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Page 30
"You'll excuse us?" remarked Manton, easily, as he drew Phelps
and Enid away.
"See!" exclaimed Millard, in a low voice, frowning now as he
watched the girl. "Manton's clever! I've never known him unable
to raise money, and that's why I wanted Enid to have her contract
with him personally. If Manton Pictures blows up he'd put her in
some other company."
"He has more than one?" This seemed to puzzle Kennedy.
"He's been interested in any number on the side," Millard
explained. "Now he's formed another, but it's a secret so far.
You've heard of Fortune Features, perhaps?"
Kennedy looked at me, but I shook my head.
"What is 'Fortune Features'?" Kennedy asked the question of
Millard.
"Just another company in which Manton has an interest," he
replied, casually. "That was why I said I advised that Enid make
her contract personally with Manton. If Manton Pictures goes up,
then he will have to swing her into Fortune Features--the other
Manton enterprise, don't you see?" He paused, then added: "By the
way, don't say anything outside about that. It isn't generally
known--and as soon as anyone does hear it, everybody in the film
game will hear it. You don't know how gossip travels in this
business."
Kennedy asked a few personal questions about Stella, but
Millard's answers indicated that he had not contemplated or even
hoped for a reconciliation, that his interest in his former wife
had become thoroughly platonic. Just now, however, he seemed
unable to keep Manton out of his mind.
"Oh, Manton's clever!" he said, confidentially to Kennedy, as he
watched the promoter deftly maneuvering Leigh and Enid into a
position side by side.
And indeed, as Millard talked, I began to get some inkling of how
really clever was the game which Manton played.
"Why," continued Millard, warming up to his story--for, to him,
above all, a good story was something that had to be told,
whatever might result from it--"I have known him to pay a visit
some afternoon to Wall Street--go down there to beard the old
lions in their den. He always used to show up about the closing
time of the market.
"I've known him to get into the office of some one like Leigh or
Phelps. Then he'll begin to talk about his brilliant prospects in
the company he happens to be promoting at the time. If you listen
to Manton you're lost. I know it--I've listened," he added,
whimsically.
"Well," he continued, "the banker will begin to get restless
after a bit--not at Manton, but at not getting away. 'My car is
outside,' Manton will say. 'Let me drive you uptown.' Of course,
there's nothing else for the banker to do but to accept, and when
he gets into Manton's car he's glad he did. I don't know anyone
who picks out such luxurious things as he does. Why, that man
could walk right out along Automobile Row, broke, and some one
would GIVE him a car."
"How does he do it?" I put the question to him.
"How does a fish swim?" said Millard, smiling. "He's clever, I
tell you. Once he has the banker in the car, perhaps they stop
for a few moments at a club. At any rate, Manton usually
contrives it so that, as they approach his apartment, he has his
talk all worked up to the point where the banker is genuinely
interested. You know there's almost nothing people will talk to
you longer about than moving pictures.
"Well, on one pretext or another, Manton usually persuades the
banker to step up here for a moment. Poor simp! It's all over
with him then. I'll never forget how impressed Phelps was with
this place the first time. There, now, watch this fellow, Leigh.
He thinks this looks like a million dollars. We're all here,
playing Manton's game. We're his menagerie--he's Barnum. I tell
you, Leigh's lost, lost!"
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