Part 23 (1/2)
Mr. Lobel in his private office was telling it to Vice President Quinlan and Secretary-Treasurer Geltfin, the only two among his a.s.sociates that his messenger had been able to find about the executive department at the moment. He continued:
”Coming like a complete shock, you could 'a' knocked me down with a feather, I a.s.sure you. For a minute I couldn't believe it. This doctor he has to say it to me twice before I get it into my head.
Shocking--huh? Sudden--huh? Awful--what? You bet you! That poor girl, for her my heart is bleeding. Dead and gone like that, with absolutely practically no warning! It don't seem possible! Taken down day before yesterday, the doctor says, and commenced getting from bad to worse right away. And this morning she goes out of her head and at two-forty-five this afternoon all of a sudden her heart gives out on her and she is dead before anybody knows it. Awful, awful!”
Mr. Lobel wagged a mournful poll.
”More than awful--actually it is horrifying!” quoth Mr. Geltfin. Visibly at least his distress seemed greater than the distress of either of the others. ”All off alone up there by herself in some little rube town it must come to her! Maybe if she had been down here with specialists and surgeons and nurses and all she would 'a' been saved. Too bad, too bad!
People got no business going away from a big town! Me, I get nervous even on a motor trip in the country and--”
”Everything possible which could be done was done,” resumed Mr. Lobel.
”So you don't need you should worry there, Geltfin. The doctor tells me he can't get no regular trained nurse on account there is so much sickness from this flu and no regular nurses there anyway, but he tells me he brings in his wife which she understands nursing and he says the wife sticks right there day and night and gives every attention. There ain't nothing we should reproach ourselves about, and besides we didn't know even she was sick--n.o.body knew.
”Dead and gone, poor girl, and not one week ago--six days, if I got to be exact--she is sitting right there in that same seat where you're sitting now, Geltfin, looking just as natural and healthy as what you look, Geltfin; looking just as if nothing is ever going to happen to her.”
Mr. Geltfin had hastily risen and moved nearer the outer door.
”An awful thing--that flu!” he declared. ”Lobel, do you think maybe she could 'a' had the germs of it on her then?”
”Don't be a coward, Geltfin!” rebuked his senior severely. ”Look at me how I am not frightened, and yet it was me she seen last, not you!
Besides, only to-day I am reading where that big doctor in Cincinnati, Ohio--Silverwater--says it is not a disease which you could catch from somebody else until after they have actually got down sick with it. Yes, sir, she sits right there telling me good-by. 'Mr. Lobel,' she says to me--I had just handed her her check--'Mr. Lobel,' she says, 'always to you,' she says, 'I should be grateful. Always to you,' she says, 'I should give thanks that two years ago when I am practically comparatively unknown you should 'a' given me my big chance.' In them very words she says it, and me setting here at this desk listening at her while she said so!
”Well, I ain't lost no time, boys. Before even I sent to find you I already got busy. I've got Appel starting for up there in half an hour in my car to take charge of everything and with orders to spare no expense. The funeral what I am going to give that girl! Well, she deserves it. Always a hard worker, always on the job, always she minds her own business, always she saves her money, always a perfect lady, never throwing any of these here temperamentals, never going off in any of these here highsterics, never making a kick if something goes wrong because it happens I ain't on the lot to run things, never----”
It threatened to become a soliloquy. This time it was Quinlan who interrupted:
”You said it all, Lobel, and it's no need that you should go on saying it any more. The main points, I take it, are that we're all sorry and that we've lost one swell big a.s.set by her dying--only it's lucky for us she didn't take ill before we got through shooting The She-Demon.”
”Lucky? Huh! Actually, lucky ain't the right word for it!” said the president. ”When I think of the fix we should 'a' been in if she hadn't finished up the picture first, I a.s.sure you, boys, it gives me the s.h.i.+vers. Right here and now in the middle of being sorry it gives me the s.h.i.+vers!”
”It does, does it?” There was something so ominous in Mr. Geltfin's sadly ironic remark--something in tone and accent so lugubriously foreboding that his hearers swung about to stare at him. ”It does, does it? Well, all what I've got to say is, Lobel, you've got some s.h.i.+vers coming to you! We've all got some s.h.i.+vers coming to us! Having this girl die on us is bad business!”
”Sure it is,” agreed the head, ”but it might be worse. There's one awful big salary cut off the pay roll and if we can't have her with us no longer there's n.o.body else can have her. And the profits from that last picture should ought to be something positively enormous--stupendous--sensational. Listen! I bet you that from the hour we release----”
”You ain't going to release!” broke in Geltfin, his wizen features sharpening into a peaky mask of grief.
”Don't talk foolishness!” snapped Mr. Lobel. ”For why shouldn't we be going to release?”
”That's it--why?” Mr. Quinlan seconded the demand.
”Because you wouldn't dare do it!” In his desire to make clear his point Mr. Geltfin fairly shoveled the words out of himself, bringing them forth overlapping one another like s.h.i.+ngles on a roof. ”Because the public wouldn't stand for it! Always you brag, Lobel, that you know what the public want! Well then, would the public stand for a picture where a good, decent, straight girl that's dead and will soon be in her grave is for six reels doing all them suggestive vampire stunts like what you yourself, Lobel, made her do? Would the public stand for calling a dead woman names like she-demon? They would not--not in a thousand years--and you should both know it without I should have to tell you! With some pretty rough things we could get by, but with that thing we could never get by! The public, I tell you, would not stand for it. No, sir; when that girl died the picture died with her. You just think it over once!”
Out of popped eyes he glared at them. They glared at him, then they looked at each other. Slowly Mr. Lobel's head drooped forward as though an unseen hand pressed against the back of his neck. Quinlan casting his eyes downward traced with one toe the pattern of the rug under his feet.
On top of one sudden blow, heavy and hard to bear, another now had followed. Since Lobel had become one of the topnotchers with a reputation to maintain, expenses had been climbing by high jumps, but receipts had not kept pace with expenses. There were the vast salaries which even the lesser drawing cards among the stars now demanded--and got. There were war taxes, excess profit taxes, amus.e.m.e.nt taxes. There was to be included in the reckoning the untimely fate of Let Freedom Ring, a vastly costly thing and quickly laughed to death, yet a smarting memory still. Its failure had put a crimp in the edge of the exchequer.
This stroke would run a wide fluting of deficit right through the middle of it.
The pall of silence lasted no longer than it has here taken to describe how it fell and enveloped them. Mr. Geltfin broke the silence without lifting the prevalent gloom. Indeed his words but depressingly served to darken it to a very hue of midnight.