Bride of the Rat God Read Online Free PDF Page A

back his head and laughed at the comparison. “God, the pink peanut stand! I don’t know, but I think he’s working in the prop department at Famous Players-Lassky by this time. Have you seen Grauman’s Egyptian yet?”
    “No, but I’ve been to Frank Brown’s estate in Beverly Hills, and I’m told it’s much of a muchness. I must admit—”
    “My dear Mrs. Blackstone!”
    Byron’s Corsair, the Scarlet Pimpernel, and Rupert of Hentzau rolled into one, her mother had said with a twinkle in her brown eyes. Even several sheets to the wind, his coin-perfect profile attached to a face badly lined, Charlie Sandringham still moved like a prince and spoke like Zeus from Olympus. It was more than a pity that motion pictures were silent, Norah thought. In his case it was a tragedy.
    “A pleasure indeed to see you about. Did you enjoy the premiere?”
    “As a matter of fact, I did. Chang,” she added warningly as the golden dog began an intensive sniff of Sandringham’s trouser leg. “The scene in the lobby afterward was a bit unnerving. Are all fans that persistent?”
    “What, Johnny Chinaman? He was quite mild and polite, talk of life and death nothwithstanding. You should see what some of the women do around poor Rudy Valentino. Be off, you pestiferous little brute,” he added good-naturedly to Chang Ming, and thought about it a moment, gazing hazily into the middle distance. “A remarkable face,” he said. “Not at all the type you’d expect to be making a fool of himself over a star’s autograph. Certainly not a Chinese gentleman that old, over, as they say in the Celestial Empire, a mere woman. But nothing to worry about.”
    He glanced back over his shoulder at Mindelbaum, who had excused himself at a sign from the waiter and gone to the bar, where he stood talking with a big man in a sailor’s pea jacket whose bushy white hair and beard gave a general impression of a demented Father Christmas. Kevin—or Kenneth—was there, too, beautiful as daylight in his immaculate evening clothes, deep in conversation with Doc LaRousse—Colossus’s red-haired electrician—and Hank Silver, an extremely handsome, scar-faced cowboy star whose name was actually Hans Schweibler and who could barely speak a word of English. For a moment the older man’s brows pinched together, and a look of hurt longing crossed the back of his eyes; then he turned to Norah and went on. “I was delighted to see you at the premiere at all, Mrs. Blackstone, since you always seem to be relegated to the corners with those wretched little beasts while our girl makes a disgrace of herself over the saxophone players at the Grove.”
    Norah laughed but at the same time was touched. “Having been a genuine companion, I can assure you, Mr. Sandringham, I’m not ill treated. Occasionally, when Flindy’s maid has a day off, I get press-ganged into playing mah-jongg, but they all treat me very kindly and help me arrange my tiles and don’t make me play for money.”
    “Like nursery cribbage.” He smiled.
    “ Exactly like nursery cribbage.” She chuckled at the comparison, though she felt an odd little stab of nostalgia. Alone of those she’d met in Hollywood, this aging god had played cards in her own childhood milieu of younger cousins in starched white dresses under some nanny’s watchful eye: scorched toast, drying shoes, oatmeal soap, and rain. The memory warmed even as it hurt.
    “And a good thing, too,” she added, “considering the sums that maid of Flindy’s takes off Christine. It’s kind of you to think of me.” She held up her hand to him, and his fingers touched hers. The blue eyes, looking down into hers, were gentle and concerned. “I simply don’t shine in company. Mostly I prefer to retreat with a book.”
    “Perfectly sensible of you, my dear Mrs. Blackstone. Faced with the prospect of one of Mr. Brown’s parties, I wish I, too, could retreat with a book. I feel rather in need of sustenance before the