MEMORANDUM FOR MR. MANTON

Have learned Enid Faye is out of Pentangle and can be engaged for about twelve hundred if you act quickly.  Why not cancel Lamar contract after “Black Terror,” if she continues up-stage?

Werner.

“I caught the name Lamar,” Kennedy explained.  Then an expression of gratification crept into his face.  “Miss Lamar was ’up-stage’?” he mused.  “That’s a theatrical word for cussedness, isn’t it?”

I paid little attention.  The name of Enid Faye had attracted my own interest.  This was the little dare-devil who had breezed into the Pacific Coast film colony and had swept everything before her.  Not only had she displayed amazing nerve for her sex and size, but she had been pretty and beautifully formed, had been as much at home in a ballroom as in an Annette Kellermann bathing suit.  In less than six months she had learned to act and had been brought to the Eastern studios of Pentangle.  Now it was possible that she would be captured by Manton, would be blazoned all over the country by that gentleman, would become another star of his making.

“Let’s go, Walter!” Kennedy, impatient, rose.  I noticed that he folded the little note, slipping it into his pocket.

Out in the hall voices came to us from Werner’s office.  After some little hesitation Kennedy opened the door unceremoniously.  At the table, littered with blue prints and drawings and colored plates of famous home interiors, was the director.  With him was Manton.  Seated facing them, in rare good humor, was a fascinating little lady.

The promoter rose.  “Professor Kennedy, I want you to meet Miss Enid Faye, one of our real comers.  And Mr. Jameson, Enid, of the New York Star.”

She acknowledged the introduction to Kennedy gracefully.  Then she turned, rising, and rushed to me most effusively, leading me to a leather-covered couch and pulling me to a seat beside her.

“Mr. Jameson,” she purred.  “I just love newspaper men; I think they’re perfectly wonderful always.  Tell me, do you like little Enid?”

I nodded, confused and unhappy, and as red as a schoolboy.

“That’s fine,” she went on, in the best modulated and most wonderful voice I thought I had ever heard.  “I like you and I know we’re going to be the best of friends.  Tell me, what’s your first name?”

“Now, Enid,” reproved Manton, in fatherly tones, “you’ll have plenty of time to vamp your publicity later.  For the present, please listen to me.  We’re talking business.”

“Shoot every hair of this old gray head!” she directed, pertly.

She did not move away, however, I could feel the warmth of her, could catch the delicacy of the perfume she used.  I noted the play of her slender fingers, the trimness of her ankle, the piquancy of a nose revealed to me in profile—­and nothing else.

“This is your chance, Enid,” Manton continued, earnestly and rather eagerly.  “You know the film will be the most talked about one this year.  We’ve got the Merritt papers lined up and that’s the best advertising in the world.  Everyone will know you took Stella’s place, and—­well, you’ll step right in.”