The incorporators of Linda Lee Inc. were not, however, long left dependent on motor-cars that plied for hire and the orange-and-black outrage on wheels which was everywhere known as "Lynn Summerlad's bus."
One of Lontaine's first acts as president of the fledgling organization was to pay out ten thousand dollars of its capital for a startling blue-and-silver car, the whim of an absent-minded motion-picture star whose sudden flitting from threats of arrest on charges of bigamy had left the car on the hands of its builders, to be picked up at what Lontaine called a bargain price. Lucinda was disposed to hold the cost immaterial, but demurred about accepting it for her personal use; and the consideration urged by Summerlad, that the more eye-arresting the colour scheme the better the advertisement for Linda Lee, failed to move her. So Lontaine felt constrained to use it himself; and Fanny demurely professed resignation, pointing out that in such a conveyance no husband would ever dare pursue any but paths of conspicuous rectitude.
For herself Lucinda eventually selected a modest landaulet of dark maroon; but it saw little service, save on shopping trips, till she began to use it for daily transportation to and from the studio.
Weeks slipped stealthily away, the rainy season waned, a Spring ensued like an Eastern Summer, with lusty vegetation, lengthening days of dry heat, and nights deliciously cooled by airs that swept through every sunless hour from the highlands to the sea; while delays on delays accumulated and still the day when "shooting" should begin lingered remotely down tomorrow's dim horizon.
Lontaine had leased studio space in the Zinn plant, which Summerlad recommended as the most modern and completely equipped on the Coast. For this the company was paying a weekly rental of fifteen hundred dollars. An expensive executive and technical staff, lacking only a director, was kicking heels of enforced idleness on full pay. A story had been selected, an old novel by a moderately popular author to which Zinn had in 1914 purchased all motion-picture rights outright for five hundred dollars and which he was now willing to part with for ten thousand as a special courtesy because he had taken such a mad fancy to Lontaine. A scenario writer, warranted by Zinn "the best in the business," had received five thousand for casting the story into continuity form, the labour of one whole week, and retired rejoicing to his hundred-and-fifty a week job in the Zinn scenario department. A reading of his bastard brain-child had persuaded Lucinda that continuity writing must be the mystery its adepts alleged; in fact, she couldn't understand the greater part of it, and what she did understand somewhat preyed upon her mind. But Lontaine seemed satisfied, Summerlad solaced her misgivings with the assurance that P. Potter Monahan simply couldn't write a poor continuity, and both agreed that Barry Nolan would know what to do to make it right when he got down to work on it.
Incidentally, he did: Nolan read it half-through, thoughtfully shied the manuscript out of a window, and dictated a continuity all his own, of which nobody but himself could make head or tail, and which at times in the course of its production seemed to puzzle even its perpetrator. But this Nolan was a resourceful lad and never hesitated to revise himself when at a loss: "That's out," he would inform his assistant; "we'll cover up the break with a subtitle. C'mon, let's shoot the close-ups;" or it might be: "Got another angle on that now. Instead of that scene where she casts him out of her life forever, I'm going to stick in some business Leslie Carter used to do in the last act of Zaza. We'll get round to that later. What's next?"
But these revelations of an unique technique, justly celebrated as such, were reserved for the indefinite future. Notwithstanding that he was under contract to Linda Lee Inc. to begin work as soon as he had finished the production he was then making, Lucinda was to be hounded through her professional début by another megaphone than Barry Nolan's.
In the engagement of that one resided the only reason for the delays. While negotiations for his services (at twice as much pay as he had ever received before) were in progress, Nolan confidently expected to be free in a fortnight. The day he signed the contract he admitted that he might possibly keep them waiting a trifle longer. It was two months later when he at length notified Lontaine that he was running up to San Francisco for a few days' rest and relaxation but would positively be "on the lot" and ready to go to work, in another week.
In the meantime Lucinda had moved to the Hollywood Hotel, the Lontaines to a furnished bungalow nearby, where they vainly pressed her to join them. She thought it wiser to decline.
"I'm far too fond of both of you to risk living with you," she explained. "It's no good deliberately placing ourselves in a position to get fed to the teeth with one another. Besides, I've got to get accustomed to shifting for myself, and it's high time I was learning to breathe in a proper motion-picture atmosphere."