'For you are loyal to the Corporation, Mulliner, I know. You would never do anything to prejudice its interests, would you?'
'Sure he wouldn't,' said Mr Levitsky.
'You would not reveal the Corporation's little secrets, thereby causing it alarm and despondency, would you, Mulliner?'
'Certainly he wouldn't,' said Mr Levitsky. 'Especially now that we're going to make him an executive.'
'An executive?' said Mr Schnellenhamer, starting.
'An executive,' repeated Mr Levitsky firmly. 'With brevet rank as a brother-in-law.'
Mr Schnellenhamer was silent for a moment. He seemed to be having a little trouble in adjusting his mind to this extremely drastic step. But he was a man of sterling sense, who realized that there are times when only the big gesture will suffice.
'That's right,' he said. 'I'll notify the legal department and have the contract drawn up right away.'
'That will be agreeable to you, Mulliner?' inquired Mr Levitsky anxiously. 'You will consent to become an executive?'
Wilmot Mulliner drew himself up. It was his moment. His head was still aching, and he would have been the last person to claim that he knew what all this was about: but this he did know – that Mabel was nestling in his arms and that his future was secure.
'I ...'
Then words failed him, and he nodded.
10 THE JUICE OF AN ORANGE
A SUDDEN cat shot in through the door of the bar-parlour of the Angler's Rest, wearing the unmistakable air of a cat which has just been kicked by a powerful foot. At the same moment there came from without sounds indicative of a strong man's wrath: and recognizing the voice of Ernest Biggs, the inn's popular landlord, we stared at one another in amazement. For Ernest had always been celebrated for the kindliness of his disposition. The last man, one would have thought, to raise a number eleven shoe against a faithful friend and good mouser.
It was a well-informed Rum and Milk who threw light on the mystery.
'He's on a diet,' said the Rum and Milk. 'On account of gout.'
Mr Mulliner sighed.
A pity,' he said, 'that dieting, so excellent from a purely physical standpoint, should have this unfortunate effect on the temper. It seems to sap the self-control of the stoutest.'
'Quite,' said the Rum and Milk. 'My stout Uncle Henry ...'
And yet,' proceeded Mr Mulliner, 'I have known great happiness result from dieting. Take, for example, the case of my distant connection, Wilmot.'
'Is that the Wilmot you were telling us about the other night?'
'Was I telling you about my distant connection Wilmot the other night?'
'The fellow I mean was a Nodder at Hollywood, and he found out that the company's child star, Little Johnny Bingley, was a midget, so to keep his mouth shut they made him an executive, and he married a girl named Mabel Potter.'
'Yes, that was Wilmot. You are mistaken, however, in supposing that he married Mabel Potter at the conclusion of that story.'
'But you distinctly said she fell into his arms.'
'Many a girl has fallen into a man's arms,' said Mr Mulliner gravely, 'only to wriggle out of them at a later date.'
We left Wilmot, as you very rightly say (said Mr Mulliner) in an extremely satisfactory position, both amatory and financial. The only cloud there had ever been between himself and Mabel Potter had been due, if you recollect, to the fact that she considered his attitude towards Mr Schnellenhamer, the head of the Corporation, too obsequious and deferential. She resented his being a Nodder. Then he was promoted to the rank of executive, so there he was, reconciled to the girl he loved and in receipt of a most satisfactory salary. Little wonder that he felt that the happy ending had arrived.
One effect of his new-found happiness on my distant connection Wilmot was to fill him with the utmost benevolence and goodwill towards all humanity. His sunny smile was the talk of the studio, and even got a couple of lines in Louella Parsons's column in the Los Angeles Examiner. Love, I believe, often has this effect on a young man. He went about the place positively seeking for ways of doing his fellow human beings good turns. And when one morning Mr Schnellenhamer summoned him to his office Wilmot's chief thought was that he hoped that the magnate was going to ask some little favour of him, because it would be a real pleasure to him to oblige.
He found the head of the Perfecto-Zizzbaum Corporation looking grave.
'Times are hard, Mulliner,' said Mr Schnellenhamer.
'And yet,' replied Wilmot cheerily, 'there is still joy in the world; still the happy laughter of children and the singing of blue-birds.'
'That's all right about blue-birds,' said Mr Schnellenhamer, 'but we've got to cut down expenses. We'll have to do some salary-slicing.'
Wilmot was concerned. This seemed to him morbid.
'Don't dream of cutting your salary, Chief,' he urged. 'You're worth every cent of it. Besides, reflect. If you reduce your salary, it will cause alarm. People will go about saying that things must be in a bad way. It is your duty to the community to be a man and bite the bullet and, no matter how much it may irk you, to stick to your eight hundred thousand dollars a year like glue.'
'I wasn't thinking of cutting my salary so much,' said Mr Schnellenhamer. 'Yours, more, if you see what I mean.'
'Oh, mine?' cried Wilmot buoyantly. 'Ah, that's different. That's another thing altogether. Yes, that's certainly an idea. If you think it will be of assistance and help to ease matters for all these dear chaps on the P-F lot, by all means cut my salary. About how much were you thinking of?'
'Well, you're getting fifteen hundred a week.'
'I know, I know,' said Wilmot. 'It's a lot of money.'
'I thought if we said seven hundred and fifty from now on ...'
'It's an awkward sort of sum,' said Wilmot dubiously. 'Not round, if you follow me. I would suggest five hundred.'
'Or four?'
'Four, if you prefer it.'
'Very well,' said Mr Schnellenhamer. 'Then from now on we'll put you on the books as three. It's a more convenient sum than four,' he explained. 'Makes less book-keeping.'
'Of course,' said Wilmot. 'Of course. What a perfectly lovely day it is, is it not? I was thinking as I came along here that I had never seen the sun shining more brightly. One just wanted to be out and about, doing lots of good on every side. Well, I'm delighted if I have been able to do anything in my humble way to make things easier for you, Chief. It has been a real pleasure.'
And with a merry 'Tra-la' he left the room and made his way to the commissary, where he had arranged to give Mabel Potter lunch.
She was a few minutes late in arriving, and he presumed that she had been detained on some matter by Mr Schnellenhamer, whose private secretary, if you remember, she was. When she arrived, he was distressed to see that her lovely face was overcast, and he was just about to say something about blue-birds when she spoke abruptly.
'What is all this I hear from Mr Schnellenhamer?'
'I don't quite understand,' said Wilmot.
'About your taking a salary cut.'
'Oh, that. I see. I suppose he drafted out a new agreement for you to take to the legal department. Yes,' said Wilmot, 'Mr Schnellenhamer sent for me this morning, and I found him very worried, poor chap. There is a world-wide money shortage at the moment, you see, and industry is in a throttled state and so on. He was very upset about it. However, we talked things over, and fortunately we found a way out. I've reduced my salary. It has eased things all round.'
Mabel's face was stony.
'Has it?' she said bitterly. 'Well, let me tell you that, as far as I'm concerned, it has done nothing of the sort. You have failed me, Wilmot. You have forfeited my respect. You have proved to me that you are still the same cold-asparagus-backboned worm who used to cringe to Mr Schnellenhamer. I thought, when you became an executive, that you would have the soul of an executive. I find that at heart you are still a Nodder. The man I used to think you – the strong, dominant man of my dreams – would ha
ve told Mr Schnellenhamer to take a running jump up an alley at the mere hint of a cut in the weekly envelope. Ah, yes, how woefully I have been deceived in you. I think that we had better consider our engagement at an end.'
Wilmot tottered.
'You are not taking up my option?' he gasped.
'No. You are at liberty to make arrangements elsewhere. I can never marry a poltroon.'
'But, Mabel ...'
'No. I mean it. Of course,' she went on more gently, 'if one day you should prove yourself worthy of my love, that is another matter. Give me evidence that you are a man among men, and then I'm not saying. But, meanwhile, the scenario reads as I have outlined.'
And with a cold, averted face she passed on into the commissary alone.
The effect of this thunderbolt on Wilmot Mulliner may readily be imagined. It had never occurred to him that Mabel might take this attitude towards what seemed to him an action of the purest altruism. Had he done wrong, he asked himself. Surely, to bring the light of happiness into the eyes of a motion-picture magnate was not a culpable thing. And yet Mabel thought otherwise, and, so thinking, had given him the air. Life, felt Wilmot, was very difficult.
For some moments he debated within himself the possibility of going back to his employer and telling him he had changed his mind. But no, he couldn't do that. It would be like taking chocolate from an already chocolated child. There seemed to Wilmot Mulliner nothing that he could do. It was just one of those things. He went into the commissary, and, taking a solitary table at some distance from the one where the haughty girl sat, ordered Hungarian goulash, salad, two kinds of pie, icecream, cheese and coffee. For he had always been a good trencherman, and sorrow seemed to sharpen his appetite.
And this was so during the days that followed. He found himself eating a good deal more than usual, because food seemed to dull the pain at his heart. Unfortunately, in doing so, it substituted another in his stomach.
The advice all good doctors give to those who have been disappointed in love is to eat lightly. Fail to do this, and the result is as inevitable as the climax of a Greek tragedy. No man, however gifted his gastric juices, can go on indefinitely brooding over a lost love and sailing into the starchy foods simultaneously. It was not long before indigestion gripped Wilmot, and for almost the first time in his life he was compelled to consult a physician. And the one he selected was a man of drastic views.
'On rising,' he told Wilmot, 'take the juice of an orange. For luncheon, the juice of an orange. And for dinner the juice –' – he paused a moment before springing the big surprise – 'of an orange. For the rest, I am not an advocate of nourishment between meals, but I am inclined to think that, should you become faint during the day – or possibly the night – there will be no harm in your taking ... well, yes, I really see no reason why you should not take the juice of – let us say – an orange.'
Wilmot stared. His manner resembled that of a wolf on the steppes of Russia who, expecting a peasant, is fobbed off with a wafer biscuit.
'But aren't you leaving out something?'
'I beg your pardon?'
'How about steaks?'
'Most decidedly no steaks.'
'Chops, then?'
'Absolutely no chops.'
'But the way I figure it out – check my figures in case I'm wrong – you're suggesting that I live solely on orange-juice.'
'On the juice of an orange,' corrected the doctor. 'Precisely. Take your orange. Divide it into two equal parts. Squeeze on a squeezer. Pour into a glass ... or cup,' he added, for he was not the man to be finnicky about small details, 'and drink.'
Put like that, it sounded a good and even amusing trick, but Wilmot left the consulting-room with his heart bowed down. He was a young man who all his life had been accustomed to take his meals in a proper spirit of seriousness, grabbing everything there was and, if there was no more, filling up with biscuits and butter. The vista which this doctor had opened up struck him as bleak to a degree, and I think that, had not a couple of wild cats at this moment suddenly started a rather ugly fight inside him, he would have abandoned the whole project.
The cats, however, decided him. He stopped at the nearest market and ordered a crate of oranges to be dispatched to his address. Then, having purchased a squeezer, he was ready to begin the new life.
It was some four days later that Mr Schnellenhamer, as he sat in conference with his fellow-magnate, Mr Levitsky – for these zealous men, when they had no one else to confer with, would confer with one another – was informed that Mr Eustiss Vanderleigh desired to see him. A playwright, this Vanderleigh, of the Little Theatre school, recently shipped to Hollywood in a crate of twelve.
'What does he want?' asked Mr Schnellenhamer.
'Probably got some grievance of some kind,' said Mr Levitsky. 'These playwrights make me tired. One sometimes wishes the old silent days were back again.'
'Ah,' said Mr Schnellenhamer wistfully. 'Well, send him in.'
Eustiss Vanderleigh was a dignified young man with tortoise-shell-rimmed spectacles and flowing front hair. His voice was high and plaintive.
'Mr Schnellenhamer,' he said, 'I wish to know what rights I have in this studio.'
'Listen ...' began the magnate truculently.
Eustiss Vanderleigh held up a slender hand.
'I do not allude to my treatment as an artist and a craftsman. With regard to that I have already said my say. Though I have some slight reputation as a maker of plays, I have ceased to complain that my rarest scenes are found unsuitable for the medium of the screen. Nor do I dispute the right, however mistaken, of a director to assert that my subtlest lines are – to adopt his argot – "cheesy." All this I accept as part of the give and take of Hollywood life. But there is a limit, and what I wish to ask you, Mr Schnellenhamer, is this: Am I to be hit over the head with crusty rolls?'
'Who's been hitting you over the head with crusty rolls?'
'One of your executives. A man named Mulliner. The incident to which I allude occurred to-day at the luncheon hour in the commissary. I was entertaining a friend at the meal, and, as he seemed unable to make up his mind as to the precise nature of the refreshment which he desired, I began to read aloud to him the various items on the bill of fare. I had just mentioned roast pork with boiled potatoes and cabbage and was about to go on to Mutton Stew Joan Clarkson, when I was conscious of a violent blow or buffet on the top of the head. And turning I perceived this man Mulliner with a shattered roll in his hand and on his face the look of a soul in torment. Upon my inquiring into his motives for the assault, he merely muttered something which I understood to be "You and your roast pork," and went on sipping his orange-juice – a beverage of which he appears to be inordinately fond, for I have seen him before in the commissary and he seems to take nothing else. However, that is neither here nor there. The question to which I desire an answer is this: How long is this going on? Must I expect, whenever I enter the studio's place of refreshment, to undergo furious assaults with crusty rolls, or are you prepared to exert your authority and prevent a repetition of the episode?'
Mr Schnellenhamer stirred uneasily.
'I'll look into it.'
'If you would care to feel the bump or contusion ... ?'
'No, you run along. I'm busy now with Mr Levitsky.'
The playwright withdrew, and Mr Schnellenhamer frowned thoughtfully.
'Something'll have to be done about this Mulliner,' he said. 'I don't like the way he's acting. Did you notice him at the conference yesterday?'
'Not specially. What did he do?'
'Well, listen,' said Mr Schnellenhamer, 'he didn't give me the idea of willing service and selfless co-operation. Every time I said anything, it seemed to me he did something funny with the corner of his mouth. Drew it up in a twisted way that looked kind of... what's that word beginning with an "s"?'
'Cynical?'
'No, a snickle is a thing you cut corn with. Ah, I've got it. Sardinic. Every time I spoke he looked Sardinia
'
Mr Levitsky was out of his depth.
'Like a sardine, do you mean?'
'No, not like a sardine. Sort of cold and sneering, like Glutz of the Medulla-Oblongata the other day on the golf-links when he asked me how many I'd taken in the rough and I said one.'
'Maybe his nose was tickling.'
'Well, I don't pay my staff to have tickling noses in the company's time. If they want tickling noses, they must have them after hours. Besides, it couldn't have been that, or he'd have scratched it. No, the way it looks to me, this Mulliner has got too big for his boots and is seething with rebellion. We've another story-conference this afternoon. You watch him and you'll see what I mean. Kind of tough and ugly he looks, like something out of a gangster film.'
'I get you. Sardinic.'
'That's the very word,' said Mr Schnellenhamer. 'And if it goes on I'll know what to do about it. There's no room in this corporation for fellows who sit around drawing up the corners of their mouths and looking sardinical.'
'Or hitting playwrights with crusty rolls.'
'No, there you go too far,' said Mr Schnellenhamer. 'Playwrights ought to be hit with crusty rolls.'
Meanwhile, unaware that his bread-and-butter – or, as it would be more correct to say, his orange-juice – was in danger, Wilmot Mulliner was sitting in a corner of the commissary, glowering sullenly at the glass which had contained his midday meal. He had fallen into a reverie, and was musing on some of the characters in History whom he most admired ... Genghis Khan ... Jack the Ripper ... Attila the Hun ...
There was a chap, he was thinking. That Attila. Used to go about taking out people's eyeballs and piling them in neat heaps. The ideal way, felt Wilmot, of getting through the long afternoon. He was sorry Attila was no longer with us. He thought the man would have made a nice friend.
For the significance of the scene which I have just described will not have been lost on you. In the short space of four days, dieting had turned my distant connection Wilmot from a thing of almost excessive sweetness and light to a soured misanthrope.