Leslie Charteris - The Happy Highwayman

"Read that speech — read it as if you were acting it."

The Saint glanced over the paragraph, drew a deep breath and read with almost uncontrollable emotion.

"No, do not lie to me. You have already given me the answer for which I have been waiting. I am not ungrateful for what you once did for me, but I see now that that kind act was only a part of your scheme to ensnare my better nature in the toils of your unhallowed passions, as though pure love were a thing that could be bought like merchandise. Ah, yes, I loved you, but I did not know that that pretty face was only a mask for the corruption beneath. How you must have laughed at me! Ha, ha. I brought you a rose, but you turned it into a nest of vipers in my bosom. They have stabbed my heart! (Sobs.)"

Mr. Urlaub clasped his hands together. His eyes bulged and rolled upwards.

"My God," he breathed hoarsely.

"What?" said the Saint.

"Why?" said Mr. Quarterstone.

"But it's like a miracle!" squeaked Waldemar Urlaub. "He's the man! The type! The face! The figure! The voice! The manner! He is a genius! Homer, where did you find him? The women will storm the theatre." He grasped the Saint by the arm, leaning as far as he could over the desk and over Mr. Quarter-stone. "Listen. He must play that part. He must. He is the only man. I couldn't put anyone else in it now. Not after I've seen him. I'll show Aaron Niementhal where he gets off. Quit, did he? Okay. He'll be sorry. We'll have a hit that'll make history!"

"But Waldemar…"

Mr. Urlaub dried up. His clutching fingers uncoiled from Simon's arm. The fire died out of his eyes. He staggered blindly back and sank into a chair and buried his face in his hands.

"Yes," he whispered bitterly. "I'd forgotten. The play can't go on. I'm sunk, Homer — just for a miserable fifteen grand. And now, of all times, when I've just seen Mr. Tombs I"

"You know I'd help you if I could, Waldemar," said Mr. Quarterstone earnestly. "But I just bought my wife a fur coat, and she wants a new car, and that ranch we just bought in California set me back a hundred thousand."

Mr. Urlaub shook his head.

"I know. It's not your fault. But isn't it just the toughest break?"

Quarterstone shook his head in sympathy. And then he looked at the Saint.

It was quite a performance, that look. It started casually, beheld inspiration, blazed with triumph, winked, glared significantly, poured out encouragement, pleaded, commanded and asked and answered several questions, all in a few seconds. Mr. Quarterstone had not at any period in his career actually held down the job of prompter, but he more than made up with enthusiasm for any lack of experience. Only a man who had been blind from birth could have failed to grasp the idea that Mr. Quarterstone was suggesting, and the Saint had not strung along so far in order to feign blindness at the signal for his entrance.

Simon cleared his throat.

"Er — did you say you only needed another fifteen thousand dollars to put on this play?" he asked diffidently, but with a clearly audible note of suppressed excitement.

After that he had to work no harder than he would have had to work to get himself eaten by a pair of hungry lions. Waldemar Urlaub, once the great light had dawned on him, skittered about like a pea on a drum in an orgy of exultant planning. Mr. Tombs would have starred in the play anyhow, whenever the remainder of the necessary wind had been raised — Urlaub had already made up his mind to that — but if Mr. Tombs had fifteen thousand dollars as well as his genius and beauty, he would be more than a star. He could be co-producer as well, a sharer in the profits, a friend and an equal, in every way the heir to the position which the great Aaron Niementhal would have occupied. His name would go on the billing with double force — Urlaub grabbed a piece of paper and a pencil to illustrate it:

There would also be lights on the theatre, advertisements, photographs, newspaper articles, news items, gossip paragraphs, parties, movie rights, screen tests, Hollywood, London, beautiful and adoring women… Mr. Urlaub built up a luminous picture of fame, success and fortune, while Mr. Quarterstone nodded benignly and slapped everybody on the back and beamed at the Saint at intervals with a sublimely smug expression of "I told you so."

"And they did all that to me, too," said Rosalind Hale wryly. "I was practically Sarah Bernhardt when they'd finished… But I told you just how they did it. Why do you have to let yourself in for the same mess that I got into?"

"The easiest way to rob a bank is from the inside," said the Saint cryptically. "I suppose you noticed that they really have got a play?"

"Yes. I read part of it — the same as you did."

"Did you like it?"

She made a little grimace.

"You've got a right to laugh at me. I suppose that ought to have been warning enough, but Urlaub was so keen about it, and Quarterstone had already made me think he was a great producer, so I couldn't say that I thought it was awful. And then I wondered if it was just because I didn't know enough about plays."

"I don't know much about plays myself," said the Saint. "But the fact remains that Comrade Urlaub has got a complete play, with three acts and everything, god-awful though it is. I took it away with me to read it over and the more I look at it the more I'm thinking that something might be done with it."

Rosalind was aghast.

"You don't mean to say you'd really put your money into producing it?"

"Stranger things have happened," said the Saint thoughtfully. "How bad can a play be before it becomes good? And how much sense of humour is there in the movie business? Haven't you seen those reprints of old two-reelers that they show sometimes for a joke, and haven't you heard the audience laughing itself sick?… Listen. I only wish I knew who wrote Love — the Redeemer. I've got an idea…"

Mr. Homer Quarterstone could have answered his question for him, for the truth was that the author of Love — the Redeemer resided under the artistic black homburg of Mr. Homer Quarterstone. It was a matter of considerable grief to Mr. Quarterstone that no genuine producer had ever been induced to see eye to eye with him on the subject of the superlative merits of that amorous masterpiece, so that after he had grown weary of collecting rejections Mr. Quarterstone had been reduced to the practical expedient of using his magnum opus as one of the props in the more profitable but by no means less artistic drama from which he and Mr. Urlaub derived their precarious incomes; but his loyalty to the child of his brain had never been shaken.

It was therefore with a strange squirmy sensation in the pit of his stomach that Mr. Quarterstone sat in his office a few mornings later and gazed at a card in the bottom left-hand corner of which were the magic words, "Paragon Pictures, Inc., Hollywood, Calif." A feeling of fate was about him, as if he had been unexpectedly reminded of a still-cherished childhood dream.

"Show her in," he said with husky magnificence.

The order was hardly necessary, for she came in at once, shepherded by a beaming Waldemar Urlaub.

"Just thought I'd give you a surprise, Homer," he explained boisterously. "Did your heart jump when you saw that card? Well, so did mine. Still, it's real. I fixed it all up. Sold her the play. 'You can't go wrong,' I said, 'with one of the greatest dramas ever written.' "

Mrs. Wohlbreit turned her back on him coldly and inspected Mr. Quarterstone. She looked nothing like the average man's conception of a female from Hollywood, being gaunt and masculine with a sallow lined face and gold-rimmed glasses and mousey hair plastered back above her ears, but Mr. Quarterstone had at least enough experience to know that women were used in Hollywood in executive positions which did not call for the decorative qualities of more publicized employees.