Merton of the Movies by Harry Leon Wilson (page 4)

that. And it would be harder to-day. Even the collar would make it harder to resist the confidence that he was not at this time overwhelmed with offers for his art.

He had for what seemed like an interminable stretch of time been solitary and an outlaw. It was something to have been spoken to by a human being who expressed ever so fleeting an interest in his affairs, even by someone as inconsequent, as negligible in the world of screen artistry as this lightsome minx who, because of certain mental infirmities, could never hope for the least enviable eminence in a profession demanding seriousness of purpose. Still it would be foolish to go again to the set where she was. She might think he was encouraging her.

So he passed the High Gear, where a four-horse stage, watched by two cameras, was now releasing its passengers who all appeared to be direct from New York, and walked on to an outdoor set that promised entertainment. This was the narrow street of some quaint European village, Scotch he soon saw from the dress of its people. A large automobile was invading this remote hamlet to the dismay of its inhabitants. Rehearsed through a megaphone they scurried within doors at its approach, ancient men hobbling on sticks and frantic mothers grabbing their little ones from the path of the monster. Two trial trips he saw the car make the length of the little street.

At its lower end, brooding placidly, was an ancient horse rather recalling Dexter in his generously exposed bones and the jaded droop of his head above a low stone wall. Twice the car sped by him, arousing no sign of apprehension nor even of interest. He paid it not so much as the tribute of a raised eyelid.

The car went back to the head of the street where its entrance would be made. “All right–ready!” came the megaphoned order. Again the peaceful street was thrown into panic by this snorting dragon from the outer world. The old men hobbled affrightedly within doors, the mothers saved their children. And this time, to the stupefaction of Merton Gill, even the old horse proved to be an actor of rare merits. As the car approached he seemed to suffer a painful shock. He tossed his aged head, kicked viciously with his rear feet, stood absurdly aloft on them, then turned and fled from the monster. As Merton mused upon the genius of the trainer who had taught his horse not only to betray fright at a motor car but to distinguish between rehearsals and the actual taking of a scene, he observed a man who emerged from a clump of near-by shrubbery. He carried a shotgun. This was broken at the breech and the man was blowing smoke from the barrels as he came on.

So that was it. The panic of the old horse had been but a simple reaction to a couple of charges of–perhaps rock–salt. Merton Gill hoped it had been nothing sterner. For the first time in his screen career he became cynical about his art. A thing of shame, of machinery, of subterfuge. Nothing would be real, perhaps not even the art.

It is probable that lack of food conduced to this disparaging outlook; and he recovered presently, for he had been smitten with a quick vision of Beulah Baxter in one of her most daring exploits. She, at least, was real. Deaf to entreaty, she honestly braved her hazards. It was a comforting thought after this late exposure of a sham.

In this slightly combative mood he retraced his steps and found himself outside the High Gear Dance Hall, fortified for another possible encounter with the inquiring and obviously sympathetic Montague girl. He entered and saw that she was not on the set. The bar-room dance-hall was for the moment deserted of its ribald crew while an honest inhabitant of the open spaces on a balcony was holding a large revolver to the shrinking back of one of the New York men who had lately arrived by the stage. He forced this man, who was plainly not honest, to descend the stairs and to sign, at a table, a certain paper. Then, with weapon still in hand, the honest Westerner forced the cowardly New Yorker in the direction of the front door until they had passed out of the picture.

On this the bored director of the day before called loudly, “Now, boys, in your places. You’ve heard a shot–you’re running outside to see what’s the matter. On your toes, now–try it once.” From rear doors came the motley frequenters of the place, led by the elder Montague.

They trooped to the front in two lines and passed from the picture. Here they milled about, waiting for further orders.

“Rotten!” called the director. “Rotten and then some. Listen. You came like a lot of children marching out of a public school. Don’t come in lines, break it up, push each other, fight to get ahead, and you’re noisy, too. You’re shouting. You’re saying, ‘What’s this? What’s it all about? What’s the matter? Which way did he go?’ Say anything you want to, but keep shouting–anything at all. Say ‘Thar’s gold in them hills!’ if you can’t think of anything else. Go on, now, boys, do it again and pep it, see. Turn the juice on, open up the old mufflers.”

The men went back through the rear doors. The late caller would here have left, being fed up with this sort of stuff, but at that moment he descried the Montague girl back behind a light-standard. She had not noted him, but was in close talk with a man he recognized as Jeff Baird, arch perpetrator of the infamous Buckeye comedies. They came toward him, still talking, as he looked.

“We’ll finish here to-morrow afternoon, anyway,” the girl was saying.

“Fine,” said Baird. “That makes everything jake. Get over on the set whenever you’re through. Come over tonight if they don’t shoot here, just to give us a look-in.”

“Can’t,” said the girl. “Soon as I get out o’ this dump I got to eat on the lot and everything and be over to Baxter’s layout–she’ll be doing tank stuff till all hours–shipwreck and murder and all like that. Gosh, I hope it ain’t cold. I don’t mind the water, but I certainly hate to get out and wait in wet clothes while Sig Rosenblatt is thinking about a retake.”

“Well”–Baird turned to go–“take care of yourself–don’t dive and forget to come up. Come over when you’re ready.”

“Sure! S’long!” Here the girl, turning from Baird, noted Merton Gill beside her. “Well, well, as I live, the actin’ kid once more! Say, you’re getting to be a regular studio hound, ain’t you?”

For the moment he had forgotten his troubles. He was burning to ask her if Beulah Baxter would really work in a shipwreck scene that night at the place where he had watched the carpenters and the men on the sailboat; but as he tried to word this he saw that the girl was again scanning him with keen eyes. He knew she would read the collar, the beard, perhaps even a look of mere hunger that he thought must now be showing.

“Say, see here, Trouper, what’s the shootin’ all about, anyway? You up against it–yes.” There was again in her eye the look of warm concern, and she was no longer trying to be funny. He might now have admitted a few little things about his screen career, but again the director interrupted.

“Miss Montague–where are you? Oh! Well, remember you’re behind the piano during that gun play just now, and you stay hid till after the boys get out. We’ll shoot this time, so get set.”

She sped off, with a last backward glance of questioning. He waited but a moment before leaving. He was almost forgetting his hunger in the pretty certain knowledge that in a few hours he would actually behold his wonder-woman in at least one of her daring exploits. Shipwreck! Perhaps she would be all but drowned. He hastened back to the pool that had now acquired this high significance. The carpenters were still puttering about on the scaffold. He saw that platforms for the cameras had been built out from its side.

He noted, too, and was puzzled by an aeroplane propeller that had been stationed close to one corner of the pool, just beyond the stern of the little sailing-craft. Perhaps there would be an aeroplane wreck in addition to a shipwreck. Now he had something besides food to think of. And he wondered what the Montague girl could be doing in the company of a really serious artist like Beulah Baxter. From her own story she was going to get wet, but from what he knew of her she would be some character not greatly missed from the cast if she should, as Baird had suggested, dive and forget to come up. He supposed that Baird had meant this to be humorous, the humour typical of a man who could profane a great art with the atrocious Buckeye comedies, so called.

He put in the hours until nightfall in aimless wandering and idle gazing, and was early at the pool-side where his heroine would do her sensational acting. It was now a scene of thrilling activity. Immense lights, both from the scaffolding and from a tower back of the sailing-craft, flooded its deck and rigging from time to time as adjustments were made. The rigging was slack and the deck was still littered, intentionally so, he now perceived. The gallant little boat had been cruelly buffeted by a gale. Two sailors in piratical dress could be seen to emerge at intervals from the cabin.

Suddenly the gale was on with terrific force, the sea rose in great waves, and the tiny ship rocked in a perilous manner. Great billows of water swept its decks. Merton Gill stared in amazement at these phenomena so dissonant with the quiet starlit night. Then he traced them without difficulty to their various sources. The gale issued from the swift revolutions of that aeroplane propeller he had noticed a while ago. The flooding billows were spilled from the big tank at the top of the scaffold and the boat rocked in obedience to the tugging of a rope–tugged from the shore by a crew of helpers– that ran to the top of its mast. Thus had the storm been produced.

A spidery, youngish man from one of the platforms built out from the scaffold, now became sharply vocal through a megaphone to assistants who were bending the elements to the need of this particular hazard of Hortense. He called directions to the men who tugged the rope, to the men in control of the lights, and to another who seemed to create the billows. Among other items he wished more action for the boat and more water for the billows. “See that your tank gets full- up this time,” he called, whereupon an engine under the scaffold, by means of a large rubber hose reaching into the pool, began to suck water into the tank above.

The speaker must be Miss Baxter’s director, the enviable personage who saw her safely through her perils. When one of the turning reflectors illumined him Merton saw his face of a keen Semitic type. He seemed to possess not the most engaging personality; his manner was aggressive, he spoke rudely to his doubtless conscientious employees, he danced in little rages of temper, and altogether he was not one with whom the watcher would have cared to come in contact. He wondered, indeed, that so puissant a star as Beulah Baxter should not be able to choose her own director, for surely the presence of this unlovely, waspishly tempered being could be nothing but an irritant in the daily life of the wonder-woman. Perhaps she had tolerated him merely for one picture. Perhaps he was especially good in shipwrecks.

If Merton Gill were in this company he would surely have words with this person, director or no director. He hastily wrote a one-reel scenario in which the man so far forgot himself as to speak sharply to the star, and in which a certain young actor, a new member of the company, resented the ungentlemanly words by pitching the offender into a convenient pool and earned even more than gratitude from the starry-eyed wonder-woman.

The objectionable man continued active, profuse of gesture and loud through the megaphone. Once more the storm. The boat rocked threateningly, the wind roared through its slack rigging, and giant billows swept the frail craft. Light as from a half-clouded moon broke through the mist that issued from a steam pipe. There was another lull, and the Semitic type on the platform became increasingly offensive. Merton saw himself saying, “Allow me, Miss Baxter, to relieve you of the presence of this bounder.” The man was impossible. Constantly he had searched the scene for his heroine. She would probably not appear until they were ready to shoot, and this seemed not to be at once if the rising temper of the director could be thought an indication.

The big hose again drew water from the pool to the tank, whence, at a sudden release, it would issue in billows. The big lights at last seemed to be adjusted to the director’s whim. The aeroplane propeller whirred and the gale was found acceptable. The men at the rope tugged the boat into grave danger. The moon lighted the mist that overhung the scene.

Then at last Merton started, peering eagerly forward across the length of the pool. At the far end, half illumined by the big lights, stood the familiar figure of his wonder–woman, the slim little girl with the wistful eyes. Plainly he could see her now as the mist lifted. She was chatting with one of the pirates who had stepped ashore from the boat. The wonderful golden hair shone resplendent under the glancing rays of the arcs. A cloak was about her shoulders, but at a word of command from the director she threw it off and stepped to the boat’s deck. She was dressed in a short skirt, her trim feet and ankles lightly shod and silken clad. The sole maritime touch in her garb was a figured kerchief at her throat similar to those worn by the piratical crew.

“All ready, Hortense–all ready Jose and Gaston, get your places.”

Miss Baxter acknowledged the command with that characteristic little wave of a hand that he recalled from so many of her pictures, a half-humorous, half-mocking little defiance. She used it often when escaping her pursuers, as if to say that she would see them in the next installment.

The star and the two men were now in the cabin, hidden from view. Merton Gill was no seaman, but it occurred to him that at least one of the crew would be at the wheel in this emergency. Probably the director knew no better. Indeed the boat, so far as could be discerned, had no wheel. Apparently when a storm came up all hands went down into the cabin to get away from it.

The storm did come up at this moment, with no one on deck. It struck with the full force of a tropic hurricane. The boat rocked, the wind blew, and billows swept the deck. At the height of the tempest Beulah Baxter sprang from the cabin to the deck, clutching wildly at a stanchion. Buffeted by the billows she groped a painful way along the side, at risk of being swept off to her death.

She was followed by one of the crew who held a murderous knife in his hand, then by the other sailor who also held a knife. They, too, were swept by the billows, but seemed grimly determined upon the death of the heroine. Then, when she reached midships and the foremost fiend was almost upon her, the mightiest of all the billows descended and swept her off into the cruel waters. Her pursuers, saving themselves only by great effort, held to the rigging and stared after the girl. They leaned far over the ship’s rocking side and each looked from under a spread hand.

For a distressing interval the heroine battled with the waves, but her frail strength availed her little. She raised a despairing face for an instant to the camera and its agony was illumined. Then the dread waters closed above her. The director’s whistle blew, the waves were stilled, the tumult ceased. The head of Beulah Baxter appeared halfway down the tank. She was swimming toward the end where Merton stood.

He had been thrilled beyond words at this actual sight of his heroine in action, but now it seemed that a new emotion might overcome him. He felt faint. Beulah Baxter would issue from the pool there at his feet. He might speak to her, might even help her to climb out. At least no one else had appeared to do this. Seemingly no one now cared where Miss Baxter swam to or whether she were offered any assistance in landing. She swam with an admirable crawl stroke, reached the wall, and put up a hand to it. He stepped forward, but she was out before he reached her side. His awe had delayed him. He drew back then, for the star, after vigorously shaking herself, went to a tall brazier in which glowed a charcoal fire.

Here he now noticed for the first time the prop-boy Jimmie, he who had almost certainly defaulted with an excellent razor. Jimmie threw a blanket about the star’s shoulders as she hovered above the glowing coals. Merton had waited for her voice. He might still venture to speak to her–to tell her of his long and profound admiration for her art. Her voice came as she shivered over the fire:

“Murder! That water’s cold. Rosenblatt swore he’d have it warmed but I’m here to say it wouldn’t boil an egg in four minutes.”

He could not at first identify this voice with the remembered tones of Beulah Baxter. But of course she was now hoarse with the cold. Under the circumstances he could hardly expect his heroine’s own musical clearness. Then as the girl spoke again something stirred among his more recent memories. The voice was still hoarse, but he placed it now. He approached the brazier. It was undoubtedly the Montague girl. She recognized him, even as she squeezed water from the hair of wondrous gold.

“Hello, again, Kid. You’re everywhere, ain’t you? Say, wha’d you think of that Rosenblatt man? Swore he’d put the steam into that water and take off the chill. And he never.” She threw aside the blanket and squeezed water from her garments, then began to slap her legs, arms, and chest.

“Well, I’m getting a gentle glow, anyhow. Wha’d you think of the scene?”

“It was good–very well done, indeed.” He hoped it didn’t sound patronizing, though that was how he felt. He believed now that Miss Baxter would have done it much better. He ventured a question. “But how about Miss Baxter–when does she do something? Is she going to be swept off the boat, too?”

“Baxter? Into that water? Quit your kidding!”

“But isn’t she here at all–won’t she do anything here?”

“Listen here, Kid; why should she loaf around on the set when she’s paying me good money to double for her?”

“You–double for Beulah Baxter?” It was some more of the girl’s nonsense, and a blasphemy for which he could not easily forgive her.

“Why not? Ain’t I a good stunt actress? I’ll tell the lot she hasn’t found any one yet that can get away with her stuff better than what I do.”

“But she–I heard her say herself she never allowed any one to double for her–she wouldn’t do such a thing.”

Here sounded a scornful laugh from Jimmie, the prop–boy. “Bunk!” said he at the laugh’s end. “How long you been doublin’ for her, Miss Montague? Two years, ain’t it?–I know it was before I come here, and I been on the lot a year and a half. Say, he ought to see some the stuff you done for her out on location, like jumpin’ into the locomotive engine from your auto and catchin’ the brake beams when the train’s movin’, and goin’ across that quarry on the cable, and ridin’ down that lumber flume sixty miles per hour and ridin’ some them outlaw buckjumpers–he’d ought to seen some that stuff, hey, Miss Montague?”

“That’s right, Jimmie, you tell him all about me. I hate to talk of myself.” Very wonderfully Merton Gill divined that this was said with a humorous intention. Jimmy was less sensitive to values. He began to obey.

“Well, I dunno–there’s that motorcycle stuff. Purty good, I’ll say. I wouldn’t try that, no, sir, not for a cool million dollars. And that chase stuff on the roofs down town where you jumped across that court that wasn’t any too darned narrow, an’ say, I wisht I could skin up a tree the way you can. An’ there was that time–“

“All right, all right, Jimmie. I can tell him the rest sometime. I don’t really hate to talk about myself–that’s on the level. And say, listen here, Jimmie, you’re my favourite sweetheart, ain’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am,” assented Jimmie, warmly. “All right. Beat it up and get me about two quarts of that hot coffee and about four ham sandwiches, two for you and two for me. That’s a good kid.”

“Sure!” exclaimed Jimmie, and was off.

Merton Gill had been dazed by these revelations, by the swift and utter destruction of his loftiest ideal. He hardly cared to know, now, if Beulah Baxter were married. It was the Montague girl who had most thrilled him for two years. Yet, almost as if from habit, he heard himself asking, “Is–do you happen to know if Beulah Baxter is married?”

“Baxter married? Sure! I should think you’d know it from the way that Sig Rosenblatt bawls everybody out.”

“Who is he?”

“Who is he? Why, he’s her husband, of course–he’s Mr. Beulah Baxter.”

“That little director up on the platform that yells so?” This unspeakable person to be actually the husband of the wonder-woman, the man he had supposed she must find intolerable even as a director. It was unthinkable, more horrible, somehow, than her employment of a double. In time he might have forgiven that–but this!

“Sure, that’s her honest-to-God husband. And he’s the best one out of three that I know she’s had. Sig’s a good scout even if he don’t look like Buffalo Bill. In fact, he’s all right in spite of his rough ways. He’d go farther for you than most of the men on this lot. If I wanted a favour I’d go to Sig before a lot of Christians I happen to know. And he’s a bully director if he is noisy. Baxter’s crazy about him, too. Don’t make any mistake there.”

“I won’t,” he answered, not knowing what he said.

She shot him a new look. “Say, Kid, as long as we’re talking, you seem kind of up against it. Where’s your overcoat a night like this, and when did you last–“

“Miss Montague! Miss Montague!” The director was calling.

“Excuse me,” she said. “I got to go entertain the white folks again.” She tucked up the folds of her blanket and sped around the pool to disappear in the mazes of the scaffolding. He remained a moment staring dully into the now quiet water. Then he walked swiftly away.

Beulah Baxter, his wonder-woman, had deceived her public in Peoria, Illinois, by word of mouth. She employed a double at critical junctures. “She’d be a fool not to,” the Montague girl had said. And in private life, having been unhappily wed twice before, she was Mrs. Sigmund Rosenblatt. And crazy about her husband!

A little while ago he had felt glad he was not to die of starvation before seeing his wonder-woman. Reeling under the first shock of his discoveries he was now sorry. Beulah Baxter was no longer his wonder-woman. She was Mr. Rosenblatt’s. He would have preferred death, he thought, before this heart-withering revelation.

CHAPTER XI

THE MONTAGUE GIRL INTERVENES

He came to life the next morning, shivering under his blankets. It must be cold outside. He glanced at his watch and reached for another blanket, throwing it over himself and tucking it in at the foot. Then he lay down again to screen a tense bit of action that had occurred late the night before. He had plunged through the streets for an hour, after leaving the pool, striving to recover from the twin shocks he had suffered. Then, returning to his hotel, he became aware that The Hazards of Hortense were still on. He could hear the roar of the aeroplane propeller and see the lights over the low buildings that lined his street.

Miserably he was drawn back to the spot where the most important of all his visions had been rent to tatters. He went to the end of the pool where he had stood before. Mr. Rosenblatt-hardly could he bring his mind to utter the hideous syllables-was still dissatisfied with the sea’s might. He wanted bigger billows and meant to have them if the company stayed on the set all night. He was saying as much with peevish inflections. Merton stood warming himself over the fire that still glowed in the brazier.

To him from somewhere beyond the scaffold came now the Montague girl and Jimmie. The girl was in her blanket, and Jimmie bore a pitcher, two tin cups, and a package of sandwiches. They came to the fire and Jimmie poured coffee for the girl. He produced sugar from a pocket.

“Help yourself, James,” said the girl, and Jimmie poured coffee for himself. They ate sandwiches as they drank. Merton drew a little back from the fire. The scent of the hot coffee threatened to make him forget he was not only a successful screen actor but a gentleman.

“Did you have to do it again?” he asked.

“I had to do it twice again,” said the girl from over her tin cup. “They’re developing the strips now, then they’ll run them in the projection room, and they won’t suit Sig one little bit, and I’ll have to do it some more. I’ll be swimming here till daylight doth appear.”

She now shot that familiar glance of appraisal at Merton. “Have a sandwich and some coffee, Kid-give him your cup, Jimmie.”

It was Merton Gill’s great moment, a heart-gripping climax to a two- days’ drama that had at no time lacked tension. Superbly he arose to it. Consecrated to his art, Clifford Armytage gave the public something better and finer. He drew himself up and spoke lightly, clearly, with careless ease:

“No, thanks-I couldn’t eat a mouthful.” The smile with which he accompanied the simple words might be enigmatic, it might hint of secret sorrows, but it was plain enough that these could not ever so distantly relate to a need for food.

Having achieved this sensational triumph, with all the quietness of method that should distinguish the true artist, he became seized with stage fright amounting almost to panic. He was moved to snatch the sandwich that Jimmie now proffered, the cup that he had refilled with coffee. Yet there was but a moment of confusion. Again he wielded an iron restraint. But he must leave the stage. He could not tarry there after his big scene, especially under that piercing glance of the girl. Somehow there was incredulity in it.

“Well, I guess I’ll have to be going,” he remarked jauntily, and turned for his exit.

“Say, Kid.” The girl halted him a dozen feet away.

“Say, listen here. This is on the level. I want to have a talk with you to-morrow. You’ll be on the lot, won’t you?”

He seemed to debate this momentarily, then replied, “Oh, yes. I’ll be around here somewhere.” “Well, remember, now. If I don’t run into you, you come down to that set where I was working to-day. See? I got something to say to you.”

“All right. I’ll probably see you sometime during the day.”

He had gone on to his hotel. But he had no intention of seeing the Montague girl on the morrow, nor of being seen by her. He would keep out of that girl’s way whatever else he did. She would ask him if everything was jake, and where was his overcoat, and a lot of silly questions about matters that should not concern her.

He was in two minds about the girl now. Beneath an unreasonable but very genuine resentment that she should have doubled for Beulah Baxter-as if she had basely cheated him of his most cherished ideal- there ran an undercurrent of reluctant but very profound admiration for her prowess. She had done some thrilling things and seemed to make nothing of it. Through this admiration there ran also a thread of hostility because he, himself, would undoubtedly be afraid to attempt her lightest exploit. Not even the trifling feat he had just witnessed, for he had never learned to swim. But he clearly knew, despite this confusion, that he was through with the girl. He must take more pains to avoid her. If met by chance, she must be snubbed- up-staged, as she would put it.

Under his blankets now, after many appealing close-ups of the sandwich which Jimmie had held out to him, he felt almost sorry that he had not taken the girl’s food. All his being, save that part consecrated to his art, had cried out for it. Art, had triumphed, and now he was near to regretting that it had not been beaten down. No good thinking about it, though.

He reached again for his watch. It was seven-thirty and time to be abroad. Once more he folded his blankets and placed them on the pile, keeping an alert glance, the while, for another possible bit of the delicious bread. He found nothing of this sort. The Crystal Palace Hotel was bare of provender. Achieving a discreet retirement from the hostelry he stood irresolute in the street. This morning there was no genial sun to warm him. A high fog overcast the sky, and the air was chill. At intervals he shivered violently. For no reason, except that he had there last beheld actual food, he went back to the pool.

Evidently Mr. Rosenblatt had finally been appeased. The place was deserted and lay bare and ugly in the dull light. The gallant ship of the night before was seen to be a poor, flimsy make-shift. No wonder Mr. Rosenblatt had wished billows to engulf it and mist to shroud it. He sat on a beam lying at the ship end of the pool and stared moodily at the pitiful make-believe.

He rounded his shoulders and pulled up the collar of his coat. He knew he should be walking, but doubted his strength. The little walk to the pool had made him strangely breathless. He wondered how long people were in starving to death. He had read of fasters who went for weeks without food, but he knew he was not of this class. He lacked talent for it. Doubtless another day would finish him. He had no heart now for visions of the Gashwiler table. He descended tragically to recalling that last meal at the drug store-the bowl of soup with its gracious burden of rich, nourishing catsup.

He began to alter the scenario of his own life. Suppose he had worked two more weeks for Gashwiler. That would have given him thirty dollars. Suppose he had worked a month. He could have existed a long time on sixty dollars. Suppose he had even stuck it out for one week more-fifteen dollars at this moment! He began to see a breakfast, the sort of meal to be ordered by a hungry man with fifteen dollars to squander.

The shivering seized him again and he heard his teeth rattle. He must move from this spot, forever now to be associated with black disillusion. He arose from his seat and was dismayed to hear a hail from the Montague girl. Was he never to be free from her? She was poised at a little distance, one hand raised to him, no longer the drenched victim of a capricious Rosenblatt, but the beaming, joyous figure of one who had triumphed over wind and wave. He went almost sullenly to her while she waited. No good trying to escape her for a minute or so.

“Hello, old Trouper! You’re just in time to help me hunt for something.” She was in the familiar street suit now, a skirt and jacket of some rough brown goods and a cloth hat that kept close to her small head above hair that seemed of no known shade whatever, though it was lighter than dark. She flashed a smile at him from her broad mouth as he came up, though her knowing gray eyes did not join in this smile. He knew instantly that she was taking him in.

This girl was wise beyond her years, he thought, but one even far less knowing could hardly have been in two minds about his present abject condition. The pushed-up collar of his coat did not entirely hide the once-white collar beneath it, the beard had reached its perhaps most distressing stage of development, and the suit was rumpled out of all the nattiness for which it had been advertised. Even the plush hat had lost its smart air.

Then he plainly saw that the girl would, for the moment at least, ignore these phenomena. She laughed again, and this time the eyes laughed, too. “C’mon over and help me hunt for that bar pin I lost. It must be at this end, because I know I had it on when I went into the drink. Maybe it’s in the pool, but maybe I lost it after I got out. It’s one of Baxter’s that she wore in the scene just ahead of last night, and she’ll have to have it again to-day. Now–” She began to search the ground around the cold brazier. “It might be along here.” He helped her look. Pretty soon he would remember an engagement and get away. The search at the end of the pool proved fruitless. The girl continued to chatter. They had worked until one- thirty before that grouch of a Rosenblatt would call it a day. At that she’d rather do water stuff than animal stuff-especially lions. “Lions? I should think so!” He replied to this. “Dangerous, isn’t it?”

“Oh, it ain’t that. They’re nothing to be afraid of if you know ’em, but they’re so hot and smelly when you have to get close to ’em. Anything I really hate, it’s having to get up against a big, hot, hairy, smelly lion.”

He murmured a sympathetic phrase and extended his search for the lost pin to the side of the pool. Almost under the scaffold he saw the shine of precious stones and called to her as he picked up the pin, a bar pin splendidly set with diamonds. He was glad that he had found it for her. It must have cost a great deal of money and she would doubtless be held responsible for its safe-keeping.

She came dancing to him. “Say, that’s fine-your eyes are working, ain’t they? I might ‘a’ been set back a good six dollars if you hadn’t found that.” She took the bauble and fastened it inside her jacket. So the pin, too, had been a tawdry makeshift. Nothing was real any more. As she adjusted the pin he saw his moment for escape. With a gallant striving for the true Clifford Armytage manner he raised the plush hat.

“Well, I’m glad you found Mrs. Rosenblatt’s pin-and I guess I’ll be getting on.”

The manner must have been defective. She looked through him and said with great firmness, “Nothing like that, old pippin.” Again he was taken with a violent fit of shivering. He could not meet her eyes. He was turning away when she seized him by the wrist. Her grip was amazingly forceful. He doubted if he could break away even with his stoutest effort. He stood miserably staring at the ground. Suddenly the girl reached up to pat his shoulder. He shivered again and she continued to pat it. When his teeth had ceased to be castanets she spoke:

“Listen here, old Kid, you can’t fool any one, so quit trying. Don’t you s’pose I’ve seen ’em like you before? Say, boy, I was trouping while you played with marbles. You’re up against it. Now, c’mon”– with the arm at his shoulder she pulled him about to face her-“c’mon and be nice-tell mother all about it.”

The late Clifford Armytage was momentarily menaced by a complete emotional overthrow. Another paroxysm of shivering perhaps averted this humiliation. The girl dropped his wrist, turned, stooped, and did something. He recalled the scene in the gambling hell, only this time she fronted away from the camera. When she faced him again he was not surprised to see bills in her hand. It could only have been the chill he suffered that kept him from blushing. She forced the bills into his numb fingers and he stared at them blankly. “I can’t take these,” he muttered.

“There, now, there, now! Be easy. Naturally I know you’re all right or I wouldn’t give up this way. You’re just having a run of hard luck. The Lord knows, I’ve been helped out often enough in my time. Say, listen, I’ll never forget when I went out as a kid with Her First False Step-they had lions in that show. It was a frost from the start. No salaries, no nothing. I got a big laugh one day when I was late at rehearsal. The manager says: ‘You’re fined two dollars, Miss Montague.’ I says, ‘All right, Mr. Gratz, but you’ll have to wait till I can write home for the money.’ Even Gratz had to laugh. Anyway, the show went bust and I never would ‘a’ got any place if two or three parties hadn’t of helped me out here and there, just the same as I’m doing with you this minute. So don’t be foolish.”

“Well-you see-I don’t–” He broke off from nervous weakness. In his mind was a jumble of incongruous sentences and he seemed unable to manage any of them.

The girl now sent a clean shot through his armour. “When’d you eat last?”

He looked at the ground again in painful embarrassment. Even in the chill air he was beginning to feel hot. “I don’t remember,” he said at last quite honestly.

“That’s what I thought. You go eat. Go to Mother Haggin’s, that cafeteria just outside the gate. She has better breakfast things than the place on the lot.” Against his will the vision of a breakfast enthralled him, yet even under this exaltation an instinct of the wariest caution survived.

“I’ll go to the one on the lot, I guess. If I went out to the other one I couldn’t get in again.”

She smiled suddenly, with puzzling lights in her eyes. “Well, of all things! You want to get in again, do you? Say, wouldn’t that beat the hot place a mile? You want to get in again? All right, Old- timer, I’ll go out with you and after you’ve fed I’ll cue you on to the lot again.”

“Well-if it ain’t taking you out of your way.” He knew that the girl was somehow humouring him, as if he were a sick child. She knew, and he knew, that the lot was no longer any place for him until he could be rightly there.

“No, c’mon, I’ll stay by you.” They walked up the street of the Western village. The girl had started at a brisk pace and he was presently breathless.

“I guess I’ll have to rest a minute,” he said. They were now before the Crystal Palace Hotel and he sat on the steps.

“All in, are you? Well, take it easy.”

He was not only all in, but his mind still played with incongruous sentences. He heard himself saying things that must sound foolish.

“I’ve slept in here a lot,” he volunteered. The girl went to look through one of the windows.

“Blankets!” she exclaimed. “Well, you got the makings of a trouper in you, I’ll say that. Where else did you sleep?”

“Well, there were two miners had a nice cabin down the street here with bunks and blankets, and they had a fight, and half a kettle of beans and some bread, and one of them shaved and I used his razor, but I haven’t shaved since because I only had twenty cents day before yesterday, and anyway they might think I was growing them for a part, the way your father did, but I moved up here when I saw them put the blankets in, and I was careful and put them back every morning. I didn’t do any harm, do you think? And I got the rest of the beans they’d thrown into the fireplace, and if I’d only known it I could have brought my razor and overcoat and some clean collars, but somehow you never seem to know when–“

He broke off, eyeing her vaguely. He had little notion what he had been saying or what he would say next.

“This is going to be good,” said the Montague girl. “I can see that from here. But now you c’mon-we’ll walk slow-and you tell me the rest when you’ve had a little snack.”

She even helped him to rise, with a hand under his elbow, though he was quick to show her that he had not needed this help. “I can walk all right,” he assured her.

“Of course you can. You’re as strong as a horse. But we needn’t go too fast.” She took his arm in a friendly way as they completed the journey to the outside cafeteria.

At this early hour they were the only patrons of the place. Miss Montague, a little with the air of a solicitous nurse, seated her charge at a corner table and took the place opposite him.

“What’s it going to be?” she demanded.

Visions of rich food raced madly through his awakened mind, wide platters heaped with sausage and steaks and ham and corned-beef hash.

“Steak,” he ventured, “and something like ham and eggs and some hot cakes and coffee and–” He broke off. He was becoming too emotional under this golden spread of opportunity. The girl glanced up from the bill of fare and appraised the wild light in his eyes.

“One minute, Kid-let’s be more restful at first. You know-kind of ease into the heavy eats. It’ll prob’ly be better for you.”

“Anything you say,” he conceded. Her words of caution had stricken him with a fear that this was a dream; that he would wake up under blankets back in the Crystal Palace. It was like that in dreams. You seemed able to order all sorts of food, but something happened; it never reached the table. He would take no further initiative in this scene, whether dream or reality. “You order something,” he concluded. His eyes trustfully sought the girl’s.

“Well, I think you’ll start with one orange, just to kind of hint to the old works that something good is coming. Then–lemme see”–she considered gravely. “Then I guess about two soft-boiled eggs–no, you can stand three–and some dry toast and some coffee. Maybe a few thin strips of bacon wouldn’t hurt. We’ll see can you make the grade.” She turned to give the order to a waitress. “And shoot the coffee along, sister. A cup for me, too.”

Her charge shivered again at the mere mention of coffee. The juncture was critical. He might still be dreaming, but in another moment he must know. He closely, even coolly, watched the two cups of coffee that were placed before them. He put a benumbed hand around the cup in front of him and felt it burn. It was too active a sensation for mere dreaming. He put sugar into the cup and poured in the cream from a miniature pitcher, inhaling a very real aroma. Events thus far seemed normal. He stirred the coffee and started to raise the cup. Now, after all, it seemed to be a dream. His hand shook so that the stuff spilled into the saucer and even out on to the table. Always in dreams you were thwarted at the last moment.

The Montague girl had noted the trembling and ineffective hand. She turned her back upon him to chat with the waitress over by the food counter. With no eye upon him, he put both hands about the cup and succeeded in raising it to his lips. The hands were still shaky, but he managed some sips of the stuff, and then a long draught that seemed to scald him. He wasn’t sure if it scalded or not. It was pretty hot, and fire ran through him. He drained the cup–still holding it with both hands. It was an amazing sensation to have one’s hand refuse to obey so simple an order. Maybe he would always be that way now, practically a cripple.

The girl turned back to him. “Atta boy,” she said. “Now take the orange. And when the toast comes you can have some more coffee.” A dread load was off his mind. He did not dream this thing. He ate the orange, and ate wonderful toast to the accompaniment of another cup of coffee. The latter half of this he managed with but one hand, though it was not yet wholly under control. The three eggs seemed like but one. He thought they must have been small eggs. More toast was commanded and more coffee.

“Easy, easy!” cautioned his watchful hostess from time to time. “Don’t wolf it–you’ll feel better afterwards.”

“I feel better already,” he announced.

“Well,” the girl eyed him critically, “you certainly got the main chandelier lighted up once more.”

A strange exhilaration flooded all his being. His own thoughts babbled to him, and he presently began to babble to his new friend.

“You remind me so much of Tessie Kearns,” he said as he scraped the sides of the egg cup.

“Who’s she?”

“Oh, she’s a scenario writer I know. You’re just like her.” He was now drunk–maudlin drunk–from the coffee. Sober, he would have known that no human beings could be less alike than Tessie Kearns and the Montague girl. Other walls of his reserve went down.

“Of course I could have written to Gashwiler and got some money to go back there–“

“Gashwiler, Gashwiler?” The girl seemed to search her memory. “I thought I knew all the tank towns, but that’s a new one. Where is it?”

“It isn’t a town; it’s a gentleman I had a position with, and he said he’d keep it open for me.” He flew to another thought with the inconsequence of the drunken. “Say, Kid”–He had even caught that form of address from her–“I’ll tell you. You can keep this watch of mine till I pay you back this money.” He drew it out. “It’s a good solid-gold watch and everything. My uncle Sylvester gave it to me for not smoking, on my eighteenth birthday. He smoked, himself; he even drank considerable. He was his own worst enemy. But you can see it’s a good solid–gold watch and keeps time, and you hold it till I pay you back, will you?”

The girl took the watch, examining it carefully, noting the inscription engraved on the case. There were puzzling glints in her eyes as she handed it back to him. “No; I’ll tell you, it’ll be my watch until you pay me back, but you keep it for me. I haven’t any place to carry it except the pocket of my jacket, and I might lose it, and then where’d we be?”

“Well, all right.” He cheerfully took back the watch. His present ecstasy would find him agreeable to all proposals.

“And say,” continued the girl, “what about this Gashweiler, or whatever his name is? He said he’d take you back, did he? A farm?”

“No, an emporium–and you forgot his name just the way that lady in the casting office always does. She’s funny. Keeps telling me not to forget the address, when of course I couldn’t forget the town where I lived, could I? Of course it’s a little town, but you wouldn’t forget it when you lived there a long time–not when you got your start there.”

“So you got your start in this town, did you?”

He wanted to talk a lot now. He prattled of the town and his life there, of the eight-hour talent-tester and the course in movie- acting. Of Tessie Kearns and her scenarios, not yet prized as they were sure to be later. Of Lowell Hardy, the artistic photographer, and the stills that he had made of the speaker as Clifford Armytage. Didn’t she think that was a better stage name than Merton Gill, which didn’t seem to sound like so much? Anyway, he wished he had his stills here to show her. Of course some of them were just in society parts, the sort of thing that Harold Parmalee played–had she noticed that he looked a good deal like Harold Parmalee? Lots of people had.

Tessie Kearns thought he was the dead image of Parmalee. But he liked Western stuff better–a lot better than cabaret stuff where you had to smoke one cigarette after another–and he wished she could see the stills in the Buck Benson outfit, chaps and sombrero and spurs and holster. He’d never had two guns, but the one he did have he could draw pretty well. There would be his hand at his side, and in a flash he would have the gun in it, ready to shoot from the hip. And roping–he’d need to practise that some. Once he got it smack over Dexter’s head, but usually it didn’t go so well.

Probably a new clothesline didn’t make the best rope–too stiff. He could probably do a lot better with one of those hair ropes that the real cowboys used. And Metta Judson–she was the best cook anywhere around Simsbury. He mustn’t forget to write to Metta, and to Tessie Kearns, to be sure and see The Blight of Broadway when it came to the Bijou Palace. They would be surprised to see those close–ups that Henshaw had used him in. And he was in that other picture. No close-ups in that, still he would show pretty well in the cage- scene–he’d had to smoke a few cigarettes there, because Arabs smoke all the time, and he hadn’t been in the later scene where the girl and the young fellow were in the deserted tomb all night and he didn’t lay a finger on her because he was a perfect gentleman.

He didn’t know what he would do next. Maybe Henshaw would want him in Robinson Crusoe, Junior, where Friday’s sister turned out to be the daughter of an English earl with her monogram tattooed on her left shoulder. He would ask Henshaw, anyway.

The Montague girl listened attentively to the long, wandering recital. At times she would seem to be strongly moved, to tears or something. But mostly she listened with a sympathetic smile, or perhaps with a perfectly rigid face, though at such moments there would be those curious glints of light far back in her gray eyes. Occasionally she would prompt him with a question.

In this way she brought out his version of the Sabbath afternoon experience with Dexter. He spared none of the details, for he was all frankness now. He even told how ashamed he had felt having to lead Dexter home from his scandalous grazing before the Methodist Church. He had longed to leap upon the horse and ride him back at a gallop, but he had been unable to do this because there was nothing from which to climb on him, and probably he would have been afraid to gallop the beast, anyway.

This had been one of the bits that most strangely moved his listener. Her eyes were moist when he had finished, and some strong emotion seemed about to overpower her, but she had recovered command of herself, and become again the sympathetic provider and counsellor.

He would have continued to talk, apparently, for the influence of strong drink had not begun to wane, but the girl at length stopped him.

“Listen here, Merton–” she began; her voice was choked to a peculiar hoarseness and she seemed to be threatened with a return of her late strong emotion. She was plainly uncertain of her control, fearing to trust herself to speech, but presently, after efforts which he observed with warmest sympathy, she seemed to recover her poise. She swallowed earnestly several times, wiped her moisture– dimmed eyes with her handkerchief, and continued, “It’s getting late and I’ve got to be over at the show shop. So I’ll tell you what to do next. You go out and get a shave and a haircut and then go home and get cleaned up–you said you had a room and other clothes, didn’t you?”

Volubly he told her about the room at Mrs. Patterson’s, and, with a brief return of lucidity, how the sum of ten dollars was now due this heartless society woman who might insist upon its payment before he would again enjoy free access to his excellent wardrobe.

“Well, lemme see–” She debated a moment, then reached under the table, fumbled obscurely, and came up with more money. “Now, here, here’s twenty more besides that first I gave you, so you can pay the dame her money and get all fixed up again, fresh suit and clean collar and a shine and everything. No, no–this is my scene; you stay out.”

He had waved protestingly at sight of the new money, and now again he blushed.

“That’s all understood,” she continued. “I’m staking you to cakes till you get on your feet, see? And I know you’re honest, so I’m not throwing my money away. There–sink it and forget it. Now, you go out and do what I said, the barber first. And lay off the eats until about noon. You had enough for now. By noon you can stoke up with meat and potatoes–anything you want that’ll stick to the merry old slats. And I’d take milk instead of any more coffee. You’ve thinned down some–you’re not near so plump as Harold Parmalee. Then you rest up for the balance of the day, and you show here to-morrow morning about this time. Do you get it? The Countess’ll let you in. Tell her I said to, and come over to the office building. See?”

He tried to tell her his gratitude, but instead he babbled again of how much she was like Tessie Kearns. They parted at the gate.

With a last wondering scrutiny of him, a last reminder of her very minute directions, she suddenly illumined him with rays of a compassion that was somehow half-laughter. “You poor, feckless dub!” she pronounced as she turned from him to dance through the gate. He scarcely heard the words; her look and tone had been so warming.

Ten minutes later he was telling a barber that he had just finished a hard week on the Holden lot, and that he was glad to get the brush off at last. From the barber’s he hastened to the Patterson house, rather dreading the encounter with one to whom he owed so much money. He found the house locked. Probably both of the Pattersons had gone out into society. He let himself in and began to follow the directions of the Montague girl. The bath, clean linen, the other belted suit, already pressed, the other shoes, the buttoned, cloth- topped ones, already polished! He felt now more equal to the encounter with a heartless society woman. But, as she did not return, he went out in obedience to a new hunger.

In the most sumptuous cafeteria he knew of, one patronized only in his first careless days of opulence, he ate for a long time. Roast beef and potatoes he ordered twice, nor did he forget to drink the milk prescribed by his benefactress. Plenty of milk would make him more than ever resemble Harold Parmalee. And he commanded an abundance of dessert: lemon pie and apple pie and a double portion of chocolate cake with ice-cream. His craving for sweets was still unappeased, so at a near-by drug store he bought a pound box of candy.

The world was again under his feet. Restored to his rightful domain, he trod it with lightness and certainty. His mind was still a pleasant jumble of money and food and the Montague girl. Miles of gorgeous film flickered across his vision. An experienced alcoholic would have told him that he enjoyed a coffee “hang-over.” He wended a lordly way to the nearest motion-picture theatre.

Billed there was the tenth installment of The Hazards of Hortense. He passed before the lively portrayal in colours of Hortense driving a motor car off an open drawbridge. The car was already halfway between the bridge and the water beneath. He sneered openly at the announcement: “Beulah Baxter in the Sensational Surprise Picture of the Century.” A surprise picture indeed, if those now entering the theatre could be told what he knew about it! He considered spreading the news, but decided to retain the superiority his secret knowledge gave him.

Inside the theatre, eating diligently from his box of candy, he was compelled to endure another of the unspeakable Buckeye comedies. The cross-eyed man was a lifeguard at a beach and there were social entanglements involving a bearded father, his daughter in an inconsiderable bathing suit, a confirmed dipsomaniac, two social derelicts who had to live by their wits, and a dozen young girls also arrayed in inconsiderable bathing suits. He could scarcely follow the chain of events, so illogical were they, and indeed made little effort to do so. He felt far above the audience that cackled at these dreadful buffooneries. One subtitle read: “I hate to kill him–murder is so hard to explain.”

This sort of thing, he felt more than ever, degraded an art where earnest people were suffering and sacrificing in order to give the public something better and finer. Had he not, himself, that very day, completed a perilous ordeal of suffering and sacrifice? And he was asked to laugh at a cross–eyed man posing before a camera that fell to pieces when the lens was exposed, shattered, presumably, by the impact of the afflicted creature’s image! This, surely, was not art such as Clifford Armytage was rapidly fitting himself, by trial and hardship, to confer upon the public.

It was with curiously conflicting emotions that he watched the ensuing Hazards of Hortense. He had to remind himself that the slim little girl with the wistful eyes was not only not performing certain feats of daring that the film exposed, but that she was Mrs. Sigmund Rosenblatt and crazy about her husband. Yet the magic had not wholly departed from this wronged heroine. He thought perhaps this might be because he now knew, and actually liked, that talkative Montague girl who would be doing the choice bits of this drama. Certainly he was loyal to the hand that fed him.

Black Steve and his base crew, hirelings of the scoundrelly guardian who was “a Power in Wall Street,” again and again seemed to have encompassed the ruin, body and soul, of the persecuted Hortense. They had her prisoner in a foul den of Chinatown, whence she escaped to balance precariously upon the narrow cornice of a skyscraper, hundreds of feet above a crowded thoroughfare. They had her, as the screen said, “Depressed by the Grim Menace of Tragedy that Impended in the Shadows.” They gave her a brief respite in one of those gilded resorts “Where the Clink of Coin Opens Wide the Portals of Pleasure, Where Wealth Beckons with Golden Fingers,” but this was only a trap for the unsuspecting girl, who was presently, sewed in a plain sack, tossed from the stern of an ocean liner far out at sea by creatures who would do anything for money–who, so it was said, were Remorseless in the Mad Pursuit of Gain.

At certain gripping moments it became apparent to one of the audience that Mrs. Sigmund Rosenblatt herself was no longer in jeopardy. He knew the girl who was, and profoundly admired her artistry as she fled along the narrow cornice of the skyscraper. For all purposes she was Beulah Baxter. He recalled her figure as being- -not exactly stubby, but at least not of marked slenderness. Yet in the distance she was indeed all that an audience could demand. And she was honest, while Mrs. Rosenblatt, in the Majestic Theatre at Peoria, Illinois, had trifled airily with his faith in women and deceived him by word of mouth.

He applauded loudly at the sensational finish, when Hortense, driving her motor car at high speed across the great bridge, ran into the draw, that opened too late for her to slow down, and plunged to the cruel waters far below.

Mrs. Rosenblatt would possibly have been a fool to do this herself. The Montague girl had been insistent on that point; there were enough things she couldn’t avoid doing, and all stars very sensibly had doubles for such scenes when distance or action permitted. At the same time, he could never again feel the same toward her. Indeed, he would never have felt the same even had there been no Rosenblatt. Art was art!

It was only five o’clock when he left the picture theatre, but he ate again at the luxurious cafeteria. He ate a large steak, drank an immense quantity of milk, and bought another box of candy on his way to the Patterson home. Lights were on there, and he went in to face the woman he had so long kept out of her money. She would probably greet him coldly and tell him she was surprised at his actions.

Yet it seemed that he had been deceived in this society woman. She was human, after all. She shook hands with him warmly and said they were glad to see him back; he must have been out on location, and she was glad they were not to lose him, because he was so quiet and regular and not like some other motion-picture actors she had known.

He told her he had just put in a hard week on the Holden lot, where things were beginning to pick up. He was glad she had missed him, and he certainly had missed his comfortable room, because the accommodations on the lot were not of the best. In fact, they were pretty unsatisfactory, if you came right down to it, and he hoped they wouldn’t keep him there again. And, oh, yes–he was almost forgetting. Here was ten dollars–he believed there were two weeks’ rent now due. He passed over the money with rather a Clifford Armytage flourish.

Mrs. Patterson accepted the bill almost protestingly. She hadn’t once thought about the rent, because she knew he was reliable, and he was to remember that any time convenient to him would always suit her in these matters. She did accept the bill, still she was not the heartless creature he had supposed her to be.

As he bade her good-night at the door she regarded him closely and said, “Somehow you look a whole lot older, Mr. Armytage.”

“I am,” replied Mr. Armytage.

* * * * * * *

Miss Montague, after parting with her protege had walked quickly, not without little recurrent dance steps–as if some excess of joy would ever and again overwhelm her–to the long office building on the Holden lot, where she entered a door marked “Buckeye Comedies. Jeff Baird, Manager.” The outer office was vacant, but through the open door to another room she observed Baird at his desk, his head bent low over certain sheets of yellow paper. He was a bulky, rather phlegmatic looking man, with a parrot-like crest of gray hair. He did not look up as the girl entered. She stood a moment as if to control her excitement, then spoke.

“Jeff, I found a million dollars for you this morning.”

“Thanks!” said Mr. Baird, still not looking up. “Chuck it down in the coal cellar, will you? We’re littered with the stuff up here.”

“On the level, Jeff.”

Baird looked up. “On the level?”

“You’ll say so.”

“Shoot!”

“Well, he’s a small-town hick that saved up seventy-two dollars to come here from Goosewallow, Michigan, to go into pictures-took a correspondence course in screen–acting and all that, and he went broke and slept in a property room down in the village all last week; no eats at all for three, four days. I’d noticed him around the lot on different sets; something about him that makes you look a second time. I don’t know what it is-kind of innocent and bug-eyed the way he’d rubber at things, but all the time like as if he thought he was someone. Well, I keep running across him and pretty soon I notice he’s up against it. He still thinks he’s someone, and is very up-stage if you start to kid him the least bit, but the signs are there, all right. He’s up against it good and hard.

“All last week he got to looking worse and worse. But he still had his stage presence. Say, yesterday he looked like the juvenile lead of a busted road show that has walked in from Albany and was just standing around on Broadway wondering who he’d consent to sign up with for forty weeks–see what I mean?-hungry but proud. He was over on the Baxter set last night while I was doing the water stuff, and you’d ought to see him freeze me when I suggested a sandwich and a cup o’ coffee. It was grand.

“Well, this morning I’m back for a bar pin of Baxter’s I’d lost, and there he is again, no overcoat, shivering his teeth loose, and all in. So I fell for him. Took him up for some coffee and eggs, staked him to his room rent, and sent him off to get cleaned and barbered. But before he went he cut loose and told me his history from the cradle to Hollywood.

“I’d ‘a’ given something good if you’d been at the next table. I guess he got kind of jagged on the food, see? He’d tell me anything that run in his mind, and most of it was good. You’ll say so. I’ll get him to do it for you sometime. Of all the funny nuts that make this lot! Well, take my word for it; that’s all I ask. And listen here, Jeff–I’m down to cases. There’s something about this kid, like when I tell you I’d always look at him twice. And it’s something rich that I won’t let out for a minute or two. But here’s what you and me do, right quick:

“The kid was in that cabaret and gambling-house stuff they shot last week for The Blight of Broadway, and this something that makes you look at him must of struck Henshaw the way it did me, for he let him stay right at the edge of the dance floor and took a lot of close- ups of him looking tired to death of the gay night life. Well, you call up the Victor folks and ask can you get a look at that stuff because you’re thinking of giving a part to one of the extras that worked in it. Maybe we can get into the projection room right away and you’ll see what I mean. Then I won’t have to tell you the richest thing about it. Now!”–she took a long breath–“will you?”

Baird had listened with mild interest to the recital, occasionally seeming not to listen while he altered the script before him. But he took the telephone receiver from its hook and said briefly to the girl: “You win. Hello! Give me the Victor office. Hello! Mr. Baird speaking–“

The two were presently in the dark projection room watching the scenes the girl had told of.

“They haven’t started cutting yet,” she said delightedly. “All his close-ups will be in. Goody! There’s the lad-get him? Ain’t he the actin’est thing you ever saw? Now wait-you’ll see others.”

Baird watched the film absorbedly. Three times it was run for the sole purpose of exposing to this small audience Merton Gill’s notion of being consumed with ennui among pleasures that had palled. In the gambling-hall bit it could be observed that he thought not too well of cigarettes. “He screens well, too,” remarked the girl. “Of course I couldn’t be sure of that.”

“He screens all right,” agreed Baird.

“Well, what do you think?”

“I think he looks like the first plume on a hearse.”

“He looks all of that, but try again. Who does he remind you of? Catch this next one in the gambling hell–get the profile and the eyebrows and the chin–there!”

“Why–” Baird chuckled. “I’m a Swede if he don’t look like–“

“You got it!” the girl broke in excitedly. “I knew you would. I didn’t at first, this morning, because he was so hungry and needed a shave, and he darned near had me bawling when he couldn’t hold his cup o’ coffee except with two hands. But what d’you think?–pretty soon he tells me himself that he looks a great deal like Harold Parmalee and wouldn’t mind playing parts like Parmalee, though he prefers Western stuff. Wouldn’t that get you?”

The film was run again so that Baird could study the Gill face in the light of this new knowledge.

“He does, he does, he certainly does–if he don’t look like a No. 9 company of Parmalee I’ll eat that film. Say, Flips, you did find something.”

“Oh, I knew it; didn’t I tell you so?”

“But, listen–does he know he’s funny?”

“Not in a thousand years! He doesn’t know anything’s funny, near as I can make him.”

They were out in the light again, walking slowly back to the Buckeye offices.

“Get this,” said Baird seriously. “You may think I’m kidding, but only yesterday I was trying to think if I couldn’t dig up some guy that looked more like Parmalee than Parmalee himself does–just enough more to get the laugh, see? And you spring this lad on me. All he needs is the eyebrows worked up a little bit. But how about him–will he handle? Because if he will I’ll use him in the new five-reeler.”

“Will he handle?” Miss Montague echoed the words with deep emphasis. “Leave him to me. He’s got to handle. I already got twenty-five bucks invested in his screen career. And, Jeff, he’ll be easy to work, except he don’t know he’s funny. If he found out he was, it might queer him–see what I mean? He’s one of that kind–you can tell it. How will you use him? He could never do Buckeye stuff.”

“Sure not. But ain’t I told you? In this new piece Jack is stage struck and gets a job as valet to a ham that’s just about Parmalee’s type, and we show Parmalee acting in the screen, but all straight stuff, you understand. Unless he’s a wise guy he’ll go all through the piece and never get on that it’s funny. See, his part’s dead straight and serious in a regular drama, and the less he thinks he’s funny the bigger scream he’ll be. He’s got to be Harold Parmalee acting right out, all over the set, as serious as the lumbago–get what I mean?”

“I got you,” said the girl, “and you’ll get him to-morrow morning. I told him to be over with his stills. And he’ll be serious all the time, make no mistake there. He’s no wise guy. And one thing, Jeff, he’s as innocent as a cup–custard, so you’ll have to keep that bunch of Buckeye roughnecks from riding him. I can tell you that much. Once they started kidding him, it would be all off.”

“And, besides–” She hesitated briefly. “Somehow I don’t want him kidded. I’m pretty hard-boiled, but he sort of made me feel like a fifty-year-old mother watching her only boy go out into the rough world. See?”

“I’ll watch out for that,” said Baird.

CHAPTER XII

ALIAS HAROLD PARMALEE

Merton Gill awoke to the comforting realization that he was between sheets instead of blankets, and that this morning he need not obscurely leave his room by means of a window. As he dressed, however, certain misgivings, to which he had been immune the day before, gnawed into his optimism. He was sober now. The sheer intoxication of food after fasting, of friendly concern after so long a period when no one had spoken him kindly or otherwise, had evaporated. He felt the depression following success.

He had been rescued from death by starvation, but had anything more than this come about? Had he not fed upon the charity of a strange girl, taking her money without seeing ways to discharge the debt? How could he ever discharge it? Probably before this she had begun to think of him as a cheat. She had asked him to come to the lot, but had been vague as to the purpose. Probably his ordeal of struggle and sacrifice was not yet over. At any rate, he must find a job that would let him pay back the borrowed twenty-five dollars.

He would meet her as she had requested, assure her of his honest intentions, and then seek for work. He would try all the emporiums in Hollywood. They were numerous and some one of them would need the services of an experienced assistant. This plan of endeavour crystallized as he made his way to the Holden lot. He had brought his package of stills, but only because the girl had insisted on seeing them.

The Countess made nothing of letting him in. She had missed him, she said, for what seemed like months, and was glad to hear that he now had something definite in view, because the picture game was mighty uncertain and it was only the lucky few nowadays that could see something definite. He did not confide to her that the definite something now within his view would demand his presence at some distance from her friendly self.

He approached the entrance to Stage Five with head bent in calculation, and not until he heard her voice did he glance up to observe that the Montague girl was dancing from pleasure, it would seem, at merely beholding him. She seized both his hands in her strong grasp and revolved him at the centre of a circle she danced. Then she held him off while her eyes took in the details of his restoration.

“Well, well, well! That shows what a few ham and eggs and sleep will do. Kid, you gross a million at this minute. New suit, new shoes, snappy cravat right from the Men’s Quality Shop, and all shaved and combed slick and everything! Say–and I was afraid maybe you wouldn’t show.”

He regarded her earnestly. “Oh, I would have come back, all right; I’d never forget that twenty-five dollars I owe you; and you’ll get it all back, only it may take a little time. I thought I’d see you for a minute, then go out and find a job–you know, a regular job in a store.”

“Nothing of the sort, old Trouper!” She danced again about him, both his hands in hers, which annoyed him because it was rather loud public behaviour, though he forgave her in the light of youth and kindliness. “No regular job for you, old Pippin–nothing but acting all over the place–real acting that people come miles to see.”

“Do you think I can really get a part?” Perhaps the creature had something definite in view for him.

“Sure you can get a part! Yesterday morning I simply walked into a part for you. Come along over to the office with me. Goody–I see you brought the stills. I’ll take a peek at ’em myself before Baird gets here.” “Baird? Not the Buckeye comedy man?” He was chilled by a sudden fear.

“Yes, Jeff Baird. You see he is going to do some five–reelers and this first one has a part that might do for you. At least, I told him some things about you, and he thinks you can get away with it.”

He went moodily at her side, thinking swift thoughts. It seemed ungracious to tell her of his loathing for the Buckeye comedies, those blasphemous caricatures of worth-while screen art. It would not be fair. And perhaps here was a quick way to discharge his debt and be free of obligation to the girl. Of course he would always feel a warm gratitude for her trusting kindness, but when he no longer owed her money he could choose his own line of work. Rather bondage to some Hollywood Gashwiler than clowning in Baird’s infamies!

“Well, I’ll try anything he gives me,” he said at last, striving for the enthusiasm he could not feel.

“You’ll go big, too,” said the girl. “Believe, me Kid, you’ll go grand.”

In Baird’s offices he sat at the desk and excitedly undid the package of stills. “We’ll give ’em the once-over before he comes,” she said, and was presently exclaiming with delight at the art study of Clifford Armytage in evening dress, two straight fingers pressing the left temple, the face in three-quarter view.

“Well, now, if that ain’t Harold Parmalee to the life! If it wasn’t for that Clifford Armytage signed under it, you’d had me guessing. I knew yesterday you looked like him, but I didn’t dream it would be as much like him as this picture is. Say, we won’t show Baird this at first. We’ll let him size you up and see if your face don’t remind him of Parmalee right away. Then we’ll show him this and it’ll be a cinch. And my, look at these others–here you’re a soldier, and here you’re a-a-a polo player–that is polo, ain’t it, or is it tennis? And will you look at these stunning Westerns! These are simply the best of all–on horseback, and throwing a rope, and the fighting face with the gun drawn, and rolling a cigarette–and, as I live, saying good-by to the horse. Wouldn’t that get you–Buck Benson to the life!”

Again and again she shuffled over the stills, dwelling on each with excited admiration. Her excitement was pronounced. It seemed to be a sort of nervous excitement. It had caused her face to flush deeply, and her manner, especially over the Western pictures, at moments oddly approached hysteria. Merton was deeply gratified. He had expected the art studies to produce no such impression as this. The Countess in the casting office had certainly manifested nothing like hysteria at beholding them. It must be that the Montague girl was a better judge of art studies.

“I always liked this one, after the Westerns,” he observed, indicating the Harold Parmalee pose.

“It’s stunning,” agreed the girl, still with her nervous manner. “I tell you, sit over there in Jeff’s chair and take the same pose, so I can compare you with the photo.”

Merton obliged. He leaned an elbow on the chair-arm and a temple on the two straightened fingers. “Is the light right?” he asked, as he turned his face to the pictured angle.

“Fine,” applauded the girl. “Hold it.” He held it until shocked by shrill laughter from the observer. Peal followed peal. She had seemed oddly threatened with hysteria; perhaps now it had come. She rocked on her heels and held her hands to her sides. Merton arose in some alarm, and was reassured when the victim betrayed signs of mastering her infirmity. She wiped her eyes presently and explained her outbreak.

“You looked so much like Parmalee I just couldn’t help thinking how funny it was–it just seemed to go over me like anything, like a spasm or something, when I got to thinking what Parmalee would say if he saw someone looking so much like him. See? That was why I laughed.”

He was sympathetic and delighted in equal parts. The girl had really seemed to suffer from her paroxysm, yet it was a splendid tribute to his screen worth.

It was at this moment that Baird entered. He tossed his hat on a chair and turned to the couple.

“Mr. Baird, shake hands with my friend Merton Gill. His stage name is Clifford Armytage.”

“Very pleased to meet you,” said Merton, grasping the extended hand. He hoped he had not been too dignified, too condescending. Baird would sometime doubtless know that he did not approve of those so- called comedies, but for the present he must demean himself to pay back some money borrowed from a working girl.

“Delighted,” said Baird; then he bent a suddenly troubled gaze upon the Gill lineaments. He held this a long moment, breaking it only with a sudden dramatic turning to Miss Montague.

“What’s this, my child? You’re playing tricks on the old man.” Again he incredulously scanned the face of Merton. “Who is this man?” he demanded.

“I told you, he’s Merton Gill from Gushwomp, Ohio,” said the girl, looking pleased and expectant.

“Simsbury, Illinois,” put in Merton quickly, wishing the girl could be better at remembering names.

Baird at last seemed to be convinced. He heavily smote an open palm with a clenched fist. “Well, I’ll be swoshed! I thought you must be kidding. If I’d seen him out on the lot I’d ‘a’ said he was the twin brother of Harold Parmalee.”

“There!” exclaimed the girl triumphantly. “Didn’t I say he’d see it right quick? You can’t keep a thing from this old bey. Now you just came over here to this desk and look at this fine batch of stills he had taken by a regular artist back in Cranberry.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Baird unctuously, “I bet they’re good. Show me.” He went to the desk. “Be seated, Mr. Gill, while I have a look at these.”

Merton Gill, under the eye of Baird which clung to him with something close to fascination, sat down. He took the chair with fine dignity, a certain masterly deliberation. He sat easily, and seemed to await a verdict confidently foreknown. Baird’s eyes did not leave him for the stills until he had assumed a slightly Harold Parmalee pose. Then his head with the girl’s bent over the pictures, he began to examine them.

Exclamations of delight came from the pair. Merton Gill listened amiably. He was not greatly thrilled by an admiration which he had long believed to be his due. Had he not always supposed that things of precisely this sort would be said about those stills when at last they came under the eyes of the right people?

Like the Montague girl, Baird was chiefly impressed with the Westerns. He looked a long time at them, especially at the one where Merton’s face was emotionally averted from his old pal, Pinto, at the moment of farewell. Regarding Baird, as he stood holding this art study up to the light, Merton became aware for the first time that Baird suffered from some nervous affliction, a peculiar twitching of the lips, a trembling of the chin, which he had sometimes observed in senile persons. All at once Baird seemed quite overcome by this infirmity. He put a handkerchief to his face and uttered a muffled excuse as he hastily left the room. Outside, the noise of his heavy tread died swiftly away down the hall.

The Montague girl remained at the desk. There was a strange light in her eyes and her face was still flushed. She shot a glance of encouragement at Merton.

“Don’t be nervous, old Kid; he likes ’em all right.” He reassured her lightly: “Oh, I’m not a bit nervous about him. It ain’t as if he was doing something worth while, instead of mere comedies.”

The girl’s colour seemed to heighten. “You be sure to tell him that; talk right up to him. Be sure to say ‘mere comedies.’ It’ll show him you know what’s what. And as a matter of fact, Kid, he’s trying to do something worth while, right this minute, something serious. That’s why he’s so interested in you.”

“Well, of course, that’s different.” He was glad to learn this of Baird. He would take the man seriously if he tried to be serious, to do something fine and distinctive.

Baird here returned, looking grave. The Montague girl seemed more strangely intense. She beckoned the manager to her side.

“Now, here, Jeff, here was something I just naturally had to laugh at.”

Baird had not wholly conquered those facial spasms, but he controlled himself to say, “Show me!”

“Now, Merton,” directed the girl, “take that same pose again, like you did for me, the way you are in this picture.”

As Merton adjusted himself to the Parmalee pose she handed the picture to Baird. “Now, Jeff, I ask you–ain’t that Harold to the life–ain’t it so near him that you just have to laugh your head off?”

It was even so. Baird and the girl both laughed convulsively, the former with rumbling chuckles that shook his frame. When he had again composed himself he said, “Well, Mr. Gill, I think you and I can do a little business. I don’t know what your idea about a contract is, but–“

Merton Gill quickly interrupted. “Well, you see I’d hardly like to sign a contract with you, not for those mere comedies you do. I’ll do anything to earn a little money right now so I can pay back this young lady, but I wouldn’t like to go on playing in such things, with cross-eyed people and waiters on roller skates, and all that. What I really would like to do is something fine and worth while, but not clowning in mere Buckeye comedies.”

Mr. Baird, who had devoted the best part of an active career to the production of Buckeye comedies, and who regarded them as at least one expression of the very highest art, did not even flinch at these cool words. He had once been an actor himself. Taking the blow like a man, he beamed upon his critic. “Exactly, my boy; don’t you think I’ll ever ask you to come down to clowning. You might work with me for years and I’d never ask you to do a thing that wasn’t serious. In fact, that’s why I’m hoping to engage you now. I want to do a serious picture, I want to get out of all that slap-stick stuff, see? Something fine and worth while, like you say. And you’re the very actor I need in this new piece.”

“Well, of course, in that case–” This was different; he made it plain that in the case of a manager striving for higher things he was not one to withhold a helping hand. He was beginning to feel a great sympathy for Baird in his efforts for the worth while. He thawed somewhat from the reserve that Buckeye comedies had put upon him. He chatted amiably. Under promptings from the girl he spoke freely of his career, both in Simsbury and in Hollywood. It was twelve o’clock before they seemed willing to let him go, and from time to time they would pause to gloat over the stills.

At last Baird said cheerily, “Well, my lad, I need you in my new piece. How’ll it be if I put you on my payroll, beginning to-day, at forty a week? How about it, hey?”

“Well, I’d like that first rate, only I haven’t worked any to-day; you shouldn’t pay me for just coming here.”

The manager waved a hand airily. “That’s all right, my boy; you’ve earned a day’s salary just coming here to cheer me up. These mere comedies get me so down in the dumps sometimes. And besides, you’re not through yet. I’m going to use you some more. Listen, now–” The manager had become coldly businesslike. “You go up to a little theatre on Hollywood Boulevard–you can’t miss it–where they’re running a Harold Parmalee picture. I saw it last night and I want you to see it to-day, Better see it afternoon and evening both.”

“Yes, sir,” said Merton.

“And watch Parmalee. Study him in this picture. You look like him already, but see if you can pick up some of his tricks, see what I mean? Because it’s a regular Parmalee part I’m going to have you do, see? Kind of a society part to start with, and then we work in some of your Western stuff at the finish. But get Parmalee as much as you can. That’s all now. Oh, yes, and can you leave these stills with me? Our publicity man may want to use them later.”

“All right, Mr. Baird, I’ll do just what you say, and of course you can keep the stills as long as I got an engagement with you, and I’m very glad you’re trying to do something really worth while.”

“Thanks,” said Baird, averting his face.

The girl followed him into the hall. “Great work, boy, and take it from me, you’ll go over. Say, honest now, I’m glad clear down into my boots.” She had both his hands again, and he could see that her eyes were moist. She seemed to be an impressionable little thing, hysterical one minute while looking at a bunch of good stills, and sort of weepy the next. But he was beginning to like her, in spite of her funny talk and free ways.

“And say,” she called after him when he had reached the top of the stairs, “you know you haven’t had much experience yet with a bunch of hard-boiled troupers; many a one will be jealous of you the minute you begin to climb, and maybe they’ll get fresh and try to kid you, see? But don’t you mind it–give it right back to them. Or tell me if they get too raw. Just remember I got a mean right when I swing free.”

“All right, thank you,” he replied, but his bewilderment was plain.

She stared a moment, danced up to him, and seized a hand in both of hers. “What I mean son, if you feel bothered any time–by anything– just come to me with it, see? I’m in this piece, and I’ll look out for you. Don’t forget that.” She dropped his hand, and was back in the office while he mumbled his thanks for what he knew she had meant as a kindness.

So she was to be in the Baird piece; she, too, would be trying to give the public something better and finer. Still, he was puzzled at her believing he might need to be looked out for. An actor drawing forty dollars a week could surely look out for himself. He emerged into the open of the Holden lot as one who had at last achieved success after long and gruelling privation. He walked briefly among the scenes of this privation, pausing in reminiscent mood before the Crystal Palace Hotel and other outstanding spots where he had so stoically suffered the torments of hunger and discouragement.

He remembered to be glad now that no letter of appeal had actually gone to Gashwiler. Suppose he had built up in the old gentleman’s mind a false hope that he might again employ Merton Gill? A good thing he had held out! Yesterday he was starving and penniless; to- day he was fed and on someone’s payroll for probably as much money a week as Gashwiler netted from his entire business. From sheer force of association, as he thus meditated, he found himself hungry, and a few moments later he was selecting from the food counter of the cafeteria whatever chanced to appeal to the eye–no weighing of prices now.

Before he had finished his meal Henshaw and his so-called Governor brought their trays to the adjoining table. Merton studied with new interest the director who would some day be telling people that he had been the first to observe the aptitude of this new star–had, in fact, given him a lot of footage and close-ups and medium shots and “dramatics” in The Blight of Broadway when he was a mere extra– before he had made himself known to the public in Jeff Baird’s first worth-while piece.

He was strongly moved, now, to bring himself to Henshaw’s notice when he heard the latter say, “It’s a regular Harold Parmalee part, good light comedy, plenty of heart interest, and that corking fight on the cliff.”

He wanted to tell Henshaw that he himself was already engaged to do a Harold Parmalee part, and had been told, not two hours ago, that he would by most people be taken for Parmalee’s twin brother. He restrained this impulse, however, as Henshaw went on to talk of the piece in hand.

It proved to be Robinson Crusoe, which he had already discussed. Or, rather, not Robinson Crusoe any longer. Not even Robinson Crusoe, Junior. It was to have been called Island Passion, he learned, but this title had been amended to Island Love.

“They’re getting fed up on that word ‘passion,'” Henshaw was saying, “and anyhow, ‘love’ seems to go better with ‘island,’ don’t you think, Governor? ‘Desert Passion’ was all right–there’s something strong and intense about a desert. But ‘island’ is different.”

And it appeared that Island Love, though having begun as Robinson Crusoe, would contain few of the outstanding features of that tale. Instead of Crusoe’s wrecked sailing-ship, there was a wrecked steam yacht, a very expensive yacht stocked with all modern luxuries, nor would there be a native Friday and his supposed sister with the tattooed shoulder, but a wealthy young New Yorker and his valet who would be good for comedy on a desert island, and a beautiful girl, and a scoundrel who would in the last reel be thrown over the cliffs.

Henshaw was vivacious about the effects he would get. “I’ve been wondering, Governor,” he continued, “if we’re going to kill off the heavy, whether we shouldn’t plant it early that besides wanting this girl who’s on the island, he’s the same scoundrel that wronged the young sister of the lead that owns the yacht. See what I mean?-it would give more conflict.”

“But here–” The Governor frowned and spoke after a moment’s pause. “Your young New Yorker is rich, isn’t he? Fine old family, and all that, how could he have a sister that would get wronged? You couldn’t do it. If he’s got a wronged sister, he’d have to be a workingman or a sailor or something. And she couldn’t be a New York society girl; she’d have to be working some place, in a store or office–don’t you see? How could you have a swell young New Yorker with a wronged sister? Real society girls never get wronged unless their father loses his money, and then it’s never anything serious enough to kill a heavy for. No–that’s out.” “Wait, I have it.” Henshaw beamed with a new inspiration. “You just said a sailor could have his sister wronged, so why not have one on the yacht, a good strong type, you know, and his little sister was wronged by the heavy, and he’d never known who it was, because the little girl wouldn’t tell him, even on her death-bed, but he found the chap’s photograph in her trunk, and on the yacht he sees that it was this same heavy–and there you are. Revenge–see what I mean? He fights with the heavy on the cliff, after showing him the little sister’s picture, and pushes him over to death on the rocks below–get it? And the lead doesn’t have to kill him. How about that?” Henshaw regarded his companion with pleasant anticipation.

The Governor again debated before he spoke. He still doubted. “Say, whose show is this, the lead’s or the sailor’s that had the wronged sister? You’d have to show the sailor and his sister, and show her being wronged by the heavy–that’d take a big cabaret set, at least- -and you’d have to let the sailor begin his stuff on the yacht, and then by the time he’d kept it up a bit after the wreck had pulled off the fight, where would your lead be? Can you see Parmalee playing second to this sailor? Why, the sailor’d run away with the piece. And that cabaret set would cost money when we don’t need it– just keep those things in mind a little.”

“Well,” Henshaw submitted gracefully, “anyway, I think my suggestion of Island Love is better than Island Passion–kind of sounds more attractive, don’t you think?”

The Governor lighted a cigarette. “Say, Howard, it’s a wonderful business, isn’t it? We start with poor old Robinson Crusoe and his goats and parrot and man Friday, and after dropping Friday’s sister who would really be the Countess of Kleig, we wind up with a steam- yacht and a comic butler and call it Island Love. Who said the art of the motion picture is in its infancy? In this case it’ll be plumb senile. Well, go ahead with the boys and dope out your hogwash. Gosh! Sometimes I think I wouldn’t stay in the business if it wasn’t for the money. And remember, don’t you let a single solitary sailor on that yacht have a wronged sister that can blame it on the heavy, or you’ll never have Parmalee playing the lead.”

Again Merton Gill debated bringing himself to the notice of these gentlemen. If Parmalee wouldn’t play the part for any reason like a sailor’s wronged sister, he would. It would help him to be known in Parmalee parts. Still, he couldn’t tell how soon they might need him, nor how soon Baird would release him. He regretfully saw the two men leave, however. He might have missed a chance even better than Baird would give him.

He suddenly remembered that he had still a professional duty to perform. He must that afternoon, and also that evening, watch a Harold Parmalee picture. He left the cafeteria, swaggered by the watchman at the gate-he had now the professional standing to silence that fellow-and made his way to the theatre Baird had mentioned.

In front he studied the billing of the Parmalee picture. It was “Object, Matrimony-a Smashing Comedy of Love and Laughter.” Harold Parmalee, with a gesture of mock dismay, seemed to repulse a bevy of beautiful maidens who wooed him. Merton took his seat with a dismay that was not mock, for it now occurred to him that he had no experience in love scenes, and that an actor playing Parmalee parts would need a great deal of such experience. In Simsbury there had been no opportunity for an intending actor to learn certain little niceties expected at sentimental moments. Even his private life had been almost barren of adventures that might now profit him.

He had sometimes played kissing games at parties, and there had been the more serious affair with Edwina May Pulver-nights when he had escorted her from church or sociables to the Pulver gate and lingered in a sort of nervously worded ecstasy until he could summon courage to kiss the girl. Twice this had actually happened, but the affair had come to nothing, because the Pulvers had moved away from Simsbury and he had practically forgotten Edwina May; forgotten even the scared haste of those embraces. He seemed to remember that he had grabbed her and kissed her, but was it on her cheek or nose?

Anyway, he was now quite certain that the mechanics of this dead amour were not those approved of in the best screen circles. Never had he gathered a beauteous girl in his arms and very slowly, very accurately, very tenderly, done what Parmalee and other screen actors did in their final fade-outs. Even when Beulah Baxter had been his screen ideal he had never seen himself as doing more than save her from some dreadful fate. Of course, later, if he had found out that she was unwed–

He resolved now to devote special study to Parmalee’s methods of wooing the fair creature who would be found in his arms at the close of the present film. Probably Baird would want some of that stuff from him.

From the very beginning of “Object, Matrimony” it was apparent that the picture drama would afford him excellent opportunities for studying the Parmalee technique in what an early subtitle called “The Eternal Battle of the Sexes.” For Parmalee in the play was Hubert Throckmorton, popular screen idol and surfeited with the attentions of adoring women. Cunningly the dramatist made use of Parmalee’s own personality, of his screen triumphs, and of the adulation lavished upon him by discriminating fair ones. His breakfast tray was shown piled with missives amply attesting the truth of what the interviewer had said of his charm. All women seemed to adore Hubert Throckmorton in the drama, even as all women adored Harold Parmalee in private life.

The screen revealed Throckmorton quite savagely ripping open the letters, glancing at their contents and flinging them from him with humorous shudders. He seemed to be asking why these foolish creatures couldn’t let an artist alone. Yet he was kindly, in this half-humorous, half-savage mood. There was a blending of chagrin and amused tolerance on his face as the screen had him murmur, casting the letter aside, “Poor, Silly Little Girls!”

From this early scene Merton learned Parmalee’s method of withdrawing the gold cigarette case, of fastidiously selecting a cigarette, of closing the case and of absently–thinking of other matters–tamping the gold-tipped thing against the cover. This was an item that he had overlooked. He should have done that in the cabaret scene. He also mastered the Parmalee trick of withdrawing the handkerchief from the cuff of the perfectly fitting morning coat. That was something else he should have done in The Blight of Broadway. Little things like that, done right, gave the actor his distinction.

The drama progressed. Millionaire Jasper Gordon, “A Power in Wall Street,” was seen telephoning to Throckmorton. He was entreating the young actor to spend the week-end at his palatial Long Island country home to meet a few of his friends. The grim old Wall Street magnate was perturbed by Throckmorton’s refusal, and renewed his appeal. He was one of those who always had his way in Wall Street, and he at length prevailed upon Throckmorton to accept his invitation. He than manifested the wildest delight, and he was excitedly kissed by his beautiful daughter who had been standing by his side in the sumptuous library while he telephoned. It could be seen that the daughter, even more than her grim old father, wished Mr. Throckmorton to be at the Long Island country home.

Later Throckmorton was seen driving his high-powered roadster, accompanied only by his valet, to the Gordon country home on Long Island, a splendid mansion surrounded by its landscaped grounds where fountains played and roses bloomed against the feathery background of graceful eucalyptus trees. Merton Gill here saw that he must learn to drive a high-powered roadster. Probably Baird would want some of that stuff, too.

A round of country-house gaieties ensued, permitting Throckmorton to appear in a series of perfectly fitting sports costumes. He was seen on his favourite hunter, on the tennis courts, on the first tee of the golf course, on a polo pony, and in the mazes of the dance. Very early it was learned that the Gordon daughter had tired of mere social triumphs and wished to take up screen acting in a serious way. She audaciously requested Throckmorton to give her a chance as leading lady in his next great picture.

He softened his refusal by explaining to her that acting was a difficult profession and that suffering and sacrifice were necessary to round out the artist. The beautiful girl replied that within ten days he would be compelled to admit her rare ability as an actress, and laughingly they wagered a kiss upon it. Merton felt that this was the sort of thing he must know more about.

Throckmorton was courteously gallant in the scene. Even when he said, “Shall we put up the stakes now, Miss Gordon?” it could be seen that he was jesting. He carried this light manner through minor scenes with the beautiful young girl friends of Miss Gordon who wooed him, lay in wait for him, ogled and sighed. Always he was the laughingly tolerant conqueror who had but a lazy scorn for his triumphs.

He did not strike the graver note until it became suspected that there were crooks in the house bent upon stealing the famous Gordon jewels. That it was Throckmorton who averted this catastrophe by sheer nerve and by use of his rare histrionic powers–as when he disguised himself in the coat and hat of the arch crook whom he had felled with a single blow and left bound and gagged, in order to receive the casket of jewels from the thief who opened the safe in the library, and that he laughed away the thanks of the grateful millionaire, astonished no one in the audience, though it caused Merton Gill to wonder if he could fell a crook with one blow. He must practice up some blows.

Throckmorton left the palatial country home wearied by the continuous adulation. The last to speed him was the Gordon daughter, who reminded him of their wager; within ten days he would acknowledge her to be an actress fit to play as his leading woman.

Throckmorton drove rapidly to a simple farm where he was not known and would be no longer surfeited with attentions. He dressed plainly in shirts that opened wide at the neck and assisted in the farm labours, such as pitching hay and leading horses into the barn. It was the simple existence that he had been craving–away from it all! No one suspected him to be Hubert Throckmorton, least of all the simple country maiden, daughter of the farmer, in her neat print dress and heavy braid of golden hair that hung from beneath her sunbonnet. She knew him to be only a man among men, a simple farm labourer, and Hubert Throckmorton, wearied by the adulation of his feminine public, was instantly charmed by her coy acceptance of his attentions.

That this charm should ripen to love was to be expected. Here was a child, simple, innocent, of a wild-rose beauty in her print dress and sunbonnet, who would love him for himself alone. Beside a blossoming orange tree on the simple Long Island farm he declared his love, warning the child that he had nothing to offer her but two strong arms and a heart full of devotion.

The little girl shyly betrayed that she returned his love but told him that he must first obtain the permission of her grandmother without which she would never consent to wed him. She hastened into the old farmhouse to prepare Grandmother for the interview.

Throckmorton presently faced the old lady who sat huddled in an armchair, her hands crooked over a cane, a ruffled cap above her silvery hair. He manfully voiced his request for the child’s hand in marriage. The old lady seemed to mumble an assent. The happy lover looked about for his fiance when, to his stupefaction, the old lady arose briskly from her chair, threw off cap, silvery wig, gown of black, and stood revealed as the child herself, smiling roguishly up at him from beneath the sunbonnet. With a glad cry he would have seized her, when she stayed him with lifted hand. Once more she astounded him. Swiftly she threw off sunbonnet, blonde wig, print dress, and stood before him revealed as none other than the Gordon daughter.

Hubert Throckmorton had lost his wager. Slowly, as the light of recognition dawned in his widening eyes, he gathered the beautiful girl into his arms. “Now may I be your leading lady?” she asked.

“My leading lady, not only in my next picture, but for life,” he replied.

There was a pretty little scene in which the wager was paid. Merton studied it. Twice again, that evening, he studied it. He was doubtful. It would seem queer to take a girl around the waist that way and kiss her so slowly. Maybe he could learn. And he knew he could already do that widening of the eyes. He could probably do it as well as Parmalee did.

* * * * * * *

Back in the Buckeye office, when the Montague girl had returned from her parting with Merton, Baird had said:

“Kid, you’ve brightened my whole day.”

“Didn’t I tell you?”

“He’s a lot better than you said.”

“But can you use him?”