Luck of the Bodkins (43 page)

Ambrose was nearest the door. He opened it in
a
distrait manner, for he was back in his reverie again.

Mabel Spence entered, followed by Ivor Llewellyn.

Chapter
24

In the demeanour of Mr Llewellyn, as he came tripping into the room, there was no trace of that mental and physical collapse which he had exhibited at the telephone. It had been but a passing weakness, and it was over. Presidents of large motion-picture corporations are tough and resilient. They recuperate quickly. You might make Ivor Llewellyn turn purple, but you could not quench his gallant spirit. He was a man who knew how to take it as well as dish it out. Through years of arduous training he had acquired the ability to assimilate the blows of Fate and then rise on stepping-stones of his dead self and by his genius turn disaster into victory.

This was what he had come to do now. A hasty conference with Mabel, and his plans were formed, his schemes perfected. The fact that they would involve a complete reversal of his policy of grinding rattlesnakes beneath his heel and that the first thing he would have to do would be to conciliate these rattlesnakes and fraternize with them, did not trouble him. No motion-picture magnate is ever troubled by the
volte-face.

'Hello, there, Mr Bodkin,' he boomed benignantly, firing the first gun of his campaign.

So engulfed was Monty at the moment in his personal Slough of Despond that only some very novel and surprising happening could have jerked him out of it. This change for the cheerier in Mr Llewellyn's manner did so. He stared, amazed.

‘
Oh, hullo,' he said.

'Say, listen, Mr Bodkin, I've an explanation to make to you.' Mr Llewellyn paused. His attention seemed to have been momentarily diverted. 'Say, that's cunning,' he said, pointing. That mouse. Yours?'

‘I
t belongs to Miss Butterwick.'

‘I
don't think I've had the pleasure of meeting Miss Butter-wick.
’

'Oh, sorry. Miss Butterwick, my fiancee, Mr Llewellyn.
’

'How do you do?'

‘
How do you do?
’
said Gertrude.

'Both the Mr Tennysons I know, and of course Lottie. Well, well,' said Mr Llewellyn genially, 'looks like we were all friends here, eh? Ha, ha.'

‘
Ha, ha,' said Monty.

'Ha, ha,
’
said Gertrude.

Lottie, Ambrose, and Reggie did not say 'Ha, ha,
’
but Mr Llewellyn appeared satisfied with the 'Ha, ha's' he had got. He seemed to feel that he had now placed matters on a chummy basis all round. He beamed a little more, and then allowed his smile to fade out, leaving behind it a grave, concerned look.

'Say, listen, Mr Bodkin. I was saying I had an explanation to make to you. It's this way. After you'd left my office, my sister-in-law here blew in and I told her of our little conversation, and what she said made me look at the thing from a new angle. Listening to her, it suddenly occurred to me that you might have thought I was serious when I handed you that line of talk. And I felt mighty bad about it Got all worked up, didn't I, Mabel?
’

'Yes,' said Mabel Spence. Not as a rule a 'yes-girl
’
, she knew that there were times when 'yessing' was essential.

'I'll say I was worked up,' proceeded Mr Llewellyn. The last thing in the world I expected was that you'd take all that stuff seriously. I thought you'd have been on to it right away that I was just kidding. Sure! Ribbing, we call it over here. When you've been on this side a little longer, you'll get used to our American kidding. Well, gee!' said Mr Llewellyn, in honest surprise, 'the idea that you'd really think I'd switched right around and didn't want you with the S.-L. never so much as crossed my mind till Mabel made me see it. No, sir, I don't blow hot and cold that way. You can't make money in my business if you don't know your own mind better than that When I come to a decision, that decision stays come to.'

Monty was aware of a constriction at the heart. He gulped. He was not a young man of swift perceptions, but there was that in tm other's words which had caused him to tremble with a sudden hope.

'Then you -'

'Eh?'

'Then you
do
want me to come to Hollywood?
’

'Why, sure,' said Mr Llewellyn heartily.

'And Ambrose?' said Lottie Blossom.

'Why, sure,' said Mr Llewellyn, his heartiness undiminished.

'You'll sign a contract?'

'Why, sure. Certainly I will. Any time the boys care to look in at my office. Can't do it here, of course,' said Mr Llewellyn, chuckling amusedly at the quaint idea of signing contracts in hotel sitting-rooms.

Mabel Spence corrected this view.

'Yes, you can,' she said reassuringly, opening her vanity-bag. 'I've Reggie's contract here. Reggie and I can be copying it out while you go on talking, and then you'll be able to sign it before you leave, and everything will be fine.
’

Mr Llewellyn ceased to chuckle. He had not intended while he was in this room to allow his cheeriness to go out of high, but at this suggestion a keen observer would have noted a distinct indication in his manner of something not unlike pain.

'That's right, too,' he said.

He spoke not in his former ringing tone, but slowly and huskily, as if something sharp had become embedded in his windpipe. At the same time, he gave his sister-in-law one of those looks which men give a relation by marriage whom they consider to have been deficient in tact.

Mabel Spence did not seem to have observed the look.

'Sure,' she said brightly. 'It only means altering a line or two. You want Mr Bodkin as a production expert and Mr Tennyson as a writer. Watch out for that, Reggie, when you come to the places.'

'Quite,' said Reggie, 'Production expert... Writer. I get you.
’

'Then the only other thing,' said Mabel, 'is terms. I mean, the penalty clauses and all that we can just copy out as they stand.
’

'Yes,' said Reggie.

'Yes,' said Ambrose.

‘
Yes,' said Mr Llewellyn. He still seemed to be troubled by that substance in his windpipe. 'I would suggest-
’
‘
Say, listen -
’

'Well, no need to argue about Ambrose,
’
Reggie pointed out ·We're all straight there, what? He gets fifteen hundred, as per previous arrangement.'

'Of course. And Mr Bodkin -?'

'How about a thousand? Nice round sum, you remember we agreed.'

'Say, listen,' said Mr Llewellyn, with a quaver in his voice, 'a thousand's a lot of money. I only pay my wife's cousin Genevieve three hundred and fifty, and she's a very valuable girl... And there's a depression on ... And things don't look any too good in the picture business...'

'Oh, make it a thousand,' said Reggie, impatient of hairsplitting. 'You're willing to take a thousand, Monty?'

'Yes.' Monty, like Mr Llewellyn, was not quite normal about the windpipe. 'Yes, 111 take a thousand.'

‘
Right Then everything's settled. Let's get at it.'

The two scribes withdrew to the writing-table, and their departure from the centre of things brought about a lull in the conversation. The realization that, owing to the officiousness of his sister-in-law, a girl whom he had never liked, he would have to sign these contracts before getting the mouse, instead of getting the mouse and then refusing to sign any contracts whatsoever, had induced in Mr Llewellyn a quiet, pensive mood. And as none of the others seemed to have -anything to say that called for immediate utterance, silence fell - a silence broken only by a scratching of pens to which Mr Llewellyn tried not to listen.

Reggie and Mabel were both quick writers. It was not long before they were able to rise with their task completed and place the results before the party of the first part.

'Here's a pen,' said Mabel.

'And here's where you sign,
’
said Reggie. 'Where my thumb is.'

'But don't sign the thumb,' said Mabel. 'Ha, ha.
’
'Ha, ha,' said Reggie.

They were both delightfully jolly and breezy about the whole thing, and their gaiety seemed to burn into Ivor Llewellyn's soul like vitriol. His suffering as he affixed his signature was indeed so manifest that Mabel Spence's heart was touched. She determined that sunshine should now enter his life in compensation for the rain which had been falling into it.

'That certainly is a cute mouse, Miss Butterwick,' she said, and Mr Llewellyn shook with emotion and made a blot 'You wouldn't part with it, would you?'

'Good Lord, no !
' cried Monty, shocked.

'Oh, I couldn't,' said Gertrude.

Mabel nodded.

‘I
was afraid not,' she said. 'I was hoping we could get that mouse for Josephine, Ikey.'

'Oh, yeah?' said Mr Llewellyn guardedly. This was the first he had heard of Josephine.

'Ikey,' explained Mabel, 'has a little crippled niece, and she had set her heart on a Mickey Mouse.'

Gertrude stirred uneasily. Monty stirred uneasily. Mr Llewellyn stirred hopefully. He did not like Mabel, but he liked her work. He gazed at her with a sudden sharp admiration. That 'crippled'. Exactly the touch the treatment needed to make it box-office.

'Crippled?' said Monty.

'Crip-pippled?' said Gertrude.

'She was run over by a car last year.
’

'A Rolls-Royce,' said Mr Llewellyn, who liked to do things well.

'And she has been on her back ever since. Ah, well,' said Mabel, with a sigh,
‘I
must go and hunt round the stores. Though I'm afraid they won't have just the right thing. It's so difficult to get exactly the kind she wants. You know how fanciful children are when they are ill and suffering -'

'She has golden hair,' said Mr Llewellyn.

'Monty,' said Reggie, who knew that his employer liked Service and Cooperation, 'are you going to be such a low-down hound as to withhold that mouse from this poor blighted child?'

'And blue eyes,
’
said Mr Llewellyn.

'Monty!' cried Gertrude appealingly. 'Absolutely,' said Monty.

'Of course she must have it, poor little thing,
’
said Gertrude
’
'I wouldn't dream of keeping it.'

"Well spoken, my young hockey-knocker,' said Reggie cordially, if perhaps a little patronizingly.

'You're sure?' said Mabel.

'Of course, of course,' said Gertrude, who had been eyeing Reggie in a rather unpleasant manner. 'Here it is, Mr Llewellyn.'

It was plainly something of a wrench for her to part with the precious object, and a really nice-minded man might have accepted it with a certain show of reluctance and hesitation. Mr Llewellyn snatched at it like a monkey jumping for a coconut. The next moment, he was backing towards the door, as if fearful of second thoughts.

At the door, he seemed to realize that he had fallen
a
little short of polish and courtesy.

'Well, say...' he began.

It is probable that he was meditating
a
stately speech of thanks. But the words would not come. He stood for an instant, beaming uncertainly. Then he was gone. And as the door closed behind him, the telephone rang.

Reggie went to answer it.

'Hullo? ... Right. Send him up. Albert Peasemarch below,' he said, 'demanding audience.' Monty smote his brow.

'Good Lord! I never tipped him! and I was in his state
’
room half the voyage.'

In the interval which elapsed between the announcing of Albert Peasemarch and the appearance of Albert Peasemarch in the flesh, an informal debate took place in the sitting-room concerning the ethics of the thing. Lottie Blossom was anti-Peasemarch. She maintained that if this line of behaviour was to be allowed to continue and develop - if, that was to say, stewards of ocean liners were to be permitted to pursue forgetful clients to New York hotels, it would not be long before they started hunting them all over America with dogs. Reggie, more charitable, said that justice was justice and Monty ought to have slipped the fellow something. Monty was busy trying to secure two fives for a ten.