He never knew what condition he would find her in-she might be in a vicious state or a comatose one. Whatever the case, countless hours of hideous suffering for both of them followed. Once he flew into a rage and dumped all of her liquor into the swimming pool-of course, since it had no filtration system, the pool had probably only benefited from the alcohol's sterilizing effect.

He had never wished to make Emma unhappy. But he could not overlook how horribly unhappy she had made him; she treated her pet dog more kindly. Ten years before he left her, Emma had said to him mat she no longer liked him-for some reason, those simple words had inflicted a wound that had never heated. Many people-friends and strangers alike, their appetites for the misfortunes of others fed by lice tike Walter Winchell and other low-life gossipmongers-assumed his relationship with Florence preceded, even initiated, the breakup with Emma.

It was true he'd known Florence for some years, had admired her at a distance (she was the wife of a Mend, the producer of his ill-fated Tarzan movie, which he'd backed as an antidote to the unfaithful MGM versions of his work). He'd felt unrequited schoolboy pangs of love for her, before she even knew he existed.

With her fair, curly hair, and her apple-cheeked wholesome beauty, Florence had been a popular child actress in the silent-movie days, a second Mary Pick-ford with a series of two-reelers for Mack Sennett leading to starring roles in features. When talkies came in, she had begun to raise a family with her producer husband, Ashton Dearholt, that good friend of Burroughs. But Burroughs and Florence had been thrown together when his own separation was quickly followed by Florence's husband throwing her over-for an actress he had met on the Guatemala film shoot of the ill-starred Tarzan picture! Hell, even Burroughs wouldn't have dared put together a plot so contrived-but, like two lost souls, he and Florence had drifted together.