Sure, they like money just like everybody else.
But there's something they want even more."
"Power?"
I shook my head.
"Only partly.
What they want more than anything else is to make pictures. Not just movies but pictures that will gain them recognition.
They want to regard themselves as artists.
Well insulated by money, of course, but artists, just the same."
"Then because you've made motion pictures, they accepted your promises rather than mine?"
"I guess that's about it." I smiled. "When I produce a picture, they feel I'm sharing the same risks they are.
I'm not risking money.
Everything I am goes on the line. My reputation, my ability, my creative conceit."
"Creative conceit?"
"It's a term I got from David Woolf.
He used it to rate certain producers.
Those who had it made great pictures. Those who didn't, made pictures.
In short, they preferred me because I was willing to be judged on their own terms."
"I see," Sheffield said thoughtfully. "I won't make the same mistake again."
"I'm sure you won't."
I felt a suspicion growing in me.
This was too easy. He was being too nice about it.
He was a fighter. And fighters die hard.
Besides, his whole approach had been inconsistent with his usual way of doing business.
Sheffield was a financial man. He dealt with business people about finances.
Yet, in this case, he'd gone directly to the picture people.
Ordinarily, he'd have contacted me right off the bat and we'd have battled it out. We'd each have compromised a little and been satisfied.
There could be only one answer.
Something that had happened in England when I was there began suddenly to make sense.
I'd come out of the projection room of our office in London, where I had gone to see the Jennie Denton test, with our British sales manager. The telephone had rung when we walked into his office.
He picked it up and spoke into it a few minutes, then put it down. He looked up at me.
"That was the circuit-buyer for the Engel theater chain," he said.
"They are frantic for product now.
Their studios were lost completely in the first raid and they had never made a deal for American product, as have the other companies."
"What are they going to do?" I asked, still thinking about the test.
For the first time since Rina had died, I began to feel the excitement that came only from making a motion picture again.
I only half listened to his answer.
"I don't know," he replied. "They have four hundred theaters and if they can't get additional product in six months, they'll have to close half of them."
"Too bad," I said. I couldn't care less.
Engel, like Korda, had come to England from Middle Europe and gone into the picture business.
But while Korda had concentrated on production, Engel had gone in for theaters.
He came into production only as an answer to his problem of supply. Rank, British Lion, Gaumont and Associated among them managed to control all the product, both British and American. Still, there was no reason to mourn for him. I had heard that his investments in the States were worth in excess of twenty million dollars.
I'd forgotten about the conversation until now. It all fitted together neatly.
It would have been a very neat trick if Engel could have stolen the company right out from under my nose. And it was just the kind of deal his Middle-European mind would have dreamed up.
I looked at Sheffield.
"What does Engel plan to do with the stock now?" I asked casually.
"I don't know." Then he looked at me. "No wonder," he said softly. "Now I know why we couldn't get anywhere.
You knew all along."
I didn't answer.
I could see the look of surprise on Mac's face behind him but I pretended I hadn't.
"And I was beginning to believe that stuff you were handing me about picture people standing together," Sheffield said.