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Merton of the Movies

by Harry Leon Wilson · English · Gutenberg #3472 · 655,281 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Merton of the Movies

Author: Harry Leon Wilson


        
Release date: October 1, 2002 [eBook #3472]
                Most recently updated: November 20, 2016

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3472

Credits: Produced by Charles Franks, Ralph Zimmermann, the Online
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MERTON OF THE MOVIES ***




Produced by Charles Franks, Ralph Zimmermann and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team






MERTON OF THE MOVIES

By Harry Leon Wilson


To George Ade


CONTENTS


         I.  DIRTY WORK AT THE BORDER
        II.  THAT NIGHT--THE APARTMENTS OF CLIFFORD ARMYTAGE
       III.  WESTERN STUFF
        IV.  THE WATCHER AT THE GATE
         V.  A BREACH IN THE CITY WALLS
        VI.  UNDER THE GLASS TOPS
       VII.  “NOTHING TO-DAY, DEAR!”
       VIII.  CLIFFORD ARMYTAGE, THE OUTLAW
        IX.  MORE WAYS THAN ONE
         X.  OF SHATTERED ILLUSIONS
        XI.  THE MONTAGUE GIRL INTERVENES
       XII.  ALIAS HAROLD PARMALEE
      XIII.  GENIUS COMES INTO ITS OWN
       XIV.  OUT THERE WHERE MEN ARE MEN
        XV.  A NEW TRAIL
       XVI.  OF SARAH NEVADA MONTAGUE
      XVII.  MISS MONTAGUE USES HER OWN FACE
     XVIII.  “FIVE REELS--500 LAUGHS”
        XIX.  THE TRAGIC COMEDIAN
        XX.  ONWARD AND UPWARD




CHAPTER I. DIRTY WORK AT THE BORDER


At the very beginning of the tale there comes a moment of puzzled
hesitation. One way of approach is set beside another for choice, and
a third contrived for better choice. Still the puzzle persists, all
because the one precisely right way might seem--shall we say intense,
high keyed, clamorous? Yet if one way is the only right way, why pause?
Courage! Slightly dazed, though certain, let us be on, into the shrill
thick of it. So, then--

Out there in the great open spaces where men are men, a clash of
primitive hearts and the coming of young love into its own! Well had
it been for Estelle St. Clair if she had not wandered from the Fordyce
ranch. A moment’s delay in the arrival of Buck Benson, a second of fear
in that brave heart, and hers would have been a fate worse than death.

Had she not been warned of Snake le Vasquez, the outlaw--his base threat
to win her by fair means or foul? Had not Buck Benson himself, that
strong, silent man of the open, begged her to beware of the half-breed?
Perhaps she had resented the hint of mastery in Benson’s cool, quiet
tones as he said, “Miss St. Clair, ma’am, I beg you not to endanger your
welfare by permitting the advances of this viper. He bodes no good to
such as you.”

Perhaps--who knows?--Estelle St. Clair had even thought to trifle with
the feelings of Snake le Vasquez, then to scorn him for his presumption.
Although the beautiful New York society girl had remained unsullied in
the midst of a city’s profligacy, she still liked “to play with fire,”
 as she laughingly said, and at the quiet words of Benson--Two-Gun Benson
his comrades of the border called him--she had drawn herself to her full
height, facing him in all her blond young beauty, and pouted adorably as
she replied, “Thank you! But I can look out for myself.”

Yet she had wandered on her pony farther than she meant to, and was
not without trepidation at the sudden appearance of the picturesque
halfbreed, his teeth flashing in an evil smile as he swept off his broad
sombrero to her. Above her suddenly beating heart she sought to chat
gayly, while the quick eyes of the outlaw took in the details of the
smart riding costume that revealed every line of her lithe young figure.
But suddenly she chilled under his hot glance that now spoke all too
plainly.

“I must return to my friends,” she faltered. “They will be anxious.”
 But the fellow laughed with a sinister leer. “No--ah, no, the lovely
senorita will come with me,” he replied; but there was the temper of
steel in his words. For Snake le Vasquez, on the border, where human
life was lightly held, was known as the Slimy Viper. Of all the evil
men in that inferno, Snake was the foulest. Steeped in vice, he feared
neither God nor man, and respected no woman. And now, Estelle St. Clair,
drawing-room pet, pampered darling of New York society, which she ruled
with an iron hand from her father’s Fifth Avenue mansion, regretted
bitterly that she had not given heed to honest Buck Benson. Her prayers,
threats, entreaties, were in vain. Despite her struggles, the blows her
small fists rained upon the scoundrel’s taunting face, she was borne
across the border, on over the mesa, toward the lair of the outlaw.

“Have you no mercy?” she cried again and again. “Can you not see that I
loathe and despise you, foul fiend that you are? Ah. God in heaven, is
there no help at hand?” The outlaw remained deaf to these words that
should have melted a heart of stone. At last over the burning plain
was seen the ruined hovel to which the scoundrel was dragging his
fair burden. It was but the work of a moment to dismount and bear her
half-fainting form within the den. There he faced her, repellent with
evil intentions.

“Ha, senorita, you are a beautiful wildcat, yes? But Snake le Vasquez
will tame you! Ha, ha!” laughed he carelessly.

With a swift movement the beautiful girl sought to withdraw the small
silver-mounted revolver without which she never left the ranch. But
Snake le Vasquez, with a muttered oath, was too quick for her. He seized
the toy and contemptuously hurled it across his vile den.

“Have a care, my proud beauty!” he snarled, and the next moment she was
writhing in his grasp.

Little availed her puny strength. Helpless as an infant was the fair New
York society girl as Snake le Vasquez, foulest of the viper breed, began
to force his attention upon her. The creature’s hot kisses seared her
defenseless cheek. “Listen!” he hissed. “You are mine, mine at last.
Here you shall remain a prisoner until you have consented to be my
wife.” All seemed, indeed, lost.

“Am I too late, Miss St. Clair?”

Snake le Vasquez started at the quiet, grim voice.

“Sapristi!” he snarled. “You!”

“Me!” replied Buck Benson, for it was, indeed, no other.

“Thank God, at last!” murmured Estelle St. Clair, freeing herself from
the foul arms that had enfolded her slim young beauty and staggering
back from him who would so basely have forced her into a distasteful
marriage. In an instant she had recovered the St. Clair poise, had
become every inch the New York society leader, as she replied, “Not too
late, Mr. Benson! Just in time, rather. Ha, ha! This--this gentleman has
become annoying. You are just in time to mete out the punishment he so
justly deserves, for which I shall pray that heaven reward you.”

She pointed an accusing finger at the craven wretch who had shrunk from
her and now cowered at the far side of the wretched den. At that moment
she was strangely thrilled. What was his power, this strong, silent man
of the open with his deep reverence for pure American womanhood? True,
her culture demanded a gentleman, but her heart demanded a man. Her eyes
softened and fell before his cool, keen gaze, and a blush mantled her
fair cheek. Could he but have known it, she stood then in meek surrender
before this soft-voiced master. A tremor swept the honest rugged face of
Buck Benson as heart thus called to heart. But his keen eyes flitted to
Snake le Vasquez.

“Now, curse you, viper that you are, you shall fight me, by heaven! in
American fashion, man to man, for, foul though you be, I hesitate to put
a bullet through your craven heart.”

The beautiful girl shivered with new apprehension, the eyes of Snake le
Vasquez glittered with new hope. He faced his steely eyed opponent for
an instant only, then with a snarl like that of an angry beast sprang
upon him. Benson met the cowardly attack with the flash of a powerful
fist, and the outlaw fell to the floor with a hoarse cry of rage and
pain. But he was quickly upon his feet again, muttering curses, and
again he attacked his grim-faced antagonist. Quick blows rained upon his
defenseless face, for the strong, silent man was now fairly aroused. He
fought like a demon, perhaps divining that here strong men battled for
a good woman’s love. The outlaw was proving to be no match for his
opponent. Arising from the ground where a mighty blow had sent him, he
made a lightning-like effort to recover the knife which Benson had taken
from him.

“Have a care!” cried the girl in quick alarm. “That fiend in human form
would murder you!”

But Buck Benson’s cool eye had seen the treachery in ample time. With
a muttered “Curse you, fiend that you are!” he seized the form of the
outlaw in a powerful grasp, raised him high aloft as if he had been but
a child, and was about to dash him to the ground when a new voice
from the doorway froze him to immobility. Statute-like he stood there,
holding aloft the now still form of Snake le Vasquez.

The voice from the doorway betrayed deep amazement and the profoundest
irritation:

“Merton Gill, what in the sacred name of Time are you meanin’ to do
with that dummy? For the good land’s sake! Have you gone plumb crazy, or
what? Put that thing down!”

The newcomer was a portly man of middle age dressed in ill-fitting
black. His gray hair grew low upon his brow and he wore a parted beard.

The conqueror of Snake le Vasquez was still frozen, though he had
instantly ceased to be Buck Benson, the strong, silent, two-gun man of
the open spaces. The irritated voice came again:

“Put that dummy down, you idiot! What you think you’re doin’, anyway?
And say, what you got that other one in here for, when it ought to be
out front of the store showin’ that new line of gingham house frocks?
Put that down and handle it careful! Mebbe you think I got them things
down from Chicago just for you to play horse with. Not so! Not so at
all! They’re to help show off goods, and that’s what I want ‘em doin’
right now. And for Time’s sake, what’s that revolver lyin’ on the floor
for? Is it loaded? Say, are you really out of your senses, or ain’t you?
What’s got into you lately? Will you tell me that? Skyhootin’ around
in here, leavin’ the front of the store unpertected for an hour or two,
like your time was your own. And don’t tell me you only been foolin’ in
here for three minutes, either, because when I come back from lunch just
now there was Mis’ Leffingwell up at the notions counter wanting some
hooks and eyes, and she tells me she’s waited there a good thutty
minutes if she’s waited one. Nice goin’s on, I must say, for a boy
drawin’ down the money you be! Now you git busy! Take that one with the
gingham frock out and stand her in front where she belongs, and then put
one them new raincoats on the other and stand him out where he belongs,
and then look after a few customers. I declare, sometimes I git clean
out of patience with you! Now, for gosh’s sake, stir your stumps!”

“Oh, all right--yes, sir,” replied Merton Gill, though but half
respectfully. The “Oh, all right” had been tainted with a trace of
sullenness. He was tired of this continual nagging and fussing over
small matters; some day he would tell the old grouch so.

And now, gone the vivid tale of the great out-of-doors, the wide plains
of the West, the clash of primitive-hearted men for a good woman’s love.
Gone, perhaps, the greatest heart picture of a generation, the picture
at which you laugh with a lump in your throat and smile with a tear in
your eye, the story of plausible punches, a big, vital theme masterfully
handled--thrills, action, beauty, excitement--carried to a sensational
finish by the genius of that sterling star of the shadowed world,
Clifford Armytage--once known as Merton Gill in the little hamlet of
Simsbury, Illinois, where for a time, ere yet he was called to screen
triumphs, he served as a humble clerk in the so-called emporium of Amos
G. Gashwiler--Everything For The Home. Our Prices Always Right.

Merton Gill--so for a little time he must still be known--moodily seized
the late Estelle St. Clair under his arm and withdrew from the dingy
back storeroom. Down between the counters of the emporium he went with
his fair burden and left her outside its portals, staring from her very
definitely lashed eyes across the slumbering street at the Simsbury post
office. She was tastefully arrayed in one of those new checked gingham
house frocks so heatedly mentioned a moment since by her lawful owner,
and across her chest Merton Gill now imposed, with no tenderness of
manner, the appealing legend, “Our Latest for Milady; only $6.98.”
 He returned for Snake le Vasquez. That outlaw’s face, even out of the
picture, was evil. He had been picked for the part because of this
face--plump, pinkly tinted cheeks, lustrous, curling hair of some
repellent composition, eyes with a hard glitter, each lash distinct in
blue-black lines, and a small, tip-curled black mustache that lent the
whole an offensive smirk. Garbed now in a raincoat, he, too, was posed
before the emporium front, labelled “Rainproof or You Get Back Your
Money.” So frankly evil was his mien that Merton Gill, pausing to regard
him, suffered a brief relapse into artistry.

“You fiend!” he muttered, and contemptuously smote the cynical face with
an open hand.

Snake le Vasquez remained indifferent to the affront, smirking
insufferably across the slumbering street at the wooden Indian
proffering cigars before the establishment of Selby Brothers,
Confectionery and Tobaccos.

Within the emporium the proprietor now purveyed hooks and eyes to an
impatient Mrs. Leffingwell. Merton Gill, behind the opposite counter,
waited upon a little girl sent for two and a quarter yards of stuff to
match the sample crumpled in her damp hand. Over the suave amenities of
this merchandising Amos Gashwiler glared suspiciously across the store
at his employee. Their relations were still strained. Merton also glared
at Amos, but discreetly, at moments when the other’s back was turned or
when he was blandly wishing to know of Mrs. Leffingwell if there would
be something else to-day. Other customers entered. Trade was on.

Both Merton and Amos wore airs of cheerful briskness that deceived the
public. No one could have thought that Amos was fearing his undoubtedly
crazed clerk might become uncontrollable at any moment, or that the
clerk was mentally parting from Amos forever in a scene of tense
dramatic value in which his few dignified but scathing words would burn
themselves unforgettably into the old man’s brain. Merton, to himself,
had often told Amos these things. Some day he’d say them right out,
leaving his victim not only in the utmost confusion but in black despair
of ever finding another clerk one half as efficient as Merton Gill.

The afternoon wore to closing time in a flurry of trade, during which,
as Merton continued to behave sanely, the apprehension of his employer
in a measure subsided. The last customer had departed from the emporium.
The dummies were brought inside. The dust curtains were hung along
the shelves of dry goods. There remained for Merton only the task of
delivering a few groceries. He gathered these and took them out to the
wagon in front. Then he changed from his store coat to his street coat
and donned a rakish plush hat.

Amos was also changing from his store coat to his street coat and
donning his frayed straw hat.

“See if you can’t keep from actin’ crazy while you make them
deliveries,” said Amos, not uncordially, as he lighted a choice cigar
from the box which he kept hidden under a counter.

Merton wished to reply: “See here, Mr. Gashwiler, I’ve stood this abuse
long enough! The time has come to say a few words to you--” But aloud he
merely responded, “Yes, sir!”

The circumstance that he also had a cigar from the same box, hidden not
so well as Amos thought, may have subdued his resentment. He would light
the cigar after the first turn in the road had carried him beyond the
eagle eye of its owner.

The delivery wagon outside was drawn by an elderly horse devoid of
ambition or ideals. His head was sunk in dejection. He was gray at the
temples, and slouched in the shafts in a loafing attitude, one
forefoot negligently crossed in front of the other. He aroused himself
reluctantly and with apparent difficulty when Merton Gill seized the
reins and called in commanding tones, “Get on there, you old skate!” The
equipage moved off under the gaze of Amos, who was locking the doors of
his establishment.

Turning the first corner into a dusty side street, Merton dropped the
reins and lighted the filched cigar. Other Gashwiler property was sacred
to him. From all the emporium’s choice stock he would have abstracted
not so much as a pin; but the Gashwiler cigars, said to be “The World’s
Best 10c Smoke,” with the picture of a dissipated clubman in evening
dress on the box cover, were different, in that they were pointedly
hidden from Merton. He cared little for cigars, but this was a
challenge; the old boy couldn’t get away with anything like that. If
he didn’t want his cigars touched let him leave the box out in the open
like a man. Merton drew upon the lighted trophy, moistened and pasted
back the wrapper that had broken when the end was bitten off, and took
from the bottom of the delivery wagon the remains of a buggy whip that
had been worn to half its length. With this he now tickled the bony
ridges of the horse. Blows meant nothing to Dexter, but he could still
be tickled into brief spurts of activity. He trotted with swaying
head, sending up an effective dust screen between the wagon and a still
possibly observing Gashwiler.

His deliveries made, Merton again tickled the horse to a frantic
pace which continued until they neared the alley on which fronted the
Gashwiler barn; there the speed was moderated to a mild amble, for
Gashwiler believed his horse should be driven with tenderness, and his
equally watchful wife believed it would run away if given the chance.

Merton drove into the barnyard, unhitched the horse, watered it at the
half of a barrel before the iron pump, and led it into the barn, where
he removed the harness. The old horse sighed noisily and shook himself
with relief as the bridle was removed and a halter slipped over his
venerable brow.

Ascertaining that the barnyard was vacant, Merton immediately became
attentive to his charge. Throughout the late drive his attitude had been
one of mild but contemptuous abuse. More than once he had uttered the
words “old skate” in tones of earnest conviction, and with the worn end
of the whip he had cruelly tickled the still absurdly sensitive sides.
Had beating availed he would with no compunction have beaten the
drooping wreck. But now, all at once, he was curiously tender. He patted
the shoulder softly, put both arms around the bony neck, and pressed his
face against the face of Dexter. A moment he stood thus, then spoke in a
tear-choked voice:

“Good-by, old pal--the best, the truest pal a man ever had. You and me
has seen some tough times, old pard; but you’ve allus brought me through
without a scratch; allus brought me through.” There was a sob in the
speaker’s voice, but he manfully recovered a clear tone of pathos. “And
now, old pal, they’re a-takin’ ye from me--yes, we got to part, you an’
me. I’m never goin’ to set eyes on ye agin. But we got to be brave, old
pal; we got to keep a stiff upper lip--no cryin’ now; no bustin’ down.”

The speaker unclasped his arms and stood with head bowed, his face
working curiously, striving to hold back the sobs.

For Merton Gill was once more Clifford Armytage, popular idol of the
screen, in his great role of Buck Benson bidding the accustomed farewell
to his four-footed pal that had brought him safely through countless
dangers. How are we to know that in another couple of hundred feet of
the reel Buck will escape the officers of the law who have him for that
hold-up of the Wallahoola stage--of which he was innocent--leap from
a second-story window of the sheriff’s office onto the back of his old
pal, and be carried safely over the border where the hellhounds can’t
touch him until his innocence is proved by Estelle St. Clair, the New
York society girl, whose culture demanded a gentleman but whose heart
demanded a man. How are we to know this? We only know that Buck Benson
always has to kiss his horse good-by at this spot in the drama.

Merton Gill is impressively Buck Benson. His sobs are choking him. And
though Gashwiler’s delivery horse is not a pinto, and could hardly get
over the border ahead of a sheriff’s posse, the scene is affecting.

“Good-by, again, old pal, and God bless ye!” sobs Merton.




CHAPTER II. THAT NIGHT--THE APARTMENTS OF CLIFFORD ARMYTAGE


Merton Gill mealed at the Gashwiler home. He ate his supper in moody
silence, holding himself above the small gossip of the day that engaged
Amos and his wife. What to him meant the announcement that Amos expected
a new line of white goods on the morrow, or Mrs. Gashwiler’s version
of a regrettable incident occurring at that afternoon’s meeting of
the Entre Nous Five Hundred Club, in which the score had been juggled
adversely to Mrs. Gashwiler, resulting in the loss of the first prize,
a handsome fern dish, and concerning which Mrs. Gashwiler had thought
it best to speak her mind? What importance could he attach to the
disclosure of Metta Judson, the Gashwiler hired girl, who chatted freely
during her appearances with food, that Doc Cummins had said old Grandma
Foutz couldn’t last out another day; that the Peter Swansons were
sending clear to Chicago for Tilda’s trousseau; and that Jeff Murdock
had arrested one of the Giddings boys, but she couldn’t learn if it was
Ferd or Gus, for being drunk as a fool and busting up a bazaar out at
the Oak Grove schoolhouse, and the fighting was something terrible.

Scarcely did he listen to these petty recitals. He ate in silence, and
when he had finished the simple meal he begged to be excused. He begged
this in a lofty, detached, somewhat weary manner, as a man of the
world, excessively bored at the dull chatter but still the fastidious
gentleman, might have begged it, breaking into one of the many
repetitions by his hostess of just what she had said to Mrs. Judge
Ellis. He was again Clifford Armytage, enacting a polished society man
among yokels. He was so impressive, after rising, in his bow to Mrs.
Gashwiler that Amos regarded him with a kindling suspicion.

“Say!” he called, as Merton in the hallway plucked his rakish plush hat
from the mirrored rack. “You remember, now, no more o’ that skylarkin’
with them dummies! Them things cost money.”

Merton paused. He wished to laugh sarcastically, a laugh of withering
scorn. He wished to reply in polished tones, “Skylarkin’! You poor, dull
clod, what do you know of my ambitions, my ideals? You, with your petty
life devoted to gaining a few paltry dollars!” But he did not say
this, or even register the emotion that would justly accompany such a
subtitle. He merely rejoined, “All right, sir, I’m not going to touch
them,” and went quickly out. “Darned old grouch!” he muttered as he went
down the concrete walk to the Gashwiler front gate.

Here he turned to regard the two-story brick house and the square
of lawn with a concrete deer on one side of the walk, balanced by a
concrete deer on the other. Before the gate was the cast-iron effigy
of a small Negro in fantastic uniform, holding an iron ring aloft. The
Gashwiler carriage horse had been tethered to this in the days before
the Gashwiler touring car had been acquired.

“Dwelling of a country storekeeper!” muttered Merton. “That’s all you
are!”

This was intended to be scornful. Merton meant that on the screen it
would be recognized as this and nothing more. It could not be taken
for the mansion of a rich banker, or the country home of a Wall Street
magnate. He felt that he had been keen in his dispraise, especially as
old Gashwiler would never get the sting of it. Clod!

Three blocks brought him to the heart of the town, still throbbing
faintly. He stood, irresolute, before the Giddings House. Chairs in
front of this hostelry were now vacant of loafers, and a clatter of
dishes came through the open windows of the dining room, where
supper was on. Farther down the street Selby Brothers, Cigars and
Confectionery, would be open; lights shone from the windows of the
Fashion Pool Parlour across the way; the City Drug Store could still be
entered; and the post office would stay open until after the mail from
No. 4 was distributed. With these exceptions the shops along this mart
of trade were tightly closed, including the Gashwiler Emporium, at the
blind front of which Merton now glanced with the utmost distaste.

Such citizens as were yet abroad would be over at the depot to watch No.
4 go through. Merton debated joining these sight-seers. Simsbury was too
small to be noticed by many trains. It sprawled along the track as if it
had been an afterthought of the railroad. Trains like No. 4 were apt
to dash relentlessly by it without slackening speed, the mail bag being
flung to the depot platform. But sometimes there would be a passenger
for Simsbury, and the proud train would slow down and halt reluctantly,
with a grinding of brakes, while the passenger alighted. Then a good
view of the train could be had; a line of beautiful sleepers terminating
in an observation car, its rear platform guarded by a brass-topped
railing behind which the privileged lolled at ease; and up ahead a
wonderful dining car, where dinner was being served; flitting white-clad
waiters, the glitter of silver and crystal and damask, and favoured
beings feasting at their lordly ease, perhaps denying even a careless
glance at the pitiful hamlet outside, or at most looking out impatient
at the halt, or merely staring with incurious eyes while awaiting their
choice foods.

Not one of these enviable persons ever betrayed any interest in Simsbury
or its little group of citizens who daily gathered on the platform to do
them honour. Merton Gill used to fancy that these people might shrewdly
detect him to be out of place there--might perhaps take him to be an
alien city man awaiting a similar proud train going the other way,
standing, as he would, aloof from the obvious villagers, and having a
manner, a carriage, an attire, such as further set him apart. Still, he
could never be sure about this. Perhaps no one ever did single him out
as a being patently of the greater world. Perhaps they considered that
he was rightly of Simsbury and would continue to be a part of it all the
days of his life; or perhaps they wouldn’t notice him at all. They had
been passing Simsburys all day, and all Simsburys and all their peoples
must look very much alike to them. Very well--a day would come. There
would be at Simsbury a momentous stop of No. 4 and another passenger
would be in that dining car, disjoined forever from Simsbury, and he
with them would stare out the polished windows at the gaping throng, and
he would continue to stare with incurious eyes at still other Simsburys
along the right of way, while the proud train bore him off to triumphs
never dreamed of by natural-born villagers.

He decided now not to tantalize himself with a glance at this splendid
means of escape from all that was sordid. He was still not a little
depressed by the late unpleasantness with Gashwiler, who had thought him
a crazy fool, with his revolver, his fiercely muttered words, and his
holding aloft of a valuable dummy as if to threaten it with destruction.
Well, some day the old grouch would eat his words; some day he would be
relating to amazed listeners that he had known Merton Gill intimately at
the very beginning of his astounding career. That was bound to come. But
to-night Merton had no heart for the swift spectacle of No. 4. Nor even,
should it halt, did he feel up to watching those indifferent, incurious
passengers who little recked that a future screen idol in natty
plush hat and belted coat amusedly surveyed them. To-night he must be
alone--but a day would come. Resistless Time would strike his hour!

Still he must wait for the mail before beginning his nightly study.
Certain of his magazines would come to-night. He sauntered down the
deserted street, pausing before the establishment of Selby Brothers.
From the door of this emerged one Elmer Huff, clerk at the City Drug
Store. Elmer had purchased a package of cigarettes and now offered one
to Merton.

“‘Lo, Mert! Have a little pill?”

“No, thanks,” replied Merton firmly.

He had lately given up smoking--save those clandestine indulgences at
the expense of Gashwiler--because he was saving money against his great
day.

Elmer lighted one of his own little pills and made a further suggestion.

“Say, how about settin’ in a little game with the gang to-night after
the store closes--ten-cent limit?”

“No, thanks,” replied Merton, again firmly.

He had no great liking for poker at any limit, and he would not subject
his savings to a senseless hazard. Of course he might win, but you never
could tell.

“Do you good,” urged Elmer. “Quit at twelve sharp, with one round of
roodles.”

“No, I guess not,” said Merton.

“We had some game last night, I’ll tell the world! One hand we had four
jacks out against four aces, and right after that I held four kings
against an ace full. Say, one time there I was about two-eighty to the
good, but I didn’t have enough sense to quit. Hear about Gus Giddings?
They got him over in the coop for breaking in on a social out at the Oak
Grove schoolhouse last night. Say, he had a peach on when he left here,
I’ll tell the world! But he didn’t get far. Them Grove lads certainly
made a believer out of him. You ought to see that left eye of his!”

Merton listened loftily to this village talk, gossip of a rural sport
who got a peach on and started something--And the poker game in the back
room of the City Drug Store! What diversions were these for one who had
a future? Let these clods live out their dull lives in their own way.
But not Merton Gill, who held aloof from their low sports, studied
faithfully the lessons in his film-acting course, and patiently bided
his time.

He presently sauntered to the post office, where the mail was being
distributed. Here he found the sight-seers who had returned from the
treat of No. 4’s flight, and many of the less enterprising citizens who
had merely come down for their mail. Gashwiler was among these, smoking
one of his choice cigars. He was not allowed to smoke in the house.
Merton, knowing this prohibition, strictly enforced by Mrs. Gashwiler,
threw his employer a glance of honest pity. Briefly he permitted
himself a vision of his own future home--a palatial bungalow in distant
Hollywood, with expensive cigars in elaborate humidors and costly
gold-tipped cigarettes in silver things on low tables. One might smoke
freely there in every room.

Under more of the Elmer Huff sort of gossip, and the rhythmic clump of
the cancelling stamp back of the drawers and boxes, he allowed himself a
further glimpse of this luxurious interior. He sat on a low couch, among
soft cushions, a magnificent bearskin rug beneath his feet. He smoked
one of the costly cigarettes and chatted with a young lady interviewer
from Photo Land.

“You ask of my wife,” he was saying. “But she is more than a wife--she
is my best pal, and, I may add, she is also my severest critic.”

He broke off here, for an obsequious Japanese butler entered with a
tray of cooling drinks. The tray would be gleaming silver, but he
was uncertain about the drinks; something with long straws in them,
probably. But as to anything alcoholic, now--While he was trying to
determine this the general-delivery window was opened and the interview
had to wait. But, anyway, you could smoke where you wished in that
house, and Gashwiler couldn’t smoke any closer to his house than the
front porch. Even trying it there he would be nagged, and fussily asked
why he didn’t go out to the barn. He was a poor fish, Gashwiler; a
country storekeeper without a future. A clod!

Merton, after waiting in line, obtained his mail, consisting of three
magazines--Photo Land, Silver Screenings, and Camera. As he stepped away
he saw that Miss Tessie Kearns stood three places back in the line. He
waited at the door for her. Miss Kearns was the one soul in Simsbury who
understood him. He had confided to her all his vast ambitions; she had
sympathized with them, and her never-failing encouragement had done
not a little to stiffen his resolution at odd times when the haven of
Hollywood seemed all too distant. A certain community of ambitions had
been the foundation of this sympathy between the two, for Tessie Kearns
meant to become a scenario writer of eminence, and, like Merton, she
was now both studying and practising a difficult art. She conducted the
millinery and dressmaking establishment next to the Gashwiler Emporium,
but found time, as did Merton, for the worthwhile things outside her
narrow life.

She was a slight, spare little figure, sedate and mouselike, of middle
age and, to the village, of a quiet, sober way of thought. But, known
only to Merton, her real life was one of terrific adventure, involving
crime of the most atrocious sort, and contact not only with the great
and good, but with loathsome denizens of the underworld who would commit
any deed for hire. Some of her scenarios would have profoundly
shocked the good people of Simsbury, and she often suffered tremors of
apprehension at the thought that one of them might be enacted at the
Bijou Palace right there on Fourth Street, with her name brazenly
announced as author. Suppose it were Passion’s Perils! She would surely
have to leave town after that! She would be too ashamed to stay. Still
she would be proud, also, for by that time they would be calling her
to Hollywood itself. Of course nothing so distressing--or so grand--had
happened yet, for none of her dramas had been accepted; but she was
coming on. It might happen any time.

She joined Merton, a long envelope in her hand and a brave little smile
on her pinched face.

“Which one is it?” he asked, referring to the envelope.

“It’s Passion’s Perils.” she answered with a jaunty affectation of
amusement. “The Touchstone-Blatz people sent it back. The slip says its
being returned does not imply any lack of merit.”

“I should think it wouldn’t!” said Merton warmly.

He knew Passion’s Perils. A company might have no immediate need for it,
but its rejection could not possibly imply a lack of merit, because the
merit was there. No one could dispute that.

They walked on to the Bijou Palace. Its front was dark, for only twice
a week, on Tuesdays and Saturdays, could Simsbury muster a picture
audience; but they could read the bills for the following night. The
entrance was flanked on either side by billboards, and they stopped
before the first. Merton Gill’s heart quickened its beats, for there
was billed none other than Beulah Baxter in the ninth installment of her
tremendous serial, The Hazards of Hortense.

It was going to be good! It almost seemed that this time the scoundrels
would surely get Hortense. She was speeding across a vast open quarry in
a bucket attached to a cable, and one of the scoundrels with an ax
was viciously hacking at the cable’s farther anchorage. It would be a
miracle if he did not succeed in his hellish design to dash Hortense to
the cruel rocks below. Merton, of course, had not a moment’s doubt that
the miracle would intervene; he had seen other serials. So he made no
comment upon the gravity of the situation, but went at once to the heart
of his ecstasy.

“The most beautiful woman on the screen,” he murmured.

“Well, I don’t know.”

Miss Kearns appeared about to advance the claims of rival beauties, but
desisted when she saw that Merton was firm.

“None of the rest can touch her,” he maintained. “And look at her nerve!
Would your others have as much nerve as that?”

“Maybe she has someone to double in those places,” suggested the
screen-wise Tessie Kearns.

“Not Beulah Baxter. Didn’t I see her personal appearance that time I
went to Peoria last spring on purpose to see it? Didn’t she talk about
the risks she look and how the directors were always begging her to use
a double and how her artistic convictions wouldn’t let her do any such
thing? You can bet the little girl is right there in every scene!”

They passed to the other billboard. This would be the comedy. A
painfully cross-eyed man in misfitting clothes was doing something
supposed to be funny--pushing a lawn mower over the carpet of a palatial
home.

“How disgusting!” exclaimed Miss Kearns.

“Ain’t it?” said Merton. “How they can have one of those terrible things
on the same bill with Miss Baxter--I can’t understand it.”

“Those censors ought to suppress this sort of buffoonery instead of
scenes of dignified passion like they did in Scarlet Sin,” declared
Tessie. “Did you read about that?”

“They sure ought,” agreed Merton. “These comedies make me tired. I never
see one if I can help it.”

Walking on, they discussed the wretched public taste and the wretched
actors that pandered to it. The slap-stick comedy, they held, degraded
a fine and beautiful art. Merton was especially severe. He always felt
uncomfortable at one of these regrettable exhibitions when people about
him who knew no better laughed heartily. He had never seen anything to
laugh at, and said as much.

They crossed the street and paused at the door of Miss Kearns’ shop,
behind which were her living rooms. She would to-night go over Passion’s
Perils once more and send it to another company.

“I wonder,” she said to Merton, “if they keep sending it back because
the sets are too expensive. Of course there’s the one where the
dissipated English nobleman, Count Blessingham, lures Valerie into
Westminster Abbey for his own evil purposes on the night of the old
earl’s murder--that’s expensive--but they get a chance to use it again
when Valerie is led to the altar by young Lord Stonecliff, the rightful
heir. And of course Stonecliff Manor, where Valerie is first seen as
governess, would be expensive; but they use that in a lot of scenes,
too. Still, maybe I might change the locations around to something
they’ve got built.”

“I wouldn’t change a line,” said Merton. “Don’t give in to ‘em. Make ‘em
take it as it is. They might ruin your picture with cheap stuff.”

“Well,” the authoress debated, “maybe I’ll leave it. I’d especially
hate to give up Westminster Abbey. Of course the scene where she is
struggling with Count Blessingham might easily be made offensive--it’s a
strong scene--but it all comes right. You remember she wrenches herself
loose from his grasp and rushes to throw herself before the altar, which
suddenly lights up, and the scoundrel is afraid to pursue her there,
because he had a thorough religious training when a boy at Oxford, and
he feels it would be sacrilegious to seize her again while the light
from the altar shines upon her that way, and so she’s saved for the
time being. It seems kind of a shame not to use Westminster Abbey for a
really big scene like that, don’t you think?”

“I should say so!” agreed Merton warmly. “They build plenty of sets as
big as that. Keep it in!”

“Well, I’ll take your advice. And I shan’t give up trying with my other
ones. And I’m writing to another set of people--see here.” She took
from her handbag a clipped advertisement which she read to Merton in the
fading light, holding it close to her keen little eyes. “Listen! ‘Five
thousand photoplay ideas needed. Working girl paid ten thousand dollars
for ideas she had thought worthless. Yours may be worth more. Experience
unnecessary. Information free. Producers’ League 562, Piqua, Ohio.’
Doesn’t that sound encouraging? And it isn’t as if I didn’t have some
experience. I’ve been writing scenarios for two years now.”

“We both got to be patient,” he pointed out. “We can’t succeed all at
once, just remember that.”

“Oh, I’m patient, and I’m determined; and I know you are, too, Merton.
But the way my things keep coming back--well, I guess we’d both get
discouraged if it wasn’t for our sense of humour.”

“I bet we would,” agreed Merton. “And good-night!”

He went on to the Gashwiler Emporium and let himself into the dark
store. At the moment he was bewailing that the next installment of The
Hazards of Hortense would be shown on a Saturday night, for on those
nights the store kept open until nine and he could see it but once. On a
Tuesday night he would have watched it twice, in spite of the so-called
comedy unjustly sharing the bill with it.

Lighting a match, he made his way through the silent store, through the
stock room that had so lately been the foul lair of Snake le Vasquez,
and into his own personal domain, a square partitioned off from the
stockroom in which were his cot, the table at which he studied the art
of screen acting, and his other little belongings. He often called this
his den. He lighted a lamp on the table and drew the chair up to it.

On the boards of the partition in front of him were pasted many
presentments of his favourite screen actress, Beulah Baxter, as she
underwent the nerve-racking Hazards of Hortense. The intrepid girl
was seen leaping from the seat of her high-powered car to the cab of a
passing locomotive, her chagrined pursuers in the distant background.
She sprang from a high cliff into the chill waters of a storm-tossed
sea. Bound to the back of a spirited horse, she was raced down the steep
slope of a rocky ravine in the Far West. Alone in a foul den of the
underworld she held at bay a dozen villainous Asiatics. Down the fire
escape of a great New York hotel she made a perilous way. From the
shrouds of a tossing ship she was about to plunge to a watery release
from the persecutor who was almost upon her. Upon the roof of the Fifth
Avenue mansion of her scoundrelly guardian in the great city of New
York she was gaining the friendly projection of a cornice from which she
could leap and again escape death--even a fate worse than death, for the
girl was pursued from all sorts of base motives. This time, friendless
and alone in profligate New York, she would leap from the cornice to
the branches of the great eucalyptus tree that grew hard by. Unnerving
performances like these were a constant inspiration to Merton Gill.
He knew that he was not yet fit to act in such scenes--to appear
opportunely in the last reel of each installment and save Hortense for
the next one. But he was confident a day would come.

On the same wall he faced also a series of photographs of himself.
These were stills to be one day shown to a director who would thereupon
perceive his screen merits. There was Merton in the natty belted coat,
with his hair slicked back in the approved mode and a smile upon his
face; a happy, careless college youth. There was Merton in tennis
flannels, his hair nicely disarranged, jauntily holding a borrowed
racquet. Here he was in a trench coat and the cap of a lieutenant, grim
of face, the jaw set, holding a revolver upon someone unpictured; there
in a wide-collared sport shirt lolling negligently upon a bench after a
hard game of polo or something. Again he appeared in evening dress, two
straightened fingers resting against his left temple. Underneath this
was written in a running, angular, distinguished hand, “Very truly
yours, Clifford Armytage.” This, and prints of it similarly inscribed,
would one day go to unknown admirers who besought him for likenesses of
himself.

But Merton lost no time in scanning these pictorial triumphs. He was
turning the pages of the magazines he had brought, his first hasty
search being for new photographs of his heroine. He was quickly
rewarded. Silver Screenings proffered some fresh views of Beulah Baxter,
not in dangerous moments, but revealing certain quieter aspects of her
wondrous life. In her kitchen, apron clad, she stirred something. In her
lofty music room she was seated at her piano. In her charming library
she was shown “Among Her Books.” More charmingly she was portrayed with
her beautiful arms about the shoulders of her dear old mother. And these
accompanied an interview with the actress.

The writer, one Esther Schwarz, professed the liveliest trepidation
at first meeting the screen idol, but was swiftly reassured by the
unaffected cordiality of her reception. She found that success had not
spoiled Miss Baxter. A sincere artist, she yet absolutely lacked the
usual temperament and mannerisms. She seemed more determined than ever
to give the public something better and finer. Her splendid dignity,
reserve, humanness, high ideals, and patient study of her art had but
mellowed, not hardened, a gracious personality. Merton Gill received
these assurances without surprise. He knew Beulah Baxter would prove to
be these delightful things. He read on for the more exciting bits.

“I’m so interested in my work,” prettily observed Miss Baxter to the
interviewer; “suppose we talk only of that. Leave out all the rest--my
Beverly Hills home, my cars, my jewels, my Paris gowns, my dogs, my
servants, my recreations. It is work alone that counts, don’t you think?
We must learn that success, all that is beautiful and fine, requires
work, infinite work and struggle. The beautiful comes only through
suffering and sacrifice. And of course dramatic work broadens a girl’s
viewpoint, helps her to get the real, the worthwhile things out of life,
enriching her nature with the emotional experience of her roles. It is
through such pressure that we grow, and we must grow, must we not? One
must strive for the ideal, for the art which will be but the pictorial
expression of that, and for the emotion which must be touched by the
illuminating vision of a well-developed imagination if the vital message
of the film is to be felt.

“But of course I have my leisure moments from the grinding stress. Then
I turn to my books--I’m wild about history. And how I love the great
free out-of-doors! I should prefer to be on a simple farm, were I a
boy. The public would not have me a boy, you say”--she shrugged
prettily--“oh, of course, my beauty, as they are pleased to call it.
After all, why should one not speak of that? Beauty is just a stock
in trade, you know. Why not acknowledge it frankly? But do come to
my delightful kitchen, where I spend many a spare moment, and see the
lovely custard I have made for dear mamma’s luncheon.”

Merton Gill was entranced by this exposition of the quieter side of
his idol’s life. Of course he had known she could not always be making
narrow escapes, and it seemed that she was almost more delightful in
this staid domestic life. Here, away from her professional perils, she
was, it seemed, “a slim little girl with sad eyes and a wistful mouth.”

The picture moved him strongly. More than ever he was persuaded that
his day would come. Even might come the day when it would be his lot
to lighten the sorrow of those eyes and appease the wistfulness of that
tender mouth. He was less sure about this. He had been unable to learn
if Beulah Baxter was still unwed. Silver Screenings, in reply to
his question, had answered, “Perhaps.” Camera, in its answers to
correspondents, had said, “Not now.” Then he had written to Photo Land:
“Is Beulah Baxter unmarried?” The answer had come, “Twice.” He had been
able to make little of these replies, enigmatic, ambiguous, at best. But
he felt that some day he would at least be chosen to act with this slim
little girl with the sad eyes and wistful mouth. He, it might be, would
rescue her from the branches of the great eucalyptus tree growing hard
by the Fifth Avenue mansion of the scoundrelly guardian. This, if he
remembered well her message about hard work.

He recalled now the wondrous occasion on which he had travelled the
nearly hundred miles to Peoria to see his idol in the flesh. Her
personal appearance had been advertised. It was on a Saturday night, but
Merton had silenced old Gashwiler with the tale of a dying aunt in the
distant city. Even so, the old grouch had been none too considerate.
He had seemed to believe that Merton’s aunt should have died nearer to
Simsbury, or at least have chosen a dull Monday.

But Merton had held with dignity to the point; a dying aunt wasn’t to
be hustled about as to either time or place. She died when her time
came--even on a Saturday night--and where she happened to be, though
it were a hundred miles from some point more convenient to an utter
stranger. He had gone and thrillingly had beheld for five minutes
his idol in the flesh, the slim little girl of the sorrowful eyes and
wistful mouth, as she told the vast audience--it seemed to Merton that
she spoke solely to him--by what narrow chance she had been saved from
disappointing it. She had missed the train, but had at once leaped
into her high-powered roadster and made the journey at an average of
sixty-five miles an hour, braving death a dozen times. For her public
was dear to her, and she would not have it disappointed, and there she
was before them in her trim driving suit, still breathless from the wild
ride.

Then she told them--Merton especially--how her directors had again and
again besought her not to persist in risking her life in her dangerous
exploits, but to allow a double to take her place at the more critical
moments. But she had never been able to bring herself to this deception,
for deception, in a way, it would be. The directors had entreated in
vain. She would keep faith with her public, though full well she knew
that at any time one of her dare-devil acts might prove fatal.

Her public was very dear to her. She was delighted to meet it here, face
to face, heart to heart. She clasped her own slender hands over her own
heart as she said this, and there was a pathetic little catch in her
voice as she waved farewell kisses to the throng. Many a heart besides
Merton’s beat more quickly at knowing that she must rush out to the
high-powered roadster and be off at eighty miles an hour to St. Louis,
where another vast audience would the next day be breathlessly awaiting
her personal appearance.

Merton had felt abundantly repaid for his journey. There had been
inspiration in this contact. Little he minded the acid greeting, on
his return, of a mere Gashwiler, spawning in his low mind a monstrous
suspicion that the dying aunt had never lived.

Now he read in his magazines other intimate interviews by other talented
young women who had braved the presence of other screen idols of both
sexes. The interviewers approached them with trepidation, and invariably
found that success had not spoiled them. Fine artists though they were,
applauded and richly rewarded, yet they remained simple, unaffected,
and cordial to these daring reporters. They spoke with quiet dignity of
their work, their earnest efforts to give the public something better
and finer. They wished the countless readers of the interviews to
comprehend that their triumphs had come only with infinite work and
struggle, that the beautiful comes only through suffering and sacrifice.
At lighter moments they spoke gayly of their palatial homes, their
domestic pets, their wives or husbands and their charming children. They
all loved the great out-of-doors, but their chief solace from toil was
in this unruffled domesticity where they could forget the worries of an
exacting profession and lead a simple home life. All the husbands and
wives were more than that--they were good pals; and of course they read
and studied a great deal. Many of them were wild about books.

He was especially interested in the interview printed by Camera with
that world favourite, Harold Parmalee. For this was the screen artist
whom Merton most envied, and whom he conceived himself most to resemble
in feature. The lady interviewer, Miss Augusta Blivens, had gone
trembling into the presence of Harold Parmalee, to be instantly put at
her ease by the young artist’s simple, unaffected manner. He chatted of
his early struggles when he was only too glad to accept the few paltry
hundreds of dollars a week that were offered him in minor parts; of
his quick rise to eminence; of his unceasing effort to give the public
something better and finer; of his love for the great out-of-doors; and
of his daily flight to the little nest that sheltered his pal wife and
the kiddies. Here he could be truly himself, a man’s man, loving the
simple things of life. Here, in his library, surrounded by his books,
or in the music room playing over some little Chopin prelude, or on the
lawn romping with the giant police dog, he could forget the public that
would not let him rest. Nor had he been spoiled in the least, said the
interviewer, by the adulation poured out upon him by admiring women and
girls in volume sufficient to turn the head of a less sane young man.

“There are many beautiful women in the world.” pursued the writer, “and
I dare say there is not one who meets Harold Parmalee who does not
love him in one way or another. He has mental brilliancy for the
intellectuals, good looks for the empty-headed, a strong vital appeal,
a magnetism almost overwhelming to the susceptible, and an easy and
supremely appealing courtesy for every woman he encounters.”

Merton drew a long breath after reading these earnest words. Would
an interviewer some day be writing as much about him? He studied the
pictures of Harold Parmalee that abundantly spotted the article. The
full face, the profile, the symmetrical shoulders, the jaunty bearing,
the easy, masterful smile. From each of these he would raise his eyes
to his own pictured face on the wall above him. Undoubtedly he was not
unlike Harold Parmalee. He noted little similarities. He had the nose,
perhaps a bit more jutting than Harold’s, and the chin, even more
prominent.

Possibly a director would have told him that his Harold Parmalee beauty
was just a trifle overdone; that his face went just a bit past the line
of pleasing resemblance and into something else. But at this moment the
aspirant was reassured. His eyes were pale, under pale brows, yet they
showed well in the prints. And he was slightly built, perhaps even thin,
but a diet rich in fats would remedy that. And even if he were quite a
little less comely than Parmalee, he would still be impressive. After
all, a great deal depended upon the acting, and he was learning to act.

Months ago, the resolution big in his heart, he had answered the
advertisement in Silver Screenings, urging him to “Learn Movie Acting,
a fascinating profession that pays big. Would you like to know,” it
demanded, “if you are adapted to this work? If so, send ten cents for
our Ten-Hour Talent-Prover, or Key to Movie-Acting Aptitude, and find
whether you are suited to take it up.”

Merton had earnestly wished to know this, and had sent ten cents to
the Film Incorporation Bureau, Station N, Stebbinsville, Arkansas. The
Talent-Prover, or Key to Movie-Acting Aptitude, had come; he had mailed
his answers to the questions and waited an anguished ten days, fearing
that he would prove to lack the required aptitude for this great art.
But at last the cheering news had come. He had every aptitude in full
measure, and all that remained was to subscribe to the correspondence
course.

He had felt weak in the moment of his relief from this torturing
anxiety. Suppose they had told him that he wouldn’t do? And he had
studied the lessons with unswerving determination. Night and day he had
held to his ideal. He knew that when you did this your hour was bound to
come.

He yawned now, thinking, instead of the anger expressions he should have
been practising, of the sordid things he must do to-morrow. He must be
up at five, sprinkle the floor, sweep it, take down the dust curtains
from the shelves of dry goods, clean and fill the lamps, then station
outside the dummies in their raiment. All day he would serve customers,
snatching a hasty lunch of crackers and cheese behind the grocery
counter. And at night, instead of twice watching The Hazards of
Hortense, he must still unreasonably serve late customers until the
second unwinding of those delectable reels.

He suddenly sickened of it all. Was he not sufficiently versed in the
art he had chosen to practise? And old Gashwiler every day getting
harder to bear! His resolve stiffened. He would not wait much
longer--only until the savings hidden out under the grocery counter had
grown a bit. He made ready for bed, taking, after he had undressed,
some dumb-bell exercises that would make his shoulders a trifle more like
Harold Parmalee’s. This rite concluded, he knelt by his narrow cot and
prayed briefly.

“Oh, God, make me a good movie actor! Make me one of the best! For
Jesus’sake, amen!”




CHAPTER III. WESTERN STUFF


Saturday proved all that his black forebodings had pictured it--a day
of sordid, harassing toil; toil, moreover, for which Gashwiler, the
beneficiary, showed but the scantest appreciation. Indeed, the day
opened with a disagreement between the forward-looking clerk and
his hide-bound reactionary. Gashwiler had reached the store at his
accustomed hour of 8:30 to find Merton embellishing the bulletin board
in front with legends setting forth especial bargains of the day to be
had within.

Chalk in hand, he had neatly written, “See our new importation of
taffetas, $2.59 the yard.” Below this he was in the act of putting down,
“Try our choice Honey-dew spinach, 20 cts. the can.” “Try our Preferred
Chipped Beef, 58 cts. the pound.”

He was especially liking that use of “the.” It sounded modern. Yet along
came Gashwiler, as if seeking an early excuse to nag, and criticized
this.

“Why don’t you say ‘a yard,’ ‘a can,’ ‘a pound’?” he demanded harshly.
“What’s the sense of that there ‘the’ stuff? Looks to me like just
putting on a few airs. You keep to plain language and our patrons’ll
like it a lot better.” Viciously Merton Gill rubbed out the modern “the”
 and substituted the desired “a.”

“Very well,” he assented, “if you’d rather stick to the old-fashioned
way; but I can tell you that’s the way city stores do it. I thought you
might want to be up to date, but I see I made a great mistake.”

“Humph!” said Gashwiler, unbitten by this irony. “I guess the old way’s
good enough, long’s our prices are always right. Don’t forget to put on
that canned salmon. I had that in stock for nearly a year now--and
say it’s twenty cents ‘a’ can, not ‘the’ can. Also say it’s a grand
reduction from thirty-five cents.”

That was always the way. You never could please the old grouch. And so
began the labour that lasted until nine that night. Merton must count
out eggs and weigh butter that was brought in. He must do up sugar and
grind coffee and measure dress goods and match silks; he must with the
suavest gentility ask if there would not be something else to-day; and
he must see that babies hazardously left on counters did not roll off.

He lived in a vortex of mental confusion, performing his tasks
mechanically. When drawing a gallon of kerosene or refolding the shown
dress goods, or at any task not requiring him to be genially talkative,
he would be saying to Miss Augusta Blivens in far-off Hollywood, “Yes,
my wife is more than a wife. She is my best pal, and, I may also add, my
severest critic.”

There was but one break in the dreary monotony, and that was when Lowell
Hardy, Simsbury’s highly artistic photographer, came in to leave an
order for groceries. Lowell wore a soft hat with rakish brim, and
affected low collars and flowing cravats, the artistic effect of these
being heightened in his studio work by a purple velvet jacket. Even in
Gashwiler’s he stood out as an artist. Merton received his order, and
noting that Gashwiler was beyond earshot bespoke his services for the
following afternoon.

“Say, Lowell, be on the lot at two sharp to-morrow, will you? I want to
shoot some Western stuff--some stills.”

Merton thrilled as he used these highly technical phrases. He had not
read his magazines for nothing.

Lowell Hardy considered, then consented. He believed that he, too, might
some day be called to Hollywood after they had seen the sort of work he
could turn out. He always finished his art studies of Merton with great
care, and took pains to have the artist’s signature entirely legible.
“All right, Mert, I’ll be there. I got some new patent paper I’ll try
out on these.”

“On the lot at two sharp to shoot Western stuff,” repeated Merton with
relish.

“Right--o!” assented Lowell, and returned to more prosaic studio art.

The day wore itself to a glad end. The last exigent customer had gone,
the curtains were up, the lights were out, and at five minutes past nine
the released slave, meeting Tessie Kearns at her front door, escorted
her with a high heart to the second show at the Bijou Palace. They
debated staying out until after the wretched comedy had been run, but
later agreed that they should see this, as Tessie keenly wished to
know why people laughed at such things. The antics of the painfully
cross-eyed man distressed them both, though the mental inferiors by whom
they were surrounded laughed noisily. Merton wondered how any producer
could bring himself to debase so great an art, and Tessie wondered
if she hadn’t, in a way, been aiming over the public’s head with her
scenarios. After all, you had to give the public what it wanted. She
began to devise comedy elements for her next drama.

But The Hazards of Hortense came mercifully to soothe their annoyance.
The slim little girl with a wistful smile underwent a rich variety of
hazards, each threatening a terrible death. Through them all she came
unscathed, leaving behind her a trail of infuriated scoundrels whom she
had thwarted. She escaped from an underworld den in a Chicago slum just
in the nick of time, cleverly concealing herself in the branches of the
great eucalyptus tree that grew hard by, while her maddened pursuers
scattered in their search for the prize. Again she was captured, this
time to be conveyed by aeroplane, a helpless prisoner and subject to the
most fiendish insults by Black Steve, to the frozen North. But in the
far Alaskan wilds she eluded the fiends and drove swiftly over the
frozen wastes with their only dog team. Having left her pursuers far
behind, she decided to rest for the night in a deserted cabin along the
way. Here a blizzard drove snow through the chinks between the logs, and
a pack of fierce wolves besieged her. She tried to bar the door, but the
bar was gone. At that moment she heard a call. Could it be Black Steve
again? No, thank heaven! The door was pushed open and there stood Ralph
Murdock, her fiance. There was a quick embrace and words of cheer from
Ralph. They must go on.

But no, the wind cut like a knife, and the wolves still prowled. The
film here showed a running insert of cruel wolves exposing all their
fangs. Ralph had lost his rifle. He went now to put his arm through the
iron loops in place of the missing bar. The wolves sought to push open
the door, but Ralph’s arm foiled them.

Then the outside of the cabin was shown, with Black Steve and his three
ugly companions furtively approaching. The wolves had gone, but human
wolves, ten thousand times more cruel, had come in their place. Back in
the cabin Ralph and Hortense discovered that the wolves had gone. It had
an ugly look. Why should the wolves go? Ralph opened the door and they
both peered out. There in the shadow of a eucalyptus tree stood Black
Steve and his dastardly crew. They were about to storm the cabin. All
was undoubtedly lost.

Not until the following week would the world learn how Hortense and her
manly fiance had escaped this trap. Again had Beulah Baxter striven and
suffered to give the public something better and finer.

“A wonder girl,” declared Merton when they were again in the open.
“That’s what I call her--a wonder girl. And she owes it all to hard,
unceasing struggle and work and pains and being careful. You ought to
read that new interview with her in this month’s Silver Screenings.”

“Yes, yes, she’s wonderful,” assented Tessie as they strolled to the
door of her shop. “But I’ve been thinking about comedy. You know my
new one I’m writing--of course it’s a big, vital theme, all about a
heartless wife with her mind wholly on society and bridge clubs
and dancing and that sort of dissipation, and her husband is Hubert
Glendenning, a studious young lawyer who doesn’t like to go out evenings
but would rather play with the kiddies a bit after their mother has gone
to a party, or read over some legal documents in the library, which is
very beautifully furnished; and her old school friend, Corona Bartlett,
comes to stay at the house, a very voluptuous type, high coloured,
with black hair and lots of turquoise jewellery, and she’s a bad woman
through and through, and been divorced and everything by a man whose
heart she broke, and she’s become a mere adventuress with a secret
vice--she takes perfume in her tea, like I saw that one did--and all her
evil instincts are aroused at once by Hubert, who doesn’t really care
deeply for her, as she has only a surface appeal of mere sensuous
beauty; but he sees that his wife is neglecting him and having an
affair with an Italian count--I found such a good name for him, Count
Ravioli--and staying out with him until all hours; so in a moment of
weakness he gives himself to Corona Bartlett, and then sees that he must
break up his home and get a divorce and marry Corona to make an honest
woman of her; but of course his wife is brought to her senses, so she
sees that she has been in the wrong and has a big scene with Corona in
which she scorns her and Corona slinks away, and she forgives Hubert his
one false step because it was her fault. It’s full of big situations,
but what I’m wondering--I’m wondering if I couldn’t risk some comedy
in it by having the faithful old butler a cross-eyed man. Nothing
so outrageous as that creature we just saw, but still noticeably
cross-eyed. Do you think it would lighten some of the grimmer scenes,
perhaps, and wouldn’t it be good pathos to have the butler aware of
his infirmity and knowing the greatest surgeons in the world can’t help
him?”

“Well,” Merton considered, “if I were you I shouldn’t chance it. It
would be mere acrobatic humour. And why do you want any one to be funny
when you have a big gripping thing of love and hate like that? I don’t
believe I’d have him cross-eyed. I’d have him elderly and simple and
dignified. And you don’t want your audience to laugh, do you, when he
holds up both hands to show how shocked he is at the way things are
going on in that house?”

“Well, maybe I won’t then. It was just a thought. I believe you have the
right instinct in those matters, Merton. I’ll leave him as he is.”

“Good-night, then,” said Merton. “I got to be on the lot to-morrow. My
camera man’s coming at two. Shooting some Western stuff.”

“Oh, my! Really?”

Tessie gazed after him admiringly. He let himself into the dark store,
so lately the scene of his torment, and on the way to his little room
stopped to reach under the grocery counter for those hidden savings.
To-night he would add to them the fifteen dollars lavished upon him
by Gashwiler at the close of a week’s toil. The money was in a tobacco
pouch. He lighted the lamp on his table, placed the three new bills
beside it and drew out the hoard. He would count it to confirm his
memory of the grand total.

The bills were frayed, lacking the fresh green of new ones; weary
looking, with an air of being glad to rest at last after much passing
from hand to hand as symbols of wealth. Their exalted present owner
tenderly smoothed out several , secured them in
a neat pile, adding the three recently acquired five-dollar bills,
and proceeded to count, moistening the ends of a thumb and finger in
defiance of the best sanitary teaching. It was no time to think of
malignant bacteria.

By his remembered count he should now be possessed of two hundred and
twelve dollars. And there was the two-dollar bill, a limp, gray thing,
abraded almost beyond identification. He placed this down first, knowing
that the remaining bills should amount to two hundred and ten dollars.
Slowly he counted, to finish with a look of blank, hesitating wonder. He
made another count, hastily, but taking greater care. The wonder grew.
Again he counted, slowly this time, so that there could be no doubt. And
now he knew! He possessed thirty-three dollars more than he had thought.
Knowing this was right, he counted again for the luxury of it. Two
hundred and forty-five obvious dollars!

How had he lost count? He tried to recall. He could remember taking
out the money he had paid Lowell Hardy for the last batch of Clifford
Armytage stills--for Lowell, although making professional rates to
Merton, still believed the artist to be worth his hire--and he could
remember taking some more out to send to the mail-order house in Chicago
for the cowboy things; but it was plain that he had twice, at least,
crowded a week’s salary into the pouch and forgotten it.

It was a pleasurable experience; it was like finding thirty-three
dollars. And he was by that much nearer to his goal; that much sooner
would he be released from bondage; thirty-three dollars sooner could
he look Gashwiler in the eye and say what he thought of him and his
emporium. In his nightly prayer he did not neglect to render thanks for
this.

He dressed the next morning with a new elation. He must be more careful
about keeping tab on his money, but also it was wonderful to find more
than you expected. He left the storeroom that reeked of kerosene and
passed into the emporium to replace his treasure in its hiding place.
The big room was dusky behind the drawn front curtains, but all the
smells were there--the smell of ground coffee and spices at the grocery
counter, farther on, the smothering smell of prints and woolens and new
leather.

The dummies, waiting down by the door to be put outside, regarded each
other in blank solemnity. A few big flies droned lazily about their
still forms. Merton eyed the dusty floor, the gleaming counters, the
curtains that shielded the shelves, with a new disdain. Sooner than he
had thought he would bid them a last farewell. And to-day, at least, he
was free of them--free to be on the lot at two, to shoot Western stuff.
Let to-morrow, with its old round of degrading tasks, take care of
itself.

At 10:30 he was in church. He was not as attentive to the sermon as he
should have been, for it now occurred to him that he had no stills of
himself in the garb of a clergyman. This was worth considering, because
he was not going to be one of those one-part actors. He would have a
wide range of roles. He would be able to play anything. He wondered how
the Rev. Otto Carmichael would take the request for a brief loan of one
of his pulpit suits. Perhaps he was not so old as he looked; perhaps
he might remember that he, too, had once been young and fired with high
ideals. It would be worth trying. And the things could be returned after
a brief studio session with Lowell Hardy. He saw himself cast in such a
part, the handsome young clergyman, exponent of a muscular Christianity.
He comes to the toughest cattle town in all the great Southwest,
determined to make honest men and good women of its sinning derelicts.
He wins the hearts of these rugged but misguided souls. Though at first
they treat him rough, they learn to respect him, and they call him the
fighting parson. Eventually he wins the hand in marriage of the youngest
of the dance-hall denizens, a sweet young girl who despite her evil
surroundings has remained as pure and good as she is beautiful.

Anyway, if he had those clothes for an hour or two while the artist made
a few studies of him he would have something else to show directors in
search of fresh talent.

After church he ate a lonely meal served by Metta Judson at the
Gashwiler residence. The Gashwilers were on their accustomed Sabbath
visit to the distant farm of Mrs. Gashwiler’s father. But as he ate he
became conscious that the Gashwiler influence was not wholly withdrawn.
From above the mantel he was sternly regarded by a tinted enlargement of
his employer’s face entitled Photographic Study by Lowell Hardy. Lowell
never took photographs merely. He made photographic studies, and the
specimen at hand was one of his most daring efforts. Merton glared at it
in free hostility--a clod, with ideals as false as the artist’s pink on
his leathery cheeks! He hurried his meal, glad to be relieved from the
inimical scrutiny.

He was glad to be free from this and from the determined recital by
Metta Judson of small-town happenings. What cared he that Gus Giddings
had been fined ten dollars and costs by Squire Belcher for his low
escapade, or that Gus’s father had sworn to lick him within an inch of
his life if he ever ketched him touching stimmilints again?

He went to the barn, climbed to the hayloft, and undid the bundle
containing his Buck Benson outfit. This was fresh from the mail-order
house in Chicago. He took out almost reverently a pair of high-heeled
boots with purple tops, a pair of spurs, a gay shirt, a gayer
neckerchief, a broad-brimmed hat, a leather holster, and--most
impressive of all--a pair of goatskin chaps dyed a violent maroon. All
these he excitedly donned, the spurs last. Then he clambered down the
ladder from the loft, somewhat impeded by the spurs, and went into
the kitchen. Metta Judson, washing dishes, gave a little cry of alarm.
Nothing like this had ever before invaded the Gashwiler home by front
door or back.

“Why, Mert’ Gill, whatever you dressed up like that for? My stars, you
look like a cowboy or something! Well, I must say!”

“Say, Metta, do me a favour. I want to see how these things look in a
glass. It’s a cowboy outfit for when I play regular Buck Benson parts,
and everything’s got to be just so or the audience writes to the
magazines about it and makes fun of you.”

“Go ahead,” said Metta. “You can git a fine look at yourself in the tall
glass in the old lady’s bedroom.”

Forthwith he went, profaning a sanctuary, to survey himself in a glass
that had never reflected anything but the discreet arraying of his
employer’s lady. He looked long and earnestly. The effect was quite all
he had hoped. He lowered the front of the broad-brimmed hat the least
bit, tightened his belt another notch and moved the holster to a better
line. He looked again. From feet to head he was perfect.

Then, slightly crouching, he drew his revolver from the holster and held
it forward from the hip, wrist and forearm rigidly straight.

“Throw up your hands!”

He uttered the grim words in a low tone, but one facing him would not
have been deceived by low tones. Steely-eyed, grim of face, relentless
in all his bearing, the most desperate adversary would have quailed.
Probably even Gashwiler himself would have quailed. When Buck Benson
looked and spoke thus he meant it.

He held it a long, breathless moment before relaxing. Then he tiptoed
softly from the hallowed confines of a good woman’s boudoir and
clattered down the back stairs to the kitchen. He was thinking: “I
certainly got to get me another gun if I’m ever going to do Two-Gun
Benson parts, and I got to get the draw down better. I ain’t quick
enough yet.”

“Well, did you like your rig?” inquired Metta genially.

“Oh, it’ll do for the stills we’re shooting to-day,” replied the actor.
“Of course I ought to have a rattlesnake-skin band on my hat, and the
things look too new yet. And say, Metta, where’s the clothesline? I want
to practise roping a little before my camera man gets here.”

“My stars! You’re certainly goin’ to be a real one, ain’t you?”

She brought him the clothesline, in use only on Mondays. He re-coiled it
carefully and made a running noose in one end.

At two Lowell Hardy found his subject casting the rope at an inattentive
Dexter. The old horse stood in the yard, head down, one foot crossed
nonchalantly before the other. A slight tremor, a nervous flickering of
his skin, was all that ensued when the rope grazed him. When it merely
fell in his general neighbourhood, as it oftener did, Dexter did not
even glance up.

“Good stuff!” applauded the artist. “Now just stand that way, holding
the noose out. I want to make a study of that.”

He rapidly mounted his camera on a tripod and put in a plate. The study
was made. Followed several studies of the fighting face of Two-Gun
Benson, grim and rigid, about to shoot from the hip. But these were
minor bits. More important would be Buck Benson and his old pal, Pinto.
From the barn Merton dragged the saddle, blanket, and bridle he had
borrowed from the Giddings House livery stable. He had never saddled a
horse before, but he had not studied in vain. He seized Dexter by a wisp
of his surviving mane and simultaneously planted a hearty kick in the
beast’s side, with a command, “Get around there, you old skate!” Dexter
sighed miserably and got around as ordered. He was both pained and
astonished. He knew that this was Sunday. Never had he been forced to
work on this day. But he meekly suffered the protrusion of a bit between
his yellow teeth, and shuddered but slightly when a blanket and then
a heavy saddle were flung across his back. True, he looked up in some
dismay when the girth was tightened. Not once in all his years had he
been saddled. He was used to having things loose around his waist.

The girth went still tighter. Dexter glanced about with genuine concern.
Someone was intending to harm him. He curved his swanlike neck and
snapped savagely at the shoulder of his aggressor, who kicked him again
in the side and yelled, “Whoa, there, dang you!”

Dexter subsided. He saw it was no use. Whatever queer thing they meant
to do to him would be done despite all his resistance. Still his alarm
had caused him to hold up his head now. He was looking much more like a
horse.

“There!” said Merton Gill, and as a finishing touch he lashed the coiled
clothesline to the front of the saddle. “Now, here! Get me this way.
This is one of the best things I do--that is, so far.” Fondly he twined
his arms about the long, thin neck of Dexter, who tossed his head and
knocked off the cowboy hat. “Never mind that--it’s out,” said Merton.
“Can’t use it in this scene.” He laid his cheek to the cheek of his pet.
“Well, old pal, they’re takin’ yuh from me, but we got to keep a stiff
upper lip. You an’ me has been through some purty lively times together,
but we got to face the music at last--there, Lowell, did you get that?”

The artist had made his study. He made three others of the same
affecting scene at different angles. Dexter was overwhelmed with
endearments. Doubtless he was puzzled--to be kicked in the ribs at one
moment, the next to be fondled. But Lowell Hardy was enthusiastic. He
said he would have some corking studies. He made another of Buck Benson
preparing to mount good old Pinto; though, as a matter of fact, Buck, it
appeared, was not even half prepared to mount.

“Go on, jump on him now,” suggested the artist. “I’ll get a few more
that way.”

“Well, I don’t know,” Merton hesitated. He was twenty-two years old, and
he had never yet been aboard a horse. Perhaps he shouldn’t try to go too
far in one lesson. “You see, the old boy’s pretty tired from his week’s
work. Maybe I better not mount him. Say, I’ll tell you, take me rolling
a cigarette, just standing by him. I darned near forgot the cigarettes.”

From the barn he brought a sack of tobacco and some brown papers. He had
no intention of smoking, but this kind of cigarette was too completely
identified with Buck Benson to be left out. Lolling against the side of
Dexter, he poured tobacco from the sack into one of the papers. “Get me
this way,” he directed, “just pouring it out.”

He had not yet learned to roll a cigarette, but Gus Giddings, the
Simsbury outlaw, had promised to teach him. Anyway, it was enough now
to be looking keenly out from under his hat while he poured tobacco into
the creased paper against the background of good old Pinto. An art study
of this pose was completed. But Lowell Hardy craved more action, more
variety.

“Go on. Get up on him,” he urged. “I want to make a study of that.”

“Well”--again Merton faltered--“the old skate’s tired out from a hard
week, and I’m not feeling any too lively myself.”

“Shucks! It won’t kill him if you get on his back for a minute, will
it? And you’ll want one on him to show, won’t you? Hurry up, while the
light’s right.”

Yes, he would need a mounted study to show. Many times he had enacted
a scene in which a director had looked over the art studies of Clifford
Armytage and handed them back with the remark, “But you seem to play
only society parts, Mr. Armytage. All very interesting, and I’ve no
doubt we can place you very soon; but just at present we’re needing a
lead for a Western, a man who can look the part and ride.”

Thereupon he handed these Buck Benson stills to the man, whose face
would instantly relax into an expression of pleased surprise.

“The very thing,” he would say. And among those stills, certainly,
should be one of Clifford Armytage actually on the back of his horse.
He’d chance it.

“All right; just a minute.”

He clutched the bridle reins of Dexter under his drooping chin, and
overcoming a feeble resistance dragged him alongside the watering
trough. Dexter at first thought he was wished to drink, but a kick took
that nonsense out of him. With extreme care Merton stood upon the
edge of the trough and thrust a leg blindly over the saddle. With
some determined clambering he was at last seated. His feet were in the
stirrups. There was a strange light in his eyes. There was a strange
light in Dexter’s eyes. To each of them the experience was not only
without precedent but rather unpleasant.

“Ride him out in the middle here, away from that well,” directed the
camera man.

“You--you better lead him out,” suggested the rider. “I can feel him
tremble already. He--he might break down under me.”

Metta Judson, from the back porch, here came into the piece with lines
that the author had assuredly not written for her.

“Giddap, there, you Dexter Gashwiler,” called Metta loudly and with the
best intentions.

“You keep still,” commanded the rider severely, not turning his head.
What a long way it seemed to the ground! He had never dreamed that
horses were so lofty. “Better lead him,” he repeated to his camera man.

Lowell Hardy grasped the bridle reins, and after many vain efforts
persuaded Dexter to stumble away from the well. His rider grasped the
horn of his saddle.

“Look out, don’t let him buck,” he called.

But Dexter had again become motionless, except for a recurrent trembling
under this monstrous infliction.

“Now, there,” began the artist. “Hold that. You’re looking off over the
Western hills. Atta boy! Wait till I get a side view.”

“Move your camera,” said the rider. “Seems to me he doesn’t want to turn
around.”

But again the artist turned Dexter half around. That wasn’t so bad.
Merton began to feel the thrill of it. He even lounged in the saddle
presently, one leg over the pommel, and seemed about to roll another
cigarette while another art study was made. He continued to lounge there
while the artist packed his camera. What had he been afraid of? He could
sit a horse as well as the next man; probably a few little tricks about
it he hadn’t learned yet, but he’d get these, too.

“I bet they’ll come out fine,” he called to the departing artist. “Leave
that to me. I dare say I’ll be able to do something good with them. So
long.”

“So long,” returned Merton, and was left alone on the back of a horse
higher than people would think until they got on him. Indeed he was
beginning to like it. If you just had a little nerve you needn’t be
afraid of anything. Very carefully he clambered from the saddle. His old
pal shook himself with relief and stood once more with bowed head and
crossed forelegs.

His late burden observed him approvingly. There was good old Pinto after
a hard day’s run over the mesa. He had borne his beloved owner far ahead
of the sheriff’s posse, and was now securing a moment’s much-needed
rest. Merton undid the riata and for half an hour practised casting it
at his immobile pet. Once the noose settled unerringly over the head of
Dexter, who still remained immobile.

Then there was the lightning draw to be practised. Again and again the
trusty weapon of Buck Benson flashed from its holster to the damage of
a slower adversary. He was getting that draw down pretty good. From the
hip with straight wrist and forearm Buck was ready to shoot in no time
at all. Throughout that villain-infested terrain along the border he was
known for his quick draw. The most desperate of them would never molest
him except they could shoot him from behind. With his back to a wall,
they slunk from the encounter.

Elated from this practice and from the memory of that one successful
rope cast, Merton became daring in the extreme. He considered nothing
less than remounting his old pal and riding, in the cool of early
evening, up and down the alley upon which the barnyard gave. He coiled
the rope and again lashed it to the left front of the saddle. Then he
curved an affectionate arm over the arched neck of Pinto, who sighed
deeply.

“Well, old pal, you and me has still got some mighty long miles to git
over between now and sunup to-morrow. I reckon we got to put a right
smart of distance between us and that pesky sheriff’s posse, but I know
yuh ain’t lost heart, old pal.”

Dexter here tossed his head, being cloyed with these embraces, and
Two-Gun Benson caught a look in the desperate eyes of his pet which he
did not wholly like. Perhaps it would be better not to ride him any
more to-day. Perhaps it would be better not to ride him again until next
Sunday. After all, wasn’t Dexter practically a wild horse, caught
up from the range and broken to saddle only that afternoon? No use
overdoing it. At this moment the beast’s back looked higher than ever.

It was the cutting remark of a thoughtless, empty-headed girl that
confirmed Merton in his rash resolve. Metta Judson, again on the back
steps, surveyed the scene with kindling eyes.

“I bet you daresn’t get on him again,” said Metta.

These were strong words; not words to be flung lightly at Two-Gun
Benson.

“You know a lot about it, don’t you?” parried Merton Gill.

“Afraid of that old skate!” murmured Metta, counterfeiting the
inflections of pity.

Her target shot her a glance of equal pity for her lack of understanding
and empty-headed banter. He stalked to the barnyard gate and opened it.
The way to his haven over the border was no longer barred. He returned
to Dexter, firmly grasped the bridle reins under his weak chin and
cajoled him again to the watering trough. Metta Judson was about to
be overwhelmed with confusion. From the edge of the trough he again
clambered into the saddle, the new boots groping a way to the stirrups.
The reins in his left hand, he swept off his ideal hat with a careless
gesture--he wished he had had an art study made of this, but you can’t
think of everything at one time. He turned loftily to Metta as one who
had not even heard her tasteless taunts.

“Well, so long! I won’t be out late.” Metta was now convinced that she
had in her heart done this hero a wrong.

“You better be here before the folks get back!” she warned.

Merton knew this as well as she did, but the folks wouldn’t be back for
a couple of hours yet, and all he meant to venture was a ride at sober
pace the length of the alley.

“Oh, I’ll take care of that!” he said. “A few miles’ stiff gallop’ll be
all I want.” He jerked Dexter’s head up, snapped the reins on his neck,
and addressed him in genial, comradely but authoritative tones.

“Git up there, old hoss!”

Dexter lowered his head again and remained as if posing conscientiously
for the statue of a tired horse.

“Giddap, there, you old skate!” again ordered the rider.

The comradely unction was gone from his voice and the bony neck received
a smarter wallop with the reins. Dexter stood unmoved. He seemed to be
fearing that the worst was now coming, and that he might as well face
it on that spot as elsewhere. He remained deaf to threats and entreaties
alike. No hoof moved from its resting place.

“Giddap, there, you old Dexter Gashwiler!” ordered Metta, and was not
rebuked. But neither would Dexter yield to a woman’s whim.

“I’ll tell you!” said Merton, now contemptuous of his mount. “Get the
buggy whip and tickle his ribs.”

Metta sped on his errand, her eyes shining with the lust for torture.
With the frayed end of the whip from the delivery wagon she lightly
scored the exposed ribs of Dexter, tormenting him with devilish cunning.
Dexter’s hide shuttled back and forth. He whinnied protestingly, but did
not stir even one hoof.

“That’s the idea,” said Merton, feeling scornfully secure on the back of
this spiritless animal. “Keep it up! I can feel him coming to life.”

Metta kept it up. Her woman’s ingenuity contrived new little tricks with
the instrument of torture. She would doubtless have had a responsible
post with the Spanish Inquisition. Face set, absorbed in her evil work,
she tickled the ribs crosswise and tickled between them, up and down,
always with the artist’s light touch.

Dexter’s frame grew tense, his head came up. Once more he looked like
a horse. He had been brave to face destruction, but he found himself
unable to face being tickled to death. If only they had chosen some
other method for his execution he would have perished gamely, but this
was exquisitely poignant--beyond endurance. He tossed his head and
stepped into a trot toward the open gate.

Metta yelled in triumph. The rider tossed his own head in rhythm to
Dexter’s trot. His whole body tossed in the saddle; it was a fearsome
pace; the sensations were like nothing he had ever dreamed of. And he
was so high above the good firm ground! Dexter continued his jolting
progress to the applause of Metta. The rider tried to command Metta to
keep still, and merely bit his tongue.

Stirred to life by the tickling, Dexter now became more acutely aware
of that strange, restless burden on his back, and was inspired to free
himself from it. He increased his pace as he came to the gate, and
managed a backward kick with both heels. This lost the rider his
stirrups and left him less securely seated than he wished to be. He
dropped the reins and grasped the saddle’s pommel with both hands.

He strangely seemed to consider the pommel the steering wheel of a motor
car. He seemed to be twisting it with the notion of guiding Dexter. All
might have been well, but on losing his stirrups the rider had firmly
clasped his legs about the waist of the animal. Again and again he
tightened them, and now Dexter not only looked every inch a horse but
very painfully to his rider felt like one, for the spurs were goring him
to a most seditious behavior. The mere pace was slackened only that he
might alarmingly kick and shake himself in a manner as terrifying to the
rider as it was unseemly in one of Dexter’s years.

But the thing was inevitable, because once in his remote, hot youth
Dexter, cavorting innocently in an orchard, had kicked over a hive of
busy bees which had been attending strictly to their own affairs until
that moment. After that they had attended to Dexter with a thoroughness
that had seared itself to this day across his memory. He now sincerely
believed that he had overturned another hive of bees, and that not but
by the most strenuous exertion could he escape from their harrying. They
were stinging him venomously along his sides, biting deeper with every
jump. At last he would bear his rider safely over the border.

The rider clasped his mount ever more tightly. The deep dust of the
alley road mounted high over the spirited scene, and through it came not
only the hearty delight of Metta Judson in peals of womanly laughter,
but the shrill cries of the three Ransom children whom Merton had not
before noticed. These were Calvin Ransom, aged eight; Elsie Ransom, aged
six; and little Woodrow Ransom, aged four. Their mother had lain down
with a headache, having first ordered them to take their picture books
and sit quietly in the parlour as good children should on a Sabbath
afternoon. So they had noisily pretended to obtain the picture books and
then quietly tiptoed out into the backyard, which was not so stuffy as
the parlour.

Detecting the meritorious doings in the Gashwiler barnyard, they perched
in a row on the alley fence and had been excited spectators from the
moment that Merton had mounted his horse.

In shrill but friendly voices they had piped, “Oh, Merton Gill’s a
cowboy, Merton Gill’s a cowboy! Oh, looka the cowboy on the big horse!”

For of course they were motion-picture experts and would know a cowboy
when they saw one. Wide-eyed, they followed the perilous antics of
Dexter as he issued from the alley gate, and they screamed with childish
delight when the spurs had recalled to his memory that far-off dreadful
day with the busy bees. They now balanced precariously on the alley
fence, the better to trace Merton’s flight through the dust cloud.
“Merton’s in a runaway, Merton’s in a runaway, Merton’s in a runaway!”
 they shrieked, but with none of the sympathy that would have become
them. They appeared to rejoice in Merton’s plight. “Merton’s in a
runaway,” they joyously chanted.

Suddenly they ceased, frozen with a new and splendid wonder, for their
descriptive phrase was now inexact. Merton was no longer in a runaway.
But only for a moment did they hesitate before taking up the new chant.

“Looky, looky. He’s throwed Merton right off into the dirt. He’s throwed
Merton right off into the dirt. Oh, looky Merton Gill right down there
in the dirt!”

Again they had become exact. Merton was right down there in the dirt,
and a frantic, flashing-heeled Dexter was vanishing up the alley at the
head of a cloud of dust. The friendly Ransom tots leaped from the fence
to the alley, forgetting on her bed of pain the mother who supposed them
to be engrossed with picture books in the library. With one accord
they ran toward the prostrate horseman, Calvin ahead and Elsie a close
second, holding the hand of little Woodrow.

They were presently able to observe that the fleeing Dexter had narrowly
escaped running down a motor car inopportunely turning at that moment
into the alley. The gallant animal swerved in time, leaving the car’s
driver and his wife aghast at their slight margin of safety. Dexter
vanished to the right up shaded Spruce Street on a Sabbath evening as
the first call to evening worship pealed from a neighbouring church
tower.

His late rider had erected himself and was beating dust from the new
chaps and the front of the new shirt. He picked up the ideal hat and
dusted that. Underneath all the flurry of this adventure he was still
the artist. He had been set afoot in the desert by a treacherous horse;
he must find a water hole or perish with thirst. He replaced the hat,
and it was then he observed the motor car bearing down the alley upon
him.

“My good gosh!” he muttered.

The Gashwilers had returned a full two hours before their accustomed
time. The car halted beside him and his employer leaned out a warmly
hostile face.

“What’s this mean?” he demanded.

The time was not one to tell Gashwiler what he thought of him. Not only
was there a lady present, but he felt himself at a disadvantage. The
lady saved him from an instant necessity for words.

“That was our new clothesline; I recognized it at once.” The woman
seemed to pride herself on this paltry feat.

“What’s this mean?” again demanded Gashwiler. He was now a man of one
idea.

Again was Merton Gill saved from the need of instant speech, though not
in a way he would have chosen to be saved. The three Ransom children ran
up, breathless, shouting.

“Oh, Merton, here’s your pistol. I found it right in the road there.”
 “We found your pistol right in the dirt there. I saw it first.” “You
did not; I saw it first. Merton, will you let me shoot it off, Merton? I
found your pistol, didn’t I, Merton? Didn’t I find it right in the road
there?” The friendly tots did little step dances while they were thus
vocal.

“Be quiet, children,” commanded Merton, finding a voice. But they were
not to be quelled by mere tones.

“He throwed Merton right off into the dirt, didn’t he, Merton? Merton,
didn’t he throw you right off into the dirt, Merton? Did he hurt you,
Merton?” “Merton, will you let me shoot it off just once--just once,
and I’ll never ask again?” “He didn’t either find it first, Merton.” “He
throwed you off right into the dirt--didn’t he throw you right off into
the dirt, Merton?”

With a harsher show of authority, or perhaps merely because he was
bearded--so unreasoning are the inhibitions of the young--Gashwiler
stilled the tumult. The dancing died. “What’s this mean?” he repeated.

“We nearly had an accident,” said the lady.

“What’s this mean?”

An answer of sorts could no longer be delayed.

“Well, I thought I’d give Dexter a little exercise, so I saddled him up
and was going to ride him around the block, when--when these kids here
yelled and scared him so he ran away.”

“Oh, what a story!” shouted the tots in unison. “What a bad story!
You’ll go to the bad place,” intoned little Elsie.

“I swear, I don’t know what’s gettin’ into you,” declared Gashwiler.
“Don’t that horse get exercise enough during the week? Don’t he like his
day of rest? How’d you like me to saddle you up and ride you round the
block? I guess you’d like that pretty well, wouldn’t you?” Gashwiler
fancied himself in this bit of sarcasm, brutal though it was. He
toyed with it. “Next Sunday I’ll saddle you up and ride you round the
block--see how you like that, young man.”

“It was our clothesline,” said the lady. “I could tell it right off.”

With a womanish tenacity she had fastened to a minor inconsequence of
the outrage. Gashwiler became practical.

“Well, I must say, it’s a pretty how-de-do, That horse’ll make straight
back for the farm; we won’t have any delivery horse to-morrow. Sue, you
get out; I’ll go down the road a piece and see if I can head him off.”

“He turned the other way,” said Merton.

“Well, he’s bound to head around for the farm. I’ll go up the road and
you hurry out the way he went. Mebbe you can catch him before he gets
out of town.”

Mrs. Gashwiler descended from the car.

“You better have that clothesline back by seven o’clock to-morrow
morning,” she warned the offender.

“Yes, ma’am, I will.”

This was not spoken in a Buck Benson manner.

“And say”--Gashwiler paused in turning the car--“what you doing in that
outlandish rig, anyhow? Must think you’re one o’ them Wild West cowboys
or something. Huh!” This last carried a sneer that stung.

“Well, I guess I can pick out my own clothes if I want to.”

“Fine things to call clothes, I must say. Well, go see if you can pick
out that horse if you’re such a good picker-out.”

Again Gashwiler was pleased with himself. He could play venomously with
words.

“Yes, sir,” said Merton, and plodded on up the alley, followed at a
respectful distance by the Ransom kiddies, who at once resumed their
vocal exercises.

“He throwed you off right into the dirt, didn’t he, Merton? Mer-tun,
didn’t he throw you off right into the dirt?”

If it were inevitable he wished that they would come closer. He would
even have taken little Woodrow by the hand. But they kept far enough
back of him to require that their voices should be raised. Incessantly
the pitiless rain fell upon him--“Mer-tun, he throwed you off right into
the dirt, didn’t he, Merton?”

He turned out of the alley up Spruce Street. The Ransom children
lawlessly followed, forgetting their good home, their poor, sick mother
and the rules she had laid down for their Sabbath recreation. At every
moment the shrill cry reached his burning ears, “Mer-tun, didn’t he
throw you off?” The kiddies appeared to believe that Merton had not
heard them, but they were patient. Presently he would hear and reassure
them that he had, indeed, been thrown off right into the dirt.

Now he began to meet or pass early churchgoers who would gaze at him in
wonder or in frank criticism. He left the sidewalk and sought the centre
of the road, pretending that out there he could better search for a
valuable lost horse. The Ransom children were at first in two minds
about following him, but they soon found it more interesting to stay on
the sidewalk. They could pause to acquaint the churchgoers with a matter
of common interest. “He throwed Merton off right into the dirt.”

If the people they addressed appeared to be doubting this, or to find
it not specific enough, they would call ahead to Merton to confirm their
simple tale. With rapt, shining faces, they spread the glad news, though
hurrying always to keep pace with the figure in the road.

Spruce Street was vacant of Dexter, but up Elm Street, slowly cropping
the wayside herbage as he went, was undoubtedly Merton’s good old pal.
He quickened his pace. Dexter seemed to divine his coming and broke
into a kittenish gallop until he reached the Methodist Church. Here,
appearing to believe that he had again eluded pursuit, he stopped to
graze on a carefully tended square of grass before the sacred edifice.
He was at once shooed by two scandalized old ladies, but paid them no
attention. They might perhaps even have tickled him, for this was the
best grass he had found since leaving home. Other churchgoers paused in
consternation, looking expectantly at the approaching Merton Gill. The
three happy children who came up with him left no one in doubt of the
late happening.

Merton was still the artist. He saw himself approach Dexter, vault
into the saddle, put spurs to the beast, and swiftly disappear down the
street. People would be saying that he should not be let to ride so fast
through a city street. He was worse than Gus Giddings. But he saw this
only with his artist’s eye. In sordid fact he went up to Dexter, seized
the trailing bridle reins and jerked savagely upon them. Back over the
trail he led his good old pal. And for other later churchgoers
there were the shrill voices of friendly children to tell what had
happened--to appeal confidently to Merton, vaguely ahead in the
twilight, to confirm their interesting story.

Dexter, the anarchist, was put to bed without his goodnight kiss. Good
old Pinto had done his pal dirt. Never again would he be given a part in
Buck Benson’s company. Across the alley came the voices of tired, happy
children, in the appeal for an encore. “Mer-tun, please let him do it to
you again.” “Mer-tun, please let him do it to you again.”

And to the back porch came Mrs. Gashwiler to say it was a good thing
he’d got that clothesline back, and came her husband wishing to be told
what outlandish notion Merton Gill would next get into the thing he
called his head. It was the beginning of the end.

Followed a week of strained relations with the Gashwiler household,
including Dexter, and another week of relations hardly more cordial.
But thirty dollars was added to the hoard which was now counted almost
nightly. And the cruder wits of the village had made rather a joke of
Merton’s adventure. Some were tasteless enough to rally him coarsely
upon the crowded street or at the post office while he awaited his
magazines.

And now there were two hundred and seventy-five dollars to put him
forever beyond their jibes. He carefully rehearsed a scathing speech for
Gashwiler. He would tell him what he thought of him. That merchant would
learn from it some things that would do him good if he believed them,
but probably he wouldn’t believe them. He would also see that he had
done his faithful employee grave injustices. And he would be left, in
some humiliation, having found, as Merton Gill took himself forever out
of retail trade, that two could play on words as well as one. It was
a good warm speech, and its author knew every word of it from mumbled
rehearsal during the two weeks, at times when Gashwiler merely thought
he was being queer again.

At last came the day when he decided to recite it in full to the man
for whom it had been composed. He confronted him, accordingly, at a dull
moment on the third Monday morning, burning with his message.

He looked Gashwiler firmly in the eye and said in halting tones, “Mr.
Gashwiler, now, I’ve been thinking I’d like to go West for a while--to
California, if you could arrange to let me off, please.” And Mr.
Gashwiler had replied, “Well, now, that is a surprise. When was you
wishing to go, Merton?”

“Why, I would be much obliged if you’d let me get off to-night on No.
4, Mr. Gashwiler, and I know you can get Spencer Grant to take my place,
because I asked him yester-day.”

“Very well, Merton. Send Spencer Grant in to see me, and you can get off
to-night. I hope you’ll have a good time.”

“Of course, I don’t know how long I’ll be gone. I may locate out there.
But then again--”

“That’s all right, Merton. Any time you come back you can have your same
old job. You’ve been a good man, and they ain’t so plenty these days.”

“Thank you, Mr. Gashwiler.”

No. 4 was made to stop at Simsbury for a young man who was presently
commanding a meal in the palatial diner, and who had, before this meal
was eaten, looked out with compassion upon two Simsbury-like hamlets
that the train rushed by, a blur of small-towners standing on their
depot platforms to envy the inmates of that splendid structure.

At last it was Western Stuff and no fooling.




CHAPTER IV. THE WATCHER AT THE GATE


The street leading to the Holden motion-picture studio, considered by
itself, lacks beauty. Flanking it for most of the way from the boulevard
to the studio gate are vacant lots labelled with their prices and
appeals to the passer to buy them. Still their prices are high enough
to mark the thoroughfare as one out of the common, and it is further
distinguished by two rows of lofty eucalyptus trees. These have a real
feathery beauty, and are perhaps a factor in the seemingly exorbitant
prices demanded for the choice bungalow and home sites they shade. Save
for a casual pioneer bungalow or two, there are no buildings to attract
the notice until one reaches a high fence that marks the beginning of
the Holden lot. Back of this fence is secreted a microcosmos, a world in
little, where one may encounter strange races of people in their native
dress and behold, by walking a block, cities actually apart by league
upon league of the earth’s surface and separated by centuries of time.

To penetrate this city of many cities, and this actual present of the
remote past, one must be of a certain inner elect. Hardly may one enter
by assuming the disguise of a native, as daring explorers have sometimes
overcome the difficulty of entering other strange cities. Its gate,
reached after passing along an impressive expanse of the reticent fence,
is watched by a guardian. He is a stoatish man of middle age, not neatly
dressed, and of forbidding aspect. His face is ruthless, with a very
knowing cynicism. He is there, it would seem, chiefly to keep people out
of the delightful city, though from time to time he will bow an assent
or wave it with the hand clutching his evening newspaper to one of the
favoured lawful inmates, who will then carelessly saunter or drive an
expensive motor car through the difficult portal.

Standing across the street, one may peer through this portal into
an avenue of the forbidden city. There is an exciting glimpse of
greensward, flowering shrubbery, roses, vines, and a vista of the ends
of enormous structures painted yellow. And this avenue is sprightly with
the passing of enviable persons who are rightly there, some in alien
garb, some in the duller uniform of the humble artisan, some in the
pressed and garnished trappings of rich overlords.

It is really best to stand across the street for this clandestine view
of heart-shaking delights. If you stand close to the gate to peer past
the bulky shape of the warder he is likely to turn and give you a cold
look. Further, he is averse to light conversation, being always morosely
absorbed--yet with an eye ever alert for intrusive outlanders--in his
evening paper. He never reads a morning paper, but has some means of
obtaining at an early hour each morning a pink or green evening paper
that shrieks with crimson headlines. Such has been his reading
through all time, and this may have been an element in shaping his now
inveterate hostility toward those who would engage him in meaningless
talk. Even in accepting the gift of an excellent cigar he betrays only
a bored condescension. There is no relenting of countenance, no genial
relaxing of an ingrained suspicion toward all who approach him, no
cordiality, in short, such as would lead you to believe that he might
be glad to look over a bunch of stills taken by the most artistic
photographer in all Simsbury, Illinois. So you let him severely alone
after a bit, and go to stand across the street, your neatly wrapped art
studies under your arm, and leaning against the trunk of a eucalyptus
tree, you stare brazenly past him into the city of wonders.

It is thus we first observe that rising young screen actor, Clifford
Armytage, beginning the tenth day of his determined effort to become
much more closely identified with screen activities than hitherto. Ten
days of waiting outside the guarded gate had been his, but no other ten
days of his life had seemed so eventful or passed so swiftly. For at
last he stood before his goal, had actually fastened his eyes upon so
much of it as might be seen through its gate. Never had he achieved so
much downright actuality.

Back in Simsbury on a Sunday morning he had often strolled over to
the depot at early train time for a sight of the two metal containers
housing the films shown at the Bijou Palace the day before. They would
be on the platform, pasted over with express labels. He would stand by
them, even touch them, examine the padlocks, turn them over, heft them;
actually hold within his grasp the film wraith of Beulah Baxter in a
terrific installment of The Hazards of Hortense. Those metal containers
imprisoned so much of beauty, of daring, of young love striving against
adverse currents--held the triumphant fruiting of Miss Baxter’s toil and
struggle and sacrifice to give the public something better and finer.
Often he had caressed the crude metal with a reverent hand, as if his
wonder woman herself stood there to receive his homage.

That was actuality, in a way. But here it was in full measure, without
mental subterfuge or vain imaginings. Had he not beheld from this
post--he was pretty sure he had--Miss Baxter herself, swathed in costly
furs, drive a robin’s-egg-blue roadster through the gate without even
a nod to the warder? Indeed, that one glimpse of reality had been worth
his ten days of waiting--worth all his watching of the gate and its
keeper until he knew every dent in the keeper’s derby hat, every bristle
in his unkempt mustache, every wrinkle of his inferior raiment, and
every pocket from which throughout the day he would vainly draw matches
to relight an apparently fireproof cigar. Surely waiting thus rewarded
could not be called barren. When he grew tired of standing he could
cross the street and rest on a low bench that encircled one of the
eucalyptus trees. Here were other waiters without the pale, usually men
of strongly marked features, with a tendency to extremes in stature or
hair or beards or noses, and not conspicuously neat in attire. These,
he discovered, were extras awaiting employment, many of them Mexicans or
strange-appearing mongrels, with a sprinkling of Negroes. Often he could
have recruited there a band of outlaws for desperate deeds over the
border. He did not fraternize with these waifs, feeling that his was
another plane.

He had spent three days thus about the studio gate when he learned of
the existence of another entrance. This was a door almost opposite the
bench. He ventured through it and discovered a bare room with a wooden
seat running about its sides. In a partition opposite the entrance was
a small window and over it the words “Casting Director.” One of the two
other doors led to the interior, and through this he observed pass many
of the chosen. Another door led to the office of the casting director,
glimpses of which could be obtained through the little window.

The waiting room itself was not only bare as to floor and walls, but
was bleak and inhospitable in its general effect. The wooden seat was
uncomfortable, and those who sat upon it along the dull-toned walls
appeared depressed and unhopeful, especially after they had braved a
talk through the little window with someone who seemed always to
be saying, “No, nothing to-day. Yes, perhaps next week. I have your
address.” When the aspirants were women, as they mostly were, the
someone back of the window would add “dear” to the speech: “No, nothing
to-day, dear.”

There seemed never to be anything to-day, and Clifford Armytage spent
very little of his waiting time in this room. It made him uncomfortable
to be stared at by other applicants, whether they stared casually,
incuriously, or whether they seemed to appraise him disparagingly, as if
telling him frankly that for him there would never be anything to-day.

Then he saw that he, too, must undergo that encounter at the little
window. Too apparently he was not getting anywhere by loitering about
outside. It was exciting, but the producers would hardly look there for
new talent.

He chose a moment for this encounter when the waiting room was vacant,
not caring to be stared at when he took this first step in forming a
connection that was to be notable in screen annals. He approached the
window, bent his head, and encountered the gaze of a small, comely woman
with warm brown eyes, neat reddish hair, and a quick manner. The gaze
was shrewd; it seemed to read all that was needed to be known of this
new candidate.

“Yes?” said the woman.

She looked tired and very businesslike, but her manner was not unkind.
The novice was at once reassured. He was presently explaining to her
that he wished to act in the pictures at this particular studio. No,
he had not had much experience; that is, you could hardly call it
experience in actual acting, but he had finished a course of study and
had a diploma from the General Film Production Company of Stebbinsville,
Arkansas, certifying him to be a competent screen actor. And of course
he would not at first expect a big part. He would be glad to take
a small part to begin with--almost any small part until he could
familiarize himself with studio conditions. And here was a bunch of
stills that would give any one an idea of the range of parts he was
prepared to play, society parts in a full-dress suit, or soldier parts
in a trench coat and lieutenant’s cap, or juveniles in the natty suit
with the belted coat, and in the storm-king model belted overcoat.
And of course Western stuff--these would give an idea of what he could
do--cowboy outfit and all that sort of thing, chaps and spurs and
guns and so forth. And he was prepared to work hard and struggle and
sacrifice in order to give the public something better and finer, and
would it be possible to secure some small part at once? Was a good
all-round actor by any chance at that moment needed in the company of
Miss Beulah Baxter, because he would especially like such a part, and he
would be ready to start to work at any time--to-morrow, or even to-day.

The tired little woman beyond the opening listened patiently to this,
interrupting several times to say over an insistent telephone, “No,
nothing to-day, dear.” She looked at the stills with evident interest
and curiously studied the face of the speaker as she listened. She
smiled wearily when he was through and spoke briskly.

“Now, I’ll tell you, son; all that is very nice, but you haven’t had a
lick of real experience yet, have you?--and things are pretty quiet on
the lot just now. To-day there are only two companies shooting. So you
couldn’t get anything to-day or to-morrow or probably for a good many
days after that, and it won’t be much when you get it. You may get on as
an extra after a while when some of the other companies start shooting,
but I can’t promise anything, you understand. What you do now--leave me
your name and address and telephone number.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said the applicant, and supplied these data.

“Clifford Armytage!” exclaimed the woman. “I’ll say that’s some warm
name!”

“Well, you see”--he paused, but resolved to confide freely in this
friendly seeming person--“you see, I picked that out for a good name
to act under. It sounds good, doesn’t it? And my own right name is
only Merton Gill, so I thought I’d better have something that sounded a
little more--well, you know.”

“Sure!” said the woman. “All right, have any name you want; but I think
I’ll call you Merton when you come again. You needn’t act with me, you
know. Now, let’s see--name, age, height, good general wardrobe, house
address, telephone number--oh, yes, tell me where I can find you during
the day.”

“Right out here,” he replied firmly. “I’m going to stick to this studio
and not go near any of the others. If I’m not in this room I’ll be just
outside there, on that bench around the tree, or just across the street
where you can see through the gate and watch the people go through.”

“Say!” Again the woman searched his face and broke into her friendly
smile. “Say, you’re a real nut, aren’t you? How’d you ever get this
way?”

And again he was talking, telling now of his past and his struggles to
educate himself as a screen actor--one of the best. He spoke of Simsbury
and Gashwiler and of Lowell Hardy who took his stills, and of Tessie
Kearns, whose sympathy and advice had done so much to encourage him. The
woman was joyously attentive. Now she did more than smile. She laughed
at intervals throughout the narrative, though her laughter seemed
entirely sympathetic and in no way daunted the speaker.

“Well, Merton, you’re a funny one--I’ll say that. You’re so kind of
ignorant and appealing. And you say this Bughalter or Gigwater or
whatever his name is will take you back into the store any time? Well,
that’s a good thing to remember, because the picture game is a hard
game. I wouldn’t discourage a nice clean boy like you for the world,
but there are a lot of people in pictures right now that would prefer a
steady job like that one you left.”

“It’s Gashwiler--that name.”

“Oh, all right, just so you don’t forget it and forget the address.”

The new applicant warmly reassured her.

“I wouldn’t be likely to forget that, after living there all those
years.”

When he left the window the woman was again saying into the telephone,
“No, dear, nothing to-day. I’m sorry.”

It was that night he wrote to Tessie Kearns:

Dear Friend Tessie:

Well, Tessie, here I am safe and sound in Hollywood after a long ride
on the cars that went through many strange and interesting cities and
different parts of the country, and I guess by this time you must have
thought I was forgetting my old friends back in Simsbury; but not so, I
can assure you, for I will never forget our long talks together and how
you cheered me up often when the sacrifice and struggle seemed more than
any man could bear. But now I feel repaid for all that sacrifice and
struggle, for I am here where the pictures are made, and soon I will be
acting different parts in them, though things are quiet on the lot now
with only two companies shooting to-day; but more companies will be
shooting in a few days more and then will come the great opportunity for
me as soon as I get known, and my different capabilities, and what I can
do and everything.

I had a long talk to-day with the lady out in front that hires the
actors, and she was very friendly, but said it might be quite some time,
because only two companies on the lot were shooting to-day, and she said
if Gashwiler had promised to keep my old job for me to be sure and not
forget his address, and it was laughable that she should say such a
thing, because I would not be liable to forget his address when I lived
there so long. She must have thought I was very forgetful, to forget
that address.

There is some great scenery around this place, including many of the
Rocky Mtns. etc. that make it look beautiful, and the city of Los
Angeles is bigger than Peoria. I am quite some distance out of the
centre of town, and I have a nice furnished room about a mile from the
Holden studios, where I will be hired after a few more companies get to
shooting on the lot. There is an electric iron in the kitchen where one
can press their clothes. And my furnished room is in the house of a Los
Angeles society woman and her husband who came here from Iowa. Their
little house with flowers in front of it is called a bungalow. The
husband, Mr. Patterson, had a farm in Iowa, six miles out from Cedar
Falls, and he cares little for society; but the wife goes into society
all the time, as there is hardly a day just now that some society does
not have its picnic, and one day it will be the Kansas Society picnic
and the next day it will be the Michigan Society having a picnic, or
some other state, and of course the Iowa Society that has the biggest
picnic of all, and Mr. Patterson says his wife can go to all these
society functions if she wants, but he does not care much for society,
and he is thinking of buying a half interest in a good soft-drink place
just to pass the time away, as he says after the busy life he has led he
needs something to keep him busy, but his wife thinks only of society.

I take my meals out at different places, especially at drug stores. I
guess you would be surprised to see these drug stores where you can go
in and sit at the soda counter and order your coffee and sandwiches and
custard pie and eat them right there in the drug store, but there are
other places, too, like cafeterias, where you put your dishes on a tray
and carry it to your own table. It is all quite different from Simsbury,
and I have seen oranges growing on the trees, and there are palm trees,
and it does not snow here; but the grass is green and the flowers bloom
right through the winter, which makes it very attractive with the Rocky
Mtns. standing up in the distance, etc.

Well, Tessie, you must excuse this long letter from your old friend, and
write me if any company has accepted Passion’s Perils and I might have
a chance to act in that some day, and I will let you know when my first
picture is released and the title of it so you can watch out for it when
it comes to the Bijou Palace. I often think of the old town, and would
like to have a chat with you and my other old friends, but I am not
homesick, only sometimes I would like to be back there, as there are not
many people to chat with here and one would almost be lonesome sometimes
if they could not be at the studio. But I must remember that work and
struggle and sacrifice are necessary to give the public something better
and finer and become a good screen actor. So no more at present, from
your old friend, and address Clifford Armytage at above number, as I am
going by my stage name, though the lady at the Holden lot said she liked
my old name better and called me that, and it sounded pretty good, as I
have not got used to the stage name yet.

He felt better after this chat with his old friend, and the following
morning he pressed a suit in the Patterson kitchen and resumed his vigil
outside the gate. But now from time to time, at least twice a day, he
could break the monotony of this by a call at the little window.

Sometimes the woman beyond it would be engrossed with the telephone and
would merely look at him to shake her head. At others, the telephone
being still, she would engage him in friendly talk. She seemed to like
him as an occasional caller, but she remained smilingly skeptical about
his immediate success in the pictures. Again and again she urged him not
to forget the address of Giggenholder or Gooshswamp or whoever it might
be that was holding a good job for him. He never failed to remind her
that the name was Gashwiler, and that he could not possibly forget the
address because he had lived at Simsbury a long time. This always seemed
to brighten the woman’s day. It puzzled him to note that for some reason
his earnest assurance pleased her.

As the days of waiting passed he began to distinguish individuals among
the people who went through the little outer room or sat patiently
around its walls on the hard bench, waiting like himself for more
companies to start shooting. Among the important-looking men that
passed through would be actors that were now reaping the reward of their
struggle and sacrifice; actors whom he thrilled to recognize as old
screen friends. These would saunter in with an air of fine leisure,
and their manner of careless but elegant dress would be keenly noted by
Merton. Then there were directors. These were often less scrupulously
attired and seemed always to be solving knotty problems. They passed
hurriedly on, brows drawn in perplexity. They were very busy persons.
Those on the bench regarded them with deep respect and stiffened to
attention as they passed, but they were never observed by these great
ones.

The waiting ones were of all ages; mostly women, with but a sprinkling
of men. Many of the women were young or youngish, and of rare beauty,
so Merton Gill thought. Others were elderly or old, and a few would be
accompanied by children, often so young that they must be held on laps.
They, too, waited with round eyes and in perfect decorum for a chance
to act. Sometimes the little window would be pushed open and a woman
beckoned from the bench. Some of them greeted the casting director as an
old friend and were still gay when told that there was nothing to-day.
Others seemed to dread being told this, and would wait on without daring
an inquiry. Sometimes there would be a little flurry of actual business.
Four society women would be needed for a bridge table at 8:30 the next
morning on Stage Number Five. The casting director seemed to know the
wardrobe of each of the waiters, and would select the four quickly.
The gowns must be smart--it was at the country house of a rich New
Yorker--and jewels and furs were not to be forgotten. There might be two
days’ work. The four fortunate ladies would depart with cheerful smiles.
The remaining waiters settled on the bench, hoping against hope for
another call.

Among the waiting-room hopefuls Merton had come to know by sight the
Montague family. This consisted of a handsome elderly gentleman of
most impressive manner, his wife, a portly woman of middle age, also
possessing an impressive manner, and a daughter. Mr. Montague always
removed his hat in the waiting room, uncovering an abundant cluster
of iron-gray curls above a noble brow. About him there seemed ever to
linger a faint spicy aroma of strong drink, and he would talk freely to
those sharing the bench with him. His voice was full and rich in tone,
and his speech, deliberate and precise, more than hinted that he
had once been an ornament of the speaking stage. His wife, also, was
friendly of manner, and spoke in a deep contralto somewhat roughened by
wear but still notable.

The daughter Merton did not like. She was not unattractive in
appearance, though her features were far off the screen-heroine model,
her nose being too short, her mouth too large, her cheekbones too
prominent, and her chin too square. Indeed, she resembled too closely
her father, who, as a man, could carry such things more becomingly.
She was a slangy chit, much too free and easy in her ways, Merton
considered, and revealing a self-confidence that amounted almost to
impudence. Further, her cheeks were brown, her brief nose freckled,
and she did not take the pains with her face that most of the beautiful
young women who waited there had so obviously taken. She was a
harum-scarum baggage with no proper respect for any one, he decided,
especially after the day she had so rudely accosted one of the passing
directors. He was a more than usually absorbed director, and with drawn
brows would have gone unseeing through the waiting room when the girl
hailed him.

“Oh, Mr. Henshaw, one moment please!”

He glanced up in some annoyance, pausing with his hand to the door that
led on to his proper realm.

“Oh, it’s you, Miss Montague! Well, what is it? I’m very, very busy.”

“Well, it’s something I wanted to ask you.” She quickly crossed the room
to stand by him, tenderly flecking a bit of dust from his coat sleeve as
she began, “Say, listen, Mr. Henshaw: Do you think beauty is a curse to
a poor girl?”

Mr. Henshaw scowled down into the eyes so confidingly lifted to his.

“That’s something you won’t ever have to worry about,” he snapped, and
was gone, his brows again drawn in perplexity over his work.

“You’re not angry with poor little me, are you, Mr. Henshaw?”

The girl called this after him and listened, but no reply came from back
of the partition.

Mrs. Montague, from the bench, rebuked her daughter.

“Say, what do you think that kidding stuff will get you? Don’t you want
to work for him any more?”

The girl turned pleading eyes upon her mother.

“I think he might have answered a simple question,” said she.

This was all distasteful to Merton Gill. The girl might, indeed, have
deserved an answer to her simple question, but why need she ask it of so
busy a man? He felt that Mr. Henshaw’s rebuke was well merited, for her
own beauty was surely not excessive.

Her father, from the bench, likewise admonished her.

“You are sadly prone to a spirit of banter,” he declared, “though I
admit that the so-called art of the motion picture is not to be regarded
too seriously. It was not like that in my day. Then an actor had to be
an artist; there was no position for the little he-doll whippersnapper
who draws the big money to-day and is ignorant of even the rudiments of
the actor’s profession.”

He allowed his glance to rest perceptibly upon Merton Gill, who felt
uncomfortable.

“We were with Looey James five years,” confided Mrs. Montague to her
neighbours. “A hall show, of course--hadn’t heard of movies then--doing
Virginius and Julius Caesar and such classics, and then starting out
with The Two Orphans for a short season. We were a knock-out, I’ll
say that. I’ll never forget the night we opened the new opera house at
Akron. They had to put the orchestra under the stage.”

“And the so-called art of the moving picture robs us of our little meed
of applause,” broke in her husband. “I shall never forget a remark of
the late Lawrence Barrett to me after a performance of Richelieu in
which he had fairly outdone himself. ‘Montague, my lad,’ said he ‘we may
work for the money, but we play for the applause.’ But now our finest
bits must go in silence, or perhaps be interrupted by a so-called
director who arrogates to himself the right to instill into us the
rudiments of a profession in which we had grounded ourselves ere yet
he was out of leading strings. Too often, naturally, the results are
discouraging.”

The unabashed girl was meantime having sprightly talk with the casting
director, whom she had hailed through the window as Countess. Merton,
somewhat startled, wondered if the little woman could indeed be of the
nobility.

“Hello, Countess! Say, listen, can you give the camera a little peek at
me to-day, or at pa or ma? ‘No, nothing to-day, dear.’” She had imitated
the little woman’s voice in her accustomed reply. “Well, I didn’t think
there would be. I just thought I’d ask. You ain’t mad, are you? I could
have gone on in a harem tank scene over at the Bigart place, but they
wanted me to dress the same as a fish, and a young girl’s got to draw
the line somewhere. Besides, I don’t like that Hugo over there so much.
He hates to part with anything like money, and he’ll gyp you if he can.
Say, I’ll bet he couldn’t play an honest game of solitaire. How’d you
like my hair this way? Like it, eh? That’s good. And me having the
only freckles left in all Hollywood. Ain’t I the little prairie flower,
growing wilder every hour?

“Say, on the level, pa needs work. These days when he’s idle he mostly
sticks home and tries out new ways to make prime old Kentucky sour mash
in eight hours. If he don’t quit he is going to find himself seeing some
moving pictures that no one else can. And he’s all worried up about
his hair going off on top, and trying new hair restorers. You know his
latest? Well, he goes over to the Selig place one day and watches horse
meat fed to the lions and says to himself that horses have plenty of
hair, and it must be the fat under the skin that makes it grow, so he
begs for a hunk of horse from just under the mane and he’s rubbing
that on. You can’t tell what he’ll bring home next. The old boy still
believes you can raise hair from the dead. Do you want some new stills
of me? I got a new one yesterday that shows my other expression. Well,
so long, Countess.”

The creature turned to her parents.

“Let’s be on our way, old dears. This place is dead, but the Countess
says they’ll soon be shooting some tenement-house stuff up at the
Consolidated. Maybe there’ll be something in it for someone. We might as
well have a look-in.”

Merton felt relieved when the Montague family went out, the girl in
the lead. He approved of the fine old father, but the daughter lacked
dignity in speech and manner. You couldn’t tell what she might say next.

The Montagues were often there, sometimes in full, sometimes represented
by but one of their number. Once Mrs. Montague was told to be on Stage
Six the next morning at 8:30 to attend a swell reception.

“Wear the gray georgette, dearie,” said the casting director, “and your
big pearls and the lorgnon.”

“Not forgetting the gold cigarette case and the chinchilla neck piece,”
 said Mrs. Montague. “The spare parts will all be there, Countess, and
thanks for the word.”

The elder Montague on the occasion of his calls often found time to
regale those present with anecdotes of Lawrence Barrett.

“A fine artist in his day, sir; none finer ever appeared in a hall
show.”

And always about his once superb frock coat clung the scent of forbidden
beverages. On one such day he appeared with an untidy sprouting of
beard, accompanied by the talkative daughter.

“Pa’s landed a part,” she explained through the little window. “It’s
one of those we-uns mountaineer plays with revenooers and feuds; one of
those plays where the city chap don’t treat our Nell right--you know.
And they won’t stand for the crepe hair, so pop has got to raise a brush
and he’s mad. But it ought to give him a month or so, and after that
he may be able to peddle the brush again; you can never tell in this
business, can you, Countess?”

“It’s most annoying,” the old gentleman explained to the bench
occupants. “In the true art of the speaking stage an artificial beard
was considered above reproach. Nowadays one must descend to mere
physical means if one is to be thought worthy.”




CHAPTER V. A BREACH IN THE CITY WALLS


During these weeks of waiting outside the gate the little woman beyond
the window had continued to be friendly but not encouraging to the
aspirant for screen honours late of Simsbury, Illinois. For three weeks
had he waited faithfully, always within call, struggling and sacrificing
to give the public something better and finer, and not once had he so
much as crossed the line that led to his goal.

Then on a Monday morning he found the waiting-room empty and his friend
beyond the window suffering the pangs of headache. “It gets me something
fierce right through here,” she confided to him, placing her finger-tips
to her temples.

“Ever use Eezo Pain Wafers?” he demanded in quick sympathy. She looked
at him hopefully.

“Never heard of ‘em.”

“Let me get you some.”

“You dear thing, fly to it!”

He was gone while she reached for her purse, hurrying along the
eucalyptus-lined street of choice home sites to the nearest drug store.
He was fearing someone else might bring the little woman another remedy;
even that her headache might go before he returned with his. But he
found her still suffering.

“Here they are.” He was breathless. “You take a couple now and a couple
more in half an hour if the ache hasn’t stopped.” “Bless your heart!
Come around inside.” He was through the door and in the dimly lit little
office behind that secretive partition. “And here’s something else,” he
continued. “It’s a menthol pencil and you take this cap off--see?--and
rub your forehead with it. It’ll be a help.” She swallowed two of the
magic wafers with the aid of water from the cooler, and applied the
menthol.

“You’re a dear,” she said, patting his sleeve. “I feel better already.
Sometimes these things come on me and stay all day.” She was still
applying the menthol to throbbing temples. “Say, don’t you get tired
hanging around outside there? How’d you like to go in and look around
the lot? Would you like that?”

Would he! “Thanks!” He managed it without choking, “If I wouldn’t be in
the way.”

“You won’t. Go on--amuse yourself.” The telephone rang. Still applying
the menthol she held the receiver to her ear. “No, nothing to-day, dear.
Say, Marie, did you ever take Eezo Pain Wafers for a headache? Keep
‘em in mind--they’re great. Yes, I’ll let you know if anything breaks.
Goo’-by, dear.”

Merton Gill hurried through a narrow corridor past offices where
typewriters clicked and burst from gloom into the dazzling light of the
Holden lot. He paused on the steps to reassure himself that the great
adventure was genuine. There was the full stretch of greensward of which
only an edge had shown as he looked through the gate. There were the
vast yellow-brick, glass-topped structures of which he had seen but the
ends. And there was the street up which he had looked for so many weeks,
flanked by rows of offices and dressing rooms, and lively with the
passing of many people. He drew a long breath and became calculating. He
must see everything and see it methodically. He even went now along
the asphalt walk to the corner of the office building from which he had
issued for the privilege of looking back at the gate through which he
had so often yearningly stared from across the street.

Now he was securely inside looking out. The watchman sat at the gate,
bent low over his paper. There was, it seemed, more than one way to get
by him. People might have headaches almost any time. He wondered if his
friend the casting director were subject to them. He must carry a box of
the Eezo wafers.

He strolled down the street between the rows of offices and the immense
covered stages. Actors in costume entered two of these and through their
open doors he could see into their shadowy interiors. He would venture
there later. Just now he wished to see the outside of things. He
contrived a pace not too swift but business-like enough to convey the
impression that he was rightfully walking this forbidden street. He
seemed to be going some place where it was of the utmost importance that
he should be, and yet to have started so early that there was no need
for haste.

He sounded the far end of that long street visible from outside the
gate, discovering its excitements to wane gently into mere blacksmith
and carpenter shops. He retraced his steps, this time ignoring the long
row of offices for the opposite line of stages. From one dark interior
came the slow, dulled strains of an orchestra and from another shots
rang out. He met or passed strangely attired people, bandits, priests,
choir boys, gentlemen in evening dress with blue-black eyebrows and
careful hair. And he observed many beautiful young women, variously
attired, hurrying to or from the stages. One lovely thing was in bridal
dress of dazzling white, a veil of lace floating from her blonde head,
her long train held up by a coloured maid. She chatted amiably, as she
crossed the street, with an evil-looking Mexican in a silver-corded
hat--a veritable Snake de Vasquez.

But the stages could wait. He must see more streets. Again reaching the
office that had been his secret gateway to these delights, he turned to
the right, still with the air of having business at a certain spot to
which there was really no need for him to hurry. There were fewer people
this way, and presently, as if by magic carpet, he had left all that
sunlight and glitter and cheerful noise and stood alone in the shadowy,
narrow street of a frontier town. There was no bustle here, only an
intense stillness. The street was deserted, the shop doors closed. There
was a ghostlike, chilling effect that left him uneasy. He called upon
himself to remember that he was not actually in a remote and desolate
frontier town from which the inhabitants had fled; that back of him
but a few steps was abounding life, that outside was the prosaic world
passing and repassing a gate hard to enter. He whistled the fragment
of a tune and went farther along this street of uncanny silence and
vacancy, noting, as he went, the signs on the shop windows. There was
the Busy Bee Restaurant, Jim’s Place, the Hotel Renown, the Last Dollar
Dance Hall, Hank’s Pool Room. Upon one window was painted the terse
announcement, “Joe--Buy or Sell.” The Happy Days Bar adjoined the
General Store.

He moved rapidly through this street. It was no place to linger. At the
lower end it gave insanely upon a row of three-story brownstone houses
which any picture patron would recognize as being wholly of New York.
There were the imposing steps, the double-doored entrances, the broad
windows, the massive lines of the whole. And beyond this he came to a
many-coloured little street out of Bagdad, overhung with gay balconies,
vivacious with spindled towers and minarets, and small reticent windows,
out of which veiled ladies would glance. And all was still with the
stillness of utter desertion.

Then he explored farther and felt curiously disappointed at finding
that these structures were to real houses what a dicky is to a sincere,
genuine shirt. They were pretentiously false.

One had but to step behind them to discover them as poor shells.

Their backs were jutting beams carried but little beyond the fronts and
their stout-appearing walls were revealed to be fragile contrivances of
button-lath and thin plaster. The ghost quality departed from them with
this discovery.

He left these cities of silence and came upon an open space and people.
They were grouped before a railway station, a small red structure beside
a line of railway track. At one end in black letters, on a narrow white
board, was the name Boomerville.

The people were plainly Western: a dozen cowboys, a sprinkling of bluff
ranchers and their families. An absorbed young man in cap and khaki and
puttees came from a distant group surrounding a camera and readjusted
the line of these people. He placed them to his liking. A wagon drawn
by two horses was driven up and a rancher helped a woman and girl to
alight. The girl was at once sought out by the cowboys. They shook hands
warmly under megaphoned directions from a man back by the camera. The
rancher and his wife mingled with the group. The girl was drawn aside
by one of the cowboys. He had a nobler presence than the others; he was
handsome and his accoutrements seemed more expensive. They looked into
each other’s eyes a long time, apparently pledging an eternal fidelity.
One gathered that there would have been an embrace but for the cowboy’s
watchful companions. They must say good-by with a mere handshake,
though this was a slow, trembling, long-drawn clasp while they steadily
regarded each other, and a second camera was brought to record it at a
distance of six feet. Merton Gill thrilled with the knowledge that he
was beholding his first close-up. His long study of the photo-drama
enabled him to divine that the rancher’s daughter was going to Vassar
College to be educated, but that, although returning a year later a
poised woman of the world, she would still long for the handsome cowboy
who would marry her and run the Bar-X ranch. The scene was done. The
camera would next be turned upon a real train at some real station,
while the girl, with a final look at her lover, entered a real car,
which the camera would show moving off to Vassar College. Thus conveying
to millions of delighted spectators the impression that a real train had
steamed out of the station, which was merely an imitation of one, on the
Holden lot. The watcher passed on. He could hear the cheerful drone of a
sawmill where logs were being cut. He followed the sound and came to its
source. The saw was at the end of an oblong pool in which logs floated.
Workmen were poling these toward the saw. On a raised platform at one
side was a camera and a man who gave directions through a megaphone; a
neighbouring platform held a second camera. A beautiful young girl in a
print dress and her thick hair in a braid came bringing his dinner in a
tin pail to the handsomest of the actors. He laid down his pike-pole and
took both the girl’s hands in his as he received the pail. One of the
other workmen, a hulking brute with an evil face, scowled darkly at this
encounter and a moment later had insulted the beautiful young girl.
But the first actor felled him with a blow. He came up from this,
crouchingly, and the fight was on. Merton was excited by this fight,
even though he was in no doubt as to which actor would win it. They
fought hard, and for a time it appeared that the handsome actor must
lose, for the bully who had insulted the girl was a man of great
strength, but the science of the other told. It was the first fight
Merton had ever witnessed. He thought these men must really be hating
each other, so bitter were their expressions. The battle grew fiercer.
It was splendid. Then, at the shrill note of a whistle, the panting
combatants fell apart.

“Rotten!” said an annoyed voice through the megaphone. “Can’t you boys
give me a little action? Jazz it, jazz it! Think it’s a love scene? Go
to it, now--plenty of jazz--understand what I mean?” He turned to the
camera man beside him. “Ed, you turn ten--we got to get some speed some
way. Jack”--to the other camera man--“you stay on twelve. All ready! Get
some life into it, now, and Lafe”--this to the handsome actor--“don’t
keep trying to hold your front to the machine. We’ll get you all right.
Ready, now. Camera!”

Again the fight was on. It went to a bitter finish in which the
vanquished bully was sent with a powerful blow backward into the water,
while the beautiful young girl ran to the victor and nestled in the
protection of his strong arms.

Merton Gill passed on. This was the real thing. He would have a lot to
tell Tessie Kearns in his next letter. Beyond the sawmill he came to
an immense wooden structure like a cradle on huge rockers supported by
scaffolding. From the ground he could make nothing of it, but a ladder
led to the top. An hour on the Holden lot had made him bold. He mounted
the ladder and stood on the deck of what he saw was a sea-going yacht.
Three important-looking men were surveying the deckhouse forward. They
glanced at the newcomer but with a cheering absence of curiosity or
even of interest. He sauntered past them with a polite but not-too-keen
interest. The yacht would be an expensive one. The deck fittings were
elaborate. A glance into the captain’s cabin revealed it to be fully
furnished, with a chart and a sextant on the mahogany desk.

“Where’s the bedding for this stateroom?” asked one of the men.

“I got a prop-rustler after it,” one of the others informed him.

They strolled aft and paused by an iron standard ingeniously swung from
the deck.

“That’s Burke’s idea,” said one of the men. “I hadn’t thought about a
steady support for the camera; of course if we stood it on deck it would
rock when the ship rocked and we’d get no motion. So Burke figures this
out. The camera is on here and swings by that weight so it’s always
straight and the rocking registers. Pretty neat, what?”

“That was nothing to think of” said one of the other men, in apparent
disparagement. “I thought of it myself the minute I saw it.” The other
two grinned at this, though Merton Gill, standing by, saw nothing to
laugh at. He thought the speaker was pretty cheeky; for of course any
one could think of this device after seeing it. He paused for a final
survey of his surroundings from this elevation. He could see the real
falseness of the sawmill he had just left, he could also look into the
exposed rear of the railway station, and could observe beyond it
the exposed skeleton of that New York street. He was surrounded by
mockeries.

He clambered down the ladder and sauntered back to the street of
offices. He was by this time confident that no one was going to ask him
what right he had in there. Now, too, he became conscious of hunger
and at the same moment caught the sign “Cafeteria” over a neat building
hitherto unnoticed. People were entering this, many of them in costume.
He went idly toward the door, glanced up, looked at his watch, and
became, to any one curious about him, a man who had that moment decided
he might as well have a little food. He opened the screen door of the
cafeteria, half expecting it to prove one of those structures equipped
only with a front. But the cafeteria was practicable. The floor was
crowded with little square polished tables at which many people were
eating. A railing along the side of the room made a passage to the back
where food was served from a counter to the proffered tray. He fell into
line. No one had asked him how he dared try to eat with real actors
and actresses and apparently no one was going to. Toward the end of the
passage was a table holding trays and napkins the latter wrapped about
an equipment of cutlery. He took his tray and received at the counter
the foods he designated. He went through this ordeal with difficulty
because it was not easy to keep from staring about at other patrons.
Constantly he was detecting some remembered face. But at last, with his
laden tray he reached a vacant table near the centre of the room and
took his seat. He absently arranged the food before him. He could stare
at leisure now. All about him were the strongly marked faces of the film
people, heavy with makeup, interspersed with hungry civilians, who might
be producers, directors, camera men, or mere artisans, for the democracy
of the cafeteria seemed ideal.

At the table ahead of his he recognized the man who had been annoyed one
day by the silly question of the Montague girl. They had said he was
a very important director. He still looked important and intensely
serious. He was a short, very plump man, with pale cheeks under dark
brows, and troubled looking gray hair. He was very seriously explaining
something to the man who sat with him and whom he addressed as Governor,
a merry-looking person with a stubby gray mustache and little hair, who
seemed not too attentive to the director.

“You see, Governor, it’s this way: the party is lost on the
desert--understand what I mean--and Kempton Ward and the girl stumble
into this deserted tomb just at nightfall. Now here’s where the big kick
comes--”

Merton Gill ceased to listen for there now halted at his table, bearing
a laden tray, none other than the Montague girl, she of the slangy
talk and the regrettably free manner. She put down her tray and seated
herself before it. She had not asked permission of the table’s other
occupant, indeed she had not even glanced at him, for cafeteria
etiquette is not rigorous. He saw that she was heavily made up and in
the costume of a gypsy, he thought, a short vivid skirt, a gay waist,
heavy gold hoops in her ears, and dark hair massed about her small head.
He remembered that this would not be her own hair. She fell at once to
her food. The men at the next table glanced at her, the director without
cordiality; but the other man smiled upon her cheerfully.

“Hello, Flips! How’s the girl?”

“Everything’s jake with me, Governor. How’s things over at your shop?”

“So, so. I see you’re working.”

“Only for two days. I’m just atmosphere in this piece. I got some real
stuff coming along pretty soon for Baxter. Got to climb down ten stories
of a hotel elevator cable, and ride a brake-beam and be pushed off a
cliff and thrown to the lions, and a few other little things.”

“That’s good, Flips. Come in and see me some time. Have a little chat.
Ma working?”

“Yeah--got a character bit with Charlotte King in Her Other Husband.”
 “Glad to hear it. How’s Pa Montague?”

“Pa’s in bed. They’ve signed him for Camillia of the Cumberlands,
providing he raises a brush, and just now it ain’t long enough for
whiskers and too long for anything else, so he’s putterin’ around with
his new still.”

“Well, drop over sometime, Flips, I’m keeping you in mind.”

“Thanks, Governor. Say--” Merton glanced up in time to see her wink
broadly at the man, and look toward his companion who still seriously
made notes on the back of an envelope. The man’s face melted to a grin
which he quickly erased. The girl began again:

“Mr. Henshaw--could you give me just a moment, Mr. Henshaw?” The serious
director looked up in quite frank annoyance.

“Yes, yes, what is it, Miss Montague?”

“Well, listen, Mr. Henshaw, I got a great idea for a story, and I was
thinking who to take it to and I thought of this one and I thought
of that one, and I asked my friends, and they all say take it to Mr.
Henshaw, because if a story has any merit he’s the one director on
the lot that can detect it and get every bit of value out of it, so I
thought--but of course if you’re busy just now--”

The director thawed ever so slightly. “Of course, my girl, I’m busy--but
then I’m always busy. They run me to death here. Still, it was very kind
of your friends, and of course--”

“Thank you, Mr. Henshaw.” She clasped her hands to her breast and gazed
raptly into the face of her coy listener.

“Of course I’ll have to have help on the details, but it starts off
kind of like this. You see I’m a Hawaiian princess--” She paused, gazing
aloft.

“Yes, yes, Miss Montague--an Hawaiian princess. Go on, go on!”

“Oh, excuse me; I was thinking how I’d dress her for the last spool in
the big fire scene. Well, anyway, I’m this Hawaiian princess, and my
father, old King Mauna Loa, dies and leaves me twenty-one thousand
volcanoes and a billiard cue--”

Mr. Henshaw blinked rapidly at this. For a moment he was dazed. “A
billiard cue, did you say?” he demanded blankly.

“Yes. And every morning I have to go out and ram it down the volcanoes
to see are they all right--and--”

“Tush, tush!” interrupted Mr. Henshaw scowling upon the playwright and
fell again to his envelope, pretending thereafter to ignore her.

The girl seemed to be unaware that she had lost his attention. “And you
see the villain is very wealthy; he owns the largest ukelele factory in
the islands, and he tries to get me in his power, but he’s foiled by my
fiance, a young native by the name of Herman Schwarz, who has invented
a folding ukelele, so the villain gets his hired Hawaiian orchestra to
shove Herman down one of the volcanoes and me down another, but I have
the key around my neck, which Father put there when I was a babe and
made me swear always to wear it, even in the bath-tub, so I let myself
out and unlock the other one and let Herman out and the orchestra
discovers us and chases us over the cliff, and then along comes my old
nurse who is now running a cigar store in San Pedro and she--” Here she
affected to discover that Mr. Henshaw no longer listened.

“Why, Mr. Henshaw’s gone!” she exclaimed dramatically. “Boy, boy, page
Mr. Henshaw.” Mr. Henshaw remained oblivious.

“Oh, well, of course I might have expected you wouldn’t have time to
listen to my poor little plot. Of course I know it’s crude, but it did
seem to me that something might be made out of it.” She resumed her
food. Mr. Henshaw’s companion here winked at her and was seen to be
shaking with emotion. Merton Gill could not believe it to be laughter,
for he had seen nothing to laugh at. A busy man had been bothered by a
silly girl who thought she had the plot for a photodrama, and even he,
Merton Gill, could have told her that her plot was impossibly wild and
inconsequent. If she were going into that branch of the art she ought to
take lessons, the way Tessie Kearns did. She now looked so mournful that
he was almost moved to tell her this, but her eyes caught his at
that moment and in them was a light so curious, so alive with hidden
meanings, so eloquent of some iron restraint she put upon her own
emotions, that he became confused and turned his gaze from hers almost
with the rebuking glare of Henshaw. She glanced quickly at him again,
studying his face for the first time. There had been such a queer look
in this young man’s eyes; she understood most looks, but not that one.

Henshaw was treating the late interruption as if it had not been. “You
see, Governor, the way we got the script now, they’re in this tomb alone
for the night--understand what I mean--and that’s where the kick comes
for the audience. They know he’s a strong young fellow and she’s a
beautiful girl and absolutely in his power--see what I mean?--but he’s
a gentleman through and through and never lays a hand on her. Get that?
Then later along comes this Ben Ali Ahab--”

The Montague girl glanced again at the face of the strange young man
whose eyes had held a new expression for her, but she and Mr. Henshaw
and the so-called governor and all those other diners who rattled thick
crockery and talked unendingly had ceased to exist for Merton Gill.
A dozen tables down the room and nearer the door sat none other than
Beulah Baxter. Alone at her table, she gazed raptly aloft, meditating
perhaps some daring new feat. Merton Gill stared, entranced, frozen.
The Montague girl perfectly understood this look and traced it to its
object. Then she surveyed Merton Gill again with something faintly like
pity in her shrewd eyes. He was still staring, still rapt.

Beulah Baxter ceased to look aloft. She daintily reached for a wooden
toothpick from the bowl before her and arose to pay her check at the
near-by counter. Merton Gill arose at the same moment and stumbled a
blind way through the intervening tables. When he reached the counter
Miss Baxter was passing through the door. He was about to follow her
when a cool but cynical voice from the counter said, “Hey, Bill--ain’t
you fergittin’ somepin’.”

He looked for the check for his meal; it should have been in one hand or
the other. But it was in neither. He must have left it back on his tray.
Now he must return for it. He went as quickly as he could. The Montague
girl was holding it up as he approached. “Here’s the little joker, Kid,”
 she said kindly.

“Thanks!” said Merton. He said it haughtily, not meaning to be haughty,
but he was embarrassed and also fearful that Beulah Baxter would be
lost. “Exit limping,” murmured the girl as he turned away. He hurried
again to the door, paid the check and was outside. Miss Baxter was not
to be seen. His forgetfulness about the check had lost her to him. He
had meant to follow, to find the place where she was working, and look
and look and look! Now he had lost her. But she might be on one of
those stages within the big barns. Perhaps the day was not yet lost.
He crossed the street, forgetting to saunter, and ventured within the
cavernous gloom beyond an open door. He stood for a moment, his vision
dulled by the dusk. Presently he saw that he faced a wall of canvas
backing. Beyond this were low voices and the sound of people moving. He
went forward to a break in the canvas wall and at the same moment there
was a metallic jar and light flooded the enclosure. From somewhere
outside came music, principally the low, leisurely moan of a ‘cello. A
beautiful woman in evening dress was with suppressed emotion kneeling at
the bedside of a sleeping child. At the doorway stood a dark, handsome
gentleman in evening dress, regarding her with a cynical smile. The
woman seemed to bid the child farewell, and arose with hands to her
breast and quivering lips. The still-smiling gentleman awaited her. When
she came to him, glancing backward to the sleeping child, he threw
about her an elaborate fur cloak and drew her to him, his cynical smile
changing to one of deceitful tenderness. The woman still glanced back at
the child, but permitted herself to be drawn through the doorway by
the insistent gentleman. From a door the other side of the bed came a
kind-faced nurse. She looked first at the little one then advanced to
stare after the departing couple. She raised her hands tragically and
her face became set in a mask of sorrow and despair. She clasped the
hands desperately.

Merton Gill saw his nurse to be the Montague mother. “All right,” said
an authoritative voice. Mrs. Montague relaxed her features and withdrew,
while an unkempt youth came to stand in front of the still-grinding
camera and held before it a placard on which were numbers. The camera
stopped, the youth with the placard vanished. “Save it,” called another
voice, and with another metallic jar the flood of light was turned off.
The ‘cello ceased its moan in the middle of a bar.

The watcher recalled some of the girl’s chat. Her mother had a character
bit in Her Other Husband. This would be it, one of those moving
tragedies not unfamiliar to the screen enthusiast. The beautiful but
misguided wife had been saying good-by to her little one and was leaving
her beautiful home at the solicitation of the false friend in evening
dress--forgetting all in one mad moment. The watcher was a tried expert,
and like the trained faunal naturalist could determine a species from
the shrewd examination of one bone of a photoplay. He knew that the wife
had been ignored by a husband who permitted his vast business interests
to engross his whole attention, leaving the wife to seek solace in
questionable quarters. He knew that the shocked but faithful nurse
would presently discover the little one to be suffering from a dangerous
fever; that a hastily summoned physician would shake his head and
declare in legible words, “Naught but a mother’s love can win that tiny
soul back from the brink of Eternity.” The father would overhear this,
and would see it all then: how his selfish absorption in Wall Street had
driven his wife to another. He would pursue her, would find her ere yet
it was too late. He would discover that her better nature had already
prevailed and that she had started back without being sent for. They
would kneel side by side, hand in hand, at the bedside of the little
one, who would recover and smile and prattle, and together they would
face an untroubled future.

This was all thrilling to Merton Gill; but Beulah Baxter was not here,
her plays being clean and wholesome things of the great outdoors. Far
down the great enclosure was another wall of canvas backing, a flood of
light above it and animated voices from within. He stood again to watch.
But this drama seemed to have been suspended. The room exposed was a
bedroom with an open window facing an open door; the actors and the
mechanical staff as well were busily hurling knives at various walls.
They were earnest and absorbed in this curious pursuit. Sometimes
they made the knife penetrate the wall, oftener it merely struck and
clattered to the floor. Five knives at once were being hurled by five
enthusiasts, while a harried-looking director watched and criticised.

“You’re a clumsy bunch,” he announced at last. “It’s a simple thing to
do, isn’t it?” The knife-throwers redoubled their efforts, but they did
not find it a simple thing to do.

“Let me try it, Mr. Burke.” It was the Montague girl still in her gipsy
costume. She had been standing quietly in the shadow observing the
ineffective practice.

“Hello, Flips! Sure, you can try it. Show these boys something good,
now. Here, Al, give Miss Montague that stickeree of yours.” Al seemed
glad to relinquish the weapon. Miss Montague hefted it, and looked
doubtful.

“It ain’t balanced right,” she declared. “Haven’t you got one with a
heavier handle?”

“Fair enough,” said the director. “Hey, Pickles, let her try that one
you got.” Pickles, too, was not unwilling to oblige.

“That’s better,” said the girl. “It’s balanced right.” Taking the blade
by its point between thumb and forefinger she sent it with a quick flick
of the wrist into the wall a dozen feet away. It hung there quivering.

“There! That’s what we want. It’s got to be quivering when Jack shoots
at Ramon who threw it at him as he leaps through the window. Try it
again, Flips.” The girl obliged and bowed impressively to the applause.

“Now come here and try it through the doorway.” He led her around the
set. “Now stand here and see can you put it into the wall just to the
right of the window. Good! Some little knife-thrower, I’ll say. Now try
it once with Jack coming through. Get set, Jack.”

Jack made his way to the window through which he was to leap. He paused
there to look in with some concern. “Say, Mr. Burke, will you please
make sure she understands? She isn’t to let go of that thing until I’m
in and crouched down ready to shoot--understand what I mean? I don’t
want to get nicked nor nothing.”

“All right, all right! She understands.”

Jack leaped through the window to a crouch, weapon in hand. The knife
quivered in the wall above him as he shot.

“Fine and dandy. Some class, I’ll say. All right, Jack. Get back. We’ll
gun this little scene right here and now. All ready, Jack, all ready
Miss Montague--camera!--one, two, three--come in, Jack.” Again the knife
quivered in the wall above his head even while he crouched to shoot at
the treacherous Mexican who had thrown it.

“Good work, Flips. Thanks a whole lot. We’ll do as much for you some
time.”

“You’re entirely welcome, Mr. Burke. No trouble to oblige. How you
coming?”

“Coming good. This thing’s going to be a knockout. I bet it’ll gross a
million. Nearly done, too, except for some chase stuff up in the hills.
I’ll do that next week. What you doing?”

“Oh, everything’s jake with me. I’m over on Number Four--Toys of
Destiny--putting a little pep into the mob stuff. Laid out for two
hours, waiting for something--I don’t know what.”

Merton Gill passed on. He confessed now to a reluctant admiration for
the Montague girl. She could surely throw a knife. He must practise that
himself sometime. He might have stayed to see more of this drama but he
was afraid the girl would break out into more of her nonsense. He was
aware that she swept him with her eyes as he turned away but he
evaded her glance. She was not a person, he thought, that one ought to
encourage.

He emerged from the great building and crossed an alley to another of
like size. Down toward its middle was the usual wall of canvas with
half-a-dozen men about the opening at one corner. A curious whirring
noise came from within. He became an inconspicuous unit of the group and
gazed in. The lights were on, revealing a long table elaborately set
as for a banquet, but the guests who stood about gave him instant
uneasiness. They were in the grossest caricatures of evening dress, both
men and women, and they were not beautiful. The gowns of the women
were grotesque and the men were lawless appearing, either as to hair or
beards or both. He divined the dreadful thing he was stumbling upon
even before he noted the sign in large letters on the back of a folding
chair: “Jeff Baird’s Buckeye Comedies.” These were the buffoons who with
their coarse pantomime, their heavy horse-play, did so much to debase
a great art. There, even at his side, was the arch offender, none other
than Jeff Baird himself, the man whose regrettable sense of so-called
humour led him to make these low appeals to the witless. And even as
he looked the cross-eyed man entered the scene. Garbed in the weirdly
misfitting clothes of a waiter, holding aloft a loaded tray of dishes,
he entered on roller skates, to halt before Baird with his uplifted tray
at a precarious balance.

“All right, that’s better,” said Baird. “And, Gertie, listen: don’t
throw the chair in front of him. That’s out. Now we’ll have the entrance
again. You other boys on the rollers, there--” Three other basely comic
waiters on roller skates came to attention.

“Follow him in and pile up on him when he makes the grand spill--see
what I mean? Get your trays loaded now and get off. Now you other
people, take your seats. No, no, Annie, you’re at the head, I told you.
Tom, you’re at the foot and start the rough-house when you get the tray
in the neck. Now, all set.”

Merton Gill was about to leave this distressing scene but was held in
spite of himself by the voice of a newcomer.

“Hello, Jeff! Atta boy!”

He knew without turning that the Montague girl was again at his elbow.
He wondered if she could be following him.

“Hello, Flips! How’s the kid?” The producer had turned cordially to her.
“Just in time for the breakaway stuff. See how you like it.”

“What’s the big idea?”

“Swell reception at the Maison de Glue, with the waiters on roller
skates in honour of rich Uncle Rollo Glue. The head waiter starts the
fight by doing a fall with his tray. Tom gets the tray in the neck and
soaks the nearest man--banquet goes flooey. Then we go into the chase
stuff.”

“Which is Uncle Rollo?”

“That’s him at the table, with the herbaceous border under his chin.”

“Is he in the fight?”

“I think so. I was going to rehearse it once more to see if I could get
a better idea. Near as I can see now, everybody takes a crack at him.”

“Well, maybe.” Montague girl seemed to be considering. “Say, how about
this, Jeff? He’s awful hungry, see, and he’s begun to eat the celery and
everything he can reach, and when the mix-up starts he just eats on and
pays no attention to it. Never even looks up, see what I mean? The fight
spreads the whole length of the table; right around Rollo half-a-dozen
murders are going on and he just eats and pays no attention. And he’s
still eating when they’re all down and out, and don’t know a thing till
Charlie or someone crowns him with the punch-bowl. How about it? Ain’t
there a laugh in that?” Baird had listened respectfully and now patted
the girl on a shoulder.

“Good work, Kid! That’s a gag, all right. The little bean’s sparking
on all six, ain’t it? Drop around again. We need folks like you.
Now, listen, Rollo--you there, Rollo, come here and get this. Now,
listen--when the fight begins--”

Merton Gill turned decisively away. Such coarse foolery as this was
too remote from Beulah Baxter who, somewhere on that lot, was doing
something really, as her interview had put it, distinctive and worth
while.

He lingered only to hear the last of Baird’s instructions to Rollo and
the absurd guests, finding some sinister fascination in the man’s talk.
Baird then turned to the girl, who had also started off.

“Hang around, Flips. Why the rush?”

“Got to beat it over to Number Four.”

“Got anything good there?”

“Nothing that will get me any billing. Been waiting two hours now just
to look frenzied in a mob.”

“Well, say, come around and see me some time.”

“All right, Jeff. Of course I’m pretty busy. When I ain’t working I’ve
got to think about my art.”

“No, this is on the level. Listen, now, sister, I got another two reeler
to pull off after this one, then I’m goin’ to do something new, see? Got
a big idea. Probably something for you in it. Drop in t’ the office and
talk it over. Come in some time next week. ‘F I ain’t there I’ll be on
the lot some place. Don’t forget, now.”

Merton Gill, some distance from the Buckeye set, waited to note what
direction the Montague girl would take. She broke away presently,
glanced brazenly in his direction, and tripped lightly out the nearest
exit. He went swiftly to one at the far end of the building, and was
again in the exciting street. But the afternoon was drawing in and the
street had lost much of its vivacity. It would surely be too late for
any glimpse of his heroine. And his mind was already cluttered with
impressions from his day’s adventure. He went out through the office,
meaning to thank the casting director for the great favour she had shown
him, but she was gone. He hoped the headache had not driven her home.
If she were to suffer again he hoped it would be some morning. He would
have the Eezo wafers in one pocket and a menthol pencil in the other.
And she would again extend to him the freedom of that wonderful city.

In his room that night he tried to smooth out the jumble in his dazed
mind. Those people seemed to say so many things they considered funny
but that were not really funny to any one else. And moving-picture plays
were always waiting for something, with the bored actors lounging about
in idle apathy. Still in his ears sounded the drone of the sawmill and
the deep purr of the lights when they were put on. That was a funny
thing. When they wanted the lights on they said “Kick it,” and when they
wanted the lights off they said “Save it!” And why did a boy come out
after every scene and hold up a placard with numbers on it before the
camera? That placard had never shown in any picture he had seen. And
that queer Montague girl, always turning up when you thought you had
got rid of her. Still, she had thrown that knife pretty well. You had to
give her credit for that. But she couldn’t be much of an actress, even
if she had spoken of acting with Miss Baxter, of climbing down cables
with her and falling off cliffs. Probably she was boasting, because he
had never seen any one but Miss Baxter do these things in her pictures.
Probably she had some very minor part. Anyway, it was certain she
couldn’t be much of an actress because she had almost promised to act
in those terrible Buckeye comedies. And of course no one with any real
ambition or capacity could consider such a thing--descending to rough
horse-play for the amusement of the coarser element among screen
patrons.

But there was one impression from the day’s whirl that remained clear
and radiant: He had looked at the veritable face of his heroine. He
began his letter to Tessie Kearns. “At last I have seen Miss Baxter face
to face. There was no doubt about its being her. You would have known
her at once. And how beautiful she is! She was looking up and seemed
inspired, probably thinking about her part. She reminded me of that
beautiful picture of St. Cecelia playing on the piano....”




CHAPTER VI. UNDER THE GLASS TOPS


He approached the office of the Holden studios the following morning
with a new air of assurance. Formerly the mere approach had been
an adventure; the look through the gate, the quick glimpse of the
privileged ones who entered, the mingling, later, with the hopeful and
the near-hopeless ones who waited. But now his feeling was that he had,
somehow, become a part of that higher life beyond the gate. He might
linger outside at odd moments, but rightfully he belonged inside. His
novitiate had passed. He was one of those who threw knives or battled
at the sawmill with the persecuter of golden-haired innocence, or lured
beautiful women from their homes. He might be taken, he thought, for an
actor resting between pictures.

At the gate he suffered a momentary regret at an error of tactics
committed the evening before. Instead of leaving the lot by the office
he should have left by the gate. He should have strolled to this exit in
a leisurely manner and stopped, just inside the barrier, for a chat with
the watchman; a chat, beginning with the gift of a cigar, which should
have impressed his appearance upon that person. He should have remarked
casually that he had had a hard day on Stage Number Four, and must now
be off to a good night’s rest because of the equally hard day to-morrow.
Thus he could now have approached the gate with confidence and passed
freely in, with a few more pleasant words to the watchman who would have
no difficulty in recalling him.

But it was vain to wish this. For all the watchman knew this young man
had never been beyond the walls of the forbidden city, nor would he know
any reason why the besieger should not forever be kept outside. He would
fix that next time.

He approached the window of the casting office with mingled emotions. He
did not hope to find his friend again stricken with headache, but if it
chanced that she did suffer he hoped to be the first to learn of it. Was
he not fortified with the potent Eezo wafers, and a new menthol pencil,
even with an additional remedy of tablets that the druggist had
strongly recommended? It was, therefore, not with any actual, crude
disappointment that he learned of his friend’s perfect well-being. She
smiled pleasantly at him, the telephone receiver at one ear. “Nothing
to-day, dear,” she said and put down the instrument.

Yes, the headache was gone, vanquished by his remedies. She was fine,
thank you. No, the headaches didn’t come often. It might be weeks before
she had another attack. No, of course she couldn’t be certain of this.
And indeed she would be sure to let him know at the very first sign of
their recurrence.

He looked over his patient with real anxiety, a solicitude from the
bottom of which he was somehow unable to expel the last trace of a
lingering hope that would have dismayed the little woman--not hope,
exactly, but something almost like it which he would only translate to
himself as an earnest desire that he might be at hand when the dread
indisposition did attack her. Just now there could be no doubt that she
was free from pain.

He thanked her profusely for her courtesy of the day before. He had
seen wonderful things. He had learned a lot. And he wanted to ask her
something, assuring himself that he was alone in the waiting room. It
was this: did she happen to know--was Miss Beulah Baxter married?

The little woman sighed in a tired manner. “Baxter married? Let me see.”
 She tapped her teeth with the end of a pencil, frowning into her vast
knowledge of the people beyond the gate. “Now, let me think.” But this
appeared to be without result. “Oh, I really don’t know; I forget. I
suppose so. Why not? She often is.”

He would have asked more questions, but the telephone rang and she
listened a long time, contributing a “yes, yes,” of understanding at
brief intervals. This talk ended, she briskly demanded a number and
began to talk in her turn. Merton Gill saw that for the time he had
passed from her life. She was calling an agency. She wanted people for a
diplomatic reception in Washington. She must have a Bulgarian general,
a Serbian diplomat, two French colonels, and a Belgian captain, all in
uniform and all good types. She didn’t want just anybody, but types that
would stand out. Holden studios on Stage Number Two. Before noon, if
possible. All right, then. Another bell rang, almost before she had hung
up. “Hello, Grace. Nothing to-day, dear. They’re out on location, down
toward Venice, getting some desert stuff. Yes, I’ll let you know.”

Merton Gill had now to make way at the window for a youngish,
weary-looking woman who had once been prettier, who led an elaborately
dressed little girl of five. She lifted the child to the window. “Say
good-morning to the beautiful lady, Toots. Good-morning, Countess.
I’m sure you got something for Toots and me to-day because it’s our
birthday--both born on the same day--what do you think of that? Any
little thing will help us out a lot--how about it?”

He went outside before the end of this colloquy, but presently saw the
woman and her child emerge and walk on disconsolately toward the next
studio. Thus began another period of waiting from which much of the
glamour had gone. It was not so easy now to be excited by those glimpses
of the street beyond the gate. A certain haze had vanished, leaving all
too apparent the circumstance that others were working beyond the gate
while Merton Gill loitered outside, his talent, his training, ignored.
His early air of careless confidence had changed to one not at all
careless or confident. He was looking rather desperate and rather
unbelieving. And it daily grew easier to count his savings. He made
no mistakes now. His hoard no longer enjoyed the addition of fifteen
dollars a week. Only subtractions were made.

There came a morning when but one bill remained. It was a ten-dollar
bill, bearing at its centre a steel-engraved portrait of Andrew Jackson.
He studied it in consternation, though still permitting himself to
notice that Jackson would have made a good motion-picture type--the
long, narrow, severe face, the stiff uncomprising mane of gray hair;
probably they would have cast him for a feuding mountaineer, deadly
with his rifle, or perhaps as an inventor whose device was stolen on his
death-bed by his wicked Wall Street partner, thus leaving his motherless
daughter at the mercy of Society’s wolves.

But this was not the part that Jackson played in the gripping drama of
Merton Gill. His face merely stared from the last money brought from
Simsbury, Illinois, and the stare was not reassuring. It seemed to say
that there was no other money in all the world. Decidedly things must
take a turn. Merton Gill had a quite definite feeling that he had
already struggled and sacrificed enough to give the public something
better and finer. It was time the public realized this.

Still he waited, not even again reaching the heart of things, for his
friend beyond the window had suffered no relapse. He came to resent a
certain inconsequence in the woman. She might have had those headaches
oftener. He had been led to suppose that she would, and now she
continued to be weary but entirely well.

More waiting and the ten-dollar bill went for a five and some silver. He
was illogically not sorry to be rid of Andrew Jackson, who had looked
so tragically skeptical. The five-dollar bill was much more cheerful. It
bore the portrait of Benjamin Harrison, a smooth, cheerful face adorned
with whiskers that radiated success. They were little short of smug
with success. He would almost rather have had Benjamin Harrison on five
dollars than the grim-faced Jackson on ten. Still, facts were facts. You
couldn’t wait as long on five dollars as you could on ten.

Then on the afternoon of a day that promised to end as other days
had ended, a wave of animation swept through the waiting room and the
casting office. “Swell cabaret stuff” was the phrase that brought the
applicants to a lively swarm about the little window. Evening clothes,
glad wraps, cigarette cases, vanity-boxes--the Victor people doing
The Blight of Broadway with Muriel Mercer--Stage Number Four at 8:30
to-morrow morning. There seemed no limit to the people desired. Merton
Gill joined the throng about the window. Engagements were rapidly made,
both through the window and over the telephone that was now ringing
those people who had so long been told that there was nothing to-day.
He did not push ahead of the women as some of the other men did. He even
stood out of the line for the Montague girl who had suddenly appeared
and who from the rear had been exclaiming: “Women and children first!”

“Thanks, old dear,” she acknowledged the courtesy and beamed through the
window. “Hullo, Countess!” The woman nodded briefly. “All right, Flips;
I was just going to telephone you. Henshaw wants you for some baby-vamp
stuff in the cabaret scene and in the gambling hell. Better wear that
salmon-pink chiffon and the yellow curls. Eight-thirty, Stage Four.
Goo’-by.”

“Thanks, Countess! Me for the jumping tintypes at the hour named. I’m
glad enough to be doing even third business. How about Ma?”

“Sure! Tell her grand-dame stuff, chaperone or something, the gray
georgette and all her pearls and the cigarette case.”

“I’ll tell her. She’ll be glad there’s something doing once more on the
perpendicular stage. Goo’-by.”

She stepped aside with “You’re next, brother!” Merton Gill acknowledged
this with a haughty inclination of the head. He must not encourage this
hoyden. He glanced expectantly through the little window. His friend
held a telephone receiver at her ear. She smiled wearily. “All right,
son. You got evening clothes, haven’t you? Of course, I remember now.
Stage Four at 8:30. Goo’-by.”

“I want to thank you for this opportunity--” he began, but was pushed
aside by an athletic young woman who spoke from under a broad hat.
“Hullo, dearie! How about me and Ella?”

“Hullo, Maizie. All right. Stage Four, at 8:30, in your swellest evening
stuff.”

At the door the Montague girl called to an approaching group who seemed
to have heard by wireless or occult means the report of new activity in
the casting office. “Hurry, you troupers. You can eat to-morrow night,
maybe!” They hurried. She turned to Merton Gill. “Seems like old times,”
 she observed.

“Does it?” he replied coldly. Would this chit never understand that he
disapproved of her trifling ways?

He went on, rejoicing that he had not been compelled to part, even
temporarily, with a first-class full-dress suit, hitherto worn only in
the privacy of Lowell Hardy’s studio. It would have been awkward, he
thought, if the demand for it had been much longer delayed. He would
surely have let that go before sacrificing his Buck Benson outfit. He
had traversed the eucalyptus avenue in this ecstasy, and was on a busier
thoroughfare. Before a motion-picture theatre he paused to study the
billing of Muriel Mercer in Hearts Aflame. The beauteous girl, in
an alarming gown, was at the mercy of a fiend in evening dress whose
hellish purpose was all too plainly read in his fevered eyes. The girl
writhed in his grasp. Doubtless he was demanding her hand in marriage.
It was a tense bit. And to-morrow he would act with this petted idol of
the screen. And under the direction of that Mr. Henshaw who seemed to
take screen art with proper seriousness. He wondered if by any chance
Mr. Henshaw would call upon him to do a quadruple transition, hate,
fear, love, despair. He practised a few transitions as he went on to
press his evening clothes in the Patterson kitchen, and to dream, that
night, that he rode his good old pal, Pinto, into the gilded cabaret to
carry off Muriel Mercer, Broadway’s pampered society pet, to the clean
life out there in the open spaces where men are men.

At eight the following morning he was made up in a large dressing room
by a grumbling extra who said that it was a dog’s life plastering grease
paint over the maps of dubs. He was presently on Stage Four in the
prescribed evening regalia for gentlemen. He found the cabaret set,
a gilded haunt of pleasure with small tables set about an oblong of
dancing floor. Back of these on three sides were raised platforms with
other tables, and above these discreet boxes, half masked by drapery,
for the seclusion of more retiring merry-makers. The scene was deserted
as yet, but presently he was joined by another early comer, a beautiful
young woman of Spanish type with a thin face and eager, dark eyes. Her
gown was glistening black set low about her polished shoulders, and she
carried a red rose. So exotic did she appear he was surprised when she
addressed him in the purest English.

“Say, listen here, old timer! Let’s pick a good table right on the edge
before the mob scene starts. Lemme see--” She glanced up and down the
rows of tables. “The cam’ras’ll be back there, so we can set a little
closer, but not too close, or we’ll be moved over. How ‘bout this here?
Let’s try it.” She sat, motioning him to the other chair. Even so early
in his picture career did he detect that in facing this girl his back
would be to the camera. He hitched his chair about.

“That’s right,” said the girl, “I wasn’t meaning to hog it. Say, we was
just in time, wasn’t we?”

Ladies and gentlemen in evening dress were already entering. They looked
inquiringly about and chose tables. Those next to the dancing space
were quickly filled. Many of the ladies permitted costly wraps of fur or
brocade to spill across the backs of their chairs. Many of the gentlemen
lighted cigarettes from gleaming metal cases. There was a lively
interchange of talk.

“We better light up, too,” said the dark girl. Merton Gill had neglected
cigarettes and confessed this with some embarrassment. The girl
presented an open case of gold attached to a chain pendent from her
girdle. They both smoked. On their table were small plates, two wine
glasses half filled with a pale liquid, and small coffee-cups. Spirals
of smoke ascended over a finished repast. Of course if the part called
for cigarettes you must smoke whether you had quit or not.

The places back of the prized first row were now filling up with the
later comers. One of these, a masterful-looking man of middle
age--he would surely be a wealthy club-man accustomed to command
tables--regarded the filled row around the dancing space with frank
irritation, and paused significantly at Merton’s side. He seemed
about to voice a demand, but the young actor glanced slowly up at him,
achieving a superb transition--surprise, annoyance, and, as the invader
turned quickly away, pitying contempt.

“Atta boy!” said his companion, who was, with the aid of a tiny
gold-backed mirror suspended with the cigarette case, heightening the
crimson of her full lips.

Two cameras were now in view, and men were sighting through them. Merton
saw Henshaw, plump but worried looking, scan the scene from the rear. He
gave hurried direction to an assistant who came down the line of tables
with a running glance at their occupants. He made changes. A couple here
and a couple there would be moved from the first row and other couples
would come to take their places. Under the eyes of this assistant the
Spanish girl had become coquettish. With veiled glances, with flashing
smiles from the red lips, with a small gloved hand upon Merton Gill’s
sleeve, she allured him. The assistant paused before them. The Spanish
girl continued to allure. Merton Gill stared moodily at the half-empty
wine glass, then exhaled smoke as he glanced up at his companion in
profound ennui. If it was The Blight of Broadway probably they would
want him to look bored.

“You two stay where you are,” said the assistant, and passed on.

“Good work,” said the girl. “I knew you was a type the minute I made
you.”

Red-coated musicians entered an orchestra loft far down the set. The
voice of Henshaw came through a megaphone: “Everybody that’s near
the floor fox-trot.” In a moment the space was thronged with dancers.
Another voice called “Kick it!” and a glare of light came on.

“You an’ me both!” said the Spanish girl, rising.

Merton Gill remained seated. “Can’t,” he said. “Sprained ankle.” How was
he to tell her that there had been no chance to learn this dance back
in Simsbury, Illinois, where such things were frowned upon by pulpit
and press? The girl resumed her seat, at first with annoyance, then
brightened. “All right at that,” she said. “I bet we get more footage
this way.” She again became coquettish, luring with her wiles one who
remained sunk in ennui.

A whistle blew, a voice called “Save it!” and the lights jarred off.
Henshaw came trippingly down the line. “You people didn’t dance. What’s
the matter?” Merton Gill glanced up, doing a double transition, from
dignified surprise to smiling chagrin. “Sprained ankle,” he said, and
fell into the bored look that had served him with the assistant. He
exhaled smoke and raised his tired eyes to the still luring Spanish
girl. Weariness of the world and women was in his look. Henshaw scanned
him closely.

“All right, stay there--keep just that way--it’s what I want.” He
continued down the line, which had become hushed. “Now, people. I
want some flashes along here, between dances--see what I mean? You’re
talking, but you’re bored with it all. The hollowness of this night
life is getting you; not all of you--most of you girls can keep on
smiling--but The Blight of Broadway shows on many. You’re beginning to
wonder if this is all life has to offer--see what I mean?” He continued
down the line.

From the table back of Merton Gill came a voice in speech to the
retreating back of Henshaw: “All right, old top, but it’ll take a good
lens to catch any blight on this bunch--most of ‘em haven’t worked a
lick in six weeks, and they’re tickled pink.” He knew without turning
that this was the Montague girl trying to be funny at the expense
of Henshaw who was safely beyond hearing. He thought she would be a
disturbing element in the scene, but in this he was wrong, for he
bent upon the wine glass a look more than ever fraught with jaded
world-weariness. The babble of Broadway was resumed as Henshaw went back
to the cameras.

Presently a camera was pushed forward. Merton Gill hardly dared look up,
but he knew it was halted at no great distance from him. “Now, here’s
rather a good little bit,” Henshaw was saying. “You, there, the girl in
black, go on--tease him the way you were, and he’s to give you that same
look. Got that cigarette going? All ready. Lights! Camera!” Merton
was achieving his first close-up. Under the hum of the lights he was
thinking that he had been a fool not to learn dancing, no matter how the
Reverend Otto Carmichael denounced it as a survival from the barbaric
Congo. He was also thinking that the Montague girl ought to be kept away
from people who were trying to do really creative things, and he was
bitterly regretting that he had no silver cigarette case. The gloom of
his young face was honest gloom. He was aware that his companion leaned
vivaciously toward him with gay chatter and gestures. Very slowly he
inhaled from a cigarette that was already distasteful--adding no little
to the desired effect--and very slowly he exhaled as he raised to hers
the bored eyes of a soul quite disillusioned. Here, indeed, was the
blight of Broadway.

“All right, first rate!” called Henshaw. “Now get this bunch down here.”
 The camera was pushed on.

“Gee, that was luck!” said the girl. “Of course it’ll be cut to a flash,
but I bet we stand out, at that.” She was excited now, no longer needing
to act.

From the table back of Merton came the voice of the Montague girl: “Yes,
one must suffer for one’s art. Here I got to be a baby-vamp when I’d
rather be simple little Madelon, beloved by all in the village.”

He restrained an impulse to look around at her. She was not serious and
should not be encouraged. Farther down the set Henshaw was beseeching
a table of six revellers to give him a little hollow gayety. “You’re
simply forcing yourselves to have a good time,” he was saying; “remember
that. Your hearts aren’t in it. You know this night life is a mockery.
Still, you’re playing the game. Now, two of you raise your glasses to
drink. You at the end stand up and hold your glass aloft. The girl next
to you there, stand up by him and raise your face to his--turn sideways
more. That’s it. Put your hand up to his shoulder. You’re slightly
lit, you know, and you’re inviting him to kiss you over his glass. You
others, you’re drinking gay enough, but see if you can get over that
it’s only half-hearted. You at the other end there--you’re staring at
your wine glass, then you look slowly up at your partner but without any
life. You’re feeling the blight, see? A chap down the line here just did
it perfectly. All ready, now! Lights! Camera! You blonde girl, stand
up, face raised to him, hand up to his shoulder. You others, drinking,
laughing. You at the end, look up slowly at the girl, look away--about
there--bored, weary of it all--cut! All right. Not so bad. Now this next
bunch, Paul.”

Merton Gill was beginning to loathe cigarettes. He wondered if Mr.
Henshaw would mind if he didn’t smoke so much, except, of course, in the
close-ups. His throat was dry and rough, his voice husky. His companion
had evidently played more smoking parts and seemed not to mind it.

Henshaw was now opposite them across the dancing floor, warning his
people to be gay but not too gay. The glamour of this night life must be
a little dulled.

“Now, Paul, get about three medium shots along here. There’s a good
table--get that bunch. And not quite so solemn, people; don’t overdo it.
You think you’re having a good time, even if it does turn to ashes in
your mouth--now, ready; lights! Camera!”

“I like Western stuff better,” confided Merton to his companion. She
considered this, though retaining her arch manner. “Well, I don’t know.
I done a Carmencita part in a dance-hall scene last month over to the
Bigart, and right in the mi’st of the fight I get a glass of somethin’
all over my gown that practically rooned it. I guess I rather do this
refined cabaret stuff--at least you ain’t so li’ble to roon a gown.
Still and all, after you been warmin’ the extra bench for a month one
can’t be choosy. Say, there’s the princ’ples comin’ on the set.”

He looked around. There, indeed, was the beautiful Muriel Mercer,
radiant in an evening frock of silver. At the moment she was putting a
few last touches to her perfect face from a make-up box held by a maid.
Standing with her was another young woman, not nearly so beautiful, and
three men. Henshaw was instructing these. Presently he called through
his megaphone: “You people are excited by the entrance of the famous
Vera Vanderpool and her friends. You stop drinking, break off your talk,
stare at her--see what I mean?--she makes a sensation. Music, lights,
camera!”

Down the set, escorted by a deferential head-waiter, came Muriel Mercer
on the arm of a middle-aged man who was elaborately garnished but whose
thin dyed mustaches, partially bald head, and heavy eyes, proclaimed him
to Merton Gill as one who meant the girl no good. They were followed
by the girl who was not so beautiful and the other two men. These were
young chaps of pleasing exterior who made the progress laughingly. The
five were seated at a table next the dancing space at the far end. They
chatted gayly as the older man ordered importantly from the head-waiter.
Muriel Mercer tapped one of the younger men with her plumed fan and they
danced. Three other selected couples danced at the same time, though
taking care not to come between the star and the grinding camera.
The older man leered at the star and nervously lighted a gold-tipped
cigarette which he immediately discarded after one savage bite at it.
It could be seen that Vera Vanderpool was the gayest of all that gay
throng. Upon her as yet had come no blight of Broadway, though she
shrank perceptibly when the partially bald one laid his hand on her
slender wrist as she resumed her seat. Food and wine were brought. Vera
Vanderpool drank, with a pretty flourish of her glass.

Now the two cameras were moved forward for close-ups. The older man was
caught leering at Vera. It would surely be seen that he was not one to
trust. Vera was caught with the mad light of pleasure in her beautiful
eyes. Henshaw was now speaking in low tones to the group, and presently
Vera Vanderpoo

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