CHAPTER IX – THE NATURE FILM PRODUCING CO. INC

THEN Peter, muttering, talking out loud to the road, the fence, the trees, the sky, turned back to retrace the miles they had covered so lightly and rapidly. His feet and legs hurt him cruelly. He found a rough stick, broke it over a rock and used it for a cane.

He thought of joining Hy and Betty. There would be sympathy there, perhaps. Hy could do something. Hy would have to do something. Where were they, anyway!

Half an hour later he caught a glimpse of them. They were sitting on a boulder on a grassy hillside, some little distance from the road. They appeared to be gazing dreamily off across a valley.

Peter hesitated. They were very close together. They hardly seemed to invite interruption. Then, while he stood, dusty and bedraggled, in real pain, watching them, he saw Betty lean back against the boulder – or was it against Hy’s arm?

Hy seemed to be leaning over her. His head bent lower still. It quite hid hers from view.

He was kissing her!

Blind to the shooting pains in his feet and legs, Peter rushed, stumbling, away. In his profound self-pity, he felt that even Hy had deserted him. He was alone, in a world that had no motive or thought but to do him evil, to pervert his finest motives, to crush him!

Somehow he got back to that railroad. An hour and a half he spent painfully sitting in the country station waiting for a train. There was time to think. There was time for nothing but thinking.

And Peter, as so often when deeply stirred either by joy or misery, found himself passing into a violent and soul-wrenching reaction. It was misery this time. He was a crawling abject thing. People would laugh. Sue would laugh…

But would she! Would she tell? Would Hy and Betty, if they ever did get home, know that she had returned alone?

Those deep-green eyes of hers, the strong little chin… She was Miss Independence herself.

Zanin was signing with Silverstone in the morning! Or as soon as the contracts could be drawn.

The train came rumbling in. Peter, in, physical and spiritual agony, boarded it.

All these painful, exciting experiences of the day were drawing together toward some new unexpected result. He was beaten – yet was he beaten! A news agent walked through the train with a great pile of magazines on his arm.

Peter suddenly thought of the moving-picture periodical he had dropped, so long, long ago, in the Tunnel Station. He bought another copy; and again turned the pages. Then he let it fall to his knees and stared out the window with eyes that saw little.

Zanin – Silverstone – Sue walking alone over a hill!.. Peters little lamp of genius was burning once more. He was thrilled, if frightened, by the ideas that were forming in that curious mind of his.

Shortly after seven o’clock of the same evening Jacob Zanin reached his mean little room in Fourth Street, after a stirring twenty-four hours at Silver-stone’s house at Long Beach and an ineffectual attempt to find Sue in her rooms. Those rooms were dim and silent. No one answered his ring. No one answered his knock when he finally succeeded in following another tenant of the building into the inner hall. Which explains why he was at his room, alone, at a quarter to eight when Peter Ericson Mann called there.

Peter, pale, nerves tense, a feverish glow in his eyes behind the horn-rimmed glasses, leaned heavily on a walking stick in the dark hallway, listening to the sound of heavy footsteps coming across the creaking boards on the other side of the door. Then the door opened; and Zanin, coatless, collarless, hair rumpled over his ears on either side of his head, stood there; a hulking figure of a man, full of force, not untouched with inner fire; a little grim; his face, that of a vigorously intellectual Russian peasant, scarred perceptibly by racial and personal hardship.

“Oh, hello, Mann!” said he. “Come in.” Then, observing the stick: “What’s the matter?”

“A little arch trouble. Nothing at all.” And Peter limped in.

Peter, as on former occasions, felt the power of the fellow. It was altogether in character that he should exhibit no surprise, though Peter Ericson Mann had never before appeared before him at that door. (He would never know that it was Peter’s seventh call within an hour and a half.)

Peter was at his calmest and most effective.

He looked casually about at the scant furniture, the soap boxes heaped with books, the kerosene stove, symbol of Zanin’s martyrdom to his art.

“Zanin,” he said, “two things stuck in my mind the other night when you and I had our little talk. One was the fact that you had got hold of a big idea; and that a man of your caliber wouldn’t be giving his time to a proposition that didn’t have something vital in it… The other thing is Sue Wilde.”

Zanin was tipped back in an armless wooden chair, taking Peter in with eyes that were shrewd and cold, but not particularly hostile.

“I didn’t realize at the time what an impression that girl was making on me. But I haven’t been able to shake it off. She has something distinctly unusual – call it beauty, charm, personally – I don’t know what it is. But she has it.”

“Yes,” said Zanin, “she has it. But see here, Mann, the whole situation has changed since then – ”

“Yes,” Peter broke in. “I know.”

“You know?”

Peter nodded, offhand. “Betty Deane has talked to Hy Lowe about it, and Hy has told me. I’m pretty well informed, as a matter of fact.”

“You know about – ”

“Silverstone? Yes. Tell me, have you closed with him?”

“Well” – Zanin hesitated.. He was disturbed. “Not in writing, no.”

“Don’t you do it, then.”

Zanin pursed his lips, hooked his feet around the legs of his chair and tapped on the front of the seat with his large fingers.

“It’s regular money, Mann,” he said.

“You said you could interest me. Why don’t you try?”

“Regular money is regular money.”

“Not if you don’t get it.”

“Why shouldn’t I get it?”

“Because Silverstone will. And look what he’ll do to your ideas – a conventional commercialist!” Zanin considered this. “I’ve got to risk that. Or it looks so. This thing can’t possibly be done cheap. I propose to do something really new in a feature film – new in groupings, new in lighting, new in the simplicity and naturalness of the acting. It will be a daring theme, highly controversial, which means building up publicity. It will take regular money. Sue is in just the right frame of mind. A year from now God knows what she’ll be thinking and feeling. She might turn square against our Village life, all of a sudden. I’ve seen it happen… And now, with everything right, here the money comes to me on a platter. Lord, man, I’ve got to take it – risk or no risk!”

They were about to come to grips. Peter felt his skin turning cold. His throat went dry again, as in the afternoon.

“How much” – he asked, outwardly firmer than he would have dared hope – “how much do you need?”

Zanin really started now, and stared at him.

“See here,” he said, “I’ve gone pretty far in with Silver stone.”

“But you haven’t signed?”

“No.”

“Nor taken his money?”

“No.”

Peter laughed shortly. “Do you think he would consider himself bound by anything you may have said! Silverstone!”

This was a point. He could see Zanin thinking it over.

“How much do you need?” he asked again.

“Well – ”

“What do you think will happen the minute Sue really discovers the sort of hands she’s in? Even if she would want to stick to you!”

This was another point.

“Well” – said Zanin, thinking fast – “it needn’t be lavish, like these big battle films and such. But it will take money.”

“How much money?”

“Three or four thousand. Maybe five or six. It means going south for the outdoor scenes. I want tropical foliage, so my people won’t look frozen. And publicity isn’t cheap, you know.”

Peter gulped; but plunged on. “I’ll tell you what you do, Zanin. Get another man – a littler producer than Silverstone – and have him supply studio, operators, and all the plant necessary, on a partnership basis, you to put in some part of the cash needed.”

“Great!” said Zanin. “Fine! And where’s the cash to come from?”

“From me.”

The front legs of Zanin’s chair came to the floor with a bang.

“This is new stuff, Mann.”

“New stuff. I’m not rich, but I believe you’ve got a big thing here, and I stand willing to put up a few thousand on a private contract with you. This can be just between ourselves. All I ask is a reasonable control of the expenditure.”

Zanin thought – and thought. Peter could see the shifting lights in his cold clear eyes.

He moved over to the window and stared out into the area-way, where electric lamps and gas flames twinkled from a hundred other rear buildings. He came back to his chair and lit a cigarette.

“You’re on!” he finally said. “If you want to know, I am worried about Silverstone. And I’m certainly in no position to turn down such an offer as this.”

Which was the genesis of The Nature Film Producing Co., Inc., Jacob Zanin, Pres’t. They talked late, these new partners.

It was nearly one o’clock in the morning when Peter limped into the rooms.

He found Hy pitting by the window in his pajamas, gazing rapturously at a lacy handerchief.

“Aha!” said Hy, “he comes! Never mind the hour, my boy! I take off my hat. You’re better than I am – better than I! A soupçon of speed, ol’ dear!”’

Peter dropped limply into the Morris chair. “What’s the matter?” said Hy, observing him more closely. “You look done. Where’s Sue?” Peter composed himself. “I left Sue a long while ago. Hours ago.”

“What on earth have you been doing?”

“Exactly what I promised you I’d do.”

This was a new, an impressive Peter.

“I don’t get you – ”

“You said Sue might not listen to my warning.”

“Oh – and she didn’t?”

“She did not.”

“And you – oh, you said you’d go to Zanin…”

“As man to man, Hy.”

“Good lord, you haven’t… Pete, you’re limping! You didn’t fight!..”

Peter solemnly shook his head. “It wasn’t necessary, Hy,” he said huskily; then cleared his throat. “What was the matter with his throat to-day, anyway?”

He sank back in his chair. His eyes closed.

Hy leaned forward with some anxiety. “Pete, what’s the matter? You’re white!”

Peter’s head moved slowly. “Nothing’s the matter.” He slowly opened his eyes. “It has been a hard day, Hy, but the job is done.”

“The job…?”

“I have saved her, Hy.”

“But the pictures?”

“They will be taken under my direction.”

“And Silverstone?”

“Silverstone is out. I control the company.” He closed his eyes again and breathed slowly and evenly in a deliberate effort to calm his tumultuous nerves. “Well!” said Hy, big-eyed. “Well!”

“Something to drink, Hy,” Peter murmured. “I put it over, Hy! I put it over!” He said this with a little more vigor, trying to talk down certain sudden misgivings regarding six thin little books with pasteboard covers that lay at the moment in the middle drawer of the desk, next the wall.

Hy got slowly to his feet; stood rubbing his head and staring down in complete admiration at the apparently triumphant if unmistakably exhausted Peter.

“It’s a queer time for them,” Hy remarked, solemn himself now. “But in this case cocktails are certainly indicated.”

He picked up the telephone. “John,” he said to the night man below, “some ice!”

Then he shuffled to the closet, struck a match and found the shaker.

In the amber fluid they pledged the success of The Nature Film Producing Co., Inc., these Seventh-Story Men! Dwelling, the while, each in his own thoughts, on the essential nobility of sacrificing one’s self to save another.