The Case of the Solid Key Read online

  He started to his feet as the door opened. But it was only the landlady. She advanced to him with a folded note in her outstretched hand. “Miss Plunk said to give you this.”

  “To give me—?”

  “She went out.”

  He unfolded the note and read:

  Some other night maybe?

  Sorry, darling.

  The landlady did not approve of his language.

  Chapter 4

  That Norman became pretty damned disgruntled at being stood up so inexplicably, and spent the rest of the evening in Los Angeles discovering the lowdown delights of Main Street, is one of the few events of that week not essential to this narrative.

  So we pass over the chance for a nicely alliterative montage of bars, burlesques, and B-girls and pick him up again next morning, seated at his typewriter, corncob clenched between his teeth, hammering out notes on the Carruthers Little Theater.

  For Norman’s special aptitude in writing lay in treating the reverse of the obvious. Even as he had seen in the futile rich of Oklahoma the companion piece which rounded out the Okie picture, so now he felt that the traditional concept of Hollywood, City of Glitter and Glamour, should be completed by a portrayal of all the helpless little people who cling to its fringes. From Betsy the carhop to Jordan the ex-hero, these figures were typically Hollywood, but a Hollywood the existence of which never occurred to the mind of the public.

  He was just seeking to fit into his notes the somewhat anomalous figure of Fergus O’Breen when the landlady called him to the telephone.

  “Mr. Norman Harker?” asked a secretarial voice.

  “Yes.”

  “Will you hold the line a moment?”

  After an interminable pause, a second but almost identical voice asked once more if he were he. When he assured her that he was, this one said, “Miss Garston wishes to speak to you. Will you please hold the line?”

  There followed another wait and then a third voice with the same question. Norman had by now decided, with a thrill he made no attempt to suppress, that this Miss Garston must be a film executive. No one else can display quite so much contempt for the time and convenience of those he telephones.

  “This is Miss Garston’s secretary,” the third voice announced. “Miss Garston would like to see you today at eleven o’clock.”

  “Thank you. And what,” Norman ventured, “is the address?” He could hardly say, “And who the hell may Miss Garston be?”

  He could see the secretary’s eyebrows arch as clearly as though by television. “You don’t know where Metropolis Pictures is?”

  “Oh,” he mumbled. “Oh yes, of course. Eleven? I’ll be there.”

  It was now ten. By eleven he had bathed, shaved, put on his best suit (though a suit, he reflected, makes a man look conspicuous in Hollywood; he should acquire some proper sport clothes, but in the present state of his bank account …), and enjoyed a brisk walk to Metropolis, which is, fortunately for the carless, one of the very few studios left within Hollywood proper.

  Stage fright, he thought, must be very much like this—disquieting, half nauseating, and yet intensely exhilarating. An exciting ordeal with incalculable possibilities. Was it possible that that last agent with whom he had left some scripts had actually read them? Had even borne them to a producer? That the producer had been carried away by this display of young talent and had resolved …? The dreams grew wilder and wilder, and Norman’s walking speeded up to keep pace with them.

  He tried two wrong gates first—gates which seemed, to judge from those who passed him, to admit all sorts and conditions of men save those having appointments with Miss Garston. At last he found the right gate, where a uniformed guard talked a while on the phone and then bestowed on him a pass and some complex instructions.

  Norman read, This pass is good only at the hour stated and for one appointment. Please go immediately to your appointment and leave at once. This pass will not admit you to any part of the studio but the office designated. “I wonder,” he said to himself, “if it could get you into the men’s room.”

  After only three false turns down winding corridors, he found the room that said GLADYS GARSTON. He had never before been actually inside a major studio; he had always been told simply to leave his application at the outer desk. Now he was legitimately inside, but for all the glamour which he saw about him he might better have been pacing the halls of any business building. This drab corridor with its monotonous rows of identical doors was a hell of a place for stage fright.

  But now he would step out of this drabness into the doubtless sumptuous sanctum of the executive, Miss Garston. He straightened his tie, glanced at his shoes, wondered if any shaving soap remained on his ears—and then saw the word under Miss Garston’s name.

  It was RESEARCH.

  So it was not as a brilliant young writer that he had been summoned, but simply as a possible routine worker. But even that meant a job, and more than that, a job with contacts and possibilities. And film salaries being as fabulous as one hears …

  Miss Garston kept him waiting only until eleven-fifteen, evidence that she was a woman of extraordinary punctuality. She proved, when he was finally admitted, to be gray-haired, plump, and laconic. She had his application on her desk, and ran a pencil down it as she rapidly checked off the essential requirements (and Norman blessed J. K. Waterman for his insistence on a Truly Thorough education).

  He had a college degree? Check.

  Postgraduate work? Two years leading to M.A.? Check.

  Research experience? Thesis and seminar papers? Check.

  Reading knowledge of at least three foreign languages? Check.

  Touch-system typing? Check.

  Shorthand? No? Hmm.

  Knowledge on any specialized subjects? Theater, general literature, music, military history, banking, and mathematics? Hmm.

  Miss Garston looked up from the application. “I think we may be able to use you, young man. There’s just been a vacancy in the department; your application came in at the right time.”

  Norman started to express joy, but her speech cut across his. “It’s too bad about that shorthand. If you had that, there’d be no doubt. As it is, I’ll have to see what we can arrange. We may ask you to pick it up in night school while you’re working. Willing to?”

  “Why yes. And might I ask—?”

  For a moment curiosity gave a quite unprofessional softness to Miss Garston’s stern face. “Have you known Miss La Marr long, Mr. Harker?”

  “Miss La Marr? I don’t know any Miss La Marr.”

  Miss Garston frowned. “Sorry. Suppose I shouldn’t have mentioned it. I’ll phone you before the end of the week.”

  “But I’d like to ask: What are the hours?”

  “Forty-four hours a week, not counting overtime. If we have a rush assignment, it may run fifty or more.”

  “And the salary?”

  “Twenty-two fifty a week.”

  “Plus overtime?”

  “And nothing for overtime. I’ll contact you by Saturday, Mr. Harker. Good day.”

  In the corridor, Norman waved his pass at the drinking fountain and took a long, cold gulp. The fabulous salaries of Hollywood, indeed! That extraordinary list of absolute prerequisites, and such a salary to reward them. He remembered a college friend of his who had landed a research job on the Federal Theater Project at slightly higher wages. He was beginning to realize the strangest of all the strange facts about Hollywood—that there is no middle ground between being outrageously overpaid and being equally outrageously underpaid.

  But nonetheless the job (if he could surmount that difficulty about shorthand) was a godsend. It would save his pride, it would keep him near Sarah, and most of all it would provide him with food—and that, in a very few months, was going to be a major problem. But what the devil had Miss Garston meant about his knowing a Miss La Marr?

  He had cast a last wistful glance at the drab walls that hid whatever glamour Metropolis might poss
ess and was about to surrender his pass when he felt a hand clap him on the shoulder. He turned. “Fergus!”

  “Hiya, Norm. What brings you to this den of iniquity? Do they need new blood among the writers?”

  “I was trying for a job in research.”

  “Get it?”

  “I don’t know yet, but I’m praying. But can I ask the same question? Do they need redheaded juveniles?”

  “Wonderful thing, Technicolor. But I’m here unprofessionally. My sister runs the publicity department, and I came out to have lunch with her. Look. There’s not much fun in a visit to G. G.’s office. How’s about joining us in the commissary? Feeding time in the zoo? Watch buxom blondes, brooding brunettes, and ravishing redheads—all eating lamb chops and pineapple?”

  Norman looked ruefully at his pass. “This thing says—”

  “I’ll fix that.” Fergus turned to the guard at the switchboard. “Get me O’Breen in Publicity. Maureen? This is the light of your life. … No, not Charles Boyer, and what would your fiancé think of that crack? This is the other O’Breen—you know, the one with the yellow polo shirt. … Yeah. Look. I’ve got me a friend. How’s about a pass to the commissary? … Hey, no cracks about passes. This is a he-friend. … Watch out, Macushla. The Hays office’ll get you. Here, tell the man you want a pass.” He handed the phone back to the guard, who dutifully listened and scribbled.

  “Even Maureen’s power,” Fergus explained as they walked, “couldn’t get you on a set. They’ll allow but nobody, ever since the biggest distributor in the East just had to see Rita in Jazzalcade. He’d be quiet as a mouse, he said, and he was—not a peep out of him. But when they ran the rushes the next day, you couldn’t hear a word out of the day’s takes. Just tempestuous sound effects like all you needed was Lamour in a sarong. The old boy had stood near a mike on the set, and his asthma had recorded itself in a starring role. But the commissary’s good enough. There’s never any telling who you’ll see there.”

  There certainly wasn’t any telling. The dark-haired girl whom Fergus introduced informally as “My sister Maureen—you know, the genius of Polly,” was that same girl to whom Rupert Carruthers had promised complete secrecy the night Norman had first seen them.

  Maureen was fun, Norman decided. Not so consciously colorful as her brother, but alive, acute, and amusing. She pointed out celebrities at near-by tables, illustrated their less-known foibles with apposite anecdotes, and kept up as thoroughly entertaining a line of shop talk as Norman had ever heard.

  “How’s about the problem child,” Fergus asked, “how’s about Rita? If she’s around today, we can give Norm an eyeful.”

  “Rita’s taking a layoff right now—vacationing in Honolulu—and I don’t know as we’ve got anything else quite that juicy.”

  “Rita La Marr …” said Norman slowly. “I wonder.”

  “Wonder what?”

  “Miss Garston in Research asked me if I knew a Miss La Marr. I can’t understand why.”

  “I think I know,” said Maureen quickly. “You see, in a way Rita’s responsible for your job, if you get it. She had a temperamental fit about a mistake Research made on her last picture and she’s been insisting they get a new man. G. G. was probably mixed up—thought Rita had some personal concern in the matter and you must know her. Oh look, there’s a celebrity for you. Paul!” She half-rose and waved the young actor toward their table.

  Yesterday’s mistake, Norman reflected, was not at all unnatural. Paul Jackson and his detective brother were similar enough to cause confusion anywhere. But the similarity lay only in appearance. Whether it was because of their totally different professions or a more basic difference in temperament, Norman could not tell; but where the Lieutenant had been dry and terse (not unlike many of Paul’s screen roles), the off-screen actor was ebullient and extrovert. He kissed Maureen, greeted Fergus with a few choice and cordial curses, and shook Norman’s hand with a firm fervor which seemed to imply that he had spent all his life waiting to meet an unsuccessful playwright from Oklahoma.

  “I was much relieved,” he said as he sat down, “to see you wave at me, Maureen.”

  “And why, sir?”

  “Because I had feared there might be a feud between the houses of O’Breen and Jackson.”

  “All right,” said Maureen. “I’ll bite. And why should there be a feud between our houses, Mistah Bones?”

  “Andy tells me Fergus cut him dead yesterday. What’s the matter, my boy? Afraid your police record will come out? And after all you lads have been through together too.”

  “Things happen,” said Fergus indefinitely.

  “Aha! Secrets of the profession, eh?”

  “Look,” Maureen interrupted, “have you heard from Rita?”

  “Rita?” Paul briefly registered a troubled look and dissolved into blithe unconcern. “Oh yes—Rita. I had a note on the last Clipper. She thinks Honolulu is marvelous, and if the publicity department ever succeeds in marrying us we should honeymoon there.”

  “But when you went to Hawaii on location for that Derring Drew picture, you came down with hay fever and ruined the whole shooting schedule.”

  “Rita knows that,” said Paul Jackson, with something of his brother’s dryness.

  “I tell you what,” said Maureen. “Maybe I’ve got soft or something since I fell in love myself; but here’s a present for you: from now on the publicity department will soft-pedal this supposed Jackson-La Marr romance.”

  Paul Jackson stared. “You mean that, Maureen?”

  “I do.”

  “You mean that I can go to a première with whoever I damned well like? I can show up alone at night spots if I feel like it? I can even spend a quiet evening at Chasen’s just talking? And not one misbegotten columnist can say, ‘But where’s Miss La Marr?’”

  “The heat’s off, Paul.”

  Paul Jackson’s YIPPEE! shook every plate in the Metropolis commissary.

  “I’m learning things,” said Norman. “Me, I’m just a trusting newspaper reader; I always thought you and Miss La Marr were the greatest romance since Gable and Lombard. And now all my illusions lie in the dust. This interests me.”

  “I wonder,” Maureen observed cryptically, “if you’ll ever realize just how much it interests you.”

  The three men looked at her in confusion. She smiled a gratified smile and settled back in her chair. “All right, brother dear. Apply your deductive mind to that clew.”

  “Come on,” Paul urged. “Let’s see the professional at work.”

  Fergus shrugged and turned to Norman. “Look. Can you have the good sense to keep all this gay banter under your hat when we get back to the theater?”

  Norman frowned. “I have run into more fragmentary secrets since Monday night than in all my twenty-seven years to date.”

  “Because,” Fergus went on, “I’d just as soon not have anybody else at that establishment know that I’m a private detective.”

  “I’m sure,” said Maureen sweetly, “they’ll never guess it from your results.”

  “Cigars, gentlemen?” asked Paul Jackson. The three men were lingering comfortably over their coffee, though the clock had forced Maureen to scurry back to her office.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” said Fergus, but Norman declined and started to fill a curved brier.

  Paul made quite an elaborate business of the lighting and took a long and leisurely puff. “Glad I happened to run into you,” he said at last. “I was thinking of calling you this evening.”

  “So? You mean professional-like, or have you a good healthy beer thirst?”

  “Professional, I’m afraid. If I could—” He looked pointedly at Norman, who shifted uncomfortably.

  “It is both, or none,” said Fergus. “You may say before this gentleman anything which you may say to me.”

  Paul looked surprised. “Such formal language for you, O’Breen.”

  Fergus grinned. “Just quoting the words of the immortal Sherlock. They mean, in s
hort, that I’m adopting this lad as a Watson. So go ahead; speak freely.”

  “Very well.” Paul Jackson took out his wallet and extracted a clipping. “This was in last night’s paper. Read it—both of you,” he added dubiously.

  The clipping read:

  ATTENTION BUREAU OF MISSING PERSONS: What star thinks Honolulu is too far away to be checked up on, and what studio is going to have the surprise of its life when it learns what its meal ticket is up to?

  “And who,” Fergus added, “gives a damn?”

  “Don’t you see?” said Paul Jackson. “It’s Rita. It must be.”

  “Why? She’s got no copyright on taking a vacation in Honolulu.”

  “But there’s been something in the air. Even before she went away she was acting strangely.”

  “Why should you worry about Rita? I thought you were pretty fed up with her after all the hoops Maureen’s made you two jump through.”

  “Oh, she’s a nice kid and I like her. If I hadn’t had her stuffed down my throat, I might have gone for her on my own. But I’m not so much worried for her as—Don’t you get it, Fergus? If she’s up to some damnfool trick and gets into a scandal, don’t you see that it’ll bounce back on me? We’re tied up together in the public mind.”

  “You’re making the Himalayas,” said Fergus, “and you haven’t even got a molehill to start with. And what do you expect me to do?”

  “Find her and head her off from whatever she’s up to.”

  “Heading off Rita from what she’s set her heart on is the thirteenth labor of Hercules, and you know it. Did you speak to Maureen about this?”

  “She laughed at me,” said Jackson with an injured air.

  “And I don’t blame her. But I tell you what. I’m pretty busy right now, but I’ll do what I can. And the fee, if I find her, will be one week’s salary.”

  Paul fidgeted. “How much do you make a week?”

  “Not my salary, my bucko. Yours.”

  The actor goggled a moment, then said, “All right. It’s a go. But,” he added hastily, “‘less ten per cent, you understand? That goes to my agent.”

  “And how much will Paul’s fee amount to?” Norman asked as they climbed into Fergus’ yellow roadster.