There was no making conversation at that breakfast party. Shut up all night with no one to talk to, she did the talking, explaining first of all and staging for their consideration the people they had attacked the night before. Althusen was the biggest producer in Los Angeles—that is to say the world, and Moscovitch, the camera man, was on all fours with him, Mrs. Raphael was Julia Raphael, the actress, and the play was “The Chink and the Girl.” The hatchet men were real _kai-gingh_ and Tommie was the girl they were making off with, and the scene on San Nicolas was not the end of the play but somewhere in the middle, for pictures are produced in sections labelled and numbered and sometimes the end sections are produced first.
Tommie had been born on a ranch. She was quite free with her private history. Her father was Ben Coulthurst—maybe they’d heard of him. Well, anyway, he was well-known in Texas till he went broke and died and left Tommie to the care of an aunt who lived in San Francisco where Tommie was half smothered—she couldn’t stand cities—and maybe would have died if the movie business hadn’t come along and saved her. Fresh air stunts, as they knew, were her vocation, and she guessed she was made of india rubber, seeing up to this she had only broken one collarbone. Her last experience was dropping from an aëroplane on to the top of a sixty-mile-an-hour express.
“I’ve seen you do that,” said Hank. “Made me sweat in the palms of my hands.”
Well, that was nothing; plane and express moving at the same speed it was as simple as stepping off the sidewalk; being thrown out of a window was a lot worse. She thanked her Maker she was born so small, but what got her goat was the nicknames her diminutive size had evoked. Some smartie on a Los Angeles paper had called her the “Pocket Artemis.” What was an Artemis anyway?
“It’s a goddess,” said George, “same thing as Diana.”
Well, she had made him apologise, anyhow.
Candon alone took little part in the conversation. This gentleman, so ready in an emergency, seemed all abroad before the creature he had captured and carried off. He sat absorbing her without neglecting his food and later on when she was on deck he appeared with half an armful of books.