Blandings Castle and Elsewhere (21 page)

Mr Schnellenhamer stirred uneasily.

'I'll look into it.'

'If you would care to feel the bump or contusion ... ?'

'No, you run along. I'm busy now with Mr Levitsky.'

The playwright withdrew, and Mr Schnellenhamer frowned
thoughtfully.

'Something'll have to be done about this Mulliner,' he said.
'I don't like the way he's acting. Did you notice him at the
conference yesterday?'

'Not specially. What did he do?'

'Well, listen,' said Mr Schnellenhamer, 'he didn't give me the
idea of willing service and selfless co-operation. Every time I said
anything, it seemed to me he did something funny with the
corner of his mouth. Drew it up in a twisted way that looked
kind of... what's that word beginning with an "s"?'

'Cynical?'

'No, a snickle is a thing you cut corn with. Ah, I've got it.
Sardinic. Every time I spoke he looked Sardinia'

Mr Levitsky was out of his depth.

'Like a sardine, do you mean?'

'No, not like a sardine. Sort of cold and sneering, like Glutz of
the Medulla-Oblongata the other day on the golf-links when he
asked me how many I'd taken in the rough and I said one.'

'Maybe his nose was tickling.'

'Well, I don't pay my staff to have tickling noses in the
company's time. If they want tickling noses, they must have
them after hours. Besides, it couldn't have been that, or he'd
have scratched it. No, the way it looks to me, this Mulliner has
got too big for his boots and is seething with rebellion. We've
another story-conference this afternoon. You watch him and
you'll see what I mean. Kind of tough and ugly he looks, like
something out of a gangster film.'

'I get you. Sardinic.'

'That's the very word,' said Mr Schnellenhamer. 'And if it
goes on I'll know what to do about it. There's no room in this
corporation for fellows who sit around drawing up the corners of
their mouths and looking sardinical.'

'Or hitting playwrights with crusty rolls.'

'No, there you go too far,' said Mr Schnellenhamer. 'Playwrights
ought to be hit with crusty rolls.'

Meanwhile, unaware that his bread-and-butter – or, as it
would be more correct to say, his orange-juice – was in danger,
Wilmot Mulliner was sitting in a corner of the commissary,
glowering sullenly at the glass which had contained his midday
meal. He had fallen into a reverie, and was musing on some of
the characters in History whom he most admired ... Genghis
Khan ... Jack the Ripper ... Attila the Hun ...

There was a chap, he was thinking. That Attila. Used to go
about taking out people's eyeballs and piling them in neat heaps.
The ideal way, felt Wilmot, of getting through the long afternoon.
He was sorry Attila was no longer with us. He thought
the man would have made a nice friend.

For the significance of the scene which I have just described
will not have been lost on you. In the short space of four days, dieting had
turned my distant connection Wilmot from a thing of almost excessive sweetness
and light to a soured misanthrope.

It has sometimes seemed to me (said Mr Mulliner, thoughtfully
sipping his hot Scotch and lemon) that to the modern craze
for dieting may be attributed all the unhappiness which is
afflicting the world to-day. Women, of course, are chiefly
responsible. They go in for these slimming systems, their
sunny natures become warped, and they work off the resultant
venom on their men-folk. These, looking about them for someone
they can take it out of, pick on the males of the neighbouring
country, who themselves are spoiling for a fight because their
own wives are on a diet, and before you know where you are war
has broken out with all its attendant horrors.

This is what happened in the case of China and Japan. It
is this that lies at the root of all the unpleasantness in the Polish
Corridor. And look at India. Why is there unrest in India?
Because its inhabitants eat only an occasional handful of rice.
The day when Mahatma Gandhi sits down to a good juicy
steak and follows it up with roly-poly pudding and a spot
of Stilton you will see the end of all this nonsense of Civil
Disobedience.

Till then we must expect Trouble, Disorder ... in a word,
Chaos.

However, these are deep waters. Let us return to my distant
connection, Wilmot.

In the brief address which he had made when prescribing,
the doctor, as was his habit, had enlarged upon the spiritual
uplift which might be expected to result from an orange-juice
diet. The juice of an orange, according to him, was not only rich
in the essential vitamins but contained also mysterious properties
which strengthened and enlarged the soul. Indeed, the
picture he had drawn of the soul squaring its elbows and throwing
out its chest had done quite a good deal at the time to
soothe the anguish that had afflicted Wilmot when receiving
his sentence.

After all, the young man had felt, unpleasant though it might
be to suffer the physical torments of a starving python, it was
jolly to think that one was going to become a sort of modern St
Francis of Assisi.

And now, as we have seen, the exact opposite had proved to be
the case. Now that he had been called upon to convert himself
into a mere vat or container for orange-juice, Wilmot Mulliner
had begun to look on his fellow-man with a sullen loathing. His
ready smile had become a tight-lipped sneer. And as for his eye,
once so kindly, it could have been grafted on to the head of a
man-eating shark and no questions asked.

The advent of a waitress, who came to clear away his glass,
and the discovery that he was alone in the deserted commissary,
awoke Wilmot to a sense of the passage of time. At two o'clock
he was due in Mr Schnellenhamer's office, to assist at the story-conference
to which the latter had alluded in his talk with Mr
Levitsky. He glanced at his watch and saw that it was time to be
moving.

His mood was one of sullen rebellion. He thought of Mr
Schnellenhamer with distaste. He was feeling that, if Mr
Schnellenhamer started to throw his weight about, he, Wilmot
Mulliner, would know what to do about it.

In these circumstances, the fact that Mr Schnellenhamer,
having missed his lunch that day owing to the numerous calls
upon him, had ordered a plateful of sandwiches to be placed
upon his desk takes upon itself no little of the dramatic.
A scenario-writer, informed of the facts of the case, would
undoubtedly have thought of those sandwiches as Sandwiches
of Fate.

It was not at once that Wilmot perceived the loathsome
objects. For some minutes only the familiar features of a story-conference
penetrated to his consciousness. Mr Schnellenhamer
was criticising a point that had arisen in connection with the
scenario under advisement.

'This guy, as I see it,' he was saying, alluding to the hero of the
story, 'is in a spot. He's seen his wife kissing a fellow and, not
knowing it was really her brother, he's gone off to Africa, shooting
big game, and here's this lion has got him down and is
starting to chew the face off him. He gazes into its hideous
eyes, he hears its fearful snarls, and he knows the end is near.
And where I think you're wrong, Levitsky, is in saying that that's
the spot for our big cabaret sequence.'

'A vision,' explained Mr Levitsky.

'That's all right about visions. I don't suppose there's a man in
the business stronger for visions than I am. But only in their
proper place. What I say is what we need here is for the United
States Marines to arrive. Aren't I right?'

He paused and looked about him like a hostess collecting eyes
at a dinner-party. The Yessers yessed. The Nodders' heads bent
like poplars in a breeze.

'Sure I am,' said Mr Schnellenhamer. 'Make a note, Miss
Potter.'

And with a satisfied air he reached out and started eating a
sandwich.

Now, the head of the Perfecto-Zizzbaum Motion Picture
Corporation was not one of those men who can eat sandwiches
aloofly and, as it were, surreptitiously. When he ate a sandwich
there was no concealment or evasion. He was patently, for all
eyes to see, all ears to hear, a man eating a sandwich. There was a
brio, a gusto, about the performance which stripped it of all
disguise. His sandwich flew before him like a banner.

The effect on Wilmot Mulliner was stupendous. As I say, he
had not been aware that there were sandwiches among those
present, and the sudden and unexpected crunching went
through him like a knife.

Poets have written feelingly of many a significant and compelling
sound ... the breeze in the trees; the roar of waves breaking
on a stern and rockbound coast; the coo of doves in
immemorial elms; and the song of the nightingale. But none
of these can speak to the very depths of the soul like the steady
champing of beef sandwiches when the listener is a man who for
four days has been subsisting on the juice of an orange.

In the case of Wilmot Mulliner, it was as if the sound of those
sandwiches had touched a spring, releasing all the dark forces
within him. A tigerish light had come into his eyes, and he sat up
in his chair, bristling.

The next moment those present were startled to observe him
leap to his feet, his face working violently.

'Stop that!'

Mr Schnellenhamer quivered. His jaw and sandwich fell. He
caught Mr Levitsky's eye. Mr Levitsky's jaw had fallen, too.

'Stop it, I say !' thundered Wilmot. 'Stop eating those sandwiches
immediately!'

He paused, panting with emotion. Mr Schnellenhamer had
risen and was pointing a menacing finger. A deathly silence held
the room.

And then, abruptly, into this silence there cut the shrill,
sharp, wailing note of a syren. And the magnate stood spellbound, the words
'You're fired!' frozen on his lips. He knew what that sound meant.

One of the things which have caused the making of motion
pictures to be listed among the Dangerous Trades is the fact that
it has been found impossible to dispense with the temperamental
female star. There is a public demand for her, and the Public's
word is law. The consequence is that in every studio you will find
at least one gifted artiste, the mere mention of whose name
causes the strongest to tremble like aspens. At the Perfecto-Zizzbaum
this position was held by Hortensia Burwash, the
Empress of Molten Passion.

Temperament is a thing that cuts both ways. It brings in the
money, but it also leads to violent outbursts on the part of its
possessor similar to those so common among the natives of the
Malay States. Every Hortensia Burwash picture grossed five
million, but in the making of them she was extremely apt, if
thwarted in some whim, to run
amok,
sparing neither age nor sex.

A procedure, accordingly, had been adopted not unlike that
in use during air raids in the War. At the first sign that the strain
had become too much for Miss Burwash, a syren sounded,
warning all workers on the lot to take cover. Later, a bugler,
blowing the 'All Clear,' would inform those in the danger zone
that the star had now kissed the director and resumed work on
the set.

It was this syren that had interrupted the tense scene which
I have been describing.

For some moments after the last note had died away, it
seemed as though the splendid discipline on which the
Perfecto-Zizzbaum organization prided itself was to triumph.
A few eyeballs rolled, and here and there you could hear the
sharp intake of breath, but nobody moved. Then from without
there came the sound of running footsteps, and the door burst
open, revealing a haggard young assistant director with a blood-streaked
face.

'Save yourselves!' he cried.

There was an uneasy stir.

'She's heading this way!'

Again that stir. Mr Schnellenhamer rapped the desk sharply.

'Gentlemen! Are you afraid of an unarmed woman?'

The assistant director coughed.

'Not unarmed exactly,' he corrected. 'She's got a sword.'

A sword?'

'She borrowed it off one of the Roman soldiery in "Hail,
Cæsar." Seemed to want it for something. Well, good-bye, all,'
said the assistant director.

Panic set in. The stampede was started by a young Nodder,
who, in fairness be it said, had got a hat-pin in the fleshy part of
the leg that time when Miss Burwash was so worried over
'Hearts Aflame.' Reckless of all rules of precedence, he shot
silently through the window. He was followed by the rest of
those present, and in a few moments the room was empty save
for Wilmot, brooding with folded arms; Mabel Potter, crouched
on top of the filing cabinet; and Mr Schnellenhamer himself,
who, too stout to negotiate the window, was crawling into a
convenient cupboard and softly closing the door after him.

To the scene which had just concluded Wilmot Mulliner had
paid but scant attention. His whole mind was occupied with the
hunger which was gnawing his vitals and that strange loathing
for the human species which had been so much with him of late.
He continued to stand where he was, as if in some dark trance.

From this he was aroused by the tempestuous entry of a
woman with make-up on her face and a Roman sword in her
hand.

'Ah-h-h-h-h!' she cried.

Wilmot was not interested. Briefly raising his eyebrows and
baring his lips in an animal snarl, he returned to his meditations.

Hortensia Burwash was not accustomed to a reception like
this. For a moment she stood irresolute; then, raising the sword,
she brought it down with a powerful follow-through on a handsome
ink-pot which had been presented to Mr Schnellenhamer
by a few admirers and well-wishers on the occasion of the
Perfecto-Zizzbaum's foundation.

'Ah-h-h-h-h!' she cried again.

Wilmot had had enough of this foolery. Like all the Mulliners,
his attitude towards Woman had until recently been
one of reverence and unfailing courtesy. But with four days'
orange-juice under his belt, he was dashed if he was going to
have females carrying on like this in his presence. A considerable
quantity of the ink had got on his trousers, and he now faced
Hortensia Burwash, pale with fury.