Weiller sighed enviously. He often remarked if he could capitalize his brains he would pay an income tax of a million dollars; but that did not prevent him from being invariably short of ready money.
He was looking forward to the dinner Trent was to give him and his friends that night. Besides Norah there were five other moving picture people who were to be used to impress Trent with their knowledge of the game and the money he could make out of it. They would be amply repaid by the dinner; for there are those who serve the screened drama whose salaries are small. These ancilliary salesmen and women were to meet at half past six in the furnished flat Norah Thompson had rented. There they were to be drilled.
It was while they were receiving the finishing touches that Anthony Trent knocked upon the door, blandly announcing that he had brought an automobile to take Norah and George to the hotel where he was staying.
Instantly the gathering registered impatience to start. Weiller, always suspicious, feared that Trent might think it curious that so many were engaged in earnest conversation, and he wondered if their voices had carried to the hall where Trent had waited.
Suave and courteous, Trent made himself at home among the crowd of people who were, so they informed him, world famous in a screen sense.
Trent, as usual, had timed things accurately. It was part of his scheme that Norah should want to banish from his mind the idea that there had been any collusion. She was bright and vivacious in her manner toward him.
“You are a sweet man,” she exclaimed, “I’m dreadfully hungry—and thirsty. Come on boys and girls.”
He noticed that although arrayed in a new costume of blue, she clung to her back moiré bag. He called Weiller aside while Norah mixed a last cocktail for the men.
“George,” he whispered, “that blue bag I bought is just the thing to give Norah.” George felt a parcel thrust into his hand. “It’s a little present from me to you and she mustn’t know I bought it.”
“She shan’t from me,” Weiller said almost tremulously. Nothing could have happened more delightfully. Not ten minutes ago in the presence of his even less prosperous motion picture colleagues, Norah had called him a tightwad who didn’t think enough of the woman he was to marry to buy her a ring. He explained that easily enough by saying nothing in San Francisco was good enough for her and that he was ordering one from New York. This present from a rich and careless spender would prove affluence no less than affection. “Thanks, old man, a million times.”