The Return Of Bulldog Drummond (18 page)

“Funny we should have been talking about him, sir, just as he came in,” said Charlie.

Drummond stared at him in surprise.

“You mean that he is the secretary?” he said at length.

“Of course, sir. That’s why I coughed.”

“Well, I’m damned,” said Drummond. “I thought you merely meant that someone was coming in and you wanted to change the conversation. So he is the secretary, is he? Charlie, give me another Bronx.”

The barman looked at him curiously.

“Almost looks as if you knew him, sir.”

“No, I don’t know him; but I’ve seen him. He has the hell of a time, has he?”

“All of that, from what I hear, sir. And yet he seems to stick it all right. He was with Sir Edward the last time he was here, and that’s eighteen months ago.”

“Italian, I should imagine.”

Charlie nodded.

“Gardini is his name – Benito Gardini. He generally comes in here in the morning for a quick one. Your Bronx, sir.”

“Thank you, Charlie. Have one yourself. Look here, could you find out something for me? I want to know if Sir Edward is lunching in his suite today, or whether he’s coming downstairs.”

“Certainly, sir: nothing easier.” He turned round. “Bert!” he called.

A youth in his shirt-sleeves popped his head out of an inner sanctum.

“Yes, Mr Green.”

“Put on your coat and run upstairs to Number 40. Get hold of Leonard and find out whether lunch is being served in the room or not. And look slippy.”

“I’m rather curious to see Sir Edward,” said Drummond, as the boy departed. “I’ve heard so much about him, but to the best of my belief I’ve never even seen a picture of him.”

“He doesn’t look a bad sort at all, sir,” said Charlie. “Tall, with a small fair beard. But handsome is as handsome does. Well, Bert?”

“Number 40 is going hout for lunch, Mr Green,” said the boy. “Leonard don’t know where, but ’e ’eard them talking abaht it this morning. There’s a car coming for them at ’alf-past twelve.”

“Well done, Bert,” said Drummond, handing him a shilling. “Be sure and put it in the plate on Sunday.”

He glanced at his watch: twenty minutes past twelve. He would take up a position in the lounge that commanded both exits, and since the secretary would almost certainly accompany him, at any rate as far as the car, there would be no difficulty in spotting him.

He found a suitable chair and lit a cigarette. The Comtessa’s house was in South Audley Street: was that where the secretary had been going? He wished now that he had waited to see, but there had been nothing in the harmless request for direction which could possibly have aroused his suspicions. And so it was the purest guesswork that her house had been his destination, but if the guess was correct, it was a funny hour to make a call.

A sudden stir in the lounge roused him from his reverie. Two men were coming down the stairs, and one of them was Gardini. And for the second time that morning Drummond, as he studied the other, was conscious of a little shock of surprise. For somewhere, at some time or other, he had seen him before. The man’s face was definitely familiar, and for a long time after they had passed through the lounge he sat on trying to puzzle out where they could have met. But try as he would, it eluded him, and when finally he left the hotel himself, he could only imagine that Sir Edward must have been pointed out to him on one of his previous visits to England, and that he had forgotten all about it. In any event, his hour at the Ritz Carlton had not been wasted.

For the rest of the afternoon he killed time: there was nothing to do now except wait for Algy Longworth. He turned up just after nine, and a glance at his face showed that something had happened.

“The most extraordinary thing, old boy,” he cried. “They have engaged both of us.”

“The devil they have,” said Drummond. “Let’s hear all about it.”

“We rolled up to the studio at half-past three,” began the other. “And the first thing that hit one was the army of blokes who had evidently come in answer to the advertisement. They were all over the place, scowling at one another, and it struck me that little Algy wasn’t going to have much of a chance. However, I beetled up to a door-keeper warrior, and told him what I wanted.

“‘First left, second right,’ he said wearily. ‘There are only about sixty in front of you.’

“So we joined the glad throng, and after a while we noticed one thing. We might be sixtieth, but it wasn’t going to take long. Each interview was the shortest thing on record: it was more like a procession passing by a judge. At last our turn came, and in I barged with Laura. A damned great fellow in shirt-sleeves with a cigar in his mouth was sitting at a table. He took one look at me and shook his head.

“‘No go,’ he said. ‘Next.’

“But I thought you said they’d taken you,” cried Drummond.

“Wait a moment, old boy: I’m coming to that. Out we pushed again, wondering how we could get a closer look at the place. All we’d seen up to date were a couple of passages and a small room, and from what Laura had said on the way down I gathered it was about all we were likely to see. The door into the actual studio was shut, and when we started to go in the commissionaire fellow let out a shout.

“‘Not allowed in there,’ he cried, ‘without a permit.’

“And we were just on the point of pushing off when another man in shirt-sleeves came dodging through the crowd that still blocked the passage.

“‘Hi! you,’ he called out to me, ‘you’re wanted. Come back to the office, and the young lady too.’

“So back we went, and found the big man still sitting there.

“‘Are you both wanting engagements?’ he asked.

“‘That’s the idea,’ I said. ‘Anything doing?’

“‘Not with regard to the advertisement,’ he answered. ‘You don’t fill that bill. But it occurred to me after you’d gone that as there are two of you, we might be able to arrange something. Ever done any film work?’

“I told him that I hadn’t, but that Laura had, and to cut a long story short, we were engaged at five pounds a week each. She gave her real name of Laura Mainwaring: I gave mine as Algy Wentworth.

“‘I don’t quite know what we shall fix you with,’ he said in conclusion, ‘but there are one or two small parts that remain to be filled. Mr Slingsby’ – he was the man who had come after us and fetched us back – ‘will take you along into the studio and introduce you to our producer, Mr Haxton. You’d better just have a look round and get the atmosphere of the piece we are doing. Society picture, with strong human appeal.’

“So off we toddled to meet Mr Haxton, and to begin with Mr Haxton was not amused. He wanted to know what the adjectival hell he was expected to do with us, as he couldn’t possibly begin shooting our bit for a week at least. However, Slingsby pacified him, and that was that. So the net result is that we have both been taken on, and if there’s anything to find out we’ve got a reasonable chance of doing it.”

“Did everything seem quite normal?” asked Drummond.

“Absolutely,” said the other. “We watched ’em shoot an impassioned love-scene between the two principals; then we strolled about.”

“What sort of place is it?”

“Pretty big. Laura says you could do three or four pictures there at the same time.”

“Are you both going down tomorrow?”

“That’s the notion. What are you going to do?”

“I shall totter about somewhere, Algy,” he said vaguely. “I might even put my nose in at the studio: if I do, of course you don’t know me.”

“What happens if I find out anything?” demanded the other.

“If I’m in the club you can come and tell me about it; and if I’m not, drop me a line to the flat.”

“Right you are, old boy. Laura and I are having a bite somewhere, so I’ll push off.”

The door swung to behind him, and Drummond ordered a whisky and soda. The big man had presumably been Penton: why had he changed his mind over engaging Algy Longworth? Was it that he genuinely did want to fill two minor parts; if so, there were scores of actors with experience from whom he could make a selection. So why Algy? It was possible that the two of them going in together had influenced him, but if that were so why didn’t he think of it at once? And he was still cogitating over the problem when an hour later he switched off his bedroom light.

Sir Edward Greatorex was enjoying himself. Stretched at ease in the most comfortable chair of his luxurious suite at the Ritz Carlton, he had permitted himself the extravagance of a cigar. On a small table at his side stood a shaded reading-lamp and a bottle of Vichy water, on his knees were some typewritten sheets of paper clipped together at one corner.

The title of the document he was reading was “High Finance,” an eminently suitable one for the great financier, but one which, strangely enough, from time to time caused him to laugh, or at any rate give vent to a noise which was as close to laughter as he ever got. Occasionally, too, he frowned, making little clucking sounds indicative of displeasure.

But if any onlooker who had been privileged to intrude on Sir Edward’s privacy had imagined that these manifestations were due to scorn or disapproval of the financial opinions expressed by the writer, he would have been sadly wrong. If, further, he had peeped over the reader’s shoulder, he would have been hard put to it to reconcile the title with the script. What, for instance, had the following paragraph to do with the finer points of international exchanges?

“Paula enters the room, and believing for the moment that it is empty, allows her utter despair to show on her features. Ruin stares the man she loves in the face: foolishly, perhaps, but not fraudulently, he has been dabbling in interests which were too big for him, and now he has lost everything…”

“Serves the damned fool right,” came a mutter from the chair.

“‘Is there nothing to be done?’ she asks herself again. Must she stand by and see Jack go down and out? Distraught, she turns towards the window, and for the first time she sees that the man principally responsible for her lover’s ruin is in the room watching her with an amused smile.”

Once again Sir Edward laid the typescript on his knee: that, he reflected, was the stuff to give ’em. He fancied himself in that part, and with a cautious glance towards the next room, where his secretary was going through the evening mail, he got up and stood in front of the glass. Amused smile – slightly contemptuous, but slightly pitying. He rehearsed two or three effects, and Gardini, entering the room noiselessly, retreated badly shaken. Mercifully Sir Edward had not seen him, and after a quick drink to restore his nerves he gave a short cough and returned.

“Are you ready, sir, for your mail?” he asked deferentially.

Sir Edward reseated himself.

“In a minute or two,” he said. “I like this stuff, Benito.”

The secretary breathed more freely: ‘Benito’ evenings were all right: ‘Gardini’ ones were a toss up: ‘you damned infernal idiot’ ones distinctly trying.

“I think it’s very good, Sir Edward,” he agreed. “It’s got punch in it, the action is rapid, and the love interest holds one.”

Sir Edward snorted contemptuously.

“Far too much of it,” he cried. “I shall speak to Hardcastle about that. Some of it might be cut, and the part in the office in Paris where Sir John is making up his mind whether to crush Bessonia or not should, I think, be considerably strengthened.”

“Perhaps so, sir,” said the other tactfully. “Of course, one has to remember that the film-going public insist on having love, and you won’t have a success unless you give it to them.”

At which point the intelligent reader will guess that the document was not concerned with the flight of the dollar, but was a brief scenario of the film being made at the Blackwater studio. But what the intelligent reader will find a little difficult to understand is why the said scenario should have found its way into the hands, and the interested hands, of a man like Sir Edward Greatorex. And to make that clear it is necessary to reveal a secret, jealously guarded save from the very few, of Sir Edward’s mentality.

Most male children have yearned passionately to drive a railway engine: to be a drum major: even perchance to draw a gun on sight and shoot apples flung in the air into a thousand pieces. And since most male children do none of these things in later life, presumably the yearning ceases with advancing years.

In Sir Edward’s case, however, the yearning had been a different one and had not ceased. From the moment when he had first seen Douglas Fairbanks slaying thousands, and had watched Charlie Chaplin’s magic feet twinkling over the screen, he had had but one real ambition, beside which a few odd millions more or less counted for nothing at all. And that ambition had been to play a leading part in a big film.

He had realised that he could hardly hope to compete against either of them in their own particular line: in fact, he had not wished to. A strong and silent role was what he passionately desired to play: a great statesman, calm and unruffled, steering the national ship through troubled waters; a great surgeon with life and death in his steady hand; a great financier with the destinies of hundreds in his control. A rugged and even ruthless type of part was what he saw himself in…

Now, beyond question, had he so wished he could have gratified his desire at any time. With a week’s income he could have bought studios, camera men, authors, and even bribed the public to come and see the result. But two things prevented him. The first was a certain diffidence caused by the thought that it was just possible he might not be quite so successful as, say, John Barrymore; the second was the question of the money involved. It would cost a lot, and that was as gall and wormwood to the soul of Edward Greatorex. And so, but for a strange turn of the wheel, his secret ambition would in all probability have remained a secret till his death.

It had occurred six months previously, when he was taking the waters at Baden. Seated next to him one day in the lounge was an extremely pretty woman; and though he liked to pose as a misogynist, in reality he was far from being one. At heart he was a sensualist, and it was only the fact that women cost a lot of money that kept him in the straight and narrow path. However, there was no charge for a little mild conversation, and when she dropped her handkerchief he retrieved it for her.