Laughing Gas

  'Say, I knew there was something I wanted to tell you/ he said. 'Watch out for Tommy Murphy.'

  He vanished again. There was a scrabbling noise and a thud. He had dropped to the ground and was off upon his hideous errand.

  Chapter 19

  I STOOD aghast. Then tottering to the bed, I sat aghast. What the little perisher had meant to convey by those parting words I had no idea, nor did I devote any time to trying to fathom their mystic significance. My mind was wholly occupied with the thought of the fearful predicament of the woman I loved. Contemplating the ghastly outrage which this young bounder was planning, I found everything swimming about me once more. My blood froze and my soul recoiled in horror.

  And talking of souls, what beat me was how the dickens he came to have one like the one he'd got. In our first conversation, if you recollect, he had mentioned a mother who lived in Chillicothe, Ohio. Surely this mother must have taught him the difference between right and wrong and instilled into his infant bosom at least the rudiments of chivalry. The merest A B C of mothercraft, that, I should have supposed. I know, if I was a mother, the very first thing I would do would be to put the offspring straight about the homage and deference which the male owes to the more delicate sex and give him the low-down on the iniquity of pulling this James Cagney stuff.

  But I soon abandoned this train of thought. It was no time for sitting weakly on beds and speculating about mothers. April, I saw, must be warned, and that without delay. She must be approached immediately and informed that if the Lord Havershot, for whom she had begun to entertain feelings deeper and warmer than those of ordinary friendship, called at her home and showed signs of trying to get within arm's reach, it was imperative that she cover up and sidestep. If possible, she must be given a few elementary lessons in the art of ducking and rolling away from the punch. Only thus could the shapeliest nose in Hollywood be saved from a brutal assault which might leave it slanting permanently sideways.

  Two minutes later, I was in the telephone-booth, hunting feverishly through the J's in the directory.

  Her name was not there. The numbers of famous stars, I should have remembered, are seldom recorded. It would be necessary for me, I perceived, to repair to her house in person. I left the booth with that end in view, and ran into Mr. Brinkmeyer in the hall.

  The president of the Brinkmeyer-Magnifico Motion Picture Corporation had unmistakably gone about his task of scrapping the cutaway-coat-and-stiff-collar programme in a big way. He was loosely and comfortably dressed in a tweed suit which might have been built by Omar the Tent Maker, and his neck was draped in roomy flannel. No spats appeared above his violin-case shoes, nor was there a flower in his buttonhole.

  There were, however, flowers in his hand, and these he now offered to me.

  'Hello,' he said affably. 'I thought you were in your room. We'll have to be starting in a minute. I was just coming to give you this.'

  I looked at it dully. Preoccupied.

  'The nosegay,' he explained.

  I took it in an absent manner, and he laughed merrily. I had never seen a sunnier motion-picture president.

  'Gosh!' he said. 'You're all dolled up like a gangster's corpse, aren't you? You look like a dude waiting at a stage door. Gee! It kind of brings back the old days. When I was in the cloak and suit business, I used to wait at stage doors with bouquets. I remember once —'

  I checked him with a gesture.

  'The story of your life later, Brinkmeyer, if you don't mind,' I said. 'I can't stop now.' 'Eh?'

  'Most important appointment. Matter of life and death.'

  He stared. It was plain that he was fogged. His air was 164

  that of a man who would appreciate a fuller explanation. 'Eh?' he said again.

  I confess that I danced like a cat on hot bricks. I wouldn't have minded him staring and saying 'Eh?' but the trouble was that while doing so he remained rooted to the spot, and his physique was such that he blocked up the entire passage. There wasn't room to edge past him, and he was not one of those men you can brush aside. And unless I could speed without delay on my mission of mercy, April June's nose was not worth a moment's purchase.

  What the upshot would have been, had the deadlock continued, I cannot say. But fortunately there now proceeded from upstairs, rending the air and causing the welkin to ring like billy-o, a female scream. I recognized it immediately for what it was - the heart cry of a woman who has just found a frog in her bedroom.

  'Gosh 1' said Mr Brinkmeyer, quivering all over as if he had heard the Last Trump.

  He turned and began to mount the stairs. It would not be correct to say that he leaped up them, for I suppose a full thirty years must have passed since he had been able to leap up anything: but he got off the mark with a swiftness most commendable in a man of his waistline. And the obstacle between me and the front door having been removed, I nipped ahead pretty smartly myself, and before you could say 'Service and Co-operation' was out on the steps.

  The car was waiting there, with the chauffeur sitting woodenly at the wheel. I tapped him on the arm.

  'Take me immediately to Miss April June's house,' I said.

  The chauffeur was a square, stocky man with a face like a suet pudding. It was a face that did not mislead the observer. Looking at it, you felt that there sat a slow-thinking man, and he was a slow-thinking man. He eyed me bulbously.

  'How's that?'

  'Take me at once to Miss April June's house.' 'Whose house?' 'Miss April June's.'

  'You want to go to Miss April June's house?' 'Yes. At once.'

  He sucked in his lips thoughtfully. 'You're going to the studio.' 'Yes. But —'

  'The studio - that's where you're going.' 'Yes. But—'

  'I was told to bring the car round to take you and Mr Brinkmeyer to the studio.' 'Yes, yes. But —'

  'And you can't go to the studio till Mr Brinkmeyer's ready. But I'll tell you what I'll do, while we're waiting,' he said, stepping down from his seat. 'I'll recite you "Gunga Din". See? Then you go to the old man and you say: "That's a very remarkable chauffeur you've got, Mr Brinkmeyer. Seems to me like he's wasted, driving a car. You'd ought to use him in a picture." Lookut,' said the chauffeur. ' "Gunga Din", by the late Rudyard Kipling.'

  I uttered a wordless protest, but you cannot stop 'Gunga Din' addicts with wordless protests. He drew a deep breath and raised one arm stiffly. The other he kept across his stomach, no doubt for purposes of self-defence. He looked more like a suet pudding than ever.

  ' "You may talk o' gin and beer —" '

  ' "I don't want to talk o' gin and beer".'

  ' "When you're quartered safe out 'ere—" '

  'I want to go —'

  ' "An' you're sent to penny-fights an' Aldershot it".' 'Look here —'

  ' "But when it comes to water you will do your work on slaughter" - other way round, I mean to say - "an' you'll lick the bloomih' boots of 'im that's got it".'

  He removed the arm that lay across his stomach and raised it - first, however, warily lowering the other and putting that across his stomach. I suppose all reciters learn to take, these precautions.

  ' "Now in Injia's sunny clime.. ." ' Here he apparently noticed that I was a restless audience who was going to be difficult to hold, for he added: 'And so on and so forth,' as if feeling that it would be necessary to condense the thing a bit. ' "Was our regimental bhisti, Gunga Din",' he concluded hurriedly.

  He paused for breath here, and I seized the opportunity to offer him ten dollars if he would take me to April June's.

  You wouldn't have thought a gleam could have come into those eyes, but one did. 'Got it on you?' 'No.'

  'I thought you hadn't. It was "Din! Din! Din! You limpin' lump o' brick-dust, Gunga Din! Hi! Slippy hitherao! Water, get it! Panee lao ..." '

  I abandoned the fruitless task. It was a long, long trail to April June's bijou residence on Linden Drive, and I had hoped not to be compelled to undertake it on foot, but I saw that there was no alternative. Leavin
g him babbling about "squidgy-nosed old idols", I sped out into the great open spaces.

  And I hadn't gone more than a couple of hundred yards, by Jove, when I was arrested by a "Hey!" in my rear, and turned to see a figure in a grey suit and powder-blue socks, the whole terminating in tasteful suede shoes.

  For one moment as I beheld him, I had the idea that the voice of conscience must have been whispering in this changeling's ear, causing him to abandon his foul project. Such, however, was not the case. His first words told me that his hat was still in the ring.

  'Suddenly remembered,' he said, 'that I don't know April June's address. You can tell me, I guess. Where do I find this beasel, buddy?'

  I eyed him with all the cold loathing at my disposal. I was revolted to the core. That he should expect me, who had told him that I loved this girl, to sit in with him on his loathsome programme of giving her a poke in the snoot struck me as being about as near the outer rim as you could get.

  'You tell me,' he said, 'and I'll slip you that money you wanted.'

  'No,' I said firmly. I did not waver for an instant To my mind, the man who sells the woman he loves for gold is a bit of a tick, and I know other fellows who think the same. 'No, certainly not.'

  'Ah, come on.'

  'No. My lips are sealed.'

  His brow darkened. I had never realized before what an ugly brute I looked when peeved. He so closely resembled a gorilla at this juncture that I should not have been surprised if he had suddenly started beating his chest, as I believe gorillas do when things aren't going too well. The spectacle was an intimidating one, but my chief emotion, oddly enough, was not alarm but a marked increase in the fervour of my love for April June. I felt that a girl who could contemplate matrimony with a chap with a face like that must be a girl in a million.

  He clenched a fist and advanced a step.

  'You'd best come clean.'

  'I will do no such dashed thing.'

  'Suppose I poke you in the snoot?'

  'I defy you.'

  'Tough, eh? What could you do if I did?'

  'I could call for assistance,' I said quietly. I pointed down the road. 'You will observe that we are not alone. You see that boy standing over there by the lamp-post? One slosh from you, one yell from me, and off, no doubt, like the wind he will be bounding to fetch the police force.'

  My words appeared to baffle him less than I had hoped and expected. About now, it seemed to me, he ought to be looking fairly thwarted, but he wasn't. He didn't look thwarted a dashed bit. In fact, I noted that he was smiling

  in a nasty way, as I have seen fellows smile at the bridge table when producing the unexpected trump. 'Friend of yours?'

  'No. I have, never seen him before. But I have little doubt that he has enough civic spirit to rally round in the event of any sloshing, even though not personally acquainted with the victim.'

  'Husky-looking guy.'

  I had not examined the boy closely up to this point, but I now did so, and I agreed with him. He appeared to be a lad, for his years, of considerable muscular development. Not that I could see what that had to do with it. I had never suggested that I expected physical aid from him.

  'Yes,' I said. 'He seems robust.'

  'I'll say he is. Listen, shall I tell you something?'

  'Do.'

  He smiled unpleasantly.

  T will,' he said. 'Before Joey Cooley became the Idol of American Motherhood, a kid named Tommy Murphy had the job. His pictures used to gross big. And then I came along, and he dropped right into the discard. Nobody needed him any more, and he didn't get his contract renewed, and it made him pretty sore. Yessir, good and sore it made him. Ever since then he's been going around saying he wants my blood and claiming he's going to get it. Well, sir, if that boy has tried to catch me once, he's tried a dozen times and, believe me, it's taken some mighty shifty foot work to hold him off.'

  A cold hand seemed to clutch my vitals. I began to get the drift.

  'That's Tommy Murphy over there by that lamp-post. He puts in most of his time waiting outside the house, hoping for the best. I guess he saw you come out and followed you.'

  The cold hand tightened its clutch. It was plain that in assuming the outer envelope of this gifted child I had stepped straight into a bally jungle, full of sinister creatures that might pounce at any moment. I had had no idea, till I became one, that the life of a child star in Hollywood was one of such incessant peril. I was not surprised that my companion had dreamed so wistfully of getting away from it all and going back to Chillicothe, Ohio. Miss Brinkmeyer alone was enough to take the gilt off the gingerbread. Add Tommy Murphy and you had something which might fairly be called a bit above the odds.

  'Now, if you'd have been nice and told me where April June lives, I'd have stuck around and seen you home. But now I won't. I'll just walk off and leave you to it. Unless you change your mind and slip me that address.'

  Well, it was a pretty frightful posish for a lover to be placed in, you'll admit. I shot a swift glance at this Murphy. It merely served to confirm my former opinion. I had said he looked robust, and he was robust. He was one of those chunky, square sort of striplings. He might have been the son of that chauffeur. And now that I examined him more closely, it was easy to note the hostility in his eye. It would not be too much to say that he was glaring at me like a tiger at the day's steak.

  The landscape seemed to flicker, and I flickered a bit myself. What with the peril in which I stood and the peril in which April June stood, I don't mind admitting that I was all of a dither.

  But Love triumphed over Self.

  'No,' I said. 'Positively no.'

  'You mean that?'

  'Definitely.'

  He shrugged my shoulders.

  'Okay. Have it your own way. Well, sir, I wouldn't be in your shoes for something. No, sir I Because it isn't only Tommy Murphy. As I was coming along, I saw Orlando Flower lurking around. I guess I'd call him kind of tougher than Tommy, really. Though I don't know. It's a close thing. So I wouldn't be in your shoes for something. Still, have it your own way.'

  With another of those bally sneers of his, he pushed off, and I was left alone in the world.

  Alone, that is to say, except for the blister Murphy, who now came heading in my direction at the rate of knots. His eyes were gleaming with a nasty light - glittering, in fact - or you might say glinting - and he was licking his lips.

  He looked like a boy whose dreams have come true, and who has found the blue bird.

  Chapter 20

  EYEING this Murphy, as he halted before me and stood measuring his distance, I found it extraordinarily difficult to believe that he could ever have been the idol of American Motherhood. American Motherhood, I felt, must be an ass. The boy did not appear to me to possess a single lovable quality. He looked like something out of a gangster film. Not at all the sort of chap you would take to your club.

  I backed a step. In fact, I backed several steps. And after I had finished backing about the eighth, the ground became more yielding under my feet, and I found that I was standing on grass. There is a regulation in Beverley Hills, you may or may not know, which compels the householder to shove his residence a certain distance away from the road and put a neat lawn in front of it, and at this crisis in my affairs I was dashed glad that this was so. It seemed only too evident that in the near future I was going to be called upon to do a good bit of falling, and anything that might tend to make this falling softer was so much gained.

  Up to this point, I should mention, the proceedings had been conducted in silence, broken only by stertorous and menacing breathing on the part of the thug Murphy and a faint chattering of teeth from me. It now occurred to me that a little chit-chat might serve to ease the tension. This frequently happens. Get a conversation going, I mean to say, and before you know where you are you have discovered mutual tastes and are fraternizing.

  Barmy Fotheringay-Phipps told me once that he was confronted on a certain occasion by a steely-eye
d bloke who wanted two pounds six and eleven for goods supplied, and he managed to get him on to the subject of runners and betting for that afternoon's meeting at Hurst

  Park, and ten minutes later he, the bloke, was standing him, Barmy, a pint of mild and bitter at a near-by hostelry, and he, Barmy, was touching him, the bloke, for five bob to be repaid without fail on the following Wednesday.

  Well, I wasn't expecting quite such a happy issue as that, of course, for I'm not the silver-tongued orator Barmy is and never have been, but I thought it possible that some good might come of opening a conversation, so I backed another step and managed to dig up a kindly smile.

  'Well, my little man,' I said, modelling my style on that of B. K. Burwash. 'What is it, my little man?'

  I detected no softening in his demeanour. He continued to breathe heavily. There ensued a bit of conversational vacuum.

  'I can't stop long,' I said, breaking a silence which threatened to become embarrassing. 'I have an engagement. Nice, meeting you.'

  And, so saying, I endeavoured to edge round him. But he proved to be just as difficult a chap to edge round as Mr. Brinkmeyer. Dissimilar in physique, they both had that quality of seeming to block every avenue. When I edged to the right, he shifted to the left, and when I shifted to the left, he edged to the right, and there we were aziz again.

  I tried once more.

  'Are you fond of flowers? Would you like a nosegay?'

  Apparently no. As I extended the nosegay, he knocked it out of my hand, and the sickening violence with which he did so added to my qualms. I stooped and picked it up, and had another shot.

  'Do you want my autograph, my little man?' I said.

  The moment the words were out of my mouth I realized that I had said the wrong thing. The last topic, of course, that I should have brought up was that of autographs. Altogether too painful and suggestive. There had been a time, no doubt, when this lad before me had had to write

  them for the fans till he got corns on the fingers, and since the advent on the silver screen of little Joey Cooley, the demand had been nil. In mentioning autographs, therefore, I was simply awakening sad memories of vanished glory - in a word, dropping salt into the exposed wound.