Blandings Castle and Elsewhere (25 page)

'Oh – hullo!' he said, untwining himself from Genevieve
Bootle.

The dark young man was reaching in his hip-pocket, but
Mabelle stopped him with a gesture.

'I can manage, thank you. Mr Murgatroyd. There is no need
for sawn-off shot-guns.'

The young man had produced his weapon and was looking at
it wistfully.

'I think you're wrong, lady,' he demurred. 'Do you know who
that is that this necker is necking?' he asked, pointing an accusing
finger at Genevieve Bootle, who was cowering against the
ink-pot. 'My girl. No less. In person. Not a picture.'

Mabelle gasped.

'You don't say so!'

'I do say so.'

'Well, it's a small world,' said Mabelle. 'Yes, sir, a small world,
and you can't say it isn't. All the same, I think we had better not
have any shooting. This is not Chicago. It might cause comment
and remark.'

'Maybe you're right,' agreed Ed Murgatroyd. He blew on his
gun, polished it moodily with the sleeve of his coat, and restored
it to his pocket. 'But I'll give her a piece of my mind,' he said,
glowering at Genevieve, who had now retreated to the wall and
was holding before her, as if in a piteous effort to shield herself
from vengeance, an official communication from the Front
Office notifying all writers that the expression 'Polack mug'
must no longer be used in dialogue.

'And I will give Mr Mulliner a piece of
my
mind,' said
Mabelle. 'You stay here and chat with Miss Bootle, while
I interview the Great Lover in the passage.'

Out in the corridor, Mabelle faced Bulstrode, tight-lipped.
For a moment there was silence, broken only by the clicking of
typwriters from the various hutches and the occasional despairing
wail of a writer stuck for an adjective.

'Well, this is a surprise!' said Bulstrode, with a sickly smile.
'How on earth do you come to be here, darling?'

'Miss Ridgway to you!' retorted Mabelle with flashing eyes.
'I will tell you. I should have been in New York still if you had
written, as you said you would. But all I've had since you left is
one measly picture-postcard of the Grand Canyon.'

Bulstrode was stunned.

'You mean I've only written to you once?'

'Just once. And after waiting for three weeks, I decided to
come here and see what was the matter. On the train I met Mr
Murgatroyd. We got into conversation, and I learned that he
was in the same position as myself. His fiancée had disappeared
into the No Man's Land of Hollywood, and she hadn't written at
all. It was his idea that we should draw the studios. In the past
two days we have visited seven, and to-day, flushing the Perfecto-Zizzbaum,
we saw you coming out of a building ...'

'The commissary. I had been having a small frosted malted
milk. I felt sort of faint.'

'You will feel sort of fainter,' said Mabelle, her voice as frosted
as any malted milk in California, 'by the time I've done with you.
So this is the kind of man you are, Bulstrode Mulliner! A traitor
and a libertine!'

From inside the office came the sound of a girl's hysterics,
blending with the deeper note of an upbraiding bootlegger and
the rhythmic tapping on the wall of Mr Dabney and Mr Mendelsohn,
who were trying to concentrate on 'Scented Sinners.'
A lifetime in Chicago had given Mr Murgatroyd the power of
expressing his thoughts in terse, nervous English, and some of
the words he was using, even when filtered through the door,
were almost equivalent to pineapple bombs.

'A two-timing daddy and a trailing arbutus!' said Mabelle,
piercing Bulstrode with her scornful eyes.

A messenger-boy came up with a communication from the
Front Office notifying all writers that they must not smoke in
the Exercise Yard. Bulstrode read it absently. The interruption
had given him time to marshal his thoughts.

'You don't understand,' he said. 'You don't realize what it is
like, being marooned in a motion-picture studio. What you have
failed to appreciate is the awful yearning that comes over you for
human society. There you sit for weeks and weeks, alone in the
great silence, and then suddenly you find a girl in your office,
washed up by the tide, and what happens? Instinctively you find
yourself turning to her. As an individual, she may be distasteful
to you, but she is – how shall I put it? – a symbol of the world
without. I admit that I grabbed Miss Bootle. I own that I kissed
her. But it meant nothing. It affected no vital issue. It was as if,
locked in a dungeon cell, I had shown cordiality towards a pet
mouse. You would not have censured me if you had come in and
found me playing with a pet mouse. For all the kisses I showered
on Miss Bootle, deep down in me I was true to you. It was simply
that the awful loneliness ... the deadly propinquity... Well, take
the case,' said Bulstrode, 'of a couple on a raft in the Caribbean
Sea ...'

The stoniness of Mabelle's face did not soften.

'Never mind the Caribbean Sea,' she interrupted. 'I have
nothing to say about the Caribbean Sea except that I wish
somebody would throw you into it with a good, heavy brick
round your neck. This is the end, Bulstrode Mulliner. I have
done with you. If we meet on the street, don't bother to raise
your hat.'

'It is Mr Schnellenhamer's hat.'

'Well, don't bother to raise Mr Schnellenhamer's hat, because
I shall ignore you. I shall cut you dead.' She looked past him at
Ed Murgatroyd, who was coming out of the office with a
satisfied expression on his face. 'Finished, Mr Murgatroyd?'

'All washed up,' said the bootlegger. 'A nice clean job.'

'Then perhaps you will escort me out of this Abode of Love.'

'Oke, lady.'

Mabelle glanced down with cold disdain at Bulstrode, who
was clutching her despairingly.

'There is something clinging to my skirt, Mr Murgatroyd,'
she said. 'Might I trouble you to brush it off?'

A powerful hand fell on Bulstrode's shoulder. A powerful foot
struck him on the trousers-seat. He flew through the open door
of the office, tripping over Genevieve Bootle, who was now
writhing on the floor.

Disentangling himself, he rose to his feet and dashed out.
The corridor was empty. Mabelle Ridgway and Edward Murgatroyd had gone.

A good many of my relations, near and distant (proceeded
Mr Mulliner after a thoughtful sip at his hot Scotch and
lemon), have found themselves in unpleasant situations in
their time, but none, I am inclined to think, in any situation
quite so unpleasant as that in which my nephew Bulstrode now
found himself. It was as if he had stepped suddenly into one of
those psychological modern novels where the hero's soul gets all
tied up in knots as early as page 21 and never straightens itself out
again.

To lose the girl one worships is bad enough in itself. But
when, in addition, a man has got entangled with another girl,
for whom he feels simultaneously and in equal proportions an
overwhelming passion and a dull dislike – and when in addition
to that he is obliged to spend his days working on a story like
'Scented Sinners' – well, then he begins to realize how dark and
sinister a thing this life of ours can be. Complex was the word
that suggested itself to Bulstrode Mulliner.

He ached for Mabelle Ridgway. He also ached for Genevieve
Bootle. And yet, even while he ached for Genevieve Bootle,
some inner voice told him that if ever there was a pill it was
she. Sometimes the urge to fold her in his arms and the urge to
haul off and slap her over the nose with a piece of blotting-paper
came so close together that it was a mere flick of the coin which
prevailed.

And then one afternoon when he had popped into the
commissary for a frosted malted milk he tripped over the feet of
a girl who was sitting by herself in a dark corner.

'I beg your pardon,' he said courteously, for a Mulliner, even
when his soul is racked, never forgets his manners.

'Don't mention it, Bulstrode,' said the girl.

Bulstrode uttered a stunned cry.

'You!'

He stared at her, speechless. In his eyes there was nothing but
amazement, but in those of Mabelle Ridgway there shone a soft
and friendly light.

'How are you, Bulstrode?' she asked.

Bulstrode was still wrestling with his astonishment.

'But what are you doing here?' he cried.

'I am working on "Scented Sinners." Mr Murgatroyd and I are
doing a treatment together. It is quite simple,' said Mabelle.
'That day when I left you we started to walk to the studio gate,
and it so happened that, as we passed, Mr Schnellenhamer was
looking out of his window. A few moments later his secretary
came running out and said he wished to see us. We went to his
office, where he gave us contracts to sign. I think he must have
extraordinary personal magnetism,' said Mabelle pensively, 'for
we both signed immediately, though nothing was further from
our plans than to join the writing-staff of the Perfecto-Zizzbaum.
I had intended to go back to New York, and Mr Murgatroyd
was complaining that his boot-legging business must be
going all to pieces without him. It seems to be one of those
businesses that need the individual touch.' She paused. 'What
do you think of Mr Murgatroyd, Bulstrode?'

'I dislike him intensely.'

'You wouldn't say he had a certain strange, weird fascination?'

'No.'

'Well, perhaps you're right,' said Mabelle dubiously. 'You
were certainly right about it being lonely in this studio. I'm
afraid I was a little cross, Bulstrode, when we last met. I understand
now. You really don't think there is a curious, intangible
glamour about Mr Murgatroyd?'

'I do not.'

'Well, you may be right, of course. Good-bye, Bulstrode,
I must be going. I have already exceeded the seven and a quarter
minutes which the Front Office allows female writers for the
consumption of nut sundaes. If we do not meet again ...'

'But surely we're going to meet all the time?'

Mabelle shook her head.

'The Front Office has just sent out a communication to all
writers, forbidding inmates of the Ohio State Penitentiary to
associate with those in the Leper Colony. They think it unsettles
them. So unless we run into one another in the commissary ...
Well, good-bye, Bulstrode.'

She bit her lip in sudden pain, and was gone.

It was some ten days later that the encounter at which
Mabelle had hinted took place. The heaviness of a storm-tossed
soul had brought Bulstrode to the commissary for a frosted
malted milk once more, and there, toying with – respectively –
a Surprise Gloria Swanson and a Cheese Sandwich Maurice
Chevalier, were Mabelle Ridgway and Ed Murgatroyd. They
were looking into each other's eyes with a silent passion in
which, an observer would have noted, there was a distinct
admixture of dislike and repulsion.

Mabelle glanced up as Bulstrode reached the table.

'Good afternoon,' she said with a welcoming smile. 'I think
you know my fiancé, Mr Murgatroyd?'

Bulstrode reeled.

'Your what did you say?' he exclaimed.

'We're engaged,' said Mr Murgatroyd sombrely.

'Since this morning,' added Mabelle. 'It was at exactly six
minutes past eleven that we found ourselves linked in a close
embrace.'

Bulstrode endeavoured to conceal his despair.

'I hope you will be very happy,' he said.

'A swell chance!' rejoined Mr Murgatroyd. 'I'm not saying
this beasel here doesn't exert a strange fascination over me, but
I think it only fair to inform her here and now – before witnesses
– that at the same time the mere sight of her makes me sick.'

'It is the same with me,' said Mabelle. 'When in Mr Murgatroyd's
presence, I feel like some woman wailing for her demon
lover, and all the while I am shuddering at that awful stuff he
puts on his hair.'

'The best hair-oil in Chicago,' said Mr Murgatroyd, a little
stiffly.

'It is as if I were under some terrible hypnotic influence which
urged me against the promptings of my true self to love Mr
Murgatroyd,' explained Mabelle.

'Make that double, sister,' said the bootlegger. 'It goes for me,
too.'

'Precisely,' cried Bulstrode, 'how I feel towards my fiancée,
Miss Bootle.'

'Are you engaged to that broad?' asked Mr Murgatroyd.

'I am.'

Ed Murgatroyd paled and swallowed a mouthful of cheese
sandwich. There was silence for a while.

'I see it all,' said Mabelle. 'We have fallen under the hideous
spell of this place. It is as you said, Bulstrode, when you wanted
me to take the case of a couple on a raft in the Caribbean Sea.
There is a miasma in the atmosphere of the Perfecto-Zizzbaum
lot which undoes all who come within its sphere of influence.
And here I am, pledged to marry a gargoyle like Mr Murgatroyd.'

'And what about me?' demanded the bootlegger. 'Do you
think I enjoy being teamed up with a wren that doesn't know
the first principles of needling beer? A swell helpmeet you're
going to make for a man in my line of business!'

'And where do I get off?' cried Bulstrode passionately. 'My
blood races at the sight of Genevieve Bootle, and yet all the
while I know that she is one of Nature's prunes. The mere
thought of marrying her appals me. Apart from the fact that
I worship you, Mabelle, with every fibre of my being.'

'And I worship you, Bulstrode.'

'And I'm that way about Genevieve,' said Mr Murgatroyd.

There was another silence.

'There is only one way out of this dreadful situation,' said
Mabelle. 'We must go to Mr Schnellenhamer and hand in our
resignations. Once we are free from this noxious environment,
everything will adjust itself nicely. Let us go and see him
immediately.'

They did not see Mr Schnellenhamer immediately, for
nobody ever did. But after a vigil of two hours in the reception-room,
they were finally admitted to his presence, and they
filed in and stated their case.