"Wait a minute!" butts in Delancey. "Don't rave no more. My name is
Tim O'Toole again and not Delancey, which sounds like a collar. I'm
sick and tired of movin' pictures and that big salary stuff is as much
bunk as the rest of it. I ain't goin' around rescuin' nutty dames,
beatin' up supes which is supposed to be the desperate smugglers and
divin' off bridges no more! I'm goin' to make a honest livin' and I've
bought out the truckin' business I was workin' for when you come along
and made a movie star and a simp outa me. I'll be takin' in money
there long after the movies is gone and all the pictures I'll ever move
from now on will be loaded on one of my wagons. Fare-thee-well, and I
hope they's no hard feelings. If they is, I ain't gonna sob out loud
over it!"
For a minute Alex was speechless. Then he comes to and works a hour
tryin' to get the ex-Delancey Calhoun to change his mind. They was
nothin' doin'. In fact, Delancey walked out and left us flat in the
middle of Alex's wail.
Well, anyways, Alex still had one satisfaction left and that was to
prove to Eve and the wife that he had put over a truck driver as a
movie star. He done it after dinner that night and if he caused any
sensation, I failed to see it with the naked eye.
"Well," says Eve, "that proves my argument."
"Proves _your_ argument?" hollers Alex. "Didn't you claim movie stars
was born, and didn't I take a truck driver and make him famous at it?"
"Yes," says Eve. "And then he went back to the trucking business,
because he wasn't born an artist and the whole thing seemed silly to
him. He couldn't stand the make-believe any longer, because he had no
imagination, no art--nothing but the stupid ability to make money!"
Alex sinks down in a chair and throws up his hands.
"Can you beat a woman?" he asks me.
"Not in this state," I says. "It's against the law."
"Come!" says Eve. "You boys are just in time. Carrington De Vire is
down at the Palace in 'The Arctic Sunflower.' I'm crazy to see it. I
think he's wonderful!"
THE END
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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