Linda Lee, Incorporated: A Novel

In that first flash of affrighted recognition, Lucinda started back to the door and fumbled for the key, but had yet to find it when the woman plunged down to grovel at her feet, catching at her knees, lifting up a face of torment, supplicating against teeth that chattered as if with an acute ague.

"O Mrs. Druce, Mrs. Druce! I'm all right now, I am, I swear I am! Forgive me, and for God's sake don't turn me out, don't call the police!"

Still frightened and mistrustful, Lucinda yet held her hand on the knob. "What do you want?" she asked in a voice that shook.

"Just to talk to you a minute… Don't be afraid…"

"I'm not afraid," Lucinda lied. Nevertheless, in compassion and dawning reassurance, she stooped, freed her skirts from the clutching hands, and stepped back. "Get up," she said, watchful. "Tell me plainly what you want…"

The woman scrambled to her feet again, cringing and fawning. "I had to come," she protested. "I didn't know where else to go, I had to know. Mrs. Druce: please tell me, is he… Did I hurt him bad?"

"Desperately," Lucinda replied, wondering at the reserve of fortitude which enabled her to speak with such composure. "Whether he'll live or not we don't know yet. He was unconscious when I left, before the doctor came."

"You left him that way? You didn't wait to find out! O my God!"

"Are you reproaching me?" Lucinda retorted in amazement – "as if it were I who shot your husband!"

"My husband!" Nelly shrilled. "It's yours I'm talking about, it's Mr. Druce. It's not knowing how bad I hurt him that's driving me crazy … not meaning to harm even his little finger, I hope to die! I didn't hardly know who he was, that time while we was fighting…" She drove her knuckles against her mouth again and sunk teeth into them till pain helped her reassert self-control. "I didn't know what I was doing!" she mumbled between sobs – "I didn't know."

"Do you know now?"

"Oh, I do, I do! I'm all right now, honestly I am. I know what I've done and what – what I've got to pay for doing it. But I don't care!" She jerked up her chin, bravado fighting with fear in her eyes. "Lynn only got what was coming to him. I warned him often enough, time after time I told him how it was all bound to end if he kept on like he was doing; but he wouldn't listen, he'd just laugh and tell me what I could do if I didn't like his ways… I don't mean I threatened him, Mrs. Druce. It wasn't like that. I don't believe I ever dreamed of striking back at him before today. I always thought it would be some other woman would do it, somebody that didn't love him like I did, and couldn't stand being treated like a dog, just because he got tired – I always thought somebody like that would make Lynn pay, I never thought I'd have the nerve. But today, all at once, I couldn't seem to stand it any longer… And when I looked in at that window and saw you alone with him, and him holding you in his arms, even if you did try to make him quit… But I'm not sorry! Lynn never treated any woman so mean, and I guess it was right his punishment should come from me. I ain't a bit sorry, I hope he dies… Do you – do you think he will?"

To the implicit hope that thus gave vaunted impenitence the lie, Lucinda returned, in a low tone and against her wish, the one word, "Probably…" and saw the woman quail and writhe away, twisting her thin, graceful hands into each other till their knuckles shone dead white through the tortured skin.

"I don't care," she wailed – "I don't! And anyway, it wasn't about him, it was Mr. Druce I came here to find out about. I couldn't go away without knowing… He's been such a prince to me, a regular prince, and I never meant him any harm. It just makes me sick to think…" She swung passionately back to Lucinda. "Won't you please, please tell me how bad he's hurt?"

"Not much – a flesh wound in the arm – "

"Thank God it wasn't worse!" Nelly drooped heavily against the wall, with a pathetic smile testifying to her relief of mind. "I'd never have forgiven myself, never…"

Profound fatigue seemed to be overcoming her. The quavering murmurs failed upon her lips, her eyes closed, her head sagged toward one shoulder.

"Are you in love with him, then?" Lucinda demanded inexorably. "Is Bel in love with you?"

Startled, Nelly stood away from the wall, with a hysterical note in the laugh that scorned this notion. "No, no, no, no!" she cried. "He isn't that sort. You ought to know he isn't. I don't know what the trouble was between you two, but I'll tell the world it wasn't on account of any other woman… It wasn't as if Mr. Druce didn't have his chance, either; any time he'd wanted it he could have had it with me, anytime!"

"Yet you tell me you're not in love with him!"

"You don't have to be in love in the picture business…" The fugitive, twisted smile vanished away, the lustreless eyes stared into space. "Mostly it's better if you aren't. If you are, it's likely to turn out like it did with me and Lynn. If a girl wants to get on, she can't afford to care for anybody, only herself. It hasn't mattered much to me what happened, since Lynn… But Mr. Druce never as much as held my hand."

"Wouldn't you tell me that anyway?"

"It's God's honest truth."

The statement was made without spirit, as one of simple, provable fact. And for all her memories of Bel's misconduct, Lucinda believed.

Wearily the woman began to pull about her shoulders a wrinkled, sleazy wrap.

"Guess I'd better be going," she said with eyes averted. "Thank you for being so kind. I'm glad Mr. Druce wasn't much hurt, and I wish you'd tell him I'm sorry for everything. I didn't mean to do it, but I just went crazy when I saw you and Lynn together, and him making love to you. I don't remember much about what happened, but I guess it must've been pretty awful for you, and I'm sorry."

Continuing to avoid Lucinda's eyes, she plucked at her cloak once more and moved toward the door; but faltered on finding that Lucinda stood in her way and didn't offer to budge. "I'd better go," she iterated uneasily.

"Where?"

"I don't know." Nelly wagged a head of desolate uncertainty. "There isn't any place I can think of now, they wouldn't find me. Only … I'm sorry about Lynn, and I'm not going to suffer any more on his account unless I have to. So it's up to me to be on my way."

"Wait a minute, please." Remaining between the girl and the door, Lucinda pursued: "I want to know how you got in here. How did you get back to the hotel so quickly?"

"From Beverly Hills, you mean? Oh, I had luck and caught a trolley without having to wait. They make pretty good time, you know. And then, when I got here … I wanted to go up to my room and get some money… I was afraid to come in the front way, I thought maybe they'd telephoned or something, so I tried the side door. They don't lock that till about nine o'clock. And just as I came in, I noticed the chambermaid unlocking this door, and it come over me like a flash you'd probably be coming home pretty soon, and I was worried about Mr. Druce; so I slipped in while she was in your bedroom, and hid behind that chair there till she went out again."

"But what if they've locked the side door since? It must be after nine now. You won't be able to leave except by way of the office."

"I guess I'll have to take my chances…" She bent upon Lucinda a look of flickering defiance. "Anyhow, what do you care?"

"I don't like to think of your being caught."

"Why?"

"I don't know, unless it's because I think you've been punished enough already. You'd better wait and rest for a while, at least till the house quiets down. And perhaps we can think of some way… Don't you think you'd better trust me?"

For another instant suspicious eyes searched Lucinda's, then with a half-nod the girl wilted into a chair. "All right," she acquiesced with the passivity of a child chastened by terror – "just's you say, Mrs. Druce. Only, I don't see why you're being so good to me."

Lucinda had no answer to that. Her motive was not more obscure to that muddled mind than to her own. Unless, of course, it had to do with that enduring image of the bird storm-beaten, weary of wing and bewildered by the dark, risking the debatable mercy of mankind in its stark necessity…

She stood pitiful, contemplating the creature who huddled in the chair, shivering, whimpering a little, gnawing her knuckles, with the dazed eyes of an animal hunted to its last gasp seeking to probe the fearful ambiguity of the future. A murderess by intention, whom the word of any moment might prove a murderess in fact… And one couldn't condemn or reproach her, one couldn't shrink from her because of the crime that stained her hands, one couldn't even win one's own consent to send her out to chance the retribution she had invited.

Incomprehensible the alchemy of the human heart! Lucinda was making up her mind to help a sinner circumvent justice…

"Tell me something," she said, with no more preface: "You've been calling me Mrs. Druce. How did you learn that was my name? Did Mr. Druce tell you?"

Only the hand of the girl moved in a sign of dissent, and her lips to shape the words: "It was Lynn told me."

"Lynn!"

"Mr. Druce never said as much as a word about you. I don't believe he knows I know now. I thought he didn't want me to know, so I never let on; but of course I did know, all along."

"Lynn told you when – ?"

"That time you found me on the floor, you know. I guess I ought to apologize for the way I treated you, but I was all upset, I hated you on account of what Lynn had told you about me and all."

"I don't think I blame you – now."

"You wouldn't 've, then, if you'd been through what I'd been through that afternoon… Lynn didn't let me know he was coming, or send his name in or anything, he just walked in through the window while I was getting dressed to go out. He said I'd got to clear out, go back home, where I come from in the East. He said if I didn't I'd spoil everything for him, if you ever found out about me you wouldn't have any more to do with him, and then where'd be his chance of getting in with New York society people like you trained with. He took out a hundred dollars and put it on the bureau and said I'd got to take it and go home and he'd send me fifty dollars every week. I said I wouldn't, and he said I would if he had to ship me East on a stretcher. I forget what I said then, but I was pretty wild, I guess, and he hit me, and I don't remember anything after that, except waking up to find Lynn gone and you taking care of me."

She jumped in the chair, cried out shrilly, and clapped a hand over her heart when the telephone sounded a peremptory call. Lucinda, answering, heard the voice of her chauffeur: he had called up Mr. Summerlad's, somebody there had told him Miss Lee had gone home already and wouldn't want him again that night, and he wanted to make sure that was all right.

"Yes, Ben," Lucinda assented, "it's quite all right. I left that word for you, but … just a minute … I may change my mind."

"It'll be all right with me, Miss Lee, if you want to go out again."

"Yes, Ben, I know; and thank you. But if I decide to use the car again tonight, I'll drive it myself – alone, you understand. If you wouldn't mind bringing it to the side door of the hotel in about an hour and leaving it there… No; don't wait for me, I may be delayed; just leave the car and go home. I'll take it to the garage when I'm through with it."

When Lucinda hung up she found Nelly slewed round in the chair and watching with darkly doubting eyes, to which she responded, with a slight smile: "That was inspiration. While Ben was talking, it occurred to me, the only possible way for you to escape would be in somebody's car. So I've arranged to let you steal mine. You can leave it wherever you think it safe to get aboard a train. You can drive, of course?" Nelly nodded. "Then if you'll come into my bedroom, you can lie down and rest while I find you a change of clothes. I'm afraid, if the police get a description of you dressed as you are, you wouldn't have much chance…"

Before she could surmise or move to defeat the girl's intention, Nelly had caught one of her hands and was weeping and slavering over it.

"You're so sweet and good to me!" she sobbed. "I can't make out what makes you so kind!"

"I think," Lucinda said, with gaze remote – "I think I am beginning to understand…"

XLI

In an interlude of difficulty to beggar all believing, response to Lucinda's forbearance all at once swept like a great wind over those treacherous emotional shallows, kicking up their still unsettled dregs of hysteria, storming in wild squalls of gratitude, remorse and shame, driving shoreward that frail, crank pleasure-craft which was the soul of Nelly Marquis, leaving it at the last stranded in a slough of self-pity and abasement, where it rested in maudlin wreckage, weeping, lamenting, calling out upon its shabby gods for that they had forsaken it.

Early in this scene Lucinda made shift to get the woman, half-leading, half-dragging her, into the bedchamber where the seizure might spend itself unheard by passers in the public corridor. But for a tedious while after she had persuaded her to lie down she made no headway toward stemming her transports; and sitting on the side of the bed, suffering Nelly to cling to her hands, seeking to pacify her whenever in a lull she could make words tell, learned enough from her maunderings to sicken one with the very thought of love.

As if what had been had left her in need of this last disenchantment!..

Sheer persistence in the end proved tranquillizing, the woman ceased to toss and writhe continually, her communications became more lucid. But she wouldn't hear of being left alone for a nap, she wouldn't release Lucinda's hands, she wouldn't heed suggestions that it might perhaps be well for her to get up and change to the clothing which Lucinda had provided. Time enough for that, she argued, when Mr. Druce had been and gone. Maybe Lynn hadn't been as much hurt as Lucinda believed. If he hadn't, he could be depended upon to move heaven and earth to save his fair name in the esteem of picture fans from the odium that must attach to it should the news get out that he had been shot up by a discarded wife. Anyway, they couldn't tell anything for certain till Mr. Druce had kept his promise to report the surgeon's verdict.

Besides, if it came to the worst, if it turned out that Nelly would have to cut and run for it, the later the hour at which she left the hotel the better, the fewer people there would be about to see her go…

It had been agreed that it would never do for Lucinda to ask for the key to the side door. But if she chose to stroll out through the lobby, accompanied by a young woman well cloaked, the chances were that the latter would pass unquestioned as some friend who had dropped in to spend the evening with her.

"But are you quite sure you feel strong and well enough to drive the car yourself?" Lucinda misdoubted for perhaps the hundredth time, though for the first openly.

The woman on the bed gave her hand a small jerk of petulance. "Don't you worry your head about me, Mrs. Druce," she insisted. "I'll be all right. I can drive any make of car there is, and I know all the roads out of Los Angeles like a book. Why, when me and Lynn was living together, we didn't hardly ever have any use for a chauffeur."

"Where will you go, then?"

"Up North, I guess, by the Coastal Highway. I can make Santa Barbara by morning easy. But I don't know, maybe I might go right through to Frisco. That's where I want to get, you know. It ought to be easy to lie low in a town like Frisco. Anyhow, wherever I decide, I'll shoot you a wire first thing, telling you where I left the car. I only wish I didn't have to take it, somehow it don't seem right. But there! maybe I won't have to… And unless I do, there wouldn't be any sense in my leaving all my clothes here and everything, would there? What time is it now? A person would think Mr. Druce wouldn't be much longer, wouldn't they? I suppose you wouldn't want to call up Lynn's house and ask…"

"I'd rather not."

"I kind of thought you'd feel like that about it. It would look too much like worrying about Lynn, wouldn't it?" Lucinda made no reply, and after a moment of dumb staring at the ceiling a shadow of complacency modified Nelly's fretful look. "I guess it's all over with Lynn now, as far as you're concerned, isn't it?"

"Yes," Lucinda said with the slowness that spells restraint – "as far as I'm concerned, it's all over."

"I'm awfully sorry," the girl asserted, her voice in turn carrying the colour of complacency – "I mean, sorry for you. You must've been awfully stuck on Lynn."

"Yes…" To offset a choke in her voice Lucinda added with a hard laugh: "Awfully!"

"It's terrible to have to give up a man like Lynn… Don't I know!"

Lucinda bluntly changed the subject. "What will you do now?" she asked – "I mean, after this blows over. Will you go on with your picture work in the East?"

"I don't know… I guess not… Nobody's likely to give me another chance… Lynn isn't going to be able to keep the truth from leaking out inside the business, of course; and he's terribly popular, his friends will take good care I don't get another job. I guess I've gone and fixed it for myself in the picture business, all right, no matter what… Unless, of course, I might maybe change my name or something."

"But this picture my husband is making: he won't be able to go on with it with you out of the cast, I presume."

Nelly laughed outright. "I guess that won't worry Mr. Druce a terrible lot. You don't suppose he cares two whoops what happens to that picture now, do you?"

"Why not? Why did he start making it, unless?.."

"Why don't you know, Mrs. Druce? I'd 've thought you'd 've been wise to that dodge all along. All Mr. Druce went into the film business for was to be near you."'

"You believe that?"

"Why!" – the girl laughed again – "it's just as plain as paint to anybody in the know; I mean, anybody that knows you two are married but living separate on account of some row or something. All Mr. Druce cares about pictures a person could put in their eye and never know it. He just wanted a good excuse to be near you and take care of you in case anything … like tonight … or if he thought you was beginning to take Lynn too seriously or anything… Anyway, that's how I figured it from the very first. He had it doped it would cramp Lynn's style to see me around the studio all the time, and maybe make him break it off with you. And so did I. Only I guess neither of us guessed how hard Lynn had fallen for you."

"You haven't told me how my husband happened to engage you."

"Well, he just went after me and wouldn't take no for an answer. He's like that, you know. Of course, I don't know what the trouble was between you two, but I don't see how you ever stood out against a man like him, Mrs. Druce."

"Where were you when he found you?"

"Back home. You see, after Lynn gave me that hundred … and what happened … I was afraid to stay in Hollywood, I didn't know what else he might do to me. And besides, I simply couldn't stand seeing you stepping out with him all the time, it made me simply wild. So I went right back to Findlay."

"Findlay?"

"The place in Ohio where my people live."

"And that's where Mr. Druce found you?"

"I'd only just got back when a man came to town, Mr. Roberts he said his name was, and said he'd got me a swell offer to go back to the Coast and act for a new company just starting. I kind of thought there was something fishy about it, because I never was much in pictures; and why should they send somebody all the way to Findlay to get me when they could 've got plenty just as good right here in Hollywood? Anyhow, I was afraid of Lynn, so I said nothing doing. Next I knew, Mr. Druce himself come to see me and said I'd got to go back to Hollywood with him and make pictures and I could write my own contract. Of course, as soon's I heard his name, I tumbled to what it was all about; and I thought if you got to seeing a lot of your husband you'd give Lynn the air … chuck him, I mean … and maybe … Ah! I don't know…"

She was quiet for a moment, in wide-eyed, wondering abstraction. "Somehow I never got over being crazy about Lynn, you know," she said in a quieter tone than she had yet used – "not even when he treated me meanest."

In this pensive mood she mused on: "You know, sometimes I think it's all wrong the way women, like you and me, take everything a man wants to hand out to us, just to hold him. They keep telling you it's the only way; but the way it looks to me, it hardly ever works … I mean, unless the man's crazy about you, like Mr. Druce…

"Of course, I know it isn't any of my business, Mrs. Druce, but I haven't got any hard feelings towards you on account of Lynn and all, not any more, and I'm perfectly sincere when I say I think you'll be making one big mistake if you don't make it up with Mr. Druce as soon's ever you can now…"

The house telephone came to Lucinda's rescue: Mr. Druce was calling, if Miss Lee would be kind enough to overlook the lateness of the hour…

Lucinda promised to get rid of Bel as soon as she could, and in return exacted the girl's promise to rest quietly and not worry. Then she shut herself out into the sitting-room, and had almost immediately to answer the door.

Bel's light motor-coat hung from his shoulders with empty sleeves, by which device he was able to make no parade of the fact that his right arm was in a sling. His features were drawn and grey, his speech slow with weariness, but his eyes keen, steady and (Lucinda made sure, looking sharply) wholly unsentimental; while his greeting, characteristically abrupt – "Still up, eh?" – was accompanied by ironical recognition of her unchanged evening costume.

"I waited up for you," Lucinda replied sufficiently to both words and look. "How's your arm?"

"Nothing to brag about, but no worse than I thought. A bit stiff and sore, that's all."

"You look fearfully tired, Bel. Won't you sit down?"

Irony again tinged his flying smile. "No, thanks. Won't stay but a minute. I promised, so here I am. But I'm dog-tired, and as soon as I've turned in my report, I'll cut along."

"Well?.."

"He's got one chance in a thousand to pull through. Say what you like about that young woman – she can shoot. Only one shot went wrong, merely smashed his shoulder. One of the others just missed his heart, the third drilled through his lungs. Wouldn't give a great deal for all the show he's got."

Grim watchfulness was rewarded by her slight start, a swift darkening of Lucinda's eyes, but no flinching, after an instant a slow nod, nothing more. "Nothing to say?" Bellamy demanded in pitiless humour.

"Thank you for letting me know."

"And that's all?"

"Was there something you expected me to say, Bel? Sorry to disappoint you…"

"Well: you knew the fellow better than I – "

"If it interests you, you may as well know now what I didn't – not before tonight."

"You didn't know Summerlad was married – ?"

"If another man dared ask me that question, I think even you would resent it."

"Perhaps. Daresay it's the husband's astigmatic point of view. However, I didn't mean to be offensive."

"Do you seriously ask me to believe that, Bel?"

"Damn it, Linda! you always did have the faculty of putting me in the wrong."

"Isn't it more true that you haven't yet mastered the faculty of always putting yourself in the right?"

"Perhaps we'd better let it go at that. One thing's certain, I'm none too happy in my efforts to express myself tonight. Daresay I'd better clear out before I make things worse…" Nevertheless he delayed. "That girl … she got away. Not a trace…"

"Are they – is anybody looking – ?"

"The police have got that job in hand. I had rather a time with them, you know. They didn't fancy my story at all, at first, couldn't see why the devil I had let Nelly escape. The circumstance that she'd shot me in the arm didn't seem to carry any weight; in fact, I gathered they didn't put it beyond me to shoot myself in the right arm to divert suspicion. Only one thing saved me: Nelly had thoughtfully lost her handbag outside the window, with an extra clip of cartridges in it."

"She must have meant to make sure… I mean, it wasn't an affair of impulse, then?"