Chapter Two. JOHNNY pushed the papers away from him and looked at his watch

JOHNNY pushed the papers away from him and looked at his watch. It was almost noon. He looked over at Jane. "Check on that call to Peter," he said. "I gotta talk to him before George comes in."

Jane picked up the phone on her desk and Johnny got up and stretched. He walked over to the window and looked out. It was raining slowly. He stood there at the window thinking.

George Pappas had done well in the last few years. There were nine theaters that carried his name and he was planning to add more. He had come to Johnny with a proposition that they form a partnership

to buy up ten theaters in New York City. He would do it himself, he explained in his gentle, halting manner, only he didn't have enough money to swing it. There was this man who was sick and was almost ready to sell out. They were ten good houses spread around the city. None on Broadway, but in good locations throughout the various boroughs, and it would take a quarter of a million dollars to swing it. George would put up half if Magnum would put up the other half. They would be equal partners and George would run them.

Johnny had thought it over carefully and decided to recom­mend it to Peter. Borden, Fox, and Zukor owned theaters, and Johnny could see how profitably they played their own product in them. They would give their own pictures the preferred playing times, the long week-end dates; and of course they paid themselves the top prices. It worked very profitably for them, and Johnny thought it would work as well for Magnum.

Jane's voice interrupted his thoughts. "Peter will be on in a few minutes."

He turned back to his desk and sat down to wait. He hoped Peter would not run true to form this time and give him an argument on it. He smiled to himself, remembering how Peter had fought with him six years ago when he had wanted him to go into bigger pictures. But he had been right then and he felt he was right now. Peter, however, liked to argue.

Peter didn't call it arguing, though; he said he was talking a thing out. Johnny remembered some of the things Peter had talked out with Joe. Some of the ideas for pictures that Joe wanted to make and Peter didn't. To an outsider their discussion sounded as if the two men were almost ready to come to blows. Then suddenly there would come a silence. They would look at each other sheepishly, a little embarrassed by the un­expected heat of their argument, and then one or the other would give in. It didn't matter which one, for when the picture was made they would be loud in their praise of each other. Each would protest that the other played the most important part in the making of the picture. But the results were good and Magnum's pictures were considered among the best in the industry.

He shrugged his shoulders philosophically. Well, if Peter balked, he thought, he was ready for him. He had

accumulated quite a few statistics on the profits there were to be made from the marriage of production and exhibition.

"He's on the phone now, Johnny." Jane's voice was a little excited. The wonder of these daily and sometimes twice daily coast-to-coast calls had never ceased for her.

Johnny reached for the phone. "Let him argue—I'm ready for him," he thought. He placed the receiver against his ear and leaned back in the chair. "Hello, Peter," he said.

"Hello, Johnny," came the reply. Peter's voice was thin across the wire. "How are you?"

"Fine," he answered. "And you?"

"Good," Peter said. His voice seemed to carry a little better over the phone now. It was funny how the telephone seemed to emphasize Peter's slightly German accent. "Did you see Doris?" he continued. "She get there all right?"

Johnny had almost forgotten about her. "I was in the projection room when she came in," he explained almost apologetically. "But Jane met her and she's in the hotel now changing her clothes. I'm taking her to lunch."

Peter laughed. His voice was proud. "You won't recognize her, Johnny. She's a young lady now. She's grown a lot in the last few years."

The last few times Johnny had been out at the studio he hadn't seen her. She was away at a young ladies' finishing school. He added up the years in his mind. She was eighteen now.

He laughed with Peter. "I bet I won't!" he said. "I didn't realize how time flew by."

Peter's voice grew even more proud. "You wouldn't know Mark either if you saw him. He's almost as tall as I am."

Johnny was properly astonished. "No!".

"I mean it," Peter assured him. "He grows out of his clothes faster than Esther can get them for him."

"You don't say."

"Yep," Peter said. "I wouldn't believe it if I didn't see for myself." He was silent for a moment. Then his voice became more businesslike.

"Did you get the figures for last month yet?"

Johnny picked up a sheet of paper from his desk. "Yes," he answered. He read some figures rapidly from the sheet and

concluded with the statement that they would net sixty thousand in profit for that month.

Peter's voice sounded contented. "If we keep up this way," he said, "we'll make over a million dollars this year."

"Easy," Johnny told him. "Last week's business was close to seventy thousand gross."

"Good," Peter said. "You're doing all right. Keep it up."

"We'll keep it up," Johnny answered. "I got that Wilson reel today." Now there was a note of pride in his voice.

"Terrific!" Already the idiom of the picture business had impressed itself on Peter's tongue.

"It will be in the Broadway theaters tonight," Johnny continued. "And at feature charges, too. When I told them it was rushed up by plane, they didn't give me any argument on its cost."

"I'd like to see it," Peter said.

"Your print will be on the train tonight," Johnny told him. "What's new out there?" He had to give Peter a chance to brag.

Peter spoke for several minutes and Johnny listened attentively. Magnum had completed several pictures and now they were editing the final picture of that season's series. As Peter came to the end of his discourse an idea struck him.

"I think I'll come to New York when we're all cleaned up here next month. I haven't been there for almost a year and Esther would like to spend Pesach with her relatives. The vacation would do her good."

Johnny smiled to himself. Peter said nothing about his own desire to visit the home office and see for himself just what was going on. "Do that," he urged. "You'll both enjoy it."

"I think I will," Peter said.

"Let me know when you've decided on the date and I'll make arrangements for you," Johnny told him.

"I'll do that," Peter said. He was silent for a second; when he spoke again, his voice was hesitant. "How do they feel about the war in New York?"

Johnny was reserved. He remembered Peter came from Germany. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"Joe wants to make a picture showing how the Germans are overrunning and oppressing the people in Belgium and France and I was wondering whether it would be a good thing to do."

Peter's voice was slightly embarrassed. "I didn't know if a picture like that would do business."

The sentiment here favors the Allies," Johnny answered carefully. He knew about the picture. Joe had called him to talk about it. Joe had also told him that Peter had objected to the idea. While Peter had no illusions about the land of his birth, he could not bring himself to the point of making a picture that would actually point a finger of scorn at it. But, on the other hand, word had leaked out to the trade and the newspapers that Magnum was planning to make a film about the German atrocities, and if Peter announced that the picture would not be made, he would be labeled pro-German. He pointed this out to Peter.

He could almost see Peter nodding his head as he made his points. Peter's voice was doubtful as he replied: "I guess we'll have to go ahead with it, then."

"That's about the situation," Johnny said. "It's a case of being damned if you do and damned if you don't."

Peter heaved a sigh. He knew when he was licked. "I'll tell Joe to put the script in work," he said heavily.

Johnny felt a twinge of sympathy for him. He could understand how Peter felt. He had heard him talk many times about his family and relatives in Germany. Some day he planned to go back there and visit them. "Tell Joe to take his time with it," he said quietly. "Maybe things will be settled before you're ready to start shooting."

Peter understood Johnny's consideration of his feelings. "No," he said, "there's no use stalling. We might as well get it over with." He was silent for a second, then he laughed half-ashamedly. "After all, why should I worry so much about it? I'm not a German any more. I've been an American citizen for over twenty years. I haven't seen the country since I left there more than twenty-six years ago. The people could have changed a lot since then."

"That's right," Johnny said kindly. "They must have changed since you were there."

"Sure," Peter agreed with him. But he knew better. He could still remember the Prussian officers riding disdainfully down the streets of Munich and their big black horses. The way everybody bowed to them and was afraid of them. He could still remember the conscription forays that dragged his

cousins from their families when they were only seventeen years old. That was why his father had sent him to America. He was sure they hadn't changed.

"All right Johnny," he said with a funny sort of finality. "We'll make the picture." With that statement his doubts seemed to ebb away and he felt better. "Tell Doris to call us at home tonight."

"I will," Johnny answered.

"I'll be talking to you tomorrow, then," Peter said.

"Yes," Johnny said half-absentmindedly. He was still think­ing of how Peter must feel about that picture. Suddenly he remembered. George—he had to have his answer today. "Peter!"

"Yes?"

"About those theaters of George's. He has to have an answer today."

"Oh, those." Peter's voice didn't sound interested and Johnny's heart went down into his boots. He couldn't argue with Peter after what they had just spoken about. "I talked to Joe and Esther about it and they all agree with me that it's a good idea. Tell him to go ahead with the deal."

Johnny picked up the statistics on his desk after he had hung up the phone and gave them to Jane. "File these," he said to her, "I won't need them after all." He leaned back in his chair, shaking his head slowly. You just couldn't figure the guy out. He never did what you expected.