The Avenger

CHAPTER IV THE LEADING LADY

CHAPTER IV

THE LEADING LADYIn the studio of the Knebworth Picture Corporation the company had been waiting in its street clothes for the greater part of an hour.

Jack Knebworth sat in his conventional attitude, huddled up in his canvas chair, fingering his long chin and glaring from time to time at the clock above the studio manager’s office.

It was eleven when Stella Mendoza flounced in, bringing with her the fragrance of wood violets and a small, unhappy Peke.

“Do you work to summer-time?” asked Knebworth slowly. “Or maybe you thought the call was for afternoon? You’ve kept fifty people waiting, Stella.”

“I can’t help their troubles,” she said with a shrug of shoulder. “You told me you were going on location, and naturally I didn’t expect there would be any hurry. I had to pack my things.”

“Naturally you didn’t think there was any hurry!”

Jack Knebworth reckoned to have three fights a year. This was the third. The first had been with Stella, and the second had been with Stella, and the third was certainly to be with Stella.

“I wanted you to be here at ten. I’ve had these boys and girls waiting since a quarter of ten.”

“What do you want to shoot?” she asked with an impatient jerk of her head.

“You mostly,” said Jack slowly. “Get into No. 9 outfit and don’t forget to leave your pearl ear-rings off. You’re supposed to be a half-starved chorus girl. We’re shooting at Griff Towers, and I told the gentleman who lent us the use of the house that I’d be through the day work by three. If you were Pauline Frederick or Norma Talmadge or Lillie Gish, you’d be worth waiting for, but Stella Mendoza has got to be on this lot by ten—and don’t forget it!”

Old Jack Knebworth got up from his canvas chair and began to put on his coat with ominous deliberation, the flushed and angry girl watching him, her dark eyes blazing with injured pride and hurt vanity.

Stella had once been plain Maggie Stubbs, the daughter of a Midland grocer, and old Jack had talked to her as if she were still Maggie Stubbs and not the great film star of coruscating brilliance, idol (or her press agent lied) of the screen fans of all the world.

“All right, if you want a fuss you can have it, Knebworth. I’m going to quit—now! I think I know what is due to my position. That part’s got to be rewritten to give me a chance of putting my personality over. There’s too much leading man in it, anyway. People don’t pay real money to see men. You don’t treat me fair, Knebworth: I’m temperamental, I admit it. You can’t expect a woman of my kind to be a block of wood.”

“The only thing about you that’s a block of wood is your head, Stella,” grunted the producer, and went on, oblivious to the rising fury expressed in the girl’s face. “You’ve had two years playing small parts in Hollywood, and you’ve brought nothing back to England but a line of fresh talk, and you could have gotten that out of the Sunday supplements! Temperament! That’s a word that means doctors’ certificates when a picture’s half taken, and a long rest unless your salary’s put up fifty per cent. Thank God this picture isn’t a quarter taken or an eighth. Quit, you mean-spirited guttersnipe—and quit as soon as you darn please!”

Boiling with rage, her lips quivering so that she could not articulate, the girl turned and flung out of the studio.

White-haired Jack Knebworth glared round at the silent company.

“This is where the miracle happens,” he said sardonically. “This is where the extra girl who’s left a sick mother and a mortgage at home leaps to fame in a night. If you don’t know that kinder thing happens on every lot in Hollywood you’re no students of fiction. Stand forth, Mary Pickford the second!”

The extras smiled, some amused, some uncomfortable, but none spoke. Adele was frozen stiff, incapable of speech.

“Modesty don’t belong to this industry,” old Jack sneered amiably. “Who thinks she can play ‘Roselle’ in this piece—because an extra’s going to play the part, believe me! I’m going to show this pseudo-actress that there isn’t an extra on this lot that couldn’t play her head off. Somebody talked about playing a part yesterday—you!”

His forefinger pointed to Adele, and with a heart that beat tumultuously she went toward him.

“I had a camera test of you six months ago,” said Jack suspiciously. “There was something wrong with her: what was it?”

He turned to his assistant. That young man scratched his head in an effort of memory.

“Ankles?” he hazarded a guess at random—a safe guess, for Knebworth had views about ankles.

“Nothing wrong with them—get out the print and let us see it.”

Ten minutes later, Adele sat by the old man’s side in the little projection room and saw her “test” run through.

“Hair!” said Knebworth triumphantly. “I knew there was something. Don’t like bobbed hair. Makes a girl too pert and sophisticated. You’ve grown it?” he added as the lights were switched on.

“Yes, Mr. Knebworth.”

He looked at her in dispassionate admiration.

“You’ll do,” he said reluctantly. “See the wardrobe and get Miss Mendoza’s costumes. There’s one thing I’d like to tell you before you go,” he said, stopping her. “You may be good and you may be bad, but, good or bad, there’s no future for you—so don’t get heated up. The only woman who’s got any chance in England is the producer’s wife, and I’ll never marry you if you go down on your knees to me! That’s the only kind of star they know in English films—the producer’s wife; and unless you’re that, you haven’t——!”

He snapped his finger.

“I’ll give you a word of advice, kid. If you make good in this picture, link yourself up with one of those cute English directors that set three flats and a pot of palms and call it a drawing-room! Give Miss What’s-her-name the script, Harry. Say—go out somewhere quiet and study it, will you? Harry, you see the wardrobe. I give you half an hour to read that script!”

Like one in a dream, the girl walked out into the shady garden that ran the length of the studio building, and sat down, trying to concentrate on the typewritten lines. It wasn’t true—it could not be true! And then she heard the crunch of feet on gravel and looked up in alarm. It was the young man who had seen her that morning—Michael Brixan.

“Oh, please—you mustn’t interrupt me!” she begged in agitation. “I’ve got a part—a big part to read.”

Her distress was so real that he hastened to take his departure.

“I’m awfully sorry——” he began.

In her confusion she had dropped the loose sheets of the manuscript, and, stooping with her to pick them up, their heads bumped.

“Sorry—that’s an old comedy situation, isn’t it?” he began.

And then he saw the sheet of paper in his hand and began to read. It was a page of elaborate description of a scene.

“The cell is large, lighted by a swinging lamp. In centre is a steel gate through which a soldier on guard is seen pacing to and fro——”

“Good God!” said Michael, and went white.

The “u’s” in the type were blurred, the “g” was indistinct. The page had been typed on the machine from which the Head-Hunter sent forth his gruesome tales of death.