He accidentally bumped Sergeant Gaspar who was so provoked that he put him in a little barred room while they waited for the Captain to arrive.
Chronologically Phil Macedon belonged between Eugene O’Brien and Robert Taylor. He was still a handsome man in his early fifties and he had saved enough from his great days for a hacienda in the San Fernando Valley; there he rested as full of honours, as rolicksome and with the same purposes in life as Man o’ War.
With Pat Hobby life had dealt otherwise. After twenty-one years in the industry, script and publicity, the accident found him driving a 1933 car which had lately become the property of the North Hollywood Finance and Loan Co. And once, back in 1928, he had reached a point of getting bids for a private swimming pool.
He glowered from his confinement, still resenting Macedon’s failure to acknowledge that they had ever met before.
‘I suppose you don’t remember Coleman,’ he said sarcastically. ‘Or Connie Talmadge or Bill Corker or Allan Dwan.’
Macedon lit a cigarette with the sort of timing in which the silent screen has never been surpassed, and offered one to Sergeant Gaspar.
‘Couldn’t I come in tomorrow?’ he asked. ‘I have a horse to exercise —’
‘I’m sorry, Mr Macedon,’ said the cop — sincerely for the actor was an old favourite of his. ‘The Captain is due here any minute. After that we won’t be holding you.’
‘It’s just a formality,’ said Pat, from his cell.
‘Yeah, it’s just a —’ Sergeant Gaspar glared at Pat. ‘It may not be any formality for you. Did you ever hear of the sobriety test?’
Macedon flicked his cigarette out the door and lit another.
‘Suppose I come back in a couple of hours,’ he suggested.
‘No,’ regretted Sergeant Gaspar. ‘And since I have to detain you, Mr Macedon, I want to take the opportunity to tell you what you meant to me once. It was that picture you made, The Final Push, it meant a lot to every man who was in the war.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Macedon, smiling.
‘I used to try to tell my wife about the war — how it was, with the shells and the machine guns — I was in there seven months with the 26th New England — but she never understood. She’d point her finger at me and say “Boom! you’re dead,” and so I’d laugh and stop trying to make her understand.’
‘Hey, can I get out of here?’ demanded Pat.
‘You shut up!’ said Gaspar fiercely. ‘You probably wasn’t in the war.’
‘I was in the Motion Picture Home Guard,’ said Pat. ‘I had bad eyes.’
‘Listen to him,’ said Gaspar disgustedly. ‘That’s what all them slackers say. Well, the war was something. And after my wife saw that picture of yours I never had to explain to her. She knew. She always spoke different about it after that — never just pointed her finger at me and said “Boom!” I’ll never forget the part where you was in that shell hole. That was so real it made my hands sweat.’
‘Thanks,’ said Macedon graciously. He lit another cigarette, ‘You see, I was in the war myself and I knew how it was. I knew how it felt.’
‘Yes sir,’ said Gaspar appreciatively. ‘Well; I’m glad of the opportunity to tell you what you did for me. You — you explained the war to my wife.’
‘What are you talking about?’ demanded Pat Hobby suddenly. ‘That war picture Bill Corker did in 1925?’
‘There he goes again,’ said Gaspar. ‘Sure — The Birth of a Nation. Now you pipe down till the Captain comes.’
‘Phil Macedon knew me then all right,’ said Pat resentfully, ‘I even watched him work on it one day.’
‘I just don’t happen to remember you, old man,’ said Macedon politely, ‘I can’t help that.’
‘You remember the day Bill Corker shot that shell hole sequence don’t you? Your first day on the picture?’
There was a moment’s silence.
‘When will the Captain be here?’ Macedon asked.
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