The Dream Merchants Part 28

11.

They stood there on the sidewalk as the cab pulled away. Johnny looked down at his crutches. They were new and shone with a yellowish brightness. The side of his trouser leg was pinned neatly to his thigh. His one leg looked strange and lonely there between the yellow crutches.

He smiled wryly at Rocco and looked over at the building. The stone letters on the building spelled out: Magnum Pictures.

"Might as well get it over with," he said.

Rocco looked at him, "Yeanh."

Slowly Johnny moved to the door and hesitated when he reached it. His face was white. There were small beads of sweat on his forehead. "I don't want anybody feeling sorry for me," he said in a low voice.

Rocco smiled rea.s.suringly at him. "Don't worry about that. n.o.body will feel sorry for you. They might feel a little strange at first and want to help you a little more than would be normal, but they'll soon get over it when they see you can manage. Then things will be the same as they always were."

"They better be," Johnny said.

"They will," Rocco answered, opening the door for him.

Johnny entered the small waiting room and Rocco followed him. The girl's face looked curiously at him through the small gla.s.s. She made no move to open it.

Rocco smiled at her and motioned to Johnny. "Through that door," he said, pointing.

Johnny looked about him curiously. They had changed the place around. He didn't say anything, but went through the door indicated and they were in a long corridor. From behind the door came the sounds of people working. Typewriters, adding-machines, people talking. They moved toward the end of the corridor. Occasionally someone would pa.s.s them in the hall and look at them curiously, impersonally.

Johnny felt as if he were in a strange place. He recognized none of the people who had pa.s.sed him. They came to another door marked: "Executive Offices."

They went through it and were in a small, pleasantly lighted corridor. There were several comfortable chairs placed there, and the floor was covered with a soft red carpet. There was no sound in there.

"Doesn't sound as if anyone is in here," Johnny said.

"We're early," Rocco answered. "Peter told me that no one got in much before ten o'clock."

Johnny looked at his wrist.w.a.tch. It was a quarter past nine. "Good. I'll have a chance to sit down for a few minutes before I get started."

"Your office is down the end of the hall, next to Peter's," Rocco said.

Johnny followed down the corridor. Several of the doors had names on them. Johnny did not know them. He had been gone only a little more than two years and yet the business had grown so rapidly during that time that new names had appeared on doors. He felt strange, out of place.

They pa.s.sed a door with Peter's name on it. "Yours is the next office," Rocco said, stopping in front of it.

Johnny looked at the door. His name had been painted on it. The paint looked new, almost as if it hadn't dried yet. Impulsively he put his fingers on it. It was dry.

Rocco smiled at his gesture.

He smiled back at him.

"Shall we go in?" Rocco asked, still smiling.

Johnny nodded.

Rocco threw open the door and stepped back as Johnny came to the threshold.

Johnny stood there in surprise as a wave of sound greeted him. His face went strangely pale and he seemed to totter a little as he leaned there on his crutches.

Rocco put a hand out to steady him.

The room was packed with people-people whom Johnny knew and people whom Johnny had never seen before. Peter and George and Jane were standing in front of the others, looking at him.

The room was all decorated with red, white, and blue bunting, and a big painted sign hung from the ceiling in the middle of the room. "Welcome Back, Johnny," it read in big red letters.

The sound died down and he stood there looking at them. He opened his mouth twice to speak, but nothing came out.

Jane stepped forward and held out her hand. Johnny took it. "h.e.l.lo, boss," she said as if he had just come back from lunch.

As if it were a signal, someone turned on a phonograph and music began to blare forth and everybody began to sing: "When Johnny comes marching home again, tra la, tra la."

He could see the tears in her eyes and felt his own eyes beginning to smart. "Janey," he managed to say.

She threw her arms around him and kissed him.

His eyes were clouded with moisture. He tried to put his arms around her, and one of his crutches fell to the floor with a clatter. He stumbled and would have fallen had Rocco not put an arm around him and held him up.

He looked at the crutch lying there on the floor. Then, strangely, as he looked at it, its bright yellow wood gleaming against the soft red carpet, he began to feel helpless. And with that feeling of helplessness came an even stranger feeling of terror-a terror of all these people watching him.

He shut his eyes for a moment. This feeling would pa.s.s, he told himself desperately. But it persisted. He began to feel his head reeling. He could feel himself stumbling, falling, but he kept his eyes tightly shut.

He could feel people helping him to a chair. He heard Rocco's voice quietly asking people to leave. He could hear Rocco explaining to them that he was still tired, still weak, and all this excitement was too much for him.

He could sense the sudden silence in the room as the people left it. Slowly he opened his eyes and looked around him. He was on a small couch. Peter and George and Jane were watching him with frightened looks on their faces. Rocco was holding a small gla.s.s to his lips.

Automatically he drank it. The liquor burned through his throat to his stomach like a livid flame. Color crept back into his cheeks. He smiled wanly at them, but the fear that had been in him still clung to the corners of his heart.

"You all right, Johnny?" Peter asked anxiously.

He nodded his head. "I'm all right," he answered. "Too much excitement I guess. I'll feel better after I get a little rest." He shut his eyes again and let his head sink back against the pillow of the couch. He wished they would go away and leave him alone.

He heard the door open and close behind them and he opened his eyes again. Only Rocco was in the room with him now.

"Rock," he whispered.

"What is it, Johnny?"

"Rock, you gotta stay with me, Rock," he said, his voice desperate and cracked with strain. "You gotta stick with me. I'm afraid to be alone with them."

Rocco tried to smile rea.s.suringly at him. "Whatta yuh got to be afraid of, Johnny? They're all your friends."

"I know," Johnny whispered in the same tone of voice, "but I feel so helpless without a leg. When I looked down and saw it wasn't there, I thought everybody was going to laugh at me."

"n.o.body would laugh," Rocco said softly.

"I don't care," Johnny said. "I'm afraid. You gotta stick close to me all the time, Rock. I can't face them alone." He grabbed at Rocco's hand and held it tightly. "Promise me, Rock, promise!"

Rocco looked down at him, his face softened. "All right, Johnny," he said slowly, "I'll stick around."

"Promise!" Johnny insisted.

Rocco hesitated a moment. "I promise," he said reluctantly.

A little while later Jane came back into the office. She was carrying a tray. On it was a pot of coffee and two cups. "I thought some coffee would do you good," she said, placing the tray on a small table in front of his couch.

"It will help," Rocco said, pouring out a cup and giving it to Johnny.

"Thanks," Johnny said to her. Suddenly he noticed her hand. Something was sparkling on her finger.

He put his cup down and caught her hand and looked at it. She was wearing a small engagement ring and a wedding band. "Janey," he cried out in surprise, "you're married!" He looked at her. "You should have told me. When did it happen?"

"I wrote you," she said quietly. "It was about four months after you went away."

"I never got the letter," he said. "What's he like?"

She looked at him a moment before she answered. "He was a very nice guy. A soldier. I met him at a dance."

The tense in which she spoke suddenly sank into his mind. He looked into her eyes. "He didn't come back?" he asked softly.

She shook her head almost imperceptibly. "He-he didn't come back."

He took both her hands. "I'm sorry, Janey. I didn't know. No one told me."

"No one could. They didn't know where you were. We tried to locate you, but everything was all mixed up and we couldn't get anything straight."

They were silent for a few seconds, then she spoke again. "But things aren't so bad. I've got the cutest little son."

Johnny looked at her. She stared back into his eyes. Her gaze was steady, even a little bit proud. He dropped his eyes to her hands. "There are a lot of things I got to catch up with around here," he said. "Everything has changed."

"Not everything, Johnny," she said. "Only what you think has changed."

12.

All morning Johnny sat in his office with Peter. He listened quietly as Peter patiently explained the things that had happened while he was away. The business had grown in a manner that even Johnny had not expected. Magnum's profit last year alone amounted to over three million dollars.

They were now producing thirty feature pictures a year and a complete line of short subjects, which included two-reel and one-reel comedies, travelogues, newsreels, and animated cartoons. And, as Peter said, this was not enough. The demand for film entertainment seemed to be insatiable. Already he had plans under way to enlarge the studio to a fifty-picture-per-year capacity.

In addition to producing pictures, Magnum now owned in conjunction with George over forty theaters throughout the country and was planning to acquire or build as many more.

There was under discussion at the moment the advisability of Magnum establis.h.i.+ng its own branch offices in princ.i.p.al cities throughout the country and distributing its own pictures. This would do away with the states' rights distributors, who now acted as Magnum's agents, and would save the company many thousands of dollars a year that it now paid as sales commissions. Borden last year had established his chain of exchanges as he called them, and it had been a very profitable one for him.

When Johnny had gone into the army, Magnum had employed a little over two hundred people at its studio and about forty people in New York. Now it employed over eight hundred people at the studio and almost two hundred people in its New York office, and plans were under way that would call for further expansion of both.

Johnny listened as his mind quietly a.s.sorted and catalogued what he heard. Peter no longer took complete charge of the studio. A studio manager was now responsible for production and answered only to Peter for his work. Sales were broken down into two divisions, domestic and foreign, each with a sales manager and his a.s.sistants, who were responsible for the business in their respective territories.

Next year Peter planned to go abroad with his foreign sales manager and establish offices and branch companies in every foreign country in the world.

Peter's job was now one of a coordinator and the responsibilities were many and varied. To do this job he needed capable a.s.sistants and people he could trust. Since his time was so taken up that he could not possibly give full attention to every matter that needed him, he had it in mind that Johnny would a.s.sume the job of his number-one a.s.sistant.

Johnny would stay in New York and everything that had to do with the running of the business would flow through him. Only those problems which absolutely needed Peter's decision would be pa.s.sed on to him, and those that did not need his personal attention would be settled by Johnny.

To undertake this tremendous program of expansion Peter had inst.i.tuted negotiations with the Bank of Independence, Al Santos's bank, for a loan of four and a half million dollars. When he heard the amount a low whistle escaped Johnny's lips. He was surprised not only because Peter spoke so casually and matter-of-factly about borrowing so large a sum of money, but also because Al Santos's bank was capable of lending that amount.

All through the morning as they talked, people kept coming in-men Johnny had known before, who came in to wish him welcome home, and men he had not known before, who were anxious to meet this man who was to take over the position of number-one a.s.sistant to the boss. There was throughout these meetings, no matter how brief, a feeling of mutual exploration and testing, the men trying to determine just how close Johnny actually was to the boss, and Johnny trying to fit them and their importance into the present organization.

There was also something new that Johnny, ever quick to sense the relations.h.i.+p of people, placed immediately and began to feel. A number of cliques had begun to form and make themselves felt. Different factions and groups within the organization were trying constantly to reach the boss's ear. He leaned back in his chair and smiled at Peter. "My head is spinning," he confessed ruefully. "I had no idea that the business had so expanded. I'll have to learn it all over again."

Peter smiled back at him proudly. "You won't have any trouble," he said confidently; "it's the same old business, only there's more of it." He got to his feet and looked down at Johnny. "Ready for lunch now?" he asked. "George will be waiting at the restaurant for us."

Johnny looked across the room to where Rocco had been sitting on the couch throughout their meeting. He had sat there quietly as if he were a part of the furniture in the office and he moved only when Johnny spoke to him or when Johnny wanted something. His dark-brown eyes had been on Johnny all morning, watching intently for any sign of weakness in him. They had seen none since the early morning. On the contrary, they had seen Johnny bloom into a new kind of life, take on an expectancy, a challenge, an excitement, that he had never seen in Johnny before. Much of what he had heard did not make sense to him, but he could see that Johnny had absorbed it all like a sponge soaking up liquid.

He had watched Johnny meet people with a sort of quiet warmth and charm that he had never thought Johnny possessed. The army was not the place to bring out such qualities in a man, he thought, but now he was beginning to understand why Joe Turner had acted toward Johnny as he did.

It was only when Johnny stood up that this quality in him seemed to disappear. His face would become strained and white and he would grow self-conscious and ill at ease and stumble and stammer over his choice of words, where ordinarily his conversation was concise and direct.

It was at such moments that sympathy for Johnny would pour over him like a wave. He could almost sense the pride that Johnny had once had in his body and in his physical appearance-the pride in having a body that matched his mind. Young and strong and healthy and filled with life and excitement and a sense of accomplishment.

He saw Johnny looking at him. In that look he read Johnny's mute appeal. Quietly he left his seat and walked over to him. He put one arm under Johnny's shoulders as Johnny adjusted the crutches. He handed him his hat as they went to the door.

"It's too bad that something can't be done about it," he said to himself, thinking about Johnny's leg. But nothing could be done about it. There was n.o.body on G.o.d's earth who could give it back to him.

At the door Johnny stopped and turned to Peter. "We're going to have to do something about Rock," he said in an embarra.s.sed tone of voice. "I can't get along without him."

Peter looked swiftly from one to the other. Rocco didn't speak. "There's a job for him here with you," Peter said quickly, "if he wants it." He paused for a second, then spoke again. "It'll pay seventy-five a week," he added.

Johnny looked at Rocco. Rocco was thinking. Seventy-five per was more than he could make if he went back to a barber shop. It was nice dough. Besides, he had promised Johnny that he would stick with him. Almost imperceptibly he nodded his head.