The William P. McGivern Fantasy MEGAPACK™: 25 Classic Fantasy Stories from the Pulps

Howie Lemp Meets an Enchantress

First published in Fantastic Adventures, February 1942.

The meteoric rise of Howie Lemp to the head of Colossal Films was one of those things that happen too frequently in Hollywood to cause a great deal of excitement.

The City of Celluloid has come to accept Boy Wonders in the same spirit they would any natural phenomenon. That is, as something inexplicable, but inevitable. Usually the human eccentricities that thrive in the eccentric atmosphere of Hollywood are speedily eclipsed and forgotten.

For that reason it is a remarkable fact that the feminine star Howie Lemp brought to Hollywood with him will never be forgotten. It would be easier to forget an earthquake than to forget the amazing girl who precipitated the chain of events that finally led Howie Lemp to Bagdad-on-the-Pacific.

Looking back, the first link of the chain was forged, so to speak, when Howie Lemp was jerking sodas for Rupp’s Drug Store in Chicago. It was during the morning rush when Howie looked up and suddenly noticed Mazie Slatter for the first time. He had seen her before, for Mazie was a waitress at Rupp’s, but it wasn’t until this particular morning that he realized that her hair was the exact shade of the deviled egg he was spreading dexterously between two slices of toasted white.

He stopped spreading the deviled egg and swallowed the sudden lump in his throat.

“Mazie,” he said awkwardly, “would — would you like to go to a show tonight?”

Mazie tossed two lumps of ice cream into a tall glass before looking up at him. By ordinary standards Mazie would not be considered beautiful. To be blunt, it is doubtful that Mazie would have been considered beautiful by any standards. Her skin was sallow and her hair was a streaky blonde and her figure might remind you of an overstuffed pillow that had been tied together at the middle.

But to Howie she was suddenly The Girl.

He looked anxiously at her.

“Well?” he said weakly. “I thought you might like to.”

Mazie’s eyes traveled unenthusiastically over Howie’s lanky frame, past his out-sized adam’s apple and on to his horn-rimmed spectacles, watery blue eyes, receding forehead and thin brown hair.

Then she laughed sarcastically.

“Why should I go to a show with you?” she asked, “when I can take in a side-show by just looking at you.”

She stuck a cherry on top of the soda she was concocting and waddled off, leaving Howie staring after her, crimson-cheeked and miserable.

After a few seconds he returned to the deviled egg sandwich but his heart was not in his work. For suddenly and completely he had fallen in love with Mazie Slatter. Even her sarcastic rejoinder was only additional evidence of her wit and cleverness.

He finished the sandwich and started another mechanically.

“I can’t let myself go to pieces,” he thought grimly.

For the rest of the morning he filled orders heroically, and no one could have told from his sad, melancholy expression that the pangs of unrequited love were gnawing away at his soul.

For Howie Lemp always looked sad and melancholy.

At lunch time he got out of the store quickly and crossed to the park where he invariably drank his quart of milk and ate his two hard boiled eggs in the forty-five minutes allotted him by the proprietor of Rupp’s Drug Store.

He ate an egg in solemn silence and thought wistfully of Mazie Slatter. With each passing second it seemed his devotion and love increased. He ate his second egg and polished off a pint of milk and then dropped his head into his long bony hands.

“I guess I was born to suffer,” he muttered brokenly.

For a moment there was a complete silence in the sunny park. Then:

“Why?”

The voice, soft and caressing, sounded beside him.

Howie sighed soul fully.

“Why?” the caressing voice persisted.

Shaken from his gloomy reverie Howie took his head from his hands and looked up. A girl was seated beside him on the park bench, her dark eyes resting on him in limpid compassion.

Howie hadn’t heard the girl come up and sit down and he wondered about this for a second. Then he straightened up, self-consciously aware of her intense gaze.

“Why are you unhappy?” she asked.

Howie turned to the girl impulsively, eager to pour forth the sorry story of his great affection for Mazie and her callous disregard of him. So absorbed was he in his own plight he did not particularly notice the amazing beauty of the girl sitting beside him.

Her hair was dark with strange highlights of blue that glistened in the sun, forming a shimmering halo about her delicate, perfectly molded features. In her eyes of deep cobalt blue, sultry fires seemed to leap and dance. There was something ageless and deathless about her loveliness, as if it were too beautiful to be ravaged by even Time itself. She wore a plain white dress that was almost severe in Grecian simplicity, but which accentuated perfectly her slim, delightfully curved figure.

Howie disregarded all of these abundant charms. If he even saw them he did not indicate it by so much as a flicker of an eyelash. He plunged into his story, happy for sympathetic ears to absorb it. He talked on, adding one glowing word after another in praise of Mazie’s beauty and charm. When he could think of nothing else to add he sighed with all of the reverence of a Tibetian monk in the presence of the Inner Mysteries and lapsed into moody silence.

“Is she so beautiful?” the dark haired girl asked.

Howie sighed.

“There’s no other woman like her,” he said.

“Is she,” the dark haired girl’s voice was as soft as a summer’s breeze, “is she more beautiful than I?”

Howie turned and looked at the dark haired girl critically.

“You’re kind of pretty,” he said, “but you haven’t got the same cute wrinkles in your neck that Mazie has.”

The dark haired girl’s face remained expressionless but there was a flicker of angry astonishment behind her smouldering eyes.

“Look at me,” she whispered.

Howie looked at her. He saw her slightly parted lips, her burning blue eyes, her slender voluptuousness. She moved closer to him, one soft white hand stealing across his shoulder to caress the back of his head.

“Can’t you forget this other girl?” she whispered. “We could be happy together, you and I. Look into my eyes and tell me if it would be difficult to love me.”

Howie squirmed uncomfortably and shifted away from the girl.

“It wouldn’t be difficult for a person to fall in love with you,” he said awkwardly. “You’re really nice and pretty and everything.” He tried desperately to think of something to say that would be kind and at the same time would discourage her intentions toward him.

“You just be patient,” he added, “and some nice young man will come along. As for me though, I’m in love with the only girl for me, Mazie.”

The dark haired girl’s features were unchanged, but there was dawning consternation in the depths of her eyes.

“Do you mean,” she asked, and there was a faintly anxious tone in her smooth voice, “that you are able to ignore me for this other girl? Surely she cannot be a tenth as desirable as I. Please look at me. You must see that I am beautiful. I could make you happier than you dream possible if you will only look at me and love me.”

“I’m sorry,” Howie said with finality, “but that just isn’t possible. I’ve told you you’re pretty — after a manner. But I’m in love with Mazie and nothing can change that. We got some good looking boys over in the store jerking sodas and if you’d like, I could maybe fix things up for you with one of them. But as for me, that’s out.”

He ran a long finger around the inside of his collar and moved a few inches away from the girl. A dizzy feeling of desperation was sweeping over him. He was no Casanova and he knew it, but this girl was acting as if he were a combination of Clark Gable and William the Conqueror.

“I’ve got to be getting back to the store,” he said apologetically, “it’s been nice knowing—”

“You can’t go,” the dark haired girl cried passionately. “You mustn’t leave me. I need you. I must have you. Why don’t you take me? Everything I have, everything I am will be yours to use as you wish. Only tell me you find me desirable and you love me, and I will be yours.”

The girl’s beautiful, haunting features were strained and fearful and a nameless terror was lurking deep in her eyes.

“You mustn’t leave me,” she begged. “You must say you love me and that you will be mine. Please tell me you can’t resist me.”

“I’d like to oblige you,” Howie stammered breathlessly, “but I just can’t do it.”

He scrambled to his feet and shoved the half-empty bottle of milk into her hands.

“Here,” he said desperately, “maybe this’ll help you. It’s on me.”

He wheeled then and sprinted across the grass...

When Howie Lemp reached the drug store, he was panting strenuously. Ducking inside, he hastily wrapped a clean apron around him and took his place behind the counter with a vast sigh of relief. He had been in a few uncomfortable spots in his lifetime, but never one that equalled the predicament he had just escaped. For several blissful seconds he enjoyed the sensation of security and then one of his fellow clerks nudged him.

“Lookit!” he whispered. “Lookit the doll at the end of the counter. Baby is she a knockout. And she’s giving you the eye.”

“Where?” Howie asked.

He needn’t have asked that question. All he needed to have done was to follow the gaze of all the male employees and customers in the store. They were all staring in unconcealed admiration at an incredibly beautiful girl with blue-black hair and great flashing eyes that were now resting limpidly and adoringly on a tall, gangling soda jerker by the name of Howie Lemp.

Howie swallowed nervously as he recognized the amorous creature who had shared the park bench with him some few minutes ago. She was looking at him. But all of the fear and consternation had left her. Now she was apparently the happiest creature in the world, smiling at him with a secretive, dreamy smile that was similar in kind if not in quality to that of a love struck adolescent mooning over an autographed picture of Robert Taylor.

“What’ve you got that I ain’t,” Howie’s fellow clerk whispered enviously. “If a dame like that gave me the eye I’d drop everything and run.” Blushing to the roots of his thin hair Howie hurled himself into the job of constructing a ham-and-cheese triple-decker. Why was this girl following him? What did she want? These unanswerable questions buzzed around in his head as he worked.

“Ham on rye,” a nasal voice sang out, and looking up, Howie saw Mazie standing in front of him. “It’s a special,” she snapped, “for Old Man Potterson, so be careful.”

Howie nodded. Potterson was one of the big shots from the Colossal Studio office on the fifth floor. He was a Hollywood producer, but he spent a good deal of time traveling on the search for talent. A liberal tipper, but he was finicky about his food.

“About tonight,” Howie said desperately, as Mazie was turning away. “Haven’t you changed your mind about taking in that show with me?”

Mazie looked at him coldly, then her gaze flicked down the counter to the gorgeous brunette who was still smiling seductively at Howie.

“Why don’t you ask her?” she snapped. “She seems to be interested in oddities in the news.”

Crushed and miserable Howie listlessly went on with his work. In his benumbed condition he slapped sandwiches together automatically, too miserable to think of anything but the hopelessness of his condition. A glamorous witch who wouldn’t leave him alone and who was souring Mazie on him even more than ever. Which was quite a lot, he was forced to admit dolefully.

The store was filling up with customers, he noticed lackadaisically.

Most of them however, he noticed, were not buying anything, but merely clogging up the aisles and counters staring and oogling the bewitchingly beautiful brunette who was perched provocatively on the end stool. He risked a hasty glance at her.

Her smile widened as she caught his eye and she winked at him, coyly and intimately.

Howie dropped his eyes to the sandwich board and groaned.

Things were terrible. They couldn’t get any worse.

In that he was mistaken.

Suddenly from one of the tables in the rear of the store an enraged bellow sounded. It was like a rogue elephant trumpeting defiance in the jungle, or a maddened bull roaring at a red flag. Only it was worse because it was “Stormy” Potterson of Colossal Films.

“I won’t stand for it,” Potterson was bellowing lustily and Howie could see his huge, red-faced figure lumbering toward the front of the store.

“I’ll break whomever’s responsible for this,” he shouted. “It’s one thing I will not stand tampering with.”

He shoved his way through the bugeyed crowd at the counter and pointed a fat finger at Howie.

“Young man,” he said at the top of his voice, “did you make my sandwich? Answer me yes or no, and don’t try and pass the buck.”

Howie swallowed nervously, then squared his shoulders.

“I won’t do any buck passing,” he said, “I made it.”

“Oh did you?” Potterson almost howled. “And you admit it, brazenly and impudently.”

He suddenly lifted his arm and extended a soppy object toward Howie.

“And did you put this in it?” he exploded.

Howie’s eye’s widened in horror as he recognized the object in Potterson’s hand. It was the flat sponge he used in swabbing up the sandwich board. His eyes flashed to the receptacle where it should have been, but the receptacle was quite empty.

And the receptacle was just next to the ham plate!

He knew in one horrified second what had happened. He had stuck the sponge in Potterson’s sandwich while he was brooding over his troubles.

“Well!” Potterson shouted the word. “Did you put it in my sandwich or didn’t you?”

Howie opened his mouth, but he didn’t get a chance to speak. For the mysterious brunette stepped into the picture at that instant. She stepped alongside Potterson and tapped him on the shoulder. Her pale cheeks were touched with spots of color and her eyes flashed like twin beacons of fury.

“You can’t talk like that to him,” she said softly. “No one can in my presence. Do you understand?”

“Who says—” Potterson began to bluster, but he suddenly lost his voice as he looked at the dark-haired girl. For fully a minute he sputtered helplessly, and then he wiped his damp forehead with a trembling hand.

“Let’s go somewhere where we can talk,” he said weakly. “I’m Potterson of Colossal Films.” His eyes traveled over the girl’s beauty with the swiftness of the experienced showman. “I’m sure I can make you an offer that you would find acceptable.”

“I am not interested in offers,” the girl said. “Only your apology to my friend.”

“Sure,” Potterson said eagerly. “We all make mistakes.” He waved genially to Howie who was watching the scene with his mouth open a full three inches. “Forget it son. Sorry I lost my head.”

He turned back to the dark-haired girl.

“My company,” he said rapidly, “is the largest in the business. We can give you the build-up you need. I can practically guarantee you stardom inside of six months.”

The dark-haired girl smiled languorously.

“That’s what the other gentleman said. He also said his company was the largest. But he promised me stardom in three months.”

“Who’re you talking about?” Potterson snapped shrewdly.

“The gentleman from Superba Films,” the dark-haired girl said innocently. “I might add that his offer was extremely interesting.”

Potterson mopped his brow. He took another searching look at the girl, appraising her eyes, her hair, her figure. She stood before him like something from Heaven, but amused and scornful.

Potterson snapped his fingers.

“I’ll double his offer,” he barked. “Whatever it was I’ll double it.”

“It isn’t up to me to decide,” the dark-haired girl answered.

“You got an agent?” Potterson demanded.

The dark-haired girl nodded her beautiful head.

“I wouldn’t make any decision unless he told me it was acceptable to him. I trust him implicitly. He’s more than an agent to me. He’s everything!”

“Who is he?” Potterson demanded hoarsely.

“You were shouting at him a minute ago,” the dark-haired girl answered coldly. She wheeled dramatically and pointed straight at Howie Lemp.

“Talk to him,” she said softly, her eyes shining. “The decision is for him to make, for I am his, body and soul!”

A dish of deviled eggs crashed to the floor with a loud clatter. A second later it was joined by the limp body of Howie Lemp!

When Howie Lemp came around, he opened his eyes and discovered that he was resting against the luxurious cushions of a swiftly traveling limousine. Startled, he attempted to sit up, but a hand on each of his shoulders pushed him back against the cushions.

“Nothing to get excited about,” a rumbling voice said.

Howie turned and saw “Stormy” Potterson on one side of him and a sharp-featured, snappily dressed middle aged man on the other. Both of the jump seats of the big car were occupied. One very fat man and one very skinny man had their backs to him.

“W-what’s it all about?” Howie asked bewilderedly.

“You’re a sly fox,” Potterson laughed with false heartiness. “Getting a contract on that young lady in the drug store and now pretending you don’t know what we want.”

“What do you want?” Howie asked wildly.

“Don’t get excited,” Potterson said soothingly. “Our price will be the best you can get. After you fainted in the store the young lady disappeared in the crowd, but she had already told us that we had to deal through you. So that’s what we’re doing. Got your boarding house address from one of the clerks at the store and we’re heading there now to draw up the papers. Just relax. We’ll treat you right.”

“You’re all crazy,” Howie said desperately, “I haven’t any contract on anybody. Let me out of this car. I’ve got to get back to the store.”

“I gotta hand it to you,” Potterson chuckled, “you’re going to keep up the act to the end aren’t you? But we might as well put the cards on the table. You’ve got us over a barrel, I don’t mind telling you. We’ve got to get that girl before Superba does. Why she’ll be the most terrific thing that ever hit the picture business. We can’t let her get away. So all you have to do is name the price and we’ll meet it if we have t.9 mortgage my false teeth to do it.”

Howie stared about frantically. Was everybody going crazy? What had he done that deserved punishment like this? With every fibre of lanky body he longed for the orderly bustle of Rupp’s Drug Store and the exhilarating presence of Mazie Slatter.

“You’ve got me all wrong,” he managed to croak hoarsely, “I don’t even know this girl you’re raving about. I’ve only seen her twice.”

Potterson smiled insinuatingly and nudged him in the side with his elbow.

“Okay, okay,” he winked. “You’ve only seen her twice. But you managed to make a terrific impression in just that time.” The smile faded from his face and was replaced with an expression of sulky envy. “I wish I knew what you had on the ball,” he muttered.

“I wish I did, too,” Howie cried in despair.

In a few minutes the long sleek car drew to a smooth stop before the modest frame boarding house in which Howie lived. As they walked up the carpeted stairs to Howie’s third floor room, he tried again.

“You men are wasting your time,” he said pleadingly, “I can’t give you any contracts or anything. I don’t even know who or where this girl you want is.”

“You hear that,” Potterson said over his shoulder to the four men who followed him, “he doesn’t know where she is.”

The men chuckled.

“He probably can’t even get in touch with her,” Potterson added between panting breaths.

The men chuckled again.

Howie shrugged despairingly. Nothing he could say or do it seemed would convince him that he was telling the truth.

He stopped before his door, inserted the key and stepped back to allow Potterson and his four shadows to precede him into the room.

Howie followed them in, closed the door behind him and stopped short, his eyes popping open incredulously.

For reclining seductively on his bed like a contented leopard was the darkhaired nemessis who had so hopelessly scrambled up his life in the past hour. She had kicked off her high heeled pumps and now she wriggled her toes and glanced up at him through a strand of blue-black hair that had fallen over her eyes.

“Hello, honey,” she cooed.

“W — what are you doing here?” gasped Howie.

Potterson took his eyes from the brunette reluctantly.

“Let’s get down to business,” he said drawing a sheaf of papers from his inner coat pocket. “We’re prepared to go as high as necessary, so there shouldn’t be any trouble.”

Howie collapsed into a chair. Strangling sounds came from his throat.

The dark haired enchantress slipped gracefully from the bed and crossed to Howie and settled slinkily onto his lap. Her round white arm found its way around his neck, pulling him closer to her.

“Don’t!” Howie strangled.

Potterson stared at him incredulously for a moment and then spread several impressive looking documents on a table next to the chair.

“A thousand a wqek to start,” he said crisply, “with a raise each year for the duration of this seven-year contract. Satisfactory?”

“Please,” Howie said miserably, “I’m not—”

“Okay,” Potterson said hastily, “we’ll make it two thousand to start with.”

“But—”

“Four thousand!”

“Mr. Potterson,” Howie said desperately, “this joke has gone far enough.”

“Four thousand dollars a joke?” Potterson shouted. “I’ll show you who’s joking! Ten thousand dollars!”

Howie groaned. His resistance was gone. No one would listen to him. Everybody was insane. Nothing made sense any more. The only reason and sanity left in the world belonged to Mazie Slatter. And she would have none of him. He was dimly aware that they were shoving a pen into his hand, that he was signing documents by the dozen. But he was oblivious to it all. The only thought in his mind, the only desire in his heart was Mazie.

“There,” Potterson cried triumphantly. “No one will ever break these contracts. They’re iron-clad and air-tight. It’ll cost us money, but it’s worth it to have her under exclusive contract for everything.”

“Brilliant work, Mr. Potterson,” one of his shadows commented.

“Stroke of genius, sir,” another added.

“Yes indeed,” the remaining two put in simultaneously.

Howie was caught up then in a tornado of turbulent action and excitement.

“We leave for the coast in three hours,” Potterson barked. “Be ready. We’ll work out a complete build-up campaign in the meantime. Don’t forget. Be at Union Station in three hours.”

Howie tried feebly to protest, but the situation was out of his hands and control now. Hollywood methods were in the saddle. He was dragged to his feet, hustled to the car, raced from ticket agency to haberdasher and back again, with all the furious confusion of Hollywood itself.

The whole thing had become a kaleidoscopic nightmare in which pinwheels and pyrotechnics exploded constantly. In one interval of sanity he got away long enough to phone Rupp’s Drug Store, but the clerk told him that Mazie Slatter had left the store and there was no way he could get in touch with her.

The papers had the story before they left. There were pictures of Potterson, Howie and all the yes men but not one single picture of the beautiful darkhaired girl. She was in the drawing room of the streamliner swathed to the ears in all-concealing veils. That was the build-up. She was heralded as the most glorious, glamorous, gorgeous creature ever to be signed by Colossal Films. But no pictures were to be taken until the dramatic unveiling at the depot in Hollywood. It was a dodge designed to create suspense and it was evidently succeeding. There were reams of copy about the mysterious veiled girl in the afternoon papers. And when the sleek streamliner pulled from the station hundreds of fans and curiosity seekers lined the tracks cheering and shouting.

Everyone was happy and excited and expectant but Howie. He sat glumly in his compartment feeling as if the bottom had dropped completely out of the safe, comfortable world he had known.

Just a few short hours ago he had been safe, secure and moderately happy. Now he was suddenly surrounded by a whirlpool of Hollywood maniacs and in the proximity of the glamorous, frightening dark-haired girl who acted toward him as if he were the personification of a hero from the pages of Ideal Romances.

As the wheels of the streamliner clicked swiftly over the rails bearing him inexorably toward his destiny in Hollywood, he wondered dazedly how it would all end...

Two days later as the train was approaching the sprawling, stuccoed station at Los Angeles, Howie had found no answer to his gloomy speculations. He had spent the time in transit scampering from his compartment to the diner and back, furtively dodging the efforts of the bewitching brunette to inveigle him into her drawing room.

The door of his compartment suddenly banged open and Howie started furtively. But it was Potterson’s moonlike face that appeared.

“Better be getting ready,” he barked. “We’re due in L.A. in about twenty minutes. I’ve just received word that the reception is all set to go off with a bang. We’ve got the mayor, dozens of stars and notables and half the town down at the station waiting for us. It’ll be the biggest moment in the history of publicity build-ups when we unveil Collossal’s latest star. I’m telling you the town will go wild. Now you get down to her drawing room and see that she’s ready.”

“But—”

“No ‘buts’” Potterson snapped. With every foot that slid back under the wheels Potterson became more and more the infallible, dynamic Producer. He had on a brightly-checked sport coat and a crimson scarf which he wore like a uniform.

“Get moving,” he ordered.

Reluctantly Howie got moving. As he reached the door to the brunette’s drawing room he was aware that the palms of his hands were damp and cold.

Summoning all of his courage he knocked timidly. A lilting voice answered him and then the door was opened and the girl appeared.

Howie gaped. She was wearing a loose flowing white gown that blended with the creamy white of her skin and set off her dark hair stunningly. Standing before him, an inviting smile on her lips she looked like a sorceress of seduction.

“Just wanted to tell you,” Howie gulped, “we’re about there.”

The girl reached out and took Howie’s hand, drew him into the drawing room.

“Now just a minute,” he spluttered, “I’ve—”

The girl closed the door after him, leaned against it, her head tilted back to expose the long column of her throat.

“You’re always in such a hurry,” she pouted. “But we can be together for these last few minutes anyway. You don’t find it disagreeable being alone with me do you?”

Howie’s will power was meeting its Waterloo. For three days he had been as noble as Galahad, but this provocative proximity was too much for him. Mazie receded into a vague blur in his consciousness.

Hardly knowing what he was doing he took the dark-haired girl into his arms and kissed her, thoroughly and completely. For a delirious instant the girl returned his embrace and it was like nothing he had ever known or dreamed in his life.

Then he got the surprise of his life!

For the girl suddenly and forcefully shoved him away, laughing gloatingly.

Howie staggered back and collapsed into a chair. He stared at her scornful features in silent, hurt amazement.

“You thought you could resist me,” she blazed angrily. “No man in three thousand years has done that. But your indifference has been grossly insulting. For that insult you will pay dearly.”

Howie stared at the girl, silent and stunned.

She seemed to be changing before his eyes. Her eyes were angry pools of smouldering flame and her features were hardening into a cold white mask of fury.

“W-who are you?” he quavered weakly.

“The Leanhaun Shee!” the word sounded like the hiss of a whip. “I live on love. My life is sustained by the devotion of men. Devotion that is as fatal to them as the sting of the adder. But I received one curse from my father that decrees that any man who resists me shall become my master. As long as you were indifferent to my charms I was your slave. Now, by your weakness and capitulation, you have become mine.”[2]

“That’s illegal,” Howie said, desperately clutching at straws. “Lincoln abolished all that sort of stuff. You’re—”

“Silence,” the girl commanded. “Rise.”

“N — no,” Howie objected weakly.

“Rise!”

Howie stood up. He didn’t want to, but some power other than his own trembling legs did the job for him.

“What do you want?” he stammered.

“Your love and your life,” the Leanhaun Shee answered softly, moving toward him. “The only man who resisted me as long as you, was Marc Antony. I didn’t mind that so much because he was occupied with Cleopatra and that was respectable competition even for me. But you, you sniveling worm, preferred that washed-out horror at the drug store to me. For that poor taste you will pay bitterly.”

“No,” Howie cried, backing from the creature.

She was growing taller before his eyes, it seemed. Her beauty was vanishing, and in its place a cold, ruthless passion was appearing. In the whiteness of her face her eyes were large saucers of violet flame.

“You are mine,” she whispered.

In desperation Howie’s distracted senses brought one name before his mind, forced one name through his terror-stiffened lips.

“Mazie!” he howled. “Mazie. Help me!”

As if this cry were the cue to invisible stage hands in invisible stage wings, the door to the drawing room was flung violently open and Mazie’s lumpy, belligerent figure marched onto the scene.

Nothing could have shocked Howie to a greater extent. His cry had been an instinctive, hopeless appeal and now, it was miraculously answered.

“Mazie,” he choked, “save me.”

Mazie surveyed the situation with a jealous glare.

“Like I thought,” she snapped. “The minute my back is turned this thing,” she paused to flick a contemptuous glance at the dark-haired enchantress, “tries to steal you right from my arms.” The Leanhaun Shee was as still and silent as if she were carved from cold white marble. Only her eyes were alive and they were like the windows of hell.

“Tell her to go,” she said tonelessly to Howie. “We are leaving.”

“Oh, no you ain’t,” Mazie cried shrilly. “If you think I’m lettin’ Howie slip away from me a second time you’re nuttier than a fruit cake.”

She wheeled to Howie.

“When I seen your pictures in the paper at home, telling about how you was to become a movie big-shot I suddenly realized that I was wrong about you. If I’d known that I would have gone to that show with you. I followed you to — to tell you that.”

Howie was a simple soul and in his tormented state this sounded logical and — wonderful.

“Gosh,” he said. “Would you, Mazie?”

“Sure, Honey,” Mazie cooed. “You’re just my type, Big Boy.”

Howie clasped her to his breast fervently. With her in his arms he felt as strong as Hercules — or Mark Antony.

“Come!” the Leanhaun Shee said softly.

Howie wavered. Mazie snuggled her peroxided head closer to him.

“We’re goin’ to be awful happy out here,” she sighed. “In pictures and everything.”

“You bet we are,” Howie said decisively. He felt as if he had emerged from a nightmare into a sane and sunny world again. He felt strong and sure of himself.

“Get out,” he said to the Leanhaun Shee. “Can’t you see we’d like to be alone?”

For a silent instant the Leanhaun Shee glared at him furiously. Then her expression softened. She shrugged her beautiful shoulders wearily.

“I must be slipping,” she said thoughtfully. “When Marc turned back to Cleo, there was some excuse for it. But,” she looked distastefully at the back of Mazie’s streaky blonde head, “in this case there’s no consolation for me at all. I might have known better than to choose a soda jerker, though.”

With a quick angry motion she whipped the white gown about her shoulder, stepped back and — vanished!

Howie blinked his eyes incredulously. There was no doubt of it. She had disappeared as completely as a whiff of white smoke in a breeze.

But he had no time to wonder about that.

For an impatient fist was pounding on the door and a loud voice was demanding.

“Hurry up in there. We’re waiting for you.”

Howie recognized Potterson’s voice with a chill start of terror.

The star, the Leanhaun Shee was gone. There was no one to take her place. His knowledge of the law was fuzzy, but he realized guiltily that he had signed contracts and legal documents guaranteeing the appearance of the glamorous brunette in pictures.

And she was gone. Vanished forever, he knew intuitively.

That was a relief, but what about the contracts he had signed? Panic mounted in his breast. He was out of one frying pan into another. As things stood, Potterson could throw him in the bastile and then throw the key away.

“Oooooh,” he groaned.

“What’s the matter?” Potterson yelled anxiously. “Anything wrong in there?”

It was then that the change came over Howie Lemp. His jaw hardened and his spine stiffened. For he suddenly though somewhat irrelevantly, remembered that he and Marc Antony had something in common. And no man with a kinship to a hero of Marc Antony’s caliber can be bluffed by a simple matter of pulling a fullgrown and fullblown movie star from his sleeve.

“There’s nothing wrong,” he snapped, and there was new authority in his voice. “I’ll — we’ll be right with you.”

The band was playing “California Here I Come” and the depot was a noisy spectacle of cheering humans and gay bunting. Officials and dignitaries were present in droves. Flood lights flashed over the spectacular scene, picking out faces of famous stars and directors.

It was Hollywood at its colorful, sensational best.

“Stormy” Potterson was on the bunting-bedecked improvised stage finishing the speech of introduction.

“...and so,” he boomed, “we feel that tonight we are welcoming to our midst one who will speedily fulfill all of the glorious expectations we have for her. In my opinion this girl of beauty and charm and talent will take her place in stardom’s uppermost niche. That is why it gives me such great pleasure to give to you, her very first audience, Colossal’s future Star of Stars!”

A spotlight stabbed at the platform revealing in its bright glare a heavily-veiled figure. Applause broke out from all sides of the depot. It swelled up, higher and higher, then at a signal from Potterson it faded away to a tense expectant murmur.

With lumbering grace Potterson escorted the heavily draped figure to the edge of the stage, and with a solemnly dramatic gesture drew aside the veil and cast it to the floor.

And in the garish light of the stabbing beacon, Hollywood had its first introduction to the sallow face and streaky hair of Mazie Slatter!

A blanket of incredulous silence settled over the crowd.

And then as Mazie shook her hands over her head like a conquering fighter the storm broke.

Roaring, rocking waves of laughter surged up from the crowd completely drowning out Potterson’s enraged bellow. It grew louder and more unrestrained by the second. Men clung to each other helplessly and some of them rolled to the floor, doubled up with merriment. It was a bedlam of buffoonery, an earthquake of mirth.

Off to one side of the howling, giggling crowd there was a lone, sad figure. Howie Lemp was not laughing.

It had seemed like a good idea at the time to substitute Mazie for the exotic Leanhaun Shee, but things were not working quite as he had hoped. In fact things were terrible. And, he decided as he saw Potterson’s huge figure lumbering toward him, they were destined to get much worse!

“I’ll throw you in jail,” Potterson was screaming. “I’ll have you tarred and feathered, drawn and quartered, and flung to the buzzards. No man alive can do what you’ve done to me. Made me the laughing stock of the whole industry. Where is the girl? Where is she? If you don’t produce Mazie Slatter, I’ll have you hung for kidnaping.”

“Mazie Slatter?” Howie echoed blankly. “That’s Mazie Slatter on the platform.”

“What are you trying to tell me?” Potterson was trembling like a tub of grape jelly in his rage. He whipped out papers from his inside pocket, jabbed a thick finger at the name signed to them. “It says right there in your handwriting. Mazie Slatter!”

Howie saw that Potterson was right and he realized at the same time what had happened. When he had signed the contract he had been thinking solely of Mazie and instinctively he had written her name into the document.

“And these contracts are air tight,” Potterson bellowed over the noisy roars of the crowd.

“If you’re trying to pull something, you’re out of luck. You can’t get out of these contracts.”

Howie had been thinking swiftly and surely. His spine was stiffening again. Marc Antony was coming to the surface.

Suddenly he jabbed a bony finger into Potterson fat chest.

“You mean you can’t get out of it,” he snapped. “That girl on the platform is Mazie Slatter and you’ve signed her up for seven years. There’s nothing about physical descriptions in that contract. If you want to go to court, we will prove that Mazie Slatter has been Mazie Slatter for the past twenty-eight years and that you signed her as such.”

“It’s a trick,” Potterson howled, “a gyp. I won’t stand for it. I want the girl, the dark-haired beautiful girl I saw in the drug store. Where is she? I don’t want Mazie Slatter, if that’s Mazie Slatter on the platform.”

He stared frantically over the crowd, listening to their wild hysterical laughter. He turned back to Howie shuddering.

“You hear that?” he demanded shrilly. “I’m ruined. I’ll be the biggest joke in pictures.”

“No you won’t!” Howie barked. He grabbed Potterson by both arms, jerked him around. “Listen to me. Forget about the other girl, you’ll never see her again. You’ve got something better than just a good looker.” He swung Potterson around to face the screaming, hilarious mob. “You’ve got a comedienne!” he shouted. “Look at that crowd. They love her. They’re laughing themselves sick at her, but they’re enjoying themselves like kids at a circus.”

“What about my publicity campaign?” Potterson moaned. “I’ve built this girl up as the most beautiful creature in the world. I can’t get out of that. I’m through, ruined.”

“No,” Howie said firmly, “you’re not.”

He took a deep breath. A man with will power enough to play in the same league with Marc Antony can rise to occasions.

“Let me handle things,” he said with quiet authority.

He did. With what was called a brilliant stroke of genius, he transformed Mazie Slatter into one of the greatest natural comediennes the screen has ever produced. And that was the start of Howie’s meteoric rise to the head of Colossal Films.

Now he’s happily married to Mazie. But he gets almost as much happiness from his hobby, which is collecting busts of Marc Antony. He has sixteen of them now in his office.