The swath which R. Parke Woll was now cutting through the City of the Angels would have attracted no special notice in the twenties; in the fearful forties it rang out like laughter in church. He was easy to follow: his absence had been requested from two hotels but he had settled down into a routine where he carried his sleeping quarters in his elbow. A small but alert band of rats and weasels were furnishing him moral support in his journey — a journey which Pat caught up with at two a.m. in Conk’s Old Fashioned Bar.

Conk’s Bar was haughtier¹ than its name, boasting cigarette girls and a doorman-bouncer named Smith who had once stayed a full hour with Tarzan White. Mr Smith was an embittered² man who expressed himself by goosing the patrons on their way in and out and this was Pat’s introduction. When he recovered himself he discovered R. Parke Woll in a mixed company around a table, and sauntered up with an air of surprise.

‘Hello, good looking,’ he said to Woll. ‘Remember me — Pat Hobby?’

R. Parke Woll brought him with difficulty into focus, turning his head first on one side then on the other, letting it sink, snap up and then lash³ forward like a cobra taking a candid⁴ snapshot. Evidently it recorded for he said:

‘Pat Hobby! Sit down and wha’ll you have. Genlemen, this is Pat Hobby — best left-handed writer in Hollywood. Pat h’are you?’

Pat sat down, amid suspicious looks from a dozen predatory eyes. Was Pat an old friend sent to get the playwright⁵ home?

Pat saw this and waited until a half-hour later when he found himself alone with Woll in the washroom.

‘Listen Parke, Banizon is having you followed,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why he’s doing it. Louie at the studio tipped me off.’

‘You don’t know why?’ cried Parke. ‘Well, I know why. I got something he wants — that’s why!’

‘You owe him money?’

‘Owe him money. Why that — he owes me money! He owes me for three long, hard conferences — I outlined a whole damn picture for him.’ His vague finger tapped his forehead in several places. ‘What he wants is in here.’

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