Leslie Charteris - Thanks to the Saint

With this entrée he was able to guide Mrs Yarmouth authoritatively around the lot, dispensing interesting lore about the processes which brought a cinematographic masterpiece from the script to the screen — much of which, thanks to some far-off days when he had worked as an extra, was reasonably authentic. He was able to take her on a stage where scenes were being shot, introduce her to a director with whom he had previously scraped an acquaintance with talk of a possible job, present her to a famous star who did not know him from Adam but gave a friendly performance from force of habit, and show her an elaborate set under construction on another stage which he said was being built for his own forthcoming series, all with such casual aplomb that by the end of the tour it would not even have entered her head to doubt that he was exactly what he had said he was.

But when they made what he called a courtesy stop at his office, to see if there had been any vital messages while he was entertaining her, before they went on to lunch, there was an abrupt change in this placid tempo. His secretary met him with a long face.

“I’m afraid this is going to be a nasty shock for you, Mr Eade,” she said. “I tried to call Mr Traustein about the meeting this afternoon, and it seems he had a heart attack in the shower this morning, and he died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.”

“Oh no!” said Mr Eade, and collapsed into a chair as if his legs had been cut from under him.

Mrs Yarmouth felt instinctively obliged to say she was sorry.

“No, it isn’t that,” said Mr Eade, removing his hands from a face which he hoped looked convincingly haggard. “He was a fine man, I understand, but I hardly knew him at all in a personal way. Our relationship was purely business. Mr Traustein was a very rich man who privately financed movie ventures, which people like myself, on the creative side, seldom have enough capital to do. He had promised to put up the money for the series that I was expecting to start, and the papers were to be signed this afternoon.”

“And you can’t go ahead without him?” Mrs Yarmouth prompted, quite superfluously.

“Frankly, no,” said Mr Eade heavily. “Not that I couldn’t get any amount of other financing, of course. That isn’t any problem, with a property and a distribution deal like mine. But to get the right terms, you have to have time to negotiate. You’ve no idea how ruthless the vultures in this town can be. When they know you’ve got to have money in a hurry, and haven’t got time to haggle, they make you pay through the nose. And it’s their business to know everything that’s going on in the Industry — you can’t bluff them. The minute I start talking to them, they’ll know they can put me through the wringer.”

“What shall I tell the studio, Mr Eade?” asked the secretary, who had been standing patiently by.

She was a rather homely woman of primly efficient aspect, in the neighborhood of forty, so radically different from the popular conception of a Hollywood producer’s secretary that Mrs Yarmouth had approved of her on sight and had thereby been subtly strengthened in her respect for Mr Eade.

“Please don’t tell them anything,” he said urgently. “Don’t talk to anybody. Perhaps I can still think of something before the whole town knows I’m over a barrel.”

“Very well, Mr Eade.”

“You’d better get some lunch — we’ll have a lot to do this afternoon. But before you go would you bring me that last letter from Herbert and Shapiro?”

He let Mrs Yarmouth read the missive herself. On a genuine sheet of letterhead pilfered from an advertising agency so famous that jokes about it were good for a laugh even from unsophisticated audiences, it said in part:

This will confirm that the StarSuds Corporation have authorized us to pay you the agreed price of $30,000 for each episode of your series Don Juan Jones in full upon delivery of each half-hour’s film ready for projection, commencing on May 12 and weekly thereafter.

However, we feel obliged to remind you that time is of the essence in your contract, and that failure to deliver the first film on or before May 12 will be grounds for cancellation of the entire series, as it would cause us ourselves to forfeit the time commitment which we have from the network.

“You see,” Mr Eade elucidated, “as far as a sponsor’s concerned, having a good TV show is only half the battle. Getting a good network time to put it on the air is the other half. StarSuds happen to have a perfect time spot booked for this series. But if I don’t deliver, they’ll lose it, and besides canceling my contract they could probably sue me for damages.”

“I should think it’d be more sensible if they lent you the money to make the pictures,” said Mrs Yarmouth.

“You don’t understand,” said Mr Eade patiently. “Things just aren’t done that way in this business — StarSuds is packed in boxes, but the soap-makers don’t make the boxes. Their attitude is that they’re in the soap business, not the box business. Or, to take it a step further, the motion-picture business. They expect to buy television pictures, not make them. As it is, they’re as close to subsidizing this series as they’ll ever come. Think of it.” He tapped the letter. “They’ll pay for the first film on May the twelfth. That’s in just over two weeks. And from then on, they pay for each film on delivery. They’ll cost me less than twenty thousand each to make — I can show you the budget. That’s ten thousand dollars a week clear profit. But, between now and the twelfth, I must shoot at least two pictures to keep my schedule here at the studio.”

“That means an investment of forty thousand,” said Mrs Yarmouth brightly. “And then you get back thirty—”

“But, of course, right then I have to start another picture, which means an investment of another twenty thousand—”

“So then you’re only down thirty thousand, and you get all that back the following week—”

“Precisely,” said Mr Eade, unwilling to be outclassed in arithmetic. “In other words, in two more weeks I’d be even—”

“And after that you’d actually be working with their money,” Mrs Yarmouth calculated triumphantly.

Mr Eade gracefully conceded the mathematical honors.

“But we’re only talking about might-have-beens,” he reminded her lugubriously. “It would have been a very nice deal, but now I’m afraid it’s another story.” He straightened his bowed shoulders with simple dignity and assembled his features into a heart-rendingly brave smile. “But I don’t want to bore you with my troubles, and we certainly mustn’t let them spoil your lunch.”

He sustained a valorous lightness and charm for about half an hour and then allowed the first slackening of the inevitably forced conversation to develop into a silence in which Mrs Yarmouth’s thoughts could not humanly fail to go back over the details of his predicament.

“I hope I’m not being too inquisitive,” she said, “but if you only had to borrow forty thousand dollars—”

“Twenty thousand,” he corrected her quickly. “I’m putting up half the money myself, in any case, and I’m only sorry that’s all the cash I have available.”

He had already assayed her expertly as being worth a twenty thousand dollar touch at the maximum, but he had discovered the psychological wheeze that a mark was much more easily induced to put up an amount which seemed to be only matching Mr Eade’s own investment than the same sum if it were represented as the entire capitalization of the venture.

“Well, twenty thousand,” she said. “But how much were you going to have to give Mr Traustein for that?”

“Thirty per cent of the profits.”