Montrose reflected.
'Why don't you take it back?'
'To its mother?'
'Certainly.'
'But ...' The gorilla pulled doubtfully at its lower lip. 'You have seen that crowd. Did you happen to observe a woman standing in the front row waving an umbrella?'
'The mother?'
'Precisely. Well, you know as well as I do, Mulliner, what an angry woman can do with an umbrella.'
Montrose thought again.
'It's all right,' he said. 'I have it. Why don't you sneak down the back steps? Nobody will see you. The crowd's in front, and it's almost dark.'
The gorilla's eyes lit up. It slapped Montrose gratefully on the shoulder.
'My dear chap! The very thing. But as regards the baby...'
'I will restore it.'
'Capital! I don't know how to thank you, dear fellow,' said the gorilla. 'By Jove, this is going to be a lesson to me in future not to give way to the artist in me. You don't know how I've been feeling about that umbrella. Well, then, in case we don't meet again, always remember that the Lotos Club finds me when I am in New York. Drop in any time you happen to be in that neighbourhood and we'll have a bite to eat and a good talk.'
And what of Rosalie, meanwhile? Rosalie was standing between the bereaved mother, using all her powers of cajolery to try to persuade Captain Jack Fosdyke to go to the rescue: and the Captain was pleading technical difficulties that stood in the way.
'Dash my buttons,' he said, 'if only I had my elephant gun and my trusty native bearer, 'Mlongi, here, I'd pretty soon know what to do about it. As it is, I'm handicapped.'
'But you told me yesterday that you had often strangled gorillas with your bare hands.'
'Not gor-illas, dear lady – por-illas. A species of South American wombat, and very good eating they make, too.'
'You're afraid!'
Afraid? Jack Fosdyke afraid? How they would laugh on the Lower Zambesi if they could hear you say that.'
'You are! You, who advised me to have nothing to do with the man I love because he was of a mild and diffident nature.'
Captain Jack Fosdyke twirled his moustache.
'Well, I don't notice,' he sneered, 'that he ...' He broke off, and his jaw slowly fell. Round the corner of the building was walking Montrose Mulliner. His bearing was erect, even jaunty, and he carried the baby in his arms. Pausing for an instant to allow the busily-clicking cameras to focus him, he advanced towards the stupefied mother and thrust the child into her arms.
'That's that,' he said carelessly, dusting his fingers. 'No, no, please,' he went on. 'A mere nothing.'
For the mother was kneeling before him, endeavouring to kiss his hand. It was not only maternal love that prompted the action. That morning she had signed up her child at seventy-five dollars a week for the forthcoming picture, 'Tiny Fingers,' and all through these long, anxious minutes it had seemed as though the contract must be a total loss.
Rosalie was in Montrose's arms, sobbing.
'Oh, Monty!'
'There, there!'
'How I misjudged you!'
'We all make mistakes.'
'I made a bad one when I listened to that man there,' said Rosalie, darting a scornful look at Captain Jack Fosdyke. 'Do you realize that, for all his boasting, he would not move a step to save that poor child?'
'Not a step?'
'Not a single step.'
'Bad, Fosdyke,' said Montrose. 'Rather bad. Not quite the straight bat, eh?'
'Tchah!' said the baffled man, and he turned on his heel and strode away. He was still twirling his moustache, but a lot that got him.
Rosalie was clinging to Montrose.
'You aren't hurt? Was it a fearful struggle?'
'Struggle?' Montrose laughed. 'Oh, dear no. There was no struggle. I very soon showed the animal that I was going to stand no nonsense. I generally find with gorillas that all one needs is the power of the human eye. By the way, I've been thinking it over and I realize that I may have been a little unreasonable about that idea of yours. I still would prefer to get married in some nice, quiet church, but if you feel you want the ceremony to take place in that animal's cage, I shall be delighted.'
She shivered.
'I couldn't do it. I'd be scared.'
Montrose smiled understandingly.
'Ah, well,' he said, 'it is perhaps not unnatural that a delicately nurtured woman should be of less tough stuff than the more rugged male. Shall we be strolling along? I want to look in on Mr Schnellenhamer, and arrange about that raise of mine. You won't mind waiting while I pop in at his office?'
'My hero!' whispered Rosalie.
9 THE NODDER
THE presentation of the super film, 'Baby Boy,' at the Bijou Dream in the High Street, had led to an animated discussion in the bar-parlour of the Angler's Rest. Several of our prominent first-nighters had dropped in there for a much-needed restorative after the performance, and the conversation had turned to the subject of child stars in the motion-pictures.
'I understand they're all midgets, really,' said a Rum and Milk.
'That's what I heard, too,' said a Whisky and Splash. 'Somebody told me that at every studio in Hollywood they have a special man who does nothing but go round the country, combing the circuses, and when he finds a good midget he signs him up.'
Almost automatically we looked at Mr Mulliner, as if seeking from that unfailing fount of wisdom an authoritative pronouncement on this difficult point. The Sage of the bar-parlour sipped his hot Scotch and lemon for a moment in thoughtful silence.
'The question you have raised,' he said at length, 'is one that has occupied the minds of thinking men ever since these little excrescences first became popular on the screen. Some argue that mere children could scarcely be so loathsome. Others maintain that a right-minded midget would hardly stoop to some of the things these child stars do. But, then, arising from that, we have to ask ourselves: Are midgets right-minded? The whole thing is very moot.'
'Well, this kid we saw to-night,' said the Rum and Milk. 'This Johnny Bingley. Nobody's going to tell me he's only eight years old.'
'In the case of Johnny Bingley,' assented Mr Mulliner, 'your intuition has not led you astray. I believe he is in the early forties. I happen to know all about him because it was he who played so important a part in the affairs of my distant connection, Wilmot.'
'Was your distant connection Wilmot a midget?'
'No. He was a Nodder.'
'A what?'
Mr Mulliner smiled.
'It is not easy to explain to the lay mind the extremely intricate ramifications of the personnel of a Hollywood motion-picture organization. Putting it as briefly as possible, a Nodder is something like a Yes-Man, only lower in the social scale. A Yes-Man's duty is to attend conferences and say 'Yes." A Nodder's, as the name implies, is to nod. The chief executive throws out some statement of opinion, and looks about him expectantly. This is the cue for the senior Yes-Man to say yes. He is followed, in order of precedence, by the second Yes-Man – or Vice-Yesser, as he is sometimes called – and the junior Yes-Man. Only when all the Yes-Men have yessed, do the Nodders begin to function. They nod.'
A Pint of Half-and-Half said it didn't sound much of a job.
'Not very exalted,' agreed Mr Mulliner. 'It is a position which you might say, roughly, lies socially somewhere in between that of the man who works the wind-machine and that of a writer of additional dialogue. There is also a class of Untouchables who are know as Nodders' assistants, but this is a technicality with which I need not trouble you. At the time when my story begins, my distant connection Wilmot was a full Nodder. Yet, even so, there is no doubt that he was aiming a little high when he ventured to aspire to the hand of Mabel Potter, the private secretary of Mr Schnellenhamer, the head of the Perfecto-Zizz-baum Corporation.
Indeed, between a girl so placed and a man in my distant connection's position there could, in ordinary circumstances, scarcely have been anything in the nature of fr
iendly intercourse. Wilmot owed his entry to her good graces to a combination of two facts – the first, that in his youth he had been brought up on a farm and so was familiar with the customs and habits of birds; the second, that before coming to Hollywood, Miss Potter had been a bird-imitator in vaudeville.
Too little has been written of vaudeville bird-imitators and their passionate devotion to their art: but everybody knows the saying, Once a Bird-Imitator, Always a Bird-Imitator. The Mabel Potter of to-day might be a mere lovely machine for taking notes and tapping out her employer's correspondence, but within her there still burned the steady flame of those high ideals which always animate a girl who has once been accustomed to render to packed houses the liquid notes of the cuckoo, the whip-poor-will, and other songsters who are familiar to you all.
That this was so was revealed to Wilmot one morning when, wandering past an outlying set, he heard raised voices within and, recognizing the silver tones of his adored one, paused to listen. Mabel Potter seemed to be having some kind of an argument with a director.
'Considering,' she was saying, 'that I only did it to oblige and that it is in no sense a part of my regular duties for which I draw my salary, I must say...'
'All right, all right,' said the director.
'... that you have a nerve calling me down on the subject of cuckoos. Let me tell you, Mr Murgatroyd, that I have made a lifelong study of cuckoos and know them from soup to nuts. I have imitated cuckoos in every theatre on every circuit in the land. Not to mention urgent offers from England, Australia and ...'
'I know, I know,' said the director.
'... South Africa, which I was compelled to turn down because my dear mother, then living, disliked ocean travel. My cuckoo is world-famous. Give me time to go home and fetch it and I'll show you the clipping from the St Louis Post-Democrat where it says ...'
'I know, I know, I know,' said the director, 'but, all the same, I think I'll have somebody do it who'll do it my way.'
The next moment Mabel Potter had swept out, and Wilmot addressed her with respectful tenderness.
'Is something the matter, Miss Potter? Is there anything I can do?'
Mabel Potter was shaking with dry sobs. Her self-esteem had been rudely bruised.
'Well, look,' she said. 'They ask me as a special favour to come and imitate the call of the cuckoo for this new picture, and when I do it Mr Murgatroyd says I've done it wrong.'
'The hound,' breathed Wilmot.
'He says a cuckoo goes Cuckoo, Cuckoo, when everybody who has studied the question knows that what it really goes is Wuckoo, Wuckoo.'
'Of course. Not a doubt about it. A distinct "W" sound.'
'As if it had got something wrong with the roof of its mouth.'
'Or had omitted to have its adenoids treated.'
'Wuckoo, Wuckoo ... Like that.'
'Exactly like that,' said Wilmot.
The girl gazed at him with a new friendliness.
'I'll bet you've heard rafts of cuckoos.'
'Millions. I was brought up on a farm.'
'These know-it-all directors make me tired.'
'Me, too,' said Wilmot. Then, putting his fate to the touch, to win or lose it all, 'I wonder, Miss Potter, if you would care to step round to the commissary and join me in a small coffee?'
She accepted gratefully, and from that moment their intimacy may be said to have begun. Day after day, in the weeks that followed, at such times as their duties would permit, you would see them sitting together either in the commissary or on the steps of some Oriental palace on the outskirts of the lot; he gazing silently up into her face; she, an artist's enthusiasm in her beautiful eyes, filling the air with the liquid note of the Baltimore oriole or possibly the more strident cry of the African buzzard. While ever and anon, by special request, she would hitch up the muscles of the larynx and go 'Wuckoo, Wuckoo.'
But when at length Wilmot, emboldened, asked her to be his wife, she shook her head.
'No,' she said, 'I like you, Wilmot. Sometimes I even think that I love you. But I can never marry a mere serf.'
A what was that?'
A serf. A peon. A man who earns his living by nodding his head at Mr Schnellenhamer. A Yesman would be bad enough, but a Nodder!'
She paused, and Wilmot, from sheer force of habit, nodded.
'I am ambitious,' proceeded Mabel. 'The man I marry must be a king among men ... well, what I mean, at least a supervisor. Rather than wed a Nodder, I would starve in the gutter.'
The objection to this as a practical policy was, of course, that, owing to the weather being so uniformly fine all the year round, there are no gutters in Hollywood. But Wilmot was too distressed to point this out. He uttered a heart-stricken cry not unlike the mating-call of the Alaskan wild duck and began to plead with her. But she was not to be moved.
'We will always be friends,' she said, 'but marry a Nodder, no.'
And with a brief 'Wuckoo' she turned away.
There is not much scope or variety of action open to a man whose heart has been shattered and whose romance has proved an empty dream. Practically speaking, only two courses lie before him. He can go out West and begin a new life, or he can drown his sorrow in drink. In Wilmot's case, the former of these alternatives was rendered impossible by the fact that he was out West already. Little wonder, then, that as he sat in his lonely lodging that night his thoughts turned ever more and more insistently to the second.
Like all the Mulliners, my distant connection Wilmot had always been a scrupulously temperate man. Had his love-life but run smoothly, he would have been amply contented with a nut sundae or a malted milk after the day's work. But now, with desolation staring him in the face, he felt a fierce urge toward something with a bit more kick in it.
About half-way down Hollywood Boulevard, he knew, there was a place where, if you knocked twice and whistled 'My Country, 'tis of thee,' a grille opened and a whiskered face appeared. The Face said 'Well?' and you said 'Service and Cooperation, ' and then the door was unbarred and you saw before you the primrose path that led to perdition. And as this was precisely what, in his present mood, Wilmot most desired to locate, you will readily understand how it came about that, some hour and a half later, he was seated at a table in this establishment, feeling a good deal better.
How long it was before he realized that his table had another occupant he could not have said. But came a moment when, raising his glass, he found himself looking into the eyes of a small child in a Lord Fauntleroy costume, in whom he recognized none other than Little Johnny Bingley, the Idol of American Motherhood – the star of this picture, 'Baby Boy,' which you, gentlemen, have just been witnessing at the Bijou Dream in the High Street.
To say that Wilmot was astonished at seeing this infant in such surroundings would be to overstate the case. After half an hour at this home-from-home the customer is seldom in a condition to be astonished at anything – not even a gamboge elephant in golfing costume. He was, however, sufficiently interested to say 'Hullo.'
'Hullo,' replied the child. 'Listen,' he went on, placing a cube of ice in his tumbler, 'don't tell old Schnellenhamer you saw me here. There's a morality clause in my contract.'
'Tell who?' said Wilmot.
'Schnellenhamer.'
'How do you spell it?'
'I don't know.'
'Nor do I,' said Wilmot. 'Nevertheless, be that as it may,' he continued, holding out his hand impulsively, 'he shall never learn from me.'
'Who won't?' said the child.
'He won't,' said Wilmot.
'Won't what?' asked the child.
'Learn from me,' said Wilmot.
'Learn what?' inquired the child.
'I've forgotten,' said Wilmot.
They sat for a space in silence, each busy with his own thoughts.
'You're Johnny Bingley, aren't you?' said Wilmot.
'Who is?' said the child.
'You are.'
'I'm what?'
'Listen,' said Wilmot. 'M
y name's Mulliner. That's what it is. Mulliner. And let them make the most of it.'
'Who?'
'I don't know,' said Wilmot.
He gazed at his companion affectionately. It was a little difficult to focus him, because he kept flickering, but Wilmot could take the big, broad view about that. If the heart is in the right place, he reasoned, what does it matter if the body flickers?
'You're a good chap, Bingley.'
'So are you, Mulliner.'
'Both good chaps?'
'Both good chaps.'
'Making two in all?' asked Wilmot, anxious to get this straight.
'That's how I work it out.'
'Yes, two,' agreed Wilmot, ceasing to twiddle his fingers. 'In fact, you might say both gentlemen.'
'Both gentlemen is correct.'
'Then let us see what we have got. Yes,' said Wilmot, as he laid down the pencil with which he had been writing figures on the table-cloth. 'Here are the final returns, as I get them. Two good chaps, two gentlemen. And yet,' he said, frowning in a puzzled way, 'that seems to make four, and there are only two of us. However,' he went on, 'let that go. Immaterial. Not germane to the issue. The fact we have to face, Bingley, is that my heart is heavy.'
'You don't say!'
'I do say. Heavy, Hearty. My bing is heavy.'
'What's the trouble?'
Wilmot decided to confide in this singularly sympathetic infant. He felt he had never met a child he liked better.
'Well, it's like this.'
'What is?'
'This is.'
'Like what?'
'I'm telling you. The girl I love won't marry me.'
'She won't?'
'So she says.'
'Well, well,' said the child star commiseratingly. 'That's too bad. Spurned your love, did she?'
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