Adventure Tales 6. H. Bedford-Jones

      I.

      Sergeant Aloysius Larrigan inspected the houses ahead—and hesitated. Before he found name and wealth and fame in California film fields, Aloysius Larrigan had been born and raised in New York. Hence, he knew the metropolis. He knew that behind him on Fifth Avenue were the false jewels; and that here ahead of him was the real thing. Here, half a block off Fifth Avenue, was the house of Jim Bleeker, bunky of Sergeant Aloysius Larrigan.

      But the sergeant hesitated, gripping the package a little harder in his hand. Then, mustering up courage, he approached the doorway and rang.

      The outer door opened, and a stolid butler gazed at him.

      “I—I’ve come to see Mrs. Bleeker,” said the sergeant nervously.

      “It’s quite early, sir,” answered the butler, somehow stifling his first instinct of blank rejection. “I hardly think, sir, that Mrs. Bleeker is—”

      “Look here!” snapped Larrigan, flushing. “I’ve just landed from France. My name is Larrigan. Jim Bleeker was my bunky—”

      “If you’ll step inside, sir,” hastened the butler, changing countenance abruptly. “I’m sure that Mrs. Bleeker will wish to see you.”

      Aloysius Larrigan sat himself down between a mounted piece of fifteenth-century armor and a dull-gleaming Rubens. All this, he knew, was the real thing. He had guessed that Jim Bleeker was an aristocrat; but—well, all this was a bit crushing. Before he quite realized it, Mrs. Bleeker, in her widow’s black, was upon him and holding his hand.

      “Jim wrote me so much of you!” she was saying quietly. “I’m very, very glad to know you, Mr. Larrigan. I received your letter from Bordeaux, telling me of the final days—I cannot tell you how I appreciated the sweetness of that letter.”

      Aloysius Larrigan blushed fearfully. He stammered something and fell silent.

      “You must stay for luncheon—but how long shall you have in the city?”

      “No time at all, ma’am,” returned Aloysius. He displayed his package. “We’re going through town to be mustered out, and then I have to hit for California. I’ve got important business there, you see—a lady I’ve not seen for a year, and also business. I just got permission to run up here with this.”

      He thrust forward the package, all his carefully rehearsed speech and actions gone to the winds.

      “You see, Mrs. Bleeker, Jim made me promise to bring these things here myself. They are just the little things; well, you’ll see. He thought maybe you would like to have them. I have to be back in half an hour.”

      Mrs. Bleeker took the package, bit her lip very hard, and then threw back her shoulders and looked Aloysius Larrigan in the eye. He realized that hers was a peculiar bravery—the courage of deep things, of rare blood, of a sensitive, inner grief that was tearing her very soul before his eyes.

      He felt tongue-tied and extremely uncomfortable, far different from the easy assurance habitual to him.

      “Wait just a minute, please,” she said, and left him.

      He waited, gazing at the velvet hangings, the deep softness of everything around him, feeling himself frightfully out of place. The knowledge that he was an American soldier, and as good as any man alive, did not help him.

      Then he smiled grimly at the thought of how little the studio directors knew about the furnishings of an aristocratic home! All the studio men knew about was the flashy emptiness of the newly rich and the professional decorator.

      Mrs. Bleeker was before him again.

      “I’m more sorry than I can tell you, Mr. Larrigan, that you have to run away so quickly. When you get settled in California, will you please send me your address? One does not know what unforeseen emergencies may arise.”

      Aloysius promised.

      Mrs. Bleeker produced a little morocco case.

      “I would like you to have this,” she said quietly, very steadily. “I brought it to Jim once; he always wore it. There’s no other man I could give it to, Mr. Larrigan—but if you would accept it, you would give me great pleasure.”

      Larrigan gazed at the scarf-pin, an abalone blister mounted in gold.

      It came to him that this was a very precious tribute, a tribute from the woman’s heart, meaning more than words could say.

      Jim Bleeker had other friends, of course—wealthy friends, college friends, all that a man of his standing would have. But he, Larrigan, had been Bleeker’s bunky in France, had watched Jim Bleeker die, had been more to Jim Bleeker than any man alive.

      And this was a tribute, the most precious heart-gift he would ever know.

      “I—I’d be very glad,” he said, stumbling over the words, cursing himself because he could not express the thing that was in him, the feeling that gripped him in that moment of revelation. “ I’ll be wearing cits in a couple of days. I—I sure appreciate this very deeply, Mrs. Bleeker.”

      “There’s no other man I could give it to,” she said again very softly.

      This was all. He was thankful that his face seemed quite unknown to her.

      II.

      Reever Keene was home again—Reever Keene, the great; Reever Keene, the man who had snapped asunder his fabulous contract a year ago in order to enlist as a private; Reever Keene, whose pictures were the greatest drawing-card in every theater of the country!

      He had sent no notice of his coming, but the studio knew of it and was ready. As the Overland drew in, sixteen automobiles were waiting, and these automobiles were the cream of motion-picture motordom. All Los Angeles knew that the aluminum car with purple trimmings was Reever Keene’s; that his director owned the pea-green Twin Duplex striped with canary; that his leading lady had paid eleven thousand dollars for the screaming blue-and-gold roadster, and so forth.

      But a terrible thing happened at the station—a thing which, fortunately, was kept out of the papers by influence. As one of the lesser lights of filmdom grasped the hand of the great Keene he gave a raucous laugh.

      “For Heaven’s sake, Reever! Where’d you get the abalone sparkler? Wow! Look at it, folks; pipe the—”

      Reever Keene’s fist smashed him square in the mouth.

      The press-agent wanted to use the story, of course; but Reever Keene took the press-agent by the nape of the neck and kicked him hard. Influence did the rest—advertising influence. The story was killed.

      “I can’t understand what’s got into Keene,” said the director, riding back to the studios with the president of the company. “And look at the face of him! We’ll have to paint him an inch deep to disguise that brick-red tan and make him come out like the old screen idol! Fortunately his profile is all right still.”

      The president grunted. He was a wise man, or he would not have been in his present position.

      “Keene takes up his contract where he left off,” he returned. “That’s all I’m worrying about! Let Keene run the whole damned place if he wants. If you’d gone into the army, my son, instead of sitting on your draft-proof