Эптон Синклер - Oil!

“What did I do? I called in an old friend of ours, Ben Skutt.”

“Ben Skutt!” Bunny had not thought of their “lease hound” for years.

“Yes, Ben is high up in this defense business now, and he did it for me.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Tell him? I told him one grand.”

“One what?”

“That’s bootlegger’s slang. I gave him five hundred dollars, and said, ‘Ben, go and see the man that’s got that old kike in jail and tell him to turn him loose, and then come back to me and I’ll give you another five hundred!’”

“My God!” said Bunny.

And Dad took a couple of puffs at his big cigar. “Now you see why we oil men have to be in politics!”

Besides completing Bunny’s political education, this incident was important to him in another way; it was the cause of Vee Tracy’s taking over the management of his life. Ross senior got the moving picture lady on the telephone that very evening, and he said, “Look here, Vee, you’re laying down on your job!”

“How do you mean, Mr. Ross?”

“My name is Dad,” said the voice, “and what I mean is that you’re not taking care of my son like I wanted you to do. He’s been a-gettin’ into trouble with these Bolshevikis again, and it’s all because you don’t see enough of him.”

“But Mr.—Dad—I’ve been trying to make him study—I thought that was what you wanted.”

“Well, you forget about him studyin’, that’s all bunk, it ain’t a-goin’ to do him no good, and besides, he don’t do it; he jist goes off to Socialist meetin’s, and he’d better be with you.”

“Oh, Dad!” There was a little catch in Vee’s voice. “There’s nothing I’d like better! I’m just crazy about that boy!”

“Well, you take him under your wing and keep him there, and if you can get him loose from these reds, I’ll remember you in my will.”

So after that Bunny found that he could have a date with his beloved at any hour of the day or night. She never told him the reason—no, her idea of truth-telling did not go that far! She let him think it was because of his overwhelming charms, and his male egotism was satisfied with the explanation. She would make feeble pretenses at resistance. “Oh, Bunny, Dad will think I’m wasting your time, he’ll call me a vamp!” And Bunny would answer, “You goose, he knows that if I’m not with you, I may be off at some Socialist meeting.”

They were so happy, so happy! The rapture of fresh young souls and fresh young bodies, eager, quivering in every nerve! Their love suffused their whole beings; everything became touched with magic—the sound of their voices, the gestures of their hands, even the clothing they wore, the cars they drove, the houses they lived in. They flew together—the telephone girls were overworked keeping them in touch. Bunny became what in the slang of the time was known as a “one-arm driver”; also he studied the arts of cajoling professors and cutting lectures. His conscience was easy, for had he not done his duty by the Socialist movement, with that “one grand” of Dad’s? Besides, the strike was over, and the clothing workers had won a few concessions; the leaders had been released, and the promised “Moscow revelations” forgotten by the newspapers, and therefore by everybody else.

Vee would still not let Bunny come to the studio where she was working. For the next picture, perhaps, but not this one; he and his Bolsheviks wouldn’t like it, and he must put off seeing it as long as possible. But all the rest of her time was his—every precious instant! The elderly housekeeper received a five dollar bill now and then, and was deaf, dumb and blind. Vee’s room in the bungalow was upstairs, the only second-story room, open on all four sides, and with ivy wreathing its windows; inside it was all white, a bower of loveliness. Here they belonged to each other; and tears of ecstasy would come into Vee’s eyes. “Oh, Bunny, Bunny! I swore I’d never do this; and here I am, worse in love than I ever dreamed! Bunny, if you desert me, I shall die!” He would smother her fears in kisses; it was a case for the application of another old saying, that actions speak louder than words!

There was no cloud in the sky of their happiness; except just one little cloud, no bigger than a man’s hand! Bunny did not see it at all; and the woman saw it for an instant or so, and then looked the other way. Oh, surely the rose will bloom forever!

The hands of destiny, turning upon the face of the movie clock, had brought Vee’s hour of glory again. The great picture was ready, and once more she was on all the billboards of the city: “Schmolsky-Superba presents Viola Tracy in the twelve-reel Superspecial, ‘The Devil’s Deputy, Million Dollar Heart Drama of the Russian Revolution.’” The scene which ornamented the billboards disclosed Vee, as usual with her lingerie torn, crouching in the arms of the ineffably handsome young American secret service agent, and the agent presenting a revolver to a mass of tangled black whiskers, behind which hideous foreign faces lurked.

Also there was publicity in the newspapers, columns and columns about the picture, the authors of the book, the continuity man and the director and the writer of the titles and the artists and the decorators and the costumers and the musicians; but most of all about the star. Was it to be expected that the publicity man should drop no hint to the reporters about the fascinating young oil prince who had now become Miss Tracy’s most intimate friend? It had been expected by Bunny, and maybe by Dad, but assuredly not by anyone else. The reporters laid siege to the young prince, and sweet, sentimental sob-sister ladies sought to lure him into revealing how it felt to be the very, very dearest friend of such a brilliantly scintillating star of the movie heavens. One day it was rumored they were engaged to marry, and the next day they were not; and if they said nothing, the reporters knew what they ought to have said. And when Bunny would not give his picture, they snapped him on the street, and when he turned his face away, they gave it a jolly caption: “Oil Prince Is Shy!”

“The Devil’s Deputy” was to have its “world premiere” at Gloobry’s Million Dollar Melanesian Theatre; and these “world premieres” are, as you may know, the great social events of Southern California. Searchlights search the clouds and bombs boom in the sky; red fire makes an imitation Hades in the streets, and kleig lights make day in the arcade which the million dollar Melanesians hold upright upon their naked shoulders. The crowds pack the streets, and swarms of burglars invade the city, because all the police department is required to make a pathway for the movie stars as they move in their appointed courses, from their shining ten thousand dollar limousines, across the sidewalk and through the arcade and under the million dollar portals. The kleigs glare upon them, and a dozen moving picture cameras grind, and flashlights boom, and the crowd surges and quivers and murmurs with ecstasy.

Never in all human history has there been such glory; never have the eyes of mortals beheld such royal pageantry! Trappers and hunters have perished in the icy wastes of the arctic to bring the ermines and sables in which these queens are robed; divers have been torn by sharks to bring up their pearls from the depths of tropic seas, and miners have been crushed in the deep earth to dig their blazing diamonds; chemists have blown themselves up in search for their cosmetics and dyes, and seamstresses have grown blind embroidering the elaborate designs which twinkle upon their silken ankles. All this concentrated in one brief glory-march—do you wonder that heads are high and glances regal? Or that the crowd surges, and rushes wildly, and women faint, and ambulances come clanging?