Big Money

Margo Dowling

Agnes got off the sleeper dressed from head to foot in black crape. She had put on weight and her face had a grey rumpled look Margo hadn’t noticed on it before. Margo put her head on Agnes’s shoulder and burst out crying right there in the sunny crowded Miami station. They got into the Buick to go out to the beach. Agnes didn’t even notice the car or the uniformed chauffeur or anything. She took Margo’s hand and they sat looking away from each other out into the sunny streets full of slowlymoving people in light clothes. Margo was patting her eyes with her lace handkerchief. “Oughtn’t you to wear black?” Agnes said. “Wouldn’t you feel better if you were wearing black?”

It wasn’t until the blue Buick drew up at the door of the bungalow on the beach and Raymond, the thinfaced mulatto chauffeur, hopped out smiling respectfully to take the bags that Agnes began to notice anything. She cried out, “Oh, what a lovely car.”

Margo showed her through the house and out on the screened porch under the palms facing the purpleblue sea and the green water along the shore and the white breakers. “Oh, it’s too lovely,” Agnes said and let herself drop into a Gloucester hammock sighing. “Oh, I’m so tired.” Then she began to cry again. Margo went to do her face at the long mirror in the hall. “Well,” she said when she came back looking freshpowdered and rosy, “how do you like the house? Some little shack, isn’t it?”

“Oh, we won’t be able to stay here now… What’ll we do now?” Agnes was blubbering. “I know it’s all the wicked unreality of matter… Oh, if he’d only had proper thoughts.”

“Anyway the rent’s paid for another month,” said Margo.

“Oh, but the expense,” sobbed Agnes.

Margo was looking out through the screendoor at a big black tanker on the horizon. She turned her head and talked peevishly over her shoulder. “Well, there’s nothing to keep me from turning over a few options, is there? I tell you what they are having down here’s a boom. Maybe we can make some money. I know everybody who is anybody in this town. You just wait and see, Agnes.”

Eliza, the black maid, brought in a silver coffeeservice and cups and a plate of toast on a silver tray covered by a lace doily. Agnes pushed back her veil, drank some coffee in little gulps and began to nibble at a piece of toast. “Have some preserves on it,” said Margo, lighting herself a cigarette. “I didn’t think you and Frank believed in mourning.”

“I couldn’t help it. It made me feel better. Oh, Margo, have you ever thought that if it wasn’t for our dreadful unbelief they might be with us this day.” She dried her eyes and went back to the coffee and toast. “When’s the funeral?”

“It’s going to be in Minnesota. His folks have taken charge of everything. They think I’m ratpoison.”

“Poor Mr. Anderson… You must be prostrated, you poor child.”

“You ought to see ’em. His brother Jim would take the pennies offa dead man’s eyes. He’s threatening to sue to get back some securities he claims were Charley’s. Well, let him sue. Homer Cassidy’s my lawyer and what he says goes in this town… Agnes, you’ve got to take off those widow’s weeds and act human. What would Frank think if he was here?”

“He is here,” Agnes shrieked and went all to pieces and started sobbing again. “He’s watching over us right now. I know that!” She dried her eyes and sniffed. “Oh, Margie, coming down on the train I’d been thinking that maybe you and Mr. Anderson had been secretly married. He must have left an enormous estate.”

“Most of it is tied up… But Charley was all right, he fixed me up as we went along.”

“But just think of it, two such dreadful things happening in one winter.”

“Agnes,” said Margo, getting to her feet, “if you talk like that I’m going to send you right back to New York… Haven’t I been depressed enough? Your nose is all red. It’s awful… Look, you make yourself at home. I’m going out to attend to some business.” “Oh, I can’t stay here. I feel too strange,” sobbed Agnes. “Well, you can come along if you take off that dreadful veil. Hurry up, I’ve got to meet somebody.”

She made Agnes fix her hair and put on a white blouse. The black dress really was quite becoming to her. Margo made her put on a little makeup. “There, dearie. Now you look lovely,” she said and kissed her.

“Is this really your car?” sighed Agnes as she sank back on the seat of the blue Buick sedan. “I can’t believe it.” “Want to see the registration papers?” said Margo. “All right, Raymond, you know where the broker’s office is.” “I sure do, miss,” said Raymond, touching the shiny visor of his cap as the motor started to hum under the unscratched paint of the hood.

At the broker’s office there was the usual welldressed elderly crowd in sportsclothes filling up the benches, men with panamahats held on knees of Palm Beach suits and linen plusfours, women in pinks and greens and light tan and white crisp dresses. It always affected Margo a little like church, the whispers, the deferential manners, the boys quick and attentive at the long blackboards marked with columns of symbols, the click of the telegraph, the firm voice reading the quotations off the ticker at a desk in the back of the room. As they went in Agnes in an awed voice whispered in Margo’s ear hadn’t she better go and sit in the car until Margo had finished her business. “No, stick around,” said Margo. “You see those boys are chalking up the stockmarket play by play on those blackboards… I’m just beginning to get on to this business.” Two elderly gentlemen with white hair and broadflanged Jewish noses smilingly made room for them on a bench in the back of the room. Several people turned and stared at Margo. She heard a woman’s voice hissing something about Anderson to the man beside her. There was a little stir of whispering and nudging. Margo felt welldressed and didn’t care.

“Well, ma dear young lady,” Judge Cassidy’s voice purred behind her, “buyin’ or sellin’ today?” Margo turned her head. There was the glint of a gold tooth in the smile on the broad red face under the thatch of silvery hair the same color as the grey linen suit which was crossed by another glint of gold in the watchchain looped double across the ample bulge of the judge’s vest. Margo shook her head. “Nothing much doing today,” she said. Judge Cassidy jerked his head and started for the door. Margo got up and followed, pulling Agnes after her. When they got out in the breezy sunshine of the short street that ran to the bathingbeach, Margo introduced Agnes as her guardian angel.

“I hope you won’t disappoint us today the way you did yesterday, ma dear young lady,” began Judge Cassidy. “Perhaps we can induce Mrs. Mandeville…”

“I’m afraid not” broke in Margo. “You see the poor darling’s so tired… She’s just gotten in from New York… You see, Agnes dear, we are going to look at some lots. Raymond will take you home, and lunch is all ordered for you and everything… You just take a nice rest.”

“Oh, of course I do need a rest” said Agnes, flushing. Margo helped her into the Buick that Raymond had just brought around from the parkingplace, kissed her and then walked down the block with the judge to where his Pierce Arrow touringcar stood shiny and glittery in the hot noon sunlight.

The judge drove his own car. Margo sat with him in the front seat. As soon as he’d started the car she said, “Well, what about that check?” “Why, ma dear young lady, I’m very much afraid that no funds means no funds… I presume we can recover from the estate.” “Just in time to make a first payment on a cemetery lot.” “Well, those things do take time… the poor boy seems to have left his affairs in considerable confusion.”

“Poor guy,” said Margo, looking away through the rows of palms at the brown reaches of Biscayne Bay. Here and there on the green islands new stucco construction stuck out raw, like stagescenery out on the sidewalk in the daytime. “Honestly I did the best I could to straighten him out.”

“Of course… Of course he had very considerable holdings… It was that crazy New York life. Down here we take things easily, we know how to let the fruit ripen on the tree.”

“Oranges,” said Margo, “and lemons.” She started to laugh but the judge didn’t join in.

Neither of them said anything for a while. They’d reached the end of the causeway and turned past yellow frame wharfbuildings into the dense traffic of the Miami waterfront. Everywhere new tall buildings iced like layercake were standing up out of scaffolding and builder’s rubbish. Rumbling over the temporary wooden bridge across the Miami River in a roar of concretemixers and a drive of dust from the construction work, Margo said, turning a roundeyed pokerface at the judge, “Well, I guess I’ll have to hock the old sparklers.” The judge laughed and said, “I can assure you the bank will afford you every facility… Don’t bother your pretty little head about it. You hold some very considerable options right now if I’m not mistaken.” “I don’t suppose you could lend me a couple of grand to run on on the strength of them, judge.”

They were running on a broad new concrete road through dense tropical scrub. “Ma dear young lady,” said Judge Cassidy in his genial drawl, “I couldn’t do that for your own sake… think of the false interpretations… the idle gossip. We’re a little oldfashioned down here. We’re easygoin’ but once the breath of scandal… Why, even drivin’ with such a charmin’ passenger through the streets of Miamah is a folly, a very pleasant folly. But you must realize, ma dear young lady… A man in ma position can’t afford… Don’t misunderstand ma motive, ma dear young lady. I never turned down a friend in ma life… But ma position would unfortunately not be understood that way. Only a husband or a…”

“Is this a proposal, judge?” she broke in sharply. Her eyes were stinging. It was hard keeping back the tears.

“Just a little advice to a client…” The judge sighed. “Unfortunately I’m a family man.”

“How long is this boom going to last?”

“I don’t need to remind you what type of animal is born every minute.”

“No need at all” said Margo gruffly.

They were driving into the parkinglot behind the great new caramelcolored hotel. As she got out of the car Margo said, “Well, I guess some of them can afford to lose their money but we can’t, can we, judge?” “Ma dear young lady, there’s no such word in the bright lexicon of youth.” The judge was ushering her into the diningroom in his fatherly way. “Ah, there are the boys now.”

At a round table in the center of the crowded diningroom sat two fatfaced young men with big mouths wearing pinkstriped shirts and nilegreen wash neckties and white suits. They got up still chewing and pumped Margo’s hand when the judge presented them. They were twins. As they sat down again one of them winked and shook a fat forefinger. “We used to see you at the Palms, girlie, naughty naughty.”

“Well, boys,” said the judge, “how’s tricks?” “Couldn’t be better,” one of them said with his mouth full. “You see, boys,” said the judge, “this young lady wants to make a few small investments with a quick turnover…” The twins grunted and went on chewing.

After lunch the judge drove them all down to the Venetian Pool where William Jennings Bryan sitting in an armchair on the float under a striped awning was talking to the crowd. From where they were they couldn’t hear what he was saying, only the laughter and hand-clapping of the crowd in the pauses. “Do you know, judge,” said one of the twins, as they worked their way through the fringes of the crowd around the pool, “if the old boy hadn’t wasted his time with politics, he’d a made a great auctioneer.”

Margo began to feel tired and wilted. She followed the twins into the realestateoffice full of perspiring men in shirtsleeves. The judge got her a chair. She sat there tapping with her white kid foot on the tiled floor with her lap full of blueprints. The prices were all so high. She felt out of her depth and missed Mr. A to buy for her, he’d have known what to buy sure. Outside, the benches on the lawn were crowded. Bawling voices came from everywhere. The auction was beginning. The twins on the stand were waving their arms and banging with their hammers. The judge was striding around behind Margo’s chair talking boom to anybody who would listen. When he paused for breath she looked up at him and said, “Judge Cassidy, could you get me a taxi?” “Ma dear young lady, I’ll drive you home myself. It’ll be a pleasure.” “O.K.,” said Margo. “You are very wise,” whispered Judge Cassidy in her ear.

As they were walking along the edge of the crowd one of the twins they’d had lunch with left the auctioneer’s stand and dove through the crowd after them. “Miss Dowlin’,” he said, “kin me an’ Al come to call?” “Sure,” said Margo, smiling. “Name’s in the phonebook under Dowling.” “We’ll be around.” And he ran back to the stand where his brother was pounding with his hammer. She’d been afraid she hadn’t made a hit with the twins. Now she felt the tired lines smoothing out of her face.

“Well, what do you think of the great development of Coral Gables?” said the judge as he helped her into the car. “Somebody must be making money,” said Margo dryly.

Once in the house she pulled off her hat and told Raymond, who acted as butler in the afternoons, to make some martini cocktails, found the judge a cigar and then excused herself for a moment. Upstairs she found Agnes sitting in her room in a lavender negligee manicuring her nails at the dressingtable. Without saying a word Margo dropped on the bed and began to cry. Agnes got up looking big and flabby and gentle and came over to the bed. “Why, Margie, you never cry…” “I know I don’t,” sobbed Margo, “but it’s all so awful… Judge Cassidy’s down there, you go and talk to him…” “Poor little girl. Surely I will but it’s you he’ll be wanting to see… You’ve been through too much.” “I won’t go back to the chorus… I won’t,” Margo sobbed. “Oh, no, I wouldn’t like that… But I’ll go down now… I feel really rested for the first time in months,” said Agnes.

When Margo was alone she stopped bawling at once. “Why, I’m as bad as Agnes,” she muttered to herself as she got to her feet. She turned on the water for a bath. It was late by the time she’d gotten into an afternoondress and come downstairs. The judge looked pretty glum. He sat puffing at the butt of a cigar and sipping at a cocktail while Agnes talked to him about Faith.

He perked up when he saw Margo coming down the stairs. She put some dancemusic on the phonograph. “When I’m in your house I’m like that famed Grecian sage in the house of the sirens… I forget hometies, engagements, everything,” said the judge, coming toward her onestepping. They danced. Agnes went upstairs again. Margo could see that the judge was just on the edge of making a pass at her. She was wondering what to do about it when Cliff Wegman was suddenly ushered into the room. The judge gave the young man a scared suspicious look. Margo could see he thought he was going to be framed.

“Why, Mr. Wegman, I didn’t know you were in Miami.” She took the needle off the record and stopped the phonograph. “Judge Cassidy, meet Mr. Wegman.” “Glad to meet you, judge. Mr. Anderson used to talk about you. I was his personal secretary.” Cliff looked haggard and nervous. “I just pulled into this little old town,” he said. “I hope I’m not intruding.” He grinned at Margo. “Well, I’m woiking for the Charles Anderson estate now.”

“Poor fellow,” said Judge Cassidy, getting to his feet. “I had the honor of bein’ quite a friend of Lieutenant Anderson’s…” Shaking his head he walked across the soft plumcolored carpet to Margo. “Well, ma dear young lady, you must excuse me. But duty calls. This was indeed delightful.” Margo went out with him to his car. The rosy evening was fading into dusk. A mockingbird was singing in a peppertree beside the house. “When can I bring the jewelry?” Margo said, leaning towards the judge over the front seat of the car. “Perhaps you better come to my office tomorrow noon. We’ll go over to the bank together. Of course the appraisal will have to be at the expense of the borrower.” “O.K. and by that time I hope you’ll have thought of some way I can turn it over quick. What’s the use of having a boom if you don’t take advantage of it?” The judge leaned over to kiss her. His wet lips brushed against her ear as she pulled her head away. “Be yourself, judge,” she said.

In the livingroom Cliff was striding up and down fit to be tied. He stopped in his tracks and came towards her with his fists clenched as if he were going to hit her. He was chewing gum; the thin jaw moving from side to side gave him a face like a sheep. “Well, the boss soitenly done right by little Orphan Annie.”

“Well, if that’s all you came down here to tell me you can just get on the train and go back home.”

“Look here, Margo, I’ve come on business.”

“On business?” Margo let herself drop into a pink overstuffed chair. “Sit down, Cliff… but you didn’t need to come barging in here like a process server. Is it about Charley’s estate?”

“Estate hell… I want you to marry me. The pickin’s are slim right now but I’ve got a big career ahead.”

Margo let out a shriek and let her head drop on the back of the chair. She got to laughing and couldn’t stop laughing. “No, honestly, Cliff,” she spluttered. “But I don’t want to marry anybody just now… Why, Cliff, you sweet kid. I could kiss you.” He came over and tried to hug her. She got to her feet and pushed him away. “I’m not going to let things like that interfere with my career either.”

Cliff frowned. “I won’t marry an actress… You’d have to can that stuff.”

Margo got to laughing again. “Not even a movingpicture actress?”

“Aw, hell, all you do is kid and I’m nuts about you.” He sat down on the davenport and wrung his head between his hands. She moved over and sat down beside him. “Forget it, Cliff.”

Cliff jumped up again. “I can tell you one thing, you won’t get anywheres fooling around with that old buzzard Cassidy. He’s a married man and so crooked he has to go through a door edgeways. He gypped hell out of the boss in that airport deal. Hell… That’s probably no news to you. You probably were in on it and got your cut first thing… And then you think it’s a whale of a joke when a guy comes all the way down to the jumpingoff place to offer you the protection of his name. All right, I’m through. Good… night.” He went out slamming the glass doors into the hall so hard that a pane of glass broke and tinkled down to the floor.

Agnes rushed in from the diningroom. “Oh, how dreadful,” she said. “I was listening. I thought maybe poor Mr. Anderson had left a trustfund for you.” “That boy’s got bats in his belfry,” said Margo. A minute later the phone rang. It was Cliff with tears in his voice, apologizing, asking if he couldn’t come back to talk it over. “Not on your tintype,” said Margo and hung up. “Well, Agnes,” said Margo as she came from the telephone, “that’s that… We’ve got to figure these things out… Cliff’s right about that old fool Cassidy. He never was in the picture anyways.” “Such a dignified man,” said Agnes, making clucking noises with her tongue.

Raymond announced dinner. Margo and Agnes ate alone, each at one end of the long mahogany table covered with doilies and silverware. The soup was cold and too salty. “I’ve told that damn girl a hundred times not to do anything to the soup but take it out of the can and heat it,” Margo said peevishly. “Oh, Agnes, please do the housekeeping… I can’t get ’em to do anything right.” “Oh, I’d love to,” said Agnes. “Of course I’ve never kept house on a scale like this.” “We’re not going to either,” said Margo. “We’ve got to cut down.”

“I guess I’d better write Miss Franklyn to see if she’s got another job for me.”

“You just wait a little while,” said Margo. “We can stay on here for a couple months. I’ve got an idea it would do Tony good down here. Suppose we send him his ticket to come down? Do you think he’d sell it on me and hit the dope again?” “But he’s cured. He told me himself he’d straightened out completely.” Agnes began to blubber over her plate. “Oh, Margo, what an openhanded girl you are… just like your poor mother… always thinking of others.”

When Tony got to Miami he looked pale as a mealyworm but lying on the beach in the sun and dips in the breakers soon got him into fine shape. He was good as gold and seemed very grateful and helped Agnes with the housework, as they’d let the maids go; Agnes declared she couldn’t do anything with them and would rather do the work herself. When men Margo knew came around she introduced him as a Cuban relative. But he and Agnes mostly kept out of sight when she had company. Tony was tickled to death when Margo suggested he learn to drive the car. He drove fine right away, so they could let Raymond go. One day when he was getting ready to drive her over to meet some big realtors at Cocoanut Grove, Margo suggested, just as a joke, that Tony try to see if Raymond’s old uniform wouldn’t fit him. He looked fine in it. When she suggested he wear it when he drove her he went into a tantrum, and talked about honor and manhood. She cooled him down saying that the whole thing was a joke and he said, well, if it was a joke, and wore it. Margo could tell he kinder liked the uniform because she saw him looking at himself in it in the pierglass in the hall.

Miami realestate was on the skids, but Margo managed to make a hundred thousand dollars’ profit on the options she held; on paper. The trouble was that she couldn’t get any cash out of her profits.

The twins she’d met at Coral Gables gave her plenty of advice but she was leery, and advice was all they did give her. They were always around in the evenings and Sundays, eating up everything Agnes had in the icebox and drinking all the liquor and talking big about the good things they were going to put youall onto. Agnes said she never shook the sand out of her beachslippers without expecting to find one of the twins in it. And they never came across with any parties either, didn’t even bring around a bottle of scotch once in a while. Agnes was kinder soft on them because Al made a fuss over her while Ed was trying to make Margo. One Sunday when they’d all been lying in the sun on the beach and sopping up cocktails all afternoon Ed broke into Margo’s room when she was dressing after they’d come in to change out of their bathingsuits and started tearing her wrapper off her. She gave him a poke but he was drunk as a fool and came at her worse than ever. She had to yell for Tony to come in and play the heavy husband. Tony was white as a sheet and trembled all over, but he managed to pick up a chair and was going to crown Ed with it when Al and Agnes came in to see what the racket was about. Al stuck by Ed and gave Tony a poke and yelled that he was a pimp and that they were a couple of goddam whores. Margo was scared. They never would have got them out of the house if Agnes hadn’t gone to the phone and threatened to call the police. The twins said nothing doing, the police were there to run women like them out of town, but they got into their clothes and left and that was the last Margo saw of them.

After they’d gone Tony had a crying fit and said that he wasn’t a pimp and that this life was impossible and that he’d kill himself if she didn’t give him money to go back to Havana. To get Tony to stay they had to promise to get out of Miami as soon as they could. “Now, Tony, you know you want to go to California,” Agnes kept saying and petting him like a baby. “Sandflies are getting too bad on the beach anyway,” said Margo. She went down in the livingroom and shook up another cocktail for them all. “The bottom’s dropped out of this dump. Time to pull out,” she said. “I’m through.”

It was a sizzling hot day when they piled the things in the Buick and drove off up U.S. 1 with Tony, not in his uniform but in a new waspwaisted white linen suit, at the wheel. The Buick was so piled with bags and household junk there was hardly room for Agnes in the back seat. Tony’s guitar was slung from the ceiling. Margo’s wardrobetrunk was strapped on behind. “My goodness,” said Agnes when she came back from the restroom of the fillingstation in West Palm Beach where they’d stopped for gas, “we look like a traveling tentshow.”

Between them they had about a hundred dollars in cash that Margo had turned over to Agnes to keep in her black handbag. The first day Tony would talk about nothing but the hit he’d make in the movies. “If Valentino can do it, it will be easy for me,” he’d say, craning his neck to see his clear brown profile in the narrow drivingmirror at the top of the windshield.

At night they stopped in touristcamps, all sleeping in one cabin to save money, and ate out of cans. Agnes loved it. She said it was like the old days when they were on the Keith circuit and Margo was a child actress. Margo said child actress hell, it made her feel like an old crone. Towards afternoon Tony would complain of shooting pains in his wrists and Margo would have to drive.

Along the gulf coast of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana the roads were terrible. It was a relief when they got into Texas, though the weather there was showery. They thought they never would get across the state of Texas, though. Agnes said she didn’t know there was so much alfalfa in the world. In El Paso they had to buy two new tires and get the brakes fixed. Agnes began to look worried when she counted over the roll of bills in her purse. The last couple of days across the desert to Yuma they had nothing to eat but one can of baked beans and a bunch of frankfurters. It was frightfully hot but Agnes wouldn’t even let them get Coca-Cola at the dustylooking drugstores in the farbetween little towns because she said they had to save every cent if they weren’t going to hit Los Angeles deadbroke. As they were wallowing along in the dust of the unfinished highway outside of Yuma, a shinylooking S.P. expresstrain passed them, big new highshouldered locomotive, pullmancars, diner, clubcar with girls and men in light suits lolling around on the observation platform. The train passed slowly and the colored porters leaning out from the pullmans grinned and waved. Margo remembered her trips to Florida in a drawingroom and sighed. “Don’t worry, Margie,” chanted Agnes from the back seat. “We’re almost there.” “But where? Where? That’s what I want to know,” said Margo, with tears starting into her eyes. The car went over a bump that almost broke the springs. “Never mind,” said Tony, “when I make the orientations I shall be making thousands a week and we shall travel in a private car.”

In Yuma they had to stop in the hotel because the camps were all full and that set them back plenty. They were all in, the three of them, and Margo woke up in the night in a high fever from the heat and dust and fatigue. In the morning the fever was gone, but her eyes were puffed up and red and she looked a sight. Her hair needed washing and was stringy and dry as a handful of tow.

The next day they were too tired to enjoy it when they went across the high fragrant mountains and came out into the San Bernardino valley full of wellkept fruittrees, orangegroves that still had a few flowers on them, and coolsmelling irrigation ditches. In San Bernardino Margo said she’d have to have her hair washed if it was the last thing she did on this earth. They still had twentyfive dollars that Agnes had saved out of the housekeeping money in Miami, that she hadn’t said anything about. While Margo and Agnes went to a beautyparlor, they gave Tony a couple of dollars to go around and get the car washed. That night they had a regular fiftycent dinner in a restaurant and went to a movingpicture show. They slept in a nice roomy cabin on the road to Pasadena in a camp the woman at the beautyparlor had told them about, and the next morning they set out early before the white clammy fog had lifted.

The road was good and went between miles and miles of orangegroves. By the time they got to Pasadena the sun had come out and Agnes and Margo declared it was the loveliest place they’d ever seen in their lives. Whenever they passed a particularly beautiful residence Tony would point at it with his finger and say that was where they’d live as soon as he had made the orientations.

They saw signs pointing to Hollywood, but somehow they got through the town without noticing it, and drew up in front of a small rentingoffice in Santa Monica. All the furnished bungalows the man had listed were too expensive and the man insisted on a month’s rent in advance, so they drove on. They ended up in a dusty stucco bungalow court in the outskirts of Venice where the man seemed impressed by the blue Buick and the wardrobetrunk and let them take a place with only a week paid in advance. Margo thought it was horrid but Agnes was in the highest spirits. She said Venice reminded her of Holland’s in the old days. “That’s what gives me the sick,” said Margo. Tony went in and collapsed on the couch and Margo had to get the neighbors to help carry in the bags and wardrobetrunk. They lived in that bungalow court for more months than Margo ever liked to admit even at the time.

Margo registered at the agency as Margo de Garrido. She got taken on in society scenes as extra right away on account of her good clothes and a kind of a way of wearing them she had that she’d picked up at old Piquot’s. Tony sat in the agency and loafed around outside the gate of any studio where there was a Spanish or South American picture being cast, wearing a broadbrimmed Cordoba hat he’d bought at a costumer’s and tightwaisted trousers and sometimes cowboy boots and spurs, but the one thing there always seemed to be enough of was Latin types. He turned morose and peevish and took to driving the car around filled up with simpering young men he’d picked up, until Margo put her foot down and said it was her car and nobody else’s, and not to bring his fagots around the house either. He got sore at that and walked out, but Agnes, who did the housekeeping and handled all the money Margo brought home, wouldn’t let him have any pocketmoney until he’d apologized. Tony was away two days and came back looking hungry and hangdog.

After that Margo made him wear the old chauffeur’s uniform when he drove her to the lot. She knew that if he wore that he wouldn’t go anywhere after he’d left her except right home to change and then Agnes could take the car key. Margo would come home tired from a long day on the lot to find that he’d been hanging round the house all day strumming It Ain’t Gonna Rain No More on his guitar, and sleeping and yawning on all the beds and dropping cigaretteashes everywhere. He said Margo had ruined his career. What she hated most about him was the way he yawned.

One Sunday, after they had been three years in the outskirts of L.A., moving from one bungalow to another, Margo getting on the lots fairly consistently as an extra, but never getting noticed by a director, managing to put aside a little money to pay the interest but never getting together enough in a lump sum to bail out her jewelry at the bank in Miami, they had driven up to Altadena in the afternoon; on the way back they stopped at a garage to get a flat fixed; out in front of the garage there were some secondhand cars for sale. Margo walked up and down looking at them to have something to do while they were waiting. “You wouldn’t like a Rolls-Royce, would you, lady?” said the garage attendant kind of kidding as he pulled the jack out from under the car. Margo climbed into the big black limousine with a red coatofarms on the door and tried the seat. It certainly was comfortable. She leaned out and said, “How much is it?” “One thousand dollars… it’s a gift at the price.” “Cheap at half the price,” said Margo. Agnes had gotten out of the Buick and come over. “Are you crazy, Margie?”

“Maybe,” said Margo and asked how much they’d allow her if she traded in the Buick. The attendant called the boss, a toadfaced young man with a monogram on his silk shirt. He and Margo argued back and forth for an hour about the price. Tony tried driving the car and said it ran like a dream. He was all pepped up at the idea of driving a Rolls, even an old one. In the end the man took the Buick and five hundred dollars in tendollar weekly payments. They signed the contract then and there, Margo gave Judge Cassidy’s and Tad Whittlesea’s names as references; they changed the plates and drove home that night in the Rolls-Royce to Santa Monica where they were living at the time. As they turned into Santa Monica Boulevard at Beverly Hills, Margo said carelessly, “Tony, isn’t that mailed hand holding a sword very much like the coatofarms of the Counts de Garrido?” “These people out here are so ignorant they wouldn’t know the difference,” said Tony. “We’ll just leave it there,” said Margo. “Sure,” said Tony, “it looks good.”

The other extras surely stared when Tony in his trim grey uniform drove her down to the lot next day, but Margo kept her pokerface. “It’s just the old family bus,” she said when a girl asked her about it. “It’s been in hock.” “Is that your mother?” the girl asked again, pointing with her thumb at Agnes who was driving away sitting up dressed in her best black in the back of the huge shiny car with her nose in the air. “Oh, no,” said Margo coldly. “That’s my companion.”

Plenty of men tried to date Margo up, but they were mostly extras or cameramen or propertymen or carpenters and she and Agnes didn’t see that it would do her any good to mix up with them. It was a lonely life after all the friends and the guys crazy about her and the business deals and everything in Miami. Most nights she and Agnes just played Russian bank or threehanded bridge if Tony was in and not too illtempered to accommodate. Sometimes they went to the movies or to the beach if it was warm enough. They drove out through the crowds on Hollywood Boulevard nights when there was an opening at Grauman’s Chinese Theater. The Rolls looked so fancy and Margo still had a good eveningdress not too far out of style so that everybody thought they were filmstars.

One dusty Saturday afternoon in midwinter Margo was feeling particularly desperate because styles had changed so she couldn’t wear her old dresses any more and didn’t have any money for new; she jumped up from her seat knocking the pack of solitaire cards onto the floor and shouted to Agnes that she had to have a little blowout or she’d go crazy. Agnes said why didn’t they drive to Palm Springs to see the new resort hotel. They’d eat dinner there if it wouldn’t set them back too much and then spend the night at a touristcamp down near the Salton Sea. Give them a chance to get the chill of the Los Angeles fog out of their bones.

When they got to Palm Springs Agnes thought everything looked too expensive and wanted to drive right on, but Margo felt in her element right away. Tony was in his uniform and had to wait for them in the car. He looked so black in the face Margo thought he’d burst when she told him to go and get himself some supper at a dogwagon, but he didn’t dare answer back because the doorman was right there.

They’d been to the ladies’ room to freshen their faces up and were walking up and down under the big datepalms looking at the people to see if they could recognize any movie actors, when Margo heard a voice that was familiar. A dark thinfaced man in white serge who was chatting with an importantlooking baldheaded Jewish gentleman was staring at her. He left his friend and came up. He had a stiff walk like an officer reviewing a company drawn up at attention. “Miss Dowling,” he said, “how very lucky for both of us.” Margo looked smiling into the twitching sallow face with dark puffs under the eyes. “You’re the photographer,” she said.

He stared at her hard. “Sam Margolies,” he said. “Well, I’ve searched all over America and Europe for you… Please be in my office for a screentest at ten o’clock tomorrow… Irwin will give you the details.” He waved his hand lackadaisically towards the fat man. “Meet Mr. Harris… Miss Dowling… forgive me, I never take upon myself the responsibility of introducing people… But I want Irwin to see you… this is one of the most beautiful women in America, Irwin.” He drew his hand down in front of Margo a couple of inches from her face working the fingers as if he were modeling something out of clay. “Ordinarily it would be impossible to photograph her.

Only I can put that face on the screen…” Margo felt cold all up her spine. She heard Agnes’s mouth come open with a gasp behind her. She let a slow kidding smile start in the corners of her mouth. “Look, Irwin,” cried Margolies, grabbing the fat man by the shoulder. “It is the spirit of comedy… But why didn’t you come to see me?” He spoke with a strong foreign accent of some kind. “What have I done that you should neglect me?”

Margo looked bored. “This is Mrs. Mandeville, my… companion… We are taking a little look at California.”

“What’s there here except the studios?”

“Perhaps you’d show Mrs. Mandeville around a movingpicture studio. She’s so anxious to see one, and I don’t know a soul in this part of the world… not a soul.”

“Of course I’ll have someone take you to all you care to see tomorrow. Nothing to see but dullness and vulgarity… Irwin, that’s the face I’ve been looking for for the little blonde girl… you remember… You talk to me of agencies, extras, nonsense, I don’t want actors… But, Miss Dowling, where have you been? I halfexpected to meet you at Baden-Baden last summer… You are the type for Baden-Baden. It’s a ridiculous place but one has to go somewhere… Where have you been?”

“Florida… Havana… that sort of thing.” Margo was thinking to herself that the last time she met him he hadn’t been using the broad a.

“And you’ve given up the stage?”

Margo gave a little shrug. “The family were so horrid about it.” “Oh, I never liked her being on the stage,” cried Agnes who’d been waiting for a chance to put a word in. “You’ll like working in pictures,” said the fat man soothingly. “My dear Margo,” said Margolies, “it is not a very large part but you are perfect for it, perfect. I can bring out in you the latent mystery… Didn’t I tell you, Irwin, that the thing to do was to go out of the studio and see the world… open the book of life?… In this ridiculous caravanserai we find the face, the spirit of comedy, the smile of the Mona Lisa… That’s a famous painting in Paris said to be worth five million dollars… Don’t ask me how I knew she would be here… But I knew. Of course we cannot tell definitely until after the screentest… I never commit myself…”

“But, Mr. Margolies, I don’t know if I can do it,” Margo said, her heart pounding. “We’re in a rush… We have important business to attend to in Miami… family matters, you understand.”

“That’s of no importance. I’ll find you an agent… we’ll send somebody… Petty details are of no importance to me. Realestate, I suppose.”

Margo nodded vaguely.

“A couple of years ago the house where we’d been living, it was so lovely, was washed clear out to sea,” said Agnes breathlessly.

“You’ll get a better house… Malibu Beach, Beverly Hills… I hate houses… But I have been rude, I have detained you… But you will forget Miami. We have everything out here… You remember, Margo dearest, I told you that day that pictures had a great future… you and… you know, the great automobile magnate, I have forgotten his name… I told you you would hear of me in the pictures… I rarely make predictions, but I am never wrong. They are based on belief in a sixth sense.”

“Oh, yes,” interrupted Agnes, “it’s so true, if you believe you’re going to succeed you can’t fail, that’s what I tell Margie…”

“Very beautifully said, dear lady… Miss Dowling darling, Continental Attractions at ten… I’ll have somebody stationed at the gate so that they’ll let your chauffeur drive right to my office. It is impossible to reach me by phone. Even Irwin can’t get at me when I am working on a picture. It will be an experience for you to see me at work.”

“Well, if I can manage it and my chauffeur can find the way.”

“You’ll come,” said Margolies and dragged Irwin Harris away by one short white flannel arm into the diningroom. Welldressed people stared after them as they went. Then they were staring at Margo and Agnes. “Let’s go to the dogwagon and tell Tony. They’ll just think we are eccentric,” whispered Margo in Agnes’s ear. “I declare I never imagined that Margolies was him.”

“Oh, isn’t it wonderful,” said Agnes.

They were so excited they couldn’t eat. They drove back to Santa Monica that night and Margo went straight to bed so as to be rested for the next morning.

Next morning when they got to the lot at a quarter of ten Mr. Margolies hadn’t sent word. Nobody had heard of an appointment. They waited half an hour. Agnes was having trouble keeping back the tears. Margo was laughing. “I bet that bozo was full of hop or something and forgot all about it.” But she felt sick inside. Tony had just started the motor and was about to pull away because Margo didn’t like being seen waiting at the gate like that when a white Pierce Arrow custombuilt towncar with Margolies all in white flannel with a white beret sitting alone in the back drove up alongside. He was peering into the Rolls-Royce and she could see him start with surprise when he recognized her. He tapped on the window of his car with a porcelainheaded cane. Then he got out of his car and reached in and took Margo by the hand. “I never apologize… It is often necessary for me to keep people waiting. You will come with me. Perhaps your friend will call for you at five o’clock… I have much to tell you and to show you.”

They went upstairs in the elevator in a long plainfaced building. He ushered her through several offices where young men in their shirtsleeves were working at draftingboards, stenographers were typing, actors were waiting on benches. “Frieda, a screentest for Miss Dowling right away, please,” he said as he passed a secretary at a big desk in the last room. Then he ushered her into his own office hung with Chinese paintings and a single big carved gothic chair set in the glare of a babyspot opposite a huge carved gothic desk. “Sit there, please… Margo darling, how can I explain to you the pleasure of a face unsmirched by the camera? I can see that there is no strain… You do not care. Celtic freshness combined with insouciance of noble Spain… I can see that you’ve never been before a camera before… Excuse me.” He sank in the deep chair behind his desk and started telephoning. Every now and then a stenographer came and took notes that he recited to her in a low voice. Margo sat and sat. She thought Margolies had forgotten her. The room was warm and stuffy and began to make her feel sleepy. She was fighting to keep her eyes open when Margolies jumped up from his desk and said, “Come, darling, we’ll go down now.”

Margo stood around for a while in front of some cameras in a plasterysmelling room in the basement and then Margolies took her to lunch at the crowded restaurant on the lot. She could feel that everybody was looking up from their plates to see who the new girl was that Margolies was taking to lunch. While they ate he asked her questions about her life on a great sugarplantation in Cuba, and her debutante girlhood in New York. Then he talked about Carlsbad and Baden-Baden and Marienbad and how Southern California was getting over its early ridiculous vulgarity: “We have everything here that you can find anywhere,” he said.

After lunch they went to see the rushes in the projectionroom. Mr. Harris turned up too, smoking a cigar. Nobody said anything as they looked at Margo’s big grey and white face, grinning, turning, smirking, mouth opening and closing, head tossing, eyes rolling. It made Margo feel quite sick looking at it, though she loved still photographs of herself. She couldn’t get used to its being so big. Now and then Mr. Harris would grunt and the end of his cigar would glow red. Margo felt relieved when the film was over and they were in the dark again. Then the lights were on and they were filing out of the projectionroom past a redfaced operator in shirtsleeves who had thrown open the door to the little black box where the machine was and gave Margo a look as she passed. Margo couldn’t make out whether he thought she was good or not.

On the landing of the outside staircase Margolies put out his hand coldly and said, “Goodby, dearest Margo… There are a hundred people waiting for me.” Margo thought it was all off. Then he went on, “You and Irwin will make the business arrangements… I have no understanding of those matters… I’m sure you’ll have a very pleasant afternoon.”

He turned back into the projectionroom swinging his cane as he went. Mr. Harris explained that Mr. Margolies would let her know when he wanted her and that meanwhile they would work out the contract. Did she have an agent? If she didn’t he would recommend that they call in his friend Mr. Hardbein to protect her interests.

When she got into the office with Mr. Harris sitting across the desk from her and Mr. Hardbein, a hollowfaced man with a tough kidding manner, sitting beside her, she found herself reading a three-year contract at three hundred a week. “Oh, dear,” she said, “I’m afraid I’d be awfully tired of it after that length of time… Do you mind if I ask my companion Mrs. Mandeville to come around?… I’m so ignorant about these things.” Then she called up Agnes and they fiddled around talking about the weather until Agnes got there.

Agnes was wonderful. She talked about commitments and important business to be transacted and an estate to care for, and said that at that figure it would not be worth Miss Dowling’s while to give up her world cruise, would it, darling, if she appeared in the picture anyway it was only to accommodate an old friend Mr. Margolies and of course Miss Dowling had always made sacrifices for her work, and that she herself made sacrifices for it and if necessary would work her fingers to the bone to give her a chance to have the kind of success she believed in and that she knew she would have because if you believed with an unsullied heart God would bring things about the way they ought to be. Agnes went on to talk about how awful unbelief was and at five o’clock just as the office was closing they went out to the car with a contract for three months at five hundred a week in Agnes’s handbag. “I hope the stores are still open,” Margo was saying. “I’ve got to have some clothes.”

A toughlooking greyfaced man in ridingclothes with light tow hair was sitting in the front seat beside Tony. Margo and Agnes glared at the flat back of his head as they got into the car. “Take us down to Tasker and Harding’s on Hollywood Boulevard… the Paris Gown Shop” Agnes said. “Oh, goody, it’ll be lovely to have you have some new clothes,” she whispered in Margo’s ear.

When Tony let the stranger off at the corner of Hollywood and Sunset, he bowed stiffly and started off up the broad sidewalk. “Tony, I don’t know how many times I’ve told you you couldn’t pick up your friends in my car,” began Margo. She and Agnes nagged at him so that when he got home he was in a passion and said that he was moving out next day. “You have done nothing but exploit me and interfere with my career. That was Max Hirsch. He’s an Austrian count and a famous poloplayer.” Next day sure enough Tony packed his things and left the house.

The five hundred a week didn’t go as far as Agnes and Margo thought it would. Mr. Hardbein the agent took ten percent of it first thing, then Agnes insisted on depositing fifty to pay off the loan in Miami so that Margo could get her jewelry back. Then moving into a new house in the nice part of Santa Monica cost a lot. There was a cook and a housemaid’s wages to pay and they had to have a chauffeur now that Tony had gone. And there were clothes and a publicityman and all kinds of charities and handouts around the studio that you couldn’t refuse. Agnes was wonderful. She attended to everything. Whenever any business matter came up Margo would press her fingers to the two sides of her forehead and let her eyes close for a minute and groan. “It’s too bad but I just haven’t got a head for business.”

It was Agnes who picked out the new house, a Puerto Rican cottage with the cutest balconies, jampacked with antique Spanish furniture. In the evening Margo sat in an easychair in the big livingroom in front of an open fire playing Russian bank with Agnes. They got a few invitations from actors and people Margo met on the lot, but Margo said she wasn’t going out until she found out what was what in this town. “First thing you know we’ll be going around with a bunch of bums who’ll do us more harm than good.” “How true that is,” sighed Agnes. “Like those awful twins in Miami.”

They didn’t see anything of Tony until, one Sunday night that Sam Margolies was coming to the house for the first time, he turned up drunk at about six o’clock and said that he and Max Hirsch wanted to start a polo school and that he had to have a thousand dollars right away. “But, Tony,” said Agnes, “where’s Margie going to get it?… You know just as well as I do how heavy our expenses are.” Tony made a big scene, stormed and cried and said Agnes and Margo had ruined his stage career and that now they were out to ruin his career in pictures. “I have been too patient,” he yelled, tapping himself on the chest. “I have let myself be ruined by women.”

Margo kept looking at the clock on the mantel. It was nearly seven. She finally shelled out twentyfive bucks and told him to come back during the week. “He’s hitting the hop again,” she said after he’d gone. “He’ll go crazy one of these days.” “Poor boy,” sighed Agnes, “he’s not a bad boy, only weak.”

“What I’m scared of is that that heinie’ll get hold of him and make us a lot of trouble… That bird had a face like state’s prison… guess the best thing to do is get a lawyer and start a divorce.” “But think of the publicity,” wailed Agnes. “Anyway,” said Margo, “Tony’s got to pass out of the picture. I’ve taken all I’m going to take from that greaser.”

Sam Margolies came an hour late. “How peaceful,” he was saying. “How can you do it in delirious Hollywood?” “Why, Margie’s just a quiet little workinggirl,” said Agnes, picking up her sewingbasket and starting to sidle out. He sat down in the easychair without taking off his white beret and stretched out his bowlegs towards the fire. “I hate the artificiality of it.” “Don’t you now?” said Agnes from the door.

Margo offered him a cocktail but he said he didn’t drink. When the maid brought out the dinner that Agnes had worked on all day he wouldn’t eat anything but toast and lettuce. “I never eat or drink at mealtimes. I come only to look and to talk.” “That’s why you’ve gotten so thin,” kidded Margo. “Do you remember the way I used to be in those old days? My New York period. Let’s not talk about it. I have no memory. I live only in the present. Now I am thinking of the picture you are going to star in. I never go to parties but you must come with me to Irwin Harris’s tonight. There will be people there you’ll have to know. Let me see your dresses. I’ll pick out what you ought to wear. After this you must always let me come when you buy a dress.” Following her up the creaking stairs to her bedroom he said, “We must have a different setting for you. This won’t do. This is suburban.”

Margo felt funny driving out through the avenues of palms of Beverly Hills sitting beside Sam Margolies. He’d made her put on the old yellow eveningdress she’d bought at Piquot’s years ago that Agnes had recently had done over and lengthened by a little French dressmaker she’d found in Los Angeles. Her hands were cold and she was afraid Margolies would hear her heart knocking against her ribs. She tried to think of something funny to say but what was the use, Margolies never laughed. She wondered what he was thinking. She could see his face, the narrow forehead under his black bang, the pouting lips, the beaklike profile very dark against the streetlights as he sat stiffly beside her with his hands on his knees. He still had on his white flannels and a white stock with a diamond pin in it in the shape of a golfclub. As the car turned into a drive towards a row of bright tall frenchwindows through the trees he turned to her and said, “You are afraid you will be bored… You’ll be surprised. You’ll find we have something here that matches the foreign and New York society you are accustomed to.” As he turned his face towards her the light glinted on the whites of his eyes and sagging pouches under them and the wet broad lips. He went on whispering squeezing her hand as he helped her out of the car. “You will be the most elegant woman there but only as one star is brighter than the other stars.”

Going into the door past the butler Margo caught herself starting to giggle. “How you do go on,” she said. “You talk like a… like a genius.” “That’s what they call me,” said Margolies in a loud voice drawing his shoulders back and standing stiffly at attention to let her go past him through the large glass doors into the vestibule.

The worst of it was going into the dressingroom to take off her wraps. The women who were doing their faces and giving a last pat to their hair all turned and gave her a quick onceover that started at her slippers, ran up her stockings, picked out every hook and eye of her dress, ran round her neck to see if it was wrinkled and up into her hair to see if it was dyed. At once she knew that she ought to have an ermine wrap. There was one old dame standing smoking a cigarette by the lavatory door in a dress all made of cracked ice who had xray eyes; Margo felt her reading the pricetag on her stepins. The colored maid gave Margo a nice toothy grin as she laid Margo’s coat over her arm that made her feel better. When she went out she felt the stares clash together on her back and hang there like a tin can on a dog’s tail. Keep a stiff upper lip, they can’t eat you, she was telling herself as the door of the ladies’ room closed behind her. She wished Agnes was there to tell her how lovely everybody was.

Margolies was waiting for her in the vestibule full of sparkly chandeliers. There was an orchestra playing and they were dancing in a big room. He took her to the fireplace at the end. Irwin Harris and Mr. Hardbein who looked as alike as a pair of eggs in their tight dress suits came up and said goodevening. Margolies gave them each a hand without looking at them and sat down by the fireplace with his back to the crowd in a big carved chair like the one he had in his office. Mr. Harris asked her to dance with him. After that it was like any other collection of dressedup people. At least until she found herself dancing with Rodney Cathcart.

She recognized him at once from the pictures, but it was a shock to find that his face had color in it, and that there was warm blood and muscle under his rakish eveningdress. He was a tall tanned young man with goldfishyellow hair and an English way of mumbling his words. She’d felt cold and shivery until she started to dance with him. After he’d danced with her once he asked her to dance with him again. Between dances he led her to the buffet at the end of the room and tried to get her to drink. She held a scotch and soda in a big blue glass each time and just sipped it while he drank down a couple of scotches straight and ate a large plate of chicken salad. He seemed a little drunk but he didn’t seem to be getting any drunker. He didn’t say anything so she didn’t say anything either. She loved dancing with him.

Every now and then when they danced round the end of the room she caught sight of the whole room in the huge mirror over the fireplace. Once when she got just the right angle she thought she saw Margolies’ face staring at her from out of the carved highbacked chair that faced the burning logs. He seemed to be staring at her attentively. The firelight playing on his face gave it a warm lively look she hadn’t noticed on it before. Immediately blond heads, curly heads, bald heads, bare shoulders, black shoulders got in her way and she lost sight of that corner of the room.

It must have been about twelve o’clock when she found him standing beside the table where the scotch was. “Hello, Sam,” said Rodney Cathcart. “How’s every little thing?” “We must go now, the poor child is tired in all this noise… Rodney, you must let Miss Dowling go now.” “O.K., pal,” said Rodney Cathcart and turned his back to pour himself another glass of scotch.

When Margo came back from getting her wraps she found Mr. Hardbein waiting for her in the vestibule. He bowed as he squeezed her hand. “Well, I don’t mind telling you, Miss Dowling, that you made a sensation. The girls are all asking what you use to dye your hair with.” A laugh rumbled down into his broad vest. “Would you come by my office? We might have a bite of lunch and talk things over a bit.” Margo gave a little shudder. “It’s sweet of you, Mr. Hardbein, but I never go to offices… I don’t understand business… You call us up, won’t you?”

When she got out to the colonial porch there was Rodney Cathcart sitting beside Margolies in the long white car. Margo grinned and got in between them as cool as if she’d expected to find Rodney Cathcart there all the while. The car drove off. Nobody said anything. She couldn’t tell where they were going, the avenues of palms and the strings of streetlamps all looked alike. They stopped at a big restaurant. “I thought we’d better have a little snack… You didn’t eat anything all evening,” Margolies said, giving her hand a squeeze as he helped her out of the car. “That’s the berries,” said Rodney Cathcart who’d hopped out first. “This dawncing makes a guy beastly ’ungry.”

The headwaiter bowed almost to the ground and led them through the restaurant full of eyes to a table that had been reserved for them on the edge of the dancefloor. Margolies ate shreddedwheat biscuits and milk, Rodney Cathcart ate a steak and Margo took on the end of her fork a few pieces of a lobsterpatty. “A blighter needs a drink after that,” grumbled Rodney Cathcart, pushing back his plate after polishing off the last fried potato. Margolies raised two fingers. “Here it is forbidden… How silly we are in this country… How silly they are.” He rolled his eyes towards Margo. She caught a wink in time to make it just a twitch of the eyelid and gave him that slow stopped smile he’d made such a fuss over at Palm Springs. Margolies got to his feet. “Come, Margo darling… I have something to show you.” As she and Rodney Cathcart followed him out across the red carpet she could feel ripples of excitement go through the people in the restaurant the way she’d felt it when she went places in Miami after Charley Anderson had been killed.

Margolies drove them to a big creamcolored apartmenthouse. They went up in an elevator. He opened a door with a latchkey and ushered them in. “This” he said, “is my little bachelor flat.”

It was a big dark room with a balcony at the end hung with embroideries. The walls were covered with all kinds of oilpaintings each lit by a little overhead light of its own. There were oriental rugs piled one on the other on the floor and couches round the walls covered with zebra and lion skins. “Oh, what a wonderful place,” said Margo. Margolies turned to her, smiling. “A bit baronial, eh? The sort of thing you’re accustomed to see in the castle of a Castilian grandee.” “Absolutely,” said Margo. Rodney Cathcart lay down full length on one of the couches. “Say, Sam old top,” he said, “have you got any of that good Canadian ale? ’Ow about a little Guinness in it?”

Margolies went out into a pantry and the swinging door closed behind him. Margo roamed around looking at the brightcolored pictures and the shelves of wriggling Chinese figures. It made her feel spooky.

“Oh, I say,” Rodney Cathcart called from the couch. “Come over here, Margo… I like you… You’ve got to call me Si… My friends call me that. It’s more American.” “All right by me” said Margo, sauntering towards the couch. Rodney Cathcart put out his hand. “Put it there, pal,” he said. When she put her hand in his he grabbed it and tried to pull her towards him on the couch. “Wouldn’t you like to kiss me, Margo?” He had a terrific grip. She could feel how strong he was.

Margolies came back with a tray with bottles and glasses and set it on an ebony stand near the couch. “This is where I do my work,” he said. “Genius is helpless without the proper environment… Sit there.” He pointed to the couch where Cathcart was lying. “I shot that lion myself… Excuse me a moment.” He went up the stairs to the balcony and a light went on up there. Then a door closed and the light was cut off. The only light in the room was over the pictures. Rodney Cathcart sat up on the edge of the couch. “For crissake, sister, drink something…” Margo started to titter. “All right, Si, you can give me a spot of gin,” she said and sat down beside him on the couch.

He was attractive. She found herself letting him kiss her but right away his hand was working up her leg and she had to get up and walk over to the other side of the room to look at the pictures again. “Oh, don’t be silly,” he sighed, letting himself drop back on the couch.

There was no sound from upstairs. Margo began to get the jeebies wondering what Margolies was doing up there. She went back to the couch to get herself another spot of gin and Rodney Cathcart jumped up all of a sudden and put his arms around her from behind and bit her ear. “Quit that caveman stuff” she said, standing still. She didn’t want to wrestle with him for fear he’d muss her dress. “That’s me,” he whispered in her ear. “I find you most exciting.”

Margolies was standing in front of them with some papers in his hand. Margo wondered how long he’d been there. Rodney Cathcart let himself drop back on the couch and closed his eyes. “Now sit down, Margo darling,” Margolies was saying in an even voice. “I want to tell you a story. See if it awakens anything in you.” Margo felt herself flushing. Behind her Rodney Cathcart was giving long deep breaths as if he were asleep.

“You are tired of the giddy whirl of the European capitals,” Margolies was saying. “You are the daughter of an old armyofficer. Your mother is dead. You go everywhere, dances, dinners, affairs. Proposals are made for your hand. Your father is a French or perhaps a Spanish general. His country calls him. He is to be sent to Africa to repel the barbarous Moors. He wants to leave you in a convent but you insist on going with him. You are following this?”

“Oh, yes,” said Margo eagerly. “She’d stow away on the ship to go with him to the war.”

“On the same boat there’s a young American collegeboy who has run away to join the foreign legion. We’ll get the reason later. That’ll be your friend Si. You meet… Everything is lovely between you. Your father is very ill. By this time you are in a mud fort besieged by natives, howling bloodthirsty savages. Si breaks through the blockade to get the medicine necessary to save your father’s life… On his return he’s arrested as a deserter. You rush to Tangier to get the American consul to intervene. Your father’s life is saved. You ride back just in time to beat the firingsquad. Si is an American citizen and is decorated. The general kisses him on both cheeks and hands his lovely daughter over into his strong arms… I don’t want you to talk about this now… Let it settle deep into your mind. Of course it’s only a rudimentary sketch. The story is nonsense but it affords the director certain opportunities. I can see you risking all, reputation, life itself to save the man you love. Now I’ll take you home… Look, Si’s asleep. He’s just an animal, a brute blond beast.”

When Margolies put her wrap around her he let his hands rest for a moment on her shoulders. “There’s another thing I want you to let sink into your heart… not your intelligence… your heart… Don’t answer me now. Talk it over with your charming companion. A little later, when we have this picture done I want you to marry me. I am free. Years ago in another world I had a wife as men have wives but we agreed to misunderstand and went our ways. Now I shall be too busy. You have no conception of the intense detailed work involved. When I am directing a picture I can think of nothing else, but when the creative labor is over, in three months’ time perhaps, I want you to marry me… Don’t reply now.”

They didn’t say anything as he sat beside her on the way home to Santa Monica driving slowly through the thick white clammy morning mist. When the car drove up to her door she leaned over and tapped him on the cheek. “Sam,” she said, “you’ve given me the loveliest evening.”

Agnes was all of a twitter about where she’d been so late. She was walking around in her dressinggown and had the lights on all over the house. “I had a vague brooding feeling after you’d left, Margie. So I called up Madame Esther to ask her what she thought. She had a message for me from Frank. You know she said last time he was trying to break through unfortunate influences.” “Oh, Agnes, what did it say?” “It said success is in your grasp, be firm. Oh, Margie, you’ve just got to marry him… That’s what Frank’s been trying to tell us.” “Jiminy crickets,” said Margo, falling on her bed when she got upstairs, “I’m all in. Be a darling and hang up my clothes for me, Agnes.”

Margo was too excited to sleep. The room was too light. She kept seeing the light red through her eyelids. She must get her sleep. She’d look a sight if she didn’t get her sleep. She called to Agnes to bring her an aspirin.

Agnes propped her up in bed with one hand and gave her the glass of water to wash the aspirin down with the other; it was like when she’d been a little girl and Agnes used to give her medicine when she was sick. Then suddenly she was dreaming that she was just finishing the Everybody’s Doing It number and the pink cave of faces was roaring with applause and she ran off into the wings where Frank Mandeville was waiting for her in his black cloak with his arms stretched wide open, and she ran into his arms and the cloak closed about her and she was down with the cloak choking her and he was on top of her clawing at her dress and past his shoulder she could see Tony laughing, Tony all in white with a white beret and a diamond golfclub on his stock jumping up and down and clapping. It must have been her yelling that brought Agnes. No, Agnes was telling her something. She sat up in bed shuddering. Agnes was all in a fluster. “Oh, it’s dreadful. Tony’s down there. He insists on seeing you, Margie. He’s been reading in the papers. You know it’s all over the papers about how you are starring with Rodney Cathcart in Mr. Margolies’ next picture. Tony’s wild. He says he’s your husband and he ought to attend to your business for you. He says he’s got a legal right.” “The little rat,” said Margo. “Bring him up here… What time is it?” She jumped out of bed and ran to the dressingtable to fix her face. When she heard them coming up the stairs she pulled on her pink lace bedjacket and jumped back into bed. She was very sleepy when Tony came in the room. “What’s the trouble, Tony?” she said.

“I’m starving and here you are making three thousand a week… Yesterday Max and I had no money for dinner. We are going to be put out of our apartment. By rights everything you make is mine… I’ve been too soft… I’ve let myself be cheated.”

Margo yawned. “We’re not in Cuba, dearie.” She sat up in bed. “Look here, Tony, let’s part friends. The contract isn’t signed yet. Suppose when it is we fix you up a little so that you and your friend can go and start your polo school in Havana. The trouble with you is you’re homesick.”

“Wouldn’t that be wonderful,” chimed in Agnes. “Cuba would be just the place… with all the tourists going down there and everything.”

Tony drew himself up stiffly. “Margo, we are Christians. We believe. We know that the church forbids divorce… Agnes she doesn’t understand.”

“I’m a lot better Christian than you are… you know that you…” began Agnes shrilly.

“Now, Agnes, we can’t argue about religion before breakfast.” Margo sat up and drew her knees up to her chin underneath the covers. “Agnes and I believe that Mary Baker Eddy taught the truth, see, Tony. Sit down here, Tony… You’re getting too fat, Tony, the boys won’t like you if you lose your girlish figure… Look here, you and me we’ve seen each other through some tough times.” He sat on the bed and lit a cigarette. She stroked the spiky black hair off his forehead. “You’re not going to try to gum the game when I’ve got the biggest break I ever had in my life.”

“I been a louse. I’m no good,” Tony said. “How about a thousand a month? That’s only a third of what you make. You’ll just waste it. Women don’t need money.”

“Like hell they don’t. You know it costs money to make money in this business.”

“All right… make it five hundred. I don’t understand the figures, you know that. You know I’m only a child.”

“Well, I don’t either. You and Agnes go downstairs and talk it over while I get a bath and get dressed. I’ve got a dressmaker coming and I’ve got to have my hair done. I’ve got about a hundred appointments this afternoon… Goodboy, Tony.” She patted him on the cheek and he went away with Agnes meek as a lamb.

When Agnes came upstairs again after Margo had had her bath, she said crossly, “Margie, we ought to have divorced Tony long ago. This German who’s got hold of him is a bad egg. You know how Mr. Hays feels about scandals.”

“I know I’ve been a damn fool.”

“I’ve got to ask Frank about this. I’ve got an appointment with Madame Esther this afternoon. Frank might tell us the name of a reliable lawyer.”

“We can’t go to Vardaman. He’s Mr. Hardbein’s lawyer and Sam’s lawyer too. A girl sure is a fool ever to put anything in writing.”

The phone rang. It was Mr. Hardbein calling up about the contract. Margo sent Agnes down to the office to talk to him. All afternoon, standing there in front of the long pierglass while the dressmaker fussed around her with her mouth full of pins she was worrying about what to do. When Sam came around at five to see the new dresses her hair was still in the dryer. “How attractive you look with your head in that thing,” Sam said, “and the lacy negligee and the little triangle of Brussels lace between your knees… I shall remember it. I have total recall, I never forget anything I’ve seen. That is the secret of visual imagination.”

When Agnes came back for her in the Rolls she had trouble getting away from Sam. He wanted to take them wherever they were going in his own car. “You must have no secrets from me, Margo darling,” he said gently. “You will see I understand everything… everything… I know you better than you know yourself. That’s why I know I can direct you. I have studied every plane of your face and of your beautiful little girlish soul so full of desire… Nothing you do can surprise or shock me.”

“That’s good,” said Margo.

He went away sore.

“Oh, Margie, you oughtn’t to treat Mr. Margolies like that,” whined Agnes.

“I can do without him better than he can do without me,” said Margo. “He’s got to have a new star. They say he’s pretty near on the skids anyway.” “Mr. Hardbein says that’s just because he’s fired his publicityman,” said Agnes.

It was late when they got started. Madame Esther’s house was way downtown in a dilapidated part of Los Angeles. They had the chauffeur let them out two blocks from the house and walked to it down an alley between dusty bungalow courts like the places they’d lived in when they first came out to the coast years ago. Margo nudged Agnes. “Remind you of anything?” Agnes turned to her, frowning. “We must only remember the pleasant beautiful things, Margie.”

Madame Esther’s house was a big old frame house with wide porches and cracked shingle roofs. The blinds were drawn on all the grimy windows. Agnes knocked at a little groundglass door in back. A thin spinsterish woman with grey bobbed hair opened it immediately. “You are late,” she whispered. “Madame’s in a state. They don’t like to be kept waiting. It’ll be difficult to break the chain.” “Has she had anything from Frank?” whispered Agnes. “He’s very angry. I’m afraid he won’t answer again… Give me your hand.”

The woman took Agnes’s hand and Agnes took Margo’s hand and they went in single file down a dark passageway that had only a small red bulb burning in it, and through a door into a completely dark room that was full of people breathing and shuffling.

“I thought it was going to be private,” whispered Margo. “Shush,” hissed Agnes in her ear. When her eyes got accustomed to the darkness she could see Madame Esther’s big puffy face swaying across a huge round table and faint blurs of other faces around it. They made way for Agnes and Margo and Margo found herself sitting down with somebody’s wet damp hand clasped in hers. On the table in front of Madame Esther were a lot of little pads of white paper. Everything was quiet except for Agnes’s heavy breathing next to her.

It seemed hours before anything happened. Then Margo saw that Madame Esther’s eyes were open but all she could see was the whites. A deep baritone voice was coming out of her lips talking a language she didn’t understand. Somebody in the ring answered in the same language, evidently putting questions. “That’s Sidi Hassan the Hindu,” whispered Agnes. “He’s given some splendid tips on the stockmarket.”

“Silence,” yelled Madame Esther in a shrill woman’s voice that almost scared Margo out of her wits. “Frank is waiting. No, he has been called away. He left a message that all would be well. He left a message that tomorrow he would impart the information the parties desired and that his little girl must on no account take any step without consulting her darling Agnes.”

Agnes burst into hysterical sobs and a hand tapped Margo on the shoulder. The same greyhaired woman led them to the back door again. She had some smellingsalts that she made Agnes sniff. Before she opened the groundglass door she said, “That’ll be fifty dollars, please. Twentyfive dollars each… And Madame says that the beautiful girl must not come any more, it might be dangerous for her, we are surrounded by hostile influences. But Mrs. Mandeville must come and get the messages. Nothing can harm her, Madame says, because she has the heart of a child.”

As they stepped out into the dark alley to find that it was already night and the lights were on everywhere Margo pulled her fur up round her face so that nobody could recognize her.

“You see, Margie” Agnes said as they settled back into the deep seat of the old Rolls, “everything is going to be all right, with dear Frank watching over us. He means that you must go ahead and marry Mr. Margolies right away.” “Well, I suppose it’s no worse than signing a threeyear contract,” said Margo. She told the chauffeur to drive as fast as he could because Sam was taking her to an opening at Grauman’s that night.

When they drove up round the drive to the door, the first thing they saw was Tony and Max Hirsch sitting on the marble bench in the garden. “I’ll talk to them,” said Agnes. Margo rushed upstairs and started to dress. She was sitting looking at herself in the glass in her stepins when Tony rushed into the room. When he got into the light over the dressingtable she noticed that he had a black eye. “Taking up the gentle art, eh, Tony?” she said without turning around.

Tony talked breathlessly. “Max blacked my eye because I did not want to come. Margo, he will kill me if you don’t give me one thousand dollars. We will not leave the house till you give us a check and we got to have some cash too, because Max is giving a party tonight and the bootlegger will not deliver the liquor until he’s paid cash. Max says you are getting a divorce. How can you? There is no divorce under the church. It’s a sin that I will not have on my soul. You cannot get a divorce.”

Margo got up and turned around to face him. “Hand me my negligee on the bed there… nouse catching my death of cold… Say, Tony, do you think I’m getting too fat? I gained two pounds last week… Look here, Tony, that squarehead’s going to be the ruination of you. You better cut him out and go away for another cure somewhere. I’d hate to have the federal dicks get hold of you on a narcotic charge. They made a big raid in San Pedro only yesterday.”

Tony burst into tears. “You’ve got to give it to me. He’ll break every bone in my body.”

Margo looked at her wristwatch that lay on the dressingtable beside the big powderbox. Eight o’clock. Sam would be coming by any minute now. “All right,” she said, “but next time this house is going to be guarded by detectives… Get that,” she said. “And any monkeybusiness and you birds land in jail. If you think Sam Margolies can’t keep it out of the papers you’ve got another think coming. Go downstairs and tell Agnes to make you out a check and give you any cash she has in the house.” Margo went back to her dressing.

A few minutes later Agnes came up crying. “What shall we do? I gave them the check and two hundred dollars… Oh, it’s awful. Why didn’t Frank warn us? I know he’s watching over us but he might have told us what to do about that dreadful man.” Margo went into her dresscloset and slipped into a brand new eveninggown. “What we’ll do is stop that check first thing in the morning. You call up the homeprotection office and get two detectives out here on day and night duty right away. I’m through, that’s all.”

Margo was mad, she was striding up and down the room in her new white spangly dress with a trimming of ostrich feathers. She caught sight of herself in the big triple mirror standing between the beds. She went over and stood in front of it. She looked at the three views of herself in the white spangly dress. Her eyes were a flashing blue and her cheeks were flushed. Agnes came up behind her bringing her the rhinestone band she was going to wear in her hair. “Oh, Margie,” she cried, “you never looked so stunning.”

The maid came up to say that Mr. Margolies was waiting. Margo kissed Agnes and said, “You won’t be scared with the detectives, will you, dearie?” Margo pulled the ermine wrap that they’d sent up on approval that afternoon round her shoulders and walked out to the car. Rodney Cathcart was there lolling in the back seat in his dressclothes. A set of perfect teeth shone in his long brown face when he smiled at her. Sam had got out to help her in, “Margo darling, you take our breaths away, I knew that was the right dress,” he said. His eyes were brighter than usual. “Tonight’s a very important night. It is the edict of the stars. I’ll tell you about it later. I’ve had our horoscopes cast.”

In the crowded throbbing vestibule Margo and Rodney Cathcart had to stop at the microphone to say a few words about their new picture and their association with Sam Margolies as they went in through the beating glare of lights and eyes to the lobby. When the master of ceremonies tried to get Margolies to speak he turned his back angrily and walked into the theater as if it was empty, not looking to the right or the left. After the show they went to a restaurant and sat at a table for a while. Rodney Cathcart ordered some kidneychops. “You mustn’t eat too much, Si,” said Margolies. “The pièce de résistance is at my flat.”

Sure enough there was a big table set out with cold salmon and lobstersalad and a Filipino butler opening champagne for just the three of them when they went back there after the restaurant had started to thin out. This time Margo tore loose and ate and drank all she could hold. Rodney Cathcart put away almost the whole salmon, muttering that it was topping, and even Sam, saying he was sure it would kill him, ate a plate of lobstersalad.

Margo was dizzygiggly drunk when she found that the Filipino and Sam Margolies had disappeared and that she and Si were sitting together on the couch that had the lionskin on it. “So you’re going to marry Sam,” said Si, gulping down a glass of champagne. She nodded. “Good girl.” Si took off his coat and vest and hung them carefully on a chair. “Hate clothes,” he said. “You must come to my ranch… Hot stuff.” “But you wear them so beautifully,” said Margo. “Correct,” said Si.

He reached over and lifted her onto his knee. “But, Si, we oughtn’t to, not on Sam’s lionskin.” Si put his mouth to hers and kissed her. “You find me exciting? You ought to see me stripped.” “Don’t, don’t,” said Margo. She couldn’t help it, he was too strong, his hands were all over her under her dress.

“Oh, hell, I don’t give a damn,” she said. He went over and got her another glass of champagne. For himself he filled a bowl that had held cracked ice earlier in the evening. “As for that lion it’s bloody rot. Sam shot it but the blighter shot it in a zoo. They were sellin’ off some old ones at one of the bloody lionfarms and they had a shoot. Couldn’t miss ’em. It was a bloody crime.” He drank down the champagne and suddenly jumped at her. She fell on the couch with his arms crushing her.

She was dizzy. She walked up and down the room trying to catch her breath. “Goodnight, hot sketch,” Si said and carefully put on his coat and vest again and was gone out the door. She was dizzy.

Sam was back and was showing her a lot of calculations on a piece of paper. His eyes bulged shiny into her face as she tried to read. His hands were shaking. “It’s tonight,” he kept saying, “it’s tonight that our lifelines cross… We are married whether we wish it or not. I don’t believe in freewill. Do you, darling Margo?”

Margo was dizzy. She couldn’t say anything. “Come, dear child, you are tired.” Margolies’ voice burred soothingly in her ears. She let him lead her into the bedroom and carefully take her clothes off and lay her between the black silk sheets of the big poster bed.

It was broad daylight when Sam drove her back to the house. The detective outside touched his hat as they turned into the drive. It made her feel good to see the man’s big pugface as he stood there guarding her house. Agnes was up and walking up and down in a padded flowered dressinggown in the livingroom with a newspaper in her hand. “Where have you been?” she cried. “Oh, Margie, you’ll ruin your looks if you go on like this and you’re just getting a start too… Look at this… now don’t be shocked… remember it’s all for the best.”

She handed the Times to Margo, pointing out a headline with the sharp pink manicured nail of her forefinger. “Didn’t I tell you Frank was watching over us?”

HOLLYWOOD EXTRA SLAIN AT PARTY

Noted Polo Player Disappears

Sailors Held

Two enlisted men in uniform, George Cook and Fred Costello, from the battleship Kenesaw were held for questioning when they were found stupefied with liquor or narcotics in the basement of an apartment house at 2234 Higueras Drive, San Pedro, where residents allege a drunken party had been in progress all night. Near them was found the body of a young man whose skull had been fractured by a blow from a blunt instrument who was identified as a Cuban, Antonio Garrido, erstwhile extra on several prominent studio lots. He was still breathing when the police broke in in response to telephoned complaints from the neighbors. The fourth member of the party, a German citizen named Max Hirsch, supposed by some to be an Austrian nobleman, who shared an apartment at Mimosa in a fashionable bungalow court with the handsome young Cuban, had fled before police reached the scene of the tragedy. At an early hour this morning he had not yet been located by the police.

Margo felt the room swinging in great circles around her head. “Oh, my God,” she said. Going upstairs she had to hold tight to the baluster to keep from falling. She tore off her clothes and ran herself a hot bath and lay back in it with her eyes closed.

“Oh, Margie,” wailed Agnes from the other room, “your lovely new gown is a wreck.”

Margo and Sam Margolies flew to Tucson to be married. Nobody was present except Agnes and Rodney Cathcart. After the ceremony Margolies handed the justice of the peace a new hundreddollar bill. The going was pretty bumpy on the way back and the big rattly Ford trimotor gave them quite a shakingup crossing the desert. Margolies’ face was all colors under his white beret but he said it was delightful. Rodney Cathcart and Agnes vomited frankly into their cardboard containers. Margo felt her pretty smile tightening into a desperate grin but she managed to keep the wedding breakfast down. When the plane came to rest at the airport at last, they kept the cameramen waiting a half an hour before they could trust themselves to come down the gangplank flushed and smiling into a rain of streamers and confetti thrown by the attendants and the whir of the motionpicture cameras. Rodney Cathcart had to drink most of a pint of scotch before he could get his legs not to buckle under him. Margo wore her smile over a mass of yellow orchids that had been waiting for her in the refrigerator at the airport, and Agnes looked tickled to death because Sam had bought her orchids too, lavender ones, and insisted that she stride down the gangplank into the cameras with the rest of them.

It was a relief after the glare of the desert and the lurching of the plane in the airpockets to get back to the quiet dressingroom at the lot. By three o’clock they were in their makeup. In a small room in the ground floor Margolies went right back to work taking closeups of Margo and Rodney Cathcart in a clinch against the background of a corner of a mud fort. Si was stripped to the waist with two cartridgebelts crossed over his chest and a canvas legionnaire’s kepi on his head and Margo was in a white eveningdress with highheeled satin slippers. They were having trouble with the clinch on account of the cartridgebelts. Margolies with his porcelainhandled cane thrashing in front of him kept strutting back and forth from the little box he stood on behind the camera into the glare of the klieg light where Margo and Si clinched and unclinched a dozen times before they hit a position that suited him. “My dear Si,” he was saying, “you must make them feel it. Every ripple of your muscles must make them feel passion… you are stiff like a wooden doll. They all love her, a piece of fragile beautiful palpitant womanhood ready to give all for the man she loves… Margo darling, you faint, you let yourself go in his arms. If his strong arms weren’t there to catch you you would fall to the ground. Si, my dear fellow, you are not an athletic instructor teaching a young lady to swim, you are a desperate lover facing death… They all feel they are you, you are loving her for them, the millions who want love and beauty and excitement, but forget them, loosen up, my dear fellow, forget that I’m here and the camera’s here, you are alone together snatching a desperate moment, you are alone except for your two beating hearts, you and the most beautiful girl in the world, the nation’s newest sweetheart… All right… hold it… Camera.”