"I can see you're not very interested in home movies."
"What do you want?" she asked.
"You." He began to close up the machine. "But not in the usual sense," he added quickly.
"I want you to play Aphrodite."
"And if I don't choose to?"
"You're lovely, you're a star, you're engaged," he said casually.
"You might not be any of the three if this film should happen to fall into the wrong hands. Together with a summary of your professional activities." His cold eyes flashed at her. "No man, even one as crazy as Jonas Cord, wants to marry the town whore."
"I'm under contract to Norman. My contract doesn't allow me to make any outside pictures."
"I know," Dan said calmly. "But I'm sure Cord would authorize the purchase of this script if you asked him.
Bonner will make the picture."
"What if he won't?
Jonas has pretty definite ideas about pictures."
A faint smile came to his lips.
"Then, make him change them."
She drew in her breath slowly.
"And if I do?"
"Why, then you get the film, of course."
"The negative, too?"
He nodded.
"How do I know that there are no dupes?"
His eyebrows went up approvingly. "I see you've learned," he said. "I paid five thousand dollars for that little can of film.
And I wouldn't have done that if I hadn't been sure there were no other copies.
Besides, why kill the goose?
We may want to do business together again sometime." He packed up the projector. "I’ll leave the script with you."
She didn't answer.
He turned, his hand on the door, and looked back.
"I told you I'd only be a few minutes," he said.
15.
Dan Pierce got to his feet, rapping his cup with a tiny spoon.
He surveyed the table owlishly.
He was drunk, happy drunk, as much on success as on the Scotch whisky he had so generously imbibed.
He nodded his head as they all looked up at him.
"Dan Pierce doesn't forget who his friends are. He does things righ'. I brought the engaged couple each a presen'." He turned, snapping his fingers.
"Yes, Mr. Pierce," the maitre d' said quickly.
He gestured and a waiter came up with two packages, looked down at the tag on each and deposited the large gold-wrapped box in front of Jonas, the smaller silver-wrapped package by Jennie.
"Thank you, Dan," Jonas said.
"Open it up, Jonas," Dan said drunkenly.
"I wan' ev'ybody to see the presents."
Jennie felt a strange foreboding.
"We'll open them later, Dan."
"No," he said insistently. "Now." She looked around the table. They were all watching curiously.
She looked at Jonas.
He shrugged his shoulders and smiled at her.
She started to open her gift.
It was wrapped so tight, she reached for a knife to cut it just as Jonas finished taking the wrapping from his.
"Hey," Jonas said, laughing, as he held it up for all to see. "A magnum of champagne!"
Her present was in a small but beautifully inlaid mahogany case.
She opened it and stared down, feeling the color drain from her face.
Jonas took the case from her hands and held it up for everyone to see.
"It's a set of English razors," he said and grinned at Dan. "The waiter must have got the labels mixed.