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 eucalyptuslined 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 stoutappearing 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 Ms 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 socalled 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