"Go on," said H. M. "Another queen, hey? She's been playin' nothing but queens. Revenge. H'm. Who's producing it?"
"That's the whole story. It's independent. She's taken great pleasure in sneering hard at a couple of producers who offered terms. She won't touch 'em, because they refused to back her a second time when she failed in the Old days. Lot of wild talk. It isn't doing her much good, Emery tells me. What's more, she walked out of the studio in the middle of a contract. Emergy and Rainger are raving but they came along.”
He stared at the pool of light. on the desk, remembering another weird light. That was the last night in New York, at the Cavalla Club. He was dancing with Louise. He was looking over her shoulder through a smoky gloom, with the grotesque shadows of dancers grown big and weaving against faint gleams, towards the table where Marcia Tait sat. There were scarlet hangings behind her, twisted with gilt tassels. She wore white, and had one shoulder with a swashbuckling air against a pillar. She was drunk but composed. He saw her teeth as she laughed, brilliant against the faintly swarthy skin. On one side of her sat Emery, very drunk and gesticulating; on the other side of her the tubby Rainger, who always seemed to need a shave and drank nothing, lifting his shoulders slightly as he examined a cigar. It was hot in the smoky room, and a heavy drum pounded slowly behind the bandmusic. He could hear fans whir. Through the humped shadows of dancers he saw Tait lift a thin glass; Emery's gesticulations spilled it suddenly across her breast, but she only laughed at it. It was John Bohun who leaned out of the gloom, swiftly, with a handkerchief..
"The latest," Bennett went on, looking up from the hypnotic glow, "is that the Cinearts people have given her a month to get back on the lot. She won't — or says she won't. The answer, she says, will be this."
He lifted his cigar and traced letters in the air as though he were writing a poster.
"JOHN BOHUN presents MARCIA TAIT and JERVIS WILLARD in 'THE PRIVATE LIFE OF CHARLES THE SECOND,' a Play by MAURICE BOHUN"
H. M frowned. He pushed the shell-rimmed spectacles up and down his broad nose.
"Good!" he said abstractedly. "Good! That'd suit her style of beauty, son. You know. Big heavy lidded eyes, swarthy skin, small neck, full lips: exactly like one of those Restoration doxies in the Stuart room at the National Portrait Gallery. Hah! Wonder nobody's thought of it before. I say, son, go round and browse through the Gallery sometime. You'll get a lot of surprises. The woman they call Bloody Mary is a baby-faced blonde, whereas Mary Queen of Scots is nearly the ugliest wench in the lot. H'm." Again he moved his glasses. "But that's interestin' about Tait: She's got nerve. She's not only courting hostility, but she's challenging competition. Do you know who Jervis Willard is? He's the best characteractor in England. And an independent producer has snaffled off Willard to play opposite her. She must think she can-"
"She does, sir, said Bennett.
"H'm. Now what about this Bohun-Bohun combination, keeping it in the family? And how does it affect Canifest?"