“You’ve got me all wrong,” he managed to croak hoarsely, “I don’t even know this girl you’re raving about. I’ve only seen her twice.”
Potterson smiled insinuatingly and nudged him in the side with his elbow.
“Okay, okay,” he winked. “You’ve only seen her twice. But you managed to make a terrific impression in just that time.” The smile faded from his face and was replaced with an expression of sulky envy. “I wish I knew what you had on the ball,” he muttered.
“I wish I did, too,” Howie cried in despair.
In a few minutes the long sleek car drew to a smooth stop before the modest frame boarding house in which Howie lived. As they walked up the carpeted stairs to Howie’s third floor room, he tried again.
“You men are wasting your time,” he said pleadingly, “I can’t give you any contracts or anything. I don’t even know who or where this girl you want is.”
“You hear that,” Potterson said over his shoulder to the four men who followed him, “he doesn’t know where she is.”
The men chuckled.
“He probably can’t even get in touch with her,” Potterson added between panting breaths.
The men chuckled again.
Howie shrugged despairingly. Nothing he could say or do it seemed would convince him that he was telling the truth.
He stopped before his door, inserted the key and stepped back to allow Potterson and his four shadows to precede him into the room.
Howie followed them in, closed the door behind him and stopped short, his eyes popping open incredulously.
For reclining seductively on his bed like a contented leopard was the darkhaired nemessis who had so hopelessly scrambled up his life in the past hour. She had kicked off her high heeled pumps and now she wriggled her toes and glanced up at him through a strand of blue-black hair that had fallen over her eyes.
“Hello, honey,” she cooed.
“W — what are you doing here?” gasped Howie.
Potterson took his eyes from the brunette reluctantly.
“Let’s get down to business,” he said drawing a sheaf of papers from his inner coat pocket. “We’re prepared to go as high as necessary, so there shouldn’t be any trouble.”
Howie collapsed into a chair. Strangling sounds came from his throat.
The dark haired enchantress slipped gracefully from the bed and crossed to Howie and settled slinkily onto his lap. Her round white arm found its way around his neck, pulling him closer to her.
“Don’t!” Howie strangled.
Potterson stared at him incredulously for a moment and then spread several impressive looking documents on a table next to the chair.
“A thousand a wqek to start,” he said crisply, “with a raise each year for the duration of this seven-year contract. Satisfactory?”
“Please,” Howie said miserably, “I’m not—”
“Okay,” Potterson said hastily, “we’ll make it two thousand to start with.”
“But—”
“Four thousand!”
“Mr. Potterson,” Howie said desperately, “this joke has gone far enough.”
“Four thousand dollars a joke?” Potterson shouted. “I’ll show you who’s joking! Ten thousand dollars!”
Howie groaned. His resistance was gone. No one would listen to him. Everybody was insane. Nothing made sense any more. The only reason and sanity left in the world belonged to Mazie Slatter. And she would have none of him. He was dimly aware that they were shoving a pen into his hand, that he was signing documents by the dozen. But he was oblivious to it all. The only thought in his mind, the only desire in his heart was Mazie.
“There,” Potterson cried triumphantly. “No one will ever break these contracts. They’re iron-clad and air-tight. It’ll cost us money, but it’s worth it to have her under exclusive contract for everything.”
“Brilliant work, Mr. Potterson,” one of his shadows commented.
“Stroke of genius, sir,” another added.
“Yes indeed,” the remaining two put in simultaneously.
Howie was caught up then in a tornado of turbulent action and excitement.
“We leave for the coast in three hours,” Potterson barked. “Be ready. We’ll work out a complete build-up campaign in the meantime. Don’t forget. Be at Union Station in three hours.”
Howie tried feebly to protest, but the situation was out of his hands and control now. Hollywood methods were in the saddle. He was dragged to his feet, hustled to the car, raced from ticket agency to haberdasher and back again, with all the furious confusion of Hollywood itself.
The whole thing had become a kaleidoscopic nightmare in which pinwheels and pyrotechnics exploded constantly. In one interval of sanity he got away long enough to phone Rupp’s Drug Store, but the clerk told him that Mazie Slatter had left the store and there was no way he could get in touch with her.
The papers had the story before they left. There were pictures of Potterson, Howie and all the yes men but not one single picture of the beautiful darkhaired girl. She was in the drawing room of the streamliner swathed to the ears in all-concealing veils. That was the build-up. She was heralded as the most glorious, glamorous, gorgeous creature ever to be signed by Colossal Films. But no pictures were to be taken until the dramatic unveiling at the depot in Hollywood. It was a dodge designed to create suspense and it was evidently succeeding. There were reams of copy about the mysterious veiled girl in the afternoon papers. And when the sleek streamliner pulled from the station hundreds of fans and curiosity seekers lined the tracks cheering and shouting.
Everyone was happy and excited and expectant but Howie. He sat glumly in his compartment feeling as if the bottom had dropped completely out of the safe, comfortable world he had known.
Just a few short hours ago he had been safe, secure and moderately happy. Now he was suddenly surrounded by a whirlpool of Hollywood maniacs and in the proximity of the glamorous, frightening dark-haired girl who acted toward him as if he were the personification of a hero from the pages of Ideal Romances.
As the wheels of the streamliner clicked swiftly over the rails bearing him inexorably toward his destiny in Hollywood, he wondered dazedly how it would all end...
Two days later as the train was approaching the sprawling, stuccoed station at Los Angeles, Howie had found no answer to his gloomy speculations. He had spent the time in transit scampering from his compartment to the diner and back, furtively dodging the efforts of the bewitching brunette to inveigle him into her drawing room.
The door of his compartment suddenly banged open and Howie started furtively. But it was Potterson’s moonlike face that appeared.
“Better be getting ready,” he barked. “We’re due in L.A. in about twenty minutes. I’ve just received word that the reception is all set to go off with a bang. We’ve got the mayor, dozens of stars and notables and half the town down at the station waiting for us. It’ll be the biggest moment in the history of publicity build-ups when we unveil Collossal’s latest star. I’m telling you the town will go wild. Now you get down to her drawing room and see that she’s ready.”
“But—”
“No ‘buts’” Potterson snapped. With every foot that slid back under the wheels Potterson became more and more the infallible, dynamic Producer. He had on a brightly-checked sport coat and a crimson scarf which he wore like a uniform.
“Get moving,” he ordered.
Reluctantly Howie got moving. As he reached the door to the brunette’s drawing room he was aware that the palms of his hands were damp and cold.
Summoning all of his courage he knocked timidly. A lilting voice answered him and then the door was opened and the girl appeared.