Chapter 9

At that same hour, in another bedroom in one of the older, more substantial Beverly Hills mansions, Rita Spillman and Irene were having a mother-and-daughter, heart-to-heart talk. "You have simply got to take my advice in this matter," Rita said, pacing the floor in nervous agitation, "everything depends on it, darling."

Once a screen star famous for her exotic beauty, Rita was still a beautiful woman. By methods best known to herself, she had managed to keep her figure as well as that certain indefinable charm which distinguishes youth from age.

She had also kept a firm grip on her common sense. There had been a time when she had faced up bravely to the fact that her days as a glamorous screen star were numbered. Having faced it, she proceeded to marry a rich man before Jack Spillman had time to change his mind. She discarded the objection that he was a dull, tiresome bore as not worthy of consideration. Security was what she was after, and Jack could give it to her. Now she faced the same problem again. With Jack gone, she was at the mercy of his father, who had never liked her.

Interrupting herself in her discussion of economics, she gazed disapprovingly at Irene's silvery green outfit. "Wear black," she suggested after a moment's thoughtful concentration.

There was something about a redheaded girl in black that went straight to the head of the average man.

Irene laughed, kicking off her silver slippers, replacing them with red ones which were more striking with black. She remarked that she doubted if they should worry about appealing to Dana Hall's head. Her money and background would speak for her in that department. It was the man's heart they had better worry about, if she wanted to marry the man.

Irene repeated, for possibly the thousandth time, that she was not at all sure she could bring herself to marry Dana Hall. Oh, he was handsome enough, but a perfect stuffed shirt. And Rita knew how she loathed and detested stuffed shirts.

"You like playboys-" her mother snapped, "any worthless scamp who knows nothing about money except how to spend it! Every single time you take an interest in a man, that's what he turns out to be; not worth the powder and shot to blow him away with. Honestly, Irene, there are times when I don't know what to make of you. Heaven knows, you seem bright enough in other ways. You did well in school, you take an intelligent interest in current events, you even seem to be handling that silly store job very efficiently. But when it comes to men, you're simply hopeless. I suppose," she added belligerently, "you've still got your mind set on Brent Robey, who doesn't care a snap of his finger about you. He's made that clear enough."

"I'd marry Brent so fast it would make your head swim, if I could get him." Having zipped up the black dress, which was a sensation, Irene reseated herself before her dressing table mirror. Her hairdo did not suit her, and after she had changed it she decided that the black called for a slightly different shade of makeup.

"And don't be too sure I can't get him, Mother. I haven't given up."

Walking up behind her daughter, Rita gave Irene's lovely reflection the stern, determined look of a wise mother advising her child for her own good.

"Now you listen to me, Irene. I have nothing to say against Brent. If he wanted to marry you, I would make no objection. Marrying for love is no doubt very pleasant, for a time at least. But I won't countenance a man who does nothing but keep you dangling, disappearing for weeks at a time, even months. You can't count on such a man, darling. You simply must face that fact. It is quite possible that Brent might make up his mind to marry you one of these days. But we simply haven't the time to wait to find out! We need a husband for you, Irene, a husband your grandfather will approve. And we need him fast. As I've been telling you for the last hour-"

"Mother, please," Irene interrupted with a sigh and a groan, while she experimented with the effect of dangling crystal earrings. "I've heard it all a thousand times. I must take unto myself a suitable husband, and fast. If I don't my grandfather might decide to leave all his lousy money to charity. That would be most unfortunate. I agree to that, Mother. But I can't stand hearing it all over again."

"Well, just so you understand that we arc actually in dire peril. I am not exaggerating when I say this, Irene. I know Joe Spillman, I know the spiteful meanness the old man is capable of. He never has liked me. He never forgave your father for marrying an actress. He's beginning to wonder if you're a bad one, too. He doesn't approve of your running around with one man after another. He thinks you should settle down with the right kind of man, start raising a family. If you don't he'd be capable of anything." Rita spoke with the grim intensity of a woman who sensed the sword of Damocles hanging over her head.

"Mother, please!"

Irene clapped her hands to her ears. She simply could not listen to any more.

Her mother exaggerated, of course. Big Joe, as Irene had called her grandfather when she was a youngster, would never leave them penniless. Still, he might cut them off with a small trust fund, which would be almost as bad. The very thought of not being able to spend money like water terrified Irene. To walk into an exclusive shop and not have the wherewithal to buy whatever caught your eye; to be forced to live in a small apartment in a tacky neighborhood; to have to go without one thing in order to afford another, actually to have to watch your dollars-that, in Irene's opinion, was a fate worse than death.

That was the reason she was willing to consider marrying Dana Hall, whom she neither liked nor disliked. As far as she was concerned, Dana was a zero. But he was ambitious, he was already successful in a small way, he presented the appearance of a sober, serious-minded fellow whose eye was firmly fixed on the main chance. All this would appeal to Big Joe. It should make Dana Hall an easy fish for her to land, too.

To all outward appearances, of course, Big Joe looked as healthy as a trout. His color was good, his mind still alert, he was still up to a fourteen-hour workday. But as Rita was never able to forget for one minute, he had had a stroke two years ago.

It had been only a slight stroke and there had been no recurrence. But a stroke was a stroke. There were no two ways about that. Big Joe might live for years. On the other hand, he might go in a minute, without warning.

Even worse, to Rita's way of thinking, he might start worrying about dying and take it into his head to change his will without warning. He wouldn't be the first wealthy man to do it. There seemed to be something about having a stroke that put a rich man off balance, impelling him to cut off his loved ones. Rita thought it might be an old man's spiteful way of getting even with those who were lucky enough to live on when he had to die.

When Irene had finished with all the little tricks and artifices she could think of, she rose from the dressing table. Smiling faintly, she asked Rita: "Do I look like nice bait, Mother darling?"

"You look beautiful," Rita approved. Never had she seen Irene look lovelier. If there weren't such imperative need for haste, she said, it would be utter nonsense for Irene to waste herself, throw herself away, on the assistant manager of a woman's dress shop. "But," she reminded Irene worriedly, "your grandfather has put on at least twenty pounds in the last few months." According to the doctors, who certainly ought to know, every added pound was that much more strain on his old heart. It meant thousands upon thousands of extra blood vessels which had to be fed. Or maybe it was millions. At any rate, it was dangerous.

"And just remember this," Rita offered her final word of warning. "The old man has always promised to settle a million dollars on you, in cash, the day you marry to suit him." And he was a man of his word.

"I'll remember," Irene promised.

Smiling at each other with the look of two conspirators who understood each other perfectly, mother and daughter wound their arms around each other and went down the broad, winding stairway to the large foyer where Dana Hell was waiting. He had just arrived.

Irene said: "Hi, Dana," and introduced her mother.

Rita, beautiful and regal in red taffeta and pearls, gave him a ravishing smile and then, on a pretty impulse, gave him a kiss. "I never can resist kissing a really handsome man," she said, laughing. "It's a throwback to my screen days. And you are a beautiful creature, Dana Hall, just as Irene promised you would be." With a playful pat, Rita ordered him to feel like one of the family. Then she ushered him into the plush drawing room where old Joe Spillman was waiting.

Dana moved in a kind of daze across the magnificent oriental rug. He wondered how many thousands of dollars that rug had cost. He wondered if Rita Spillman's pearls were the genuine article and decided that they must be. He wondered exactly what hidden meaning lay behind her apparently casual remark: "You are to feel like one of the family, you sweet man." He found his hand being gripped by the ham-like hand of the powerfully built old man whose name was synonymous with big money. The big man was looking him over with shrewd, wise eyes, eyes that had long ago learned how to size up a man and his potentialities in one swift, probing glance.

"Have a cigar?" the old man invited. "Sit down, sit down. By the way, young man, do you know anything about stamp collecting?"

"A little," Dana said.

"Good. Shows you have a little intelligence. Stamp collecting happens to be my hobby. Helps me forget the madhouse the world has turned into. It's reached the point where I'm half ashamed to admit I'm a member of the human race. And now, after he's messed up everything on earth as best he can, Man wants to rush off to some other planets and start lousing them up. Here." The old man took an envelope from his pocket and withdrew a handful of stamps from the envelope. "Take a look at these. I paid a hundred bucks for the bunch. You think I was sold a joker?"

Dana was deep in a discussion of stamps when Irene came drifting toward him, carrying a silver tray with cocktails. She was smiling at him, showing her beautiful teeth, her eyes luminous, glowing, as if there were powerful candles behind them. She was a sensationally beautiful girl, no question about that. And she had the poise, the know-how of a princess. By comparison, Lena seemed just a bit-well, outclassed.

Rita crossed the room to take a martini from the tray. Before she drank, she touched Dana's glass with her own, her still beautiful, lively eyes smiling straight into his. "If only I were twenty years younger," she said gaily, "I'd rope you in and marry you myself, you beautiful hunk of man. But since I'm not," she added sadly, "I suppose I'll have to bow out in favor of Irene."

Good Lord, Dana wondered, what gives? Is she telling me I can marry Irene if I want her? There was a puzzle here, and he could not make head or tail of it. He wondered why the first martini hit him so fast, the second set his head to whirling. He was not, to be sure, a heavy drinker. Two cocktails before dinner were about his limit. But as a rule he could manage that much with no trouble at all.

It did not occur to him that he was dizzy because of the astonishing thing that was happening to him. Dana Hall was being taken to the high mountain top and shown the splendors of the promised land that could be his for the taking. Never before in his life had he sat, a guest, in a home of real wealth. Never before had he been accepted as an equal by one of the powerful men of the state. Not until now, right this very minute as they sipped their drinks, had Dana truly believed that he could marry a girl like Irene. He had been convinced, insofar as he had thought about it, that Irene was after a few thrills with a new man.

But her mother was not on the hunt for thrills for her daughter, that was certain. Neither was old Joe Spillman. And for that matter, Irene didn't act or sound as if she were, either.

She certainly didn't sound like it later, long after dinner was over, when they stood together in the dimly lighted solarium. "I'm so sick and fed up With being a playgirl," Irene murmured low. "I'm so disgusted with the uselessness of my life, and with men who give me a whirl because I'm pretty and rich and fun at a party. Oh, how sick I am of the whole silly rat race. I long so for the real things in life-a home of my own where I can make my man happy, and a man who sees and loves the real me, the me that most people never see. I'm hungry to be truly loved by a really swell guy. I have so much love to give to the right man, Dana. I simply ache to give it to a man worth giving it to, who wants it. Do you understand what I mean?"

A nagging little voice inside him tried to warn Dana that this was an act, that Irene had overplayed it. But it was no time to be overly concerned with inner voices, because suddenly Irene was warm and soft and sobbing in his arms. It was inevitable that he should pull her closer, hold her tenderly, to comfort her. After that, one inevitability followed close upon another, so that it was little wonder that Dana left the Spillman house that night an engaged man.

Engaged to Irene, that is. What he was to do about Lena he simply did not know. He wasn't at all certain that he Wanted to break off with Lena, or that he actually wanted to marry Irene. He wasn't certain how he had got himself into this mess. He had the peculiar feeling that he had been taken over by forces stronger than himself; that in a way he did not understand, he had been manipulated as a clever player moves a figure on a chess board.

But regardless of reasons, here he was engaged to two girls. One of them he loved strictly for herself. The other he loved strictly by virtue of what she could mean to him in terms of personal advantage. He didn't try to deceive himself on that point. Underneath that flashing superficial beauty, Irene Spillman was as brittle and hard as nails. There was something about her that reminded him of Corinne. Irene would drive and ride her man with a heavy hand, and heaven help the man if he didn't jump when Irene cracked the whip. It would be a very powerful whip, since it was spelled M-O-N-E-Y.

Dana understood all this dimly, just as he understood that all of the real love and tenderness that was in him belonged to Lena. Lena made him feel big and important and altogether wonderful. Lena's idea of happiness would always be just to love him and cater to him and make him happy. He doubted if Irene was capable of that kind of love, or even understood that there was such a thing. But Irene, with her grandfather behind her, could do a great deal to help him get ahead. "If you married Irene, you'd be marrying your future," Corinne had said. And she was right.