Читаем The Cutthroat полностью

The Cutthroat

“Who will pay for it?” asked Buchanan. “You’re talking about carrying the entire company during the process, not to mention what cameras and that sort of thing cost.”

“My syndicate will put up the money in exchange for half the profits. Your movie rights to your play will keep the other half.”

“This will take some pondering.”

“Why?” asked Bell. “It was your idea.”

“Our idea? What are you talking about?”

“Mr. Barrett, you said you wished your play would not disappear. And, Mr. Buchanan, you wished you could sell tickets to a production that cost nothing to make. Didn’t you?”

“Wishes.”

“I’m offering you your wishes. If you must ponder, ponder two unique facts about movies. One, a movie preserves your play — and, particularly, your performances — for the ages.”

Barrett nodded.

Buchanan said, “Yes, yes, immortality. There’s where you started. What is the other unique fact?”

“An all-new kind of ‘magic wand’ profit never seen before in the history of the theater. Speaking in round numbers, let’s say your play wraps eight thousand a week, provided you crowd the theater. But your play costs you seven thousand a week in salaries and expenses. Each and every week, whether or not you crowd the theater.”

Bell watched Barrett and Buchanan exchange raised eyebrows, again. The Hartford insurance man had learned a thing or two.

“To make your movie will cost you nothing. When it plays in every movie house in the country, it will bring in twenty, thirty, fifty thousand a week. Every week. While your cost every week will remain zero.”

“I like that,” said Buchanan.

“Money and immortality,” said Barrett. “Very tempting, Mr. Bell.”

“Your idea, gentlemen. All I did was listen to you. But speed is of the essence, unless you’re willing to go to the expense of starting from scratch with a whole new company, scenery, and costumes.”

Barrett and Buchanan looked at each other and traded silent nods.

“What’s the next step?”

Isaac Bell stood up. “We shake on it, and then I will do everything in my power to talk my wife into it.”

“If she won’t,” said Barrett, “we’ll find someone else.”

Bell jumped at the chance to make Marion bulletproof.

“That won’t be necessary. We have already discussed it.”

“Was talking her into it a negotiating ploy?”

“Guilty,” said Bell. “It’s a terrible insurance man habit. The customer wants his steel mills insured for the lowest premium. I sympathize but must ‘clear it with my underwriters,’ who are real skinflints. Fact is, there’s really no one else to film your play better than Marion, and she is so excited about moving it out of doors, beyond the confines of the stage. When Mr. Hyde stalks a girl through the storm in Central Park, she will fashion a wind machine to buffet the trees. And you will fight your Dream Duel in a hurricane.”

“I, for one, will send my understudy,” said Buchanan.

“Me, too,” Barrett grinned. “Poor Mr. Young will have his hands full standing in for both of us.”

“Is Mr. Young a fencer, too?” asked Bell.

“Enough of one to spell us on occasion.”

Barrett said, “But, seriously, if for some reason your wife can’t—”

Isaac Bell answered firmly, “If Marion Morgan Bell can’t make the movie, we won’t pay for it. And we won’t release the rights.”

“Then it will behoove us to be most persuasive. When can we meet her?”

“Soon as we get to Denver. Let’s say lunch tomorrow at the Brown Palace, if we can round up Miss Cook and your stage manager.”

“Henry Young is not a principal.”

“My wife will have questions of a technical nature best addressed to the stage manager.”

42

The Cutthroat dreamed he was a boy in London.

The boy found a broken sword. He polished the rust with sand and honed both edges like a Roman gladius. He stole a file and shaped the broken end to a needle point.

He dreamed they chased him through narrow streets.

He fled to a seaport that reeked of salt and grease and smoke.

He sprawled, seasick, retching his guts out on a splintered deck. The ship finally stopped moving in a hot Southern city where the girls spoke French.

He killed them and fled up the Mississippi River on a steamboat. No — the dream went backwards and started over. The steamboat was behind him. He was on an immense raft, a floating theater, pushed by a steamboat. Up the wide, wide river from New Orleans, day and night, day and night, day and night, Memphis, past Cairo, up the Ohio River. Off the raft at Louisville, on again, and up the river, and off at Cincinnati. Safe at last.

Suddenly he was an animal sleeping in his den.

He was a wolf. Something paced at the mouth of the cave.