That is to say, a woman named Glassman, a Hungarian by birth, in age
thirty-two years, widowed and without children or known next of kin,
died in a small bungalow in a small town up in the coast range north of
Los Angeles. When the picture was done and Vida Monte took off the
barbaric trappings and the heavy paste jewels and the clinging reptilian
half gowns of the role she played, with them she took off and laid aside
the animal emotionalism, the theatricalistic fever and fervor, the
passion and the lure that professionally made up Vida Monte, movie star.
She took off even the very aspect of herself as the show shop and as
patrons of the cinemas knew her; and she put on a simple traveling gown
and she tucked her black hair up in coils beneath a severely plain hat
and she became what really she was and always had been--a quiet,
self-contained, frugal and--except for her splendid eyes, her fine
figure and her full mobile mouth--a not particularly striking-looking
woman, by name Sarah Glassman, which was, in fact, her name; and quite
alone she got on a train and she went up into the foothills to a tiny
bungalow which she had rented there for a month or so to live alone, to
do her own simple housekeeping, to sew and to read and to rest.

It was the day after the taking of the last segment of the picture that
she went away. It was four days later that she sickened of the Spanish
influenza, so called. It was not Spanish and not influenza, though by
any other name it would have been as deadly in its devastating sweep
across this country. And it was within forty-eight hours after that, on
a November afternoon, that word came to the Lobel plant that she was
dead. Down there they had not known even that she was sick.

"The doctor in that there little jay town up there by the name
Hamletsburg is the one which just gets me on the long-distance telephone
and tells me that she died maybe half an hour ago."

Mr. Lobel in his private office was telling it to Vice President Quinlan
and Secretary-Treasurer Geltfin, the only two among his associates that
his messenger had been able to find about the executive department at
the moment. He continued:

"Coming like a complete shock, you could 'a' knocked me down with a
feather, I assure you. For a minute I couldn't believe it. This doctor
he has to say it to me twice before I get it into my head.
Shocking--huh? Sudden--huh? Awful--what? You bet you! That poor girl,
for her my heart is