His Training Group had begun training six weeks before Cynthia’s. The way the school was set up (before she had come to Virginia Station as a trainee, Cynthia had read Eldon Baker’s training syllabus), incoming trainees were placed under the supervision of trainees who had finished their training and were awaiting assignment. The announced purpose was to spare the training staff the mundane work of seeing to the issue of equipment, the first painful hours of calisthenics, the explanation of the rules, and so on. The real reason was so that the training staff could judge how well the “senior” trainees dealt with subordinates–to see if they could inspire cooperation. There was no place on an operational OSS team for someone who antagonized, intentionally or otherwise, the others on the team.
It. Horace G. Hammersmith had been as good and as natural a leader of his peers at Virginia Station as Greg Hammer had been a leader in the movies. Despite herself, Cynthia had come to like him. And she found that her first snap judgment of him had been almost entirely wrong. She had found Hammersmith to be really shy, rather than being arrogant. And she learned that, rather than being awed with himself as a movie star, he thought the whole movie business was rather funny.
Over the weeks, she had learned that he was an electrical engineer who had been sent to Los Angeles by the Murray Hill division of the Bell Telephone
Laboratories to supervise the installation of a recording studio at Continental Studios.
“Lana Turner,” he told her one afternoon while they were taking a five minute break on a ten-mile run, “was discovered in Schwab’s Drug Store. I was discovered having dinner with a vice president of Continental Studios, Stan Fine, at the Villa Friscati.”
“Stanley Fine?” she asked, genuinely surprised.
“Uh-huh, “he said.
“We’re not supposed to be talking about our private lives, you know,” she said.
“I know,” he said, “and I also know you know Stan.”
Then he’d looked at his watch, and the five-minute break was over, and he’d jumped to his feet and blown his whistle, and they’d resumed the ten mile run. That night, at supper, he had sat down beside her and resumed the conversation where he’d broken it off.
“Over a steak, which Bell Labs was paying for, I was explaining to Stanley why it was going to cost Continental Studios a bunch of money more than they expected to get what they wanted, when this fat little bald-headed man walked up to the table and said, in an accent you could cut with a knife, “So tell me, Stanley, who’s your friend? And vy I haven’t zeen any film?”” “Max Liebermann,” Cynthia said, laughing at Hammersmith’s apt mimicry of the founder and chairman of the board of Continental Studios.
“Right,” Hammersmith said.
“But I didn’t know who he was. So Stanley said, “Uncle Max, he’s the engineer from Bell Telephone.”” ”
“What I want to know is can he ride a horz?” Max said,” Hammersmith went on. ‘”If he can ride a horz, I tink he’s Major Porter. We god a hell uf a problem wit dat, Stanley, if I god to tell you.”” By then, Cynthia was giggling at the mimicry.
“It didn’t take much to corrupt me,” Hammersmith had gone on.
“All it took to get me before the cameras was as much by the week, on a year’s contract, as Bell Labs was paying me by the month. And luckily, I could ride a ‘horz.”” “I saw Calvary Raid,” Cynthia said.
“You were very good.”
“That’s because my only lines were “Yes, Sir,” and “Sound the Charge!”” Hammersmith said.
“Anyway, Stan and I became pals. And he got me into this, and he wrote me a letter saying if I got to Washington and desperately needed a place to stay, I should call a Miss Cynthia Chenowith and say I was a friend of his. Unless there is another Cynthia Chenowith?”
Horace G. Hammersmith had not so much as touched her hand, except in the line of duty. But neither had he for long taken his eyes off her whenever they were around each other.