Phil Macedon, once the Star of Stars, and Pat Hobby, script writer, had collided out on Sunset near the Beverly Hills Hotel. It was five in the morning and there was liquor in the air as they argued and Sergeant¹ Gaspar took them around to the station house. Pat Hobby, a man of forty-nine, showed fight, apparently² because Phil Macedon failed to acknowledge that they were old acquaintances.

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.

Chronologically³ 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 publicity⁴, 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 glowered⁶ from his confinement⁷, still resenting Macedon’s failure to acknowledge that they had ever met before.

‘I suppose you don’t remember Coleman,’ he said sarcastically⁸. ‘Or Connie Talmadge or Bill Corker or Allan Dwan.’

Macedon lit a cigarette with the sort of timing⁹ 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.’

分享到：