Chapter XLII · CAMERA!

Three months had passed since the Dower House had yielded up its grisly secrets. A long enough time for Gregory Penne to recover completely and to have served one of the six months’ imprisonment to which he was sentenced on a technical charge. The guillotine had been re-erected in a certain Black Museum on the Thames Embankment, where young policemen come to look upon the equipment of criminality. People had ceased to talk about the Head-Hunter.

It seemed a million years ago to Michael as he sat, perched on a table, watching Jack Knebworth, in the last stages of despair, directing a ruffled Reggie Connolly in the business of love-making. Near by stood Adele Leamington, a star by virtue of the success that had attended a certain trade show.

Out of range of the camera, a cigarette between her fingers, Stella Mendoza, gorgeously attired, watched her some time friend and prospective leading man with good-natured contempt.

“There’s nobody can tell me, Mr. Knebworth,” said Reggie testily, “how to hold a girl! Good gracious, heavens alive, have I been asleep all my life? Don’t you think I know as much about girls as you, Mr. Knebworth?”

“I don’t care a darn how you hold your girl,” howled Jack. “I’m telling you how to hold my girl! There’s only one way of making love, and that’s my way. I’ve got the patent rights! Your arm round her waist again, Connolly. Hold your head up, will you? Now turn it this way. Now drop your chin a little. Smile, darn you, smile! Not a prop smile!” he shrieked. “Smile as if you liked her. Try to imagine that she loves you! I’ll apologize to you, afterwards, Adele, but try to imagine it, Connolly. That’s better. You look as if you’d swallowed a liqueur of broken glass! Look down into her eyes—look, I said, not glare! That’s better. Now do that again——”

He watched, writhing, gesticulating, and at last, in cold resignation:

“Rotten, but it’ll have to do. Lights!”

The big Kreisler lights flared, the banked mercury lamps burnt bluely, and the flood lamps became blank expanses of diffused light. Again the rehearsal went through, and then:

“Camera!” wailed Jack, and the handle began to turn.

“That’s all for you to-day, Connolly,” said Jack. “Now, Miss Mendoza——”

Adele came across to where Michael was sitting and jumped up on to the table beside him.

“Mr. Knebworth is quite right,” she said, shaking her head. “Reggie Connolly doesn’t know how to make love.”

“Who does?” demanded Michael. “Except the right man?”

“He’s supposed to be the right man,” she insisted. “And, what’s more, he’s supposed to be the best lover on the English screen.”

“Ha ha!” said Michael sardonically.

She was silent for a time, and then:

“Why are you still here? I thought your work was finished in this part of the world.”

“Not all,” he said cheerfully. “I’ve still an arrest to make.”

She looked up at him quickly.

“Another?” she said. “I thought, when you took poor Sir Gregory——”

“Poor Sir Gregory!” he scoffed. “He ought to be a very happy man. Six months’ hard labour was just what he wanted, and he was lucky to be charged, not with the killing of his unfortunate servant but with the concealment of his death.”

“Whom are you arresting now?”

“I’m not so sure,” said Michael, “whether I shall arrest her.”

“Is it a woman?”

He nodded.

“What has she done?”

“The charge isn’t definitely settled,” he said evasively, “but I think there will be several counts. Creating a disturbance will be one; deliberately endangering public health—at any rate, the health of one of the public—will be another; maliciously wounding the feelings——”

“Oh, you, you mean?”

She laughed softly.

“I thought that was part of your delirium that night at the hospital, or part of mine. But as other people saw you kiss me, it must have been yours. I don’t think I want to marry,” she said thoughtfully. “I am——”

“Don’t say that you are wedded to your art,” he groaned. “They all say that!”

“No, I’m not wedded to anything, except a desire to prevent my best friend from making a great mistake. You’ve a very big career in front of you, Michael, and marrying me is not going to help you. People will think you’re just infatuated, and when the inevitable divorce comes along——”

They both laughed together.

“If you have finished being like a maiden aunt, I want to tell you something,” said Michael. “I’ve loved you from the moment I saw you.”

“Of course you have,” she said calmly. “That’s the only possible way you can love a girl. If it takes three days to make up your mind it can’t be love. That’s why I know I don’t love you. I was annoyed with you the first time I met you; I was furious with you the second time; and I’ve just tolerated you ever since. Wait till I get my make-up off.”

She got down and ran to her dressing-room. Michael strolled across to comfort an exhausted Jack Knebworth.

“Adele? Oh, she’s all right. She really has had an offer from America—not Hollywood, but a studio in the East. I’ve advised her not to take it until she’s a little more proficient, but I don’t think she wanted any advice. That girl isn’t going to stay in the picture business.”

“What makes you think that, Knebworth?”

“She’s going to get married,” said Jack glumly. “I can recognize the signs. I told you all along that there was something queer about her. She’s going to get married and leave the screen for good—that’s her eccentricity.”

“And whom do you think she will marry?” asked Michael.

Old Jack snorted.

“It won’t be Reggie Connolly—that I can promise you.”

“I should jolly well say not!” said that indignant young man, who had remarkably keen ears. “I’m not a marrying chap. It spoils an artist. A wife is like a millstone round his neck. He has no chance of expressing his individuality. And whilst we are on that subject, Mr. Knebworth, are you perfectly sure that I’m to blame? Doesn’t it strike you—mind you, I wouldn’t say a word against the dear girl—doesn’t it strike you that Miss Leamington isn’t quite—what shall I say?—seasoned in love—that’s the expression.”

Stella Mendoza had strolled up. She had returned to the scene of her former labours, and it looked very much as if she were coming back to her former position.

“When you say ‘seasoned’ you mean ‘smoked,’ Reggie,” she said. “I think you’re wrong.”

“I can’t be wrong,” said Reggie complacently. “I’ve made love to more girls in this country than any other five leading men, and I tell you that Miss Leamington is distinctly and fearfully immature.”

The object of their discussion appeared at the end of the studio, nodded a cheery good night to the company and went out, Michael on her heels.

“You’re fearfully immature,” he said, as he guided her across the road.

“Who said so? It sounds like Reggie: that is a favourite word of his.”

“He says you know nothing whatever about love-making.”

“Perhaps I don’t,” she said shortly, and so baffling was her tone that he was not prepared to continue the subject, until they reached the long, dark road in which she lived.

“The proper way to make love,” he said, more than a little appalled at his own boldness, “is to put one hand on the waist——”

Suddenly she was in his arms, her cool face against his.

“There isn’t any way,” she murmured. “One just does!”

THE END

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