'The works,' said April Quest.
'So I see,' murmured the Saint. 'Let's pretend we're used to it.'
'You're going to be an experience,' she said. 'Did you ever do any acting?'
'Not for the camera.'
'Were you on the stage?'
He shook his head.
'Not that either. Just what you might call privately. You see, when you lead a wicked life like mine, you can't always be yourself,' he explained. 'According to the job in hand, you may want to pretend to be anything, from a dyspeptic poet with Communist tendencies to a retired sea-captain with white whiskers and a perpetual thirst.'
She was studying him with candid interest now.
'Then some of that stuff about you must be on the level.'
'Some of it,' he admitted mildly.
'Most of it, I guess.' She said it herself. 'I ought to have known-it isn't the sort of thing that press-agents think up. But Jesus, you meet so many phonies in this business you get out of the habit of believing anything. I'm one myself, so I know.'
'You?'
'What do you think you know about me?'
'Let's see. Your name's April Quest,' he began cautiously. 'Or is it?'
'That's about as far as you'll get, and nobody would believe that. What's a name! Even that isn't a hundred per cent, either. It was Quist on my birth certificate, but they thought Quest sounded better.'
'I remember reading something about you,' he recalled.'Last year, wasn't it, when you were the new sensational discovery? You were raised in the logging country up north. Your parents died when you were a kid, but you kept the old forest going. You'd never been in a city or bought a ready-made dress or worn a pair of shoes, but tough lumberjacks worshipped the ground you walked on and worked like slaves for you. You'd never seen a lipstick or a powder puff. You were the unspoiled glamor girl of the wilderness, the untamed virgin queen of the Big Trees--'
'Nuts,' she said. 'My father was a drunken longshoreman who got his skull cracked in a strikers' riot. I was dealing them off the arm in a truck-drivers' hash house outside Seattle when Jack Groom stopped in for a cup of coffee and offered me a trial contract at twenty-five a week. I'd just about settled on another offer to be a B-girl in San Francisco, but this looked better. And that's more than I'd tell another soul in this village. I guess I must have a feeling about you.'
'That's nice,' said the Saint, and meant it.
Suddenly her hand slid over his fingers, and her smile was really intoxicating.
'Darling,' she said softly.
He looked at her in a quite unreasonable stillness.
A flash bulb popped.
Simon turned in time to see the photographer backing away. April Quest giggled, and let go his hand.
'Sorry,' she said. 'I only just saw the bastard coming in time.'
'Try to warn me next time, will you?' said the Saint gently. 'My heart's liable to blow a gasket when you put so much soul into your work.'
A heavy hand fell on his shoulder, and he looked up and back. April mirrored his movement at the same time. Mr. Byron Ufferlitz stood between them, looking heavily genial with a fat cigar in his mouth.
'That was nice cooperation, kiddies,' he rumbled. 'I told him to get another later on, when you're dancing. How's everything?'
'Fine,' April said.
She smiled dazzlingly, but her voice sounded very faintly mechanical.
'How ya getting on with the Saint? He's all right, huh? What a profile! And that figure . . . You two are gonna make a great team. Maybe you'll do a lotta pictures together, like Garbo and Gilbert or Colman and Banky in the old days.'
'I can't afford it,' said the Saint. 'Earning that kind of money is too expensive these days.'
'We'll take care of that,' said Mr. Ufferlitz jovially, if a trifle ambiguously. 'Say, April, about your new hair-do, I was talkin' to Westmore just now and ...'
Simon looked around the room and caught the raised eyeнbrows of Dick Halliday, who had just come in with Mary Martin. He grinned; and then he saw Martha Scott and Carl Alsop making faces at him, and they were just the first of other faces that were breaking into expressions of recognition, and he knew that he was certainly going to have to be well paid for the explanations he would have to make to some of his friends in Hollywood for his manner of arriving back among them. Then, trying to postpone that awkward moment by finding some blank direction to turn to, he looked towards the entrance from the bar and saw Orlando Flane.
Flane was looking right at them. He had a highball glass in his hand, and his feet were braced apart as if to steady himself. In spite of that he was swaying a little. His too-handsome face was flushed, and his hair and necktie had the uncomfortably rumpled look that can never be confused with any other kind of untidiness. There was no doubt that Orlando Flane was drunk again, or still drunk. The twist of his mouth was vicious.
'Well, I mustn't stay any longer,' Mr. Ufferlitz was saying. 'Don't want to look like I was promoting this. Have yourнselves a time, and don't worry about the check. It's all taken care of. 'Bye.'
He clapped them on the shoulders again and moved away. Simon's eyes followed him towards the bar with interested expectations, but Orlando Flane had disappeared.
'There,' said April coldbloodedly, 'goes one of the prize-winning swine of this town.'
With Flane still on his mind, Simon said: 'Who?'
'Ufferlitz, of course. Dear Byron.'
Their drinks came belatedly, accompanied by menus, and there was an interruption for the ordering of dinner. From the wine list, Simon added a bottle of Bollinger '31.
'On Byron,' he said, as the waiter removed himself. 'Everyone tells me something about him. He was a stick-up man in New Orleans, but his pictures make money. He's a retired union racketeer, but he pays his slaves. Take it away.'
'How much does he pay them?'
The Saint's brows levelled fractionally.
'He hasn't shown me the payroll yet,' he admitted. 'But two literary gents named Kendricks and Lazaroff told me his checks were okay.'
'Listen,' she said. 'Those two clowns used to be rated one of the best writing teams in Hollywood, even though they nearly drove every producer nuts that they worked for. But last year they went too far. They got in a beef with Goldwyn, and he fired them. So they bluffed their way into his house when he was out and filled all his clothes with itching powder and left ink soap in all the bathrooms. The Producers' Association banned them and they haven't worked since- until Byron hired them. How much d'you think he had to pay them when they were in a spot like that, and why wouldn't they be goddamn glad to get it?'
This was a new angle.
'I didn't know about that,' he said thoughtfully. 'The deal he offered me was all right, but of course he hasn't got anyнthing on me ... yet,' he added. 'What about you?'
This was a new angle.
'He expects to rape me before we start shooting, of course, but he doesn't need much else. He got me with Jack Groom, because Jack still has my contract.'
'For twenty-five a week?'
'No, a bit more than that now. I don't know what Jack's deal is, but I know he hates Byron's guts.'
'I met Comrade Groom today,' Simon remarked casually. 'How do you get on with him?'
The exquisitely drawn green eyes measured him contemнplatively; and then they were bright with laughter.
'The Saint Goes On,' she quoted. 'I can see it coming. Now stop being a damn detective, will you? This is your night off. We're supposed to be having fun and romance, and we've hardly stopped being serious for a minute. Dance with me.'
