"Along with a hundred others I get the credit for——"
"I daresay, by Hollywood standards, 'credit' is the right word."
"Oh, hang it all, Linda! you must understand. A man in my line.... Oh, you know how it is.... There'll always be women ready to make fools of themselves over any man who manages to get a certain degree of prominence. And an actor has got to keep in the public eye. Men are just as bad, for that matter; they'll run in circles around an actress, simply because she's on the stage, who can't hold a candle for looks or good disposition to the little girl who lives two doors away on their home street. I met Nelly Marquis shortly after I'd made my first real dent in pictures. She'd come out here to try her luck, after some experience on the legitimate stage. She was so hard hit I used to be afraid to leave the house until I'd sent out scouts to make sure the coast was clear. I've always thought that trouble of hers was more than half responsible for her mania about me."
"What trouble?"
"Dope. She's a hop nut. Coke—cocaine's her big bet. That's what her friend the doctor boggled about telling you—must've been the trouble, that time you found her stretched out: an overdose. I didn't like to tell you because—well, frankly, I didn't want you to think I knew so much about the girl."
"Oh, what a pity!"
"I can't hold myself responsible——"
"But why should you?"
"I mean, I don't believe it was simply disappointment drove her to it.... Hang it! I can't seem to help talking like an ass tonight. What I'm trying to say is this: Nelly took to the dope after I'd met her, but only, I believe, because she got in with the wrong crowd. That's easy in Hollywood. It's hard to tell till you are in with them. And there's an awful lot of that sort of thing goes on more or less quietly out here. They lead one another on. When they've tried everything else they take a chance on the hop to see if there's really anything in it; and then they're gone. They drift into little cliques and have parties, ether parties and that sort of thing, you know, where they choose one by lot to stay off the stuff and watch the others to make sure nobody strangles to death while they lie around him in a circle——"
Lucinda lifted her hands to her ears. "Please, Lynn, please! I don't want to hear any more. It's too dreadful!"