“It’s Butch,” said Bonnie faintly.
“Oh, say, Butch,” began Ty in a defiant mutter. “We were going to tell you, call you, sort of—”
“The hell with that!” yelled the quick one. “I don’t care a hoot about how you two bedbugs conduct your private lives, but I’ll be damned if I see why you played such a dirty trick on your own studio!”
“Lay off, you,” said Ty. “Butch, we really owe you—”
“Lay off?” Sam Vix glared out of his one eye. “He says lay off. Listen, me fine bucko, you haven’t got a private life, see? You’re a piece of property, like this house. You belong to Magna Studios, see? When Magna says jump—”
“Oh, go away, Sam,” said Bonnie. She took one step towards the Boy Wonder, who stood exactly where he had stopped on entering the room and was still regarding her with that fixed and awful sadness of a man who sees the coffin-lid being screwed down over the face of his child, or mother, or sweetheart.
“Butch dear.” Bonnie pinched her dress. “We were both so excited... You know, I think, how I’ve always felt towards you. I never really told you I loved you, did I, Butch? Oh, I know I’ve treated you shamefully, and you’ve been a perfect angel about everything. But something happened today... Ty is the only man I’ll ever love, Butch, and I’m going to marry him just as quickly as I can.”
Jacques Butcher took off his hat, looked around, put on his hat, and then sat down. He did not cross his legs, but sat stiffly, like a ventriloquist’s dummy; and as he began to talk the only part of his face that moved was his lips.
“I’m sorry to have to intrude at such a time,” he said, and stopped. Then he started again. “I wouldn’t have come at all. Only Louis Selvin asked me to. Louis is — well, a little put out. Especially by you, Ty.”
“Oh, Butch—” began Bonnie, but she stopped helplessly.
“By me?” said Ty.
Butcher cleared his throat. “Damn it all, I wouldn’t — I’ve got to talk to you not as myself but as vice-president of Magna, Ty. I’ve just come from a long talk with Selvin. As president of Magna he feels it his duty to warn you — not to get married.”
Ty blinked. “You don’t mean to tell me he’s going to hold me to that ridiculous marriage clause in my contract!”
“Marriage clause?” Bonnie stared. “Ty! What marriage clause?”
“Oh, Selvin stuck an anti-marriage clause into my contract the last time,” said Ty disgustedly. “Prevents me from getting married.”
“Sure, why not?” said Vix. “Great lover. You don’t think the studio’s going to build you up into a national fem-killer and let you spoil it by getting hitched!”
“I didn’t know that, Ty,” said Bonnie, distressed. “You didn’t tell me.”
“Forgot all about it. Anyway, it doesn’t make any difference. Louis X. Selvin isn’t going to tell me how to run my life!”
“Selvin asked me to point out,” said Butcher in his cold, flat voice, “that you’ll breach your contract if you marry Bonnie.”
“The hell with Selvin! There are plenty of other studios in Hollywood.”
“All Hollywood studios respect one another’s star-contracts,” said Butcher drearily. “If you breach a Magna contract you’re through, Ty.”
“Then I’m through!” Ty waved his arms angrily.
“But, Ty,” cried Bonnie, “you can’t! I won’t let you throw away your career. We can wait. Maybe when you sign your next contract—”
“I don’t want to wait. I’ve waited long enough. I’m marrying you tomorrow, and if Selvin doesn’t like it he can go to hell.”
“No, Ty!”
“No more arguments.” Ty turned away with a stubborn, final gesture.
“All right, then,” said Butcher in the same dreary way. “Louis anticipated that you might be stubborn. He could break you, Ty, but he admits you’re too valuable a piece of property. So he’s prepared to dicker.”
“Oh, he is, is he?”
“But he warns you that his proposal is final. Take it or leave it.”
“What proposal?” said Ty abruptly.
“If you insist on being married to Bonnie, he’s willing to waive the anti-marriage clause. But only on the following conditions. First, you are to let Magna handle the details of your wedding. Second, after your wedding you and Bonnie are to co-star in a picture biography of Jack and Blythe, taking the roles of your parents.”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” said Ty. “Does that wedding stunt mean a lot of this noisy publicity?”
“It means whatever Magna wants to do.”
“And the picture — does that mean the murders, too?” asked Bonnie, looking ill at the very thought.
“The story,” said Butcher, “is entirely up to me. You will have nothing to say about it.”
“Oh, yes, we have,” shouted Ty. “We say no — right now!”
Butcher rose. “I’m sorry. I’ll tell Selvin.
“No — wait, Butch,” cried Bonnie. She ran over to Ty and shook him. “Ty, please. You can’t throw everything away like this. If — if you’re stubborn I won’t marry you!”
“Let ’em make monkeys out of us with one of those studio weddings?” growled Ty. “Make us put dad and Blythe on the screen in God knows what? Nothing doing.”
“Ty, you’ve got to. I don’t like it any more than you do; you know that. I’m fed up with — with all this. But we’ve got to look to the future, darling. Neither of us has anything. You can’t throw up the only thing we’ve got. It won’t be so bad. The wedding won’t take long, and then we’ll go away somewhere by ourselves—”
Ty glowered at the rug. He lifted his head and said sharply to Butcher: “If we go through with this, do we get a rest? A vacation? A honeymoon without brass bands?”
“Hell, no,” said Vix quickly. “We can use that honeymoon swell. We can—”
“Please, Sam,” said Butcher. Vix fell silent. “Yes, I can promise you that, Ty. Our wedding, your honeymoon. We realize that you’re both upset, not yourselves, won’t be able to do your best work immediately. So you may have as long for your honeymoon as you feel you need.”
“And privacy!”
“And privacy.”
Ty looked at Bonnie, and Bonnie looked pleadingly at Ty. Finally Ty said: “All right. It’s a deal.”
The Boy Wonder said: “Revised contracts will be in your hands in the morning. Sam here will handle all the details of the wedding.” He turned on his heel and quietly went to the door. At the door he hesitated; then he turned around. “I’ll convey my congratulations — tomorrow.” And he walked out.
“Swell,” said Sam Vix briskly. “Now look. You want to tie the knot tomorrow?”
“Yes,” sighed Ty, sitting down. “Anything. Just get out of here.”
“I’ve figured it all out on the way down. Here’s the angle. We use the Jack-Blythe marriage as a model, see?”
“Oh,” began Bonnie. Then she said: “Yes.”
“Only we smear it on, see? Go the whole hog. You won’t be married on the field. You’ll—”
“You mean another airplane shindig?” growled Ty.
“Yeah, sure. Only we’ll get old Doc Erminius to hitch you in your plane. Get it? Wedding over the field. In the air. Microphones for everybody in the plane. Broadcast through a radio telephone hook-up via the field station right to the thousands on the field as the plane circles it. Do it right, and with that Jack-Blythe background it’ll be the biggest stunt this or any other town ever saw!”
“My God,” yelled Ty, rising, “if you think—”
“Go on, Sam, get out of here,” said Bonnie hurriedly, pushing him. “It’ll be all right. I promise. Go on now.”