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They’ve earned top money for over twenty years, and yet both are stony. Jack was – and is – a philanderer, gambler, a swash-buckler who indulges in the most idiotic escapades; a great actor, of course. Blythe was – and is – a lovely, electric hoyden whom everyone adores. It’s simply that they’re capable of anything, from breaking an engagement for no reason at all to keeping up a vendetta for over twenty years.’
    â€˜Or, I should imagine, piracy on the high seas.’
    She laughed. ‘Jack once signed a contract with old Sigmund calling for five thousand a week, to make a picture that was scheduled to take about ten weeks’ shooting time. The afternoon of the day he signed the contract he dropped fifty thousand dollars at Tia Juana. So he worked the ten weeks for nothing, borrowing money from week to week for tips, and he gave the most brilliant performance of his career. That’s Jack Royle.’
    â€˜Keep talking.’
    â€˜Blythe? She’s never worn a girdle, drinks Martinis exclusively, sleeps raw, and three years ago gave half a year’s salary to the Actors’ Fund because Jack gave three months’ income. And that’s Blythe.’
    â€˜I suppose the youngsters are worse than their parents. The second generation usually is.’
    â€˜Oh, definitely. It’s such a deep, sustained hatred that a psychologist, I suspect, would look for some frustration mechanism, like Love Crushed to Earth …’
    â€˜But Bonnie’s engaged to Jacques Butcher!’
    â€˜I know that,’ said Paula calmly. ‘Nevertheless – you mark my words – crushed to earth, it will rise again. Poor Butch is in for it. And I think he knows it, poor darling.’
    â€˜This boy Tyler and the girl aren’t on speaking terms?’
    â€˜Oh, but they are! Wait until you hear them. Of course, they both came up in pictures about the same time, and they’re horribly jealous of each other. A couple of months ago Ty got a newspaper splash by wrestling with a trained grizzly at one of his father’s famous parties. A few days later Bonnie adopted a panther cub as a pet and paraded it up and down the Magna lot until Ty came off a set with a gang of girls, and then somehow – quite innocently, of course – the cub came loose and began to chew at Ty’s leg. The sight of Ty running away with the little animal scampering after him quite destroyed his reputation as a he-man.’
    â€˜Playful, aren’t they?’
    â€˜You’ll love all four of them, as everyone else does. In Blythe’s and Bonnie’s case, it’s probably an inheritance from Blythe’s father Tolland – that’s Bonnie’s grandfather.’
    â€˜Vix mentioned him rather profusely.’
    â€˜He’s a local character – quite mad. I don’t mean mentally; he was sane enough to amass a tremendous fortune in oil. Just gaga. He spent a million dollars on his estate on Chocolate Mountain, and he hasn’t even a caretaker to hoe the weeds. It cost him forty thousand dollars to blast away the top of a neighbouring mountain peak because he didn’t like the view of it from his porch – he said it looked like the profile of a blankety-blank who had once beaten him in an oil deal.’
    â€˜Charming,’ said Ellery, looking at her figure.
    â€˜He drinks cold water with a teaspoon and publishes pamphlets crammed with statistics crusading against stimulants, including tobacco and coffee and tea, and warning people that eating white bread brings you early to the grave.’
    She talked on and on, and Ellery sat back and listened, more entranced by the source than the information. It was by far the pleasantest afternoon he had spent in Hollywood.
    He came to with a start. There was a shadow on Paula’s face, and it was creeping higher every minute.
    â€˜Good Lord!’ he said, springing up and looking at his