The savings had been opportunely replenished. In two days he had
accumulated a sum for which, back in Simsbury, he would have had to toil
a week. Yet there was to be said in favour of the Simsbury position that
it steadily endured. Each week brought its fifteen dollars, pittance
though it might be, while the art of the silver screen was capricious
in its rewards, not to say jumpy. Never, for weeks at a stretch, had
Gashwiler said with a tired smile, “Nothing to-day--sorry!” He might
have been a grouch and given to unreasonable nagging, but with him there
was always a very definite something to-day which he would specify,
in short words if the occasion seemed to demand. There was not only a
definite something every day but a definite if not considerable sum of
money to be paid over every Saturday night, and in the meantime three
very definite and quite satisfying meals to be freely partaken of at
stated hours each day.
The leisure enforced by truly creative screen art was often occupied
now with really moving pictures of Metta Judson placing practicable food
upon the Gashwiler table. This had been no table in a gilded Broadway
resort, holding empty coffee cups and half empty wine glasses, passed
and repassed by apparently busy waiters with laden trays who never
left anything of a practicable nature. Doubtless the set would not have
appealed to Henshaw. He would never have been moved to take close-ups,
even for mere flashes, of those who ate this food. And yet, more and
more as the days went by, this old-time film would unreel itself before
the eager eyes of Merton Gill. Often now it thrilled him as might have
an installment of The Hazards of Hortense, for the food of his favourite
pharmacy was beginning to pall and Metta Judson, though giving her
shallow mind to base village gossip, was a good cook. She became the
adored heroine of an apparently endless serial to be entitled The
Hazards of Clifford Armytage, in which the hero had tragically little to
do but sit upon a bench and wait while tempting repasts were served.
Sometimes on the little bench around the eucalyptus tree he would run
an entire five-thousand-foot program feature, beginning with the Sunday
midday dinner of roast chicken, and abounding in tense dramatic moments
such as corned-beef and cabbage on Tuesday night, and corned-beef hash
on Wednesday morning. He would pause to take superb closeups of these,
the corned beef on its spreading platter hemmed about with boiled
potatoes and turnips and cabbage, and the corned beef hash with its
richly browned surface. The thrilling climax would be the roast of beef
on Saturday night, with close-ups taken in the very eye of the camera,
of the mashed potatoes and the apple pie drenched with cream. And there
were close-ups of Metta Judson, who had never seriously contemplated
a screen career, placing upon the table a tower of steaming hot cakes,
while a platter of small sausages loomed eloquently in the foreground.
With eyes closed he would run this film again and again, cutting here,
rearranging sequences, adding trims from suddenly remembered meals of
the dead past, devising more intimate close-ups, such as the one
of Metta withdrawing pies from the oven or smoothing hot chocolate
caressingly over the top of a giant cake, or broiling chops, or saying
in a large-lettered subtitle--artistically decorated with cooked
foods--“How about some hot coffee, Merton?”
He became an able producer of this drama. He devised a hundred
sympathetic little touches that Henshaw would probably never have
thought of. He used footage on a mere platter of steak that another
director might have ignored utterly. He made it gripping--the supreme
heart-interest drama of his season a big thing done in a big way, and
yet censor-proof. Not even the white-souled censors of the great state
of Pennsylvania could have outlawed its realism, brutal though this was
in such great moments as when Gashwiler carved the roast beef. So able
was his artistry that Merton’s nostrils would sometimes betray him--he
could swear they caught rich aromas from that distant board.
Not only had the fare purveyed by his favourite pharmacy put a blight
upon him equal to Broadway’s blight, but even of this tasteless stuff he
must be cautious in his buying. A sandwich, not too meaty at the centre,
coffee tasting strangely of other things sold in a pharmacy, a segment
of pie fair--seeming on its surface, but lacking the punch, as he put
it, of Metta Judson’s pie, a standardized, factory-made, altogether
formal and perfunctory pie--these were the meagre items of his
accustomed luncheon and dinner.
He had abandoned breakfast, partly because it cost money and partly
because a gentleman in eastern Ohio had recently celebrated his hundred
and third birthday by reason, so he confided to the press, of having
always breakfasted upon a glass of clear cold water. Probably ham and
eggs or corned--beef hash would have cut him off at ninety, and water
from the tap in the Patterson kitchen was both clear and cold. It was
not so much that he cared to live beyond ninety or so, but he wished to
survive until things began to pick up on the Holden lot, and if this did
bring him many more years, well and good. Further, if the woman in the
casting office persisted, as she had for ten days, in saying “Nothing
yet” to inquiring screen artists, he might be compelled to intensify the
regime of the Ohio centenarian. Perhaps a glass of clear cold water at
night, after a hearty midday meal of drug--store sandwiches and pie,
would work new wonders.
It seemed to be the present opinion of other waiters on the extra bench
that things were never going to pick up on the Holden lot nor on any
other lot. Strongly marked types, ready to add distinction to the screen
of painted shadows, freely expressed a view that the motion-picture
business was on the rocks. Unaffected by the optimists who wrote in
the picture magazines, they saw no future for it. More than one of them
threatened to desert the industry and return to previous callings. As
they were likely to put it, they were going to leave the pictures flat
and go back to type-writing or selling standard art-works or waiting on
table or something where you could count on your little bit every week.
Under the eucalyptus tree one morning Merton Gill, making some
appetizing changes in the fifth reel of Eating at Gashwiler’s, was
accosted by a youngish woman whom he could not at first recall. She had
come from the casting office and paused when she saw him.
“Hello, I thought it was you, but I wasn’t sure in them clothes. How
they coming?”
He stared blankly, startled at the sudden transposition he had been
compelled to make, for the gleaming knife of Gashwiler, standing up to
carve, had just then hovered above the well-browned roast of beef. Then
he placed the speaker by reason of her eyes. It was the Spanish girl,
his companion of the gilded cabaret, later encountered in the palatial
gambling hell that ate like a cancer at the heart of New York--probably
at the corner of Broadway and Fifth Avenue.
He arose and shook hands cordially. He had supposed, when he thought
of the girl at all, that she would always be rather Spanish, an exotic
creature rather garishly dressed, nervously eager, craving excitement
such as may be had in cabarets on Broadway, with a marked inclination
for the lighter life of pleasure. But she wore not so much as a rose in
her smoothly combed hair. She was not only not excited but she was
not exciting. She was plainly dressed in skirt and shirtwaist of no
distinction, her foot-gear was of the most ordinary, and well worn, and
her face under a hat of no allure was without make-up, a commonplace,
somewhat anxious face with lines about the eyes. But her voice as well
as her eyes helped him to recall her.
She spoke with an effort at jauntiness after Merton had greeted her.
“That’s one great slogan, ‘Business as Usual!’ ain’t it? Well, it’s
business as usual here, so I just found out from the Countess--as usual,
rotten. I ain’t had but three days since I seen you last.”
“I haven’t had even one,” he told her.
“No? Say, that’s tough. You’re registered with the Service Bureau, ain’t
you?”
“Well, I didn’t do that, because they might send me any place, and I
sort of wanted to work on this particular lot.” Instantly he saw himself
saving Beulah Baxter, for the next installment, from a fate worse than
death, but the one-time Spanish girl did not share this vision.
“Oh, well, little I care where I work. I had two days at the Bigart in a
hop-joint scene, and one over at the United doin’ some board-walk stuff.
I could ‘a’ had another day there, but the director said I wasn’t just
the type for a chick bathing-suit. He was very nice about it. Of course
I know my legs ain’t the best part of me--I sure ain’t one of them like
the girl that says she’s wasted in skirts.” She grinned ruefully.
He felt that some expression of sympathy would be graceful here, yet he
divined that it must be very discreetly, almost delicately, worded. He
could easily be too blunt.
“I guess I’d be pretty skinny in a bathing-suit myself, right now. I
know they won’t be giving me any such part pretty soon if I have to cut
down on the meals the way I been doing.”
“Oh, of course I don’t mean I’m actually skinny--”
He felt he had been blunt, after all.
“Not to say skinny.” she went on, “but--well, you know--more like
home-folks, I guess. Anyway, I got no future as a bathing beauty--none
whatever. And this walkin’ around to the different lots ain’t helpin’
me any, either. Of course it ain’t as if I couldn’t go back to the
insurance office. Mr. Gropp, he’s office manager, he was very nice about
it. He says, ‘I wish you all the luck in the world, girlie, and remember
your job as filin’ clerk will always be here for you.’ Wasn’t that
gentlemanly of him? Still, I’d rather act than stand on my feet all day
filing letters. I won’t go back till I have to.”
“Me either,” said Merton Gill, struggling against the obsession of
Saturday-night dinner at Gashwiler’s.
Grimly he resumed his seat when the girl with a friendly “So long!” had
trudged on. In spite of himself he found something base in his nature
picturing his return to the emporium and to the thrice-daily encounter
with Metta Judson’s cookery. He let his lower instincts toy with the
unworthy vision. Gashwiler would advance him the money to return, and
the job would be there. Probably Spencer Grant had before this tired
of the work and gone into insurance or some other line, and probably
Gashwiler would be only too glad to have the wanderer back. He would get
off No. 3 just in time for breakfast.
He brushed the monstrous scene from his eyes, shrugged it from his
shoulders. He would not give up. They had all struggled and sacrificed,
and why should he shrink from the common ordeal? But he wished the
Spanish girl hadn’t talked about going back to her job. He regretted
not having stopped her with words of confident cheer that would have
stiffened his own resolution. He could see her far down the street, on
her way to the next lot, her narrow shoulders switching from light to
shadow as she trudged under the line of eucalyptus trees. He hoped she
wouldn’t give up. No one should ever give up--least of all Merton Gill.
The days wore wearily on. He began to feel on his own face the tired
little smile of the woman in the casting office as she would look up
to shake her head, often from the telephone over which she was saying:
“Nothing to-day, dear. Sorry!” She didn’t exactly feel that the
motion-picture business had gone on the rocks, but she knew it wasn’t
picking up as it should. And ever and again she would have Merton Gill
assure her that he hadn’t forgotten the home address, the town where
lived Gighampton or Gumwash or whoever it was that held the good old job
open for him. He had divined that it was a jest of some sort when she
warned him not to forget the address and he would patiently smile at
this, but he always put her right about the name of Gashwiler. Of course
it was a name any one might forget, though the woman always seemed to
make the most earnest effort to remember it.
Each day, after his brief chat with her in which he learned that there
would be nothing to-day, he would sit on the waiting-room bench or out
under the eucalyptus tree and consecrate himself anew to the art of the
perpendicular screen. And each day, as the little hoard was diminished
by even those slender repasts at the drug store, he ran his film of the
Gashwiler dining room in action.
From time to time he would see the Montague girl, alone or with her
mother, entering the casting office or perhaps issuing from the guarded
gate. He avoided her when possible. She persisted in behaving as if they
had been properly introduced and had known each other a long time. She
was too familiar, and her levity jarred upon his more serious mood. So
far as he could see, the girl had no screen future, though doubtless she
was her own worst enemy. If someone had only taught her to be serious,
her career might have been worth while. She had seemed not wholly
negligible in the salmon-pink dancing frock, though of course the blonde
curls had not been true.
Then the days passed until eating merely at a drug-store lunch counter
became not the only matter of concern. There was the item of room rent.
Mrs. Patterson, the Los Angeles society woman, had, upon the occasion
of their first interview, made it all too clear that the money, trifling
though it must seem for a well-furnished room with the privilege
of electric iron in the kitchen, must be paid each week in advance.
Strictly in advance. Her eye had held a cold light as she dwelt upon
this.
There had been times lately when, upon his tree bench, he would try
to dramatize Mrs. Patterson as a woman with a soft heart under that
polished society exterior, chilled by daily contact with other society
people at the Iowa or Kansas or other society picnics, yet ready to melt
at the true human touch. But he had never quite succeeded in this bit
of character work. Something told him that she was cold all through, a
society woman without a flaw in her armour. He could not make her seem
to listen patiently while he explained that only one company was now
shooting on the lot, but that big things were expected to be on in
another week or so. A certain skeptic hardness was in her gaze as he
visioned it.
He decided, indeed, that he could never bring himself even to attempt
this scene with the woman, so remote was he from seeing her eye soften
and her voice warm with the assurance that a few weeks more or less
need not matter. The room rent, he was confident, would have to be paid
strictly in advance so long as their relations continued. She was the
kind who would insist upon this formality even after he began to play,
at an enormous salary, a certain outstanding part in the Hazards of
Hortense. The exigencies, even the adversities, of art would never make
the slightest appeal to this hardened soul. So much for that. And daily
the hoard waned.
Yet his was not the only tragedy. In the waiting room, where he now
spent more of his time, he listened one day to the Montague girl chat
through the window with the woman she called Countess.
“Yeah, Pa was double-crossed over at the Bigart. He raised that lovely
set of whiskers for Camillia of the Cumberlands and what did he get for
it?--just two weeks. Fact! What do you know about that? Hugo has him
killed off in the second spool with a squirrel rifle from ambush, and Pa
thinking he would draw pay for at least another three weeks. He kicked,
but Hugo says the plot demanded it. I bet, at that, he was just trying
to cut down his salary list. I bet that continuity this minute shows Pa
drinking his corn out of a jug and playing a fiddle for the dance right
down to the last scene. Don’t artists get the razz, though. And that
Hugo, he’d spend a week in the hot place to save a thin dime. Let me
tell you, Countess, don’t you ever get your lemon in his squeezer.”
There were audible murmurs of sympathy from the Countess.
“And so the old trouper had to start out Monday morning to peddle
the brush. Took him three days to land anything at all, and then it’s
nothing but a sleeping souse in a Western bar-room scene. In here now he
is--something the Acme people are doing. He’s had three days, just lying
down with his back against a barrel sleeping. He’s not to wake up even
when the fight starts, but sleep right on through it, which they say
will be a good gag. Well, maybe. But it’s tough on his home. He gets all
his rest daytimes and keeps us restless all night making a new kind of
beer and tending his still, and so on. You bet Ma and I, the minute he’s
through with this piece, are going pronto to get that face of his as
naked as the day he was born. Pa’s so temperamental--like that time he
was playing a Bishop and never touched a drop for five weeks, and in bed
every night at nine-thirty. Me? Oh, I’m having a bit of my own in this
Acme piece--God’s Great Outdoors, I think it is--anyway, I’m to be a
little blonde hussy in the bar-room, sitting on the miners’ knees and
all like that, so they’ll order more drinks. It certainly takes all
kinds of art to make an artist. And next week I got some shipwreck
stuff for Baxter, and me with bronchial pneumonia right this minute, and
hating tank stuff, anyway. Well, Countess, don’t take any counterfeit
money. So long.”
She danced through a doorway and was gone--she was one who seldom
descended to plain walking. She would manage a dance step even in the
short distance from the casting--office door to the window. It was
not of such material, Merton Gill was sure, that creative artists were
moulded. And there was no question now of his own utter seriousness.
The situation hourly grew more desperate. For a week he had foregone the
drug-store pie, so that now he recalled it as very wonderful pie indeed,
but he dared no longer indulge in this luxury. An occasional small
bag of candy and as much sugar as he could juggle into his coffee must
satisfy his craving for sweets. Stoically he awaited the end--some end.
The moving-picture business seemed to be still on the rocks, but things
must take a turn.
He went over the talk of the Montague girl. Her father had perhaps been
unfairly treated, but at least he was working again. And there were
other actors who would go unshaven for even a sleeping part in the
bar-room scene of God’s Great Outdoors. Merton Gill knew one, and
rubbed his shaven chin. He thought, too, of the girl’s warning about
counterfeit money. He had not known that the casting director’s duties
required her to handle money, but probably he had overlooked this item
in her routine. And was counterfeit money about? He drew out his own
remaining bill and scrutinized it anxiously. It seemed to be genuine.
He hoped it was, for Mrs. Patterson’s sake, and was relieved when she
accepted it without question that night.
Later he tested the handful of silver that remained to him and prayed
earnestly that an increase of prosperity be granted to producers of the
motion picture. With the silver he eked out another barren week, only to
face a day the evening of which must witness another fiscal transaction
with Mrs. Patterson. And there was no longer a bill for this heartless
society creature. He took a long look at the pleasant little room as
he left it that morning. The day must bring something but it might not
bring him back that night.
At the drug store he purchased a bowl of vegetable soup, loaded it
heavily with catsup at intervals when the attendant had other matters
on his mind, and seized an extra half--portion of crackers left on
their plate by a satiated neighbour. He cared little for catsup, but it
doubtless bore nourishing elements, and nourishment was now important.
He crumpled his paper napkin and laid upon the marble slab a trifling
silver coin. It was the last of his hoard. When he should eat next and
under what circumstances were now as uncertain as where he should sleep
that night, though he was already resolving that catsup would be no part
of his meal. It might be well enough in its place, but he had abundantly
proved that it was not, strictly speaking, a food.
He reached the Holden studios and loitered outside for half an hour
before daring the daily inquiry at the window. Yet, when at last he did
approach it, his waning faith in prayer was renewed, for here in his
direst hour was cheering news. It seemed even that his friend beyond the
window had been impatient at his coming.
“Just like you to be late when there’s something doing!” she called to
him with friendly impatience. “Get over to the dressing rooms on the
double-quick. It’s the Victor people doing some Egyptian stuff--they’ll
give you a costume. Hurry along!”
And he had lingered over a bowl of soggy crackers soaked, at the last,
chiefly in catsup! He hurried, with a swift word of thanks.
In the same dressing room where he had once been made up as a Broadway
pleasure seeker he now donned the flowing robe and burnoose of a
Bedouin, and by the same grumbling extra his face and hands were stained
the rich brown of children of the desert. A dozen other men of the paler
race had undergone the same treatment. A sheik of great stature and
noble mien smoked an idle cigarette in the doorway. He was accoutred
with musket and with pistols in his belt.
An assistant director presently herded the desert men down an alley
between two of the big stages and to the beginning of the oriental
street that Merton had noticed on his first day within the Holden walls.
It was now peopled picturesquely with other Bedouins. Banners hung from
the walls and veiled ladies peeped from the latticed balconies. A camel
was led excitingly through the crowded way, and donkeys and goats were
to be observed. It was a noisy street until a whistle sounded at the
farther end, then all was silence while the voice of Henshaw came
through the megaphone.
It appeared that long shots of the street were Henshaw’s first need. Up
and down it Merton Gill strolled in a negligent manner, stopping perhaps
to haggle with the vendor who sold sweetmeats from a tray, or to chat
with a tribal brother fresh from the sandy wastes, or to purchase a
glass of milk from the man with the goats. He secured a rose from the
flower seller, and had the inspiration to toss it to one of the discreet
balconies above him, but as he stepped back to do this he was stopped by
the watchful assistant director who stood just inside a doorway. “Hey,
Bill, none of that! Keep your head down, and pay no attention to the
dames. It ain’t done.”
He strolled on with the rose in his hand. Later, and much nearer the
end of the street where the cameras were, he saw the sheik of noble mien
halt the flower seller, haggle for another rose, place this daintily
behind his left ear and stalk on, his musket held over one shoulder, his
other hand on a belted pistol. Merton disposed of his rose in the same
manner. He admired the sheik for his stature, his majestic carriage,
his dark, handsome, yet sinister face with its brooding eyes. He thought
this man, at least, would be a true Arab, some real son of the desert
who had wandered afar. His manner was so much more authentic than that
of the extra people all about.
A whistle blew and the street action was suspended. There was a long
wait while cameras were moved up and groups formed under the direction
of Henshaw and his assistant. A band of Bedouins were now to worship
in the porch of a mosque. Merton Gill was among these. The assistant
director initiated them briefly into Moslem rites. Upon prayer rugs they
bowed their foreheads to earth in the direction of Mecca.
“What’s the idea of this here?” demanded Merton Gill’s neighbour in
aggrieved tones.
“Ssh!” cautioned Merton. “It’s Mass or something like that.” And they
bent in unison to this noon-tide devotion.
When this was done Henshaw bustled into the group. “I want about a dozen
or fifteen good types for the cafe,” he explained to his assistant.
Merton Gill instinctively stood forward, and was presently among those
selected. “You’ll do,” said Henshaw, nodding. The director, of course,
had not remembered that this was the actor he had distinguished in The
Blight of Broadway, yet he had again chosen him for eminence. It showed,
Merton felt, that his conviction about the screen value of his face was
not ill founded.
The selected types were now herded into a dark, narrow, low-ceiled room
with a divan effect along its three walls. A grizzled Arab made coffee
over a glowing brazier. Merton Gill sat cross-legged on the divan and
became fearful that he would be asked to smoke the narghileh which
the assistant director was now preparing. To one who balked at mere
cigarettes, it was an evil-appearing device. His neighbour who had been
puzzled at prayer-time now hitched up his flowing robe to withdraw a
paper of cigarettes from the pocket of a quite occidental garment.
“Go on, smoke cigarettes,” said the assistant director.
“Have one?” said Merton’s neighbour, and he took one. It seemed you
couldn’t get away from cigarettes on the screen. East and West were
here one. He lighted it, though smoking warily. The noble sheik,
of undoubtedly Asiatic origin, came to the doorway overlooking the
assistant director’s work on the narghileh. A laden camel halted near
him, sneered in an evil manner at the bystanders, and then, lifting
an incredible length of upper lip, set his yellow teeth in the nearest
shoulder. It was the shoulder of the noble sheik, who instantly rent the
air with a plaintive cry: “For the love of Mike!--keep that man-eater
off’n me, can’t you?”
His accent had not been that of the Arabian waste-land. Merton Gill was
disappointed. So the fellow was only an actor, after all. If he had felt
sympathy at all, it would now have been for the camel. The beast
was jerked back with profane words and the sheik, rubbing his bitten
shoulder, entered the cafe, sitting cross-legged at the end of the divan
nearest the door.
“All right, Bob.” The assistant director handed him the tube of the
water pipe, and the sheik smoked with every sign of enjoyment. Merton
Gill resolved never to play the part of an Arab sheik--at the mercy of
man-eating camels and having to smoke something that looked murderous.
Under Henshaw’s direction the grizzled proprietor now served tiny cups
of coffee to the sheik and his lesser patrons. Two of these played
dominoes, and one or two reclined as in sleep. Cameras were brought up.
The interior being to his satisfaction, Henshaw rehearsed the entrance
of a little band of European tourists. A beautiful girl in sports garb,
a beautiful young man in khaki and puttees, a fine old British father
with gray side whiskers shaded by a sun-hat with a flowing veil twined
about it. These people sat and were served coffee, staring in a tourist
manner at their novel surroundings. The Bedouins, under stern command,
ignored them, conversing among themselves over their coffee--all but the
sheik.
The sheik had been instantly struck by the fair young English girl. His
sinister eyes hung constantly upon her, shifting only when she regarded
him, furtively returning when she ceased. When they left the cafe, the
sheik arose and placed himself partly in the girl’s way. She paused
while his dark eyes caught and held hers. A long moment went before she
seemed able to free herself from the hypnotic tension he put upon her.
Then he bowed low, and the girl with a nervous laugh passed him.
It could be seen that the sheik meant her no good. He stepped to the
door and looked after the group. There was evil purpose in his gaze.
Merton Gill recalled something of Henshaw’s words the first day he had
eaten at the cafeteria: “They find this deserted tomb just at nightfall,
and he’s alone there with the girl, and he could do anything, but the
kick for the audience is that he’s a gentleman and never lays a finger
on her.”
This would be the story. Probably the sheik would now arrange with the
old gentleman in the sun-hat to guide the party over the desert, and
would betray them in order to get the beautiful girl into his power.
Of course there would be a kick for the audience when the young fellow
proved to be a gentleman in the deserted tomb for a whole night--any
moving-picture audience would expect him under these propitious
circumstances to be quite otherwise, if the girl were as beautiful as
this one. But there would surely be a greater kick when the sheik found
them in the tomb and bore the girl off on his camel, after a fight
in which the gentleman was momentarily worsted. But the girl would be
rescued in time. And probably the piece would be called Desert Passion.
He wished he could know the ending of the story. Indeed he sincerely
wished he could work in it to the end, not alone because he was curious
about the fate of the young girl in the bad sheik’s power. Undoubtedly
the sheik would not prove to be a gentleman, but Merton would like to
work to the end of the story because he had no place to sleep and but
little assurance of wholesome food. Yet this, it appeared, was not to
be. Already word had run among the extra people. Those hired to-day
were to be used for to-day only. Tomorrow the desert drama would unfold
without them.
Still, he had a day’s pay coming. This time, though, it would be but
five dollars--his dress suit had not been needed. And five dollars would
appease Mrs. Patterson for another week. Yet what would be the good of
sleeping if he had nothing to eat? He was hungry now. Thin soup, ever so
plenteously spiced with catsup, was inadequate provender for a working
artist. He knew, even as he sat there cross-legged, an apparently
self-supporting and care-free Bedouin, that this ensuing five dollars
would never be seen by Mrs. Patterson.
There were a few more shots of the cafe’s interior during which one of
the inmates carefully permitted his half--consumed cigarette to go
out. After that a few more shots of the lively street which, it was now
learned, was a street in Cairo. Earnest efforts were made by the throngs
in these scenes to give the murderous camel plenty of head room. Some
close-ups were taken of the European tourists while they bargained with
a native merchant for hammered brassware and rare shawls.
The bad sheik was caught near the group bending an evil glare upon the
beauteous English girl, and once the camera turned while she faced
him with a little shiver of apprehension. Later the sheik was caught
bargaining for a camel train with the innocent-looking old gentleman
in the sun-hat. Undoubtedly the sheik was about to lead them into the
desert for no good purpose. A dreadful fate seemed in store for the
girl, but she must be left to face it without the support of Merton
Gill.
The lately hired extras were now dismissed. They trooped back to
the dressing room to doff their flowing robes and remove the Bedouin
make-up. Merton Gill went from the dressing room to the little window
through which he had received his robe and his slip was returned to him
signed by the assistant director. It had now become a paper of value,
even to Mrs. Patterson; but she was never to know this, for its owner
went down the street to another window and relinquished it for a
five-dollar bill.
The bill was adorned with a portrait of Benjamin Harrison smugly
radiating prosperity from every hair in his beard. He was clearly one
who had never gone hungry nor betrayed the confidence of a society woman
counting upon her room rent strictly in advance. The portrait of this
successful man was borne swiftly to the cafeteria where its present
owner lavishly heaped a tray with excellent food and hastened with it
to a table. He ate with but slight regard for his surroundings. Beulah
Baxter herself might have occupied a neighbouring table without coming
to his notice at once. He was very hungry. The catsup-laden soup had
proved to be little more than an appetizer.
In his first ardour he forgot his plight. It was not until later in the
meal that the accusing face of Mrs. Patterson came between him and the
last of his stew which he secured with blotters of bread. Even then he
ignored the woman. He had other things to think of. He had to think of
where he should sleep that night. But for once he had eaten enough; his
optimism was again enthroned.
Sleeping, after all, was not like eating. There were more ways to manage
it. The law of sleep would in time enforce itself, while eating did
nothing of the sort. You might sleep for nothing, but someone had to
be paid if you ate. He cheerfully paid eighty cents for his repast. The
catsup as an appetizer had been ruinous.
It was late in the afternoon when he left the cafeteria and the cheerful
activities of the lot were drawing to a close. Extra people from the
various stages were hurrying to the big dressing room, whence they would
presently stream, slips in hand, toward the cashier’s window. Belated
principals came in from their work to resume their choice street
garments and be driven off in choice motor cars.
Merton Gill in deep thought traversed the street between the big stages
and the dressing rooms. Still in deep thought he retraced his steps, and
at the front office turned off to the right on a road that led to the
deserted street of the Western town. His head bowed in thought he went
down this silent thoroughfare, his footsteps echoing along the way lined
by the closed shops. The Happy Days Saloon and Joe--Buy or Sell, the
pool-room and the restaurant, alike slept for want of custom. He felt
again the eeriness of this desertion, and hurried on past the silent
places.
Emerging from the lower end of this street he came upon a log cabin
where activity still survived. He joined the group before its door.
Inside two cameras were recording some drama of the rude frontier. Over
glowing coals in the stone fireplace a beautiful young girl prepared
food in a long-handled frying pan. At a table in the room’s centre two
bearded miners seemed to be appraising a buckskin pouch of nuggets,
pouring them from hand to hand. A candle stuck in a bottle flickered
beside them. They were honest, kindly faced miners, roughly dressed and
heavily bearded, but it could be seen that they had hearts of gold. The
beautiful young girl, who wore a simple dress of blue calico, and whose
hair hung about her fair face in curls of a radiant buff, now served
them food and poured steaming coffee from a large pot.
The miners seemed loth to eat, being excited by the gold nuggets. They
must have struck it rich that day, Merton Gill divined, and now with
wealth untold they would be planning to send the girl East to school.
They both patted her affectionately, keeping from her the great surprise
they had in store.
The girl was arch with them, and prettily kissed each upon his bald
head. Merton at once saw that she would be the daughter of neither; she
would be their ward. And perhaps they weren’t planning to send her to
school. Perhaps they were going to send her to fashionable relatives in
the East, where she would unwittingly become the rival of her beautiful
but cold-hearted cousin for the hand of a rich young stock-broker, and
be ill-treated and long for the old miners who would get word of it
and buy some fine clothes from Joe--Buy or Sell, and go East to the
consternation of the rich relatives and see that their little mountain
flower was treated right.
As he identified this photo-play he studied the interior of the cabin,
the rough table at which the three now ate, the makeshift chairs, the
rifle over the fireplace, the picks and shovels, the shelf along the
wall with its crude dishes, the calico curtain screening off what would
be the dressing room of the little mountain flower. It was a home-like
room, for all its roughness. Along one wall were two bunks, one above
the other, well supplied with blankets.
The director, after a final shot of one of the miners being scalded by
his coffee which he drank from a saucer, had said, “All right, boys!
We’ll have the fight first thing in the morning.”
Merton Gill passed on. He didn’t quite know what the fight would be
about. Surely the two miners wouldn’t fight. Perhaps another miner of
loose character would come along and try to jump their claim, or attempt
some dirty work with the little girl. Something like that. He carried
with him the picture of the homey little ulterior, the fireplace
with its cooking utensils, the two bunks with their ample stock
of blankets--the crude door closed with a wooden bar and a leather
latch-string, which hung trustfully outside.
In other circumstances--chiefly those in which Merton Gill had now been
the prominent figure in the film world he meant one day to become--he
would on this night have undoubtedly won public attention for his
mysterious disappearance. The modest room in the Patterson home, to
which for three months he had unfailingly come after the first picture
show, on this night went untenanted. The guardian at the Holden gate
would have testified that he had not passed out that way, and the way
through the offices had been closed at five, subsequent to which hour
several witnesses could have sworn to seeing him still on the lot.
In the ensuing search even the tank at the lower end of the lot might
have been dragged--without result.
Being little known to the public, however, and in the Patterson home it
being supposed that you could never tell about motion-picture actors,
his disappearance for the night caused absolutely no slightest ripple.
Public attention as regarded the young man remained at a mirror-like
calm, unflawed by even the mildest curiosity. He had been seen, perhaps,
though certainly not noted with any interest, to be one of the group
watching a night scene in front of one of the Fifth Avenue mansions.
Lights shone from the draped windows of this mansion and from its
portals issued none other than Muriel Mercer, who, as Vera Vanderpool,
freed at last from the blight of Broadway, was leaving her palatial home
to cast her lot finally with the ardent young tenement worker with the
high forehead. She descended the brown-stone steps, paused once to look
back upon the old home where she had been taught to love pleasure above
the worth-while things of life, then came on to the waiting limousine,
being greeted here by the young man with the earnest forehead who had
won her to the better way.
The missing youth might later have been observed, but probably was not,
walking briskly in the chill night toward the gate that led to the outer
world. But he wheeled abruptly before reaching this gate, and walked
again briskly, this time debouching from the main thoroughfare into
the black silence of the Western village. Here his pace slackened, and
halfway down the street he paused irresolutely. He was under the wooden
porch of the Fashion Restaurant--Give our Tamales a Trial. He lingered
here but a moment, however, then lurked on down the still thoroughfare,
keeping well within the shadow of the low buildings. Just beyond the
street was the log cabin of the big-hearted miners. A moment later he
could not have been observed even by the keenest eye.
Nothing marked his disappearance, at least nothing that would have been
noted by the casual minded. He had simply gone. He was now no more than
the long-vanished cowboys and sheriffs and gamblers and petty tradesmen
who had once peopled this street of silence and desolation.
A night watchman came walking presently, flashing an electric torch from
side to side. He noticed nothing. He was, indeed, a rather imaginative
man, and he hoped he would not notice anything. He did not like coming
down this ghostly street, which his weak mind would persist in peopling
with phantom crowds from long-played picture dramas. It gave him the
creeps, as he had more than once confessed. He hurried on, flashing his
torch along the blind fronts of the shops in a perfunctory manner. He
was especially nervous when he came to corners. And he was glad when he
issued from the little street into the wider one that was well lighted.
How could he have been expected to notice a very trifling incongruous
detail as he passed the log cabin? Indeed many a keener-eyed and
entirely valorous night watchman might have neglected to observe that
the leathern latch-string of the cabin’s closed door was no longer
hanging outside.