Part 30 (1/2)

”Isn't he simply delicious?” says the leadin' woman, with a fond glance at Delancey.

”Delicious, hey?” he snorts. ”What d'ye think I am--a pie?”

They is a vampire there and she turns up her nose.

”I think he's impossible!” she says. ”He hasn't the slightest conception of art.”

”Lemme alone!” growls Delancey. ”I'm as good a actor as you guys is, if not better. Where d'ye get that art stuff?”

”Heavens!” says the vampire. ”You must have worked all your life to acquire ignorance, for no one was ever _born_ as stupid as you! All you have is your looks.”

[Ill.u.s.tration: ”Heavens!” says the vampire. ”You must have worked a your life to acquire ignorance, for no one was ever _born_ as stupid as you!”]

”Yeh,” snarls Delancey. ”And all Rockefeller's got is a billion!”

At this point Alex stepped in and prevented bloodshed.

Well, Delancey is as big a success as a movie star as Boston is as a town, and within a month he's swept the country like a new dance. That stuff about him bein' a millionaire and willin' to marry the girl which guesses the answer to the mystery in ”What Was Hector's Choice?” caught on with the ladies like cold cream and his handsome map did the rest.

His picture is plastered all over the country and kids which barely knowed their A, B, C's, is familiar with his name. His mail arrives daily in freight cars and Alex had four guys workin' on nothin' but autographin' his photos for ”A Admirer” and ”Your Unknown Friend.”

Alex got a quarter the each for said photos to cover the ”wrapping and mailing charges” and made a nice little profit on the side.

With all this success, though, Delancey Calhoun kept his head. He never appeared at no banquets, addressed meetin's on ”The Future of the Motion Picture Industry,” or as much as glanced at the daily slew of mail. When the dames around the studio cast languis.h.i.+n' glances at his handsome form, he glared at 'em like a infuriated turtle. If one of 'em remarked that it was a nice day by way of startin' a slight flirtation, Delancey would answer that he couldn't help it, and walk away. He never spent a nickel foolishly or at all, and when the auto agents swooped down on him, he borrowed cigars from them and beat it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: When the dames cast languis.h.i.+ng glances at his handsome form, he glared at them like an infuriated turtle.]

The most astonis.h.i.+n' thing, though, was the way he acted about the movies durin' his career as a star. He never stopped claimin' that the whole thing was the bunk and that it was idiotic for a grown person to put on a wig and take off the old banker or the like, when they was only a fifty buck a week actor. He insisted that anything as silly as the movies was could never last and they was more real money in the truckin' business for a man that knew the game as he did and had plenty of wagons. When Alex argues with him and says that many of the big stars makes fifty thousand a year, he tells Alex to stop usin' opium because it'll get him in the end.

At the end of three months, Delancey has made Alex pay him a percentage of the receipts and a salary of a thousand a week, but his opinion of the movie business is unchanged. He explains the fact that he's makin'

plenty of money out of it by sayin' that Alex must be takin' it out of his own pocket and is simply makin' pictures to cover up his real game, which is prob'ly safe crackin'. Alex throws up his hands and lets him be after that one.