Корнелл Вулрич - A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

“But — but Chief,” I pleaded, “bodyguard to a — a movie actress! All the rest of the boys will laugh at me, I’ll never be able to live it down! And what’ll the wife say? Dock me, break me — anything but that!”

He rattled some papers around and held them up in front of his face. Maybe to keep from weakening, I don’t know. “Ahem — now not another word out of you, Galbraith. Off you go. Get right out there and don’t let her out of your sight until further notice. Remember, your job isn’t to trace these threats or track down whoever sent ’em, it’s just to keep your eye on Martha Meadows and see that nothing happens to her. You’re responsible for her safety.”

“O.K., Chief,” I sighed, “but I really should be wearing a dog collar.”

No doubt about it, I was the unhappiest, most miserable detective that ever started out on an assignment as I walked out of headquarters that day and got in a taxi. The sooner I got busy on the job, I figured, the sooner the chief might relent and take me off it. The taxi, and everything else from now on, was at Miss Meadows’ own personal expense, but that didn’t make me like her any the better. Without actually wishing her any harm, I was far from being a fan of hers at the moment.

The studio, on Marathon Street, looked more like a library than anything else from the outside. The gateman picked up a phone, said: “From headquarters, to see Miss Meadows,” and everything opened up high, wide and handsome. I passed from hand to hand like a volley-ball getting to her; and all of them, from the gateman right on up, seemed glad that I had been sent over to look after her. You could tell she was well liked.

She was in her bungalow dressing-room resting between scenes and having her lunch when they brought me in. Her lunch was a malted milk and a slice of sponge cake — not enough to keep a canary alive. She had a thick make-up on, but even at that she still looked like somebody’s twelve-year-old sister. You sort of wanted to protect her and be her big brother the minute you set eyes on her, even if you hadn’t been sent there for just that purpose — the way I had. “I’m Jimmy Galbraith from headquarters, Miss Meadows,” I said.

She gave me a friendly smile. “You don’t look a bit like a detective,” she answered, “you look like a college boy.”

Just to put her in her place I said: “And you don’t look a bit like a screen star, you look like a little girl in grade school, rigged up for the school play.”

Just then a colored woman, her maid I guess, looked in and started to say, “Honey lamb, is you nearly—” Then when she saw me she changed to: “Look here, man, don’t you bring that cig-ret in here, you want to burn that child up?” I didn’t know what she meant for a minute, I wasn’t anywhere near Meadows.

“Hush up, Nellie,” Martha Meadows ordered with a smile. “She means this,” Meadows explained, and pointed to her dress. “It has celluloid underneath, to stiffen it. If a spark gets on it—” She was dressed as a Civil War belle, with a wide hoopskirt the size of a balloon. I pinched the cigarette out between my fingers in a hurry.

“Just cause it ain’t happen’, don’t mean it can’t happen,” snapped the ferocious Nellie, and went about her business muttering darkly to herself. The dressing-room telephone rang and Meadows said: “Alright, I’m ready whenever you are.” She turned to me. “I have to go back on the set now. We’re shooting the big scene this afternoon.”

“Sorry,” I said, “but I’ll have to go with you, those are my orders.”

“It’s agreeable to me,” she said, “but the director mayn’t like outsiders watching him. He’s very temperamental, you know.”

I wasn’t even sure what the word meant, so I looked wise and said: “He’ll get over it.”

She started up and the three of us left the bungalow. I let the maid and her go in front and followed close behind them. They walked along a number of lanes between low one-story studio buildings and finally came to a big barn of a place that had sliding doors like a garage and a neat little sign up: Set VIII, Meadows, Civil War Picture. People were hanging around outside, some in costume and some not. They made way for her respectfully and she passed through them and went in. She bowed slightly to one or two and they nearly fell over themselves bowing back.

Inside, the place had a cement floor criss-crossed over with a lot of little steel rails like baby train tracks. They were for moving heavy camera trucks back and forth, and cables and ropes and wires and pulleys galore were dangling from the rafters. Canvas back-drops were stacked, like cards, up against the walls. But it wasn’t out here they were going to shoot the scene at all. There was a sound-proof door with a red light over it leading in to the “stage” itself, where the action was to take place.

Before we got to it, though, a bald-headed man in a pullover sweater came up to Meadows. He was about five feet tall and with a beak like an eagle’s. A girl carrying a thick notebook, like a stenographer’s dictation pad, was following him around wherever he went. I had him spotted for the director as soon as I looked at him.

“Who is this man?” he asked — meaning me. Then, when she told him, he raised both hands to his head and would have tom out some hair, only, as I said before, he was bald. “No,” he said, “I cannot work! There are too many people hanging around the stage already! First it was your colored maid. Now a detective! Who will it be next?”

A big argument started in then and there about whether I was to go in or stay out, with Meadows taking my part and the script-girl trying to calm the director down. “Now, Stormy,” she kept saying, “please don’t excite yourself, this isn’t good for you, remember how sensitive you are!” Finally I cut the whole thing short by saying I’d phone the chief and leave it up to him, as he was the one who had given me the assignment. But there was no telephone in the place and I had to go outside and call up headquarters from the studio cafeteria next door.

The chief went off like a firecracker. “What’s the matter with them anyway? First they ask me for a bodyguard for her, then they start shooing him away. You go in there, Gal, and if they try to keep you out, quit the case cold and report back here to me. I’ll wash my hands of all responsibility for her safety!” Which was music to my ears, as I hadn’t liked the job from the start.

Sure enough, when I got back, the sound-proof door was already closed, the red light was on above it to warn that “shooting” was going on, and they had all gone in without waiting. There was a guard stationed outside the door to keep people from opening it by accident.

“She left word for you to wait out here,” he told me. “Stormann bullied her into going in without you.”

“Oh, he did, did he?” I burned. “The little shrimp! Who does he think he is? He may be the whole limburger around here but he isn’t even a bad smell to us down at headquarters!” The chief had told me what to do, but Stormann’s opposition somehow got my goat so beautifully that instead of quitting I hung around, just for the pleasure of telling him a thing or two when he came out. To crash in now would have ruined the scene, cost the company thousands of dollars, and maybe gotten Meadows in bad with her bosses; so I didn’t have the heart to do it.

“They’ll be through about four,” the guard told me. It was now a little before two.

Whether I would have stuck it out for two whole hours, outside that door, just to bawl Stormann out — I don’t know. I never will know. At 2:10 or thereabouts the door suddenly opened from the inside without any warning and through it came the horrible unearthly screams of the dying. Nothing could scream like that and live very long.