登陆注册
15290000000069

第69章

Ten minutes later he was telling a barber that he had just finished a hard week on the Holden lot, and that he was glad to get the brush off at last. From the barber's he hastened to the Patterson house, rather dreading the encounter with one to whom he owed so much money. He found the house locked. Probably both of the Pattersons had gone out into society. He let himself in and began to follow the directions of the Montague girl. The bath, clean linen, the other belted suit, already pressed, the other shoes, the buttoned, cloth-topped ones, already polished! He felt now more equal to the encounter with a heartless society woman. But, as she did not return, he went out in obedience to a new hunger.

In the most sumptuous cafeteria he knew of, one patronized only in his first careless days of opulence, he ate for a long time. Roast beef and potatoes he ordered twice, nor did he forget to drink the milk prescribed by his benefactress. Plenty of milk would make him more than ever resemble Harold Parmalee. And he commanded an abundance of dessert: lemon pie and apple pie and a double portion of chocolate cake with ice-cream. His craving for sweets was still unappeased, so at a near-by drug store he bought a pound box of candy.

The world was again under his feet. Restored to his rightful domain, he trod it with lightness and certainty. His mind was still a pleasant jumble of money and food and the Montague girl. Miles of gorgeous film flickered across his vision. An experienced alcoholic would have told him that he enjoyed a coffee "hang-over." He wended a lordly way to the nearest motion-picture theatre.

Billed there was the tenth installment of The Hazards of Hortense.

He passed before the lively portrayal in colours of Hortense driving a motor car off an open drawbridge. The car was already halfway between the bridge and the water beneath. He sneered openly at the announcement: "Beulah Baxter in the Sensational Surprise Picture of the Century." A surprise picture indeed, if those now entering the theatre could be told what he knew about it! He considered spreading the news, but decided to retain the superiority his secret knowledge gave him.

Inside the theatre, eating diligently from his box of candy, he was compelled to endure another of the unspeakable Buckeye comedies. The cross-eyed man was a lifeguard at a beach and there were social entanglements involving a bearded father, his daughter in an inconsiderable bathing suit, a confirmed dipsomaniac, two social derelicts who had to live by their wits, and a dozen young girls also arrayed in inconsiderable bathing suits. He could scarcely follow the chain of events, so illogical were they, and indeed made little effort to do so. He felt far above the audience that cackled at these dreadful buffooneries. One subtitle read: "I hate to kill him--murder is so hard to explain."This sort of thing, he felt more than ever, degraded an art where earnest people were suffering and sacrificing in order to give the public something better and finer. Had he not, himself, that very day, completed a perilous ordeal of suffering and sacrifice? And he was asked to laugh at a cross--eyed man posing before a camera that fell to pieces when the lens was exposed, shattered, presumably, by the impact of the afflicted creature's image! This, surely, was not art such as Clifford Armytage was rapidly fitting himself, by trial and hardship, to confer upon the public.

It was with curiously conflicting emotions that he watched the ensuing Hazards of Hortense. He had to remind himself that the slim little girl with the wistful eyes was not only not performing certain feats of daring that the film exposed, but that she was Mrs.

Sigmund Rosenblatt and crazy about her husband. Yet the magic had not wholly departed from this wronged heroine. He thought perhaps this might be because he now knew, and actually liked, that talkative Montague girl who would be doing the choice bits of this drama. Certainly he was loyal to the hand that fed him.

Black Steve and his base crew, hirelings of the scoundrelly guardian who was "a Power in Wall Street," again and again seemed to have encompassed the ruin, body and soul, of the persecuted Hortense.

They had her prisoner in a foul den of Chinatown, whence she escaped to balance precariously upon the narrow cornice of a skyscraper, hundreds of feet above a crowded thoroughfare. They had her, as the screen said, "Depressed by the Grim Menace of Tragedy that Impended in the Shadows." They gave her a brief respite in one of those gilded resorts "Where the Clink of Coin Opens Wide the Portals of Pleasure, Where Wealth Beckons with Golden Fingers," but this was only a trap for the unsuspecting girl, who was presently, sewed in a plain sack, tossed from the stern of an ocean liner far out at sea by creatures who would do anything for money--who, so it was said, were Remorseless in the Mad Pursuit of Gain.

At certain gripping moments it became apparent to one of the audience that Mrs. Sigmund Rosenblatt herself was no longer in jeopardy. He knew the girl who was, and profoundly admired her artistry as she fled along the narrow cornice of the skyscraper. For all purposes she was Beulah Baxter. He recalled her figure as being--not exactly stubby, but at least not of marked slenderness. Yet in the distance she was indeed all that an audience could demand. And she was honest, while Mrs. Rosenblatt, in the Majestic Theatre at Peoria, Illinois, had trifled airily with his faith in women and deceived him by word of mouth.

He applauded loudly at the sensational finish, when Hortense, driving her motor car at high speed across the great bridge, ran into the draw, that opened too late for her to slow down, and plunged to the cruel waters far below.

Mrs. Rosenblatt would possibly have been a fool to do this herself.

同类推荐
热门推荐
  • 旋风少女后续之复仇

    旋风少女后续之复仇

    在大雨中,一个女生跪在松柏道馆门前,神志不清,嘴里却还喃喃道我没有,若白师兄原谅我……
  • 大话西游之无欲

    大话西游之无欲

    “大圣,此去欲何?”“踏南天,碎云霄!”“若一去不复返……”“便一去不复返!”
  • 阴阳先生之神威伏魔

    阴阳先生之神威伏魔

    因为一些偶遇,将一个本该走上绝路的小子,变成了一名妖魔见了便闻风丧胆的捉鬼道士;本应该在一次行动中丢掉性命的他,却又因为一些巧合激发出体内的一些小力量,再次走出了绝境……
  • 仙破

    仙破

    龙吞昆仑山,九鼎现。登仙门开,九星重聚,人世间,无物理。大变即将到来前,程默遇到了几万年后的自己。群号:87768456
  • 夜光光的爆笑江湖:神偷公主

    夜光光的爆笑江湖:神偷公主

    真正的神偷做了神捕,神捕退隐江湖,于是收了古灵精怪公主为徒,公主劫富济贫,行走江湖,夜不归宿,美名其曰:体察民情。实际则是:逃婚。她不愿意接受政治婚姻,哪怕对方帅的一塌糊涂。然而有偷必有捕,奇迹的是他们成为了搭档,他一袭白衣站于屋顶,她一袭黑衣游走于“财房”,她偷窃,他望风,她将银子盗走,他将贪官伏法。于是,在那场神偷和神捕的追逐里,忽然发现,自古,神偷都逃不过神捕。
  • 朝朝不暮暮

    朝朝不暮暮

    树倒猢狲散,赫赫有名的威望世家凤家一夜之间败落。小孩长者被杀,年轻男子充军,而女子则沦为军妓,成为玩物!就连最疼爱她的姐姐也死在了刀剑之下!十年间,褪去一身青涩,小小少年,女扮男装,忍辱负重,只为换得有一天含冤昭雪。权谋?抱负?责任?爱情?亲情?友情?当更大的阴谋来袭,该当如何?她答曰:灭我满门者,伤我至亲者,挡我路者,死路一条!今生今世,遇神杀神,遇魔杀魔,谁敢挡我?!
  • 谶语

    谶语

    这个热闹的网络文坛已经有了太多的浮躁喧嚣,年少多金、风流倜傥、无所不能、妻妾成群、偷情无数成了这一大批所谓小说的主流标志。世俗追求的低俗妄想在这个虚构的世界里得到了彻底的实现。忍不住我也来个滥竽充数,不过我虽然做不到妙笔生花,但讲几个有趣的故事,发泄一下…
  • 佛说护国尊者所问大乘经卷第一

    佛说护国尊者所问大乘经卷第一

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
  • 步入死亡

    步入死亡

    凌晨怪异声响,背后突显三道血色抓痕,这是死亡的印记......
  • 那一抹柔情

    那一抹柔情

    她是他心中放不下的那一抹柔情,她的笑于他而言如那冬季的阳光,如那夏季的清泉,一场车祸,他们的结局发生了翻天覆地的变化,八年后再次遇见,是有人故意安排,还是天意........