Screenland (Nov 1937-Apr 1938)

wages," she ruminated. "The woman always pays in my case, all right !" She started for a phone booth that was shaped like a sedan chair, and was just stepping into it when she was arrested by the sound of small feet running. She turned, half expecting to face Peter, but it was her servant, instead. "Little boy gone," said Kito, breathlessly, "but all his clothes — even those he wear today — are in room." Katrine said, "I don't get you?" The Japanese was having trouble with his speech. "I look in closet and under beds," said Kito. "Only no Mr. Peter." Katrine laughed. "Are you being funny? Kids don't run out naked into the night." Kito answered — "The blue pants he came in — he kept 'em. They ore gone with little boy!" Katrine heard herself saying, as if in a daze — "I thought I told you to throw away those darned orphan asylum overalls." She added, "Get Mr. Naughton on the phone, and tell him to come here as fast as he can make it. I need him . . ." * * * Bill Naughton would have found Katrine in tears — if there'd been any tears left. As it was, she met him dry-eyed and curiously calm. "It's Peter," she told him. "It's fierce!" "What's the kid done, now?" asked Bill. "And what am I supposed to do?" Katrine said, "He's run away." Bill said, before the impact of the thing hit him — "He certainly showed good sense." Then suddenly his voice changed. "Where in hell did he go ?" snarled Bill. "He's only a little tyke. Where could he run to?" Katrine said, and her voice was weary — "You've got to find out. You've got to bring him back. He didn't even take the clothes I bought him." "Why should he take your filthy clothes ?" rasped Bill. "And if I find him, why should I bring him back to you? To be tortured some more, I suppose ! I hope, for his own sake, that the kid's been run over or something." Katrine had thought she was cried out. But with ghastly clarity she saw a vision of Peter — very small and thin, in faded blue denim — lying in a dusty road, with blood on his chin. Blood on his chin as it had been that first day, when he bit his lower 98 lip to keep from sobbing . . . Before that vision she dissolved into grief. Her flood of tears were more, real, even, than the ones she had shed in the throes . of her previous hysteria. "Don't bawl me out," she wept, "the Lord knows I feel bad enough." Bill's voice softened. "But not as bad as you deserve to feel," he told her. Katrine admitted it. "I know," she said. "I've treated Peter — and you, too, for that matter— like dirt, and this is the pay-off. But get the kid back, and as God is my witness, I'll be a good mother to him." Bill looked at her oddly. And then all at once he said something under his breath and took Katrine forcibly into his arms. "Stop bawling, Katie," he said, "we'll find the kid. And you're darn tooting you'll be a good mother to him. You'll be a good mother if I have to marry you and beat sense and decency into your dumb head. Kiss me, honey, and then I'll bring the car around and we'll start !" * * * They hunted valiantly — two people at first filled with bravado. "A kid that size couldn't walk very far," they told each other hopefully. They asked people all over Hollywood — men in newsstands, policemen, loungers on corners — "Seen a kid with red hair and freckles and blue overalls?" But whereas such a child in any other place might stick out like a sore thumb, in Hollywood— accustomed to its variety of makeup— Peter had been just a small tramp schooner that passed in the night. Nobody had seen him or — if they had seen him — they hadn't noticed or didn't remember. Katrine and Bill Naughton started to search at about eight-thirty. Two hours later Katrine looked ten years older, and Bill's face was lean and gray. At eleven-thirty they went to the police station. But a reporter, leaning on the Sergeant's desk, whispered : "That's Katrine Mollineaux and her publicity man. Another gag !" And so, though the Sergeant was sympathetic, the matter was shelved in favor -of a pickpocket who had been caught red handed, with somebody's wallet! Eleven-thirty was only a jump from midnight, and midnight became the wee small hours. And Bill and Katrine, deserting Hollywood, were in the outlying districts. The bravado was gone now, and fear had taken its place, and Katrine was remembering a certain child murderer who was still at large, and Bill was talking about kidnappers. "Anyway," Bill said, "Peter isn't in a hospital. We've taken care of every hospital on the map." And Katrine said: "I wish to heaven he was in a hospital. Then I'd be able to see him — and touch him . . ." They had called the Home of the Good Shepherds first off. They called it again, as the night progressed, but the matron was a little bored with it all. "Adopted children sometimes run away when they're unhappy," she said, "but they seldom run to us . . ." Bill hung up the receiver — at that — and curbed for five minutes without stopping. And then — as they said in some of Katrine's own sub-titles — came dawn. And when she and Bill had given up hope, and were cruising down an isolated lane, they saw a heap of something that might have bsen old rags lying under a hedge, and — by some miracle — it was Peter. Unharmed, and fast asleep on the cold ground, with one hand tucked under a grimy, tear-stained cheek. * * * It was Katrine who reached him first. She jumped out of the car while it was still moving and had Peter in her arms before Bill could jam down his brakes. She realized how the child's ribs stuck out a full minute before she realized that this was the only time she had ever touched him — except for publicity purposes. And then Peter woke with a little cry, and wrenched himself out of her grasp. "No," he sobbed, "no, no, no . . ." Katrine's face was as streaked and grimy as the little boy's, and for the same reason. "But, Peter," she sobbed in turn, "we've been hunting for you all night." The child was clear awake, now. "Why did you hunt for me ?" he asked. "You don't like me, an' you don't want me." He waited a second and gulped. "I didn't take any of the new clothes, not even the shoes . . I wore what I came in. I was going back . . ." Katrine said, "You were a little sap." Her voice shook. "I never mean the half of what I say . . ." She hesitated — "You heard how your Uncle Bill told me off once, didn't you? Everybody knowrs I'm a great joker ..." The child stared from Katrine to Bill. Bill moved close, and put out a hand. "Yeah, feller," he said unsteadily, "Katie will have her fun. She didn't expect you to take her seriously, and beat it." The little boy was on his feet. Katrine saw, with a shock, that he was indeed shoeless — that his toes were scratched and blue with the chill of the weather. All at once, and without meaning to, she started to scold. It was a case of tortured nerves searching for release. "You ought to be spanked, Peter," she said. "You'll get your death of cold — and like as not give it to me, and then they'll have to hold up production on my film." Bill breathed, "For crying out loud!" but Peter — with dawn making glorious the sky behind him — moved suddenly close to Katrine. He laid a hand involuntarily on her arm. "But how could I give you a cold?" he asked, sniffling. "I never get that near to you !" Katrine was still on her knees. It made her face on a level with Peter's. "Well, you will from now on," she raged. "Honest "to gosh, you make me furious !" Her arms went around him again, and held him tight. "I could kill you, Peter," she wept. "Kiss me, you little nitwit!" Bill Naughton, with an inarticulate sound, put his arms around them both . . . The End THE CUNEO PRESS, INC., U.S.A.