that why you married me?” growled Mack.

  “For heaven’s sake, this is business!” she said. “Try to look at it from my point of view. The new Dordress play will be the number one event of the season. Naturally I play the lead. If the play was produced by Mack Townley and Mack Townley’s wife did not get the lead it would be like a slap in the face, it would be like repudiation.”

  “The final choice rests with Gavin,” said Mack.

  “O, I’ll take care of him,” said Bea confidently. “I’ll see that he wants me to play the part.”

  Mack’s face turned blackish, and his right hand clenched instinctively. “By God!” he muttered. “By God! …”

  Bea, busy with her thoughts, did not notice him. “His giving a dinner at this time falls just right,” she said. “I’ll get him to tell me about the play. I’ll clinch the matter to-night …”

  Mack broke out in a low, thick voice. “God damn the play! And Gavin Dordress, tool I’ll have nothing to do with it. Let him find another manager!”

  Bea turned her head swiftly and looked at him from between narrowed lids. “I’m fed up!” stormed Mack. “Fed up, do you hear? Gavin this and Gavin that; you din his name into my ears from morning until night. The man has laid a spell on you. Do you expect me to stand for it? Gavin and Gavin’s play! No, by God! I’m through with him and I’ll tell him so to-night. I’m going to take you away from all this!”

  “You don’t mean what you’re saying,” put in Bea quietly.

  “All right! You’ll see!” he cried.

  “Listen to me,” she said. “You’re at the head of your profession in New York and London. The first nights of the plays that you put on are important social events. The people don’t come to see your bright eyes. It’s because you’re the fashion. If you drop Gavin Dordress, Maurice Stein will get him, or Sam Nikodemus, or Gregory McArdle, and he will become the fashion. You will be handing a great fortune to one of your rivals, while you drop into second place!”

  “I’m going to retire,” muttered Mack. “I’ve made enough. We’ll travel abroad.”

  “Who, me?” said Bea. She laughed delicately, and paused to allow the sound to sink in. “Can you see me fluffing from one European resort to another with nothing to do but exchange gossip with the other wives and get fat? You can do it if you want. Not me. I’m twenty-nine years old and I’m not going to quit until I get to the top of the ladder. Get that. When I agreed to marry you it was understood that you were to help me in my career. If you chuck your part of the bargain don’t expect me to keep mine. The day you drop Gavin Dordress I go to Reno!”

  “By God! you’re a cold-blooded proposition!” muttered Mack, beaten.

  “That doesn’t help any,” said Bea pettishly. “Really, Mack, I don’t understand you. With all your experience you must know that in our profession business is all mixed up with personal relations. You can’t separate them. If, in order to get this part, it is necessary for me to cajole the author, and even appear make love to him a little, why should you care? You must have been through it a hundred times before.”

  Mack shook his head heavily. “No. Never before,” said quietly. “Because I’m in love with you, Bea, And there’s something in a man more powerful than business policy, or making money or getting ahead of others. A man may keep it under for years, may never have known that it was there, but it breaks out .. it breaks out …!”

  Bea appeared to relent a little. She patted his hand, did not look around. She was intent on her own thoughts. “I’m crazy about you!” he murmured. “You came into my life at a time when I thought all that was past. It is like a fire in me. It scorches. Everything in me is changed. You can make my life either a heaven or a hell on earth!”

  “Bear!” she said in a fond voice, but her expression had not changed.

  “Tell me you are not so cold-blooded as you make out!”

  “Of course I’m not! I was talking business!”

  “Tell me you’re just a little fond of me.”

  “Certainly I am. Or I wouldn’t have married you.”

  “Kiss me, Bea!”

  She obediently turned her head. “Don’t muss me!” she warned. He kissed her gently, his hand closing hard over hers. “Ouch! You’re hurting my hand.”

  “Sorry, dear … Let’s not go to this dinner,” he pleaded. “Honestly, I don’t feel up to it!”

  “But we must!” she said. “We’re there! We can’t back out now … Besides, the matter may be decided to-night. If I am not there, Garrett will wangle the part out of him!”

  “All right,” he said heavily. “But I feel that it is a mistake.”

  “But Mack, we understand each other now. If you see me being very nice to Gavin you will know it is only through motives of policy.”

  “You are not nice to him through motives of policy,” he said darkly. “The man excites you. I have eyes.”

  “I will be extra nice to you after we have left,” she said softly.

  “All right. But don’t goad me too far while we’re there.” It was like a groan. “Don’t goad me!”

  When they got out of the cab. Mack hung back in order to give the photographers a fair show at Bea. Bea smiled dazzlingly at each young man in turn. “Hello, boys! We meet again.”

  “Couldn’t be too often for me, Miss Ellerman,” said one. The bulbs flashed. When Bea passed on they took Mack in turn. When Mack had disappeared into the apartment house one young man said to another: “Townley’s showing his age.”

  GAVIN DORDRESS and his guests had moved into the studio after dinner. This was a big room occupying the entire westerly end of the penthouse with windows on three sides looking out on the neat box hedges of the roof-garden. The window curtains were drawn back and coloured lights were strung in the garden to make a festive effect. At the back of the garden the wall of the adjoining building rose some fifteen feet higher, covered with a lattice over which vines were trained in summer. Indoors, Gavin did not go in for decorative fads: the room was of no period, but merely comfortable, with deep ch
airs, mellow old rugs, shaded lamps and endless shelves of hooks. A fire was burning.

  The setting was right for a good party, and the company highly ornamental. Gavin, Mack, Emmett and Siebert were tall, handsome men, and Lee, though his figure was tubby, had a distinctive head; all the women were beautiful women, each in her own style, except poor Louella. Nevertheless, it was not a good party; there was no lack of brittle talk and laughter, but it had overtures like thunder on the horizon.

  Gavin had become aware of it as soon as they sat down to the table. He could not talk all the time; he was hungry. And as soon as he fell silent, the ladies at his right and left, with a too-perfect courtesy and sweetness, began taking shots at each other. In his mind Gavin consigned them both to the devil. His own clever Cynthia was silent and distrait. He could do little with Louella Kip because she was afraid of him. He addressed himself gratefully to Fanny Parran, whole sharp answers were delightful. But when he talked to Fanny, both Gail and Bea began to discharge their darts in her direction, and Gavin, for Fanny’s own sake, felt obliged to leave the girl alone. He was relieved when the ladies left the table.

  The men were no better. Mack Townley had drunk too much; Siebert Ackroyd’s comely young face was white and tight-lipped. Neither would talk; they glanced at Gavin with barely-concealed animosity. Gavin inwardly shrugged them off. In the brightly lighted room Emmett Gundy had the look of a handsome boy who had started to wither before he was quite mature. His would-be flattering remarks were curdled with envy. Nursing his brandy goblet between his hands and sniffing the old Armagnac, he simpered: “This is the incense of popular success.” When he lit a cigar he said: “I suppose some Cuban admirer presented you with these.”

  Only Lee Mappin was his own dry, comical self, and Gavin’s heart warmed to him. His best friend! They talked about college days, hoping to draw in the other two classmates, but without success. As soon as the men had drunk their brandies, Gavin led them to the ladies in the sunroom, hoping for the best. The tight smiles which greeted them were not reassuring. What a party! Gavin glanced at Cynthia for humorous sympathy, but Cynthia was sunk in her own painful thoughts. From the sunroom they proceeded to the studio. Townley, tall, dark, regal in the starry blue dress, looked around. “So this is where masterpieces are produced!”

  Gavin said: “I wish I could think so.”

  “So, is this the first time you have been in this room, darling?” asked Gail. Alongside Bea she looked a little insipid. The gathered chiffon dress was too youthful. Gail was straightening a picture on the wall, and returning a book to its place on the shelf with a proprietary air that made Bea’s eyes snap. “O, dear no!” said Bea. “I have spent happy hours here. But every time I enter I have the same feeling of awe.”

  “It will wear off,” said Gail.

  “Can I have a Scotch and soda?” growled Mack.

  “Surely,” said Gavin, pressing a bell. Even the perfect Hillman was upset to-night, Gavin observed with wry humour when his servant entered, wheeling the bar. Hillman’s lean face was drawn and grey; his eyes and his hands shook a little when he put ice in the glasses.

  When Gavin took a glass from him he said: “You may go home with the other men when they finish up. If we want anything we’ll serve ourselves.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,” said Hillman.

  After he had left the room Lee Mappin said, just to be saying something: “Doesn’t Hillman sleep in?”

  “No,” said Gavin. “He’s a family man. He has a home of his own. Servants ought to be allowed to live normal lives like anybody else.”

  “O!” exclaimed Bea. “Do you mean to say that after the butler goes home you are all alone here on this roof?”

  “Surely.” said Gavin, “Why not?”

  “Aren’t you afraid?”

  “Hardly. I’ve reached the age when I love to be alone.”

  Fanny Parran was beside him at the moment. “That’s hardly polite,” she murmured.

  “Well, do you blame me?” Gavin asked, smiling back.

  Fanny glanced over the company. “No. If it was me, I’d tell them all to get the heck out!”

  Gavin laughed. “If they were all like you what a good party it would be!”

  “You’re pretty nice yourself,” said Fanny.

  Gail and Bea, observing this low-voiced exchange, moved from different directions to break it up. Bea said to Gavin: “I don’t think it’s right for you to be alone at night. Suppose you were taken sick!”

  “I am never sick,” said Gavin. “If I should be, the telephone is beside my bed.”

  “You might be too sick to use it.”

  “If I was unconscious what difference would it make to me?”

  “You don’t look as if you were going to be sick,” said Bea, languishing at him, “but men who are so much in the public eye are always a mark for kidnappers, burglars, cranks, and so on.”

  ” Anybody who lives in fear might as well die and be done with it,” said Gavin. “The elevator man is there to protect me from intruders. And up here on the fifteenth floor it is hardly likely anybody is coming in by the window.”

  Gail glanced scornfully at Bea: “Anybody who tried to tackle Gavin would regret it. He is armed.”

  “Are you?” said Bea.

  Gail moved towards an immense flat-topped desk at the south end of the room. She said: “He keeps a gun here.” Pulling out the middle drawer, she picked up a business-like black automatic, and exhibited it. There was something terrible in her smile. “You seem to be familiar with them,” said Bea.

  “I use a gun like this in my present play.”

  “Put it away, Gail,” said Gavin good-humouredly. “I hate to see anybody fooling with a loaded gun.”

  Bea, her face sharpened by curiosity, had joined Gail at the desk. Gail returned the gun to its place. Bea’s eyes ran over the contents of the wide, shallow drawer. Alongside the gun lay a pile of typescript with corrections and interlineations in a quaint and individual hand. At the top of the first page was typed the title: The Changeling. “O here is the great play!” cried Bea. “Won’t you read it to us, Gavin?”

  Gail stood a little away from the desk, watching Bea with a slight, malicious smile. Fanny Parran and Louella Kip, who did not know Gavin very well, added their voices to Bea’s. “O, do read it, Mr. Dordress!”

  Gavin shook his head. “I never read my own stuff aloud,” he said, obstinately good-humoured.

  “Please!” chorused the three women.

  Emmett spoke up: “Leave him alone,” he said with a sour smile.

  “He hates to be the centre of attraction.” “The truth is,” said Gavin, smiling, “I have listened to too many young playwrights laughing and sobbing over their own lines.”

  “But among your intimate friends …” pleaded Bea.

  “Shut the drawer, Bea,” growled Mack. “Can’t you see that he hates to have his work touched?”

  Bea smiled at her husband in a manner that presaged trouble later, and slowly pushed the drawer in. Returning to Gavin, she said: “Well, tell us something about the play: tell us the story of it.”

  He shook his head. “It is always likely to be stood on its head or turned inside out up to the very moment when it is handed to the typist.”

  Fanny, to create a diversion, asked: “Don’t you have a secretary?”

  “No,” he said, suggesting by his smile that if he could have one like her he would. “If she’s young she tries to vamp you; if she’s old she tries to boss you … I have a girl in occasionally for correspondence. Writing a play is a slow business. I can type quite fast enough to keep up with the flow of my ideas.”

  “Tell us about the people in the play,” said Bea cajolingly.

  She seated herself beside Gavin on the sofa and laid a hand on his arm. From across the room Mack’s glowering eyes watched her. “Not a word,” said Gavin, smiling and firm. “It’s the only rule I ever made for myself-and kept.”

  “Then nobody in the
world but you knows what is in that play?” said Bea.

  “Nobody in the world! Mack is taking a big chance in announcing its production.”

  “I could still refuse to produce it,” growled Mack.

  Everybody except Gavin laughed as at a good joke. Bea, laughing the loudest, said to Mack: “You won’t do that!”

  “O, I don’t know,” he growled.

  Gavin glanced at him, puzzled. Mack refused to meet his eye.

  It was Emmett Gundy who made the first move to break up the ill-starred party. He exchanged a meaning look with Louella and they arose. It was no more than ten o’clock. The inevitable empty politenesses were exchanged. “Must you go? It’s so early.”

  “Sorry,” said Emmett, ” but we have promised to join some friends at the Coq Rouge.”

  Louella looked as if this was news to her. She had too honest a face for society. Gavin and Cynthia accompanied them to the door of the room. “Are you going to be tied up tomorrow, Gavin?” asked Emmett off-handedly.

  “I’ll be working on my play. I haven’t made any engagements.”

  “Could I see you for a few minutes after working hours? I want to ask your advice about rewriting my novel.”

  “Surely. Drop in about five.”

  When they had gone, Gavin said, low-voiced: “Stand by me, Cyn. I want you to stay until after everybody has gone.”

  She looked quickly in his face. “Surely, Dad.”

  Lee and Fanny were on their feet. “Must you go?” said Gavin with real regret.

  “Must!” said Lee. They moved into the foyer and he added: “Fanny and I thought this would be the quickest way to break it up. This party was doomed not to prosper.”

  “Dear old Lee!” said Gavin warmly.

  “Why this sudden burst of affection?”

  “You shine like a good deed in a naughty world!”

  “I’ve been called many things in my time,” said Lee. “But that’s a new one.”

  “I’m sorry it wasn’t a good party,” said Gavin to Fanny.

  “Ask me again.”

  “I shall.”

  When Gavin and Cynthia turned to go back, they met Siebert, very stiff and good-looking, coming out of the studio. Cynthia, with the slightest of bows, passed on into the room. “Must you go?” said Gavin. “I was hoping you would stay on a little.”