Laughing Gas Read online

  'Oh, it's not really so bad. I don't want to pose as a martyr. I'm quite happy. I love young Joseph. He's a scream.'

  'All the same, it must be pretty foul for you. I mean, I know how you must want to be out and about, nosing after stories and getting scoops or whatever you call them.'

  'It's sweet of you to be sympathetic, Reggie, but I think I'm going to be all right. I'm practically sure this thing I was speaking of will come off - I don't see how there can be a hitch - and when it does I shall rise on stepping-stones of my dead self to higher things.'

  'Good.'

  'Though, mind you, there's a darker side. It won't be all jam being April June's press agent.' 'What! Why not?' 'She's a cat.'

  I shuddered from stem to stern, as stout barks do when buffeted by the waves. 'A what?'

  'A cat. There's another word that would describe her even better, but "cat" meets the case.' I mastered my emotion with an effort. 'April June,' I said, 'is the sweetest, noblest, divinest girl in existence. The loveliest creature you could shake a stick at in a month of Sundays, and as good as she is beautiful. She's wonderful. She's marvellous. She's super. She's the top.'

  She looked at me sharply.

  'Hullo! What's all this?'

  I saw no reason to conceal my passion.

  'I love her,' I said.

  'What!'

  'Definitely.'

  'It can't be true.'

  'It is true. I worship the ground she treads on,’ 'Well, for crying in the soup!'

  'I don't know what that expression means, but I still stick to my story. I worship the ground she treads on.'

  She went into the silence for a moment. Then she spoke in a relieved sort of voice.

  'Well, thank goodness, there isn't a chance that she'll look at you.'

  'Why not?'

  'It's all over Hollywood that she's got her hooks on some fool of an Englishman. A man called Lord Havershot. That's the fellow she's going to marry.'

  A powerful convulsion shook me from base to apex.

  'What!'

  'Yes.'

  'Is that official?' 'Quite, I believe.'

  I drew a deep breath. The coloured lanterns seemed to be dancing buck and wing steps around me. 'Good egg!' I said. 'Because I'm him.' 'What!'

  'Yes. Since we - er - last met, there has been a good deal of mortality in the family and I've copped the title’ She was staring at me, wide-eyed. 'Oh, hell! 'she said. 'Why, "oh, hell"?'

  'This is awful’

  'It is nothing of the kind. I like it.' She clutched my coat.

  'Reggie, you mustn't do this. Don't make a fool of yourself.'

  'A fool of myself, eh?'

  'Yes. She'll make you miserable. I may be going to depend on her for my bread and butter, but that shan't stop me doing my best to open your eyes. You're such a sweet, simple old ass that you can't see what everybody else sees. The woman's poison. She's frightful. Everybody knows it. Vain, affected, utterly selfish, and as hard as nails.'

  I had to laugh at that.

  'As hard as nails, eh?'

  'Harder.'

  I laughed again. Whole thing so dashed absurd.

  'You think so, do you?' I said. 'Funny you should say that. Extremely funny. Because the one thing she is is gentle and sensitive and highly strung and so forth. Let me tell you of a little episode that occurred on the train. I was describing round five of the recent heavyweight championship contest to her, and when I came to the bit about the blood her eyeballs rolled upwards and she swooned away.'

  'She did, did she?'

  'Passed right out. I never saw anything so womanly in my life.'

  'And it didn't occur to you, I suppose, that she was just putting on an act?' 'An act?'

  'Yes. And it worked, apparently. Because now I hear that you follow her everywhere she goes, bleating.' 'I do not bleat.'

  'The story going the round of the clubs is that you do bleat. People say they can hear you for miles on a clear day. My poor Reggie, she was just fooling you. The woman goes to all the fights in Los Angeles and revels in them.'

  'I don't believe it.'

  'She does, I tell you. Can't you see that she was simply making a play for you because you're Lord Havershot? That's all she's after - the title. For heaven's sake, Reggie, lay off while there's still time.'

  I eyed her coldly and detached my coat from her grasp.

  'Let us talk of something else,' I said.

  'There's nothing else I want to talk about.'

  Then don't let's talk at all. I don't know if you realize it, but what we're doing is perilously near to speaking lightly of a woman's name - the sort of thing chaps get kicked out of clubs for.'

  'Reggie, will you listen to me?'

  'No. I jolly well won't.'

  'Reggie!'

  'No. Let's drop the subj.' She gave a little sigh.

  'Oh, very well,' she said. 'I might have known it would be no use trying to drive sense into a fat head like yours ... April June!'

  'Why do you say "April June" like that?'

  'Because it's the only way to say it.'

  'Well, let me tell you I resent your saying "April June" as if you were mentioning the name of some particularly unpleasant disease.'

  'That is the way I shall go on saying "April June".'

  I bowed stiffly.

  'Oh, right ho,' I said. 'Please yourself. After all, your methods of voice production are your own affair. And now, as I observe my hostess approaching, I will beetle along and pay my respects. This will leave you at liberty to go off into a corner by yourself and say "April June", if you so desire, till the party is over and they lock up the house and put the cat out.'

  'They don't put her out. She lives here.'

  I made no reply to this vulgar crack. I felt that it was beneath me. Besides, I couldn't think of anything. I moved away in silence. I could feel Ann's eyes on the back of my neck, like Eggy's spiders, but I did not look round.

  I pushed off to where April was greeting a covey of guests and barged in, hoping ere long to be able to detach her from the throng and have a private word with her on a tender and sentimental subject.

  Well, of course, it wasn't easy, because a hostess has much to occupy her, but eventually she seemed satisfied that she had got things moving and could leave people to entertain themselves, so I collared a table for two in a corner of the lawn and dumped her down there. And we had steak and kidney pie and the usual fixings, and presently we started wading into vanilla ice-cream.

  And all the while my determination to slap my heart down before her was growing. Ann's derogatory remarks hadn't weakened me in the slightest. All rot, they seemed to me. As I watched this lovely girl shovelling down the stuff, I refused to believe that she wasn't everything that was perfect. I braced myself for the kick-off. At any moment now, I felt, it might occur. It was simply a question of watching out for the psychological moment and leaping on it like a ton of bricks the second it shoved its nose up.

  The conversation had turned to her work. She had said something about her chances of doing a quiet sneak to bed at a fairly early hour, because she was supposed to be on the set, made up, at six on the following a.m. for some retakes; and the mere idea of being out of the hay at a time like that made me quiver with tender compassion.

  'Six o'clock!' I said. 'Gosh!'

  'Yes, it's not an easy life. I often wonder if one's public ever realize how hard it is.'

  'It must be frightful.'

  'One does get a little tired sometimes.'

  'Still,' I said, doing a spot of silver-lining-pointing, 'there's money in it, what?'

  'Money!'

  'And fame.'

  She smiled a faint, saintly sort of smile and champed a spoonful of ice-cream.

  'Money and fame mean nothing to me, Lord Havershot.' 'No?'

  'Oh, no. My reward is the feeling that I am spreading happiness, that I am doing my little best to cheer up this tired world, that I am giving the toiling masses a glimpse of somethi
ng bigger and better and more beautiful.'

  'What ho,' I said reverently.

  'You don't think it silly of me to feel like that?'

  'I think it's terrific'

  'I'm so glad. You see, it's a sort of religion with me. I feel like a kind of priestess. I think of all those millions of drab lives, and I say to myself what does all the hard work and the distasteful publicity matter if I can bring a little sunshine into their drab round. You're laughing at me?'

  'No, no. Absolutely not.'

  'Take Pittsburgh, for instance. They eat me in Pittsburgh. My last picture but one grossed twenty-two thousand there on the week. And that makes me very happy, because I think of all those drab lives in Pittsburgh being brightened up like that. And Cincinnati. I was a riot in Cincinnati. People's lives are very drab in Cincinnati, too.'

  'It's wonderful!' She sighed.

  'I suppose it is. Yes, of course it is. All those drab lives, I mean. And yet is it enough? That is what one asks oneself sometimes. One is lonely now and then. One feels one wishes one could get away from it all and be just an ordinary happy wife and mother. Sometimes one dreams of the patter of little feet...'

  I waited no longer. If this wasn't the psychological moment, I didn't know a psychological moment when I saw one. I leaned forward. 'Darling,' I was just about to say, 'stop me if you've heard this before, but will you be my wife?' when something suddenly went off like a bomb inside my head, causing me to drop the subject absolutely.

  It happened in a flash. One moment, I was all fire and romance, without a thought for anything except that the girl who was sitting beside me was the girl I loved, and that I was jolly well going to put her in touch with the facts: the next, I was hopping round in circles with my hand pressed to my cheek, suffering the tortures of the damned.

  Whether by pure spontaneous combustion, or because I had inadvertently taken aboard too large a segment of ice-cream, the old Havershot wisdom tooth had begun to assert its personality.

  I had had my eye on this tooth for some time, and I suppose I ought to have taken a firm line with it before. But you know how it is when you're travelling. You shrink from entrusting the snappers to a strange dentist. You say to yourself 'Stick it out, old cock, till you get back to London and can toddle round to the maestro who's been looking after you since you were so high.' And then, of course, you cop it unexpectedly, as I had done.

  Well, there it was. A fellow can't pour out his soul under those conditions. In fact, I don't mind admitting that at that juncture all thoughts of love and marriage and little feet and what not had passed for the nonce completely out of my mind. With a hasty word of farewell, I left her sitting and proceeded to the chemist's shop by the Beverley-Wilshire Hotel in quest of temporary relief. And next day I was in the dentist's waiting-room, about to keep my tryst with I. J. Zizzbaum, the man behind the forceps.

  So here we are again at the point where, if you remember, I originally wanted to start the story, only my literary pal headed me off. There I was, as I told you, sitting in an arm-chair, and across the room in another arm-chair, turning the pages of the National Geographic Magazine, was a kid of the Little Lord Fauntleroy type. His left cheek, like mine, was bulging, and I deduced that we were both awaiting the awful summons.

  He was, I observed, a kid of singular personal beauty. Not even the bulge in his cheek could conceal that. He had large, expressive eyes and golden ringlets. Long lashes hid these eyes as he gazed down at his National Geographic Magazine.

  I never know what's the correct course to pursue on occasions like this. Should one try to help things along with a friendly word or two, if only about the weather? Or is silence best? I was just debating this question in ray mind, when he opened the conversation himself.

  He lowered his National Geographic Magazine and looked across at me.

  'Where,' he asked, 'are the rest of the boys?'

  Chapter 5

  His meaning eluded me. I didn't get him. A cryptic kid. One of those kids, who, as the expression is, speak in riddles. He was staring at me enquiringly, and I stared back at him, also enquiringly.

  Then I said, going straight to the point and evading all side issues:

  'What boys?'

  'The newspaper boys.'

  'The newspaper boys?'

  An idea seemed to strike him.

  'Aren't you a reporter?'

  'No, not a reporter.'

  'Then what are you doing here?'

  'I've come to have a tooth out.'

  This appeared to surprise and displease him. He said, with marked acerbity:

  'You can't have come to have a tooth out.' 'Yes, I have.'

  'But I've come to have a tooth out.' I spotted a possible solution.

  'Perhaps,' I said, throwing out the suggestion for what it was worth, 'we've both come to have a tooth out, what? I mean to say, you one and me another. Tooth A and Tooth B, as it were.'

  He still seemed ruffled. He eyed me searchingly.

  'When's your appointment?'

  'Three-thirty.'

  'It can't be. Mine is.'

  'So is mine. I. J. Zizzbaum was most definite about that. We arranged it over the phone, and his words left no loophole for misunderstanding. "Three-thirty," said I. J. Zizzbaum, as plain as I see you now.'

  The kid became calmer. His alabaster brow lost its frown, and he ceased to regard me as if I were some hijacker or bandit. It was as if a great light had shone upon him.

  'Oh, I. J. Zizzb mm?' he said. 'B. K. Burwash is doing mine.'

  And, looking about me, I now perceived that on either side of the apartment in which we sat was a door. On one of these doors Was imprinted the legend:

  J. ZIZZBAUM

  And on the other:

  B. K. BURWASH

  The mystery was solved. Possibly because they were old dental college chums, or possibly from motives of economy, these two fang-wrenchers shared a common waiting-room.

  Convinced now that no attempt was being made to jump his claim, the kid had become affability itself. Seeing in me no rival for first whack at the operating-chair, but merely a fellow human being up against the facts of life just as he was, he changed his tone to one of kindly interest.

  'Does your tooth hurt?'

  'Like the dickens.'

  'So does mine. Coo!'

  'Coo here, too.'

  'Where does it seem to catch you most?' 'Pretty well all the way down to the toenails.' 'Me, too. This tooth of mine is certainly fierce. Yessir!' 'So is mine.'

  'I'll bet mine's worse than yours.' 'It couldn't be.'

  He made what he evidently considered a telling point.

  'I'm having gas.'

  I came right back at him.

  'So am I.'

  'I'll bet I need more gas than you.'

  ‘I’ll bet you don't.'

  ‘I’ll bet you a trillion dollars I do.'

  It seemed to me that rancour was beginning to creep into the conversation once more, and that pretty soon we would be descending to a common wrangle. So, rather than allow the harmony of the proceedings to be marred by a jarring note, I dropped the theme and switched off to an aspect of the matter which had been puzzling me from the first. You will remember that I had thought this kid to have spoken in riddles, and I still wanted an explanation of those rather mystic opening words of his.

  'You're probably right,' I said pacifically. 'But, be that as it may, what made you think I was a reporter?'

  'I'm expecting a flock of them here.'

  'You are?'

  'Sure. There'll be camera men, too, and human interest writers.'

  'What, to see you have a tooth out?'

  'Sure. When I have a tooth out, that's news.'

  'What!'

  'Sure. This is going to make the front page of every paper in the country.' 'What, your tooth?'

  'Yay, my tooth. Listen, when I had my tonsils extracted last year, it rocked civilization. I'm some shucks, I want to tell you.'

  'Somebody s
pecial, you mean?'

  'I'll say that's what I mean. I'm Joey Cooley.'

  Owing to the fact that one of my unswerving rules in life is never to go to a picture if I am informed by my spies that there is a child in it, I had never actually set eyes on this stripling. But of course I knew the name. Ann, if you remember, had spoken of him. So had April June.

  'Oh, ah,' I said. 'Joey Cooley, eh?'

  'Joey Cooley is correct.'

  'Yes, I've heard of you.'

  'So I should think.'

  'I know your nurse.'

  *My what?'

  'Well, your female attendant or whatever she is. Ann Bannister.'

  'Oh, Ann? She's an all-right guy, Ann is.' 'Quite.'

  'A corker, and don't let anyone tell you different.' 'I won't.'

  'Ann's a peach. Yessir, that's what Ann is.'

  'And April June was talking about you the other day.'

  'Oh, yeah? And what did she have to say?'

  'She told me you were in her last picture.'

  'She did, did she?' He snorted with not a little violence, and his brow darkened. It was plain that he was piqued. Meaning nothing but to pass along a casual item of information, I appeared to have touched some exposed nerve. 'The crust of that dame! In her last picture, eh? Let me tell you that she was in my last picture!'

  He snorted a bit more. He had taken up the National Geographic Magazine again, and I noted that it quivered in his hands, as if he were wrestling with some powerful emotion. Presently the spasm passed, and he was himself again.

  'So you've met that pill, have you?' he said.

  It was my turn to quiver, and 1 did so like a jelly.

  'That what?'

  'That pill.'

  'Did you say "pill"?'

  ' "Pill" was what I said. Slice her where you like, she's still boloney.' I drew myself up.

  'You are speaking,' I said, 'of the woman I love.'

  He started to say something, but I raised my hand coldly and said 'Please,' and silence supervened. He read his National Geographic Magazine. I read mine. And for some minutes matters proceeded along these lines. Then I thought to myself: 'Oh, well, dash it,' and decided to extend the olive branch. Too damn silly, I mean, a couple of fellows on the brink of having teeth out simply sitting reading the National Geographic Magazine at one another instead of trying to forget by means of pleasant chitchat the ordeal which lay before them. 'So you're Joey Cooley?' I said.