During these weeks of waiting outside the gate the little woman beyond
the window had continued to be friendly but not encouraging to the
aspirant for screen honours late of Simsbury, Illinois. For three weeks
had he waited faithfully, always within call, struggling and sacrificing
to give the public something better and finer, and not once had he so
much as crossed the line that led to his goal.
Then on a Monday morning he found the waiting-room empty and his friend
beyond the window suffering the pangs of headache. “It gets me something
fierce right through here,” she confided to him, placing her finger-tips
to her temples.
“Ever use Eezo Pain Wafers?” he demanded in quick sympathy. She looked
at him hopefully.
“Never heard of ‘em.”
“Let me get you some.”
“You dear thing, fly to it!”
He was gone while she reached for her purse, hurrying along the
eucalyptus-lined street of choice home sites to the nearest drug store.
He was fearing someone else might bring the little woman another remedy;
even that her headache might go before he returned with his. But he
found her still suffering.
“Here they are.” He was breathless. “You take a couple now and a couple
more in half an hour if the ache hasn’t stopped.” “Bless your heart!
Come around inside.” He was through the door and in the dimly lit little
office behind that secretive partition. “And here’s something else,” he
continued. “It’s a menthol pencil and you take this cap off--see?--and
rub your forehead with it. It’ll be a help.” She swallowed two of the
magic wafers with the aid of water from the cooler, and applied the
menthol.
“You’re a dear,” she said, patting his sleeve. “I feel better already.
Sometimes these things come on me and stay all day.” She was still
applying the menthol to throbbing temples. “Say, don’t you get tired
hanging around outside there? How’d you like to go in and look around
the lot? Would you like that?”
Would he! “Thanks!” He managed it without choking, “If I wouldn’t be in
the way.”
“You won’t. Go on--amuse yourself.” The telephone rang. Still applying
the menthol she held the receiver to her ear. “No, nothing to-day, dear.
Say, Marie, did you ever take Eezo Pain Wafers for a headache? Keep
‘em in mind--they’re great. Yes, I’ll let you know if anything breaks.
Goo’-by, dear.”
Merton Gill hurried through a narrow corridor past offices where
typewriters clicked and burst from gloom into the dazzling light of the
Holden lot. He paused on the steps to reassure himself that the great
adventure was genuine. There was the full stretch of greensward of which
only an edge had shown as he looked through the gate. There were the
vast yellow-brick, glass-topped structures of which he had seen but the
ends. And there was the street up which he had looked for so many weeks,
flanked by rows of offices and dressing rooms, and lively with the
passing of many people. He drew a long breath and became calculating. He
must see everything and see it methodically. He even went now along
the asphalt walk to the corner of the office building from which he had
issued for the privilege of looking back at the gate through which he
had so often yearningly stared from across the street.
Now he was securely inside looking out. The watchman sat at the gate,
bent low over his paper. There was, it seemed, more than one way to get
by him. People might have headaches almost any time. He wondered if his
friend the casting director were subject to them. He must carry a box of
the Eezo wafers.
He strolled down the street between the rows of offices and the immense
covered stages. Actors in costume entered two of these and through their
open doors he could see into their shadowy interiors. He would venture
there later. Just now he wished to see the outside of things. He
contrived a pace not too swift but business-like enough to convey the
impression that he was rightfully walking this forbidden street. He
seemed to be going some place where it was of the utmost importance that
he should be, and yet to have started so early that there was no need
for haste.
He sounded the far end of that long street visible from outside the
gate, discovering its excitements to wane gently into mere blacksmith
and carpenter shops. He retraced his steps, this time ignoring the long
row of offices for the opposite line of stages. From one dark interior
came the slow, dulled strains of an orchestra and from another shots
rang out. He met or passed strangely attired people, bandits, priests,
choir boys, gentlemen in evening dress with blue-black eyebrows and
careful hair. And he observed many beautiful young women, variously
attired, hurrying to or from the stages. One lovely thing was in bridal
dress of dazzling white, a veil of lace floating from her blonde head,
her long train held up by a coloured maid. She chatted amiably, as she
crossed the street, with an evil-looking Mexican in a silver-corded
hat--a veritable Snake de Vasquez.
But the stages could wait. He must see more streets. Again reaching the
office that had been his secret gateway to these delights, he turned to
the right, still with the air of having business at a certain spot to
which there was really no need for him to hurry. There were fewer people
this way, and presently, as if by magic carpet, he had left all that
sunlight and glitter and cheerful noise and stood alone in the shadowy,
narrow street of a frontier town. There was no bustle here, only an
intense stillness. The street was deserted, the shop doors closed. There
was a ghostlike, chilling effect that left him uneasy. He called upon
himself to remember that he was not actually in a remote and desolate
frontier town from which the inhabitants had fled; that back of him
but a few steps was abounding life, that outside was the prosaic world
passing and repassing a gate hard to enter. He whistled the fragment
of a tune and went farther along this street of uncanny silence and
vacancy, noting, as he went, the signs on the shop windows. There was
the Busy Bee Restaurant, Jim’s Place, the Hotel Renown, the Last Dollar
Dance Hall, Hank’s Pool Room. Upon one window was painted the terse
announcement, “Joe--Buy or Sell.” The Happy Days Bar adjoined the
General Store.
He moved rapidly through this street. It was no place to linger. At the
lower end it gave insanely upon a row of three-story brownstone houses
which any picture patron would recognize as being wholly of New York.
There were the imposing steps, the double-doored entrances, the broad
windows, the massive lines of the whole. And beyond this he came to a
many-coloured little street out of Bagdad, overhung with gay balconies,
vivacious with spindled towers and minarets, and small reticent windows,
out of which veiled ladies would glance. And all was still with the
stillness of utter desertion.
Then he explored farther and felt curiously disappointed at finding
that these structures were to real houses what a dicky is to a sincere,
genuine shirt. They were pretentiously false.
One had but to step behind them to discover them as poor shells.
Their backs were jutting beams carried but little beyond the fronts and
their stout-appearing walls were revealed to be fragile contrivances of
button-lath and thin plaster. The ghost quality departed from them with
this discovery.
He left these cities of silence and came upon an open space and people.
They were grouped before a railway station, a small red structure beside
a line of railway track. At one end in black letters, on a narrow white
board, was the name Boomerville.
The people were plainly Western: a dozen cowboys, a sprinkling of bluff
ranchers and their families. An absorbed young man in cap and khaki and
puttees came from a distant group surrounding a camera and readjusted
the line of these people. He placed them to his liking. A wagon drawn
by two horses was driven up and a rancher helped a woman and girl to
alight. The girl was at once sought out by the cowboys. They shook hands
warmly under megaphoned directions from a man back by the camera. The
rancher and his wife mingled with the group. The girl was drawn aside
by one of the cowboys. He had a nobler presence than the others; he was
handsome and his accoutrements seemed more expensive. They looked into
each other’s eyes a long time, apparently pledging an eternal fidelity.
One gathered that there would have been an embrace but for the cowboy’s
watchful companions. They must say good-by with a mere handshake,
though this was a slow, trembling, long-drawn clasp while they steadily
regarded each other, and a second camera was brought to record it at a
distance of six feet. Merton Gill thrilled with the knowledge that he
was beholding his first close-up. His long study of the photo-drama
enabled him to divine that the rancher’s daughter was going to Vassar
College to be educated, but that, although returning a year later a
poised woman of the world, she would still long for the handsome cowboy
who would marry her and run the Bar-X ranch. The scene was done. The
camera would next be turned upon a real train at some real station,
while the girl, with a final look at her lover, entered a real car,
which the camera would show moving off to Vassar College. Thus conveying
to millions of delighted spectators the impression that a real train had
steamed out of the station, which was merely an imitation of one, on the
Holden lot. The watcher passed on. He could hear the cheerful drone of a
sawmill where logs were being cut. He followed the sound and came to its
source. The saw was at the end of an oblong pool in which logs floated.
Workmen were poling these toward the saw. On a raised platform at one
side was a camera and a man who gave directions through a megaphone; a
neighbouring platform held a second camera. A beautiful young girl in a
print dress and her thick hair in a braid came bringing his dinner in a
tin pail to the handsomest of the actors. He laid down his pike-pole and
took both the girl’s hands in his as he received the pail. One of the
other workmen, a hulking brute with an evil face, scowled darkly at this
encounter and a moment later had insulted the beautiful young girl.
But the first actor felled him with a blow. He came up from this,
crouchingly, and the fight was on. Merton was excited by this fight,
even though he was in no doubt as to which actor would win it. They
fought hard, and for a time it appeared that the handsome actor must
lose, for the bully who had insulted the girl was a man of great
strength, but the science of the other told. It was the first fight
Merton had ever witnessed. He thought these men must really be hating
each other, so bitter were their expressions. The battle grew fiercer.
It was splendid. Then, at the shrill note of a whistle, the panting
combatants fell apart.
“Rotten!” said an annoyed voice through the megaphone. “Can’t you boys
give me a little action? Jazz it, jazz it! Think it’s a love scene? Go
to it, now--plenty of jazz--understand what I mean?” He turned to the
camera man beside him. “Ed, you turn ten--we got to get some speed some
way. Jack”--to the other camera man--“you stay on twelve. All ready! Get
some life into it, now, and Lafe”--this to the handsome actor--“don’t
keep trying to hold your front to the machine. We’ll get you all right.
Ready, now. Camera!”
Again the fight was on. It went to a bitter finish in which the
vanquished bully was sent with a powerful blow backward into the water,
while the beautiful young girl ran to the victor and nestled in the
protection of his strong arms.
Merton Gill passed on. This was the real thing. He would have a lot to
tell Tessie Kearns in his next letter. Beyond the sawmill he came to
an immense wooden structure like a cradle on huge rockers supported by
scaffolding. From the ground he could make nothing of it, but a ladder
led to the top. An hour on the Holden lot had made him bold. He mounted
the ladder and stood on the deck of what he saw was a sea-going yacht.
Three important-looking men were surveying the deckhouse forward. They
glanced at the newcomer but with a cheering absence of curiosity or
even of interest. He sauntered past them with a polite but not-too-keen
interest. The yacht would be an expensive one. The deck fittings were
elaborate. A glance into the captain’s cabin revealed it to be fully
furnished, with a chart and a sextant on the mahogany desk.
“Where’s the bedding for this stateroom?” asked one of the men.
“I got a prop-rustler after it,” one of the others informed him.
They strolled aft and paused by an iron standard ingeniously swung from
the deck.
“That’s Burke’s idea,” said one of the men. “I hadn’t thought about a
steady support for the camera; of course if we stood it on deck it would
rock when the ship rocked and we’d get no motion. So Burke figures this
out. The camera is on here and swings by that weight so it’s always
straight and the rocking registers. Pretty neat, what?”
“That was nothing to think of” said one of the other men, in apparent
disparagement. “I thought of it myself the minute I saw it.” The other
two grinned at this, though Merton Gill, standing by, saw nothing to
laugh at. He thought the speaker was pretty cheeky; for of course any
one could think of this device after seeing it. He paused for a final
survey of his surroundings from this elevation. He could see the real
falseness of the sawmill he had just left, he could also look into the
exposed rear of the railway station, and could observe beyond it
the exposed skeleton of that New York street. He was surrounded by
mockeries.
He clambered down the ladder and sauntered back to the street of
offices. He was by this time confident that no one was going to ask him
what right he had in there. Now, too, he became conscious of hunger
and at the same moment caught the sign “Cafeteria” over a neat building
hitherto unnoticed. People were entering this, many of them in costume.
He went idly toward the door, glanced up, looked at his watch, and
became, to any one curious about him, a man who had that moment decided
he might as well have a little food. He opened the screen door of the
cafeteria, half expecting it to prove one of those structures equipped
only with a front. But the cafeteria was practicable. The floor was
crowded with little square polished tables at which many people were
eating. A railing along the side of the room made a passage to the back
where food was served from a counter to the proffered tray. He fell into
line. No one had asked him how he dared try to eat with real actors
and actresses and apparently no one was going to. Toward the end of the
passage was a table holding trays and napkins the latter wrapped about
an equipment of cutlery. He took his tray and received at the counter
the foods he designated. He went through this ordeal with difficulty
because it was not easy to keep from staring about at other patrons.
Constantly he was detecting some remembered face. But at last, with his
laden tray he reached a vacant table near the centre of the room and
took his seat. He absently arranged the food before him. He could stare
at leisure now. All about him were the strongly marked faces of the film
people, heavy with makeup, interspersed with hungry civilians, who might
be producers, directors, camera men, or mere artisans, for the democracy
of the cafeteria seemed ideal.
At the table ahead of his he recognized the man who had been annoyed one
day by the silly question of the Montague girl. They had said he was
a very important director. He still looked important and intensely
serious. He was a short, very plump man, with pale cheeks under dark
brows, and troubled looking gray hair. He was very seriously explaining
something to the man who sat with him and whom he addressed as Governor,
a merry-looking person with a stubby gray mustache and little hair, who
seemed not too attentive to the director.
“You see, Governor, it’s this way: the party is lost on the
desert--understand what I mean--and Kempton Ward and the girl stumble
into this deserted tomb just at nightfall. Now here’s where the big kick
comes--”
Merton Gill ceased to listen for there now halted at his table, bearing
a laden tray, none other than the Montague girl, she of the slangy
talk and the regrettably free manner. She put down her tray and seated
herself before it. She had not asked permission of the table’s other
occupant, indeed she had not even glanced at him, for cafeteria
etiquette is not rigorous. He saw that she was heavily made up and in
the costume of a gypsy, he thought, a short vivid skirt, a gay waist,
heavy gold hoops in her ears, and dark hair massed about her small head.
He remembered that this would not be her own hair. She fell at once to
her food. The men at the next table glanced at her, the director without
cordiality; but the other man smiled upon her cheerfully.
“Hello, Flips! How’s the girl?”
“Everything’s jake with me, Governor. How’s things over at your shop?”
“So, so. I see you’re working.”
“Only for two days. I’m just atmosphere in this piece. I got some real
stuff coming along pretty soon for Baxter. Got to climb down ten stories
of a hotel elevator cable, and ride a brake-beam and be pushed off a
cliff and thrown to the lions, and a few other little things.”
“That’s good, Flips. Come in and see me some time. Have a little chat.
Ma working?”
“Yeah--got a character bit with Charlotte King in Her Other Husband.”
“Glad to hear it. How’s Pa Montague?”
“Pa’s in bed. They’ve signed him for Camillia of the Cumberlands,
providing he raises a brush, and just now it ain’t long enough for
whiskers and too long for anything else, so he’s putterin’ around with
his new still.”
“Well, drop over sometime, Flips, I’m keeping you in mind.”
“Thanks, Governor. Say--” Merton glanced up in time to see her wink
broadly at the man, and look toward his companion who still seriously
made notes on the back of an envelope. The man’s face melted to a grin
which he quickly erased. The girl began again:
“Mr. Henshaw--could you give me just a moment, Mr. Henshaw?” The serious
director looked up in quite frank annoyance.
“Yes, yes, what is it, Miss Montague?”
“Well, listen, Mr. Henshaw, I got a great idea for a story, and I was
thinking who to take it to and I thought of this one and I thought
of that one, and I asked my friends, and they all say take it to Mr.
Henshaw, because if a story has any merit he’s the one director on
the lot that can detect it and get every bit of value out of it, so I
thought--but of course if you’re busy just now--”
The director thawed ever so slightly. “Of course, my girl, I’m busy--but
then I’m always busy. They run me to death here. Still, it was very kind
of your friends, and of course--”
“Thank you, Mr. Henshaw.” She clasped her hands to her breast and gazed
raptly into the face of her coy listener.
“Of course I’ll have to have help on the details, but it starts off
kind of like this. You see I’m a Hawaiian princess--” She paused, gazing
aloft.
“Yes, yes, Miss Montague--an Hawaiian princess. Go on, go on!”
“Oh, excuse me; I was thinking how I’d dress her for the last spool in
the big fire scene. Well, anyway, I’m this Hawaiian princess, and my
father, old King Mauna Loa, dies and leaves me twenty-one thousand
volcanoes and a billiard cue--”
Mr. Henshaw blinked rapidly at this. For a moment he was dazed. “A
billiard cue, did you say?” he demanded blankly.
“Yes. And every morning I have to go out and ram it down the volcanoes
to see are they all right--and--”
“Tush, tush!” interrupted Mr. Henshaw scowling upon the playwright and
fell again to his envelope, pretending thereafter to ignore her.
The girl seemed to be unaware that she had lost his attention. “And you
see the villain is very wealthy; he owns the largest ukelele factory in
the islands, and he tries to get me in his power, but he’s foiled by my
fiance, a young native by the name of Herman Schwarz, who has invented
a folding ukelele, so the villain gets his hired Hawaiian orchestra to
shove Herman down one of the volcanoes and me down another, but I have
the key around my neck, which Father put there when I was a babe and
made me swear always to wear it, even in the bath-tub, so I let myself
out and unlock the other one and let Herman out and the orchestra
discovers us and chases us over the cliff, and then along comes my old
nurse who is now running a cigar store in San Pedro and she--” Here she
affected to discover that Mr. Henshaw no longer listened.
“Why, Mr. Henshaw’s gone!” she exclaimed dramatically. “Boy, boy, page
Mr. Henshaw.” Mr. Henshaw remained oblivious.
“Oh, well, of course I might have expected you wouldn’t have time to
listen to my poor little plot. Of course I know it’s crude, but it did
seem to me that something might be made out of it.” She resumed her
food. Mr. Henshaw’s companion here winked at her and was seen to be
shaking with emotion. Merton Gill could not believe it to be laughter,
for he had seen nothing to laugh at. A busy man had been bothered by a
silly girl who thought she had the plot for a photodrama, and even he,
Merton Gill, could have told her that her plot was impossibly wild and
inconsequent. If she were going into that branch of the art she ought to
take lessons, the way Tessie Kearns did. She now looked so mournful that
he was almost moved to tell her this, but her eyes caught his at
that moment and in them was a light so curious, so alive with hidden
meanings, so eloquent of some iron restraint she put upon her own
emotions, that he became confused and turned his gaze from hers almost
with the rebuking glare of Henshaw. She glanced quickly at him again,
studying his face for the first time. There had been such a queer look
in this young man’s eyes; she understood most looks, but not that one.
Henshaw was treating the late interruption as if it had not been. “You
see, Governor, the way we got the script now, they’re in this tomb alone
for the night--understand what I mean--and that’s where the kick comes
for the audience. They know he’s a strong young fellow and she’s a
beautiful girl and absolutely in his power--see what I mean?--but he’s
a gentleman through and through and never lays a hand on her. Get that?
Then later along comes this Ben Ali Ahab--”
The Montague girl glanced again at the face of the strange young man
whose eyes had held a new expression for her, but she and Mr. Henshaw
and the so-called governor and all those other diners who rattled thick
crockery and talked unendingly had ceased to exist for Merton Gill.
A dozen tables down the room and nearer the door sat none other than
Beulah Baxter. Alone at her table, she gazed raptly aloft, meditating
perhaps some daring new feat. Merton Gill stared, entranced, frozen.
The Montague girl perfectly understood this look and traced it to its
object. Then she surveyed Merton Gill again with something faintly like
pity in her shrewd eyes. He was still staring, still rapt.
Beulah Baxter ceased to look aloft. She daintily reached for a wooden
toothpick from the bowl before her and arose to pay her check at the
near-by counter. Merton Gill arose at the same moment and stumbled a
blind way through the intervening tables. When he reached the counter
Miss Baxter was passing through the door. He was about to follow her
when a cool but cynical voice from the counter said, “Hey, Bill--ain’t
you fergittin’ somepin’.”
He looked for the check for his meal; it should have been in one hand or
the other. But it was in neither. He must have left it back on his tray.
Now he must return for it. He went as quickly as he could. The Montague
girl was holding it up as he approached. “Here’s the little joker, Kid,”
she said kindly.
“Thanks!” said Merton. He said it haughtily, not meaning to be haughty,
but he was embarrassed and also fearful that Beulah Baxter would be
lost. “Exit limping,” murmured the girl as he turned away. He hurried
again to the door, paid the check and was outside. Miss Baxter was not
to be seen. His forgetfulness about the check had lost her to him. He
had meant to follow, to find the place where she was working, and look
and look and look! Now he had lost her. But she might be on one of
those stages within the big barns. Perhaps the day was not yet lost.
He crossed the street, forgetting to saunter, and ventured within the
cavernous gloom beyond an open door. He stood for a moment, his vision
dulled by the dusk. Presently he saw that he faced a wall of canvas
backing. Beyond this were low voices and the sound of people moving. He
went forward to a break in the canvas wall and at the same moment there
was a metallic jar and light flooded the enclosure. From somewhere
outside came music, principally the low, leisurely moan of a ‘cello. A
beautiful woman in evening dress was with suppressed emotion kneeling at
the bedside of a sleeping child. At the doorway stood a dark, handsome
gentleman in evening dress, regarding her with a cynical smile. The
woman seemed to bid the child farewell, and arose with hands to her
breast and quivering lips. The still-smiling gentleman awaited her. When
she came to him, glancing backward to the sleeping child, he threw
about her an elaborate fur cloak and drew her to him, his cynical smile
changing to one of deceitful tenderness. The woman still glanced back at
the child, but permitted herself to be drawn through the doorway by
the insistent gentleman. From a door the other side of the bed came a
kind-faced nurse. She looked first at the little one then advanced to
stare after the departing couple. She raised her hands tragically and
her face became set in a mask of sorrow and despair. She clasped the
hands desperately.
Merton Gill saw his nurse to be the Montague mother. “All right,” said
an authoritative voice. Mrs. Montague relaxed her features and withdrew,
while an unkempt youth came to stand in front of the still-grinding
camera and held before it a placard on which were numbers. The camera
stopped, the youth with the placard vanished. “Save it,” called another
voice, and with another metallic jar the flood of light was turned off.
The ‘cello ceased its moan in the middle of a bar.
The watcher recalled some of the girl’s chat. Her mother had a character
bit in Her Other Husband. This would be it, one of those moving
tragedies not unfamiliar to the screen enthusiast. The beautiful but
misguided wife had been saying good-by to her little one and was leaving
her beautiful home at the solicitation of the false friend in evening
dress--forgetting all in one mad moment. The watcher was a tried expert,
and like the trained faunal naturalist could determine a species from
the shrewd examination of one bone of a photoplay. He knew that the wife
had been ignored by a husband who permitted his vast business interests
to engross his whole attention, leaving the wife to seek solace in
questionable quarters. He knew that the shocked but faithful nurse
would presently discover the little one to be suffering from a dangerous
fever; that a hastily summoned physician would shake his head and
declare in legible words, “Naught but a mother’s love can win that tiny
soul back from the brink of Eternity.” The father would overhear this,
and would see it all then: how his selfish absorption in Wall Street had
driven his wife to another. He would pursue her, would find her ere yet
it was too late. He would discover that her better nature had already
prevailed and that she had started back without being sent for. They
would kneel side by side, hand in hand, at the bedside of the little
one, who would recover and smile and prattle, and together they would
face an untroubled future.
This was all thrilling to Merton Gill; but Beulah Baxter was not here,
her plays being clean and wholesome things of the great outdoors. Far
down the great enclosure was another wall of canvas backing, a flood of
light above it and animated voices from within. He stood again to watch.
But this drama seemed to have been suspended. The room exposed was a
bedroom with an open window facing an open door; the actors and the
mechanical staff as well were busily hurling knives at various walls.
They were earnest and absorbed in this curious pursuit. Sometimes
they made the knife penetrate the wall, oftener it merely struck and
clattered to the floor. Five knives at once were being hurled by five
enthusiasts, while a harried-looking director watched and criticised.
“You’re a clumsy bunch,” he announced at last. “It’s a simple thing to
do, isn’t it?” The knife-throwers redoubled their efforts, but they did
not find it a simple thing to do.
“Let me try it, Mr. Burke.” It was the Montague girl still in her gipsy
costume. She had been standing quietly in the shadow observing the
ineffective practice.
“Hello, Flips! Sure, you can try it. Show these boys something good,
now. Here, Al, give Miss Montague that stickeree of yours.” Al seemed
glad to relinquish the weapon. Miss Montague hefted it, and looked
doubtful.
“It ain’t balanced right,” she declared. “Haven’t you got one with a
heavier handle?”
“Fair enough,” said the director. “Hey, Pickles, let her try that one
you got.” Pickles, too, was not unwilling to oblige.
“That’s better,” said the girl. “It’s balanced right.” Taking the blade
by its point between thumb and forefinger she sent it with a quick flick
of the wrist into the wall a dozen feet away. It hung there quivering.
“There! That’s what we want. It’s got to be quivering when Jack shoots
at Ramon who threw it at him as he leaps through the window. Try it
again, Flips.” The girl obliged and bowed impressively to the applause.
“Now come here and try it through the doorway.” He led her around the
set. “Now stand here and see can you put it into the wall just to the
right of the window. Good! Some little knife-thrower, I’ll say. Now try
it once with Jack coming through. Get set, Jack.”
Jack made his way to the window through which he was to leap. He paused
there to look in with some concern. “Say, Mr. Burke, will you please
make sure she understands? She isn’t to let go of that thing until I’m
in and crouched down ready to shoot--understand what I mean? I don’t
want to get nicked nor nothing.”
“All right, all right! She understands.”
Jack leaped through the window to a crouch, weapon in hand. The knife
quivered in the wall above him as he shot.
“Fine and dandy. Some class, I’ll say. All right, Jack. Get back. We’ll
gun this little scene right here and now. All ready, Jack, all ready
Miss Montague--camera!--one, two, three--come in, Jack.” Again the knife
quivered in the wall above his head even while he crouched to shoot at
the treacherous Mexican who had thrown it.
“Good work, Flips. Thanks a whole lot. We’ll do as much for you some
time.”
“You’re entirely welcome, Mr. Burke. No trouble to oblige. How you
coming?”
“Coming good. This thing’s going to be a knockout. I bet it’ll gross a
million. Nearly done, too, except for some chase stuff up in the hills.
I’ll do that next week. What you doing?”
“Oh, everything’s jake with me. I’m over on Number Four--Toys of
Destiny--putting a little pep into the mob stuff. Laid out for two
hours, waiting for something--I don’t know what.”
Merton Gill passed on. He confessed now to a reluctant admiration for
the Montague girl. She could surely throw a knife. He must practise that
himself sometime. He might have stayed to see more of this drama but he
was afraid the girl would break out into more of her nonsense. He was
aware that she swept him with her eyes as he turned away but he
evaded her glance. She was not a person, he thought, that one ought to
encourage.
He emerged from the great building and crossed an alley to another of
like size. Down toward its middle was the usual wall of canvas with
half-a-dozen men about the opening at one corner. A curious whirring
noise came from within. He became an inconspicuous unit of the group and
gazed in. The lights were on, revealing a long table elaborately set
as for a banquet, but the guests who stood about gave him instant
uneasiness. They were in the grossest caricatures of evening dress, both
men and women, and they were not beautiful. The gowns of the women
were grotesque and the men were lawless appearing, either as to hair or
beards or both. He divined the dreadful thing he was stumbling upon
even before he noted the sign in large letters on the back of a folding
chair: “Jeff Baird’s Buckeye Comedies.” These were the buffoons who with
their coarse pantomime, their heavy horse-play, did so much to debase
a great art. There, even at his side, was the arch offender, none other
than Jeff Baird himself, the man whose regrettable sense of so-called
humour led him to make these low appeals to the witless. And even as
he looked the cross-eyed man entered the scene. Garbed in the weirdly
misfitting clothes of a waiter, holding aloft a loaded tray of dishes,
he entered on roller skates, to halt before Baird with his uplifted tray
at a precarious balance.
“All right, that’s better,” said Baird. “And, Gertie, listen: don’t
throw the chair in front of him. That’s out. Now we’ll have the entrance
again. You other boys on the rollers, there--” Three other basely comic
waiters on roller skates came to attention.
“Follow him in and pile up on him when he makes the grand spill--see
what I mean? Get your trays loaded now and get off. Now you other
people, take your seats. No, no, Annie, you’re at the head, I told you.
Tom, you’re at the foot and start the rough-house when you get the tray
in the neck. Now, all set.”
Merton Gill was about to leave this distressing scene but was held in
spite of himself by the voice of a newcomer.
“Hello, Jeff! Atta boy!”
He knew without turning that the Montague girl was again at his elbow.
He wondered if she could be following him.
“Hello, Flips! How’s the kid?” The producer had turned cordially to her.
“Just in time for the breakaway stuff. See how you like it.”
“What’s the big idea?”
“Swell reception at the Maison de Glue, with the waiters on roller
skates in honour of rich Uncle Rollo Glue. The head waiter starts the
fight by doing a fall with his tray. Tom gets the tray in the neck and
soaks the nearest man--banquet goes flooey. Then we go into the chase
stuff.”
“Which is Uncle Rollo?”
“That’s him at the table, with the herbaceous border under his chin.”
“Is he in the fight?”
“I think so. I was going to rehearse it once more to see if I could get
a better idea. Near as I can see now, everybody takes a crack at him.”
“Well, maybe.” Montague girl seemed to be considering. “Say, how about
this, Jeff? He’s awful hungry, see, and he’s begun to eat the celery and
everything he can reach, and when the mix-up starts he just eats on and
pays no attention to it. Never even looks up, see what I mean? The fight
spreads the whole length of the table; right around Rollo half-a-dozen
murders are going on and he just eats and pays no attention. And he’s
still eating when they’re all down and out, and don’t know a thing till
Charlie or someone crowns him with the punch-bowl. How about it? Ain’t
there a laugh in that?” Baird had listened respectfully and now patted
the girl on a shoulder.
“Good work, Kid! That’s a gag, all right. The little bean’s sparking
on all six, ain’t it? Drop around again. We need folks like you.
Now, listen, Rollo--you there, Rollo, come here and get this. Now,
listen--when the fight begins--”
Merton Gill turned decisively away. Such coarse foolery as this was
too remote from Beulah Baxter who, somewhere on that lot, was doing
something really, as her interview had put it, distinctive and worth
while.
He lingered only to hear the last of Baird’s instructions to Rollo and
the absurd guests, finding some sinister fascination in the man’s talk.
Baird then turned to the girl, who had also started off.
“Hang around, Flips. Why the rush?”
“Got to beat it over to Number Four.”
“Got anything good there?”
“Nothing that will get me any billing. Been waiting two hours now just
to look frenzied in a mob.”
“Well, say, come around and see me some time.”
“All right, Jeff. Of course I’m pretty busy. When I ain’t working I’ve
got to think about my art.”
“No, this is on the level. Listen, now, sister, I got another two reeler
to pull off after this one, then I’m goin’ to do something new, see? Got
a big idea. Probably something for you in it. Drop in t’ the office and
talk it over. Come in some time next week. ‘F I ain’t there I’ll be on
the lot some place. Don’t forget, now.”
Merton Gill, some distance from the Buckeye set, waited to note what
direction the Montague girl would take. She broke away presently,
glanced brazenly in his direction, and tripped lightly out the nearest
exit. He went swiftly to one at the far end of the building, and was
again in the exciting street. But the afternoon was drawing in and the
street had lost much of its vivacity. It would surely be too late for
any glimpse of his heroine. And his mind was already cluttered with
impressions from his day’s adventure. He went out through the office,
meaning to thank the casting director for the great favour she had shown
him, but she was gone. He hoped the headache had not driven her home.
If she were to suffer again he hoped it would be some morning. He would
have the Eezo wafers in one pocket and a menthol pencil in the other.
And she would again extend to him the freedom of that wonderful city.
In his room that night he tried to smooth out the jumble in his dazed
mind. Those people seemed to say so many things they considered funny
but that were not really funny to any one else. And moving-picture plays
were always waiting for something, with the bored actors lounging about
in idle apathy. Still in his ears sounded the drone of the sawmill and
the deep purr of the lights when they were put on. That was a funny
thing. When they wanted the lights on they said “Kick it,” and when they
wanted the lights off they said “Save it!” And why did a boy come out
after every scene and hold up a placard with numbers on it before the
camera? That placard had never shown in any picture he had seen. And
that queer Montague girl, always turning up when you thought you had
got rid of her. Still, she had thrown that knife pretty well. You had to
give her credit for that. But she couldn’t be much of an actress, even
if she had spoken of acting with Miss Baxter, of climbing down cables
with her and falling off cliffs. Probably she was boasting, because he
had never seen any one but Miss Baxter do these things in her pictures.
Probably she had some very minor part. Anyway, it was certain she
couldn’t be much of an actress because she had almost promised to act
in those terrible Buckeye comedies. And of course no one with any real
ambition or capacity could consider such a thing--descending to rough
horse-play for the amusement of the coarser element among screen
patrons.
But there was one impression from the day’s whirl that remained clear
and radiant: He had looked at the veritable face of his heroine. He
began his letter to Tessie Kearns. “At last I have seen Miss Baxter face
to face. There was no doubt about its being her. You would have known
her at once. And how beautiful she is! She was looking up and seemed
inspired, probably thinking about her part. She reminded me of that
beautiful picture of St. Cecelia playing on the piano....”