"Since you tell me it was a business luncheon, you leave me to infer that your affair with Amelie has reached the point where you take her to the Clique Club to talk terms." Bellamy's jaw sagged, his eyes were dashed with consternation. "What else do you wish me to think, Bellamy?"

He made a pitiable effort to pull himself together. "Look here, Linda: you're all wrong about this--misinformed. I can explain----"

"You forget I know all your explanations, Bel; I've heard them all too often!"

"But--but you must give me a chance! d.a.m.n it, you can't refuse----!"

"Can't I? Go home, Bel, get some sleep. When you wake up, if you still think you have anything to say--consider it carefully before you ask me to listen. Remember what I tell you now: you've lied to me for the last time, one more lie will end everything between us, finally and for all time!"

Conscious though she was that her wrath was righteous, she experienced an instant of irresolution, of yielding and pity excited by the almost dog-like appeal in his eyes. But immediately she remembered Amelie, hardened her heart and, leaving him agape, pushed through the door to the street.

And instantly she effected one of those shifts of which few but the sensitive know the secret, who must hide their hurts from alien eyes though they spend all their strength in the effort; instantly she sloughed every sign of her anger and with smiling face went to rejoin f.a.n.n.y and Dobbin.

As soon as she appeared the latter jumped out of the car and offered his hand. He said something in a jocular vein, and Lucinda must have replied to the point, for she heard him chuckle; but she could not, a minute later, recollect one word of what had pa.s.sed between them.

With her hand resting on Dobbin's she glanced back and saw Bellamy--still with his armful of orchids--emerge from the hotel. He halted, his face darkening as he watched Daubeney follow Lucinda into the car. It drew away quickly, giving him no chance to see for himself that it held another pa.s.senger.

He stood still upon the steps, deep in sombre and chagrined reflection, till a touch on his arm and a civil "Pardon!" roused him to the fact that he was obstructing the fairway. As he moved aside he was hailed by name.

"Well, I'm d.a.m.ned! Bellamy Druce drunk, dressed up, and highly perfumed."

In his turn, he recognized the speaker, a personage of the theatrical world with modest social aspirations and a n.o.ble cellar.

"Why, h.e.l.lo, Whittington!" said Bellamy, smiling in spite of his disgruntlement, to see that carved mask of a wise clown upturned to his.

"All by yourself? What's happened to the girl crop you should be so lonesome?"

Without direct reply, Mr. Freddie Whittington linked his arm and began to walk toward Fifth avenue.

"Just the man I'm looking for," he declared without a smile. "Come along. Got a thousand women I want you to meet 'safternoon. They'll take care of your orchids."

"Well," Bellamy conceded, "that sounds reasonable. But what do you say, we drop in at the Club? Got something there won't do us any good--in my locker."

VIII

On the far West Side, well beyond the drab iron articulation of the Ninth Avenue Elevated, in a region of New York whose every aspect was foreign to Lucinda's eyes, the brougham drew to a shuddering stop, in thoroughbred aversion to such surroundings, before a row of blank-avised brick buildings whose facades of varying heights and widths showed them to have been originally designed for diverse uses. That they were today, however, united in one service was proved by the legend that linked them together, letters of black on a broad white band running from end to end of the row beneath its second-story windows:

ALMA DALEY STUDIOS--CULP CINEMAS INC.--BEN CULP, PRES'T.

Across the way unsightly tenements grinned like a company of draggletail crones who had heard a rare lot about the goings-on of picture actors and, through this happy accident of propinquity, were in a position to tell the world it didn't know the half of it. Children liberally embellished with local colour swarmed on sidewalks where ash and garbage-cans flourished in subtropical luxuriance, and disputed the roadway with the ramshackle wagons and push-carts of peddlers, horse-drawn drays, and grinding, gargantuan motor-trucks that snarled ferociously at the aliens, the frail, pretty pleasure cars from Fifth avenue. Apparently an abattoir was languishing nearby, discouraged in its yearning to lose consciousness of self in the world's oblivion. At the end of the street the Hudson ran, a glimpse of incredible blue furrowed by snowy wakes.

Such the nursery in which what Mr. Culp (or his press agent) had brilliantly imaged as the youngest, fairest sister of the plastic arts was fostering the finest flower of its expression, to wit, the artistry of Alma Daley....

"Like a lily springing from the mire," f.a.n.n.y Lontaine murmured.

Lucinda laughed and gave f.a.n.n.y's arm a mock-pinch, grateful for any gleam of wit to lighten life's dull firmament. The temper in which she had left Bel at the Ritz had been quick to cool; and though its cooling had not affected her determination to brook no longer his misconduct, she was beginning to experience premonitions of that debacle whose event was certain if this breach, so lately opened, were to widen.

If it should come to a break asunder, what would become of her? of the home she loved so well? and what of Bel, whom she loved best of all?

In the eyes of Dobbin, as he waited for her at the main entrance to the building, she read too shrewd a question; and understanding that she had for a moment let fall her mask, she hastily resumed that show of debonair amus.e.m.e.nt which was her heart's sole shield against the tearing beaks and talons of envy, malice and all manner of uncharitableness.

Fortunately there was something to jog her sense of humour in the utter absence of preparations to receive them, such as Lontaine had confidently promised.

A sense of hostility made itself felt even in the bare antechamber, a vestibule with makeshift walls of match-boarding, and for all features a wooden bench, a card-board sign, NO CASTING TODAY, a door of woven iron wire at the mouth of a forbidding tunnel, and a window which framed the head of a man with gimlet eyes, a permanent scowl, and a cauliflower ear.

Interviewed by Lontaine, this one grunted skeptically but consented to pa.s.s on the name and message to some person unseen, then resumed his louring and distrustful watch, while beyond the part.i.tion the professional sing-song of a telephone operator made itself heard: "Lis'n, sweetheart. Mista Fountain's here with a party, says he's got 'nappointmunt with Mista Culp.... Wha' say?... Oh, a'right, dearie. Say, Sam: tell that party Mista Culp's into a conf'rince, but they kin go up to the stage if they wanta an' stick around till he's dis'ngaged."

With every symptom of disgust the faithful watchdog pressed a b.u.t.ton on the window ledge, a latch clicked, the wire door swung back, the party filed through and in twilight stumbled up two flights of creaking steps to a tiny landing upon which a number of doors stood all closed, and each sternly stencilled: PRIVATE.

After a moment of doubt during which even Lontaine began to show signs of failing patience, one of the doors opened hastily and ejected a well-groomed, nervously ingratiating young man, who introduced himself as Mr. Lane, secretary to Mr. Culp, and said he had been delegated to do the honours. A public-spirited soul, he shook each visitor warmly by the hand, protested that he was genuinely pleased to meet them all, then threw wide another of the PRIVATE doors.

"This is the main stage, ladies. Miss Daley is working on one of the sets now, making the final scenes for her latest picture, 'The Girl in the Dark'; so if you'll be kind enough not to talk out loud while she's before the camera.... Miss Daley is very, er, temperamental, y'understand...."

Reverently the barbarians obeyed a persuasive wave of Mr. Lane's hand and tiptoed into the studio, to huddle in a considerately awe-stricken group on one side of an immense loft with a high roof of gla.s.s.

Stage, as the layman understands that term, there was none; but the floor s.p.a.ce as a whole was rather elaborately cluttered with what Lucinda was to learn were technically known as "sets," in various stages of completion and demolition; a set being anything set up to be photographed, from a single "side" or "flat" with a simple window or door, or an "angle" formed of two such sides joined to show the corner of a room, up to the solid and pretentious piece of construction which occupied fully one-half of the loft and reproduced the Palm Room at the Ritz-Carlton, not without discrepancies to be noted by the captious, but by no means without fair illusion.

On a modest set near at hand, apparently a bedchamber in a home of humble fortunes, a bored chambermaid in checked shirt and overalls, with a cigarette stuck behind his ear, was making up the bed.

In another quarter a number of workmen were noisily if languidly engaged in knocking down a built wall of real brick and lugging away sections of a sidewalk which had bordered it, light frames of wood painted to resemble stone.

At the far end of the room a substantial set represented a living-room that matched up with the bedchamber nearer at hand, or seemed to, for a good part of it was masked from Lucinda's view by a number of ma.s.sive but portable metal screens or stands arranged in two converging ranks, at whose apex stood a heavy tripod supporting a small black box. To these stands lines of insulated cable wandered over the floor from every quarter of the room. Just back of the tripod several men were lounging, gazing off at the set with an air of listless curiosity. The s.p.a.ces between the screens afforded glimpses of figures moving to and fro with, at that distance, neither apparent purpose nor animation.

Elsewhere about the studio, in knots, by twos and singly, some twenty-five or thirty men and women, mostly in grease-paint and more or less convincing afternoon dress, were lounging, gossiping, reading newspapers, or simply and beautifully existing.

An enervating atmosphere of apathy pervaded the place, as if nothing of much moment to anybody present was either happening or expected to happen. An effect to which considerable contribution was made by the lugubrious strains of a three-piece orchestra, piano, violin, and 'cello, stationed to one side of the living-room set.

At first sight this trio intrigued Lucinda's interest. To her its presence in a motion-picture studio seemed unaccountable, but not more so than patience with its rendition of plaintive and tremulous melodies of a bygone period, tunes which one more familiar with the cant of the theatre would unhesitatingly have cla.s.sified as "sob stuff," and to which n.o.body appeared to be paying any attention whatever.

Mystified to the point of fascination, she studied the musicians individually.

The pianist, perched sideways on his stool and fingering the keyboard of an antique upright without once looking at the music on its rack, as often as not played with one hand only, using the other to manipulate a cigarette which he was smoking in open defiance of the many posted notices that forbade this practice.

The violinist, stretched out with ankles crossed, occupied a common kitchen chair which his body touched at two places only, with the end of his spine and the nape of his neck. His eyes were half-shut, his bowing suggested the performance of a somnambulist.

The 'cellist, too, seemed to be saved from falling forward from his chair solely by the instrument which his knees embraced. His head drowsily nodding to the time, the fingers of his left hand automatically stopped the strings at which his right arm sawed methodically. An honest soul, a journeyman who for a set wage had contracted to saw so many chords of music before the whistle blew and was honestly bent on doing his stint....

Mr. Lane, having excused himself for a moment, returned from consulting some member of the group round the tripod.

"'Sall right," he announced with a happy smile. "They won't begin shooting a while yet. You can come closer if you want, I'll show you where to stay so's you won't be in the way."

Guided by him, the exotics gingerly picked their way across the banks, coils, loops and strands of electric cable that ran in snaky confusion all over the floor, like exposed viscera of the cinema; and Lucinda presently found herself on the side lines of the living-room, between it and the dogged orchestra, and well out of range of the camera.

She could now see three people on the set, two men with a girl whom, thanks to the wide circulation of the lady's photographs, she had no difficulty in identifying as Alma Daley herself--a prepossessing young person with bobbed hair, a boldly featured face, comely in the flesh rather than pretty, and a slight little body whose emaciation told a tale of too-rigorous dieting and which she used not unpleasingly but with a rather fetching effect of youthful gaucherie. Her make-up for the camera was much lighter and more deftly applied than seemed to be the rule. Gowned effectively if elaborately in a street dress hall-marked by the rue de la Paix, she was leaning against a table and lending close if fatigued attention to the quiet conversation of the two men.