But she'd read the script.
Mary Magdalene.
At first, she'd almost died laughing. No wonder Bonner had thought of her. It was type-casting of a high order.
Then something of the story had got to her. She'd felt moved and shaken.
She'd lost herself in the part and there were times when she cried while the cameras were on her. And that was something she hadn't done since she was a little girl.
No wonder they were laughing. She'd have laughed herself if it had been anyone else.
The whore crying for the whore. She never should have listened.
The week had gone by and there hadn't been even a word from Bonner.
The heavy footsteps of the Mexican woman sounded behind her. She looked around. The servant's beady eyes were inscrutable.
"Senor Woolf esta aqui."
Woolf.
She knew no one by that name.
Maybe he was the new man from the cops.
They'd told her a new man was coming around to pick up the pay-off.
"De las peliculas," the servant added quickly. "Oh."
She nodded. "Traigale aqui."
She turned back to her desk as the servant moved away. Quickly Jennie made a neat pile of the bills and put them in a drawer. She turned in her chair just as the Mexican returned with a young man.
She looked coldly at him, rising from her chair.
"Bonner sent you?"
"No," he said.
"As a matter of fact, Bonner doesn't even know I'm here."
"Oh." She knew now why he had come. "You saw the test?"
He nodded.
Her voice grew even colder.
"Then you might as well go," she said. "I see no one except by appointment." A faint smile tugged at his lips.
She grew even angrier. "And you can tell Bonner for me that he'd better stop showing that test around town or he'll regret it."
He laughed, then his face grew serious.
"I’ve already done that, Miss Denton."
"You have?" She felt her anger dissipating. "A thing like that could ruin my business."
"I think you're out of that business," he said quietly.
She stared at him, her eyes large. "What do you mean?"
"I’m afraid you don't understand," he said, taking a card from his pocket and handing it to her.
She looked down at it. It was an expensive engraved card.
David Woolf, it read simply, and down in one corner, the words: Executive Vice-President.
Below that was the name of the motion-picture company Bonner was connected with.
Now she remembered who he was.
She'd read about him in the papers.
The bright young man. Cord's boy wonder.
She looked up at him.
The faint smile was playing around his lips again.
"Would you like to play Mary Magdalene?"
Suddenly, she was nervous.
"I don't know," she said hesitantly. "I thought – it was all a kind of joke to Bonner."
"Perhaps it was," David Woolf said quickly. "I don't know what he thought.
But it's no joke to me.
I think you can be a great star." He was silent for a moment. "And my wife does, too."
She looked at him questioningly. "Rosa Strassmer.
She knew you at the hospital four years ago."
A light came into her eyes.
"You mean Dr. Strassmer?