The Chinese Parrot Page 5

  First impressions are important, and Bob Eden knew at once that this was no meek, complacent opponent that confronted him. The steak looked back at him with an air of defiance that was amply justified by what followed. After a few moments of unsuccessful battling, he summoned the sheik. “How about a steel knife?” he inquired.

  “Only got three and they’re all in use,” the waiter replied.

  Bob Eden resumed the battle, his elbows held close, his muscles swelling. With set teeth and grim face he bore down and cut deep. There was a terrific screech as his knife skidded along the platter, and to his horror he saw the steak rise from its bed of gravy and onions and fly from him. It travelled the grimy counter for a second, then dropped on to the knees of the girl and thence to the floor.

  Eden turned to meet her blue eyes filled with laughter.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” he said. “I thought it was a steak, and it seems to be a lap-dog.”

  “And I hadn’t any lap,” she cried. She looked down at her riding-breeches. “Can you ever forgive me? I might have caught it for you. It only goes to show—women should be womanly.”

  “I wouldn’t have you any different,” Bob Eden responded gallantly. He turned to the sheik. “Bring me something a little less ferocious,” he ordered.

  “How about the pot roast?” asked the youth.

  “Well, how about it?” Eden repeated. “Fetch it along and I’ll fight another round. I claim a foul on that one. And say—bring this young woman a napkin.”

  “A what? A napkin. We ain’t got any. I’ll bring her a towel.”

  “Oh, no—please don’t,” cried the girl. “I’m all right, really.”

  The sheik departed.

  “Somehow,” she added to Eden, “I think it wiser not to introduce an Oasis towel into this affair.”

  “You’re probably right,” he nodded. “I’ll pay for the damage, of course.”

  She was still smiling. “Nonsense. I ought to pay for the steak. It wasn’t your fault. One needs long practice to eat in the crowded arena of the Oasis.”

  He looked at her, his interest growing every minute. “You’ve had long practice?” he inquired.

  “Oh, yes. My work oftens brings me this way.”

  “Your—er—your work?”

  “Yes. Since your steak seems to have introduced us, I may tell you I’m with the moving-pictures.”

  Of course, thought Eden. The desert was filled with movie people these days. “Ah—have I ever seen you in the films?” he ventured.

  She shrugged. “You have not—and you never will. I’m not an actress. My job’s much more interesting. I’m a location finder.”

  Bob Eden’s pot roast arrived, mercifully cut into small pieces by some blunt instrument behind the scenes. “A location finder? I ought to know what that is.”

  “You certainly ought to. It’s just what it sounds like. I travel about hunting backgrounds. By the Vandeventer Trail to Piñon Flat, down to the Salton Sea or up to the Morongos—all the time trying to find something new, something the dear old public will mistake for Algeria, Araby, the South Seas.”

  “Sounds mighty interesting.”

  “It is, indeed. Particularly when one loves this country as I do.”

  “You were born here, perhaps?”

  “Oh, no. I came out with Dad to Doctor Whitcomb’s—it’s five miles from here, just beyond the Madden ranch— some years ago. When—when Dad left me I had to get a job, and—but look here, I’m telling you the story of my life.”

  “Why not?” asked Eden. “Women and children always confide in me. I’ve got such a fatherly face. By the way, this coffee is terrible.”

  “Yes, isn’t it?” she agreed. “What will you have for dessert? There are two kinds of pie—apple, and the other’s out. Make your selection.”

  “I’ve made it,” he replied. “I’m taking the one that’s out.” He demanded his check. “Now, if you’ll let me pay for your dinner—”

  “Nothing of the sort,” she protested.

  “But after the way my steak attacked you.”

  “Forget it. I’ve an expense account, you know. If you say any more I’ll pay your check.”

  Ignoring the jar of toothpicks hospitably offered by a friendly cashier, Bob Eden followed her to the street. Night had fallen; the pavement was deserted. On the false front of a long, low building with sides of corrugated tin, a sad little String of electric lights proclaimed that gaiety was afoot.

  “Whither away?” Bob Eden said. “The movies?”

  “Heavens, no. I remember that one. It took ten years off my young life. Tell me, what are you doing here? People confide in me too. Stranger, you don’t belong.”

  “No, I’m afraid I don’t,” Eden admitted. “It’s a complicated story, but I’ll inflict it on you, anyhow, some day. Just at present I’m looking for the editor of the Eldorado Times. I’ve got a letter to him in my pocket.”

  “Will Holley?”

  “Yes. You know him?”

  “Everybody knows him. Come with me. He ought to be in his office now.”

  They turned down First Street. Bob Eden was pleasantly conscious of the slim, lithe figure walking at his side. He had never before met a girl so modestly confident, so aware of life and unafraid of it. These desert towns were delightful.

  A light was burning in the newspaper office, and under it a frail figure sat hunched over a typewriter. As they entered Will Holley rose, removing a green shade from his eyes. He was a thin, tall man of thirty-five or so, with prematurely grey hair and wistful eyes.

  “Hello, Paula,” he said.

  “Hello, Will. See what I found at the Oasis Café.”

  Holley smiled. “You would find him,” he said. “You’re the only one I know who can discover anything worth while in Eldorado. My boy, I don’t know who you are, but run away before this desert gets you.”

  “I’ve a letter to you, Mr Holley,” Eden said. Het took it from his pocket. “It’s from an old friend of yours—Harry Fladgate.”

  “Harry Fladgate,” repeated Holley softly. He read the letter through. “A voice from the past,” he said. “The past when we were boys together on the old Sun, in New York. Say—that was a newspaper!” He was silent for a moment, staring out at the desert night. “Harry says you’re here on business of some sort,” he added.

  “Why, yes,” Eden replied. “I’ll tell you about it later. Just at present I want to hire a car to take me out to the Madden ranch.”

  “You want to see P. J. himself?”

  “Yes, just as soon as possible. He’s out there, isn’t he?”

  Holley nodded. “Yes—he’s supposed to be. However, I haven’t seen him. It’s rumoured he came by motor the other day from Barstow. This young woman can tell you more about him than I can. By the way, have you two met each other, or are you just taking a stroll together in the moonlight?”

  “Well, the fact is—” smiled Eden. “Miss—er—she just let a steak of mine get away from her in the Oasis. I had to credit her with an error in the infield, but she made a splendid try. However, as to names—and all that—”

  “So I perceive,” said Holley. “Miss Paula Wendell, may I present Mr Bob Eden? Let us not forget our book of etiquette, even here in the devil’s garden.”

  “Thanks, old man,” remarked Eden. “No one has ever done me a greater kindness. Now that we’ve been introduced, Miss Wendell, and I can speak to you at last, tell me—do you know Mr Madden?”

  “Not exactly,” she replied. “It isn’t given such humble folk to know the great Madden. But several years ago my company took some pictures at his ranch—he has rather a handsome house there, with a darling patio. The other day we got hold of a script that fairly screamed for the Madden patio. I wrote him, asking permission to use his place, and he answered—from San Francisco—that he was coming down and would be glad to grant our request. His letter was really most kind.”

  The girl sat down on the edge of Holley’s typewriter t
able. “I got to Eldorado two nights ago, and drove out to Madden’s at once. And—well, it was rather queer—what happened. Do you want to hear all this?”

  “I certainly do,” Bob Eden assured her.

  “The gate was open, and I drove into the yard. The lights of my car flashed suddenly on the barn door, and I saw a bent old man with a black beard and a pack on his back—evidently an old-time prospector such as one meets occasionally, even to-day, in this desert country. It was his expression that startled me. He stood like a frightened rabbit in the spotlight, then darted away. I knocked at the ranch-house door. There was a long delay, then finally a man came, a pale, excited-looking man—Madden’s secretary, Thorn, he said he was. I give you my word—Will’s heard this before—he was trembling all over. I told him my business with Madden, and he was very rude. He informed me that I positively could not see the great P. J. ‘Come back in a week,’ he said, over and over. I argued and pleaded—and he shut the door in my face.”

  “You couldn’t see Madden,” repeated Bob Eden slowly. “Anything else?”

  “Not much. I drove back to town. A short distance down the road my lights picked up the little old prospector again. But when I got to where I thought he was he’d disappeared utterly. I didn’t investigate—I just stepped on the gas. My love for the desert isn’t so keen after dark.”

  Bob Eden took out a cigarette. “I’m awfully obliged,” he said. “Mr Holley, I must get out to Madden’s at once. If you’ll direct me to a garage—”

  “I’ll do nothing of the sort,” Holley replied. “An old flivver that answers to the name of Horace Greeley happens to be among my possessions at the moment, and I’m going to drive you out.”

  “I couldn’t think of taking you away from your work.”

  “Oh, don’t joke like that. You’re breaking my heart. My work! Here I am, trying to string one good day’s work along over all eternity, and you drift in and start to kid me—”

  “I’m sorry,” said Eden. “Come to think of it, I did see your placard on the door.”

  Holley shrugged. “I suppose that was just cheap cynicism. I try to steer clear of it. But sometimes—sometimes …”

  They went together out of the office, and Holley locked the door. The deserted, sad little street stretched off to nowhere in each direction. The editor waved his hand at the somnolent picture.

  “You’ll find us all about out here,” he said, “the exiles of the world. Of course, the desert is grand, and we love it— but once let a doctor say ‘You can go’ and you couldn’t see us for the dust. I don’t mind the daytime so much—the hot, friendly day—but the nights—the cold, lonely nights.”

  “Oh, it isn’t so bad, Will,” said the girl gently.

  “Oh, no, it isn’t so bad,” he admitted. “Not since the radio—and the pictures. Night after night I sit over there in that movie theatre, and sometimes, in a news-reel or perhaps in a feature, I see Fifth Avenue again, Fifth Avenue at Forty-second, with the motors, and the lions in front of the library, and the women in furs. But I never see Park Row.” The three of them walked along in silence through the sand. “If you love me, Paula,” added Will Holley softly, “there’s a location you’ll find. A story about Park Row, with the crowds under the El, and the wagons backed up to the rear door of the post-office, and Perry’s Drug Store, and the gold dome of the World. Give me a film of that, and I’ll sit in the Strand watching it over and over until these old eyes go blind.”

  “I’d like to,” said the girl. “But those crowds under the Elevated wouldn’t care for it. What they want is the desert—the broad, open spaces away from the roar of the town.”

  Holley nodded. “I know. It’s a feeling that’s spread over America these past few years like some dread epidemic. I must write an editorial about it. The French have a proverb that describes it: ‘Wherever one is not, that is where the heart is.’”

  The girl held out her hand. “Mr Eden, I’m leaving you here—leaving you for a happy night at the Desert Edge Hotel.”

  “But I’ll see you again,” Bob Eden said quickly. “I must.”

  “You surely will. I’m coming out to Madden’s ranch to-morrow. I have that letter of his, and this time I’ll see him—you bet I’ll see him if he’s there.”

  “If he’s there,” repeated Bob Eden thoughtfully. “Good night. But before you go—how do you like your steaks?”

  “Rare,” she laughed.

  “Yes—I guess one was enough. However, I’m very grateful to that one.”

  “It was a lovely steak,” she said. “Good night.”

  Will Holley led the way to an aged car parked before the hotel. “Jump in,” he said. “It’s only a short run.”

  “Just a moment—I must get my bag,” Eden replied. He entered the hotel and returned in a moment with his suitcase, which he tossed into the tonneau. “Horace Greeley’s ready,” Holley said. “Come west, young man.”

  Eden climbed in, and the little car clattered down Main Street. “This is mighty kind of you,” the boy said.

  “It’s a lot of fun,” Holley answered. “You know, I’ve been thinking. Old P. J. never gives an interview, but you can’t tell—I might be able to persuade him. These famous men sometimes let down a little when they get out here. It would be a big feather in my cap. They’d hear of me on Park Row again.”

  “I’ll do all I can to help,” Bob Eden promised.

  “That’s good of you,” Holley answered. The faint yellow lights of Eldorado grew even fainter behind them. They ascended a rough road between two small hills—barren, unlovely piles of badly assorted rocks. “Well, I’m going to try it,” the editor added. “But I hope I have more luck than the last time.”

  “Oh—then you’ve seen Madden before?” Eden asked with interest.

  “Just once,” Holley replied. “Twelve years ago, when I was a reporter in New York. I’d managed to get into a gambling-house in Forty-fourth Street, a few doors east of Delmonico’s. It didn’t have a very good reputation, that joint, but there was the great P. J. Madden himself, all dolled up in evening clothes, betting his head off. They said that after he’d gambled all day in Wall Street, he couldn’t let it alone—hung round the roulette-wheels in that house every night.”

  “And you tried to interview him?”

  “I did. I was a fool kid, with lots of nerve. He had a big railroad merger in the air at the time, and I decided to ask him about it. So I went up to him during a lull in the betting. I told him I was on a newspaper—and that was as far as I got. ‘Get the hell out of here,’ he roared. ‘You know I never give interviews.’” Holley laughed. “That was my first and only meeting with P. J. Madden. It wasn’t a very propitious beginning, but what I started that night on Forty-fourth Street I’m going to try to finish out here tonight.”

  They reached the top of the grade, the rocky hills dropped behind them, and they were in a mammoth doorway leading to a strange new world. Up amid the platinum stars a thin slice of moon rode high, and far below in that meagre light lay the great grey desert, lonely and mysterious.

  Chapter V

  Madden’s Ranch

  Carefully will Holley guided his car down the steep, rock-strewn grade. “Go easy, Horace,” he murmured. Presently they were on the floor of the desert, the road but a pair of faint wheel-tracks amid the creosote brush and mesquite. Once their headlights caught a jack-rabbit, sitting firmly on the right of way; the next instant he was gone for ever.

  Bob Eden saw a brief stretch of palm-trees behind a barbed-wire fence, and down the lane between the trees the glow of a lonely window.

  “Alfalfa Ranch,” Will Holley explained.

  “Why, in heaven’s name, do people live out here?” Eden asked.

  “Some of them because they can’t live anywhere else,” the editor answered. “And at that—well, you know it isn’t a bad place to ranch it. Apples, lemons, pears—”

  “But how about water?”

  “It’s only a desert because not
many people have taken the trouble to bore for water. Just go down a way, and you strike it. Some go down a couple of hundred feet—Madden only had to go thirty odd. But that was Madden luck. He’s near the bed of an underground river.”

  They came to another fence; above it were painted signs and flags fluttering yellow in the moonlight.

  “Don’t tell me that’s a subdivision,” Eden said.

  Holley laughed. “Date City,” he announced “Here in California the subdivider, like the poor, is always with us. Date City where, if you believe all you’re told, every dime is a baby dollar. No one lives there yet—but who knows? We’re a growing community—see my editorial in last week’s issue.”

  The car ploughed on. It staggered a bit now, but Holley’s hands were firm on the wheel. Here and there a Joshua-tree stretched out hungry black arms as though to seize these travellers by night, and over that grey waste a dismal wind moaned constantly, chill and keen and biting. Bob Eden turned up the collar of his top coat.

  “I can’t help thinking of that old song,” he said. “You know—about the lad who guaranteed to love somebody ’until the sands of the desert grow cold.’”

  “It wasn’t much of a promise,” agreed Holley. “Either he was a great kidder, or he’d never been on the desert at night. But look here—is this your first experience with this country? What kind of a Californian are you?”

  “Golden Gate brand,” smiled Eden. “Yes, it’s true, I’ve never been down here before. Something tells me I’ve missed a lot.”

  “You sure have. I hope you won’t rush off in a hurry. By the way, how long do you expect to be here?”

  “I don’t know,” replied Eden. He was silent for a moment; his friend at home had told him that Holley could be trusted, but he really did not need that assurance. One look into the editor’s friendly grey eyes was sufficient. “Holley, I may as well tell you why I’ve come,” he continued. “But I rely on your discretion. This isn’t an interview.”