Cold Poison Read Online Free PDF Page A

thirties with a militantly boyish haircut and blunt, clever hands; he explained a bit diffidently that for his sins he had been sentenced to drop everything else and work here with her. Miss Withers liked him on sight—and for that reason mistrusted him, too, not being overly sure of first impressions.
    After him came two studio workmen carrying a story board still grimy from the dust of the cellar vaults, and entitled The Circus Poodle . It was hung on the wall facing her desk, replacing one of the others.
    Tip Brown looked at her quizzically. “You an old hand at this business?”
    “A very new hand, a neophyte,” Miss Withers confessed.
    “Then I guess I’d better explain,” he said. He did explain, with painstaking weariness, that each of the drawings pinned to the story board in this preliminary stage was supposed to represent a master scene in the picture, a high spot in the story. Other artists would later fill in the blanks between, which was why they were called “in-betweeners.” There were also the animators, who made the drawings that the original creators hadn’t bothered with—making things move and come alive.
    “It’s a sort of complicated business, in case you didn’t know,” Tip Brown confided. “We do it over and over again, and never know just where we’re coming out.” He slumped into an easy chair by the window, a cold pipe dangling from his mouth, eyeing Miss Withers and Talley, too, with a certain amount of puzzled wonder. But he was game and shook Tally’s paw as often as it was offered. “So we’re going to have another whirl at the Circus Poodle headache,” he said. “It’s a mystery to me why the front office wants to dig up this one; it was a good story idea but somewhere it curdled. Anyhow, here we go, you and I and the pup. Do you have to sit in my lap, dog?” He gently shoved Talley to the floor. “And we’re in Larry Reed’s old office, too. He got the quick axe, I heard.”
    “So I understood,” said the schoolteacher cautiously.
    “And now you get your name on the door, eh? You must know where the body is buried.”
    “But it isn’t even—” The schoolteacher bit her lip, realizing that the man was only speaking the vernacular, trying to put a newcomer at her ease. He had already taken out sketch pad and pencil, and was studying Talleyrand.
    “You supposed to work with me on the new story line, or are you just here with the pup?” Tip wanted to know. Miss Withers cautiously admitted that she was not quite sure what her duties at the studio would amount to. The artist wryly said that sometimes nobody was sure. He prodded the poodle gently with an expensive oxford. “Can the beast do any tricks?”
    Talleyrand, who like all his breed had been born to the grease paint and cap-and-bells of the clown, was delighted to show off his not inconsiderable repertoire. Tip Brown, somewhat visibly impressed, dashed off half a hundred sketches, pure simplified line and mass that got the big dog down on paper as no camera could ever have done; it was, Miss Withers realized as she peeked over the artist’s shoulder, the veritable essence of poodle. Evidently the young man liked to talk while he worked. “You see, ma’am, the story of The Circus Poodle is this; we start with this pampered pooch who belongs to a rich woman, elderly and eccentric, a sort of Hetty Green type….”
    The schoolteacher suddenly realized that he was now sketching her, and not the dog at all. She bristled a little, but Tip Brown went blithely on. “This old biddy with her millions, she’s practically on her deathbed and because she may pop off any minute her ever-loving nieces and nephews begin to cluster around like vultures, none of them worth a hoot in hell but all hot-pants after a legacy. She can’t stand ’em, so on a whim she makes a will leaving everything in trust to the dog, who sleeps on a featherbed and eats only caviar and porterhouse steaks.”
    “Yes, I see.