M ERTON 
 OF THE 
 
 OVIES 
 
 arri| Leon Wilson 
 
University of California Berkeley 
 
 Gift of 
 
 TRAVIS BOGARD 
 
 
MRS.VERAS.HORNSBX 
 158 East 6th St. , 
 
 PITTSBURG, CALIFj 
 
MERTON OF 
 THE MOVIES 
 
"Now, curse you, viper that you are 
 
MERTON OF 
 THE MOVIES 
 
 BY 
 
 HARRY LEON WILSON 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 RUGGLES OF RED GAP, 
 THE SPENDERS, ETC. 
 
 ILLUSTRATED WITH SCENE 
 FROM THE PLAY 
 
 GROSSET& DUNLAP 
 
 PUBLISHERS NEW YORK 
 
 Made in the United State* of America 
 
All dramatic rights to "Merton of the Movies" are controlled by 
 George C, Tyler and Hugh Ford, New Amsterdam Theatre Building, 
 New York City. It may not be acted either by professional or 
 amateur companies without permission and payment of royalties 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY 
 DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 COPTBIQHT, IQ22, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY IN THB 
 UNITED STATES AND GBEAT BRITAIN 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES 
 
 AT 
 THE COUNTBY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y. 
 
TO 
 GEORGE ADE 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. DIRTY WORK AT THE BORDER 1 
 
 II. THAT NIGHT THE APARTMENTS OP CLIF- 
 FORD ARMYTAGE 12 
 
 III. WESTERN STUFF 30 
 
 IV. THE WATCHER AT THE GATE . . . . 56 
 V. A BREACH IN THE CITY WALLS .... 71 
 
 VI. UNDER THE GLASS TOPS 92 
 
 VII. "NOTHING TO-DAY, DEAR!" 120 
 
 VIII. CLIFFORD ARMYTAGE, THE OUTLAW . . . 141 
 
 IX. MORE WAYS THAN ONE 152 
 
 X. OF SHATTERED ILLUSIONS 164 
 
 XI. THE MONTAGUE GIRL INTERVENES . . . 177 
 
 XII. ALIAS HAROLD PARMALEE 200 
 
 XIII. GENIUS COMES INTO ITS OWN .... 219 
 
 XIV. OUT THERE WHERE MEN ARE MEN ... 233 
 XV. A NEW TRAIL 251 
 
 XVI. OF SARAH NEVADA MONTAGUE .... 267 
 
 XVII. Miss MONTAGUE USES HER OWN FACE - . 282 
 
 XVIII. "FIVE REELS 500 LAUGHS" .... 300 
 
 XIX. THE TRAGIC COMEDIAN . . . . . . 315 
 
 XX. ONWARD AND UPWARD 327 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 " 'Now, curse you, viper that you are . Frontispiece 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 " 'Oh, God, make me a good movie actor! " 3 . . 26 
 "He was about to follow her" 90 
 
 " . . . in which a certain young actor resented 
 
 the ungentlemanly words" 170 
 
 '"Would three hundred and fifty a week interest 
 
 you?'" 314 
 
 " 'It's all right, everything's all right'" 330 
 
MERTON OF 
 THE MOVIES 
 
MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 / 
 
 DIRTY WORK AT THE BORDER 
 
 A 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 con- 
 trived for better choice. Still the puzzle persists, all be- 
 cause 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 out- 
 law 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 halfbreed? 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 
 
 1 
 
2 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 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 re- 
 plied, "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? " 
 
DIRTY WORK AT THE BORDER 3 
 
 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 inten- 
 tions. 
 
 "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 with- 
 draw the small silver-mounted revolver without which she 
 never left the ranch. But Snake le Vasquez, with a mut- 
 tered 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?" 
 
 Siiake 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, free- 
 ing 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 
 
4 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 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 power- 
 ful 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 hi human form would murder you!" 
 
 But Buck Benson's cool eye had seen the treachery in 
 
DIRTY WORK AT THE BORDER 5 
 
 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 
 
6 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 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 be- 
 longs, 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 great- 
 est 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, ex- 
 citement carried to a sensational finish by the genius of 
 that sterling star of the shadowed world, Clifford Army- 
 tage 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 men- 
 tioned 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." 
 
DIRTY WORK AT THE BORDER 7 
 
 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. Leifingwefl. Merton 
 Gill, behind the opposite counter, waited upon a little girl 
 sent for two and a quarter yards of stuff to match the sam- 
 ple 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 
 
8 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 things. Some day he'd say them right out, leaving his 
 victim not only in the utmost confusion but in black de- 
 spair 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 dum- 
 mies 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, PT!" 
 
 The circumstance that he also had a cigar from the same 
 box, hidden not so well as Amos thought, may have subdued 
 his resell client. 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 reluc- 
 tantly 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 
 
DIRTY WORK AT THE BORDEIl 9 
 
 gaze of Amos, who was locking the doors of his establish- 
 ment. 
 
 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 lOc 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 vener- 
 able brow. 
 
 Ascertaining that the barnyard was vacant, Merton 
 immediately became attentive to his charge. Throughout 
 
10 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 the late drive his attitude had been one of mild but con- 
 temptuous 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 speak- 
 er'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, pop- 
 ular 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 gentle- 
 man 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. 
 
DIRTY WORK AT THE BORDER 11 
 
 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 H 
 
 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 mor- 
 row, or Mrs. Gashwiler's version of a regrettable incident oc* 
 curring at that afternoon's meeting of the Entre Nous Five 
 Hundred Club, in which the score had been juggled ad- 
 versely 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, exces- 
 sively 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 
 
 12 
 
THE APARTMENTS OF CLIFFORD ARMYTAGE 13 
 
 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 fan- 
 tastic 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 'sail 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 Gid- 
 dings House. Chairs in front of this hostelry were now 
 vacant of loafers, and a clatter of dishes came through the 
 
14 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 open windows of the dining room, where supper was on. 
 Farther down the street Selby Brothers, Cigars and Con* 
 fectionery, 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 grind- 
 ing 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 in- 
 curious 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 
 
THE APARTMENTS OF CLIFFORD ARMYTAGE 15 
 
 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, dis- 
 joined 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 unpleasant- 
 ness with Gashwiler, who had thought him a crazy fool, 
 with his revolver, his fiercely muttered words, and his hold- 
 ing 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 
 
16 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 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 tune 
 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. 
 
THE APARTMENTS OF CLIFFORD ARMYTAGE 17 
 
 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 ex- 
 pensive 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 Plioto 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 inter- 
 view 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 store- 
 keeper without a future. A clod! 
 
 Merton, after waiting in line, obtained his mail, consisting 
 of three magazines Photo Land, Silver Screenings, and 
 
18 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 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 affec- 
 
THE APARTMENTS OF CLIFFORD ARMYTAGE 19 
 
 tation 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 im- 
 mediate 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," sug- 
 gested the screen-wise Tessie Kearns. 
 
 "Not Beulah Baxter. Didn't I see her personal appear- 
 ance that time I went to Peoria last spring on purpose to see 
 
20 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 it? Didn't she talk about the risks she took 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. Mer- 
 ton 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 Bles- 
 singham, 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 
 
THE APARTMENTS OF CLIFFORD ARMYTAGE 21 
 
 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." 
 
22 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 " 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 Hor- 
 tense. 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 villain- 
 ous 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 projec- 
 tion 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 inspira- 
 
THE APARTMENTS OF CLIFFORD ARMYTAGE 23 
 
 tion 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, care- 
 less 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 un- 
 pictured; 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 tri- 
 umphs. 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 danger- 
 ous moments, but revealing certain quieter aspects of her 
 wondrous life. In her kitchen, apron clad, she stirred some- 
 thing. 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 ac- 
 companied 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 
 
24 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 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 person- 
 ality. Merton Gill received these assurances without sur- 
 prise. 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 grind- 
 ing stress. Then I turn to my books I'm wild about his- 
 tory. 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 
 
THE APARTMENTS OF CLIFFORD ARMYTAGE 25 
 
 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 PJioto 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 Gash- 
 wiler 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 
 
26 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 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 breath- 
 less 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 
 
THE APARTMENTS OF CLIFFORD ARMYTAGE 27 
 
 quiet dignity of their work, their earnest efforts to give the 
 public something better and finer. They wished the count- 
 less readers of the interviews to comprehend that their tri- 
 umphs 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 exact- 
 ing 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 trem- 
 bling into the presence of Harold Parmalee, to be instantly 
 put at her ease by the young artist's simple, unaffected man- 
 ner. 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 
 
28 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 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 pro- 
 file, 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. Undoubt- 
 edly 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 hi 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-Pro ver, 
 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 
 
"Oh, God, make me a good movie actor! 
 
THE APARTMENTS OF CLIFFORD ARMYTAGE 29 
 
 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 tor- 
 turing anxiety. Suppose they had told him that he wouldn't 
 do? And he had studied the lessons with unswerving deter- 
 mination. 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-moiTOw. 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 dum- 
 mies 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 Gash- 
 wiler every day getting harder to bear ! His resolve stiffened. 
 He would not wait much longer only until the savings hid- 
 den 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 Mer- 
 ton embellishing the bulletin board in front with legends set- 
 ting forth especial bargains of the day to be had within. 
 Chalk in hand, he had neatly written, "See our new importa- 
 tion 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 de- 
 manded 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 
 
 30 
 
WESTERN STUFF 31 
 
 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 count- 
 ers 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 photog- 
 rapher, came in to leave an order for groceries. Lowell wore 
 a soft hat with rakish brim, and affected low collars and flow- 
 ing 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 ser- 
 vices 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 
 
32 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 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 cus- 
 tomer 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 terri- 
 ble 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 faKAlaskan wilds she eluded the fiends and drove swiftly 
 over the frozen wastes with their only dog team. 
 
WESTERN STUFF 33 
 
 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 das- 
 tardly 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 
 
34 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 of course it's a big, vital theme, all about a heartless wife 
 with her mind wholly on society and bridge clubs and danc- 
 ing 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, conies 
 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 be- 
 come 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 
 
WESTERN STUFF 35 
 
 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 digni- 
 fied. 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.C 
 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 that 
 had become crumpled, 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. 
 
36 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 He made another count, hastily, but taking greater care t 
 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 botydage; 
 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, 
 
WESTERN STUFF 37 
 
 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 de- 
 grading 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 clergy- 
 man. 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. Per- 
 haps 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 tilings 
 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. Gash- 
 wiler '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 enlarge- 
 ment of his employer's face entitled Photographic Study 
 
38 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 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 
 
WESTERN STUFF 39 
 
 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 an- 
 other 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 
 
40 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 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. 
 
WESTERN STUFF 41 
 
 "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 to- 
 gether, 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, butGusGiddings, 
 the Simsbury outlaw, had promised to teach him. Anyway, 
 
42 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 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/* 
 
 44 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 along- 
 side 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 deter- 
 mined 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 
 
WESTERN STUFF 43 
 
 i 
 
 experience was not only without precedent but rather un- 
 pleasant. 
 
 "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 turn- 
 ing 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." 
 
 "Mpve 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 pom- 
 mel, 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. 
 
44 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 " 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 get- 
 ting 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 ex- 
 treme. 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 
 
WESTERN STUFF 45 
 
 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 desper- 
 ate eyes of his pet which he did not wholly like. Perhaps 
 it would be better not to ride him any more to-day. Per- 
 haps 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, counter- 
 feiting 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 ges- 
 ture 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." 
 
46 MERTOX OF THE MOVIES 
 
 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 en- 
 treaties 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 de- 
 livery wagon she lightly scored the exposed ribs of Dexter, 
 tormenting him with devilish cunning. Dexter's hide shut- 
 tled 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 
 
WESTERN STUFF 47 
 
 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 destruc- 
 tion, 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 noth- 
 ing 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 behaviour. 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 
 
48 MERTON OP THE MOVIES 
 
 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 barn- 
 yard, 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 fol- 
 lowed 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. 
 
WESTERN STUFF 49 
 
 "Merlon's in a runaway, Merlon's in a runaway, Merlon's 
 in a runaway ! " Ihey shrieked, bul wilh none of the sympathy 
 lhal would have become Ihem. They appeared lo rejoice 
 in Merlon's plighl. "Merlon's in a runaway," Ihey joy- 
 ously chanled. 
 
 Suddenly Ihey ceased, frozen wilh a new and splendid 
 wonder, for Iheir descriplive phrase was now inexact. Mer- 
 lon was no longer in a runaway. Bul only for a moment 
 did Ihey hesilale before laking up Ihe new chanl. 
 
 "Looky, looky. He's Ihrowed Merlon righl off inlo Ihe 
 dirl. He's Ihrowed Merlon righl off inlo Ihe dirl. Oh, 
 looky Merlon Gill righl down ihere in Ihe dirl!" 
 
 Again Ihey had become exacl. Merlon was righl down 
 there in Ihe dirl, and a franlic, flashing-heeled Dexler was 
 vanishing up Ihe alley al Ihe head of a cloud of dusl. The 
 friendly Ransom lols leaped from Ihe fence lo Ihe alley, 
 forgelling on her bed of pain Ihe molher who supposed 
 them to be engrossed wilh piclure books in Ihe library. 
 Wilh one accord Ihey ran loward Ihe proslrale horseman, 
 Calvin ahead and Elsie a close second, holding Ihe hand 
 of lillle Woodrow. 
 
 They were presenlly able lo observe lhal Ihe fleeing 
 Dexler had narrowly escaped running down a molor car 
 inopportunely lurning al lhal momenl inlo Ihe alley. The 
 gallanl animal swerved in lime, leaving Ihe car's driver and 
 his wife aghasl al their slight margin of safely. Dexler 
 vanished lo Ihe righl up shaded Spruce Slreel on a Sabbalh 
 evening as Ihe firsl call lo evening worship pealed from a 
 neighbouring church lower. 
 
 His lale rider had erecled himself and was bealing dust 
 from Ihe new chaps and Ihe fronl of Ihe new shirl. He 
 picked up Ihe ideal hal and dusled lhal. Undernealh all 
 Ihe flurry of Ihis advenlure he was slill Ihe arlisl. He had 
 been sel afool in Ihe deserl by a Ireacherous horse; he musl 
 find a waler hole or perish wilh Ihirsl. He replaced the hat, 
 and it was then he observed Ihe molor car bearing down 
 the alley upon him. 
 
50 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 "My good gosh!" he muttered. 
 
 The Gashwilers had returned a full two hours before their 
 accustomed time. The car halted beside him and his em- 
 ployer 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 him- 
 self 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 lemme 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. 
 
WESTERN STUFF 51 
 
 "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 
 
52 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 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 reas- 
 sure them that he had, indeed, been thrown off right into the 
 dirt. 
 
 Now he began to meet or to 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 follow-- 
 ing 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. 
 
WESTERN STUFF 53 
 
 "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 undoubt- 
 edly 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 good- 
 night 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. 
 
54 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 "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 re- 
 hearsed 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 injus- 
 tices. 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." 
 
WESTERN STUFF 55 
 
 And Mr. Gashwiler had replied, "Well, now, that is a sur- 
 prise. 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 com- 
 passion 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 foaling. 
 
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 sur- 
 face 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 stoutish 
 man of middle age, not neatly dressed, and of forbidding 
 aspect. His face is ruthless, with a very knowing cynicism. 
 
 56 
 
THE WATCHER AT THE GATE 57 
 
 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 clan- 
 destine 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 ab- 
 sorbed 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 en- 
 gage 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. 
 
58 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 It is thus we first observe that rising young screen actor, 
 Clifford Armytage, beginning the tenth day of his deter- 
 mined effort to become much more closely identified with 
 screen activities than hitherto. Ten days of waiting out- 
 side 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 plat- 
 form, 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. 
 
THE WATCHER AT THE GATE 59 
 
 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 conspicu- 
 ously 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 desper- 
 ate 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 ap- 
 plicants, whether they stared casually, incuriously, or 
 whether they seemed to appraise him disparagingly, as if 
 
60 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 telling him frankly that for him there would never be any- 
 thing 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 no- 
 table 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 experi- 
 ence 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 lieu- 
 tenant'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 
 
THE WATCHER AT THE GATE 61 
 
 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 ad- 
 dress, telephone number oh, yes, tell me where I can find 
 you during the day." 
 
 "Right out here," he replied firmly. "I'm going to 
 
62 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 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 sympa- 
 thetic 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 Bug- 
 halter 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 these 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 
 
THE WATCHER AT THE GATE 63 
 
 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 Sims- 
 bury; 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. 
 
64 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 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 sand- 
 wiches 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 differ- 
 ent 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 kit- 
 chen 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 
 
THE WATCHER AT THE GATE 65 
 
 again she urged him not to forget the address of Giggen- 
 holder 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 pos- 
 sibly 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 re- 
 garded 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. 
 
66 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 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 for- 
 gotten. There might be two days' work. The four for- 
 tunate 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 al- 
 ways 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 unat- 
 tractive 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 be- 
 comingly. 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. 
 
THE WATCHER AT THE GATE 67 
 
 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 per- 
 plexity 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, 
 
68 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 "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 j T ears," 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 him- 
 self 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 dis- 
 couraging." 
 
 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? 
 
THE WATCHER AT THE GATE 69 
 
 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 restor- 
 ers. 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 yes' 
 terday 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, some- 
 
,70 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 times 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 direc- 
 tor, "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. Now- 
 adays one must descend to mere physical means if one is to 
 be thought worthy." 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 A BREACH IN THE CITY WALLS 
 
 DTJEING 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 sym- 
 pathy. 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 head- 
 ache 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 
 
 71 
 
72 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 through the door and in the dimly lit little office behind that 
 secretive partition. "And here's something else," he con- 
 tinued. "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 
 
A BREACH IN THE CITY WALLS 73 
 
 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 con- 
 trived a pace not too swift but business-like enough to con- 
 vey the impression that he was rightfully walking this for- 
 bidden 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, ban- 
 dits, 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 Mexi- 
 can in a silver-corded hat a veritable Snake le 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 
 
74 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 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 whoie. And be- 
 yond this he came to a many-coloured little street out of 
 Bagdad, overhung with gay balconies, vivacious with spin- 
 dled 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 preten- 
 tiously 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 
 
A BREACH IN THE CITY WALLS 75 
 
 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 dis- 
 tant 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 mega- 
 phoned 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 pres- 
 ence than the others; he was handsome and his accoutre- 
 ments 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 re- 
 garded 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. 
 
76 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 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 hand- 
 somest 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 in- 
 sulted 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 hand- 
 some 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 
 
A BREACH IN THE CITY WALLS 77 
 
 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 curi- 
 osity 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 ingeni- 
 ously 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 min- 
 ute 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 
 
78 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 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. Con- 
 stantly 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 
 
A BREACH IN THE CITY WALLS 79 
 
 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 ex- 
 plaining 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 Kenapton 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 hi 
 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 hah*. She fell at once to her food. The men 
 at the next table glanced at her, the director without cordial- 
 ity; but the other man smiled upon her cheerfully. 
 
 "Hello, Flips ! How's the girl? " 
 
 " Every thing'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." 
 
80 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 "Glad to hear it. How's Pa Montague?" 
 
 "Pa's in bad. 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 com- 
 panion 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 
 <?ourse 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, 
 
A BREACH IN THE CITY WALLS 81 
 
 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 atten- 
 tion. "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. Hen- 
 shaw 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 laugh- 
 ter, 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 
 
82 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 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 be- 
 came 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 per- 
 fectly 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 
 
A BREACH IN THE CITY WALLS 83 
 
 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 mean- 
 ing to be haughty, but he was embarrassed and also fearful 
 that Beulah Baxter would be lost. "Exit limping," mur- 
 mured 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 for- 
 ward 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 
 
84 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 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 say- 
 ing 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 in- 
 terests 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 absorp- 
 tion in Wall Street had driven his wife to another. He would 
 
A BREACH IN THE CITY WALLS 85 
 
 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 to- 
 gether 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 
 
86 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 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 
 
A BREACH IN THE CITY WALLS 87 
 
 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-dozeri 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 carica- 
 tures 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 stum- 
 bling 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 
 
88 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 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 w r as about to leave this distressing scene 
 but was held in spite of himself by the voice of a newcomer. 
 
 "Hello, Jeff! Attaboy!" 
 
 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, every- 
 body takes a crack at him." 
 
 "Well, maybe." The Montague girl seemed to be con- 
 sidering. "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 
 
A BREACH IN THE CITY WALLS 89 
 
 all down and out, and don't know a thing till Charlie or some- 
 one 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, Hollo, 
 come here and get this. Now, listen when the fight be- 
 gins 
 
 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 Hollo and the absurd guests, finding some sinister fascina- 
 tion 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 some- 
 thing 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 ex- 
 citing street. But the afternoon was drawing in and the 
 
90 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 street had lost much of its vivacity. It would surely be too 
 late for any glimpse of his heroine. And his mind was al- 
 ready 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 climb- 
 ing 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 amuse- 
 ment of the coarser element among screen patrons. 
 
 But there was one impression from the day's whirl that 
 
A BREACH IN THE CITY WALLS 91 
 
 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 adven- 
 ture; 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 bat- 
 tled at the sawmill with the persecuter of golden-haired in- 
 nocence, 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 watch- 
 man; 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 
 
 92 
 
"He was about to follow her 
 
UNDER THE GLASS TOPS 93 
 
 this young man had never been beyond the walls of the for- 
 bidden 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 peDciL frowning into her vast knowledge of the people 
 
94 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 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 beauti- 
 ful 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 pres- 
 ently 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, leav- 
 ing all too apparent the circumstance that others were work- 
 ing beyond the gate while Merton Gill loitered outside, 
 his talent, his training, ignored. His early air of careless 
 ronfidence had changed to one not at all caj *less or confident. 
 
UNDER THE GLASS TOPS 95 
 
 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; prob- 
 ably 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 
 
06 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 Benjamin Harrison on five dollars than the grim-faced Jack- 
 son 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 busi- 
 ness. How about Ma?" 
 
 "Sure! Tell her grand-dame stuff, chaperone or some- 
 thing, 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 expect- 
 
UNDER THE GLASS TOPS* 97 
 
 antly through the little window. His friend held a tele- 
 phone 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 tran- 
 sition, hate, fear, love, despaij. He practised a few tran- 
 
98 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 sitions 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 enter- 
 ing. 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 
 lively interchange of talk. 
 
UNDER THE GLASS TOPS 99 
 
 "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 be- 
 come 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. 
 
100 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 "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 hollo wness 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 
 
UNDER THE GLASS TOPS 101 
 
 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 dis- 
 turbing 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 re- 
 sumed 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 Broad- 
 way. 
 
 "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 
 
102 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 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 your- 
 selves 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 wouM 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 
 
UNDER THE GLASS TOPS 103 
 
 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-Yv'aiter, 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 
 
104 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 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 Van- 
 derpool 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 Vanderpool did a transition. The mad light of pleasure 
 died from her eyes and the smile froze on her beautiful mouth. 
 A look almost of terror came into her eyes, followed by a 
 pathetic lift of the upper lip. She stared intently above the 
 camera. She was beholding some evil thing far from that 
 palace of revels. 
 
 "Now they'll cut back to the tenement-house stuff they 
 shot last week," explained the Spanish girl. 
 
 " Tenement house ?" queried Merton. " But I thought the 
 story would be that she falls in love with a man from the 
 great wind-swept spaces out West, and goes out there to live 
 a clean open life with him that's the way I thought it 
 would be out there where she could forget the blight of 
 Broadway." 
 
 "No, Mercer never does Western stuff. I got a little girl 
 friend workin' with her and she told me about this story. 
 Mercer gets into this tenement house down on the east side, 
 and she's a careless society butterfly; but all at once she sees 
 what a lot of sorrow there is in this world when she sees these 
 people in the tenement house, starving to death, and sick 
 kids and everything, and this little friend of mine does an 
 Italian girl with a baby and this old man here, he's a rich 
 swell and prominent in Wall Street and belongs to all the 
 clubs, but he's the father of this girl's child, only Mercer don't 
 know that yet. But she gets aroused in her better nature by 
 
UNDER THE GLASS TOPS 105 
 
 the sight of all this trouble, and she almost falls in love with 
 another gentleman who devotes all his time to relieving the 
 poor in these tenements it was him who took her there but 
 still she likes a good time as well as anybody, and she's 
 stickin' around Broadway and around this old guy who's 
 pretty good company in spite of his faults. But just now she 
 got a shock at remembering the horrible sights she has seen; 
 she can't get it out of her mind. And pretty soon she'll see 
 this other gentleman that she nearly fell in love with, the one 
 who hangs around these tenements doing good he'll be over 
 at one of them tables and she'll leave her party and go over 
 to his table and say, * Take me from this heartless Broadway 
 to your tenements where I can relieve their suffering,' so she 
 goes out and gets in a taxi with him, leaving the old guy with 
 not a thing to do but pay the check. Of course he's mad, 
 and he follows her down to the tenements where she's reliev- 
 ing the poor just in a plain black dress and she finds out 
 he's the real father of this little friend of mine's child, and 
 tells him to go back to Broadway while she has chosen the 
 better part and must live her life with these real people. But 
 he sends her a note that's supposed to be from a poor woman 
 dying of something, to come and bring her some medicine, 
 and she goes off alone to this dive in another street, and it's 
 the old guy himself who has sent the note, and he has her 
 there in this cellar in his power. But the other gentleman 
 has found the note and has follered her, and breaks in the 
 door and puts up a swell fight with the old guy and some 
 toughs he has hired, and gets her off safe and sound, and so 
 they're married and live the real life far away from the blight 
 of Broadway. It's a swell story, all right, but Mercer can't 
 act it. This little friend of mine can act all around her. 
 She'd be a star if only she was better lookin'. You bet 
 Mercer don't allow any lookers on the same set with her. 
 Do you make that one at the table with her now? Just got 
 looks enough to show Mercer off. Mercer's swell-lookin', 
 I'll give her that, but for actin' say, all they need in a piece 
 for her is just some stuff to go in between her close-ups. 
 
106 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 Don't make much difference what it is. Oh, look! There 
 comes the dancers. It's Luzon and Mario." 
 
 Merton Gill looked. These would be hired dancers to 
 entertain the pleasure-mad throng, a young girl with vine 
 leaves in her hair and a dark young man of barbaric appear- 
 ance. The girl was clad in a mere whisp of a girdle and 
 shining breast plates, while the man was arrayed chiefly in a 
 coating of dark stain. They swirled over the dance floor to 
 the broken rhythm of the orchestra, now clinging, now apart, 
 working to a climax in which the man poised with his partner 
 perched upon one shoulder. Through the megaphone came 
 instructions to applaud the couple, and Broadway applauded 
 all but Merton Gill, who stared moodily into his coffee cup 
 or lifted bored eyes to the scene of revelry. He was not 
 bored, but his various emotions combined to produce this 
 effect very plausibly. He was dismayed at this sudden 
 revelation of art in the dance so near him. Imogene Pulver 
 had once done an art dance back in Simsbury, at the cantata 
 of Esther in the vestry of the Methodist church, and had been 
 not a little criticised for her daring; but Imogene had been 
 abundantly clad, and her gestures much more restrained. 
 He was trying now to picture how Gashwiler would take a 
 thing like this, or Mrs. Gashwiler, for that matter! One 
 glimpse of those practically unclad bodies skipping and 
 bounding there would probably throw them into a panic. 
 They couldn't have sat it through. And here he was, right 
 up in front of them, and not turning a hair. 
 
 This reflection permitted something of the contemptuous 
 to show in the random glances with which he swept the 
 dancers. He could not look at them steadily, not when they 
 were close, as they often were. Also, he loathed the cigarette 
 he was smoking. The tolerant scorn for the Gashwilers and 
 his feeling for the cigarette brought him again into favourable 
 notice. He heard Henshaw, but did not look up. 
 
 "Get another flash here, Paul. He's rather a good little 
 bit." Henshaw now stood beside him. "Hold that," he 
 said. "No, wait." He spoke to Merton's companion. 
 
UNDER THE GLASS TOPS 107 
 
 "You change seats a minute with Miss Montague, as if you'd 
 got tired of him see what I mean? Miss Montague Miss 
 Montague." The Spanish girl arose, seeming not wholly 
 pleased at this bit of directing. The Montague girl came to 
 the table. She was a blithesome sprite in a salmon-pink 
 dancing frock. Her blonde curls fell low over one eye which 
 she now cocked inquiringly at the director. 
 
 "You're trying to liven him up," explained Henshaw. 
 :< That 'sail baby- vamp him. He'll do the rest. He's quite 
 a good little bit." 
 
 The Montague girl flopped into the chair, leaned roguishly 
 toward Merton Gill, placed a small hand upon the sleeve of 
 his coat and peered archly at him through beaded lashes, one 
 eye almost hidden by its thatch of curls. Merton Gill sunk 
 low in his chair, cynically tapped the ash from his tenth 
 cigarette into the coffee cup and raised bored eyes to hers. 
 
 "That's it shoot it, Paul, just a flash." 
 
 The camera was being wheeled toward them. The Monta- 
 gue girl, with her hand still on his arm, continued her whee- 
 dling, though now she spoke. 
 
 "Why, look who's here. Kid, I didn't know you in your 
 stepping-out clothes. Say, listen, why do you always up- 
 stage me? I never done a thing to you, did I? Go on, now, 
 give me the fishy eye again. How'd you ace yourself into this 
 first row, anyway? Did you have to fight for it? Say, your 
 friend '11 be mad at me putting her out of here, won't she? 
 Well, blame it on the gelatin master. I never suggested it. 
 Say, you got Henshaw going. He likes that blighted look of 
 yours." 
 
 He made no reply to this chatter. He must keep in the 
 picture. He merely favoured her with a glance of fatigued 
 indifference. The camera was focused. 
 
 "All ready, you people. Do like I said, now. Lights, 
 camera!" 
 
 Merton Gill drew upon his cigarette with the utmost dis- 
 relish, raised the cold eyes of a disillusioned man to the face 
 of the leering Montague girl, turned aside from her with every 
 
108 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 sign of apathy, and wearily exhaled the smoke. There 
 seemed to be but this one pleasure left to him. 
 
 "Cut!" said Henshaw, and somewhere lights jarred off. 
 "Just stick there a bit, Miss Montague. We'll have a couple 
 more shots when the dancing begins." 
 
 Merton resented this change. He preferred the other girl. 
 She lured him but not in so pronounced, so flagrant a manner. 
 The blight of Broadway became more apparent than ever 
 upon his face. The girl's hand still fluttered upon his sleeve 
 as the music came and dancers shuffled by them. 
 
 "Say, you're the actin' kid, all right." She was tapping 
 the floor with the heel of a satin slipper. He wished above 
 all things that she wouldn't call him "Kid." He meditated 
 putting a little of Broadway's blight upon her by saying in a 
 dignified way that his real name was Clifford Armytage. 
 Still, this might not blight her you couldn't tell about the 
 girl. 
 
 "You certainly are the actin'est kid on this set, I'll tell the 
 lot that. Of course these close-ups won't mean much, just 
 about one second, or half that maybe. Or some hick in the 
 cuttin' room may kill 'em dead. Come on, give me the 
 fish-eye again. That's it. Say, I'm glad I didn't have to 
 smoke cigarettes in this scene. They wouldn't do for my type, 
 standin' where the brook and river meet up. I hate a ciga- 
 rette worse'n anything. You I bet you'd give up food first." 
 
 "I hate 'em, too," he muttered grudgingly, glad to be able 
 to say this, even though only to one whose attentions he 
 meant to discourage. "If I have to smoke one more it'll 
 finish me." 
 
 " Now, ain't that the limit? Too bad, Kid ! " 
 
 "I didn't even have any of my own. That Spanish girl 
 gave me these." 
 
 The Montague girl glanced over his shoulder at the young 
 woman whose place she had usurped. "Spanish, eh? If 
 she's Spanish I'm a Swede right out of Switzerland. Any- 
 way, I never could like to smoke. I started to learn one 
 summer when I was eight. Pa and Ma and I was out with a 
 
UNDER THE GLASS TOPS 109 
 
 tent Tom-show, me doing Little Eva, and between acts I had 
 to put on pants and come out and do a smoking song, all 
 about a kid learning to smoke his first cigar and not doin' well 
 with it, see? But they had to cut it out. Gosh, what us 
 artists suffer at times! Pa had me try it a couple of years 
 later when I was doin' Louise the blind girl in the Two 
 Orphans, playin' thirty cents top. It was a good song, all 
 right, with lots of funny gags. I'd 'a' been the laughing hit of 
 the bill if I could 'a' learned not to swallow. We had to cut 
 it out again after the second night. Talk about entering 
 into your part. Me? I was too good." 
 
 If the distant camera glanced this way it caught merely 
 the persistent efforts of a beautiful debutante who had not 
 yet felt the blight of Broadway to melt the cynicism of one 
 who suffered it more and more acutely each moment. Her 
 hand fluttered on his sleeve and her left eye continuously 
 beguiled him from under the overhanging curl. As often as 
 he thought it desirable he put the bored glance upon her, 
 though mostly he stared in dejection at the coffee cup or the 
 empty wine glass. He was sorry that she had had that 
 trouble with the cigar, but one who as Little Eva or poor 
 persecuted Louise, tie blind girl, had to do a song and dance 
 between the acts must surely come from a low plane of art. 
 He was relieved when, at megaphoned directions, an elderly 
 fop came to whirl her off in the dance. Her last speech was : 
 "That poor Henshaw the gelatin master'll have megaphone- 
 lip by to-night." 
 
 He was left alone at his table. He wondered if they might 
 want a close-up of him this way, uncompanioned, jaded, tired 
 of it all, as if he would be saying: "There's always the river!" 
 But nothing of this sort happened. There was more dancing, 
 more close-ups of Muriel Mercer being stricken with her 
 vision of tenement misery under the foul glare of a middle- 
 aged roue inflamed with wine. And there was a shot of 
 Muriel perceiving at last the blight of Broadway and going 
 to a table at which sat a pale, noble-looking young man with 
 a high forehead, who presently led her out into the night to 
 
110 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 the real life of the worthy poor. Later the deserted admirer 
 became again a rou6 inflamed with wine and submitted to a 
 close-up that would depict his baffled rage. He clenched his 
 hands in this and seemed to convey, with a snarling lift of his 
 lip, that the girl would yet be his. Merton Gill had ceased to 
 smoke. He had sounded on Broadway even the shallow 
 pleasure of cigarettes. He was thoroughly blighted. 
 
 At last a megaphoned announcement from the assistant 
 director dismissing the extras, keeping the star, the lead, and 
 a few small-part people, to clean up medium shots, "dra- 
 matics," and other work requiring no crowd. "All you extra 
 people here to-morrow morning, eight-thirty, same clothes 
 and make-up." There was a quick breaking up of the 
 revelry. The Broadway pleasure-seekers threw off the 
 blight and stormed the assistant director for slips of paper 
 which he was now issuing. Merton Gill received one, 
 labelled "Talent check." There was fine print upon it which 
 he took no pains to read, beyond gathering its general effect 
 that the Victor Film-art Company had the full right to use 
 any photographs of him that its agents might that day have 
 obtained. What engrossed him to the exclusion of this legal 
 formality was the item that he would now be paid seven 
 dollars and fifty cents for his day's work and once he had 
 been forced to toil half a week for this sum ! Emerging from 
 the stage into the sunlight he encountered the Montague girl 
 who hailed him as he would have turned to avoid her. 
 
 "Say, trouper, I thought I'd tell you in case you didn't 
 know we don't take our slips to that dame in that outside 
 cafeteria any more. She always pinches off a quarter or 
 maybe four bits. They got it fixed now so the cash is always 
 on tap in the office. I just thought I'd tell you." 
 
 "Thanks," he said, still with the jaded air of the dis- 
 illusioned. He had only the vaguest notion of her meaning, 
 but her intention had been kindly. " Thank you very much." 
 4 "Oh, don't mention it. I just thought I'd tell you." She 
 glanced after him shrewdly. 
 
 Nearing the office he observed a long line of Broadway 
 
UNDER THE GLASS TOPS 111 
 
 revellers waiting to cash their slips. Its head was lost inside 
 the building and it trailed far outside. No longer was any 
 blight to be perceived. The slips were ready in hand.. 
 Instead of joining the line Merton decided upon luncheon. 
 It was two o'clock, and though waiters with trays had been 
 abundant in the gilded cabaret, the best screen art had not 
 seemed to demand a serving of actual food. Further, he 
 would eat in the cafeteria in evening dress, his make-up still 
 on, like a real actor. The other time he had felt conspicuous 
 because nothing had identified him with the ordinary clientele 
 of the place. 
 
 The room was not crowded now. Only a table here and 
 there held late comers, and the choice of foods when he 
 reached the serving counter at the back was limited. He 
 permitted himself to complain of this in a practised manner, 
 but made a selection and bore his tray to the centre of the 
 room. He had chosen a table and was about to sit, when he 
 detected Henshaw farther down the room, and promptly took 
 the one next him. It was probable that Henshaw would 
 recall him and praise the work he had done. But the di- 
 rector merely rolled unseeing eyes over him as he seated him- 
 self, and continued his speech to the man Merton had before 
 seen him with, the grizzled dark man with the stubby gray 
 mustache whom he called Governor. Merton wondered if 
 he could be the governor of California, but decided not. 
 Perhaps an ex-governor. 
 
 "She's working out well," he was saying. "I consider it 
 one of the best continuities Belmore has done. Not a line of 
 smut in it, but to make up for that we'll have over thirty 
 changes of costume." 
 
 Merton Gill coughed violently, then stared moodily at 
 his plate of baked beans. He hoped that this, at least, would 
 recall him to Henshaw who might fix an eye on him to say: 
 "And, by the way, here is a young actor that was of great 
 help to me this morning." But neither man even glanced 
 up. Seemingly this young actor could choke to death with- 
 out exciting their notice. He stared less moodily at the 
 
112 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 baked beans. Henshaw would notice him sometime, and you 
 couldn't do everything at once. 
 
 The men had finished their luncheon and were smoking. 
 The animated Henshaw continued his talk. "And about 
 that other thing we were discussing, Governor, I want to go 
 into that with you. I tell you if we can do Robinson Crusoe, 
 and do it right, a regular five-thousand-foot program feature, 
 the thing ought to gross a million. A good, clean, censor- 
 proof picture great kid show, run forever. Shipwreck stuff, 
 loading the raft, island stuff, hut stuff, goats, finding the foot- 
 print, cannibals, the man Friday can't you see it?" 
 
 The Governor seemed to see it. "Fine that's so!" He 
 stared above the director's head for the space of two inha- 
 lations from his cigarette, imbuing Merton Gill with gratitude 
 that he need not smoke again that day. " But say, look here, 
 how about your love interest?" 
 
 Henshaw waved this aside with his own cigarette and 
 began to make marks on the back of an envelope. "Easy 
 enough Belmore can fix that up. We talked over one or 
 two ways. How about having Friday's sister brought over 
 with him to this island? The cannibals are going to eat her, 
 too. Then the cannibals run to their canoes when they hear 
 the gun, just the same as in the book. And Crusoe rescues 
 the two. And when he cuts the girl's bonds he finds she 
 can't be Friday's real sister, because she's white see what I 
 mean? Well, we work it out later that she's the daughter of 
 in English Earl that was wrecked near the cannibal island, 
 and they rescued her, and Friday's mother brought her up as 
 her own child. She's saved the papers that came ashore, and 
 she has the Earl's coat-of-arms tattooed on her shoulder 
 blade, and finally, after Crusoe has fallen in love with her, and 
 she's remembered a good deal of her past, along comes the 
 old Earl, her father, in a ship and rescues them all. How 
 about that?" Henshaw, brightly expectant, awaited the 
 verdict of his chief. 
 
 "Well I don't know." The other considered. "Where's 
 your conflict, after the girl is saved from the savages? And 
 
UNDER THE GLASS TOPS 113 
 
 Crusoe in the book wears a long beard. How about that? 
 He won't look like anything sort of hairy, and that's 
 all." 
 
 Henshaw from the envelope on which he drew squares and 
 oblongs appeared to gain fresh inspiration. He looked up 
 with new light in his eyes. "I got it got the whole thing. 
 Modernize it. This chap is a rich young New Yorker, cruis- 
 fng on his yacht, and he's wrecked on this island and gets a 
 lot of stuff ashore and his valet is saved, too say there's some 
 good comedy, see what I mean? valet is one of these stiff 
 English lads, never been wrecked on an island before and 
 complains all the time about the lack of conveniences. I can 
 see a lot of good gags for him, having to milk the goats, and 
 getting scared of the other animals, and no place to press his 
 master's clothes things like that, you know. Well, the 
 young fellow explores the island and finds another party 
 that's been wrecked on the other side, and it's the girl and the 
 man that got her father into his power and got all of his 
 estate and is going to make beggars of them if the girl won't 
 marry him, and she comes on the young fellow under some 
 palms and they fall in love and fix it up to double-cross the 
 villain Belmore can work it out from there. How about 
 that? And say, we can use a lot of trims from that South 
 Sea piece we did last year, all that yacht and island stuff see 
 what I mean?" 
 
 The other considered profoundly. "Yes, you got a story 
 there, but it won't be Robinson Crusoe, don't you see?" 
 
 Again Henshaw glanced up from his envelope with the light 
 of inspiration. "Well, how about this? Call it Robinson 
 Crusoe, Junior! There you are. We get the value of the 
 name and do the story the way we want it, the young fellow 
 being shaved every day by the valet, and he can invite the 
 other party over to dine with him and receive them in even- 
 ing dress and everything. Can't you see it? If that story 
 wouldn't gross big then I don't know a story. And all easy 
 stuff. We can use the trims for the long shots, and use that 
 inlet toward the other end of Catalina for the hut and the 
 
114 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 beach; sure-fire stuff, Governor and Robinson Crusoe, 
 Junior is a cinch title." 
 
 "Well, give Belmore as much dope as you've got, and see 
 what he can work out." 
 
 They arose and stood by the counter to pay their checks. 
 
 "If you want to see the rushes of that stuff we shot this 
 morning be over to the projection room at five," said Hen- 
 shaw as they went out. Neither had observed the rising 
 young screen actor, Clifford Armytage, though he had 
 coughed violently again as they left. He had coughed most 
 plausibly, moreover, because of the cigarettes. 
 
 At the cashier's window, no longer obstructed, he received 
 his money, another five-dollar bill adorned with the cheerfully 
 prosperous face of Benjamin Harrison and half that amount 
 in silver coin. Then, although loath to do this, he went to the 
 dressing room and removed his make-up. That grease paint 
 had given him a world of confidence. 
 
 At the casting office he stopped to tell his friend of the 
 day's camera triumph, how the director had seemed to single 
 him out from a hundred or so revellers to portray facially the 
 deadly effect of Broadway's night life. 
 
 "Good work!" she applauded. "Before long you'll be 
 having jobs oftener. And don't forget, you're called again 
 to-morrow morning for the gambling-house scene." 
 
 She was a funny woman; always afraid he would forget 
 something he could not possibly forget. Once more in the 
 Patterson kitchen he pressed his suit and dreamt of new 
 eminences in his chosen art. 
 
 The following morning he was again the first to reach the 
 long dressing room, the first to be made up by the grumbling 
 extra, the first to reach the big stage. The cabaret of yester- 
 day had overnight been transformed into a palatial gambling 
 hell. Along the sides of the room and at its centre were 
 tables equipped for strange games of chance which only his 
 picture knowledge enabled him to recognize. He might tarry 
 at these tables, he thought, but he must remember to look 
 bored in the near presence of Henshaw. The Spanish girl of 
 
UNDER THE GLASS TOPS 115 
 
 yesterday appeared and he greeted her warmly. " I got some 
 cigarettes this time," he said, "so let me pay you back all 
 those I smoked of yours yesterday." Together they filled the 
 golden case that hung from her girdle. 
 
 "It's swell, all right," said the girl, gazing about the vast 
 room now filling with richly clad gamblers. 
 
 " But I thought it was all over except the tenement-house 
 scenes where Vera Vanderpool has gone to relieve the poor," 
 he said. 
 
 The girl explained. "This scene comes before the one we 
 did yesterday. It's where the rich old boy first sees Vera 
 playing roulette, and she loses a lot of money and is going to 
 leave her string of pearls, but he says it's a mere trifle and let 
 him pay her gambling losses, so in a weak moment she does, 
 and that's how he starts to get her into his power. You'll see 
 how it works out. Say, they spent some money on this set, 
 all right." 
 
 It was indeed a rich set, as the girl had said. It seemed 
 to Merton Gill that it would be called on the screen "One of 
 those Plague Spots that Eat like a Cancer at the Heart of New 
 York." He lighted a cigarette and leaned nonchalantly 
 against a pillar to smile a tired little smile at the pleasure- 
 mad victims of this life who were now grouping around the 
 roulette and faro tables. He must try for his jaded look. 
 
 "Some swell shack!" The speaker was back of him, but 
 he knew her for the Montague girl, and was instantly enabled 
 to increase the blighted look for which he had been trying. 
 "One natty little hovel, I'll tell the world," the girl continued. 
 "Say, this puts it all over the Grand Central station, don't 
 it? Must be right smack at the corner of Broadway and 
 Fifth Avenue. Well, start the little ball rolling, so I can make 
 a killing." He turned his head slightly and saw her dance off 
 to one of the roulette tables, accompanied by the middle-aged 
 fop who had been her companion yesterday. 
 
 Henshaw and his assistant now appeared and began group- 
 ing the players at the various tables. Merton Gill remained 
 leaning wearily against his massive pillar, trying to appear 
 
116 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 blas6 under the chatter of the Spanish girl. The groups 
 were arranged to the liking of Henshaw, though only after 
 many trials. The roulette ball was twirled and the lively 
 rattle of chips could be heard. Scanning his scene, he noted 
 Merton and his companion. 
 
 "Oh, there you are, you two. Sister, you go and stand 
 back of that crowd around the faro table. Keep craning to 
 look over their shoulders, and give us your side view. I 
 want to use this man alone. Here." He led Merton to a 
 round table on which were a deck of cards and some neatly 
 stacked chips. "Sit here, facing the camera. Keep one 
 hand on the cards, sort of toying with 'em, see what I mean?" 
 
 He scattered the piled chips loosely about the table, and 
 called to a black waiter: "Here, George, put one of those 
 wine glasses on his left." 
 
 The wine glass was placed. "Now kind of slump down in 
 your chair, like you saw the hollowness of it all see what I 
 mean?" 
 
 Merton Gill thought he saw. He exhaled smoke, toyed 
 contemptuously with the cards at his right hand and, with a 
 gesture of repulsion, pushed the wine glass farther away. 
 He saw the hollowness of it all. The spirit of wine sang in his 
 glass but to deaf ears. Chance could no longer entice him. 
 It might again have been suspected that cigarettes were ceas- 
 ing to allure. 
 
 "Good work! Keep it up," said Henshaw and went back 
 to his cameras. 
 
 The lights jarred on; desperate gaming was filmed. " More 
 life at the roulette tables," megaphoned Henshaw. "Crowd 
 closer around that left-hand faro table. You're playing for 
 big stakes." The gaming became more feverish. The mad 
 light of pleasure was in every eye, yet one felt that the blight 
 of Broadway was real. 
 
 The camera was wheeled forward and Merton Gill joyously 
 quit smoking while Henshaw secured flashes of various 
 groups, chiefly of losers who were seeing the hollowness of it 
 all. He did not, however, disdain a bit of comedy. 
 
UNDER THE GLASS TOPS 117 
 
 "Miss Montague." 
 
 "Yes, Mr. Henshaw." The Montague girl paused in the 
 act of sprinkling chips over a roulette lay-out. 
 
 "Your escort has lost all his chips and you've lost all he 
 bought for you " 
 
 The girl and her escort passed to other players the chips 
 before them, and waited. 
 
 "Your escort takes out his wallet, shows it to you empty, 
 and shrugs his shoulders. You shrug, too, but turn your 
 back on him, facing the camera, and take some bills out of 
 your stocking see what I mean? Give her some bills, some- 
 one." 
 
 "Never mind, Mr. Henshaw; I already got some there. n 
 The pantomime was done, the girl turned, stooped, withdrew 
 flattened bills from one of the salmon-pink stockings and 
 flourished them at her escort who achieved a transition from 
 gloom to joy. Merton Gill, observing this shameless pro- 
 cedure, plumbed the nether depths of disgust for Broadway's 
 night life. 
 
 The camera was now wheeled toward him and he wearily 
 lighted another cigarette. "Get a flash of this chap," Hen- 
 shaw was saying. The subject leaned forward in his chair, 
 gazing with cynical eyes at the fevered throng. Wine, 
 women, song, all had palled. Gambling had no charm he 
 looked with disrelish at the cigarette he had but just lighted. 
 
 "All right, Paul, that's good. Now get that bunch over 
 at the crap table." 
 
 Merton Gill lost no time in relinquishing his cigarette. 
 He dropped it into the wine glass which became a symbol of 
 Broadway's dead-sea fruit. Thereafter he smoked only 
 when he was in the picture. He felt that he was becoming 
 screen wise. And Henshaw had remembered him. The cast 
 of The Blight of Broadway might not be jewelled with his 
 name, but his work would stand out. He had given the best 
 that was in him. 
 
 He watched the entrance of Muriel Mercer, maddest of all 
 the mad throng, accompanied by the two young men and the 
 
118 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 girl who was not so beautiful. He watched her lose steadily, 
 and saw her string of pearls saved by the elderly scoundrel 
 who had long watched the beautiful girl as only the Wolf of 
 Wall Street could watch one so fair. He saw her leave upon 
 his arm, perhaps for further unwholesome adventure along 
 Broadway. The lights were out, the revelry done. 
 
 Merton Gill beyond a doubt preferred Western stuff, some 
 heart-gripping tale of the open spaces, or perhaps of the 
 frozen north, where he could be the hard-riding, straight- 
 shooting, two-fisted w T onder-man, and not have to smoke so 
 many cigarettes only one now and then, which he would 
 roll himself and toss away after a few puffs. Still, he had 
 shown above the mob of extra people, he thought. Hen- 
 shaw had noticed him. He was coming on. 
 
 The Montague girl hailed him as he left the set. "Hullo, 
 old trouper. I caught you act in* again to-day, right out 
 before the white folks. Well, so far so good. But say, I'm 
 glad all that roulette and stuff was for the up-and-down stage 
 and not on the level. I'd certainly have lost everything but 
 my make-up. So long, Kid!" She danced off to join a 
 group of other women who were leaving. He felt a kindly 
 pity for the child. There could be little future in this diffi- 
 cult art for one who took it so lightly; who talked so frankly 
 to strangers without being introduced. 
 
 At luncheon in the cafeteria he waited a long time in the 
 hope of encountering Henshaw, who would perhaps command 
 his further services in the cause of creative screen art. He 
 meant to be animated at this meeting, to show the director 
 that he could be something more than an actor wiio Lad 
 probed the shams of Broadway. But he lingered in vain. 
 He thought Henshaw would perhaps be doing without food 
 in order to work on the scenario for Robinson Crusoe, Junior. 
 
 He again stopped to thank his friend, the casting director, 
 for securing him his first chance. She accepted his thanks 
 smilingly, and asked him to drop around often. " Mind, you 
 don't forget our number," she said. 
 
 He was on the point of making her understand once for all 
 
UNDER THE GLASS TOPS 
 
 that he would not forget the number, that he would never for- 
 get Gashwiler's address, that he had been coming to this 
 studio too often to forget its location. But someone engaged 
 her at the window, so he was obliged to go on without en- 
 lightening the woman. She seemed to be curiously dense. 
 
CHAPTER VH 
 
 "NOTHING TO-DAY, DEAR!" 
 
 THE savings had been opportunely replenished. In 
 two days he had accumulated a sum for which, back in 
 Simsbury, he would have had to toil a week. Yet 
 there was to be said in favour of the Simsbury position that it 
 steadily endured. Each week brought its fifteen dollars, 
 pittance though it might be, while the art of the silver screen 
 was capricious in its rewards, not to say jumpy. Never, for 
 weeks at a stretch, had Gashwiler said with a tired smile, 
 *' Nothing to-day sorry!" He might have been a grouch 
 and given to unreasonable nagging, but with him there was 
 always a very definite something to-day which he would 
 specify, in short words if the occasion seemed to demand. 
 There was not only a definite something every day but a 
 definite if not considerable sum of money to be paid over 
 every Saturday night, and in the meantime three very 
 definite and quite satisfying meals to be freely partaken of at 
 stated hours each day. 
 
 The leisure enforced by truly creative screen art was often 
 occupied now with really moving pictures of Metta Judson 
 placing practicable food upon the Gashwiler table. This had 
 been no table in a gilded Broadway resort, holding empty 
 coffee cups and half empty wine glasses, passed and re- 
 passed by apparently busy waiters with laden trays who 
 never left anything of a practicable nature. Doubtless the 
 set would not have appealed to Henshaw. He would never 
 have been moved to take close-ups, even for mere flashes, of 
 those who ate this food. And yet, more and more as the days 
 went by, this old-time film would unreel itself before the 
 
 120 
 
"NOTHING TO-DAY, DEAR!" 
 
 eager eyes of Merton Gill. Often now it thrilled him as 
 might have an installment of The Hazards of Hortense,for the 
 food of his favourite pharmacy was beginning to pall and 
 Metta Judson, though giving her shallow mind to base village 
 gossip, was a good cook. She became the adored heroine of 
 an apparently endless serial to be entitled The Hazards of 
 Clifford Armytage, in which the hero had tragically little to 
 do but sit upon a bench and wait while tempting repasts were 
 served. 
 
 Sometimes on the little bench around the eucalyptus tree 
 he would run an entire five-thousand-foot program feature, 
 beginning with the Sunday midday dinner of roast chicken, 
 and abounding in tense dramatic moments such as corned- 
 beef and cabbage on Tuesday night, and corned-beef hash on 
 Wednesday morning. He would pause to take superb close- 
 ups of these, the corned beef on its spreading platter hemmed 
 about with boiled potatoes and turnips and cabbage, and the 
 corned beef hash with its richly browned surface. The thrill- 
 ing climax would be the roast of beef on Saturday night, with 
 close-ups taken in the very eye of the camera, of the mashed 
 potatoes and the apple pie drenched with cream. And there 
 were close-ups of Metta Judson, who had never seriously 
 contemplated a screen career, placing upon the table a tower 
 of steaming hot cakes, while a platter of small sausages 
 loomed eloquently in the foreground. 
 
 With eyes closed he would run this film again and again, 
 cutting here, rearranging sequences, adding trims from 
 suddenly remembered meals of the dead past, devising more 
 intimate close-ups, such as the one of Metta withdrawing pies 
 from the oven or smoothing hot chocolate caressingly over 
 the top of a giant cake, or broiling chops, or saying in a 
 large-lettered subtitle artistically decorated with cooked 
 foods "How about some hot coffee, Merton?" 
 
 He became an able producer of this drama. He devised 
 a hundred sympathetic little touches that Henshaw would 
 probably never have thought of. He used footage on a mere 
 platter of steak that another director might have ignored 
 
122 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 utterly. He made it gripping the supreme heart-interest 
 drama of his season a big thing done in a big way, and yet 
 censor-proof. Not even the white-souled censors of the 
 great state of Pennsylvania could have outlawed its realism, 
 brutal though this was in such great moments as when Gash- 
 wiler carved the roast beef. So able was his artistry that 
 Merton's nostrils would sometimes betray him he could 
 swear they caught rich aromas from that distant board. 
 
 Not only had the fare purveyed by his favourite pharmacy 
 put a blight upon him equal to Broadway's blight, but even 
 of this tasteless stuff he must be cautious in his buying. A 
 sandwich, not too meaty at the centre, coffee tasting strangely 
 of other things sold in a pharmacy, a segment of pie fair- 
 seeming on its surface, but lacking the punch, as he put it, of 
 Metta Judson's pie, a standardized, factory-made, alto- 
 gether formal and perfunctory pie these were the meagre 
 items of his accustomed luncheon and dinner. 
 
 He had abandoned breakfast, partly because it cost money 
 and partly because a gentleman in eastern Ohio had recently 
 celebrated his hundred and third birthday by reason, so he 
 confided to the press, of having always breakfasted upon a 
 glass of clear cold water. Probably ham and eggs or corned- 
 beef hash would have cut him off at ninety, and water from 
 the tap in the Patterson kitchen was both clear and cold. It 
 was not so much that he cared to live beyond ninety or so,but 
 he wished to survive until things began to pick up on the 
 Holden lot, and if this did bring him many more years, well 
 and good. Further, if the woman in the casting office per- 
 sisted, as she had for ten days, in saying "Nothing yet" to 
 inquiring screen artists, he might be compelled to intensify 
 the regime of the Ohio centenarian. Perhaps a glass of 
 clear cold water at night, after a hearty midday meal of drug- 
 store sandwiches and pie, would work new wonders. 
 
 It seemed to be the present opinion of other waiters on the 
 extra bench that things were never going to pick up on the 
 Holden lot nor on any other lot. Strongly marked types, 
 ready to add distinction to the screen of painted shadows, 
 
"NOTHING TO-DAY, DEAR!" 123 
 
 freely expressed a view that the motion-picture business was 
 on the rocks. Unaffected by the optimists who wrote in the 
 picture magazines, they saw no future for it. More than one 
 of them threatened to desert the industry and return to 
 previous callings. As they were likely to put it, they were 
 going to leave the pictures flat and go back to type- writing or 
 selling standard art-works or waiting on table or something 
 where you could count on your little bit every week. 
 
 Under the eucalyptus tree one morning Merton Gill, mak- 
 ing some appetizing changes in the fifth reel of Eating at 
 Gashwiler's, was accosted by a youngish woman whom he 
 could not at first recall. She had come from the casting office 
 and paused when she saw him. 
 
 "Hello, I thought it was you, but I wasn't sure in them 
 clothes. How they coming?" 
 
 He stared blankly, startled at the sudden transposition he 
 had been compelled to make, for the gleaming knife of Gash- 
 wiler, standing up to carve, had just then hovered above the 
 well-browned roast of beef. Then he placed the speaker by 
 reason of her eyes. It was the Spanish girl, his companion 
 of the gilded cabaret, later encountered in the palatial gam- 
 bling hell that ate like a cancer at the heart of New York 
 probably at the corner of Broadway and Fifth Avenue. 
 
 He arose and shook hands cordially. He had supposed, 
 when he thought of the girl at all, that she would always be 
 rather Spanish, an exotic creature rather garishly dressed, 
 nervously eager, craving excitement such as may be had in 
 cabarets on Broadway, with a marked inclination for the 
 lighter life of pleasure. But she wore not so much as a rose 
 in her smooth^ combed hair. She was not only not excited 
 but she was not exciting. She was plainly dressed in skirt 
 and shirtwaist of no distinction, her foot-gear was of the 
 most ordinary, and well worn, and her face under a hat of 
 no allure was without make-up, a commonplace, somewhat 
 anxious face with lines about the eyes. But her voice as well 
 as her eyes helped him to recall her. 
 
 She spoke with an effort at jauntiness after Merton had 
 
124 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 greeted her. "That's one great slogan, 'Business as Usual f 
 aia't it? Well, it's business as usual here, so I just found out 
 from the Countess as usual, rotten. I ain't had but three 
 days since I seen you last." 
 
 "I haven't had even one," he told her. 
 
 "No? Say, that's tough. You're registered with the 
 Service Bureau, ain't you?" 
 
 "Well, I didn't do that, because they might send me any 
 place, and I sort of wanted to work on this particular lot." 
 Instantly he saw himself saving Beulah Baxter, for the next 
 installment, from a fate worse than death, but the one-time 
 Spanish girl did not share this vision. 
 
 "Oh, well, little I care where I work. I had two days at 
 the Bigart in a hop-joint scene, and one over at the United 
 doin* some board-walk stuff. I could 'a' had another day 
 there, but the director said I wasn't just the type for a 
 chick bathing-suit. He was very nice about it. Of course 
 I know my legs ain't the best part of me I sure ain't one 
 of them like the girl that says she's wasted hi skirts." She 
 grinned ruefully. 
 
 He felt that some expression of sympathy would be grace- 
 ful here, yet he divined that it must be very discreetly, al- 
 most delicately, worded. He could easily be too blunt. 
 
 "I guess I'd be pretty skinny in a bathing-suit myself, 
 right now. I know they won't be giving me any such part 
 pretty soon if I have to cut down on the meals the way I been 
 doing." 
 
 "Oh, of course I don't mean I'm actually skinny " 
 
 He felt he had been blunt, after all. 
 
 "Not to say skinny," she went on, "but well, you know 
 more like home-folks, I guess. Anyway, I got no future as 
 a bathing beauty none whatever. And this walkin' around 
 to the different lots ain't helpin' me any, either. Of course 
 it ain't as if I couldn't go back to the insurance office. Mr. 
 Gropp, he's office manager, he was very nice about it. He 
 says, 'I wish you all the luck in the world, girlie, and re- 
 member your job as film' clerk will always be here for you.' 
 
"NOTHING TO-DAY, DEAR!" 125 
 
 Wasn't that gentlemanly of him? Still, I'd rather act than 
 stand on my feet all day filing letters. I won't go back 
 till I have to." 
 
 "Me either," said Merton Gill, struggling against the ob- 
 session of Saturday-night dinner at Gashwiler's. 
 
 Grimly he resumed his seat when the girl with a friendly 
 "So long!" had trudged on. In spite of himself he found 
 something base hi his nature picturing his return to the 
 emporium and to the thrice-daily encounter with Metta 
 Judson's cookery. He let his lower instincts toy with the un- 
 worthy vision. Gashwiler would advance him the money 
 to return, and the job would be there. Probably Spencer 
 Grant had before this tired of the work and gone into in- 
 surance or some other line, and probably Gashwiler would 
 be only too glad to have the wanderer back. He would get 
 off No. 3 just in time for breakfast. 
 
 He brushed the monstrous scene from his eyes, shrugged 
 it from his shoulders. He would not give up. They had 
 all struggled and sacrificed, and why should he shrink from 
 the common ordeal? But he wished the Spanish girl hadn't 
 talked about going back to her job. He regretted not 
 having stopped her with words of confident cheer that would 
 have stiffened his own resolution. He could see her far 
 down the street, on her way to the next lot, her narrow 
 shoulders switching from light to shadow as she trudged 
 under the line of eucalyptus trees. He hoped she wouldn't 
 give up. No one should ever give up least of all Merton 
 Gill. 
 
 The days wore wearily on. He began to feel on his own 
 face the tired little smile of the woman in the casting office 
 as she would look up to shake her head, often from the 
 telephone over which she was saying: "Nothing to-day, dear. 
 Sorry!" She didn't exactly feel that the motion-picture 
 business had gone on the rocks, but she knew it wasn't pick- 
 ing up as it should. And ever and again she would have 
 Merton Gill assure her that he hadn't forgotten the home 
 address, the town where lived Gighampton or Gumwash or 
 
126 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 whoever it was that held the good old job open for him. He 
 had divined that it was a jest of some sort when she warned 
 him not to forget the address and he would patiently smile 
 at this, but he always put her right about the name of Gash- 
 wiler. Of course it was a name any one might forget, though 
 the woman always seemed to make the most earnest effort 
 to remember it. 
 
 Each day, after his brief chat with her in which he learned 
 that there would be nothing to-day, he would sit on the 
 waiting-room bench or out under the eucalyptus tree and 
 consecrate himself anew to the art of the perpendicular screen. 
 And each day, as the little hoard was diminished by even 
 those slender repasts at the drug store, he ran his film of the 
 Gashwiler dining room in action. 
 
 From time to time he would see the Montague girl, alone 
 or with her mother, entering the casting office or perhaps 
 issuing from the guarded gate. He avoided her when 
 possible. She persisted in behaving as if they had been 
 properly introduced and had known each other a long time. 
 She was too familiar, and her levity jarred upon his more 
 serious mood. So far as he could see, the girl had no screen 
 future, though doubtless she was her own worst enemy. If 
 someone had only taught her to be serious, her career might 
 have been worth while. She had seemed not wholly negli- 
 gible in the salmon-pink dancing frock, though of course 
 the blonde curls had not been true. 
 
 Then the days passed until eating merely at a drug-store 
 lunch counter became not the only matter of concern. There 
 was the item of room rent. Mrs. Patterson, the Los Angeles 
 society woman, had, upon the occasion of their first inter- 
 view, made it all too clear that the money, trifling though 
 it must seem for a well-furnished room with the privilege of 
 electric iron in the kitchen, must be paid each week in ad- 
 vance. Strictly in advance. Her eye had held a cold 
 light as she dwelt upon this. 
 
 There had been times lately when, upon his tree bench, 
 he would try to dramatize Mrs. Patterson as a woman with 
 
"NOTHING TO-DAY, DEAR!" 127 
 
 a soft heart under that polished society exterior, chilled by 
 daily contact with other society people at the Iowa or Kan- 
 sas or other society picnics, yet ready to melt at the true 
 human touch. But he had never quite succeeded in this 
 bit of character work. Something told him that she was 
 cold all through, a society woman without a flaw in her 
 armour. He could not make her seem to listen patiently 
 while he explained that only one company was now shooting 
 on the lot, but that big things were expected to be on in an- 
 other week or so. A certain skeptic hardness was in her 
 gaze as he visioned it. 
 
 He decided, indeed, that he could never bring himself 
 even to attempt this scene with the woman, so remote was 
 he from seeing her eye soften and her voice warm with the 
 assurance that a few weeks more or less need not matter. 
 The room rent, he was confident, would have to be paid 
 strictly in advance so long as then* relations continued. She 
 was the kind who would insist upon this formality even 
 after he began to play, at an enormous salary, a certain out- 
 standing part in the Hazards of Hortense. The exigencies, 
 even the adversities, of art would never make the slightest 
 appeal to this hardened soul. So much for that. And daily 
 the hoard waned. 
 
 Yet his was not the only tragedy. In the waiting room, 
 where he now spent more of his time, he listened one day to 
 the Montague girl chat through the window with the woman 
 she called Countess. 
 
 "Yeah, Pa was double-crossed over at the Bigart. He 
 raised that lovely set of whiskers for Camillia of the Cumber- 
 lands and what did he get for it? just two weeks. Fact! 
 What do you know about that? Hugo has him killed off 
 in the second spool with a squirrel rifle from ambush, and Pa 
 thinking he would draw pay for at least another three weeks. 
 He kicked, but Hugo says the plot demanded it. I bet, at 
 that, he was just trying to cut down his salary list. I bet 
 that continuity this minute shows Pa drinking his corn 
 likker out of a jug and playing a fiddle for the dance right 
 
128 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 down to the last scene. Don't artists get the razz, though. 
 And that Hugo, he'd spend a week in the hot place to save 
 a thin dime. Let me tell you, Countess, don't you ever get 
 your lemon in his squeezer." 
 
 There were audible murmurs of sympathy from the 
 Countess. 
 
 "And so the old trouper had to start out Monday morn- 
 ing to peddle the brush. Took him three days to land any- 
 thing at all, and then it's nothing but a sleeping souse in a 
 Western bar-room scene. In here now he is something the 
 Acme people are doing. He's had three days, just lying down 
 with his back against a barrel sleeping. He's not to wake 
 up even when the fight starts, but sleep right on through it, 
 which they say will be a good gag. Well, maybe. But it's 
 tough on his home. He gets all his rest daytimes and keeps 
 us restless all night making a new kind of beer and tending 
 his still, and so on. You bet Ma and I, the minute he's 
 through with this piece, are going pronto to get that face of 
 his as naked as the day he was born. Pa's so temperamental 
 like that time he was playing a Bishop and never touched 
 a drop for five weeks, and in bed every night at nine-thirty. 
 Me? Oh, I'm having a bit of my own in this Acme piece 
 God's Great Outdoors, I think it is anyway, I'm to be a 
 little blonde hussy in the bar-room, sitting on the miners' 
 knees and all like that, so they'll order more drinks. It 
 certainly takes all kinds of art to make an artist. And next 
 week I got some shipwreck stuff for Baxter, and me with 
 bronchial pneumonia right this minute, and hating tank 
 stuff, anyway. Well, Countess, don't take any counterfeit 
 money. S'long!" 
 
 She danced through a doorway and was gone she was one 
 who seldom descended to plain walking. She would manage 
 a dance step even in the short distance from the casting- 
 office door to the window. It was not of such material, 
 Merton Gill was sure, that creative artists were moulded. 
 
 And there was no question now of his own utter serious- 
 ness. The situation hourly grew more desperate. For a 
 
"NOTHING TO-DAY, DEAR!" 129 
 
 week he had foregone the drug-store pie, so that now he 
 recalled it as very wonderful pie indeed, but he dared no 
 longer indulge in this luxury. An occasional small bag of 
 candy and as much sugar as he could juggle into his coffee 
 must satisfy his craving for sweets. Stoically he awaited 
 the end some end. The moving-picture business seemed 
 to be still on the rocks, but things must take a turn. 
 
 He went over the talk of the Montague girl. Her father 
 had perhaps been unfairly treated, but at least he was work- 
 ing again. And there were other actors who would go un- 
 shaven for even a sleeping part in the bar-room scene of 
 God's Great Outdoors. Merton Gill knew one, and rubbed 
 his shaven chin. He thought, too, of the girl's warning 
 about counterfeit money. He had not known that the 
 casting director's duties required her to handle money, but 
 probably he had overlooked this item in her routine. And 
 was counterfeit money about? He drew out his own re- 
 maining bill and scrutinized it anxiously. It seemed to be 
 genuine. He hoped it was, for Mrs. Patterson's sake, and 
 was relieved when she accepted it without question that night. 
 
 Later he tested the handful of silver that remained to 
 him and prayed earnestly that an increase of prosperity be 
 granted to producers of the motion picture. With the 
 silver he eked out another barren week, only to face a day 
 the evening of which must witness another fiscal transaction 
 with Mrs. Patterson. And there was no longer a bill for 
 this heartless society creature. He took a long look at the 
 pleasant little room as he left it that morning. The day 
 must bring something but it might not bring him back that 
 night. 
 
 At the drug store he purchased a bowl of vegetable soup, 
 loaded it heavily with catsup at intervals when the attendant 
 had other matters on his mind, and seized an extra half- 
 portion of crackers left on their plate by a satiated neighbour. 
 He cared little for catsup, but it doubtless bore nourishing 
 elements, and nourishment was now important. He crum- 
 pled his paper napkin and laid upon the marble slab a trifling 
 
130 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 silver coin. It was the last of his hoard. When he should 
 eat next and under what circumstances were now as un- 
 certain as where he should sleep that night, though he was 
 already resolving that catsup would be no part of his meal. 
 It might be well enough in its place, but he had abundantly 
 proved that it was not, strictly speaking, a food. 
 
 He reached the Holden studios and loitered outside for 
 half an hour before daring the daily inquiry at the window. 
 Yet, when at last he did approach it, his waning faith in 
 prayer was renewed, for here in his direst hour was cheering 
 news. It seemed even that his friend beyond the window had 
 been impatient at his coming. 
 
 "Just like you to be late when there's something doing!" 
 she called to him with friendly impatience. " Get over to the 
 dressing rooms on the double-quick. It's the Victor people 
 doing some Egyptian stuff they'll give you a costume. 
 Hurry along!" 
 
 And he had lingered over a bowl of soggy crackers soaked, 
 at the last, chiefly in catsup ! He hurried, with a swift word 
 of thanks. 
 
 In the same dressing room where he had once been made 
 up as a Broadway pleasure seeker he now donned the flowing 
 robe and burnoose of a Bedouin, and by the same grumbling 
 extra his face and hands were stained the rich brown of 
 children of the desert. A dozen other men of the paler race 
 had undergone the same treatment. A sheik of great 
 stature and noble mien smoked an idle cigarette in the door- 
 way. He was accoutred with musket and with pistols 
 in his belt. 
 
 An assistant director presently herded the desert men down 
 an alley between two of the big stages and to the beginning 
 of the oriental street that Merton had noticed on his first 
 day within the Holden walls. It was now peopled pic- 
 turesquely with other Bedouins. Banners hung from the 
 walls and veiled ladies peeped from the latticed balconies. 
 A camel was led excitingly through the crowded way, and 
 donkeys and goats were to be observed. It was a noisy 
 
"NOTHING TO-DAY, DEAR!" 131 
 
 street until a whistle sounded at the farther end, then all 
 was silence while the voice of Henshaw came through the 
 megaphone. 
 
 It appeared that long shots of the street were Henshaw's 
 first need. Up and down it Merton Gill strolled in a negli- 
 gent manner, stopping perhaps to haggle with the vendor 
 who sold sweetmeats from a tray, or to chat with a tribal 
 brother fresh from the sandy wastes, or to purchase a glass 
 of milk from the man with the goats. He secured a rose 
 from the flower seller, and had the inspiration to toss it to 
 one of the discreet balconies above him, but as he stepped 
 back to do this he was stopped by the watchful assistant 
 director who stood just inside a doorway. "Hey, Bill, none 
 of that ! Keep your head down, and pay no attention to the 
 dames. It ain't done." 
 
 He strolled on with the rose in his hand. Later, and 
 much nearer the end of the street where the cameras were, 
 he saw the sheik of noble mien halt the flower seller, haggle 
 for another rose, place this daintily behind his left ear and 
 stalk on, his musket held over one shoulder, his other hand 
 on a belted pistol. Merton disposed of his rose in the same 
 manner. He admired the sheik for his stature, his majestic 
 carriage, his dark, handsome, yet sinister face with its 
 brooding eyes. He thought this man, at least, would be a 
 true Arab, some real son of the desert who had wandered 
 afar. His manner was so much more authentic than that 
 of the extra people all about. 
 
 A whistle blew and the street action was suspended. 
 There was a long wait while cameras were moved up and 
 groups formed under the direction of Henshaw and his 
 assistant. A band of Bedouins were now to worship in 
 the porch of a mosque. Merton Gill was among these. The 
 assistant director initiated them briefly into Moslem rites. 
 Upon prayer rugs they bowed their foreheads to earth in the 
 direction of Mecca. 
 
 "What's the idea of this here?" demanded Merton Gill's 
 neighbour in aggrieved tones. 
 
132 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 "Ssh!" cautioned Merton. "It's Mass or something like 
 that." And they bent in unison to this noon-tide devotion. 
 
 When this was done Henshaw bustled into the group. 
 "I want about a dozen or fifteen good types for the cafe," 
 he explained to his assistant. Merton Gill instinctively 
 stood forward, and was presently among those selected. 
 "You'll do,'* said Henshaw, nodding. The director, of 
 course, had not remembered that this was the actor he had 
 distinguished in The Blight of Broadway, yet he had again 
 chosen him for eminence. It showed, Merton felt, that 
 his conviction about the screen value of his face was not 
 ill founded. 
 
 The selected types were ROW herded into a dark, narrow, 
 low-ceiled room with a divan effect along its three walls. 
 A grizzled Arab made coffee over a glowing brazier. Merton 
 Gill sat cross-legged on the divan and became fearful that 
 he would be asked to smoke the narghileh which the assist- 
 ant director was now preparing. To one who balked at 
 mere cigarettes, it was an evil-appearing device. His 
 neighbour who had been puzzled at prayer-time now hitched 
 up his flowing robe to withdraw a paper of cigarettes from 
 the pocket of a quite occidental garment. 
 
 "Go on, smoke cigarettes," said the assistant director. 
 
 "Have one?" said Merton 's neighbour, and he took one. 
 It seemed you couldn't get away from cigarettes on the screen. 
 East and West were here one. He lighted it, though smoking 
 warily. The noble sheik, of undoubtedly Asiatic origin, came 
 to the doorway overlooking the assistant director's work on 
 the narghileh. A laden camel halted near him, sneered 
 in an evil manner at the bystanders, and then, lifting an 
 incredible length of upper lip, set his yellow teeth in the 
 nearest shoulder. It was the shoulder of the noble sheik, 
 who instantly rent the air with a plaintive cry: "For the 
 love of Mike! keep that man-eater off'n me, can't you?" 
 
 His accent had not been that of the Arabian waste-land. 
 Merton Gill was disappointed. So the fellow was only an 
 actor, after all. If he had felt sympathy at all, it would now 
 
"NOTHING TO-DAY, DEAR!" 133 
 
 have been for the camel. The beast was jerked back with 
 profane words and the sheik, rubbing his bitten shoulder, 
 entered the cafe, sitting cross-legged at the end of the divan 
 nearest the door. 
 
 "All right, Bob." The assistant director handed him 
 the tube of the water pipe, and the sheik smoked with every 
 sign of enjoyment. Merton Gill resolved never to play 
 the part of an Arab sheik at the mercy of man-eating cam- 
 els and having to smoke something that looked murderous. 
 
 Under Henshaw's direction the grizzled proprietor now 
 served tiny cups of coffee to the sheik and his lesser patrons. 
 Two of these played dominoes, and one or two reclined as 
 in sleep. Cameras were brought up. The interior being 
 to his satisfaction, Henshaw rehearsed the entrance of a 
 little band of European tourists. A beautiful girl in sports 
 garb, a beautiful young man in khaki and puttees, a fine old 
 British father with gray side whiskers shaded by a sun-hat 
 with a flowing veil twined about it. These people sat and 
 were served coffee, staring in a tourist manner at their novel 
 surroundings. The Bedouins, under stern command, ig- 
 nored them, conversing among themselves over their coffee 
 all but the sheik. 
 
 The sheik had been instantly struck by the fair young 
 English girl. His sinister eyes hung constantly upon her, 
 shifting only when she regarded him, furtively returning 
 when she ceased. When they left the cafe, the sheik arose 
 and placed himself partly in the girl's way. She paused 
 while his dark eyes caught and held hers. A long moment 
 went before she seemed able to free herself from the hypnotic 
 tension he put upon her. Then he bowed low, and the girl 
 with a nervous laugh passed him. 
 
 It could be seen that the sheik meant her no good. He 
 stepped to the door and looked after the group. There was 
 evil purpose in his gaze. 
 
 Merton Gill recalled something of Henshaw's words the 
 first day he had eaten at the cafeteria: "They find this 
 deserted tomb just at nightfall, and he's alone there with 
 
134 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 the girl, and he could do anything, but the kick for the 
 audience is that he's a gentleman and never lays a finger on 
 her." 
 
 This would be the story. Probably the sheik would now 
 arrange with the old gentleman in the sun-hat to guide the 
 party over the desert, and would betray them in order to 
 get the beautiful girl into his power. Of course there would 
 be a kick for the audience when the young fellow proved 
 to be a gentleman in the deserted tomb for a whole night 
 any moving-picture audience would expect him under these 
 propitious circumstances to be quite otherwise, if the girl 
 were as beautiful as this one. But there would surely be a 
 greater kick when the sheik found them in the tomb and 
 bore the girl off on his camel, after a fight in which the 
 gentleman was momentarily worsted. But the girl would 
 be rescued in time. And probably the piece would be called 
 Desert Passion. 
 
 He wished he could know the ending of the story. Indeed 
 he sincerely wished he could work in it to the end, not alone 
 because he was curious about the fate of the young girl in the 
 bad sheik's power. Undoubtedly the sheik would not prove 
 to be a gentleman, but Merton would like to work to the end 
 of the story because he had no place to sleep and but little 
 assurance of wholesome food. Yet this, it appeared, was 
 not to be. Already word had run among the extra people. 
 Those hired to-day were to be used for to-day only. To- 
 morrow the desert drama would unfold without them. 
 
 Still, he had a day's pay coming. This time, though, 
 it would be but five dollars his dress suit had not been 
 needed. And five dollars would appease Mrs. Patterson 
 for another week. Yet what would be the good of sleeping 
 if he had nothing to eat? He was hungry now. Thin soup, 
 ever so plenteously spiced with catsup, was inadequate prov- 
 ender for a working artist. He knew, even as he sat there 
 cross-legged, an apparently self-supporting and care-free 
 Bedouin, that this ensuing five dollars would never be seen 
 by Mrs. Pattersoa, 
 
"NOTHING TO-DAY, DEAR!" 135 
 
 There were a few more shots of the cafe's interior during 
 which one of the inmates carefully permitted his half-con- 
 sumed cigarette to go out. After that a few more shots of 
 the lively street which, it was now learned, was a street in 
 Cairo. Earnest efforts were made by the throngs in these 
 scenes to give the murderous camel plenty of head room* 
 Some close-ups were taken of the European tourists while 
 they bargained with a native merchant for hammered brass- 
 ware and rare shawls. 
 
 The bad sheik was caught near the group bending an evil 
 glare upon the beauteous English girl, and once the camera 
 turned while she faced him with a little shiver of apprehen- 
 sion. Later the sheik was caught bargaining for a camel 
 train with the innocent-looking old gentleman in the sun-hat. 
 Undoubtedly the sheik was about to lead them into the desert 
 for no good purpose. A dreadful fate seemed in store for 
 the girl, but she must be left to face it without the support 
 of Merton Gill. 
 
 The lately hired extras were now dismissed. They trooped 
 back to the dressing room to doff their flowing robes and re- 
 move the Bedouin make-up. Merton Gill went from the 
 dressing room to the little window through which he had 
 received his robe and his slip was returned to him signed 
 by the assistant director. It had now become a paper of 
 value, even to Mrs. Patterson; but she was never to know 
 this, for its owner went down the street to another window 
 and relinquished it for a five-dollar bill. 
 
 The bill was adorned with a portrait of Benjamin Harrison 
 
 smugly radiating prosperity from every hair in his beard. 
 
 He was clearly one who had never gone hungry nor betrayed 
 
 the confidence of a society woman counting upon her room 
 
 rent strictly in advance. The portrait of this successful 
 
 man was borne swiftly to the cafeteria where its present 
 
 t- lavisli!/ V^ned a tray with excellent food and hastened 
 
 it to a table. He ate with but slight regard for his 
 
 oirroundings. Beukih Baxter herself might have occupied 
 
 a neighbouring table without coming to his notice at once. 
 
136 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 He was very hungry. The catsup-laden soup had proved 
 to be little more than an appetizer. 
 
 In his first ardour he forgot his plight. It was not until 
 later in the meal that the accusing face of Mrs. Patterson 
 came between him and the last of his stew which he secured 
 with blotters of bread. Even then he ignored the woman. 
 He had other things to think of. He had to think of where 
 he should sleep that night. But for once he had eaten 
 enough; his optimism was again enthroned. 
 
 Sleeping, after all, was not like eating. There were more 
 ways to manage it. The law of sleep would in time enforce 
 itself, while eating did nothing of the sort. You might sleep 
 for nothing, but someone had to be paid if you ate. He 
 cheerfully paid eighty cents for his repast. The catsup as 
 an appetizer had been ruinous. 
 
 It was late in the afternoon when he left the cafeteria and 
 the cheerful activities of the lot were drawing to a close. 
 Extra people from the various stages were hurrying to the 
 big dressing room, whence they would presently stream, 
 slips in hand, toward the cashier's window. Belated princi- 
 pals came in from their work to resume their choice street 
 garments and be driven off in choice motor cars. 
 
 Merton Gill in deep thought traversed the street between 
 the big stages and the dressing rooms. Still in deep thought 
 he retraced his steps, and at the front office turned off to the 
 right on a road that led to the deserted street of the Western 
 town. His head bowed in thought he went down this silent 
 thoroughfare, his footsteps echoing along the way lined by 
 the closed shops. The Happy Days Saloon and Joe Buy or 
 Sell, the pool-room and the restaurant, alike slept for want 
 of custom. He felt again the eeriness of this desertion, and 
 hurried on past the silent places. 
 
 Emerging from the lower end of this street he came upon 
 a log cabin where activity still survive^ 7 : o!ncci the 
 group before its door. Inside two cameras were recc 
 some drama of the rude frontier. O\er glowing co? 1 
 the stone fireplace a beautiful young giri prepared food in 
 
"NOTHING TO-DAY, DEAR!" 137 
 
 a long-handled frying pan. At a table in the room's centre 
 two bearded miners seemed to be appraising a buckskin 
 pouch of nuggets, pouring them from hand to hand. A 
 candle stuck in a bottle flickered beside them. They were 
 honest, kindly faced miners, roughly dressed and heavily 
 bearded, but it could be seen that they had hearts of gold. 
 The beautiful young girl, who wore a simple dress of blue 
 calico, and whose hair hung about her fair face in curls of a 
 radiant buff, now served them food and poured steaming 
 coffee from a large pot. 
 
 The miners seemed loth to eat, being excited by the gold 
 nuggets. They must have struck it rich that day, Merton 
 Gill divined, and now with wealth untold they would be 
 planning to send the girl East to school. They both patted 
 her affectionately, keeping from her the great surprise they 
 had in store. 
 
 The girl was arch with them, and prettily kissed each upon 
 his bald head. Merton at once saw that she would be the 
 daughter of neither; she would be their ward. And perhaps 
 they weren't planning to send her to school. Perhaps they 
 were going to send her to fashionable relatives in the East, 
 where she would unwittingly become the rival of her beauti- 
 ful but cold-hearted cousin for the hand of a rich young 
 stock-broker, and be ill-treated and long for the old miners 
 who would get word of it and buy some fine clothes from 
 Joe Buy or Sell, and go East to the consternation of the 
 rich relatives and see that their little mountain flower was 
 treated right. 
 
 As he identified this photo-play he studied the interior 
 of the cabin, the rough table at which the three now ate, the 
 makeshift Chan's, the rifle over the fireplace, the picks and 
 shovels, the shelf along the wall with its crude dishes, the 
 calico curtain screening off what would be the dressing room 
 of the little mountain flower. It was a home-like room, for 
 all its roughness. Along one wall were two bunks, one above 
 the other, well supplied with blankets. 
 
 The director, after a final shot of one of the miners being 
 
138 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 scalded by his coffee which he drank from a saucer, had 
 s* id, "All right, boys ! We'll have the fight first thing in the 
 morning/ 7 
 
 Merton Gill passed on. He didn't quite know what the 
 fight would be about. Surely the two miners wouldn't 
 fight. Perhaps another miner of loose character would come 
 along and try to jump their claim, or attempt some dirty 
 work with the little girl. Something like that. He carried 
 with him the picture of the homey little interior, the fire- 
 place with its cooking utensils, the two bunks with their 
 ample stock of blankets the crude door closed with a 
 wooden bar and a leather latch-string, which hung trustfully 
 outside. 
 
 In other circumstances chiefly those in which Merton 
 Gill had now been the prominent figure in the film world he 
 meant one day to become he would on this night have un- 
 doubtedly won public attention for his mysterious disap- 
 pearance. The modest room in the Patterson home, to 
 which for three months he had unfailingly come after the 
 first picture show, on this night went untenanted. The 
 guardian at the Holden gate would have testified that he had 
 not passed out that way, and the way through the offices 
 had been closed at five, subsequent to which hour several 
 witnesses could have sworn to seeing him still on the lot. 
 In the ensuing search even the tank at the lower end of the 
 lot might have been dragged without result. 
 
 Being little known to the public, however, and in the 
 Patterson home it being supposed that you could never tell 
 about motion-picture actors, his disappearance for the night 
 caused absolutely no slightest ripple. Public attention as 
 regarded the young man remained at a mirror-like calm, 
 unflawed by even the mildest curiosity. He had been seen, 
 perhaps, though certainly not noted with any interest, to 
 be one of the group watching a night scene in front of one 
 of the Fifth Avenue mansions. 
 
 Lights shone from the draped windows of this mansion 
 and from its portals issued none other than Muriel Mercer, 
 
"NOTHING TO-DAY, DEAR!" 139 
 
 who, as Vera Vanderpool, freed at last from the blight of 
 Broadway, was leaving her palatial home to cast her lot 
 finally with the ardent young tenement worker with the high 
 forehead. She descended the brown-stone steps, paused 
 once to look back upon the old home where she had been 
 taught to love pleasure above the worth-while things of life, 
 then came on to the waiting limousine, being greeted here 
 by the young man with the earnest forehead who had won 
 her to the better way. 
 
 The missing youth might later have been observed, but 
 probably was not, walking briskly in the chill night toward 
 the gate that led to the outer world. But he wheeled 
 abruptly before reaching this gate, and walked again briskly, 
 this time debouching from the main thoroughfare into the 
 black silence of the Western village. Here his pace slack- 
 ened, and halfway down the street he paused irresolutely. 
 He was under the wooden porch of the Fashion Restaurant 
 Give our Tamales a Trial. He lingered here but a mo- 
 ment, however, then lurked on down the still thoroughfare, 
 keeping well within the shadow of the low buildings. Just 
 beyond the street was the log cabin of the big-hearted 
 miners. A moment later he could not have been observed 
 even by the keenest eye. 
 
 Nothing marked his disappearance, at least nothing that 
 would have been noted by the casual minded. He had 
 simply gone. He was now no more than the long-vanished 
 cowboys and sheriffs and gamblers and petty tradesmen who 
 had once peopled, this street of silence and desolation. 
 
 A night watchman came walking presently, flashing an 
 electric torch from side to side. He noticed nothing. He 
 was, indeed, a rather imaginative man, and he hoped he would 
 not notice anything. He did not like coming down this 
 ghostly street, which his weak mind would persist in peopling 
 with phantom crowds from long-played picture dramas. 
 It gav^ him the creeps, as he had more than once confessed. 
 He hurried on, flashing his torch along the blind fronts of 
 the shops in a perfunctory manner. He was especially 
 
140 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 nervous when he came to corners. And he was glad when 
 he issued from the little street into the wider one that was 
 well lighted. 
 
 How could he have been expected to notice a very trifling 
 incongruous detail as he passed the log cabin? Indeed 
 many a keener-eyed and entirely valorous night watchman 
 might have neglected to observe that the leathern latch-string 
 of the cabin's closed door was no longer hanging outside. 
 
CHAPTER VHI 
 
 CLIFFORD ARMYTAGE, THE OUTLAW 
 
 DAWN brought the wide stretches of the Holden lot 
 into gray relief. It lightened the big yellow stages 
 and crept down the narrow street of the Western 
 town where only the ghosts of dead plays stalked. It bur- 
 nished the rich fronts of the Fifth Avenue mansions and 
 in the next block illumined the rough sides of a miner's 
 cabin. 
 
 With more difficulty it seeped through the blurred glass 
 of the one window in this structure and lightened the shadows 
 of its interior to a pale gray. The long-handled frying-pan 
 rested on the hearth where the little girl had left it. The 
 dishes of the overnight meal were still on the table; the vacant 
 chairs sprawled about it; and the rifle was in its place above 
 the rude mantel; the picks and shovels awaited the toil of a 
 new day. All seemed as it had been when the director had 
 closed the door upon it the previous night. 
 
 But then the blankets in the lower bunk were seen to heave 
 and to be thrust back from the pale face of Merton Gill. 
 An elbow came into play, and the head was raised. A gaze 
 still vague with sleep travelled about the room in dull alarm. 
 He was waking up in his little room at the Patterson house 
 and he couldn't make it look right. He rubbed his eyes 
 vigorously and pushed himself farther up. His mind re- 
 sumed its broken threads. He was where he had meant to 
 be from the moment he had spied the blankets in those 
 bunks. 
 
 In quicker alarm, now, he reached for his watch. Perhaps 
 he had slept too late and would be discovered arrested, 
 
 HI 
 
142 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 jailed! He found his watch on the floor beside the bunk. 
 Seven o'clock. He was safe. He could dress at leisure, 
 and presently be an early-arriving actor on the Holden lot. 
 He wondered how soon he could get food at the cafeteria. 
 Sleeping in this mountain cabin had cursed him with a rav- 
 enous appetite, as if he had indeed been far off in the keen 
 air of the North Woods. 
 
 He crept from the warm blankets, and from under the 
 straw mattress in which one of the miners had hidden the 
 pouch of nuggets he took his newly pressed trousers. 
 Upon a low bench across the room was a battered tin wash- 
 basin, a bucket of water brought by the little girl from the 
 spring, and a bar of yellow soap. He made a quick toilet, 
 and at seven-thirty, a good hour before the lot would wake 
 up, he was dressed and at the door. 
 
 It might be chancy, opening that door; so he peered 
 through a narrow crack at first, listening intently. He could 
 hear nothing and no one was in sight. He pushed the latch- 
 string through its hole, then opened the door enough to emit 
 his slender shape. 
 
 A moment later, ten feet from the closed door, he stood 
 at ease, scanning the log cabin as one who, passing by, had 
 been attracted by its quaint architecture. Then glancing 
 in both directions to be again sure that he was unobserved, 
 he walked away from his new home. 
 
 He did not slink furtively. He took the middle of the 
 street and there was a bit of swagger to his gait. He felt 
 rather set up about this adventure. He reached what might 
 have been called the lot's civic centre and cast a patronizing 
 eye along the ends of the big stages and the long, low dressing- 
 room building across from them. Before the open door of the 
 warehouse he paused to watch a truck being loaded with 
 handsome furniture a drawing room was evidently to be 
 set on one of the stages. Rare rugs and beautiful chairs 
 and tables were carefully brought out. He had rather a 
 superintending air as he watched this process. He might 
 have been taken for the owner of these costly things, watch- 
 
CLIFFORD AEMYTAGE, THE OUTLAW 143 
 
 ing to see that no harm befell them. He strolled on when 
 the truck had received its load. Such people as he had met 
 were only artisans, carpenters, electricians, property-men. 
 He faced them all confidently, with glances of slightly amused 
 tolerance. They were good men in their way but they were 
 not actors not artists. 
 
 In the neatly landscaped little green place back of the 
 ofnce building a climbing rose grew on a trellis. He plucked 
 a pink bu;!, fixed it in his lapel, and strolled down the street 
 past the dressing rooms. Across from these the doors of 
 the big stages were slid back, and inside he could see that 
 sets were being assembled. The truckload of furniture came 
 to one of these doors and he again watched it as the stuff 
 was carried inside. 
 
 For all these workmen knew, he might presently be earn- 
 ing a princely salary as he acted amid these beautiful objects, 
 perhaps attending a reception in a Fifth Avenue mansion 
 where the father of a beautiful New York society girl would 
 tell him that he must first make good before he could aspire 
 to her hand. And he would make good out there in the 
 great open spaces, where the girl would come to him after 
 many adventures and where they would settle to an untrou- 
 bled future in the West they both loved. 
 
 He had slept; he knew where with luck he could sleep 
 again; and he had money in his pocket for several more 
 ample meals. At this moment he felt equal to anything. 
 
 No more than pleasantly aware of his hunger, sharpened 
 by the walk in this keen morning air, he made a nonchalant 
 progress toward the cafeteria. Motor cars were now stream- 
 ing through the gate, disgorging other actors trim young 
 men and beautiful young women who must hurry to the 
 dressing rooms while he could sit at ease in a first-class 
 cafeteria and eat heavily of sustaining foods. Inside he chose 
 from the restricted menu offered by the place at this early 
 hour and ate in a leisurely, almost condescending manner. 
 Half-a-dozen other early comers wolfed their food as if they 
 feared to be late for work, but he suffered no such anxiety. 
 
144 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 He consumed the last morsel that his tray held, drained his 
 cup of coffee, and jingled the abundant silver coin in his 
 pocket. 
 
 True, underneath it, as he plumed himself upon his ad- 
 venture, was a certain pestering consciousness that all was 
 not so well with him as observers might guess. But he 
 resolutely put this away each time it threatened to over- 
 whelm him. He would cross no bridge until he came to it. 
 He even combated this undercurrent of sanity by wording 
 part of an interview with himself some day to appear in 
 Photo Land: 
 
 "Clifford Armytage smiled that rare smile which his 
 Admirers have found so winning on the silver screen a 
 smile reminiscent, tender, eloquent of adversities happily 
 surmounted. 'Yes,' he said frankly in the mellow tones that 
 are his, 'I guess there were times when I almost gave up the 
 struggle. I recall one spell, not so many years ago, when I 
 camped informally on the Holden lot, sleeping where I could 
 find a bed and stinting myself in food to eke out my little 
 savings. Yet I look back upon that time' he mischie- 
 vously pulled the ears of the magnificent Great Dane that 
 lolled at his feet 'as one of the happiest in my career, be- 
 cause I always knew that my day would come. I had done 
 only a few little bits, but they had stood out, and the di- 
 rectors had noticed me. Not once did I permit myself to 
 become discouraged, and so I say to your readers who may 
 feel that they have in them the stuff for truly creative screen 
 art '" 
 
 He said it, dreaming above the barren tray, said it as 
 Harold Parmalee had said it in a late interview extorted 
 from him by Augusta Blivens for the refreshment of his host 
 of admirers who read Photo Land. He was still saying it as 
 he paid his check at the counter, breaking off only to reflect 
 that fifty-five cents was a good deal to be paying for food so 
 early in the day. For of course he must eat again before 
 seeking shelter of the humble miner's cabin. 
 
 It occurred to him that the blankets might be gone by 
 
CLIFFORD ARMYTAGE, THE OUTLAW 145 
 
 nightfall. He hoped they would have trouble with the fight 
 scene. He hoped there would be those annoying delays that 
 so notoriously added to the cost of producing the screen 
 drama long waits, when no -one seemed to know what was 
 being waited for, and bored actors lounged about in apathy, 
 He hoped the fight would be a long fight. You needed 
 blankets even in sunny California. 
 
 He went out to pass an enlivening day, fairly free of mis- 
 giving. He found an abundance of entertainment. On 
 one stage he overlooked for hah* an hour a fragment of the 
 desert drama which he had assisted the previous day. A 
 covered incline led duskily down to the deserted tomb in 
 which the young man and the beautiful English girl were to 
 take shelter for the night. They would have eluded the 
 bad sheik for a little while, and in the tomb the young man 
 would show himself to be a gentleman by laying not so much 
 as a finger upon the defenceless girl. 
 
 But this soon palled upon the watching connoisseur. The 
 actual shots were few and separated by barren intervals of 
 waiting for that mysterious something which photoplays 
 in production seemed to need. Being no longer identified 
 with this drama he had lost much of his concern over the 
 fate in store for the girl, though he knew she would emerge 
 from the ordeal as pure as she was beautiful a bit foolisb 
 at moments, perhaps, but good. 
 
 He found that he was especially interested in bedroom 
 scenes. On Stage Four a sumptuous bedroom, vacant for th? 
 moment, enchained him for a long period of contemplation. 
 The bed was of some rare wood ornately carved, with a silken 
 canopy, spread with finest linen and quilts of down, its 
 pillows opulent in their embroidered cases. The hide of a 
 polar bear, its head mounted with open jaws, spread over the 
 rich rug beside the bed. He wondered about this interest- 
 ingly. Probably the stage would be locked at night. Still, 
 at a suitable hour, he could descreetly find out. 
 
 On another stage a bedroom likewise intrigued him, 
 though this was a squalid room in a tenement and the bed 
 
146 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 was a cheap thing sparsely covered and in sad disorder. 
 People were working on this set, and he presently identified 
 the play, for Muriel Mercer in a neat black dress entered to 
 bring comfort to the tenement dwellers. But this play, too, 
 had ceased to interest him. He knew that Vera Vanderpool 
 had escaped the blight of Broadway to choose the worth- 
 while, the true, the vital things of Me, and that was about all 
 he now cared to know of the actual play. This tenement 
 bed had become for him its outstanding dramatic value. 
 He saw himself in it for a good night's rest, waking refreshed 
 in plenty of time to be dressed and out before the tenement 
 people would need it. He must surely learn if the big sliding 
 doors to these stages were locked overnight. 
 
 He loitered about the stages until late afternoon, with 
 especial attention to sleeping apartments. In one gripping 
 drama he felt cheated. The set showed the elaborately 
 fitted establishment of a fashionable modiste. Mannequins 
 in wondrous gowns came through parted curtains to parade 
 before the shop's clientele, mostly composed of society but- 
 terflies. One man hovered attentive about the most beauti- 
 ful of these, and whispered entertainingly as she scanned 
 the gowns submitted to her choice. He was a dissolute-look- 
 ing man, although faultlessly arrayed. His hair was thin, 
 his eyes were cruel, and his face bespoke self-indulgence. 
 
 The expert Merton Gill* at once detected that the beautiful 
 young woman he whispered to would be one of those light- 
 headed wives who care more for fashionable dress than for 
 the good name of their husbands. He foresaw that the crea- 
 ture would be trapped into the power of this villain by her 
 love of finery, though he was sure that the end would find 
 her still a good woman. The mannequins finished their 
 parade and the throng of patrons broke up. The cameras 
 were pushed to an adjoining room where the French propri- 
 etor of the place figured at a desk. The dissolute pleasure- 
 seeker came back to question him. His errant fancy had 
 been caught by one of the mannequins the most beautiful 
 of them, a blonde with a flowerlike face and a figure whose 
 
CLIFFORD ARMYTAGE, THE OUTLAW 147 
 
 perfection had been boldly attested by the gowns she had 
 worn. The unprincipled proprietor at once demanded from 
 a severe-faced forewoman that this girl be sent for, after which 
 he discreetly withdrew. The waiting scoundrel sat and com- 
 placently pinched the ends of his small dark mustache. It 
 could be seen that he was one of those who believe that 
 money will buy anything. 
 
 The fair girl entered and was leeringly entreated to go out 
 to dinner with him. It appeared that she never went out to 
 dinner with any one, but spent her evenings with her mother 
 who was very, very ill. Her unworthy admirer persisted. 
 Then the telephone on the manager's desk called her. Her 
 mother was getting worse. The beautiful face was now 
 suffused with agony, but this did not deter the man from 
 his loathsome advances. There was another telephone call. 
 She must come at once if she were to see her mother alive. 
 The man seized her. They struggled. All seemed lost, 
 even the choice gown she still wore; but she broke away 
 to be told over the telephone that her mother had died. 
 Even this sad news made no impression upon the wretch. 
 He seemed to be a man of one idea. Again he seized her, 
 and the maddened girl stabbed him with a pair of long gleam- 
 ing shears that had lain on the manager's desk. He fell 
 lifeless at her feet, while the girl stared in horror at the 
 weapon she still grasped. 
 
 Merton Gill would not have lingered for this. There were 
 tedious waits, and scenes must be rehearsed again and again. 
 Even the agony of the girl as she learned of her mother's 
 passing must be done over and over at the insistence of a 
 director who seemed to know what a young girl should feel at 
 these moments. But Merton had watched from his place 
 back of the lights with fresh interest from the moment it was 
 known that the girl's poor old mother was an invalid, for he 
 had at first believed that the mother's bedroom would be 
 near by. He left promptly when it became apparent that 
 the mother's bedroom would not be seen in this drama. 
 They would probably show the doctor at the other telephone 
 
148 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 urging the girl to hurry home, and show him again announo * 
 ing that all was over, but the expense of mother and her 
 deathbed had been saved. He cared little for the ending of 
 this play. Already he was becoming a little callous to the 
 plight of beautiful young girls threatened with the loss of that 
 which they held most dear. 
 
 Purposely all day he had avoided the neighbourhood of 
 his humble miner's home. He thought it as well that he 
 should not be seen much around there. He ate again at four 
 o'clock, heartily and rather expensively, and loafed about the 
 stages until six. Then he strolled leisurely down the village 
 street and out the lower end to where he could view the cabin. 
 Work for the day was plainly over. The director and his 
 assistant lingered before the open door in consultation. A 
 property man and an electrician were engaged inside, but a 
 glance as he passed showed that the blankets were still in the 
 bunks. He did not wait to see more, but passed on with all 
 evidences of disinterest in this lowly abode. 
 
 He ascertained that night that the fight must have been 
 had. The table was overturned, one of the chairs wrecked, 
 and there were other signs of disorder. Probably it had been 
 an excellent fight; probably these primitive men of the woods 
 had battled desperately. But he gave little consideration to 
 the combat, and again slept warmly under the blankets. 
 Perhaps they would fight again to-morrow, or perhaps there 
 would be less violent bits of the drama that would secure 
 him another night of calm repose. 
 
 The following morning found him slightly disturbed by two 
 unforeseen needs arising from his novel situation. He looked 
 carefully at his collar, wondering how many days he would 
 be able to keep it looking like a fresh collar, and he regretted 
 that he had not brought his safety-razor to this new home. 
 Still the collar was in excellent shape as yet, and a scrutiny of 
 his face in the cracked mirror hanging on the log wall de- 
 termined that he could go at least another day without shav- 
 ing. His beard was of a light growth, gentle in texture, and 
 he was yet far from the plight of Mr. Montague. Eventually, 
 
CLIFFORD ARMYTAGE, THE OUTLAW 149 
 
 to be sure, he would have to go to the barber shop on the lot 
 and pay money to be shaved, which seemed a pity, because 
 an actor could live indefinitely wntfhaven but could lire with- 
 out food for the merest fragment of tune. 
 
 He resolved to be on the lookout that day for a barber-shop 
 set. He believed they were not common in the photodrama, 
 still one might be found. 
 
 He limited himself to the lightest of breakfasts. He had 
 timidly refrained from counting his silver but he knew he 
 must be frugal. He rejoiced at this economy until late after- 
 noon when, because of it, he simply had to eat a heavier 
 dinner than he had expected to need. There was something 
 so implacable about this demand for food. If you skimped 
 in the morning you must make amends at the next meal. He 
 passed the time as on the previous day, a somewhat blase actor 
 resting between pictures, and condescending to beguile the 
 tedium by overlooking the efforts of his professional brethren. 
 He could find no set that included a barber shop, although 
 they were beds on every hand. He hoped for another night 
 in the cabin, but if that were not to be, there was a bed easy 
 of access on Stage Three. When he had observed it, a ghastly 
 old father was coughing out his life under its blankets, nursed 
 only by his daughter, a beautiful young creature who sewed 
 by his bedside, and who would doubtless be thrown upon the 
 world in the very next reel, though Merton was glad to 
 note probably not until the next day. 
 
 Yet there was no need for this couch of the tubercular 
 father, for action in the little cabin was still on. After 
 making the unhappy discovery in the cafeteria that his 
 appetite could not be hoodwinked by the clumsy subterfuge 
 of calling coffee and rolls a breakfast some six hours pre- 
 viously, he went boldly down to stand before his home. 
 Both miners were at work inside. The room had been 
 placed in order again, though the little mountain flower was 
 gone. A letter, he gathered, had been received from her, 
 and one of the miners was about to leave on a long journey. 
 
 Merton could not be sure, but he supposed that the letter 
 
150 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 from the little girl told that she was unhappy in her new 
 surroundings, perhaps being ill-treated by the supercilious 
 Eastern relatives. The miner who was to remain helped the 
 other to pack his belongings in a quaint old carpet sack, and 
 together they undid a bundle which proved to contain a 
 splendid new suit. Not only this, but now came a scene of 
 eloquent appeal to the watcher outside the door. The 
 miner who was to remain expressed stern disapproval of 
 the departing miner's beard. It would never do, he was 
 seen to intimate, and when the other miner portrayed help- 
 lessness a new package was unwrapped and a safety razor 
 revealed to his shocked gaze. 
 
 At this sight Merton Gill felt himself growing too emotional 
 for a mere careless bystander, and withdrew to a distance 
 where he could regain better control of himself. When he 
 left the miner to be shorn was betraying comic dismay while 
 the other pantomimed the correct use of the implement his 
 thoughfulness had provided. When he returned after half- 
 an-hour's rather nervous walk up another street, the depart- 
 ing miner was clean shaven and one might note the new 
 razor glittering on the low bench beside the battered tin 
 basin. 
 
 They worked late in his home that night; trifling scenes 
 were taken and retaken. The departing miner had to dress 
 in his splendid but ill-fitting new garments and to bid an 
 affectionate farewell to his partner, then had to dress in his 
 old clothes again for some bit that had been forgotten, only to 
 don the new suit for close-ups. At another time Merton Gill 
 might have resented this tediously drawn-out affair which 
 was keeping him from his rest, for he had come to look upon 
 this structure as one having rights in it after a certain hour, 
 but a sight of the razor which had not been touched allayed 
 any possible feeling of irritation. 
 
 It was nine-thirty before the big lights jarred finally off and 
 the director said, "That's all, boys." Then he turned to call, 
 " Jimmie! Hey, Jimmie! Where's that prop-rustler gone to 
 now?" 
 
CLIFFORD AEMYTAGE, THE OUTLAW 151 
 
 "Here, Mr. Burke, yes, sir." 
 
 "We've finished the shack stuff. Let's see " He 
 
 looked at the watch on his wrist "That'll be all for to-night. 
 Strike this first thing to-morrow morning." 
 
 "Yes, sir," said Jimmie. The door was closed and the 
 men walked away. Merton trailed them a bit, not remain- 
 ing too pointedly near the cabin. He circled around through 
 Fifth Avenue to regain the place. 
 
 Softly he let himself in and groped through the dark until 
 his hand closed upon the abandoned razor. Satisfying him- 
 self that fresh blades had accompanied it, he made ready for 
 bed. He knew it was to be his last night in this shelter. The 
 director had told Jimmie to strike it first thing in the morning. 
 The cabin would still be there, but it would contain no homely 
 furniture, no chairs, no table, no wash-basin, no safety-razor 
 and, most vital of lacks it would be devoid of blankets. 
 
 Yet this knowledge did not dismay him. He slept peace- 
 fully after praying that something good would happen to him. 
 He put it that way very simply. He had placed himself, it 
 seemed, where things could only happen to him. He was, 
 he felt, beyond bringing them about. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 MORE WAYS THAN ONE 
 
 EARLY he was up to bathe and shave. He shaved 
 close to make it last longer, until his tender face 
 reddened under the scraping. Probably he would 
 not find another cabin in which a miner would part with his 
 beard for an Eastern trip. Probably he would have to go to 
 the barber the next tune. He also succeeded, with soap and 
 water, in removing a stain from his collar. It was still a 
 decent collar; not immaculate, perhaps, but entirely possible. 
 
 This day he took eggs with his breakfast, intending to 
 wheedle his appetite with a lighter second meal than it had 
 demanded the day before. He must see if this would not 
 average better on the day's overhead. 
 
 After breakfast he was irresistibly drawn to view the mov- 
 ing picture of his old home being dismantled. He knew now 
 that he might stand brazenly there without possible criticism. 
 He found Jimmy and a companion property-boy already 
 busy. Much of the furniture was outside to be carted away. 
 Jimmy, as Merton lolled idly in the doorway, emptied the 
 blackened coffee pot into the ashes of the fireplace and then 
 proceeded to spoon into the same refuse heap half a kettle of 
 beans upon which the honest miners had once feasted. The 
 watcher deplored that he had not done more than taste the 
 beans when he had taken his final survey of the place this 
 morning. They had been good beans, but to do more than 
 taste them would have been stealing. Now he saw them 
 thrown away and regretted that he could not have known 
 what their fate was to be. There had been enough of them 
 to save him a day's expenses. 
 
 152 
 
MORE WAYS THAN ONE 153 
 
 He stood aside as the two boys brought out the cooking 
 utensils, the rifle, the miners' tools, to stow them in a waiting 
 handcart. When they had loaded this vehicle they trundled 
 it on up the narrow street of the Western town. Yet they 
 went only a little way, halting before one of the street's 
 largest buildings. A sign above its wooden porch flaunted 
 the name Crystal Palace Hotel. They unlocked its front 
 door and took the things from the cart inside. 
 
 From the street the watcher could see them stowing these 
 away. The room appeared to contain a miscellaneous 
 collection of articles needed in the ruder sort of photodrama. 
 Emptying their cart, they returned with it to the cabin for 
 another load. Merton Gill stepped to the doorway and 
 peered in from apparently idle curiosity. He could see a row 
 of saddles on wooden supports; there were kitchen stoves, 
 lamps, painted chairs, and heavy earthenware dishes on 
 shelves. His eyes wandered over these articles until they 
 came to rest upon a pile of blankets at one side of the room. 
 They were neatly folded, and they were many. 
 
 Down before the cabin he could see the handcart being 
 reloaded by Jimmie and his helper. Otherwise the street 
 was empty. The young man at the doorway stepped lightly 
 in and regarded the windows on either side of the door. He 
 sauntered to the street and appeared to be wondering what he 
 would examine next in this curious world. He passed 
 Jimmie and the other boy returning with the last load from 
 the cabin. He noted at the top of the load the mattress on 
 which he had lain for three nights and the blankets that had 
 warmed him. But he was proved not to be so helpless as he 
 had thought. Again he knew where a good night's rest might 
 be had by one using ordinary discretion. 
 
 Again that day, the fourth of his double life, he went the 
 mad pace, a well-fed, carefree youth, sauntering idly from 
 stage to stage, regarding nonchalantly the joys and griefs, the 
 twistings of human destiny there variously unfolded. Not 
 only was he this to the casual public notice; to himself he was 
 this, at least consciously. True, in those nether regions of 
 
154 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 the mind so lately discovered and now being so expertly 
 probed by Science, in the mind's dark basement, so to say, a 
 certain unlovely fronted dragon of reality would issue from 
 the gloom where it seemed to have been lurking and force 
 itself upon his notice. 
 
 This would be at oddly contented moments when he least 
 feared the future, when he was most successfully being to 
 himself all that he must seem to others. At such times when 
 he leisure^ walked a world of plenty and fruition, the dragon 
 would half -emerge from its subconscious lair to chill him with 
 its head composed entirely of repellent facts. Then a stout 
 effort would be required to send the thing back where it 
 belonged, to those lower, decently hidden levels of the mind- 
 life. 
 
 And the dragon was cunning. From hour to hour, growing 
 more restive, it employed devices of craft and subtlety. As 
 when Merton Gill, carefree to the best of his knowledge, 
 strolling lightly to another point of interest, graciously 
 receptive to the pleasant life about him, would suddenly dis- 
 cover that a part of his mind without superintendence had 
 for some moments been composing a letter, something that 
 ran in effect : 
 
 "Mr. Gashwiler, dear sir, I have made certain changes in 
 my plans since I first came to sunny California and getting 
 quite a little homesick for good old Simsbury and I thought I 
 would write you about taking back my old job in the em- 
 porium, and now about the money for the ticket back to 
 Simsbury, the railroad fare is " 
 
 He was truly amazed when he found this sort of thing 
 going on in that part of his mind he didn't watch. It was 
 scandalous. He would indignantly snatch the half-finished 
 letter and tear it up each time he found it unaccountably 
 under way. 
 
 It was surely funny the way your mind would keep doing 
 things you didn't want it to do. As, again, this very morning 
 when, with his silver coin out in his hand, he had merely 
 wished to regard it as a great deal of silver coin, a store of 
 
MORE WAYS THAN ONE 155 
 
 plenty against famine, which indeed it looked to be under a 
 not-too-minute scrutiny. It looked like as much as two 
 dollars and fifty cents, and he would have preferred to pocket 
 it again with this impression. Yet that rebellious other part 
 of his mind had basely counted the coin even while he eyed 
 it approvingly, and it had persisted in shouting aloud that it 
 was not two dollars and fifty cents but one dollar and eighty- 
 five cents. 
 
 The counting part of the mind made no comment on this 
 discrepancy; it did not say that this discovery put things 
 in a very different light. It merely counted, registered the 
 result, and ceased to function, with an air of saying that it 
 would ascertain the facts without prejudice and you could do 
 what you liked about them. It didn't care. 
 
 That night a solitary guest enjoyed the quiet hospitality of 
 the Crystal Palace Hotel. He might have been seen but 
 was not to effect a late evening entrance to this snug inn 
 by means of a front window which had, it would seem, at 
 some earlier hour of the day, been unfastened from within. 
 Here a not-too-luxurious but sufficing bed was contrived on 
 the floor of the lobby from a pile of neatly folded blankets at 
 hand, and a second night's repose was enjoyed by the lonely 
 patron, who again at an early hour of the morning, after 
 thoughtfully refolding the blankets that had protected him, 
 was at some pains to leave the place as he had entered it 
 without attracting public notice, perchance of unpleasant 
 character. 
 
 On this day it would not have been possible for any part of 
 the mind whatsoever to mis value the remaining treasure of 
 silver coin. It had become inconsiderable, and even if kept 
 from view could be, and was, counted again and again by 
 mere blind fingertips. They contracted, indeed, a senseless 
 habit of confining themselves in a trouser's pocket to count 
 the half -dollar, the quarter, and the two dimes long after the 
 total was too well known to its owner. 
 
 Nor did this total, unimpressive at best, long retain even 
 these poor dimensions. A visit to the cafeteria, in response 
 
156 MEETON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 to the imperious demands of a familiar organic process, re- 
 sulted in less labour, by two dimes, for the stubbornly reiter- 
 ative fingertips. An ensuing visit to the Holden lot barber, 
 in obedience to social demands construed to be equally 
 imperious with the physical, reduced all subsequent counting, 
 whether by fingertips or a glance of the eye, to barest me- 
 chanical routine. A single half-dollar is easy to count. 
 Still, on the following morning there were two coins to count. 
 True, both were dimes. 
 
 A diligent search among the miscellany of the Crystal 
 Palace Hotel had failed to reveal a single razor. The razor 
 used by the miner should in all reason have been found, but 
 there was neither that nor .^ny other. The baffled seeker 
 believed there must have been crooked work somewhere. 
 Without hesitation he found cither Jimmie or his companion 
 to be guilty of malfeasance in office. But at least one item of 
 more or less worried debate was eliminated. He need no 
 longer weigh mere surface gentility against the stern demands 
 of an active metabolism. A shave cost a quarter. Twenty 
 cents would not buy a shave, but it would buy at the cafe- 
 teria something more needful to any one but a fop. 
 
 He saw himself in the days to come if there were 
 very many days to come, of which he was now not too certain 
 descending to the unwholesome artistic level of the elder 
 Montague. He would, in short, be compelled to peddle the 
 brush. And of course as yet it was nothing like a brush 
 nothing to kindle the eye of a director needing genuine 
 brushes. In the early morning light he fingered a somewhat 
 gaunt chin and wondered how long "they" would require to 
 grow. Not yet could he be taken for one of those actors 
 compelled by the rigorous exactions of creative screen art to 
 let Nature have its course with his beard. At present he 
 merely needed a shave. 
 
 And the collar had not improved with usage. Also, as 
 the day wore on, coffee with one egg proved to have been not 
 long-enduring fare for this private in the army of the un- 
 employed. Still, his morale was but slightly impaired. 
 
MORE WAYS THAN ONE 157 
 
 There were always ways, it seemed. And the later hours of 
 the hungry afternoon were rather pleasantly occupied in 
 dwelling upon one of them. 
 
 The sole guest of the Crystal Palace Hotel entered the 
 hostelry that night somewhat earlier than was usual; indeed 
 at the very earliest moment that foot traffic through the 
 narrow street seemed to have diminished to a point where the 
 entry could be effected without incurring the public notice 
 which he at these moments so sincerely shunned. After a 
 brief interval inside the lobby he issued from his window 
 with certain objects in hand, one of which dropped as he 
 clambered out. The resulting clamour seemed to rouse far 
 echoes along the dead street, and he hastily withdrew, with 
 a smothered exclamation of dismay, about the nearest corner 
 of the building until it could be ascertained that echoes alone 
 had been aroused. 
 
 After a little breathless waiting he slunk down the street, 
 keeping well within friendly shadows, stepping softly, until he 
 reached the humble cabin where so lately the honest miners 
 had enacted their heart-tragedy. He jerked the latch-string 
 of the door and was swiftly inside, groping a way to the fire- 
 place. Here he lighted matches, thoughtfully appropriated 
 that morning from the cafeteria counter. He shielded the 
 blaze with one hand while with the other he put to use the 
 articles he had brought from his hotel. 
 
 Into a tin cooking pot with a long handle he now hastily 
 ladled well-cooked beans from the discarded heap in the fire- 
 place, by means of an iron spoon. He was not too careful. 
 More or less ashes accompanied the nutritious vegetables as 
 the pot grew to be half full. That was a thing to be corrected 
 later, and at leisure. When the last bean had been salvaged 
 the flame of another match revealed an unsuspected item 
 a half -loaf of bread nestled in the ashes at the far corner of the 
 fireplace. It lacked freshness; was, in truth, withered and 
 firm to the touch, but doubtless more wholesome than bread 
 freshly baked. 
 
 He was again on his humble cot in the seclusion of the 
 
158 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 Crystal Palace Hotel. Half -reclining, he ate at leisure. It 
 being inadvisable to light matches here he ate chiefly by the 
 touch system. There was a marked alkaline flavour to the 
 repast, not unpleasantly counteracted by a growth of vege- 
 table mould of delicate lavender tints which Nature had been 
 decently spreading over the final reduction of this provender 
 to its basic elements. But the time was not one in which to 
 cavil about minor infelicities. Ashes wouldn't hurt any one 
 if taken in moderation; you couldn't see the mould in a 
 perfectly dark hotel; and the bread was good. 
 
 The feast was prolonged until a late hour, but the finger- 
 tips that had accurately counted money hi a dark pocket 
 could ascertain in a dark hotel that a .store of food still re- 
 mained. He pulled the blankets about him and sank com- 
 fortably to rest. There was always some way. 
 
 Breakfast the next morning began with the promise of only 
 moderate enjoyment. Somehow in the gray light sifting 
 through the windows the beans did not look as good as they 
 had tasted the night before, and the early mouthf uls were less 
 blithesome on the palate than the remembered ones of yester- 
 day. He thought perhaps he was not so hungry as he had 
 been at his first encounter with them. He delicately re- 
 moved a pocket of ashes from the centre, and tried again. 
 They tasted better now. The mould of tender tints was 
 again visible but he made no effort to avoid it. For his 
 appetite had reawakened. He was truly hungry, and ate 
 with an entire singleness of purpose. 
 
 Toward the last of the meal his conscious self feebly 
 prompted him to quit, to save against the inevitable hunger 
 of the night. But the voice was ignored. He was now clay 
 to the moulding of the subconscious. He could have saved 
 a few of the beans when reason was again enthroned, but they 
 were so very few that he fatuously thought them not worth 
 saving. Might as well make a clean job of it. He restored 
 the stewpan and spoon to their places and left his hotel. He 
 was fed. To-day something else would have to happen. 
 
 The plush hat cocked at a rakish angle, he walked abroad 
 
MORE WAYS THAN ONE 159 
 
 with something of the old confident swagger. Once he doubt- 
 fully fingered the sprouting beard, but resolutely dismissed 
 a half -formed notion of finding out how the Holdea lot barber 
 would regard a proposition from a new patron to open a 
 charge account. If nothing worse than remaining unshaven 
 was going to happen to him, what cared he? The collar was 
 still pretty good. Why let his beard be an incubus? He 
 forgot it presently in noticing that the people arriving on the 
 Holden lot all looked so extremely well fed. He thought it 
 singular that he should never before have noticed how many 
 well-fed people one saw in a day. 
 
 Late in the afternoon his explorations took him beyond 
 the lower end of his little home street, and he was attracted 
 by sounds of the picture drama from a rude board structure 
 labelled the High Gear Dance Hall. He approached and 
 entered with that calm ease of manner which his days on the 
 lot had brought to a perfect bloom. No one now would ever 
 suppose that he was a mere sightseer or chained to the Holden 
 lot by circumstances over which he had ceased to exert the 
 slightest control. 
 
 The interior of the High Gear Dance Hall presented noth- 
 ing new to his seasoned eye. It was the dance-hall made 
 familiar by many a smashing five-reel Western. The picture 
 was, quite normally, waiting. Electricians were shoving 
 about the big light standards, cameras were being moved, and 
 bored actors were loafing informally at the round tables or 
 chatting in groups about the set. 
 
 One actor alone was keeping in his part. A ragged, 
 bearded, unkempt elderly man in red shirt and frayed over- 
 alls, a repellent felt hat pulled low over his brow, reclined 
 on the floor at the end of the bar, his back against a barrel. 
 Apparently he slept. A flash of remembrance from the 
 Montague girl's talk identified this wretched creature. This 
 was what happened to an actor who had to peddle the brush. 
 Perhaps for days he had been compelled to sleep there in the 
 interests of dance-hall atmosphere. 
 
 He again scanned the group, for he remembered, too, that 
 
160 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 the Montague girl would also be working here in God's Great 
 Outdoors. His eyes presently found her. She was indeed a 
 blonde hussy, short-skirted, low-necked, pitifully rouged, 
 depraved beyond redemption. She stood at the end of the 
 piano, and in company with another of the dance-hall girls 
 who played the accompaniment, she was singing a ballad the 
 refrain of which he caught as "God calls them Angels in 
 Heaven, we call them Mothers here." 
 
 The song ended, the Montague girl stepped to the centre 
 of the room, looked aimlessly about her, then seized an 
 innocent bystander, one of the rough characters frequenting 
 this unsavoury resort, and did a dance with him among the 
 tables. Tiring of this, she flitted across the room and 
 addressed the bored director who impatiently awaited the 
 changing of lights. She affected to consider him a reporter 
 who had sought an interview with her. She stood erect, fac- 
 ing him with one hand on a hip, the other patting and re- 
 adjusting her blonde coiffure. 
 
 "Really," she began in a voice of pained dignity, "I am at a 
 loss to understand why the public should be so interested in 
 me. What can I say to your readers I who am so wholly 
 absorbed in my art that I can't think of hardly anything else? 
 Why will not the world let us alone? Hold ondon't go!" 
 She had here pretended that the reporter was taking her at 
 her word. She seized him by a lapel to which she clung while 
 with her other arm she encircled a post, thus anchoring the 
 supposed intruder into her private affairs. "As I was say- 
 ing," she resumed, "all this publicity is highly distasteful to 
 the artist, and yet since you have forced yourself in here I 
 may as well say a few little things about how good I am and 
 how I got that way. Yes, I have nine motor cars, and I 
 just bought a lace tablecloth for twelve hundred bones " 
 
 She broke off inconsequently, poor victim of her con- 
 stitutional frivolity. The director grinned after her as she 
 danced away, though Merton Gill had considered her levity 
 in the worst of taste. Then her eye caught him as he stood 
 modestly back of the working electricians, and she danced 
 
MORE WAYS THAN ONE 161 
 
 forward again in his direction. He would have liked to 
 evade her but saw that he could not do this gracefully. 
 
 She greeted him with an impudent grin. "Why, hello, 
 trouper ! As I live, the actin' Kid ! " She held out a hand to 
 him and he could not well refuse it. He would have preferred 
 to "up-stage" her once more, as she had phrased it in her low 
 jargon, but he was cornered. Her grip of his hand quite 
 astonished him with its vigour. 
 
 "Well, how's everything with you? Everything jake?" 
 
 He tried for a show of easy confidence. "Oh, yes, yes, 
 indeed, everything is." 
 
 " Well, that's good, Kid." But she was now without the grin, 
 and was running a practised eye over what might have been 
 called his production. The hat was jaunty enough, truly a 
 hat of the successful, but all below that, the not-too-fresh 
 collar, the somewhat rumpled coat, the trousers crying for an 
 iron despite their nightly compression beneath their slumber- 
 ing owner, the shoes not too recently polished, and, more than 
 all, a certain hunted though still-defiant look in the young 
 man's eyes, seemed to speak eloquently under the shrewd 
 glance she bent on him. 
 
 "Say, listen here, Old-timer, remember I been trouping 
 man and boy for over forty year and it's hard to fool me you 
 working?" 
 
 He resented the persistent levity of manner, but was 
 coerced by the very apparent real kindness in her tone. 
 "Well," he looked about the set vaguely in his discomfort, 
 "you see, right now I'm between pictures you know how it 
 is." 
 
 Again she searched his eyes and spoke in a lower tone: 
 "Well, all right but you needn't blush about it, Kid." The 
 blush she detected became more flagrant. 
 
 "Well, I you see " he began again, but he was saved 
 
 from being explicit by the call of an assistant director. 
 
 "Miss Montague. Miss Montague where 's that Flips 
 girl on the set, please." She skipped lightly from him. 
 When she returned a little later to look for him he had gone. 
 
162 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 He went to bed that night when darkness had made this 
 practicable, and under his blankets whiled away a couple of 
 wakeful hours by running tensely dramatic films of break- 
 fast, dinner, and supper at the Gashwiler home. It seemed 
 that you didn't fall asleep so quickly when you had eaten 
 nothing since early morning. Never had he achieved such 
 perfect photography as now of the Gashwiler corned-beef 
 hash and light biscuits, the Gashwiler hot cakes and sausage, 
 and never had Gashwiler so impressively carved the Saturday 
 night four-rib roast of tender beef. Gashwiler achieved a 
 sensational triumph in the scene, being accorded all the close- 
 ups that the most exacting of screen actors could wish. His 
 knife-work was perfect. He held his audience enthralled by 
 his technique. 
 
 Mrs. Gashwiler, too, had a small but telling part in the 
 drama to-night; only a character bit, but one of those poig- 
 nant bits that stand out in the memory. The subtitle was, 
 "Merton, won't you let me give you another piece of the 
 mince pie?" That was all, and yet, as screen artists say, 
 it got over. There came very near to being not a dry eye in 
 the house when the simple words were flashed beside an in- 
 sert of thick, flaky-topped mince pies with quarters <?u* from 
 them to reveal their noble interiors 
 
 Sleep came at last while he was regretting that lawless orgy 
 of the morning. He needn't have cleaned up those beans in 
 that silly way. He could have left a good half of them. He 
 ran what might have been considered a split-reel comedy of 
 the stew-pan's bottom still covered with perfectly edible 
 beans lightly protected with Nature's own pastel-tinted 
 shroud for perishing vegetable matter and diversified here 
 and there with casual small deposits of ashes. 
 
 In the morning something good really did happen. As 
 he folded his blankets in the gray light a hard object rattled 
 along the floor from them. He picked this up before he 
 recognized it as a mutilated fragment from the stale half- 
 loaf of bread he had salvaged. He wondered how he could 
 have forgotten it, even in the plenitude of his banquet. 
 
MORE WAYS THAN ONE 163 
 
 There it was, a mere nubbin of crust and so hard it might al- 
 most have been taken for a petrified specimen of prehistoric 
 bread. Yet it proved to be rarely palatable. It's flavour 
 was exquisite. It melted in the mouth. 
 
 Somewhat refreshed by this modest cheer, he climbed from 
 the window of the Crystal Palace with his mind busy on two 
 tracks. While the letter to Gashwiler composed itself, with 
 especially clear directions about where the return money 
 should be sent, he was also warning himself to remain 
 throughout the day at a safe distance from the door of the 
 cafeteria. He had proved the wisdom of this even the day 
 before that had started with a bounteous breakfast. To-day 
 the aroma of cooked food occasionally wafted from the 
 cafeteria door would prove, he was sure, to be more than he 
 could bear. 
 
 He rather shunned the stages to-day, keeping more to 
 himself. The collar, he had to confess, was no longer, even 
 to the casual eye, what a successful screen-actor's collar 
 should be. The sprouting beard might still be misconstrued 
 as the whim of a director sanctified to realism every day it 
 was getting to look more like that but no director would 
 have commanded the wearing of such a collar except in 
 actual work where it might have been a striking detail in the 
 apparel of an underworldling, one of those creatures who 
 became the tools of rich but unscrupulous roues who are bent 
 upon the moral destruction of beautiful young screen hero- 
 ines. He knew it was now that sort of collar. No use now in 
 pretending that it had been worn yesterday for the first time. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 OF SHATTERED ILLUSIONS 
 
 THE next morning he sat a long time in the genial 
 sunlight watching carpenters finish a scaffolding 
 beside the pool that had once floated logs to a saw- 
 mill. The scaffolding was a stout affair supporting an 
 immense tank that would, evidently for some occult reason 
 important to screen art, hold a great deal of water. The saw- 
 mill was gone; at one end of the pool rode a small sail-boat 
 with one mast, its canvas flapping idly in a gentle breeze. 
 Its deck was littered with rigging upon which two men 
 worked. They seemed to be getting things shipshape 
 for a cruise. 
 
 When he had tired of this he started off toward the High 
 Gear Dance Hall. Something all day had been drawing him 
 there against his will. He hesitated to believe it was the 
 Montague girl's kindly manner toward him the day before, 
 yet he could identify no other influence. Probably it was 
 that. Yet he didn't want to face her again, even if for a 
 moment she had quit trying to be funny, even if for a mo- 
 ment her eyes had searched his quite earnestly, her broad, 
 amiable face glowing with that sudden friendly concern. It 
 had been hard to withstand this yesterday; he had been 
 in actual danger of confiding to her that engagements of late 
 were not plentiful something like that. And it would 
 be harder to-day. Even the collar would make it harder to 
 resist the confidence that he was not at this tune over- 
 whelmed with offers for his art. 
 
 He had for what seemed like an interminable stretch of 
 time been solitary and an outlaw. It was something to 
 
 164 
 
OF SHATTERED ILLUSIONS 165 
 
 have been spoken to by a human being who expressed ever 
 so fleeting an interest in his affairs, even by someone as 
 inconsequent, as negligible in the world of screen artistry 
 as this lightsome minx who, because of certain mental 
 infirmities, could never hope for the least enviable eminence 
 in a profession demanding seriousness of purpose. Still 
 it would be foolish to go again to the set where she was. 
 She might think he was encouraging her. 
 
 So he passed the High Gear, where a four-horse stage, 
 watched by two cameras, was now releasing its passengers 
 who all appeared to be direct from New York, and walked 
 on to an outdoor set that promised entertainment. This 
 w-j the narrow street of some quaint European village, 
 Scotch he soon saw from the dress of its people. A large 
 automobile was invading this remote hamlet to the dismay 
 of its inhabitants. Rehearsed through a megaphone they 
 scurried within doors at its approach, ancient men hobbling 
 on sticks and frantic mothers grabbing their little ones from 
 the path of the monster. Two trial trips he saw the car make 
 the length of the little street. 
 
 At its lower end, brooding placidly, was an ancient horse 
 rather recalling Dexter in his generously exposed bones 
 and the jaded droop of his head above a low stone wall. 
 Twice the car sped by him, arousing no sign of apprehension 
 nor even of interest. He paid it not so much as the tribute 
 of a raised eyelid. 
 
 The car went back to the head of the street where its en- 
 trance would be made. "All right ready!*' came the mega- 
 phoned order. Again the peaceful street was thrown into 
 panic by this snorting dragon from the outer world. The 
 old men hobbled affrightedly within doors, the mothers 
 saved their children. And this time, to the stupefaction of 
 Merton Gill, even the old horse proved to be an actor of rare 
 merits. As the car approached he seemed to suffer a pain- 
 ful shock. He tossed his aged head, kicked viciously with 
 his rear feet, stood absurdly aloft on them, then turned and 
 fled from the monster. As Merton mused upon the genius 
 
166 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 of the trainer who had taught his horse not only to betray 
 fright at a motor car but to distinguish between rehearsals 
 and the actual taking of a scene, he observed a man who 
 emerged from a clump of near-by shrubbery. He carried a 
 shotgun. This was broken at the breech and the man was 
 blowing smoke from the barrels as he came on. 
 
 So that w r as it. The panic of the old horse had been but 
 a simple reaction to a couple of charges of perhaps rock- 
 salt. Merton Gill hoped it had been nothing sterner. For 
 the first time in his screen career he became cynical about 
 his art. A thing of shame, of machinery, of subterfuge. 
 Nothing would be real, perhaps not even the art. 
 
 It is probable that lack of food conduced to this disparag- 
 ing outlook; and he recovered presently, for he had been 
 smitten with a quick vision of Beulah Baxter in one of her 
 most daring exploits. She, at least, was real. Deaf to 
 entreaty, she honestly braved her hazards. It was a com- 
 forting thought after this late exposure of a sham. 
 
 In this slightly combative mood he retraced his steps 
 and found himself outside the High Gear Dance Hall, forti- 
 fied for another possible encounter with the inquiring and 
 obviously sympathetic Montague girl. He entered and saw 
 that she was not on the set. The bar-room dance-hall was 
 for the moment deserted of its ribald crew while an honest 
 inhabitant of the open spaces on a balcony was holding a 
 large revolver to the shrinking back of one of the New York 
 men who had lately arrived by the stage. He forced this 
 man, who was plainly not honest, to descend the stairs and 
 to sign, at a table, a certain paper. Then, with weapon still 
 in hand, the honest Westerner forced the cowardly New 
 Yorker in the direction of the front door until they had 
 passed out of the picture. 
 
 On this the bored director of the day before called loudly, 
 "Now, boys, in your places. You've heard a shot you're 
 running outside to see what's the matter. On your toes, 
 now try it once." From rear doors came the motley fre- 
 quenters of the place, led by the elder Montague. 
 
OF SHATTERED ILLUSIONS 167 
 
 They trooped to the front in two lines and passed from 
 the picture. Here they milled about, waiting for further 
 orders. 
 
 "Rotten!" called the director. "Rotten and then some. 
 Listen. You came like a lot of children marching out of a 
 public school. Don't come in lines, break it up, push each 
 other, fight to get ahead, and you're noisy, too. You're shout- 
 ing. You're saying, * What's this? What's it all about? 
 What's the matter? Which way did he go?' Say anything 
 you want to, but keep shouting anything at all. Say 'Thar's 
 go 1 1 in them hills !' if you can't think of anything else. Go 
 on, now, boys, do it again and pep it, see. Turn the juice on, 
 open up the old mufflers." 
 
 The men went back through the rear doors. The late 
 caller would here have left, being fed up with this sort of 
 stuff, but at that moment he descried the Montague girl 
 back behind a light-standard. She had not noted him, but 
 was in close talk with a man he recognized as Jeff Baird, 
 arch perpetrator of the infamous Buckeye comedies. They 
 came toward him, still talking, as he looked. 
 
 "We'll finish here to-morrow afternoon, anyway," the girl 
 was saying. 
 
 "Fine," said Baird. "That makes everything jake. Get 
 over on the set whenever you're through. Come over to- 
 night if they don't shoot here, just to give us a look-in." 
 
 "Can't," said the girl. "Soon as I get out o' this dump 
 I got to eat on the lot and everything and be over to Baxter's 
 layout she'll be doing tank stuff till all hours shipwreck 
 and murder and all like that. Gosh, I hope it ain't cold. 
 I don't mind the water, but I certainly hate to get out and 
 wait in wet clothes while Sig Rosenblatt is thinking about 
 a retake." 
 
 "Well" Baird turned to go "take care of yourself 
 don't dive and forget to come up. Come over when you're 
 ready." 
 
 "Sure! S'long!" Here the girl, turning from Baird, 
 noted Merton Gill beside her. 
 
168 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 "Well, well, as I live, the actin' kid once more! Say, 
 you're getting to be a regular studio hound, ain't you?" 
 
 For the moment he had forgotten his troubles. He was 
 burning to ask her if Beulah Baxter would really work in a 
 shipwreck scene that night at the place where he had watched 
 the carpenters and the men on the sailboat; but as he tried 
 to word this he saw that the girl was again scanning him with 
 keen eyes. He knew she would read the collar, the beard, 
 perhaps even a look of mere hunger that he thought must now 
 be showing. 
 
 "Say, see here, Trouper, what's the shootin' all about, 
 anyway? You up against it yes." There was again in 
 her eye the look of warm concern, and she was no longer 
 trying to be funny. He might now have admitted a few 
 little things about his screen career, but again the director 
 interrupted. 
 
 "Miss Montague where are you? Oh! Well, remem- 
 ber you're behind the piano during that gun play just 
 now, and you stay hid till after the boys get out. We'll 
 shoot this time, so get set." 
 
 She sped off, with a last backward glance of questioning. 
 He waited but a moment before leaving. He was almost 
 forgetting his hunger in the pretty certain knowledge that 
 in a few hours he would actually behold his wonder- woman in 
 at least one of her daring exploits. Shipwreck! Perhaps 
 she would be all but drowned. He hastened back to the 
 pool that had now acquired this high significance. The 
 carpenters were still puttering about on the scaffold. He saw 
 that platforms for the cameras had been built out from its 
 side. 
 
 He noted, too, and was puzzled by an aeroplane propeller 
 that had been stationed close to one corner of the pool, just 
 beyond the stern of the little sailing-craft. Perhaps there 
 would be an aeroplane wreck in addition to a shipwreck. 
 Now he had something besides food to think of. And he 
 wondered what the Montague girl could be doing in the 
 company of a really serious artist like Beulah Baxter. From 
 
OF SHATTERED ILLUSIONS 169 
 
 her own story she was going to get wet, but from what ke 
 knew of her she would be some character not greatly missed 
 from the cast if she should, as Baird had suggested, dive and 
 forget to come up. He supposed that Baird had meant 
 this to be humorous, the humour typical of a man who could 
 profane a great art with the atrocious Buckeye comedies, so 
 called. 
 
 He put in the hours until nightfall in aimless wandering 
 and idle gazing, and was early at the pool-side where his 
 Leroine would do her sensational acting. It was now a 
 scene of thrilling activity. Immense lights, both from the 
 scaffolding and from a tower back of the sailing-craft, flooded 
 its deck and rigging from time to time as adjustments were 
 made. The rigging was slack and the deck was still littered, 
 intentionally so, he now perceived. The gallant little boat 
 had been cruelly buffeted by a gale. Two sailors in pirati- 
 cal dress could be seen to emerge at intervals from the cabin. 
 
 Suddenly the gale was on with terrific force, the sea rose 
 in great waves, and the tiny ship rocked in a perilous manner. 
 Great billows of water swept its decks. Merton Gill stared 
 in amazement at these phenomena so dissonant with the 
 quiet starlit night. Then he traced them without difficulty 
 to their various sources. The gale issued from the swift 
 revolutions of that ae'roplane propeller he had noticed a 
 while ago. The flooding billows were spilled from the big 
 tank at the top of the scaffold and the boat rocked in obe- 
 dience to the tugging of a rope tugged from the shore by a 
 crew of helpers that ran to the top of ite mast. Thus had 
 the storm been produced. 
 
 A spidery, youngish man from one of the platforms built 
 out from the scaffold, now became sharply voeal through a 
 megaphone to assistants who were bending the elements 
 to the need of this particular hazard of Hortense. He called 
 directions to the men who tugged the rope, to the men in 
 control of the lights, and to another who seemed to create 
 the billows. Among other items he wished more action 
 for the boat and more water for the billows. "See that 
 
170 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 your tank gets full-up this time," he called, whereupon an 
 engine under the scaffold, by means of a large rubber hose 
 reaching into the pool, began to suck water into the tank 
 above. 
 
 The speaker must be Miss Baxter's director, the enviable 
 personage who saw her safely through her perils. When one 
 of the turning reflectors illumined him Merton saw his face 
 of a keen Semitic type. He seemed to possess not the most 
 engaging personality; his manner was aggressive, he spoke 
 rudely to his doubtless conscientous employees, he danced in 
 little rages of temper, and altogether he was not one with 
 whom the watcher would have cared to come in contact. 
 He wondered, indeed, that so puissant a star as Beulah 
 Baxter should not be able to choose her own director, for 
 surely the presence of this unlovely, waspishly tempered 
 being could be nothing but an irritant in the daily life of 
 the wonder-woman. Perhaps she had tolerated him merely 
 for one picture. Perhaps he was especially good in ship- 
 wrecks. 
 
 If Merton Gill were in this company he would surely have 
 words with this person, director or no director. He hastily 
 wrote a one-reel scenario in which the man so far forgot him- 
 self as to speak sharply to the star, and in which a certain 
 young actor, a new member of the company, resented the 
 ungentlemanly words by pitching the offender into a con- 
 venient pool and earned even more than gratitude from the 
 starry-eyed wonder-woman. 
 
 The objectionable man continued active, profuse of gesture 
 and loud through the megaphone. Once more the storm. 
 The boat rocked threateningly, the wind roared through its 
 slack rigging, and giant billows swept the frail craft. Light 
 as from a half-clouded moon broke through the mist that 
 issued from a steam pipe. There was another lull, and the 
 Semitic type on the platform became increasingly offensive. 
 Merton saw himself saying, "Allow me, Miss Baxter, to re- 
 lieve you of the presence of this bounder." The man was 
 impossible. 
 
OF SHATTERED ILLUSIONS 171 
 
 Constantly he had searched the scene for his heroine. 
 She would probably not appear until they were ready to 
 shoot, and this seemed not to be at once if the rising temper 
 of the director could be thought an indication. 
 
 The big hose again drew water from the pool to the tank, 
 whence, at a sudden release, it would issue in billows. The 
 bi^; lights at last seemed to be adjusted to the director's 
 whim. The aeroplane propeller whirred and the gale was 
 found acceptable. The men at the rope tugged the boat 
 into grave danger. The moon lighted the mist that over- 
 hung the scene. 
 
 Then at last Merton started, peering eagerly forward 
 across the length of the pool. At the far end, half illumined 
 by the big lights, stood the familiar figure of his wonder- 
 woman, the slim little girl with the wistful eyes. Plainly 
 he could see her now as the mist lifted. She was chatting 
 with one of the pirates who had stepped ashore from the 
 boat. The wonderful golden hair shone resplendent under 
 the glancing rays of the arcs. A cloak was about her shoul- 
 ders, but at a word of command from the director she threw 
 it off and stepped to the boat's deck. She was dressed in a 
 short skirt, her trim feet and ankles lightly shod and silken 
 clad. The sole maritime touch in her garb was a figured 
 kerchief at her throat similar to those worn by the piratical 
 crew. 
 
 "All ready, Hortense all ready Jose and Gaston, get 
 your places." 
 
 Miss Baxter acknowledged the command with that char- 
 acteristic little wave of a hand that he recalled from so many 
 of her pictures, a half -humorous, half -mocking little defiance. 
 She used it often when escaping her pursuers, as if to say 
 that she would see them in the next installment. 
 
 The star and the two men were now in the cabin, hidden 
 from view. Merton Gill was no seaman, but it occurred 
 to him that at least one of the crew would be at the wheel in 
 this emergency. Probably the director knew no better. 
 Indeed the boat s so far as could be discerned, had no wheel. 
 
172 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 Apparently when a storm came up all hands went down into 
 the cabin to get away from it. 
 
 The storm did come up at this moment, with no one on 
 deck. It struck with the full force of a tropic hurricane. 
 The boat rocked, the wind blew, and billows swept the deck. 
 At the height of the tempest Beulah Baxter sprang from the 
 cabin to the deck, clutching wildly at a stanchion. Buffeted 
 by the billlows she groped a painful way along the side, at 
 risk of being swept off to her death. 
 She was followed by one of the crew who held a murderous 
 knife in his hand, then by the other sailor who also held a 
 knife. They, too, were swept by the billows, but seemed 
 grimly determined upon the death of the heroine. Then, 
 when she reached midships and the foremost fiend was al- 
 most upon her, the mightiest of all the billows descended and 
 swept her off into the cruel waters. Her pursuers, saving 
 themselves only by great effort, held to the rigging and stared 
 after the girl. They leaned far over the ship's rocking side 
 and each looked from under a spread hand. 
 
 For a distressing interval the heroine battled with the 
 waves, but her frail strength availed her little. She raised 
 a despairing face for an instant to the camera and its agony 
 was illumined. Then the dread waters closed above her. 
 The director's whistle blew, the waves were stilled, the 
 tumult ceased. The head of Beulah Baxter appeared halfway 
 down the tank. She was swimming toward the end where 
 Merton stood. 
 
 He had been thrilled beyond words at this actual sight 
 of his heroine in action, but now it seemed that a new emotion 
 might overcome him. He felt faint. Beulah Baxter would 
 issue from the pool there at his feet. He might speak to 
 her, might even help her to climb out. At least no one else 
 had appeared to do this. Seemingly no one now cared where 
 Miss Baxter swam to or whether she were offered any assist- 
 ance in landing. She swam with an admirable crawl 
 stroke, reached the wall, and put up a hand to it. He stepped 
 forward, but she was out before he reached her side. His 
 
OF SHATTERED ILLUSIONS 173 
 
 awe had delayed him. He drew back then, for the star, 
 after vigorously shaking herself, went to a tall braeier in 
 w'jch glowed a charcoal fire. 
 
 Here he now noticed for the first tinae the prop-boy 
 Jimmie, he who had almost certainly defaulted with an ex- 
 cellent razor. Jimmie threw a blanket about the star's shoul- 
 ders as she hovered above the glowing coals. Merton had 
 waited for her voice. He might still venture to speak to her 
 to tell her of his long and profound admiration for her art. 
 Her voice came as she shivered over the fire: 
 
 "Murder! That water's cold. Rosenblatt swore he'd 
 have it warmed but I'm here to say it wouldn't boil an egg 
 in four minutes." 
 
 He could not at first identify this voice with the remem- 
 bered tones of Beulah Baxter. But of course she was now 
 hoarse with the cold. Under the circumstances he could 
 hardly expect his heroine's own musical clearness. Then 
 as the girl spoke again something stirred among his more re- 
 cent memories. The voice was still hoarse, but he placed 
 it now. He approached the brazier. It was undoubt- 
 edly the Montague girl. She recognized him, even as she 
 squeezed water from the hair of wondrous gold. 
 
 "Hello, again, Kid. You're everywhere, ain't you? 
 Say, wha'd you think of that Rosenblatt man? Swore he'd 
 put the steam into that water and take off the chill. And he 
 never." She threw aside the blanket and squeezed water 
 from her garments, then began to slap her legs, arms, and 
 chest. 
 
 "Well, I'm getting a gentle glow, anyhow. Wha'd you 
 think of the scene?" 
 
 "It was good very well done, indeed." He hoped it 
 didn't sound patronizing, though that was how he felt. He 
 believed now that Miss Baxter would have done it much 
 better. He ventured a question. "But how about Miss 
 Baxter when does she do something? Is she going to be 
 swept off the boat, too?" 
 
 "Baxter? Into that water? Quit your kidding!" 
 
174 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 "But isn't she here at all won't she do anything here?" 
 
 "Listen here, Kid; why should she loaf around on the set 
 when she's paying me good money to double for her?" 
 
 "You double for Beulah Baxter?" It was some more 
 of the girl's nonsense, and a blasphemy for which he could 
 not easily forgive her. 
 
 "Why not? Ain't I a good stunt actress? I'll tell the 
 lot she hasn't found any one yet that can get away with her 
 stuff better than what I do." 
 
 "But she I heard her say herself she never allowed any 
 one to double for her she wouldn't do such a thing." 
 
 Here sounded a scornful laugh from Jimmie, the prop- 
 boy. "Bunk!" said he at the laugh's end. "How long you 
 been doublin' for her, Miss Montague? Two years, ain't 
 it? I know it was before I come here, and I been on the lot 
 a year and a half. Say, he ought to see some the stuff you 
 done for her out on location, like jumpin' into the locomotive 
 engine from your auto and catchin* the brake beams when 
 the train's movin', and goin' across that quarry on the cable, 
 and ridin' down that lumber flume sixty miles per hour and 
 ridin' some them outlaw buckjumpers he'd ought to seen 
 some that stuff, hey, Miss Montague?" 
 
 "That's right, Jimmie, you tell him all about me. I hate 
 to talk of myself." Very wonderfully Merton Gill divined 
 that this was said with a humorous intention. Jimmy was 
 less sensitive to values. He began to obey. 
 
 "Well, I dunno there's that motorcycle stuff. Purty 
 good, I'll say. I wouldn't try that, no, sir, not for a cool 
 million dollars. And that chase stuff on the roofs down town 
 where you jumped across that court that wasn't any too 
 darned narrow, an' say, I wisht I could skin up a tree 
 the way you can. An' there was that tune 
 
 "All right, all right, Jimmie. I can tell him the rest some- 
 time. I don't really hate to talk about myself that's on 
 the level. And say, listen here, Jimmie, you're my favourite 
 sweetheart, ain't you?" 
 
 "Yes, ma'am," assented Jimmie, warmly. 
 
OF SHATTERED ILLUSIONS 175 
 
 "All right. Beat it up and get me about two quarts of that 
 not coffee and about four ham sandwiches, two for you and 
 two for me. That's a good kid." 
 
 "Sure!" exclaimed Jimmie, and was off. 
 
 Merton Gill had been dazed by these revelations, by the 
 swift and utter destruction of his loftiest ideal. He hardly 
 cared to know, now, if Beulah Baxter were married. It was 
 the Montague girl who had most thrilled him for two years. 
 Yet, almost as if from habit, he heard himself asking, "Is 
 do you happen to know if Beulah Baxter is married?" 
 
 "Baxter married? Sure! I should think you'd know it 
 from the way that Sig Rosenblatt bawls everybody out." 
 
 "Who is he?" 
 
 "Who is he? Why, he's her husband, of course he's 
 Mr. Beulah Baxter." 
 
 "That little director up on the platform that yells so?'* 
 This unspeakable person to be actually the husband of the 
 wonder-woman, the man he had supposed she must find in- 
 tolerable even as a director. It was unthinkable, more 
 horrible, somehow, than her employment of a double. In 
 time he might have forgiven that but this! 
 
 "Sure, that's her honest-to-God husband. And he's the 
 best one out of three that I know she's had. Sig's a good 
 scout even if he don't look like Buffalo Bill. In fact, he's 
 all right in spite of his rough ways. He'd go farther for you 
 than most of the men on this lot. If I wanted a favour I'd 
 go to Sig before a lot of Christians I happen to know. And 
 he's a bully director if he is noisy. Baxter's crazy about him, 
 too. Don't make any mistake there." 
 
 "I won't," he answered, not knowing what he said. 
 
 She shot him a new look. "Say, .Kid, as long as we're 
 talking, you seem kind of up against it. WTiere's your over- 
 coat a night like this, and when did you last " 
 
 "Miss Montague! Miss Montague!" The director was 
 calling. 
 
 "Excuse me," she said. "I got to go entertain the white 
 folks again." 
 
176 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 She tucked up the folds of her blanket and sped around 
 the pool to disappear in the mazes of the scaffolding. He 
 remained a moment staring dully into the now quiet water. 
 Then he walked swiftly away. 
 
 Beulah Baxter, his wonder- woman, had deceived her public 
 in Peoria, Illinois, by word of mouth. She employed a dou- 
 ble at critical junctures. "She'd be a fool not to," the Mon- 
 tague girl had said. And in private life, having been un- 
 happily wed twice before, she was Mrs. Sigmund Rosenblatt. 
 And crazy about her husband! 
 
 A little while ago he had felt glad he was not to die of 
 starvation before seeing his wonder-woman. Reeling under 
 the first shock of his discoveries he was now sorry. Beulah 
 Baxter was no longer his wonder-woman. She was Mr. 
 Rosenblatt's. He would have preferred death, he thought, 
 before this heart-withering revelation. , 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE MONTAGUE GIRL INTERVENES 
 
 HE CAME to life the next morning, shivering under 
 his blankets. It must be cold outside. He glanced 
 at his watch and reached for another blanket, throw- 
 ing it over himself and tucking it in at the foot. Then he lay 
 down again to screen a tense bit of action that had occurred 
 late the night before. He had plunged through the streets 
 for an hour, after leaving the pool, striving to recover from 
 the twin shocks he had suffered. Then, returning to his 
 hotel, he became aware that The Hazards of Hortense were 
 still on. He could hear the roar of the aeroplane propeller 
 and see the lights over the low buildings that lined his street. 
 
 Miserably he was drawn back to the spot where the most 
 important of all his visions had been rent to tatters. He 
 went to the end of the pool where he had stood before. Mr. 
 Rosenblatt hardly could he bring his mind to utter the 
 hideous syllables was still dissatisfied with the sea's might. 
 He wanted bigger billows and meant to have them if the 
 Company stayed on the set all night. He was saying as much 
 with peevish inflections. Merton stood warming himself over 
 the fire that still glowed in the brazier. 
 
 To him from somewhere beyond the scaffold came now the 
 Montague girl and Jimmie. The girl was in her blanket, and 
 Jimmie bore a pitcher, two tin cups, and a package of sand- 
 wiches. They came to the fire and Jimmie poured coffee for 
 the girl. He produced sugar from a pocket. 
 
 "Help yourself, James," said the girl, and Jimmie poured 
 coffee for himself. They ate sandwiches as they drank. 
 Merton drew a little back from the fire. The scent of the 
 
 177 
 
178 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 hot coffee threatened to make him forget he was not only a 
 successful screen actor but a gentleman. 
 
 "Did you have to do it again?" he asked. 
 
 "I had to do it twice again," said the girl from over her 
 tin cup. "They're developing the strips now, then they'll 
 run them in the projection room, and they won't suit Sig one 
 little bit, and I'll have to do it some more. I'll be swimming 
 here till daylight doth appear." 
 
 She now shot that familiar glance of appraisal at Merton. 
 "Have a sandwich and some coffee, Kid give him your cup, 
 Jimmie." 
 
 It was Merton Gill's great moment, a heart-gripping 
 climax to a two-days' drama that had at no time lacked 
 tension. Superbly he arose to it. Consecrated to his art, 
 Clifford Armytage gave the public something better and 
 finer. He drew himself up and spoke lightly, clearly, with 
 careless ease : 
 
 " No, thanks I couldn't eat a mouthful." The smile with 
 which he accompanied the simple words might be enigmatic, 
 it might hint of secret sorrows, but it was plain enough that 
 these could not ever so distantly relate to a need for food. 
 
 Having achieved this sensational triumph, with all the 
 quietness of method that should distinguish the true artist, he 
 became seized with stage fright amounting almost to panic. 
 He was moved to snatch the sandwich that Jimmie now 
 proffered, the cup that he had refilled with coffee. Yet there 
 was but a moment of confusion. Again he wielded an iron 
 restraint. But he must leave the stage. He could not tarry 
 there after his big scene, especially under that piercing glance 
 of the girl. Somehow there was incredulity in it. 
 
 "Well, I guess I'll have to be going," he remarked jauntily, 
 and turned for his exit. 
 
 "Say, Kid." The girl halted him a dozen feet away. 
 "Say, listen here. This is on the level. I want to have a 
 talk with you to-morrow. You'll be on the lot, won't you?" 
 
 He seemed to debate this momentarily, then replied, "Oh, 
 yes, I'll be around here somewhere." 
 
THE MONTAGUE GIRL INTERVENES 179 
 
 "Well, remember, now. If I don't run into you, you come 
 down to that set where I was working to-day. See? I got 
 something to say to you." 
 
 "All right. I'll probably see you sometime during the 
 day." 
 
 He had gone on to his hotel. But he had no intention of 
 seeing the Montague girl on the morrow, nor of being seen by 
 her. He would keep out of that girl's way whatever else he 
 did. She would ask him if everything was jake, and where 
 was his overcoat, and a lot of silly questions about matters 
 that should not concern her. 
 
 He was in two minds about the girl now. Beneath an un- 
 reasonable but very genuine resentment that she should have 
 doubled for Beulah Baxter as if she had basely cheated him 
 of his most cherished ideal there ran an undercurrent of 
 reluctant but very profound admiration for her prowess. 
 She had done some thrilling things and seemed to make noth- 
 ing of it. Through this admiration there ran also a thread of 
 hostility because he, himself, would undoubtedly be afraid to 
 attempt her lightest exploit. Not even the trifling feat he had 
 just witnessed, for he had never learned to swim. But he 
 clearly knew, despite this confusion, that he was through 
 with the girl. He must take more pains to avoid her. If 
 met by chance, she must be snubbed up-staged, as she would 
 put it. 
 
 Under his blankets now, after many appealing close-ups 
 of the sandwich which Jimmie had held out to him, he felt 
 almost sorry that he had not taken the girl's food. All his 
 being, save that part consecrated to his art, had cried out for 
 it. Art had triumphed, and now he was near to regretting 
 that it had not been beaten down. No good thinking about 
 it, though. 
 
 He reached again for his watch. It was seven-thirty and 
 time to be abroad. Once more he folded his blankets and 
 placed them on the pile, keeping an alert glance, the while, for 
 another possible bit of the delicious bread. He found noth- 
 ing of this sort. The Crystal Palace Hotel was bare of 
 
180 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 provender. Achieving a discreet retirement from the 
 hostelry he stood irresolute in the street. This morning 
 there was no genial sun to warm him. A high fog overcast 
 the sky, and the air was chill. At intervals he shivered 
 violently. For no reason, except that he had there last be- 
 held actual food, he went back to the pool. 
 
 Evidently Mr. Rosenblatt had finally been appeased. The 
 place was deserted and lay bare and ugly in the dull light. 
 The gallant ship of the night before was seen to be a poor, 
 flimsy make-shift. No wonder Mr. Rosenblatt had wished 
 billows to engulf it and mist to shroud it. He sat on a beam 
 lying at the ship end of the pool and stared moodily at the 
 pitiful make-believe. 
 
 He rounded his shoulders and pulled up the collar of his 
 coat. He knew he should be walking, but doubted his 
 strength. The little walk to the pool had made him strangely 
 breathless. He wondered how long people were in starving 
 to death. He had read of fasters who went for weeks without 
 food, but he knew he was not of this class. He lacked talent 
 for it. Doubtless another day would finish him. He had 
 no heart now for visions of the Gashwiler table. He de- 
 scended tragically to recalling that last meal at the drug 
 store the bowl of soup with its gracious burden of rich, 
 nourishing catsup. 
 
 He began to alter the scenario of his own life. Suppose 
 he had worked two more weeks for Gashwiler. That would 
 have given him thirty dollars. Suppose he had worked a 
 month. He could have existed a long time on sixty dollars, 
 Suppose he had even stuck it out for one week more fifteen 
 dollars at this moment! He began to see a breakfast, the 
 sort of meal to be ordered by a hungry man with fifteen 
 dollars to squander. 
 
 The shivering seized him again and he heard his teeth 
 rattle. He must move from this spot, forever now to be 
 associated with black disillusion. He arose from his seat 
 and was dismayed to hear a hail from the Montague girl. 
 Was he never to be free from her? 
 
THE MONTAGUE GIRL INTERVENES 181 
 
 She was poised at a little distance, one hand raised to him, 
 no longer the drenched victim of a capricious Rosenblatt, but 
 the beaming, joyous figure of one who had triumphed over 
 wind and wave. He went almost sullenly to her while she 
 waited. No good trying to escape her for a minute or 
 so. 
 
 "Hello, old Trouper! You're just in time to help me hunt 
 for something." She was in the familiar street suit now, a 
 skirt and jacket of some rough brown goods and a cloth hat 
 that kept close to her small head above hair that seemed of no 
 known shade whatever, though it was lighter than dark. She 
 flashed a smile at him from her broad mouth as he came up, 
 though her knowing gray eyes did not join in this smile. He 
 knew instantly that she was taking him in. 
 
 This girl was wise beyond her years, he thought, but one 
 even far less knowing could hardly have been in two minds 
 about his present abject condition. The pushed-up collar 
 of his coat did not entirely hide the once- white collar beneath 
 it, the beard had reached its perhaps most distressing stage of 
 development, and the suit was rumpled out of all the natti- 
 ness for which it had been advertised. Even the plush hat 
 had lost its smart ah*. 
 
 Then he plainly saw that the girl would, for the moment 
 at least, ignore these phenomena. She laughed again, and 
 this time the eyes laughed, too. " C'mon over and help me 
 hunt for that bar pin I lost. It must be at this end, because 
 I know I had it on when I went into the drink. Maybe it's 
 in the pool, but maybe I lost it after I got out. It's one of 
 Baxter's that she wore in the scene just ahead of last night, 
 
 and she'll have to have it again to-day. Now " She 
 
 began to search the ground around the cold brazier. "It 
 might be along here." He helped her look. Pretty soon he 
 would remember an engagement and get away. The search 
 at the end of the pool proved fruitless. The girl continued 
 to chatter. They had worked until one-thirty before that 
 grouch of a Rosenblatt would call it a day. At that she'd 
 rather do water stuff than animal stuff especially lions. 
 
182 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 "Lions? I should think so!" He replied to this. "Danger- 
 ous, isn't it?" 
 
 "Oh, it ain't that. They're nothing to be afraid of if you 
 know 'em, but they're so hot and smelly when you have to 
 get close to 'em. Anything I really hate, it's having to get 
 up against a big, hot, hairy, smelly lion." 
 
 He murmured a sympathetic phrase and extended his 
 search for the lost pin to the side of the pool. Almost under 
 the scaffold he saw the shine of precious stones and called ta 
 her as he picked up the pin, a bar pin splendidly set with 
 diamonds. He was glad that he had found it for her. It 
 must have cost a great deal of money and she would doubtles* 
 be held responsible for its safe-keeping. 
 
 She came dancing to him. "Say, that's fine your eyes 
 are working, ain't they? I might 'a' been set back a good six 
 dollars if you hadn't found that." She took the bauble and 
 fastened it inside her jacket. So the pin, too, had been a 
 tawdry makeshift. Nothing was real any more. As she 
 adjusted the pin he saw his moment for escape. With a 
 gallant striving for the true Clifford Annytage manner he 
 raised the plush hat. 
 
 "Well, I'm glad you found Mrs. Rosenblatt's pin and I 
 guess I'll be getting on." 
 
 The manner must have been defective. She looked through 
 him and said with great firmness, "Nothing like that, old 
 pippin." Again he was taken with a violent fit of shivering. 
 He could not meet her eyes. He was turning away whe& 
 she seized him by the wrist. Her grip was amazingly force-* 
 ful. He doubted if he could break away even with his 
 stoutest effort. He stood miserably staring at the ground. 
 Suddenly the girl reached up to pat his shoulder. He 
 shivered again and she continued to pat it. When his teeth 
 had ceased to be castanets she spoke: 
 
 "Listen here, old Kid, you can't fool any one, so quit 
 trying. Don't you s'pose I've seen 'em like you before? 
 Say, boy, I was trouping while you played with marbles. 
 You're up against it. Now, c'mon" with the arm at his 
 
THE MONTAGUE GIRL INTERVENES 183 
 
 shoulder she pulled him about to face her "c'mon and be 
 nice tell mother all about it." 
 
 The late Clifford Armytage was momentarily menaced by 
 a complete emotional overthrow. Another paroxysm of 
 shivering perhaps averted this humiliation. The girl dropped 
 his wrist, turned, stooped, and did something. He recalled 
 the scene in the gambling hell, only this time she fronted 
 away from the camera. When she faced him again he was not 
 surprised to see bills in her hand. It could only have been 
 the chill he suffered that kept him from blushing. She forced 
 the bills into his numb fingers and he stared at them blankly. 
 
 "I can't take these," he muttered. 
 
 "There, now, there, now! Be easy. Naturally I know 
 you're all right or I wouldn't give up this way. You're just 
 having a run of hard luck. The Lord knows, I've been helped 
 out often enough in my time. Say, listen, I'll never forget 
 when I went out as a kid with Her First False Step they had 
 lions in that show. It was a frost from the start. No 
 salaries, no nothing. I got a big laugh one day when I was 
 late at rehearsal. The manager says: * You 're fined two 
 dollars, Miss Montague.' I says, 'All right, Mr. Gratz, but 
 you'll have to wait till I can write home for the money.' 
 Even Gratz had to laugh. Anyway, the show went bust and 
 I never would 'a' got any place if two or three parties hadn't of 
 helped me out here and there, just the same as I'm doing with 
 you this minute. So don't be foolish." 
 
 "Well you see I don't " He broke off froat ner- 
 vous weakness. In his mind was a jumble of incongruous 
 sentences and he seemed unable to manage any of them. 
 
 The girl now sent a clean shot through his armour. 
 "When'd you eat last?" 
 
 He looked at the ground again in painful embarrassment. 
 Even in the chill air he was beginning to feel hot. "I don't 
 remember," he said at last quite honestly. 
 
 "That's what I thought. You go eat. Go to Mother 
 Haggin's, that cafeteria just outside the gate. She has better 
 breakfast things than the place on the lot." 
 
184 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 Against his will the vision of a breakfast enthralled him, 
 yet even under this exaltation an instinct of the wariest 
 caution survived. 
 
 "I'll go to the one on the lot, I guess. If I went out to 
 the other one I couldn't get in again." 
 
 She smiled suddenly, with puzzling lights in her eyes. 
 " Well, of all things ! You want to get in again, do you? Say, 
 wouldn't that beat the hot place a mile? You want to get in 
 again? All right, Old-timer, I'll go out with you and after 
 you've fed I'll cue you on to the lot again." 
 
 "Well if it ain't taking you out of your way." He knew 
 that the girl was somehow humouring him, as if he were a 
 sick child. She knew, and he knew, that the lot was no 
 longer any place for him until he could be rightly there. 
 
 " No, c'mon, I'll stay by you." They walked up the street 
 of the Western village. The girl had started at a brisk pace 
 and he was presently breathless. 
 
 "I guess I'll have to rest a minute," he said. They were 
 now before the Crystal Palace Hotel and he sat on the steps. 
 
 "All in, are you? Well, take it easy." 
 
 He was not only all in, but his mind still played with in- 
 congruous sentences. He heard himself saying things that 
 must sound foolish. 
 
 "I've slept in here a lot," he volunteered. The girl went 
 to look through one of the windows. 
 
 "Blankets!" she exclaimed. "Well, you got the makings 
 of a trouper in you, I'll say that. Where else did you sleep? " 
 
 "Well, there were two miners had a nice cabin down the 
 street here with bunks and blankets, and they had a fight, 
 and half a kettle of beans and some bread, and one of them 
 shaved and I used his razor, but I haven't shaved since be- 
 cause I only had twenty cents day before yesterday, and any- 
 way they might think I was growing them for a part, the way 
 your father did, but I moved up here when I saw them put 
 the blankets in, and I was careful and put them back every 
 morning. I didn't do any harm, do you think? And I got 
 the rest of the beans they'd thrown into the fireplace, and if 
 
THE MONTAGUE GIRL INTERVENES 185 
 
 I'd only known it I could have brought my razor and over- 
 coat and some clean collars, but somehow you never seem to 
 know when " 
 
 He broke off, eyeing her vaguely. He had little notion 
 what he had been saying or what he would say next. 
 
 "This is going to be good," said the Montague girl. "I 
 can see that from here. But now you c'mon we'll walk 
 slow and you tell me the rest when you've had a little 
 snack." 
 
 She even helped him to rise, with a hand under his elbow, 
 though he was quick to show her that he had not needed this 
 help. "I can walk all right," he assured her. 
 
 "Of course you can. You're as strong as a horse. But 
 we needn't go too fast." She took his arm in a friendly way as 
 they completed the journey to the outside cafeteria. 
 
 At this early hour they were the only patrons of the place. 
 Miss Montague, a little with the air of a solicitous nurse, 
 seated her charge at a corner table and took the place oppo- 
 site him. 
 
 " What 's it going to be?" she demanded. 
 
 Visions of rich food raced madly through his awakened 
 mind, wide platters heaped with sausage and steaks and ham 
 and corned-beef hash. 
 
 "Steak," he ventured, "and something like ham and eggs 
 
 and some hot cakes and coffee and " He broke off. He 
 
 was becoming too emotional under this golden spread of 
 opportunity. The girl glanced up from the bill of fare and 
 appraised the wild light in his eyes. 
 
 "One minute, Kid let's be more restful at first. You 
 know kind of ease into the heavy eats. It'll prob'ly be 
 better for you." 
 
 "Anything you say," he conceded. Her words of caution 
 had stricken him with a fear that this was a dream; that he 
 would wake up under blankets back in the Crystal Palace. 
 It was like that in dreams. You seemed able to order all sorts 
 of food, but something happened ; it never reached the table. 
 He would take no further initiative in this scene, whether 
 
186 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 dream or reality. "You order something," he concluded. 
 His eyes trustfully sought the girl's. 
 
 "Well, I think you'll start with one orange, just to kind of 
 hint to the old works that something good is coming. Then 
 lemme see" she considered gravely. "Then I guess 
 about two soft-boiled eggs no, you can stand three and 
 some dry toast and some coffee. Maybe a few thin strips 
 of bacon wouldn't hurt. We'll see can you make the grade." 
 Ske traraed to give the order to a waitress. "And shoot 
 the coffee along, sister. A cup for me, too." 
 
 Her charge shivered again at the mere mention of coffee. 
 The juncture was critical. He might still be dreaming, but 
 in another moment he must know. He closely, even coolly, 
 watched the two cups of coffee that were placed before them. 
 He put a benumbed hand around the cup in front of him and 
 felt it burn. It was too active a sensation for mere dreaming. 
 He put sugar into the cup and poured in the cream from a 
 miniature pitcher, inhaling a very real aroma. Events thus 
 far seemed normal. He stirred the coffee and started to 
 raise the cup. Now, after all, it seemed to be a dream. His 
 hand shook so that the stuff spilled into the saucer and even 
 out on to the table. Always in dreams you were thwarted 
 at the last moment. 
 
 The Montague girl had noted the trembling and ineffec- 
 tive hand. She turned her back upon him to chat with the 
 waitress over by the food counter. With no eye upon him, 
 he put both hands about the cup and succeeded in raising 
 it to his lips. The hands were still shaky, but he managed 
 some sips of the stuff, and then a long draught that seemed 
 to scald him. He wasn't sure if it scalded or not. It was 
 pretty hot, and fire ran through him. He drained the cup 
 still holding it with both hands. It was an amazing sensa- 
 tion to have one's hand refuse to obey so simple an order. 
 Maybe he would always be that way now, practically a 
 cripple. 
 
 The girl turned back to him. "Atta boy," she said. 
 "Now take the orange. And when the toast comes you can 
 
THE MONTAGUE GIRL INTERVENES 187 
 
 have some more coffee." A dread load was off his mind. 
 He did not dream this thing. He ate the orange, and ate 
 wonderful toast to the accompaniment of another cup of 
 coffee. The latter half of this he managed with but one 
 hand, though it was not yet wholly under control. The 
 three eggs seemed like but one. He thought they must 
 have been small eggs. More toast was commanded and 
 more coffee. 
 
 "Easy, easy!" cautioned his watchful hostess from time 
 to time. "Don't wolf it you'll feel better afterwards." 
 
 "I feel better already," he announced. 
 
 "Well," the girl eyed him critically, "you certainly got 
 the main chandelier lighted up once more." 
 
 A strange exhilaration flooded all his being. His own 
 thoughts babbled to him, and he presently began to babble 
 to his new friend. 
 
 "You remind me so much of Tessie Kearns," he said as he 
 scraped the sides of the egg cup. 
 
 "Who's she?" 
 
 "Oh, she's a scenario writer I know. You're just like 
 her." He was now drunk maudlin drunk from the coffee. 
 Sober, he would have known that no human beings could be 
 less alike than Tessie Kearns and the Montague girl. Other 
 walls of his reserve went down. 
 
 "Of course I could have written to Gashwiler and got 
 some money to go back there " 
 
 "Gashwiler, Gashwiler?" The girl seemed to search her 
 memory. "I thought I knew all the tank towns, but that's 
 a new one. Where is it?" 
 
 "It isn't a town; it's a gentleman I had a position with, 
 and he said he'd keep it open for me." He flew to another 
 thought with the inconsequence of the drunken. "Say, 
 Kid" He had even caught that form of address from 
 her "I'll tell you. You can keep this watch of mine 
 till I pay you back this money." He drew it out. "It's a 
 good solid-gold watch and everything. My uncle Sylvester 
 gave it to me for not smoking, on my eighteenth birthday. 
 
188 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 He smoked, himself; he even drank considerable. He was 
 his own worst enemy. But you can see it's a good solid- 
 gold watch and keeps time, and you hold it till I pay you 
 back, will you?" 
 
 The girl took the watch, examining it carefully, noting 
 the inscription engraved on the case. There were puzzling 
 glints in her eyes as she handed it back to him. "No; I'll 
 tell you, it'll be my watch until you pay me back, but you 
 keep it for me. I haven't any place to carry it except the 
 pocket of my jacket, and I might lose it, and then where 'd 
 we be?" 
 
 "Well, all right." He cheerfully took back the watch, 
 His present ecstasy would find him agreeable to all pro- 
 posals. 
 
 "And say," continued the girl, "what about this Gashwel- 
 ler, or whatever his name is? He said he'd take you back, 
 did he? A farm?" 
 
 "No, an emporium and you forgot his name just the 
 way that lady in the casting office always does. She's funny. 
 Keeps telling me not to forget the address, when of course I 
 couldn't forget the town where I lived, could I? Of course 
 it's a little town, but you wouldn't forget it when you lived 
 there a long time not when you got your start there." 
 
 "So you got your start in this town, did you?" 
 
 He wanted to talk a lot now. He prattled of the town 
 and his life there, of the eight-hour talent-tester and the 
 course in movie-acting. Of Tessie Xearns and her scenarios, 
 not yet prized as they were sure to be later. Of Lowell 
 Hardy, the artistic photographer, and the stills that he had 
 made of the speaker as 'Clifford Armytage. Didn't she think 
 that was a better stage name than Merton Gill, which didn't 
 seem to sound like so much? Anyway, he wished he had 
 his stills here to show her. Of course some of them were just 
 in society parts, the sort of thing that Harold Parmalee 
 played had she noticed that he looked a good deal like 
 Harold Parmalee? Lots of people had. 
 
 Tessie Kearns thought he was the dead image of Parmalee. 
 
THE MONTAGUE GIRL INTERVENES 189 
 
 But he liked Western stuff better a lot better than cabaret 
 stuff where you had to smoke one cigarette after another 
 and he wished she could see the stills in the Buck Benson 
 outfit, chaps and sombrero and spurs and holster. He'd 
 never had two guns, but the one he did have he could draw 
 pretty well. There would be his hand at his side, and in a 
 flash he would have the gun in it, ready to shoot from the 
 hip. And roping he'd need to practise that some. Once 
 he got it smack over Dexter's head, but usually it didn't go 
 so well. 
 
 Probably a new clothesline didn't make the best rope 
 too stiff. He could probably do a lot better with one of those 
 hair ropes that the real cowboys used. And Metta Judson 
 she was the best cook anywhere around Simsbury. He 
 mustn't forget to write to Metta, and to Tessie Kearns, to 
 be sure and see The Blight of Broadway when it came to the 
 Bijou Palace. They would be surprised to see those close- 
 ups that Henshaw had used him in. And he was in that 
 other picture. No close-ups in that, still he would show 
 pretty well in the cage-scene he'd had to smoke a few 
 cigarettes there, because Arabs smoke all the time, and he 
 hadn't been in the later scene where the girl and the young 
 fellow were in the deserted tomb all night and he didn't lay 
 a finger on her because he was a perfect gentleman. 
 
 He didn't know what he would do next. Maybe Henshaw 
 would want him in Robinson Crusoe, Junior, where Friday's 
 sister turned out to be the daughter of an English earl with 
 her monogram tattooed on her left shoulder. He would ask 
 Henshaw, anyway. 
 
 The Montague girl listened attentively to the long, wander- 
 ing recital. At times she would seem to be strongly moved, 
 to tears or something. But mostly she listened with a 
 sympathetic smile, or perhaps with a perfectly rigid face, 
 though at such moments there would be those curious glints 
 of light far back in her gray eyes. Occasionally she would 
 prompt him with a question. 
 
 In this way she brought out his version of the Sabbath 
 
190 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 afternoon experience with Dexter. He spared none of the 
 details, for he was all frankness now. He even told how 
 ashamed he had felt having to lead Dexter home from his 
 scandalous grazing before the Methodist Church. He had 
 longed to leap upon the horse and ride him back at a gallop, 
 but he had been unable to do this because there was nothing 
 from which to climb on him, and probably he would have 
 been afraid to gallop the beast, ai 
 
 This had been one of the bits that most strangely moved 
 his listener. Her eyes were moist when he had finished, and 
 some strong emotion seemed about to overjx^ver her, but 
 she had m-nveivd command of herself, and become again 
 the sympathetic provider and counsellor. 
 
 He would have continued to talk, apparently, for the in- 
 fluence of strong drink had not begun to wane, but the girl 
 at length stopped him. 
 
 "Listen here, Merton " she began; her voice was 
 
 choked to a peculiar hoarseness and she seemed to be threat- 
 ened with a return of her late strong emotion. She was 
 plainly uncertain of her control, fearing to trust herself to 
 speech, but presently, after efforts which he observed with 
 warmest sympathy, she seemed to recover her poise. She 
 swallowed earnestly several times, wiped her moisture- 
 dimmed eyes with her handkerchief, and continued, "It's 
 getting late and Fve got to be over at the show shop. So 
 I'll tell you what to do next. You go out and get a shave 
 and a haircut and then go home and get cleaned up you 
 said you had a room and other clothes, didn't you?" 
 
 Volubly he told her about the room at Mrs. Patterson's, 
 and, with a brief return of lucidity, how the sum of ten dol- 
 lars was now due this heartless society woman who might 
 insist upon its payment before he would again enjoy free ac- 
 cei to his excellent wardrobe. 
 
 "Well, lemme see " She debated a moment, then 
 
 reached under the table, fumbled obscurely, and came up with 
 more money. "Now, here, here's twenty more besides that 
 first I gave you, so you can pay the dame her money and 
 
THE MONTAGUE GIRL INTERVENES 191 
 
 get all fixed up again, fresh suit and clean collar and a shine 
 and everything. No, no this is my scene; you stay out.* 1 
 
 He had waved protestingly at sight of the new money, 
 and now again he blushed. 
 
 "That's all understood," she continued. "I'm staking 
 you to cakes till you get on your feet, see? And I know 
 you're honest, so I'm not throwing my money away. There 
 sink it and forget it. Now, you go out and do what I 
 said, the barber first. And lay off the eats until about noon. 
 You had enough for now. By noon you can stoke up with 
 meat and potatoes anything you want that'll stick to the 
 merry old slats. And I'd take milk instead of any more 
 coffee. You've thinned down some you're not near so 
 plump as Harold Parmalee. Then you rest up for the bal- 
 ance of the day, and you show here to-morrow morning about 
 this time. Do you get it? The Countess'll let you in. 
 Tell her I said to, and come over to the office building. See? " 
 
 He tried to tell her his gratitude, but instead he babbled 
 again of how much she was like Tessie Kearns. They parted 
 at the gate. 
 
 With a last wondering scrutiny of him, a last reminder of 
 ker very minute directions, she suddenly illumined him with 
 rays of a compassion that was somehow half-laughter. 
 "You poor, feckless dub!" she pronounced as she turned 
 from him to dance through the gate. He scarcely heard 
 the words; her look and tone had been so warming. 
 
 Ten minutes later he was telling a barber that he had just 
 finished a hard week on the Holden lot, and that he was glad 
 to get the brush off at last. From the barber's he hastened 
 to the Patterson house, rather dreading the encounter with 
 one to whom he owed so much money. He found the house 
 locked. Probably both of the Pattersons had gone out into 
 society. He let himself in and began to follow the directions 
 of the Montague girl. The bath, clean linen, the other 
 belted suit, already pressed, the other shoes, the buttoned, 
 cloth-topped ones, already polished! He felt now more 
 equal to the encounter with a heartless society woman. But, 
 
MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 as she did not return, he went out in obedience to a new 
 hunger. 
 
 In the most sumptuous cafeteria he knew of, one patronized 
 only in his first careless days of opulence, he ate for a long 
 time. Roast beef and potatoes he ordered twice, nor did he 
 forget to drink the milk prescribed by his benefactress. 
 Plenty of milk would make him more than ever resemble 
 Harold Parmalee. And he commanded an abundance of 
 dessert: lemon pie and apple pie and a double portion of 
 chocolate cake with ice-cream. His craving for sweets was 
 still unappeased, so at a near-by drug store he bought a 
 pound box of candy. 
 
 The world was again un,der his feet. Restored to his right- 
 ful domain, he trod it with lightness and certainty. His 
 mind was still a pleasant jumble of money and food and the 
 Montague girl. Miles of gorgeous film flickered across his 
 vision. An experienced alcoholic would have told him that 
 he enjoyed a coffee "hang-over." He wended a lordly way 
 to the nearest motion-picture theatre. 
 
 Billed there was the tenth installment of The Hazards 
 of Hortense. He passed before the lively portrayal in 
 colours of Hortense driving a motor car off an open draw- 
 bridge. The car was already halfway between the bridge 
 and the water beneath. He sneered openly at the announce- 
 ment: "Beulah Baxter in the Sensational Surprise Picture 
 of the Century." A surprise picture indeed, if those now 
 entering the theatre could be told what he knew about it! 
 He considered spreading the news, but decided to retain 
 the superiority his secret knowledge gave him. 
 
 Inside the theatre, eating diligently from his box of candy, 
 he was compelled to endure another of the unspeakable 
 Buckeye comedies. The cross-eyed man was a lifeguard 
 at a beach and there were social entanglements involv- 
 ing a bearded father, his daughter in an inconsiderable 
 bathing suit, a confirmed dipsomaniac, two social derelicts 
 who had to live by their wits, and a dozen young girls also 
 arrayed in inconsiderable bathing suits. He could scarcely 
 
THE MONTAGUE GIRL INTERVENES 193 
 
 follow the chain of events, so illogical were they, and indeed 
 made little effort to do so. He felt far above the audience 
 that cackled at these dreadful buffooneries. One subtitle 
 read: "I hate to kill him murder is so hard to explain." 
 
 This sort of thing, he felt more than ever, degraded an art 
 where earnest people were suffering and sacrificing in order 
 to give the public something better and finer. Had he not, 
 himself, that very day, completed a perilous ordeal of suffer- 
 ing and sacrifice? And he was asked to laugh at a cross- 
 eyed man posing before a camera that fell to pieces when the 
 lens was exposed, shattered, presumably, by the impact of 
 the afflicted creature's image! This, surely, was not art 
 such as Clifford Armytage was rapidly fitting himself, by 
 trial and hardship, to confer upon the public. 
 
 It was with curiously conflicting emotions that he watched 
 the ensuing Hazards of Hortense. He had to remind him- 
 self that the slim little girl with the wistful eyes was not only 
 not performing certain feats of daring that the film exposed, 
 but that she was Mrs. Sigmund Rosenblatt and crazy about 
 her husband. Yet the magic had not wholly departed from 
 this wronged heroine. He thought perhaps this might be 
 because he now knew, and actually liked, that talkative 
 Montague girl who would be doing the choice bits of this 
 drama. Certainly he was loyal to the hand that fed him. 
 
 Black Steve and his base crew, hirelings of the scoundrelly 
 guardian who was "a Power in Wall Street, " again and again 
 seemed to have encompassed the ruin, body and soul, of the 
 persecuted Hortense. They had her prisoner in a foul den 
 of Chinatown, whence she escaped to balance precariously 
 upon the narrow cornice of a skyscraper, hundreds of feet 
 above a crowded thoroughfare. They had her, as the screen 
 said, "Depressed by the Grim Menace of Tragedy that 
 Impended in the Shadows." They gave her a brief respite 
 in one of those gilded resorts "Where the Clink of Coin 
 Opens Wide the Portals of Pleasure, Where Wealth Beckons 
 with Golden Fingers," but this was only a trap for the un- 
 suspecting girl, who was presently, sewed in a plain sack. 
 
194 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 tossed from the stern of an ocean liner far out at sea by 
 creatures who would do anything for money who, so it 
 was said, were Remorseless in the Mad Pursuit of Gain. 
 
 At certain gripping moments it became apparent to one 
 of the audience that Mrs. Sigmund Rosenblatt herself was 
 no longer in jeopardy. He knew the girl who was, and pro- 
 foundly admired her artistry as she fled along the narrow 
 cornice of the skyscraper. For all purposes she was Beulah 
 Baxter. He recalled her figure as being not exactly stubby, 
 but at least not of marked slenderness. Yet in the distance 
 she was indeed all that an audience could demand. And 
 she was honest, while Mrs. Rosenblatt, in the Majestic 
 Theatre at Peoria, Illinois, had trifled airily with his faith in 
 women and deceived him by word of mouth. 
 
 He applauded loudly at the sensational finish, when 
 Hortense, driving her motor car at high speed across the 
 great bridge, ran into the draw, that opened too late for her 
 to slow down, and plunged to the cruel waters far below. 
 
 Mrs. Rosenblatt would possibly have been a fool to do this 
 herself. The Montague girl had been insistent on that point ; 
 there were enough things she couldn't avoid doing, and all 
 stars very sensibly had doubles for such scenes when distance 
 or action permitted. At the same time, he could never again 
 feel the same toward her. Indeed, he would never have felt 
 the same even had there been no Rosenblatt. Art was 
 art! 
 
 It was only five o'clock when he left the picture theatre, 
 but he ate again at the luxurious cafeteria. He ate a large 
 steak, drank an immense quantity of milk, and bought an^ 
 other box of candy on his way to the Patterson home. Lights 
 were on there, and he went in to face the woman he had so 
 long kept out of her money. She would probably greet him 
 coldly and tell him she was surprised at his actions. 
 
 Yet it seemed that he had been deceived in this society 
 woman. She was human, after all. She shook hands with 
 him warmly and said they were glad to see him back; he 
 must have been out on location, and she was glad they were 
 
THE MONTAGUE GIRL INTERVENES 195 
 
 not to lose him, because he was so quiet and regular and not 
 like some other motion-picture actors she had known. 
 
 He told her he had just put in a hard week on the Holden 
 lot, where things were beginning to pick up. He was glad she 
 had missed him, and he certainly had missed his comfortable 
 room, because the accommodations on the lot were not of the 
 best. In fact, they were pretty unsatisfactory, if you came 
 right down to it, and he hoped they wouldn't keep him there 
 again. And, oh, yes he was almost forgetting. Here was 
 ten dollars he believed there were two weeks' rent now due. 
 He passed over the money with rather a Clifford Armytage 
 flourish. 
 
 Mrs. Patterson accepted the bill almost protestingly. She 
 hadn't once thought about the rent, because she knew he 
 was reliable, and he was to remember that any time con- 
 venient to him would always suit her in these matters. She 
 did accept the bill, still she was not the heartless creature he 
 had supposed her to be. 
 
 As he bade her good-night at the door she regarded him 
 closely and said, "Somehow you look a whole lot older, Mr. 
 Armytage." 
 
 "I am," replied Mr. Armytage. 
 
 Miss Montague, after parting with her protege had walked 
 quickly, not without little recurrent dance steps as if some 
 excess of joy would ever and again overwhelm her to the 
 long office building on the Holden lot, where she entered a 
 door marked "Buckeye Comedies. Jeff Baird, Manager." 
 The outer office was vacant, but through the open door to 
 another room she observed Baird at his desk, his head bent 
 low over certain sheets of yellow paper. He was a bulky, 
 rather phlegmatic looking man, with a parrot-like crest 
 of gray hair. He did not look up as the girl entered. She 
 stood a moment as if to control her excitement, then spoke. 
 "Jeff, I found a million dollars for you this morning." 
 " Thanks 1" said Mr. Baird, still not looking up. "Chuck 
 
196 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 it down in the coal cellar, will you? We're littered with the 
 stuff up here." 
 
 "On the level, Jeff." 
 
 Baird looked up. "On the level?" 
 
 "You'll say so." 
 
 "Shoot!" 
 
 "Well, he's a small-town hick that saved up seventy-two 
 dollars to come here from Goosewallow, Michigan, to go 
 into pictures took a correspondence course in screen- 
 acting and all that, and he went broke and slept in a prop- 
 erty room down in the village all last week; no eats at all 
 for three, four days. I'd noticed him around the lot on 
 different sets; something about him that makes you look a 
 second time. I don't know what it is kind of innocent and 
 bug-eyed the way he'd rubber at things, but all the time like 
 as if he thought he was someone. Well, I keep running 
 across him and pretty soon I notice he's up against it. He 
 still thinks he's someone, and is very up-stage if you start 
 to kid him the least bit, but the signs are there, all right. 
 He's up against it good and hard. 
 
 "All last week he got to looking worse and worse. But 
 he still had his stage presence. Say, yesterday he looked like 
 the juvenile lead of a busted road show that has walked in 
 from Albany and was just standing around on Broadway won- 
 dering who he'd consent to sign up with for forty weeks see 
 what I mean? hungry but proud. He was over on the 
 Baxter set last night while I was doing .the water stuff, and 
 you'd ought to see him freeze me when I suggested a sand- 
 wich and a cup o' coffee. It was grand. 
 
 "Well, this morning I'm back for a bar pin of Baxter's 
 I'd lost, and there he is again, no overcoat, shivering his 
 teeth loose, and all in. So I fell for him. Took him up for 
 some coffee and eggs, staked him to his room rent, and sent 
 him off to get cleaned and barbered. But before he went 
 he cut loose and told me his history from the cradle to 
 Hollywood. 
 
 "I'd 'a' given something good if you'd been at the next 
 
THE MONTAGUE GIRL INTERVENES 197 
 
 table. I guess he got kind of jagged on the food, see? He'd 
 tell me anything that run in his mind, and most of it was 
 good. You'll say so. I'll get him to do it for you sometime. 
 Of all the funny nuts that make this lot! Well, take my 
 word for it; that's all I ask. And listen here, Jeff I'm 
 down to cases. There's something about this kid, like 
 when I tell you I'd always look at him twice. And it's 
 something rich that I won't let out for a minute or two. 
 But here's what you and me do, right quick: 
 
 "The kid was in that cabaret and gambling-house stuff 
 they shot last week for The Blight of Broadway, and this 
 something that makes you look at him must of struck Hen- 
 shaw the way it did me, for he let him stay right at the edge 
 of the dance floor and took a lot of close-ups of him looking 
 tired to death of the gay night life. Well, you call up the 
 Victor folks and ask can you get a look at that stuff because 
 you're thinking of giving a part to one of the extras that 
 worked in it. Maybe we can get into the projection room 
 right away and you'll see what I mean. Then I won't 
 have to tell you the richest thing about it. Now!" she 
 took a long breath "will you?" 
 
 Baird had listened with mild interest to the recital, oc- 
 casionally seeming not to listen while he altered the script 
 before him. But he took the telephone receiver from its 
 hook and said briefly to the girl: "You win. Hello! 
 Give me the Victor office. Hello ! Mr. Baird speaking ' ' 
 
 The two were presently in the dark projection room watch- 
 ing the scenes the girl had told of. 
 
 "They haven't started cutting yet," she said delightedly. 
 "All his close-ups will be in. Goody! There's the lad 
 get him? Ain't he the actin'est thing you ever saw? Now 
 wait you'll see others." 
 
 Baird watched the film absorbedly. Three times it was 
 run for the sole purpose of exposing to this small audience 
 Merton Gill's notion of being consumed with ennui among 
 pleasures that had palled. In the gambling-hall bit it could 
 be observed that he thought not too well of cigarettes* 
 
198 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 "He screens well, too," remarked the girl. "Of course I 
 couldn't be sure of that." 
 
 "He screens all right," agreed Baird. 
 
 "Well, what do you think?" 
 
 "I think he looks like the first plume on a hearse." 
 
 "He looks all of that, but try again. Who does he remind 
 you of? Catch this next one in the gambling hell get the 
 profile and the eyebrows and the chin there!" 
 
 "Why " Baird chuckled. "I'm a Swede if he don't 
 
 look like " 
 
 "You got it!" the girl broke in excitedly. "I knew you 
 would. I didn't at first, this morning, because he was so 
 hungry and needed a shave, and he darned near had me 
 bawling when he couldn't hold his cup o' coffee except with 
 two hands. But what d'you think? pretty soon he tells 
 me himself that he looks a great deal like Harold Parmalee 
 and wouldn't mind playing parts like Parmalee, though he 
 prefers Western stuff. Wouldn't that get you?" 
 
 The film was run again so that Baird could study the Gill 
 face in the light of this new knowledge. 
 
 "He does, he does, he certainly does if he don't look like 
 a No. 9 company of Parmalee I'll eat that film. Say, Flips, 
 you did find something." 
 
 "Oh, I knew it; didn't I tell you so?" 
 
 "But, listen does he know he's funny?" 
 
 "Not in a thousand years! He doesn't know anything's 
 funny, near as I can make him." 
 
 They were out in the light again, walking slowly back to 
 the Buckeye offices. 
 
 "Get this," said Baird seriously. "You may think I'm 
 kidding, but only yesterday I was trying to think if I couldn't 
 dig up some guy that looked more like Parmalee than Parma- 
 lee himself does just enough more to get the laugh, see? 
 And you spring this lad on me. All he needs is the eyebrows 
 worked up a little bit. But how about him will he handle? 
 Because if he will I'll use him in the new five-reeler." 
 
 " Will he handle? " Miss Montague echoed the words with 
 
THE MONTAGUE GIRL INTERVENES 199 
 
 deep emphasis. "Leave him to me. He's got to handle. 
 I already got twenty-five bucks invested in his screen career. 
 And, Jeff, he'll be easy to work, except he don't know he's 
 funny. If he found out he was, it might queer him see 
 what I mean? He's one of that land you can tell it. 
 How will you use him? He could never do Buckeye stuff." 
 
 "Sure not. But ain't I told you? In this new piece 
 Jack is stage struck and gets a job as valet to a ham that's 
 just about Parmalee's type, and we show Parmalee acting in 
 the screen, but all straight stuff, you understand. Unless 
 he's a wise guy he'll go all through the piece and never get 
 on that it's funny. See, his part's dead straight and serious 
 in a regular drama, and the less he thinks he's funny the 
 bigger scream he'll be. He's got to be Harold Parmalee 
 acting right out, all over the set, as serious as the lumbago 
 get what I mean?" 
 
 "I got you," said the girl, "and you'll get him to-morrow 
 morning. I told him to be over with his stills. And he'll 
 be serious all the time, make no mistake there. He's no 
 wise guy. And one thing, Jeff, he's as innocent as a cup- 
 custard, so you'll have to keep that bunch of Buckeye rough- 
 necks from riding him. I can tell you that much. Once 
 they started kidding him, it would be all off." 
 
 "And, besides " She hesitated briefly. "Somehow I 
 
 don't want him kidded. I'm pretty hard-boiled, but he sort 
 of made me feel like a fifty-year-old mother watching her only 
 boy go out into the rough world. See?" 
 
 "I'll watch out for that," said Baird. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 ALIAS HAROLD PARMALEE 
 
 MERTON GILL awoke to the comforting realization 
 that he was between sheets instead of blankets, and 
 that this morning he need not obscurely leave his 
 room by means of a window. As he dressed, however, cer- 
 tain misgivings, to which he had been immune the day be- 
 fore, gnawed into his optimism. He was sober now. The 
 sheer intoxication of food after fasting, of friendly concern 
 after so long a period when no one had spoken him kindly or 
 otherwise, had evaporated. He felt the depression following 
 success. 
 
 He had been rescued from death by starvation, but had 
 anything more than this come about? Had he not fed upon 
 the charity of a strange girl, taking her money without seeing 
 ways to discharge the debt? How could he ever discharge 
 it? Probably before this she had begun to think of him as 
 a cheat. She had asked him to come to the lot, but had been 
 vague as to the purpose. Probably his ordeal of struggle 
 and sacrifice was not yet over. At any rate, he must find a 
 job that would let him pay back the borrowed twenty-five 
 dollars. 
 
 He would meet her as she had requested, assure her of 
 his honest intentions, and then seek for work. He would try 
 all the emporiums in Hollywood. They were numerous and 
 some one of them would need the services of an experienced 
 assistant. This plan of endeavour crystallized as he made 
 his way to the Holden lot. He had brought his package of 
 stills, but only because the girl had insisted on seeing them. 
 
 The Countess made nothing of letting him in. She had 
 
 200 
 
ALIAS HAROLD PARMALEE 201 
 
 missed him, she said, for what seemed like months, and was 
 glad to hear that he now had something definite in view, 
 because the picture game was mighty uncertain and it was 
 only the lucky few nowadays that could see something 
 definite. He did not confide to her that the definite some- 
 thing now within his view would demand his presence at 
 some distance from her friendly self. 
 
 He approached the entrance to Stage Five with head bent 
 in calculation, and not until he heard her voice did he glance 
 up to observe that the Montague girl was dancing from 
 pleasure, it would seem, at merely beholding him. She 
 seized both his hands in her strong grasp and revolved him 
 at the centre of a circle she danced. Then she held him off 
 while her eyes took in the details of his restoration. 
 
 "Well, well, well! That shows what a few ham and eggs 
 and sleep will do. Kid, you gross a million at this minute. 
 New suit, new shoes, snappy cravat right from the Men's 
 Quality Shop, and all shaved and combed slick and 
 everything! Say and I was afraid maybe you wouldn't 
 show." 
 
 He regarded her earnestly. " Oh, I would have come back, 
 all right; I'd never forget that twenty-five dollars I owe you; 
 and you'll get it all back, only it may take a little time. I 
 thought I'd see you for a minute, then go out and find a job 
 you know, a regular job in a store." 
 
 "Nothing of the sort, old Trouper!" She danced again 
 about him, both his hands in hers, which annoyed him be- 
 cause it was rather loud public behaviour, though he forgave 
 her in the light of youth and kindliness. "No regular job 
 for you, old Pippin nothing but acting all over the place 
 real acting that people come miles to see." 
 
 "Do you think I can really get a part?" Perhaps the 
 creature had something definite in view for him. 
 
 "Sure you can get a part! Yesterday morning I simply 
 walked into a part for you. Come along over to the office 
 with me. Goody I see you brought the stills. I'll take a 
 peek at 'em myself before Baird gets here." 
 
202 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 "Baird? Not the Buckeye comedy man?" He was 
 chilled by a sudden fear. 
 
 "Yes, Jeff Baird. You see he is going to do some five- 
 reelers and this first one has a part that might do for you. 
 At least, I told him some things about you, and he thinks 
 you can get away with it." 
 
 He went moodily at her side, thinking swift thoughts. 
 It seemed ungracious to tell her of his loathing for the Buck- 
 eye comedies, those blasphemous caricatures of worth-while 
 screen art. It would not be fair. And perhaps here was a 
 quick way to discharge his debt and be free of obligation to 
 the girl. Of course he would always feel a warm gratitude 
 for her trusting kindness, but when he no longer owed her 
 money he could choose his own line of work. Rather bond- 
 age to some Hollywood Gashwiler than clowning in Baird's 
 infamies ! 
 
 "Well, I'll try anything he gives me," he said at last, 
 striving for the enthusiasm he could not feel. 
 
 "You'll go big, too," said the girl. "Believe, me Kid, 
 you'll go grand." 
 
 In Baird's offices he sat at the desk and excitedly undid 
 the package of stills. "We'll give 'em the once-over before 
 he comes," she said, and was presently exclaiming with 
 delight at the art study of Clifford Armytage in evening 
 dress, two straight fingers pressing the left temple, the face 
 in three-quarter view. 
 
 "Well, now, if that ain't Harold Parmalee to the life! 
 If it wasn't for that Clifford Armytage signed under it, you'd 
 had me guessing. I knew yesterday you looked like him, 
 but I didn't dream it would be as much like him as this 
 picture is. Say, we won't show Baird this at first. We'll 
 let him size you up and see if your face don't remind him of 
 Parmalee right away. Then we'll show him this and it'll 
 be a cinch. And my, look at these others here you're a 
 soldier, and here you're a a a polo player that is 
 polo, ain't it, or is it tennis? And will you look at these 
 stunning Westerns! These are simply the best of all on 
 
ALIAS HAKOLD PARMALEE 203 
 
 horseback, and throwing a rope, and the fighting face with 
 the gun drawn, and rolling a cigarette and, as I live, saying 
 good-by to the horse. Wouldn't that get you Buck 
 Benson to the life!" 
 
 Again and again she shuffled over the stills, dwelling oa 
 each with excited admiration. Her excitement was pro- 
 nounced. It seemed to be a sort of nervous excitement. It 
 had caused her face to flush deeply, and her manner, es- 
 pecially over the Western pictures, at moments oddly 
 approached hysteria. Merton was deeply gratified. He 
 had expected the art studies to produce no such impression 
 as this. The Countess in the casting office had certainly mani- 
 fested nothing like hysteria at beholding them. It must 
 be that the Montague girl was a better judge of art studies. 
 
 "I always liked this one, after the Westerns," he observed, 
 indicating the Harold Parmalee pose. 
 
 "It's stunning," agreed the girl, still with her nervous 
 manner. "I tell you, sit over there in Jeff's chair and take 
 the same pose, so I can compare you with the photo." 
 
 Merton obliged. He leaned an elbow on the chair-arm 
 and a temple on the two straightened fingers. "Is the 
 light right?" he asked, as he turned his face to the pictured 
 angle. 
 
 "Fine," applauded the girl. "Hold it." He held it 
 until shocked by shrill laughter from the observer. Peal 
 followed peal. She had seemed oddly threatened with 
 hysteria; perhaps now it had come. She rocked on her heels 
 and held her hands to her sides. Merton arose in some 
 alarm, and was reassured when the victim betrayed signs of 
 mastering her infirmity. She wiped her eyes presently and 
 explained her outbreak. 
 
 "You looked so much like Parmalee I just couldn't help 
 thinking how funny it was it just seemed to go over me like 
 anything, like a spasm or something, when I got to thinking 
 what Parmalee would say if he saw someone looking so much 
 like him. See? That was why I laughed." 
 
 He was sympathetic and delighted in equal parts. The 
 
204 MERTOX OF THE MONIES 
 
 girl had really seemed to suffer from her paroxysm, yet it 
 was a splendid tribute to his screen worth. 
 
 It was at this moment that Baird entered. He tossed his 
 hat on a chair and turned to the couple. 
 
 "Mr. Baird, shake hands with my friend Merton GUI. 
 His stage name is Clifford Armytage." 
 
 ry pleased to meet you," said Merton, grasping the 
 extended hand. He hoped he had not been too dignified, too 
 condescending. Baird would sometime doubtless know that 
 he did not approve of those so-called comedies, but for the 
 present he must demean himself to pay back some money 
 borrowed from a working girl. 
 
 flighted," said Baird; then he bent a suddenly troubled 
 gaze upon the Gill lineaments. He held this a long moment, 
 breaking it only with a sudden dramatic turning to Miss 
 itague. 
 
 "What's this, my child? You're playing tricks on the 
 old man." Again he incredulously scanned the face of Mer- 
 ton. "Who is this man?" he demanded. 
 
 "1 told you, he's Merton Gill from Gushwomp, Ohio," 
 said the girl, looking pleased and expectant. 
 
 zisbury, Illinois," put in Merton quickly, wishing the 
 girl could be better at remembering names. 
 
 Baird at last seemed to be convinced. He heavily smote 
 an open palm with a clenched fist. "Well, I'll be swoshed! 
 I thought you must be kidding. If I'd seen him out on the 
 lot I'd 'a' said he was the twin brother of Harold Parmalee." 
 
 "There!" exclaimed the girl triumphantly. "Didn't I 
 say he'd see it right quick? You can't keep a thing from this 
 old boy. Now you just come over here to this desk and look 
 at this fine batch of stills he had taken by a regular artist 
 back in Cranberry." 
 
 i!" exclaimed Baird unctuously, "I bet they're good. 
 Show me." He went to the desk. "Be seated, Mr. Gill, 
 while I have a look at these.** 
 
 Merton Gill, under the eye of Baird which clung to him 
 with something close to fascination, sat down. He took the 
 
ALIAS HAROLD PARMALEE 205 
 
 chair with fine dignity, a certain masterly deliberation. He 
 sat easily, and seemed to await a verdict confidently fore- 
 known. Baird's eyes did not leave him for the stills until 
 he had assumed a slightly Harold Parmalee pose. Then 
 his head with the girl's bent over the pictures, he began to 
 examine them. 
 
 Exclamations of delight came from the pair. Merton 
 Gill listened amiably. He was not greatly thrilled by an 
 admiration which he had long believed to be his due. Had 
 he not always supposed that things of j this sort 
 
 would be said about those stills when at la>' .me under 
 
 the eyes of the right people? 
 
 Like the Montague girl, Baird was chiefly impressed with 
 the Westerns. He looked a long time at them, especially 
 at the one where Merton 's face was emotionally averted from 
 his old pal, Pinto, at the moment of farewell. Regarding 
 Baird, as he stood holding this art study up to the light, 
 Merton became aware for the first time that Baird suffered 
 from some nervous affliction, a peculiar twitching of the 
 lips, a trembling of the chin, which he had sometimes ob- 
 served in senile persons. All at once Baird seemed quite over- 
 come by this infirmity. He put a handkerchief to his face and 
 uttered a muffled excuse as he hastily left the room. Outside, 
 the noise of his heavy tread died swiftly away down the halL 
 
 The Montague girl remained at the desk. There was a 
 strange light in her eyes and her face was still flushed. She 
 shot a glance of encouragement at Merton. 
 
 "Don't be nervous, old Kid; he likes 'em all right," 
 
 He reassured her lightly: "Oh, I'm not a bit nervous 
 about him. It ain't as if he was doing something worth 
 while, instead of mere comedies." 
 
 The girl's colour seemed to heighten. "You be sure to 
 tell him that; talk right up to him. Be sure to say 'mere 
 comedies.' It'll show him you know what's what. And as 
 a matter of fact, Kid, he's trying to do something worth 
 while, right this minute, something serious. That's why 
 fee's so interested in you." 
 
206 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 "Well, of course, that's different." He was glad to learn 
 this of Baird. He would take the man seriously if he tried to 
 be serious, to do something fine and distinctive. 
 
 Baird here returned, looking grave. The Montague girl 
 seemed more strangely intense. She beckoned the manager 
 to her side. 
 
 "Now, here, Jeff, her/e was something I just naturally had 
 to laugh at." 
 
 Baird had not wholly conquered those facial spasms, but 
 he controIVd himself to say, "Show me!" 
 
 "Now, Ll^rton," directed the girl, "take that same pose 
 again, like you did for me, the way you are in this picture." 
 
 As Merton adjusted himself to the Parmalee pose she 
 handed the picture to Baird. "Now, Jeff, I ask you ain't 
 that Harold to the life ain't it so near him that you just 
 have to laugh your head off?" 
 
 It was even so. Baird and the girl both laughed con- 
 vulsively, the former with rumbling chuckles that shook 
 his frame. When he had again composed himself he said, 
 "Well, Mr. Gill, I think you and I can do a little business. 
 I don't know what your idea about a contract is, but " 
 
 Merton Gill quickly interrupted. "Well, you see I'd 
 hardly like to sign a contract with you, not for those mere 
 comedies you do. I'll do anything to earn a little money 
 right now so I can pay back this young lady, but I wouldn't 
 like to go on playing in such things, with cross-eyed people 
 and waiters on roller skates, and all that. What I really 
 would like to do is something fine and worth while, but not 
 clowning in mere Buckeye comedies." 
 
 Mr. Baird, who had devoted the best part of an active 
 career to the production of Buckeye comedies, and who re- 
 garded them as at least one expression of the very highest 
 art, did not even flinch at these cool words. He had once 
 been an actor himself. Taking the blow like a man, he 
 beamed upon his critic. "Exactly, my boy; don't you 
 think I'll ever ask you to come down to clowning. You 
 might work with me for y<-rs and I'd never ask you to do 
 
ALIAS HAROLD PAKMALEE 207 
 
 a thing that wasn't serious. In fact, that's why I'm hoping 
 to engage you now. I want to do a serious picture, I want 
 to get out of all that slap-stick stuff, see? Something fine 
 and worth while, like you say. And you're the very actor 
 I need in this new piece." 
 
 "Well, of course, in that case " This was different; 
 
 he made it plain that hi the case of a manager striving for 
 higher things he was not one to withhold a helping hand. He 
 was beginning to feel a great sympathy for Baird in his efforts 
 for the worth while. He thawed somewhat from the re- 
 serve that Buckeye comedies had put upon him. He chatted 
 amiably. Under promptings from the girl he spoke freely 
 of his career, both in Simsbury and in Hollywood. It was 
 twelve o'clock before they seemed willing to let him go, and 
 from time to time they would pause to gloat over the stills. 
 
 At last Baird said cheerily, "Well, my lad, I need you in 
 my new piece. How'll it be if I put you on my payroll, be- 
 ginning to-day, at forty a week? How about it, hey?" 
 
 "Well, I'd like that first rate, only I haven't worked any 
 to-day; you shouldn't pay me for just coming here." 
 
 The manager waved a hand airily. "That's all right, my 
 boy; you've earned a day's salary just coming here to cheer 
 me up. These mere comedies get me so down in the dumps 
 sometimes. And besides, you're not through yet. I'm 
 going to use you some more. Listen, now " The man- 
 ager had become coldly businesslike. "You go up to a little 
 theatre on Hollywood Boulevard you can't miss it where 
 they're running a Harold Parmalee picture. I saw it last 
 night and I want you to see it to-day, Better see it after- 
 noon and evening both." 
 
 "Yes, sir," said Merton. 
 
 "And watch Parmalee. Study him in this picture. You 
 look like him already, but see if you can pick up some of his 
 tricks, see what I mean? Because it's a regular Parmalee 
 part I'm going to have you do, see? Kind of a society part 
 to start with, and then we work in some of your Western 
 stuff at the finish. But get Parmalee as much as you can. 
 
208 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 That's all now. Oh, yes, and can you leave these stills with 
 me? Our publicity man may want to use them later." 
 
 "All right, Mr. Baird, I'll do just what you say, and of 
 course you can keep the stills as long as I got an engagement 
 with you, and I'm very glad you're trying to do something 
 really worth while." 
 
 "Thanks," said Baird, averting his face. 
 
 The girl followed him into the hall. "Great work, boy, 
 and take it from me, you'll go over. Say, honest now, I'm 
 glad clear down into my boots." She had both his hands 
 again, and he could see that her eyes were moist. She seemed 
 to be an impressionable little thing, hysterical one minute 
 while looking at a bunch of good stills, and sort of weepy 
 the next. But he was beginning to like her, in spite of her 
 funny talk and free ways. 
 
 "And say," she called after him when he had reached the 
 top of the stairs, "you know you haven't had much experi- 
 ence yet with a bunch of hard-boiled troupers; many a one 
 will be jealous of you the minute you begin to climb, and may- 
 be they'll get fresh and try to kid you, see? But don't you 
 mind it give it right back to them. Or tell me if they get 
 too raw. Just remember I got a mean right when I swing 
 free." 
 
 "All right, thank you," he replied, but his bewilderment 
 was plain. 
 
 She stared a moment, danced up to him, and seized a hand 
 in both of hers. "What I mean son, if you feel bothered any 
 time by anything just come to me with it, see? I'm in 
 this piece, and I'll look out for you. Don't forget that." 
 She dropped his hand, and was back in the office while he 
 mumbled his thanks for what he knew she had meant as a 
 kindness. 
 
 So she was to be in the Baird piece; she, too, would be 
 trying to give the public something better and finer. Still, 
 he was puzzled at her believing he might need to be looked 
 out for. An actor drawing forty dollars a week could surely 
 look out for himself. 
 
ALIAS HAROLD PARMALEE 209 
 
 He emerged into the open of the Holden lot as one who 
 had at last achieved success after long and gruelling pri- 
 vation. He walked briefly among the scenes of this privation, 
 pausing in reminiscent mood before the Crystal Palace Hotel 
 and other outstanding spots where he had so stoically suffered 
 the torments of hunger and discouragement. 
 
 He remembered to be glad now that no letter of appeal 
 had actually gone to Gashwiler. Suppose he had built up 
 in the old gentleman's mind a false hope that he might again 
 employ Merton Gill? A good thing he had held out! Yes- 
 terday he was starving and penniless; to-day he was fed and 
 on someone's payroll for probably as much money a week as 
 Gashwiler netted from his entire business. From sheer 
 force of association, as he thus meditated, he found him- 
 self hungry, and a few moments later he was selecting from 
 the food counter of the cafeteria whatever chanced to appeal 
 to the eye no weighing of prices now. 
 
 Before he had finished his meal Henshaw and his so-called 
 Governor brought their trays to the adjoining table. Merton 
 studied with new interest the director who would some day 
 be telling people that he had been the first to observe the 
 aptitude of this new star had, in fact, given him a lot of 
 footage and close-ups and medium shots and "dramatics" in 
 The Blight of Broadway when he was a mere extra before 
 he had made himself known to the public in Jeff Baird's 
 first worth-while piece. 
 
 He was strongly moved, now, to bring himself to Henshaw's 
 notice when he heard the latter say, "It's a regular Harold 
 Parmalee part, good light comedy, plenty of heart interest, 
 and that corking fight on the cliff." 
 
 He wanted to tell Henshaw that he himself was already 
 engaged to do a Harold Parmalee part, and had been told, 
 not two hours ago, that he would by most people be taken for 
 Parmalee's twin brother. He restrained this impulse, how- 
 ever, as Henshaw went on to talk of the piece in hand. 
 
 It proved to be Robinson Crusoe, which he had already dis- 
 cussed. Or, rather, not Robinson Crusoe any longer. Not 
 
210 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 even Robinson Crusoe, Junior. It was to have been called 
 Island Passion, he learned, but this title had been amended 
 to Island Love. 
 
 "They're getting fed up on that word 'passion,' " Henshaw 
 was saying, "and anyhow, 'love* seems to go better with 
 'island ,' don't you think, Governor? 'Desert Passion' was 
 all right there's something strong and intense about a 
 desert. But 'island' is different." 
 
 And it appeared that Island Love, though having begun as 
 Robinson Crusoe, would contain few of the outstanding fea- 
 tures of that tale. Instead of Crusoe's wrecked sailing-ship, 
 there was a wrecked steam yacht, a very expensive yacht 
 stocked with all modern luxuries, nor would there be a native 
 Friday and his supposed sister with the tattooed shoulder, 
 but a wealthy young New Yorker and his valet who would be 
 good for comedy on a desert island, and a beautiful girl, 
 and a scoundrel who would in the last reel be thrown over 
 the cliffs. 
 
 Henshaw was vivacious about the effects he would get. 
 "I've been wondering, Governor," he continued, "if we're 
 going to kill off the heavy, whether we shouldn't plant it 
 early that besides wanting this girl who's on the island, he's 
 the same scoundrel that wronged the young sister of the lead 
 that owns the yacht. See what I mean? it would give more 
 conflict." 
 
 "But here " The Governor frowned and spoke after 
 
 a moment's pause. "Your young New Yorker is rich, isn't 
 he? Fine old family, and all that, how could he have a 
 sister that would get wronged? You couldn't do it. If he's 
 got a wronged sister, he'd have to be a workingman or a 
 sailor or something. And she couldn't be a New York 
 society girl; she'd have to be working some place, in a store 
 or office don't you see? How could you have a swell 
 young New Yorker with a wronged sister? Real society 
 girls never get wronged unless their father loses his money, 
 and then it's never anything serious enough to kill a heavy 
 for. No that's out." 
 
ALIAS HAROLD PARMALEE 211 
 
 "Wait, I have it." Henshaw beamed with a new inspira- 
 tion. "You just said a sailor could have his sister wronged, 
 so why not have one on the yacht, a good strong type, you 
 know, and his little sister was wronged by the heavy, and he'd 
 never known who it was, because the little girl wouldn't 
 tell him, even on her death-bed, but he found the chap's 
 photograph in her trunk, and on the yacht he sees that it was 
 this same heavy and there you are. Revenge see what 
 I mean? He fights with the heavy on the cliff, after show- 
 ing him the little sister's picture, and pushes him over to 
 death on the rocks below get it? And the lead doesn't 
 have to kill him. How about that?" Henshaw regarded 
 his companion with pleasant anticipation. 
 
 The Governor again debated before he spoke. He still 
 doubted. "Say, whose show is this, the lead's or the sailor's 
 that had the wronged sister? You'd have to show the sailor 
 and his sister, and show her being wronged by the heavy 
 that'd take a big cabaret set, at least and you'd have to 
 let the sailor begin his stuff on the yacht, and then by the 
 time he'd kept it up a bit after the wreck and pulled off the 
 fight, where would your lead be? Can you see Parmalee 
 playing second to this sailor? Why, the sailor'd run away 
 with the piece. And that cabaret set would cost money 
 when we don't need it just keep those things in mind a 
 little." 
 
 "Well," Henshaw submitted gracefully, "anyway, I 
 think my suggestion of Island Love is better than Island 
 Passion kind of sounds more attractive, don't you think? " 
 
 The Governor lighted a cigarette. "Say, Howard, it's a 
 wonderful business, isn't it? We start with poor old Robin- 
 son Crusoe and his goats and parrot and man Friday, and after 
 dropping Friday's sister who would really be the Countess 
 of Kleig, we wind up with a steam-yacht and a comic butler 
 and call it Island Love. Who said the art of the motion 
 picture is in its infancy? In this case it'll be plumb senile. 
 Well, go ahead with the boys and dope out your hogwash. 
 Gosh! Sometimes I think I wouldn't stay in the business 
 
MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 if it wasn't for the money. And remember, don't you let 
 a single solitary sailor on that yacht have a wronged sister 
 that can blame it on the heavy, or you'll never have Parmalee 
 playing the lead." 
 
 Again Merton Gill debated bringing himself to the notice 
 of these gentlemen. If Parmalee wouldn't play the part 
 for any reason like a sailor's wronged sister, he would. It 
 would help him to be known in Parmalee parts. Still, he 
 couldn't tell how soon they might need him, nor how soon 
 Baird would release him. He regretfully saw the two men 
 leave, however. He might have missed a chance even better 
 than Baird ^ ouM give him. 
 
 He suddenly remembered that he had still a professional 
 duty to perform. He must that afternoon, and also that 
 evening, watch a Harold Parmalee picture. He left the 
 cafeteria, swaggered by the watchman at the gate he had 
 now the professional standing to silence that fellow and 
 made his way to the theatre Baird had mentioned. 
 
 In front he studied the billing of the Parmalee picture. 
 It was "Object, Matrimony a Smashing Comedy of Love 
 and Laughter." Harold Parmalee, with a gesture of mock 
 dismay, seemed to repulse a bevy of beautiful maidens who 
 wooed him. Merton took his seat with a dismay that was 
 not mock, for it now occurred to him that he had no expe- 
 rience in love scenes, and that an actor playing Parmalee 
 parts would need a great deal of such experience. In Sims- 
 bury there had been no opportunity for an intending actor 
 to learn certain little niceties expected at sentimental mo- 
 ments. Even his private life had been almost barren of 
 adventures that might now profit him. 
 
 He had sometimes played kissing games at parties, and 
 there had been the more serious affair with Edwina May 
 Pulver nights when he had escorted her from church or 
 sociables to the Pulver gate and lingered in a sort of nervously 
 worded ecstasy until he could summon courage to kiss the 
 girl. Twice this had actually happened, but the affair had 
 come to nothing, because the Pulvers had moved away from 
 
ALIAS HAROLD PARMALEE 
 
 Simsbury and he had practically forgotten Edwina May; 
 forgotten even the scared haste of those embraces. He 
 seemed to remember that he had grabbed her and kissed her, 
 but was it on her cheek or nose? 
 
 Anyway, he was now quite certain that the mechanics of 
 this dead amour were not those approved of in the best screen 
 circles. Never had he gathered a beauteous girl in his arms 
 and very slowly, very accurately, very tenderly, done what 
 Parmalee and other screen actors did in their final fade-outs. 
 Even when Beulah Baxter had been his screen ideal he had 
 never seen himself as doing more than save her from some 
 dreadful fate. Of course, later, if he had found out that she 
 was unwed 
 
 He resolved now to devote special study to Parmalee's 
 methods of wooing the fair creature who would be found in 
 his arms at the close of the present film. Probably Baird 
 would want some of that stuff from him. 
 
 From the very beginning of "Object, Matrimony" it was 
 apparent that the picture drama would afford him excellent 
 opportunities for studying the Parmalee technique in what an 
 early subtitle called "The Eternal B ttle of the Sexes." 
 For Parmalee in the play was Hubert Throckmorton, popular 
 screen idol and surfeited with the attentions of adoring 
 women. Cunningly the dramatist made use of Parmalee's 
 own personality, of his screen triumphs, and of the adulation 
 lavished upon him by discriminating fair ones. His break- 
 fast tray was shown piled with missives amply attesting the 
 truth of what the interviewer had said of his charm. All 
 women seemed to adore Hubert Throckmorton in the drama, 
 even as all women adored Harold Parmalee in private 
 life. 
 
 The screen revealed Throckmorton quite savagely ripping 
 open the letters, glancing at their contents and flinging them 
 from him with humorous shudders. He seemed to be asking 
 why these foolish creatures couldn't let an artist alone. Yet 
 he was kindly, in this half -humorous, half-savage mood. 
 There was a blending of chagrin and amused tolerance on 
 
214 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 his face as the screen had him murmur, casting the letter 
 aside, "Poor, Silly Little Girls!" 
 
 From this early scene Merton learned Parmalee's method 
 of withdrawing the gold cigarette case, of fastidiously se- 
 lecting a cigarette, of closing the case and of absently 
 thinking of other matters tamping the gold-tipped thing 
 against the cover. This was an item that he had overlooked. 
 He should have done that in the cabaret scene. He also 
 mastered the Parmalee trick of withdrawing the handker- 
 chief from the cuff of the perfectly fitting morning coat. 
 That was something else he should have done in The Blight 
 of Broadway. Little things like that, done right, gave the 
 actor his distinction. 
 
 The drama progressed. Millionaire Jasper Gordon, "A 
 Power in Wall Street," was seen telephoning to Throck- 
 morton. He was entreating the young actor to spend the 
 week-end at his palatial Long Island country home to meet 
 a few of his friends. The grim old Wall Street magnate was 
 perturbed by Throckmorton's refusal, and renewed his ap- 
 peal. He was one of those who always had his way in Wall 
 Street, and he at length prevailed upon Throckmorton to 
 accept his invitation. He than manifested the wildest de- 
 light, and he was excitedly kissed by his beautiful daughter 
 who had been standing by his side in the sumptuous library 
 while he telephoned. It could be seen that the daughter, 
 even more than her grim old father, wished Mr. Throckmor- 
 ton to be at the Long Island country home. 
 
 Later Throckmorton was seen driving his high-powered 
 roadster, accompanied only by his valet, to the Gordon 
 country home on Long Island, a splendid mansion surrounded 
 by its landscaped grounds where fountains played and roses 
 bloomed against the feathery background of graceful eucalyp- 
 tus trees. Merton Gill here saw that he must learn to drive 
 a high-powered roadster. Probably Baird would want some 
 of that stuff, too. 
 
 A round of country-house gaieties ensued, permitting 
 Throckmorton to appear in a series of perfectly fitting sports 
 
ALIAS HAROLD PARMALEE 215 
 
 costumes. He was seen on his favourite hunter, on the ten- 
 nis courts, on the first tee of the golf course, on a polo pony, 
 and in the mazes of the dance. Very early it was learned that 
 the Gordon daughter had tired of mere social triumphs and 
 wished to take up screen acting in a serious way. She au- 
 daciously requested Throckmorton to give her a chance as 
 leading lady in his next great picture. 
 
 He softened his refusal by explaining to her that acting 
 was a difficult profession and that suffering and sacrifice 
 were necessary to round out the artist. The beautiful girl 
 replied that within ten days he would be compelled to admit 
 her rare ability as an actress, and laughingly they wagered a 
 kiss upon it. Merton felt that this was the sort of thing he 
 must know more about. 
 
 Throckmorton was courteously gallant in the scene. Even 
 when he said, "Shall we put up the stakes now, Miss Gor- 
 don?" it could be seen that he was jesting. He carried this 
 light manner through minor scenes with the beautiful young 
 girl friends of Miss Gordon who wooed him, lay in wait for 
 him, ogled and sighed. Always he was the laughingly- 
 tolerant conqueror who had but a lazy scorn for his 
 triumphs. 
 
 He did not strike the graver note until it became sus- 
 pected that there were crooks in the house bent upon stealing 
 the famous Gordon jewels. That it was Throckmorton who 
 averted this catastrophe by sheer nerve and by use of his 
 rare histrionic powers as when he disguised himself in the 
 coat and hat of the arch crook whom he had felled with 
 a single blow and left bound and gagged, in order to re- 
 ceive the casket of jewels from the thief who opened the safe 
 in the library, and that he laughed away the thanks of the 
 grateful millioniare, astonished no one in the audience, though 
 it caused Merton Gill to wonder if he could fell a crook with 
 one blow. He must practise up some blows. 
 
 Throckmorton left the palatial country home wearied by 
 the continuous adulation. The last to speed him was the 
 Gordon daughter, who reminded him of their wager; within 
 
216 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 ten days he would acknowledge her to be an actress fit to 
 play as his leading woman. 
 
 Throckmorton drove rapidly to a simple farm where he 
 was not known and would be no longer surfeited with atten- 
 tions. He dressed plainly in shirts that opened wide at the 
 neck and assisted in the farm labours, such as pitching hay 
 and leading horses into the barn. It was the simple ex- 
 istence that he had been craving away from it all ! No one 
 suspected him to be Hubert Throckmorton, least of all the 
 simple country maiden, daughter of the farmer, in her neat 
 print dress and heavy braid of golden hair that hung from 
 beneath her sunbonnet. She knew him to be only a man 
 among men, a simple farm labourer, and Hubert Throck- 
 morton, wearied by the adulation of his feminine public, 
 was instantly charmed by her coy acceptance of his atten- 
 tions. 
 
 That this charm should ripen to love was to be expected. 
 Here was a child, simple, innocent, of a wild-rose beauty in 
 her print dress and sunbonnet, who would love him for him- 
 self alone. Beside a blossoming orange tree on the simple 
 Long Island farm he declared his love, warning the child 
 that he had nothing to offer her but two strong arms and a 
 heart full of devotion. 
 
 The little girl shyly betrayed that she returned his love 
 but told him that he must first obtain the permission of 
 her grandmother without which she would never consent 
 to wed him. She hastened into the old farmhouse to pre- 
 pare Grandmother for the interview. 
 
 Throckmorton presently faced the old lady who sat hud- 
 dled in an armchair, her hands crooked over a cane, a ruffled 
 cap above her silvery hair. He manfully voiced his request 
 for the child's hand in marriage. The old lady seemed to 
 mumble an assent. The happy lover looked about for his 
 fianc6 when, to his stupefaction, the old lady arose briskly 
 from her chajr, threw off cap, silvery wig, gown of black, 
 and stood revealed as the child herself, smiling roguishly 
 up at him from beneath the sunbonnet. 
 
ALIAS HAROLD PAEMALEE 217 
 
 With a glad cry he would have seized her, when she stayed 
 him with lifted hand. Once more she astounded him. 
 Swiftly she threw off sunbonnet, blonde wig, print dress, and 
 stood before him revealed as none other than the Gordon 
 daughter. 
 
 Hubert Throckmorton had lost his wager. Slowly, as the 
 light of recognition dawned in his widening eyes, he gathered 
 the beautiful girl into his arms. "Now may I be your lead- 
 ing lady?" she asked. 
 
 "My leading lady, not only in my next picture, but for 
 life," he replied. 
 
 There was a pretty little scene in which the wager was paid. 
 Merton studied it. Twice again, that evening, he studied 
 it. He was doubtful. It would seem queer to take a girl 
 around the waist that way and kiss her so slowly. Maybe 
 he could learn. And he knew he could already do that widen- 
 ing of the eyes. He could probably do it as well as Parmalee 
 did. 
 
 Back in the Buckeye office, when the Montague girl had 
 returned from her parting with Merton, Baird had said: 
 
 "Kid, youVe brightened my whole day." 
 
 "Didn't I tell you?" 
 
 "He's a lot better than you said." 
 
 "But can you use him?" 
 
 "You can't tell. You cant tell till you try him out. 
 He might be good, and he might blow up right at the 
 start." 
 
 "I bet he'll be good. I tell you, Jeff, that boy is just 
 full of acting. All you got to do keep his stuff straight, 
 serious. He can't help but be funny that way." 
 
 "We'll see. To-morrow we'll kind of feel him out. He'll 
 see this Parmalee film to-day I caught it last night and 
 there's some stuff in it I want to play horse with, see? So 
 I'll start him to-morrow in a quiet scene, and find out does 
 he handle. If he does, we'll go right into some hokum drama 
 
218 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 stuff. The more serious he plays it the better. It ought to 
 be good, but you can't ever tell in our trade. You know 
 that as well as I do." 
 
 The girl was confident. "I can tell about this lad," she 
 insisted. 
 
CHAPTER XIH 
 
 GENIUS COMES INTO ITS OWN 
 
 MERTON GILL, enacting the part of a popular 
 screen idol, as in the play of yesterday, sat at 
 breakfast in his apartments on Stage Number Five. 
 Outwardly he was cool, wary, unperturbed, as he peeled the 
 shell from a hard-boiled egg and sprinkled salt upon it. For 
 the breakfast consisted of hard-boiled eggs and potato salad 
 brought on in a wooden dish. 
 
 He had been slightly disturbed by the items of this meal; 
 it was not so elegant a breakfast as Hubert Throckmorton's, 
 but he had been told by Baird that they must be a little 
 different. 
 
 He had been slightly disturbed, too, at discovering the 
 faithful valet who brought on the simple repast was the cross- 
 eyed man. Still, the fellow had behaved respectfully, as a 
 valet should. He had been quietly obsequious of manner, 
 revealing only a profound admiration for his master and a 
 constant solicitude for his comfort. Probably he, like Baird, 
 was trying to do something distinctive and worth while. 
 
 Having finished the last egg glad they had given him no 
 more than three the popular screen idol at the prompting of 
 Baird, back by the cameras, arose, withdrew a metal ciga- 
 rette case, purchased that very morning with this scene in 
 view, and selected a cigarette. He stood negligently, as 
 Parmalee had stood, tapped the end of the cigarette on the 
 side of the case, as Parmalee had done, lighted a match on the 
 sole of his boot, and idly smoked in the Parmalee manner. 
 
 Three times the day before he had studied Parmalee in 
 this bit of business. Now he idly crossed to the centre-table 
 
 19 
 
220 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 upon which reposed a large photograph album. He turned 
 the pages of this, pausing to admire the pictures there re- 
 vealed. Baird had not only given him general instructions 
 for this scene, but now prompted him in low, encouraging 
 tones. 
 
 "Turn over slowly; you like 'em all. Now lift the album 
 up and hold it for a better light on that one. It's one of 
 the best, it pleases you a lot. Look even more pleased 
 smile! That's good. Put down the album; turn again, 
 slowly; turn twice more, that's it; pick it up again. This one 
 is fine " 
 
 Baird took him through the album in this manner, had 
 him close it when all the leaves were turned, and stand a 
 moment with one hand resting on it. The album had been 
 empty. It had been deemed best not to inform the actor 
 that later close-ups of the pages would show him to have been 
 refreshed by studying photographs of himself copies, in 
 fact, of the stills of Clifford Armytage at that moment resting 
 on Baird's desk. 
 
 As he stood now, a hand affectionately upon the album, a 
 trace of the fatuously admiring smile still lingering on his 
 expressive face, a knock sounded upon the door. " Come in," 
 he called. 
 
 The valet entered with the morning mail. This consisted 
 entirely of letters. There were hundreds of them, and the 
 valet had heaped them in a large clothes-basket which he 
 now held respectfully in front of him. 
 
 The actor motioned him, with an authentic Parmalee 
 gesture, to place them by the table. The valet obeyed, 
 though spilling many letters from the top of the overflowing 
 basket. These, while his master seated himself, he briskly 
 swept up with a broom. 
 
 The chagrined amusement of Harold Parmalee, the half- 
 savage, half -humorous tolerance for this perhaps excusable 
 weakness of woman, was here accurately manifested. The 
 actor yawned slightly, lighted another cigarette with flawless 
 Parmalee technique, withdrew a handkerchief from his 
 
GENIUS COMES INTO ITS OWN 221 
 
 sleeve-cuff, lightly touched his forehead with it, and began to 
 open the letters. He glanced at each one in a quick, bored 
 manner, and cast it aside. 
 
 When a dozen or so had been thus treated he was aroused 
 by another knock at the door. It opened to reveal the valet 
 with another basket overflowing with letters. Upon this the 
 actor arose, spread his arms wide in a gesture of humorous 
 helplessness. He held this briefly, then drooped in humorous 
 despair. 
 
 He lighted another cigarette, eyed the letters with that 
 whimsical lift of the brows so characteristic of Parmalee, and 
 lazily blew smoke toward them. Then, regarding the smoke, 
 he idly waved a hand through it. "Poor, silly little girls!" 
 But there was a charming tolerance in his manner. One felt 
 his generous recognition that they were not wholly without 
 provocation. 
 
 This appeared to close the simple episode. The scenes, 
 to be sure, had not been shot without delays and rehearsals, 
 and a good two hours of the morning had elapsed before the 
 actor was released from the glare of light and the need to re- 
 member that he was Harold Parmalee. His peeling of an egg, 
 for example, had not at first been dainty enough to please the 
 director, and the scene with the album had required many 
 rehearsals to secure the needed variety of expressions, but 
 Baird had been helpful in his promptings, and always 
 kind. 
 
 "Now, this one you've turned over it's someone you 
 love better than anybody. It might be your dear old mother 
 that you haven't seen for years. It makes you kind of solemn 
 as you show how fond you were of her. You're affected deeply 
 by her face. That's it, fine ! Now the next one, you like it 
 just as much, but it pleases you more. It's someone else 
 you're fond of, but you're not so solemn. 
 
 "Now turn over another, but very slow slow but don't 
 let go of it. Stop a minute and turn back as if you had to 
 have another peek at the last one, see what I mean? Take 
 plenty of time. This is a great treat for you. It makes you 
 
222 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 feel kind of religious. Now you're getting it that's the 
 boy! All right " 
 
 The scene where he showed humorous dismay at the 
 quantity of his mail had needed but one rehearsal. He had 
 here been Harold Parmalee without effort. Also he had not 
 been asked to do again the Parmalee trick of lighting a 
 cigarette nor of withdrawing the handkerchief from its cuff 
 to twice touch his forehead in moments of amused perplexity. 
 Baird had merely uttered a low "Fine!" at beholding these 
 bits. 
 
 He drew a long breath of relief when released from the 
 set. Seemingly he had met the test. Baird had said that 
 morning, "Now we'll just run a little kind of test to find out a 
 few things about you," and had followed with a general 
 description of the scenes. It was to be of no great importance 
 a minor detail of the picture. 
 
 Perhaps this had been why the wealthy actor breakfasted 
 in rather a plainly furnished room on hard-boiled eggs and 
 potato salad. Perhaps this had been why the costume given 
 him had been not too well fitting, not too nice in detail. 
 Perhaps this was why they had allowed the cross-eyed man 
 to appear as his valet. He was quite sure this man would not 
 do as a valet in a high-class picture. Anyway, however un- 
 important the scene, he felt that he had acquitted himself 
 with credit. 
 
 The Montague girl, who had made him up that morning, 
 with close attention to his eyebrows, watched him from back 
 of the cameras, and she seized both his hands when he left the 
 set. "You're going to land," she warmly assured him. "I 
 can tell a trouper when I see one." 
 
 She was in costume. She was apparently doing the part 
 of a society girl, though slightly overdressed, he thought. 
 
 "We're working on another set for this same picture," she 
 explained, "but I simply had to catch you acting. You'll 
 probably be over with us to-morrow. But you're through 
 for the day, so beat it and have a good time." 
 
 "Couldn't I come over and watch you?" 
 
GENIUS COMES INTO ITS OWN 223 
 
 "No, Baird doesn't like to have his actors watching things 
 they ain't in; he told me specially that you weren't to be 
 around except when you're working. You see, he's using 
 you in kind of a special part in this multiple-reeler, and he's 
 afraid you might get confused if you watched the other parts. 
 I guess he'll start you to-morrow. You're to be in a good, 
 wholesome heart play. You'll have a great chance in it." 
 
 "Well, I'll go see if I can find another Parmalee picture 
 for this afternoon. Say, you don't think I was too much like 
 him in that scene, do you? You know it's one thing if I look 
 like him I can't help that but I shouldn't try to imitate 
 him too closely, should I? I got to think about my own 
 individuality, haven't I?" 
 
 "Sure, sure you have! But you were fine your imitation 
 wasn't a bit too close. You can think about your own 
 individuality this afternoon when you're watching him." 
 
 Late that day in the projection room Baird and the 
 Montague girl watched the "rush" of that morning's episode. 
 
 "The squirrel's done it," whispered the girl after the 
 opening scene. It seemed to her that Merton Gill on the 
 screen might overhear her comment. 
 
 Even Baird was low-toned. "Looks so," he agreed. 
 
 "If that ain't Parmalee then I'll eat all the hard-boiled 
 eggs on the lot." 
 
 Baird rubbed his hands. "It's Parmalee plus," he 
 corrected. 
 
 "Oh, Mother, Mother!" murmured the girl while the 
 screen revealed the actor studying his photographs. 
 
 "He handled all right in that spot," observed Baird. 
 
 "He'll handle right don't worry. Ain't I told you he's 
 a natural born trouper?" 
 
 The mail was abandoned in humorous despair. The 
 cigarette lighted in a flawless Parmalee manner, the smoke 
 idly brushed aside. "Poor, silly little girls," the actor was 
 seen to say. 
 
MERTON OP THE MOVIES 
 
 The girl gripped Baird's arm until he winced. "There, 
 old Pippin ! There's your million, picked right up on the lot !" 
 
 "Maybe," assented the cooler Baird, as they left the 
 projection room. 
 
 "And say," asked the girl, "did you notice all morning how 
 he didn't even bat an eye when you spoke to him, if the 
 camera was still turning? Not like a beginner that'll nearly 
 always look up and get out of the picture." 
 
 "What I bet," observed Baird, "I bet he'd 'a' done that 
 album stuff even better than he did if I'd actually put his own 
 pictures in, the way I'm going to for the close-ups. I was 
 afraid he'd see it was kidding if I did, or if I told him what 
 pictures they were going to be. But I'm darned now if I 
 don't think he'd have stood for it. I don't believe you'll ever 
 be able to peeve that boy by telling him he's good." 
 
 The girl glanced up defensively as they walked. 
 
 "Now don't get the idea he's conceited, because he ain't. 
 Not one bit." 
 
 "How do you know he ain't?" 
 
 She considered this, then explained brightly, "Because I 
 wouldn't like him if he was. No, no now you listen 
 here "as Baird had grinned. "This lad believes in him- 
 self, that's all. That's different from conceit. You can be- 
 lieve a whole lot in yourself, and still be as modest as a new- 
 hatched chicken. That's what he reminds me of, too." 
 
 The following morning Baird halted him outside the set 
 on which he would work that day. Again he had been made 
 up by the Montague girl, with especial attention to the eye- 
 brows so that they might show the Parmalee lift. 
 
 "I just want to give you the general dope of the piece before 
 you go on," said Baird, in the shelter of high canvas backing. 
 "You're the only son of a widowed mother and both you and 
 she are toiling to pay off the mortgage on the little home. 
 You're the cashier of this business establishment, and in love 
 with the proprietor's daughter, only she's a society girl and 
 
GENIUS COMES INTO ITS OWN 225 
 
 kind of looks down on you at first. Then, there's her brother, 
 the proprietor's only son. He's the clerk in this place. He 
 doesn't want to work, but his father has made him learn the 
 business, see? He's kind of a no-good; dissipated; wears 
 flashy clothes and plays the races and shoots craps and 
 drinks. You try to reform him because he's idolized by his 
 sister that you're in love with. 
 
 "But you can't do a thing with him. He keeps on and gets 
 in with a rough crowd, and finally he steals a lot of money out 
 of the safe, and just when they are about to discover that he's 
 the thief you see it would break his sister's heart so you take 
 the crime on your own shoulders. After that, just before 
 you're going to be arrested, you make a getaway because, 
 after all, you're not guilty and you go out West to start all 
 over again " 
 
 "Out there in the big open spaces?" suggested Merton, 
 who had listened attentively. 
 
 "Exactly," assented Baird, with one of those nervous 
 spasms that would now and again twitch his lips and chin. 
 "Out there in the big open spaces where men are men 
 that's the idea. And you build up a little gray home in the 
 West for yourself and your poor old mother who never lost 
 faith in you. There'll be a lot of good Western stuff in this 
 Buck Benson stuff, you know, that you can do so well and 
 the girl will get out there some way and tell you that her 
 brother finally confessed his crime, and everything'll be Jake, 
 see what I mean?" 
 
 "Yes, sir; it sounds fine, Mr. Baird. And I certainly 
 will give the best that is in me to this part." He had an 
 impulse to tell the manager, too, how gratified he was that 
 one who had been content with the low humour of the Buck- 
 eye comedies should at last have been won over to the better 
 form of photodrama. But Baird was leading him on to the 
 set; there was no time for this congratulatory episode. 
 
 Indeed the impulse was swept from his mind in the novelty 
 of the set now exposed, and in the thought that his person- 
 ality was to dominate it. The scene of the little drama's 
 
226 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 unfolding was a delicatessen shop. Counters and shelves 
 were arrayed with cooked foods, salads, cheeses, the latter 
 under glass or wire protectors. At the back was a cashier's 
 desk, an open safe beside it. He took his place there at 
 Baird's direction and began to write in a ledger. 
 
 "Now your old mother's coming to mop up the place," 
 called Baird. " Come on, Mother ! You look up and see her, 
 and rush over to her. She puts down her bucket and mop, 
 and takes you in her arms. She's weeping; you try to com- 
 fort her; you want her to give up mopping, and tell her you 
 can make enough to support two, but she won't listen be- 
 cause there's the mortgage on the little flat to be paid off. 
 So you go back to the desk, stopping to give her a sad look as 
 she gets down on the floor. Now, try it." 
 
 A very old, bent, feeble woman with a pail of water and 
 cloths tottered on. Her dress was ragged, her white hair 
 hung about her sad old face in disorderly strands. She set 
 down her bucket and raised her torn apron to her eyes. 
 
 "Look up and see her," called Baird. "A glad light comes 
 into her eyes. Rush forward say * Mother' distinctly, 
 so it'll show. Now the clench. You're crying on his shoulder, 
 Mother, and he's looking down at you first, then off, about at 
 me. He's near crying himself. Now he's telling you to give 
 up mopping places, and you're telling him every little helps. 
 
 "All right, break. Get to mopping, Mother, but keep on 
 crying. He stops for a long look at you. He seems to be 
 saying that some day he will take you out of such work. 
 Now he's back at his desk. All right. But we'll do it once 
 more. And a little more pathos, Merton, when you take the 
 old lady in your arms. You can broaden it. You don't 
 actually break down, but you nearly do." 
 
 The scene was rehearsed again, to Baird's satisfaction, 
 and the cameras ground. Merton Gill gave the best that 
 was in him. His glad look at first beholding the old lady, the 
 yearning of his eyes when his arms opened to enfold her, the 
 tenderness of his embrace as he murmured soothing words, 
 the lingering touch of his hand as he left her, the manly 
 
GENIUS COMES INTO ITS OWN 
 
 determination of the last look in which he showed a fresh 
 resolve to release her from this toil, all were eloquent of the 
 deepest filial devotion and earnestness of purpose. 
 
 Back at his desk he was genuinely pitying the old lady. 
 Very lately, it was evident, she had been compelled to play in 
 a cabaret scene, for she smelled strongly of cigarettes, and he 
 could not suppose that she, her eyes brimming with anguished 
 mother love, could have relished these. He was glad when it 
 presently developed that his own was not to be a smoking 
 part. 
 
 "Now the dissipated brother's coming on," explained 
 Baird. "He'll breeze in, hang up his hat, offer you a ciga- 
 rette, which you refuse, and show you some money that he 
 won on the third race yesterday. You follow him a little 
 way from the desk, telling him he shouldn't smoke cigarettes, 
 and that money he gets by gambling will never do him any 
 good. He laughs at you, but you don't mind. On your 
 way back to the desk you stop by your mother, and she gets 
 up and embraces you again. 
 
 "Take your time about it she's your mother, remember." 
 
 The brother entered. He was indeed dissipated appearing, 
 loudly dressed, and already smoking a cigarette as he swag- 
 gered the length of the shop to offer Merton one. Merton 
 refused in a kindly but firm manner. The flashy brother 
 now pulled a roll of bills from his pocket and pointed to his 
 winning horse in a racing extra. The line in large type was 
 there for the close-up "Pianola Romps Home in Third 
 Race." 
 
 Followed the scene in which Merton sought to show this 
 youth that cigarettes and gambling would harm him. The 
 youth remained obdurate. He seized a duster and, with 
 ribald action, began to dust off the rows of cooked food on 
 the counters. Again the son stopped to embrace his mother, 
 who again wept as she enfolded him. The scene was shot. 
 
 Step by step, under the patient coaching of Baird, the 
 simple drama unfolded. It was hot beneath the lights, delays 
 were frequent and the rehearsals tedious, yet Merton GiD 
 
228 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 continued to give the best that was in him. As the day wore 
 on, the dissipated son went from bad to worse. He would 
 leave the shop to place money on a horse race, and he would 
 seek to induce the customers he waited on to play at dice 
 with him. A few of them consented, and one, a coloured 
 man who had come to purchase pigs'-feet, won at this game 
 all the bills which the youth had shown to Merton on entering. 
 
 There were moments during this scene when Merton 
 wondered if Baird were not relapsing into Buckeye comedy 
 depths, but he saw the inevitable trend of the drama and the 
 justification for this bit of gambling. For the son, now 
 penniless, became desperate. He appealed to Merton for a 
 loan, urging it on the ground that he had a sure thing thirty- 
 to-one shot at Latonia. At least these were the words of 
 Baird, as he directed Merton to deny the request and to 
 again try to save the youth from his inevitable downfall. 
 Whereupon the youth had sneered at Merton and left the 
 place in deep anger. 
 
 There followed the scene with the boy's sister, only daugh- 
 ter of the rich delicatessen merchant, who Merton was 
 pleased to discover would be played by the Montague girl. 
 She entered in a splendid evening gown, almost too splendid, 
 Merton thought, for street wear in daylight, though it was 
 partially concealed by a rich opera cloak. The brother being 
 out, Merton came forward to wait upon her. 
 
 "It's like this," Baird explained. "She's just a simple 
 New York society girl, kind of shallow and heartless, because 
 she has never been aroused nor anything, see? You're the 
 first one that's really touched her heart, but she hesitates be- 
 cause her father expects her to marry a count, and she's come 
 to get the food for a swell banquet they're giving for him. 
 She says where's her brother, and if anything happened to 
 him it would break her heart. Then she orders what she 
 wants and you do it up for her, looking at her all the time as 
 if you thought she was the one girl in the world. 
 
 "She kind of falls for you a little bit, still she is afraid of 
 what her father would say. Then you get bolder, see? You 
 
GENIUS COMES INTO ITS OWN 229 
 
 come from behind the counter and begin to make love, talking 
 as you come out so-and-so, so-and-so, so-and-so Miss 
 Hoffmeyer, I have loved you since the day I first set eyes on 
 you so-and-so, so-and-so, so-and-so, I have nothing to offer 
 but the love of an honest man she's falling for it, see? So 
 you get up close and grab her cave-man stuff. Do a good 
 hard clench she's yours at last; she just naturally sags right 
 down on to you. You've got her. 
 
 "Do a regular Parmalee. Take your time. You're going 
 to kiss her and kiss her right. But just as you get down to it 
 the father busts in and says what's the meaning of this, so you 
 fly apart and the father says you're discharged, because his 
 daughter is the affianced wife of this Count Aspirin, see? 
 Then he goes back to the safe and finds all the money has 
 been taken, because the son has sneaked in and grabbed out 
 the bundle and hid it in the ice-box on his way out, taking 
 only a few bills to get down on a horse. So he says call the 
 police but that's enough for now. Go ahead and do that 
 love scene for me." 
 
 Slowly the scene was brought to Baird's liking. Slowly, 
 because Msrton Gill at first proved to be diffident at the 
 crisis. For three rehearsals the muscular arm of Miss 
 Montague had most of the clenching to do. He believed he 
 was being rough and masterful, but Baird wished a greater 
 show of violence. They had also to time this scene with the 
 surreptitious entrance of the brother, his theft of the money 
 which he stuffed into a paper sack and placed in the ice-box, 
 and his exit. 
 
 The leading man having at last proved that he could be 
 Harold Parmalee even in this crisis, the scene was extended 
 to the entrance of the indignant father. He was one of those 
 self-made men of wealth, Merton thought, a short, stout 
 gentleman with fiery whiskers, not at all fashionably dressed. 
 He broke upon the embrace with a threatening stick. The 
 pair separated, the young lover facing him, proud, erect, 
 defiant, the girl drooping and confused. 
 
 The father discharged Merton Gill with great brutality, 
 
230 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 then went to the safe at the back of the room, returning to 
 shout the news that he had been robbed by the man who 
 would have robbed him of his daughter. It looked black for 
 Merton. Puzzled at first, he now saw that the idolized 
 brother of the girl must have taken the money. He seemed 
 about to declare this when his nobler nature compelled him to 
 a silence that must be taken for guilt. 
 
 The erring brother returned, accompanied by several 
 customers. "Bring a detective to arrest this man," ordered 
 the father. One of the customers stepped out to return with 
 a detective. Again Merton was slightly disquieted at per- 
 ceiving that the detective was the cross-eyed man. This 
 person bustled about the place, tapping the cooked meats 
 and the cheeses, and at last placed his hand upon the shoulder 
 of the supposed thief. Merton, at Baird's direction, drew 
 back and threatened him with a blow. The detective 
 cringed and said: "I will go out and call a policeman." 
 
 The others now turned their backs upon the guilty man. 
 Even the girl drew away after one long, agonized look at the 
 lover to whose embrace she had so lately submitted. He 
 raised his arms to her in mute appeal as she moved away, 
 then dropped them at his side. 
 
 "Give her all you got in a look," directed Baird. "You're 
 saying: 'I go to a felon's cell, but I do it all for you.' Dream 
 your eyes at her. " Merton Gill obeyed. 
 
 The action progressed. In this wait for the policeman 
 the old mother crept forward. She explained to Merton that 
 the money was in the ice-box where the real thief had placed 
 it, and since he had taken the crime of another upon his 
 shoulders he should also take the evidence, lest the un- 
 fortunate young man be later convicted by that; she also 
 urged him to fly by the rear door while there was yet time. 
 He did these things, pausing for a last embrace of the weeping 
 old lady, even as the hand of the arriving policeman was upon 
 the door. 
 
 "All for to-day, except some close-ups," announced Baird 
 when this scene had been shot. There was a breaking up of 
 
GENIUS COMES INTO ITS OWN 231 
 
 the group, a relaxation of that dramatic tension which the 
 heart- values of the piece had imposed. Only once, while 
 Merton was doing some of his best acting, had there been a 
 kind of wheezy tittering from certain members of the cast and 
 the group about the cameras. 
 
 Baird had quickly suppressed this. "If there's any kidding 
 in this piece it's all in my part," he announced in cold, clear 
 tones, and there had been no further signs of levity. Merton 
 was pleased by this manner of Baird's. It showed that he 
 was finely in earnest in the effort for the worth-while things. 
 
 And Baird now congratulated him, seconded by the Mon- 
 tague girl. He had, they told him, been all that could be 
 expected. 
 
 "I wasn't sure of myself,'* he told them, "in one scene, 
 and I wanted to ask you about it, Mr. Baird. It's where I 
 take that money from the ice-box and go out with it. I 
 couldn't make myself feel right. Wouldn't it look te other 
 people as if I was actually stealing it myself? Why couldn't 
 I put it back in the safe?" 
 
 Baird listened respectfully, eonsidering. "I think not," 
 he announced at length. "You'd hardly have time for that, 
 and you have a better plan. It'fl be brought out in the sub- 
 titles, of course. You are going to leave it at the residence 
 of Mr. Hoffmeyer, where it will be safe. You see, if you put 
 it back where it was, his soa might steal it again. We thought 
 that out very carefully." 
 
 "I see," said Merton. "I wish I had been told that. I 
 feel that I could have done that bit a lot better. I felt kind of 
 guilty." 
 
 "You did it perfectly," Board assured him. 
 
 "Kid, you're a woadep," dediared the Montague girl. 
 "I'm that tickled with you I could give you a good hug," and 
 with that curious approach to hysteria she had shown while 
 looking at his stills, she for a moment frantically clasped him 
 to her. He was somewhat embarrassed by this excess, but 
 pardoned it in the reflection that he had indeed given the 
 best that was in him, 
 
32 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 "Bring all your Western stuff to the dressing room to- 
 morrow," said Baird. 
 
 Western stuff the real thing at last! He was slightly 
 amazed later to observe the old mother outside the set. She 
 was not only smoking a cigarette with every sign of relish, 
 but she was singing as she did a little dance step. Still she 
 had been under a strain all day, weeping, too, almost continu- 
 ously. He remembered this, and did not judge her harshly 
 as she smoked, danced, and lightly sang, 
 
 Her mother's name was Cleo, 
 
 Her father's name was Pat; 
 They called her Cleopatra, 
 
 And let it go at that. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 OUT THERE WHERE MEN ARE MEN 
 
 FROM the dressing room the following morning, 
 arrayed in the Buck Benson outfit, unworn since that 
 eventful day on the Gashwiler lot, Merton accompa- 
 nied Baird to a new set where he would work that day. Baird 
 was profuse in his admiration of the cowboy embellish- 
 ments, the maroon chaps, the new boots, the hat, the 
 checked shirt and gay neckerchief. 
 
 "I'm mighty glad to see you so sincere in your work," 
 he assured Merton. "A lot of these hams I hire get to kidding 
 on the set and spoil the atmosphere, but don't let it bother 
 you. One earnest leading man, if he'll just stay earnest, will 
 carry the piece. Remember that you got a serious part." 
 
 "I'll certainly remember," Merton earnestly assured 
 him. 
 
 "Here we are; this is where we begin the Western stuff," 
 said Baird. Merton recognized the place. It was the High 
 Gear Dance Hall where the Montague girl had worked. The 
 name over the door was now "The Come All Ye," and there 
 was a hitching rack in front to which were tethered half-a- 
 dozen saddled horses. 
 
 Inside, the scene was set as he remembered it. Tables 
 for drinking were about the floor, and there was a roulette 
 wheel at one side. A red-shirted bartender, his hair plastered 
 low over his brow, leaned negligently on the bar. Scattered 
 around the room were dance-hall girls in short skirts, and a 
 number of cowboys. 
 
 "First, I'll wise you up a little bit," said Baird. " You've 
 come out here to work on a ranche in the great open spaces, 
 
 233 
 
234 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 and these cowboys all love you and come to town with you 
 every time, and they'll stand by you when the detective from 
 New York gets here. Now let's see I guess first we'll get 
 your entrance. You come in the front door at the head of 
 them. You've ridden in from the ranche. We get the horse- 
 back stuff later. You all come in yelling and so on, and the 
 boys scatter, some to the bar and some to the wheel, and some 
 sit down to the tables to have their drinks and some dance 
 with the girls. You distribute money to them from a paper 
 sack. Here's the sack." From a waiting property boy he 
 took a paper sack. "Put this in your pocket and take it out 
 whenever you need money. 
 
 "It's the same sack, see, that the kid put the stolen money 
 in, and you saved it after returning the money. It's just a 
 kind of an idea of mine," he vaguely added, as Merton looked 
 puzzled at this. 
 
 "All right, sir. " He took the sack, observing it to contain a 
 rude imitation of bills, and stuffed it into his pocket. 
 
 "Then, after the boys scatter around, you go stand at the 
 end of the bar. You don't join hi their sports and pastimes, 
 see? You're serious; you have things on your mind. Just 
 sort of look around the place as if you were holding yourself 
 above such things, even if you do like to give the boys a good 
 time. Now we'll try the entrance." 
 
 Cameras were put into place, and Merton Gill led through 
 the front door his band of rollicking good fellows. He 
 paused inside to give them bills from the paper sack. They 
 scattered to their dissipations. Their leader austerely posed 
 at one end of the bar and regarded the scene with disapprov- 
 ing eyes. Wine, women, and the dance were not for him. 
 He produced again the disillusioned look that had won Hen- 
 shaw. 
 
 "Fine," said Baird. "Gun it, boys." 
 
 The scene was shot, and Baird spoke again: "Hold it, 
 everybody; go on with your music, and you boys keep up the 
 dance until Mother's entrance, then you quit and back off." 
 
 Merton was puzzled by this speech, but continued his 
 
OUT THERE WHEEE MEN AEE MEN 235 
 
 superior look, breaking it with a very genuine shock of 
 surprise when his old mother tottered in at the front door. 
 She was still the disconsolate creature of the day before, be- 
 draggled, sad-eyed, feeble, very aged, and still she carried her 
 bucket and the bundle of rags with which she had mopped. 
 Baird came forward again. 
 
 "Oh, I forgot to tell you. Of course you had your old 
 mother follow you out here to the great open spaces, but the 
 poor old thing has cracked under the strain of her hard life, 
 see what I mean? All her dear ones have been leaving the 
 old nest and going out over the hills one by one you were the 
 last to go and now she isn't quite right, see? 
 
 "You have a good home on the ranche for her, but she 
 won't stay put. She follows you around, and the only thing 
 that keeps her quiet is mopping, so you humour her; you 
 let her mop. It's the only way. But of course it makes you 
 sad. You look at her now, then go up and hug her the way 
 you did yesterday; you try to get her to give up mopping, but 
 she won't, so you let her go on. Try it." 
 
 Merton went forward to embrace his old mother. Here 
 was tragedy indeed, a bit of biting pathos from a humble life. 
 He gave the best that was in him as he enfolded the feeble old 
 woman and strained her to his breast, murmuring to her that 
 she must give it up give it up. 
 
 The old lady wept, but was stubborn. She tore herself 
 from his arms and knelt on the floor. "I just got to mop, 
 I just got to mop," she was repeating in a cracked voice. "If 
 I ain't let to mop I git rough till I'm simply a scandal." 
 
 It was an affecting scene, marred only by one explosive 
 bit of coarse laughter from an observing cowboy at the close 
 of the old mother's speech. Merton Gill glanced up in sharp 
 annoyance at this offender. Baird was quick in rebuke. 
 
 "The next guy that laughs at this pathos can get off the 
 set," he announced, glaring at the assemblage. There was 
 no further outbreak and the scene was filmed. 
 
 There followed a dramatic bit that again involved the de- 
 mented mother. "This ought to be good if you can do it the 
 
236 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 right way," began Baird. "Mother's mopping along there 
 and sloshes some water on this Mexican's boot where are 
 you, Pedro? Come here and get this. The old lady sloshes 
 water on you while you're playing monte here, so you yell 
 Carramba or something, and kick at her. You don't land on 
 her, of course, but her son rushes up and grabs your arm 
 here, do it this way." Baird demonstrated. "Grab his 
 wrist with one hand and his elbow with the other and make 
 as if you broke his arm across your knee you know, like you 
 were doing joojitsey. He slinks off with his broken arm, and 
 you just dust your hands off and embrace your mother again. 
 
 "Then you go back to the bar, not looking at Pedro at all. 
 See? He's insulted your mother, and you've resented it hi a 
 nice, dignified, gentlemanly way. Try it." 
 
 Pedro sat at the table and picked up his cards. He was 
 a foul-looking Mexican and seemed capable even of the 
 enormity he was about to commit. The scene was rehearsed 
 to Baird's satisfaction, then shot. The weeping old lady, 
 blinded by her tears, awkward with her mop, the brutal 
 Mexican, his prompt punishment. 
 
 The old lady was especially pathetic as she glared at her 
 insulter from where she lay sprawled on the floor, and 
 muttered, " Carramba, huh? I dare you to come outside and 
 say that to me ! " 
 
 "Good work," applauded Baird when the scene was 
 finished. "Now we're getting into the swing of it. In about 
 three days here we'll have something that exhibitors can 
 clean up on, see if we don't." 
 
 The three days passed in what for Merton Gill was a 
 whirlwind of dramatic intensity. If at times he was vaguely 
 disquieted by a suspicion that the piece was not wholly 
 serious, he had only to remember the intense seriousness of 
 his own part and the always serious manner of Baird in 
 directing his actors. And indeed there were but few mo- 
 ments when he was even faintly pricked by this suspicion. 
 It seemed a bit incongruous that Hoffmeyer, the delicatessen 
 merchant, should arrive on a bicycle, dressed in cowboy attire 
 
OUT THERE WHERE MEN ARE MEN 37 
 
 save for a badly dented derby hat, and carrying a bag of golf 
 clubs; and it was a little puzzling how Hoffmeyer should have 
 been ruined by his son's mad act, when it would have been 
 shown that the money was returned to him. But Baird ex- 
 plained carefully that the old man had been ruined some other 
 way, and was demented, like the poor old mother who had 
 gone over the hills after her children had left the home nest. 
 
 And assuredly in Merton's own action he found nothing 
 that was not deeply earnest as well as strikingly dramatic. 
 There was the tense moment when a faithful cowboy broke 
 upon the festivities with word that a New York detective 
 was coming to search for the man who had robbed the Hoff- 
 meyer establishment. His friends gathered loyally about 
 Merton and swore he would never be taken from them alive. 
 He was induced to don a false mustache until the detective 
 had gone. It was a long, heavy black mustache with curl- 
 ing tips, and in this disguise he stood aloof from his com- 
 panions when the detective entered. 
 
 The detective was the cross-eyed man, himself now dis- 
 guised as Sherlock Holmes, with a fore-and-aft cloth cap and 
 drooping blond mustache. He smoked a pipe as he examined 
 those present. Merton was unable to overlook this scene, 
 as he had been directed to stand with his back to the de- 
 tective. Later it was shown that he observed in a mirror the 
 Mexican whom he had punished creeping forward to in- 
 form the detective of his man's whereabouts. The coward's 
 treachery cost him dearly. The hero, still with his back 
 turned, drew his revolver and took careful aim by means of 
 the mirror. 
 
 This had been a spot where for a moment he was troubled. 
 Instead of pointing the weapon over his shoulder, aiming 
 by the mirror, he was directed to point it at the Mexican's 
 reflection in the glass, and to fire at this reflection. "It's 
 all right," Baird assured him. "It's a camera trick, see? 
 It may look now as if you were shooting into the mirror but 
 it comes perfectly right on the film. You'll see. Go on, 
 aim carefully, right smack at that looking-glass fire!" 
 
38 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 Still somewhat doubting, Merton fired. The mirror was 
 shattered, but a dozen feet back of him the treacherous 
 Mexican threw up his arms and fell lifeless, a bullet through 
 his cowardly heart. It was a puzzling bit of trick-work, he 
 thought, but Baird of course would know what was right, so 
 the puzzle was dismissed. Buck Benson, silent man of the 
 open, had got the scoundrel who would have played him 
 false. 
 
 A thrilling struggle ensued between Merton and the hell- 
 hound of justice. Perceiving who had slain his would-be 
 informant, the detective came to confront Merton. Snatch- 
 ing off his cap and mustache he stood revealed as the man 
 who had not dared to arrest him at the scene of his crime. 
 With another swift movement he snatched away the mus- 
 tache that had disguised his quarry. Buck Benson, at bay, 
 sprang like a tiger upon his antagonist. They struggled 
 while the excited cowboys surged about them. The de- 
 tective proved to be no match for Benson. He was borne 
 to earth, then raised aloft and hurled over the adjacent 
 tables. 
 
 This bit of acting had involved a trick which was not ob- 
 scure to Merton like his shot into the mirror that brought 
 down a man back of him. Moreover, it was a trick of which 
 he approved. When he bore the detective to earth the cam- 
 eras halted their grinding while a dummy in the striking 
 likeness of the detective was substituted. It was a light 
 affair, and he easily raised it for the final toss of triumph. 
 
 "Throw it high as you can over those tables and toward 
 the bar," called Baird. The figure was thrown as directed. 
 
 "Fine work! Now look up, as if he was still in the air, 
 now down, now brush your left sleeve lightly with your right 
 hand, now brush your right sleeve lightly with your left 
 hand. 
 
 "All right cut. Great, Merton! If that don't get you a 
 hand I don't know what will. Now all outside for the horse- 
 back stuff!" 
 
 Outside, the faithful cowboys leaped into their saddles and 
 
OUT THERE WHERE MEN ARE MEN 239 
 
 urged their beloved leader to do the same. But he lingered 
 beside his own horse, pleading with them to go ahead. He 
 must remain in the place of danger yet awhile for he had 
 forgotten to bring out his old mother. They besought him 
 to let them bring her out, but he would not listen. His 
 alone was the task. 
 
 Reluctantly the cowboys galloped off. As he turned to 
 re-enter the dance-hall he was confronted by the detective, 
 who held two frowning weapons upon him. Benson was 
 at last a prisoner. 
 
 The detective brutally ordered his quarry inside. Benson, 
 seeing he was beaten, made a manly plea that he might be 
 let to bid his horse good-by. The detective seemed moved. 
 He relented. Benson went to his good old pal. 
 
 "Here's your chance for a fine bit," called Baird. "Give 
 it to us now the way you did in that still. Broaden it all 
 you want to. Go to it." 
 
 Well did Merton Gill know that here was his chance for 
 a fine bit. The horse was strangely like Dexter upon whom 
 he had so often rehearsed this bit. He was a bony, drooping, 
 sad horse with a thin neck. "They're takin' ye frum me, 
 old pal takin' ye frum me. You an' me has seen some 
 tough times an* I sort o' figgered we'd keep on together till 
 the last an' now they got me, old pal, takin' me far away 
 where ye won't see me no more " 
 
 "Go to it, cowboy take all the footage you want!" called 
 Baird in a curiously choked voice. 
 
 The actor took some more footage. "But we got to keep 
 a stiff upper lip, old pal, you and me both. No cryin', no 
 bustin' down. We had our last gallop together, an' we're 
 at the forkin' of th' trail. So we got to be brave we got to 
 stand the gaff." 
 
 Benson released his old pal, stood erect, dashed a bit of 
 moisture from his eyes, and turned to the waiting detective 
 who, it seemed, had also been strangely moved during this 
 affecting farewell. Yet he had not forgotten his duty. 
 Benson was forced to march back into the Come All Ye Dance 
 
240 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 Hall. As he went he was wishing that Baird would have 
 him escape and flee on his old pal. 
 
 And Baird was a man who seemed to think of everything, 
 or perhaps he had often seen the real Buck Benson's play, 
 for it now appeared that everything was going to be as Mer- 
 ton Gill wished. Baird had even contrived an escape that 
 was highly spectacular. 
 
 Locked by the detective in an upper room, the prisoner 
 went to the window and glanced out to find that his loyal 
 horse was directly beneath him. He would leap from the 
 window, alight in the saddle after a twenty-foot drop, and 
 be off over the border. The window scene was shot, in- 
 cluding a flash of the horse below. The mechanics of the 
 leap itself required more time. Indeed, it took the better 
 part of a morning to satisfy Baird that this thrilling exploit 
 had been properly achieved. From a lower window, quite 
 like the high one, Merton leaped, but only to the ground 
 a few feet below. 
 
 "That's where we get your take-off," Baird explained. 
 
 "Now we get you lighting in the saddle." This proved to 
 be a more delicate bit of work. From a platform built out 
 just above the faithful horse Merton precariously scrambled 
 down into the saddle. He glanced anxiously at Baird, 
 fearing he had not alighted properly after the supposed 
 twenty-foot drop, but the manager appeared to be delighted 
 with his prowess after the one rehearsal, and the scene was* 
 shot. 
 
 "It's aU jake," Baird assured him. "Don't feel worried. 
 Of course we'll trick the bit where you hit the saddle; the 
 camera'll look out for that." 
 
 One detail only troubled Merton. After doing the leap 
 from the high window, and before doing its finish where he 
 reached the saddle, Baird directed certain changes in his 
 costume. He was again to don the false mustache, to put 
 his hat on, and also a heavy jacket lined with sheep's wool 
 worn by one of the cowboys in the dance-hall. Merton was 
 pleased to believe he had caught the manager napping here. 
 
OUT THERE WHERE MEN ARE MEN 241 
 
 "But Mr. Baird, if I leap from the window without the 
 hat or mustache or jacket and land on my horse in them, 
 wouldn't it look as if I had put them on as I was falling?" 
 
 Baird was instantly overcome with confusion. "Now, 
 that's so! I swear I never thought of that, Merton. I'm 
 glad you spoke about it in time. You sure have shown me 
 up as a director. You see I wanted you to disguise your- 
 self again I'll tell you; get the things on, and after we shoot 
 you lighting in the saddle we'll retake the window scene. 
 That'll fix it." 
 
 Not until long afterward, on a certain dread night when 
 the earth was to rock beneath him, did he recall that Baird 
 had never retaken that window scene. At present the young 
 actor was too engrossed by the details of his daring leap to 
 remember small things. The leap was achieved at last. 
 He was in the saddle after a twenty-foot drop. He gathered 
 up the reins, the horse beneath him coughed plaintively, and 
 Merton rode him out of the picture. Baird took a load off 
 his mind as to this bit of riding. 
 
 "Will you want me to gallop?" he asked, recalling the 
 unhappy experience with Dexter. 
 
 "No; just walk him beyond the camera line. The cam- 
 era '11 trick it up all right." So, safely, confidently, he had 
 ridden his steed beyond the lens range at a curious shuffling 
 amble, and his work at the Come All Ye Dance Hall was done. 
 
 Then came some adventurous days in the open. In 
 motor cars the company of artists was transported to a sunny 
 nook in the foothills beyond the city, and here in the wild, 
 rough, open spaces, the drama of mother-love, sacrifice, and 
 thrills was further unfolded. 
 
 First to be done here was the continuation of the hero's 
 escape from the dance-hall. Upon his faithful horse he 
 ambled along a quiet road until he reached the shelter of an 
 oak tree. Here he halted at the roadside. 
 
 "You know the detective is following you," explained 
 Baird, "and you're going to get him. Take your nag over a 
 little so the tree won't mask him too much. That's it. 
 
MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 Now, you look back, lean forward in the saddle, listen! 
 You hear him coming. Your face sets look as grim as you 
 can. That's the stuff the real Buck Benson stuff when 
 they're after him. That's fine. Now you get an idea. 
 Unlash your rope, let the noose out, give it a couple of whirls 
 to see is everything all right. That's it only you still look 
 grim not so worried about whether the rope is going to act 
 right. We'll attend to that. When the detective comes in 
 sight give about three good whirls and let her fly. Try it 
 once. Good! Now coil her up again and go through the 
 whole thing. Never mind about whether you're going to 
 get him or not. Remember, Buck Benson never misses. 
 We'll have a later shot that shows the rope falling over his 
 head." 
 
 Thereupon the grim-faced Benson, strong, silent man of 
 the open, while the cameras ground, waited the coming of 
 one who hounded him for a crime of which he was innocento 
 His iron face was relentless. He leaned forward, listening. 
 He uncoiled the rope, expertly ran out the noose, and grimly 
 waited. Far up the road appeared the detective on a gal- 
 loping horse. Benson twirled the rope as he sat in his saddle. 
 It left his hand, to sail gracefully in the general direction of 
 his pursuer. 
 
 "Cut!" called Baird. "That was bully. Now you got 
 him. Ride out into the road. You're dragging him off his 
 horse, see? Keep on up the road; you're still dragging the 
 hound. Look back over your shoulder and light your face 
 up just a little that's it, use Benson's other expression. 
 You got it fine. You're treating the skunk rough, but look 
 what he was doing to you, trying to pinch you for something 
 you never did. That's fine go ahead. Don't look back any 
 more." 
 
 Merton was chiefly troubled at this moment by the thought 
 that someone would have to double for him in the actual 
 casting of the rope that would settle upon the detective's 
 shoulders. Well, he must practise roping. Perhaps, by 
 the next picture, he could do this stuff himself. It was ex- 
 
OUT THERE WHERE MEN ARE MEN 243 
 
 citing work, though sometimes tedious. It had required 
 almost an entire morning to enact this one simple scene, with 
 the numerous close-ups that Baird demanded. 
 
 The afternoon was taken up largely in becoming accus- 
 tomed to a pair of old Spanish spurs that Baird now pro- 
 vided him with. Baird said they were very rare old spurs 
 which he had obtained at a fancy price from an impoverished 
 Spanish family who had treasured them as heirlooms. He 
 said he was sure that Buck Benson in all his vast collection 
 did not possess a pair of spurs like these. He would doubt- 
 less, after seeing them worn by Merton Gill in this picture, 
 have a pair made like them. 
 
 The distinguishing feature of these spurs was their size. 
 They were enormous, and their rowels extended a good twelve 
 inches from Merton's heels after he had donned them. 
 "They may bother you a little at first," said Baird, "but 
 you'll get used to them, and they're worth a little trouble 
 because they'll stand out." 
 
 The first effort to walk in them proved bothersome indeed, 
 for it was made over ground covered with a low-growing 
 vine and the spurs caught in this. Baird was very earnest 
 in supervising this progress, and even demanded the presence 
 of two cameras to record it. 
 
 "Of course I'm not using this stuff," he said, "but I want 
 to make a careful study of it. These are genuine hidalgo 
 spurs. Mighty few men in this line of parts could get away 
 with them. I bet Benson himself would have a lot of trouble. 
 Now, try it once more." 
 
 Merton tried once more, stumbling as the spurs caught 
 in the undergrowth. The cameras closely recorded his 
 efforts, and Baird applauded them. "You're getting it 
 keep on. That's better. Now try to run a few steps go 
 right coward that left-hand camera." 
 
 He ran the few steps, but fell headlong. He picked him- 
 self up, an expression of chagrin on his face. 
 
 "Never mind," urged Baird. "Try it again. We must 
 get this right." 
 
244 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 He tried again to run; was again thrown. But he was 
 determined to please the manager, and he earnestly continued 
 his efforts. Benson himself would see the picture and prob- 
 ably marvel that a new man should have mastered, appar- 
 ently with ease, a pair of genuine hidalgos. 
 
 "Maybe we better try smoother ground," Baird at last 
 suggested after repeated falls had shown that the under- 
 growth was difficult. So the cameras were moved on to the 
 front of a ranche house now in use for the drama, and the 
 spur lessons continued. But on smooth ground it appeared 
 that the spurs were still troublesome. After the first mis- 
 hap here Merton discovered the cause. The long shanks 
 were curved inward so that in walking their ends clashed. 
 He pointed this out to Baird, who was amazed at the dis- 
 covery. 
 
 "Well, well, that's so! They're bound to interfere. I 
 never knew that about hidalgo spurs before." 
 
 "We might straighten them," suggested the actor. 
 
 "No, no," Baird insisted, "I wouldn't dare try that. 
 They cost too much money, and it might break 'em. I tell 
 you what you do, stand up and try this: just toe in a little 
 when you walk that'll bring the points apart. There 
 that's it; that's fine." 
 
 The cameras were again recording so that Baird could 
 later make his study of the difficulties to be mastered by the 
 wearer of genuine hidalgos. By toeing in Merton now suc- 
 ceeded in walking without disaster, though he could not feel 
 that he was taking the free stride of men out there in the open 
 spaces. 
 
 "Now try running," directed Baird, and he tried running; 
 but again the spurs caught and he was thrown full in the 
 eyes of the grinding camera. He had forgotten to toe in. 
 But he would not give up. His face was set in Buck Benson 
 grimness. Each time he picked himself up and earnestly 
 resumed the effort. The rowels were now catching in the 
 long hair of his chaps. 
 
 He worked on, directed and cheered by the patient Baird, 
 
OUT THERE WHERE MEN ARE MEN 245 
 
 while the two camera men, with curiously strained faces, 
 recorded his failures. Baird had given strict orders that 
 other members of the company should remain at a distance 
 during the spur lessons, but now he seemed to believe that a 
 few other people might encourage the learner. Merton was 
 directed to run to his old mother who, bucket at her side and 
 mop in hand, knelt on the ground at a little distance. He 
 was also directed to run toward the Montague girl, now 
 in frontier attire of fringed buckskin. He made earnest 
 efforts to keep his feet during these essays, but the spurs 
 still proved treacherous. 
 
 "Just pick yourself up and go on," ordered Baird, and had 
 the cameras secure close shots of Merton picking himself up 
 and going carefully on, toeing in now, to embrace his weep- 
 ing old mother and the breathless girl who had awaited him 
 with open arms. 
 
 He was tired that night, but the actual contusions he had 
 suffered in his falls were forgotten in the fear that he might 
 fail to master the hidalgos. Baird himself seemed confident 
 that his pupil would yet excite the jealousy of Buck Benson 
 in this hazardous detail of the screen art. He seemed, indeed, 
 to be curiously satisfied with his afternoon's work. He said 
 that he would study the film carefully and try to discover 
 just how the spurs could be mastered. 
 
 "You'll show 'em yet how to take a joke," he declared 
 when the puzzling implements were at last doffed. The 
 young actor felt repaid for his earnest efforts. No one could 
 put on a pair of genuine hidalgos for the first time and ex- 
 pect to handle them correctly. 
 
 There were many days in the hills. Until this time the 
 simple drama had been fairly coherent in Merton Gill's 
 mind. So consecutively were the scenes shot that the story 
 had not been hard to follow. But now came rather a jum- 
 ble of scenes, not only at times bewildering in themselves, 
 but apparently unrelated. 
 
 First it appeared that the Montague girl, as Miss Rebecca 
 Hoffmeyer, had tired of being a mere New York society 
 
46 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 butterfly, had come out into the big open spaces to do some- 
 thing real, something worth while. The ruin of her father, 
 still unexplained, had seemed to call out unsuspected re- 
 serves in the girl. She was stern and businesslike in such 
 scenes as Merton was permitted to observe. And she had 
 not only brought her ruined father out to the open spaces 
 but the dissipated brother, who was still seen to play at dice 
 whenever opportunity offered. He played with the jolly 
 cowboys and invariably won. 
 
 Off hi the hills there were many scenes which Merton did 
 not overlook. "I want you to have just your own part in 
 mind," Baird told him. And, although he was puzzled 
 later, he knew that Baird was somehow making it right in the 
 drama when he became again the successful actor of that 
 first scene, which he had almost forgotten. He was no longer 
 the Buck Benson of the open spaces, but the foremost idol 
 of the shadowed stage, and in Harold Parmalee's best manner 
 he informed the aspiring Montague girl that he could not 
 accept her as leading lady in his next picture because she 
 lacked experience. The wager of a kiss was laughingly made 
 as she promised that within ten days she would convince him 
 of her talent. 
 
 Later she herself, in an effective scene, became the grim- 
 faced Buck Benson and held the actor up at the point of 
 her two guns. Then, when she had convinced him that she 
 was Benson, she appeared after an interval as her own father; 
 the fiery beard, the derby hat with its dents, the chaps, 
 the bicycle, and golf bag. In this scene she seemed to de- 
 mand the actor's intentions toward the daughter, and again 
 overwhelmed him with confusion, as Parmalee had been 
 overwhelmed when she revealed her true self under the baf- 
 fling disguise. The wager of a kiss was prettily paid. This 
 much of the drama he knew. And there was an affecting 
 final scene on a hillside. 
 
 The actor, arrayed in chaps, spurs, and boots below the 
 waist was, above this, in faultless evening dress. "You see, 
 it's a masquerade party at the ranche," Baird explained, " 
 
OUT THERE WHERE MEN AEE MEN 247 
 
 you've thought up this costume to sort of puzzle the little 
 lady." 
 
 The girl herself was in the short, fringed buckskin skirt, 
 with knife and revolvers in her belt. Off in the hills day 
 after day she had worn this costume in those active scenes 
 he had not witnessed. Now she was merely coy. He fol- 
 lowed her out on the hillside with only a little trouble from 
 the spurs indeed he fell but once as he approached her 
 and the little drama of the lovers, at last united, was touch- 
 ingly shown. 
 
 In the background, as they stood entwined, the poor de- 
 mented old mother was seen. With mop and bucket she 
 was cleansing the side of a cliff, but there was a happier look 
 on the worn old face. 
 
 "Glance around and see her," called Baird. "Then ex- 
 plain to the girl that you will always protect your mother, 
 no matter what happens. That's it. Now the clench 
 kiss her slow! That's it. Cut!" 
 
 Merton's part in the drama was ended. He knew that 
 the company worked in the hills another week and there were 
 more close-ups to take in the dance-hall, but he was not needed 
 in these. Baird congratulated him warmly. 
 
 "Fine work, my boy! You've done your first picture, 
 and with Miss Montague as your leading lady I feel that 
 you're going to land ace-high with your public. Now all 
 you got to do for a couple of weeks is to take it easy while 
 we finish up some rough ends of this piece. Then we'll be 
 ready to start on the new one. It's pretty well doped out, and 
 there's a big part in it for you big things to be done in a 
 big way, see what I mean?" 
 
 "Well, I'm glad I suited you," Merton replied. "I tried 
 to give the best that was in me to a sincere interpretation 
 of that fine part. And it was a great surprise to me. I 
 never thought I'd be working for you, Mr. Baird, and of 
 course I wouldn't have been if you had kept on doing those 
 comedies. I never would have wanted to work in one of 
 them." 
 
248 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 "Of course not," agreed Baird cordially. "I realized 
 that you were a serious artist, and you came in the nick of 
 time, just when I was wanting to be serious myself, to get 
 away from that slap-stick stuff into something better and 
 finer. You came when I needed you. And, look here, 
 Merton, I signed you on at forty a week " 
 
 "Yes, sir: I was glad to get it." 
 
 "Well, I'm going to give you more. From the beginning 
 of the new picture you're on the payroll at seventy-five a 
 
 week. No, no, not a word " as Merton would have 
 
 thanked him. "You're earning the money. And for the 
 picture after that well, if you keep on giving the best that's 
 in you, it will be a whole lot more. Now take a good rest 
 till we're ready for you." 
 
 At last he had won. Suffering and sacrifice had told. 
 And Baird had spoken of the Montague girl as his leading 
 lady quite as if he were a star. And seventy-five dollars a 
 week! A sum Gashwiler had made him work five weeks for. 
 Now he had something big to write to his old friend, Tessie 
 Kearns. She might spread the news in Simsbury, he thought. 
 He contrived a close-up of Gashwiler hearing it, of Mrs. 
 Gashwiler hearing it, of Metta Judson hearing it. 
 
 They would all be incredulous until a certain picture was 
 shown at the Bijou Palace, a gripping drama of mother- 
 love, of a clean-limbed young American type wrongfully ac- 
 cused of a crime and taking the burden of it upon his own 
 shoulders for the sake of the girl he had come to love; of the 
 tense play of elemental forces in the great West, the regenera- 
 tion of a shallow society girl when brought to adversity by 
 the ruin of her old father; of the lovers reunited in that West 
 they both loved. 
 
 And somehow this was still a puzzle the very effective 
 weaving in and out of the drama of the world's most popular 
 screen idol, played so expertly by Clifford Armytage who 
 looked enough like him to be his twin brother. 
 
OUT THERE WHERE MEN ARE MEN 249 
 
 Fresh from joyous moments in the projection room, the 
 Montague girl gazed at Baird across the latter 's desk. 
 Baird spoke. 
 
 "Sis, he's a wonder." 
 
 "Jeff, you're a wonder. How'd you ever keep him from 
 getting wise?" 
 
 Baird shrugged. "Easy! We caught him fresh." 
 
 "How'd you ever win him to do all those falls on the trick 
 spurs, and get the close-ups of them? Didn't he know you 
 were shooting?" 
 
 "Oh ! " Baird shrugged again. " A little talk made that all 
 jake. But what bothers me how's he going to act when 
 he's seen the picture?" 
 
 The girl became grave. "I'm scared stiff every time I 
 think of it. Maybe he'll murder you, Jeff." 
 
 "Maybe he'll murder both of us. You got him into it." 
 
 She did not smile, but considered gravely, absently. 
 
 "There's something else might happen," she said at last. 
 "That boy's got at least a couple of sides to him. I'd rather 
 he'd be crazy mad than be what I'm thinking of now, and 
 that's that all this stuff might just fairly break his heart* 
 Think of it to see his fine honest acting turned into good 
 old Buckeye slap-stick! Can't you get that? How'd 
 you like to think you were playing Romeo, and act your 
 heart out at it, and then find out they'd slipped in a cross- 
 eyed Juliet in a comedy make-up on you? Well, you can 
 laugh, but maybe it won't be funny to him. Honest, Jeff, 
 that kid gets me under the ribs kind of. I hope he takes it 
 standing up, and goes good and crazy mad." 
 
 "I'll know what to say to him if he does that. If he takes 
 it the other way, lying down, I'll be too ashamed ever to 
 look him in the eye again. Say, it'll be like going up to a 
 friendly baby and soaking it with a potato masher or some- 
 thing." 
 
 "Don't worry about it, Kid. Anyway, it won't be your 
 fault so much as mine. And you think there's only two 
 tfays for him to take it, mad or heart broken? Well, let 
 
250 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 i 
 
 me tell you something about that lad he might fool you 
 both ways. I don't know just how, but I tell you he's an 
 actor, a born one. What he did is going to get over big. 
 And I never yet saw a born actor that would take applause 
 lying down, even if it does come for what he didn't know 
 he was doing. Maybe he'll be mad that's natural enough. 
 But maybe he'll fool us both. So cheerio, old Pippin! and 
 let's fly into the new piece. I'll play safe by shooting the 
 most of that before the other one is released. And he'll 
 still be playing straight in a serious heart drama* Fancy 
 that, Armand!" 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 A NEW TRAIL 
 
 ONE genial morning a few days later the sun shone in 
 across the desk of Baird while he talked to Merton 
 Gill of the new piece. It was a sun of fairest prom- 
 ise. Mr. Gill's late work was again lavishly commended, 
 and confidence was expressed that he would surpass himself 
 in the drama shortly to be produced. 
 
 Mr. Baird spoke in enthusiastic terms of this, declaring 
 that if it did not prove to be a knock-out a clean-up pic- 
 ture then he, Jeff Baird, could safely be called a Chinaman. 
 And during the time that would elapse before shooting on 
 the new piece could begin he specified a certain study in 
 which he wished his actor to engage. 
 
 "You've watched the Edgar Wayne pictures, haven't 
 you?" 
 
 "Yes, I've seen a number of them." 
 
 "Like his work? that honest country-boy-loving-his- 
 mother-and-little-sister stuff, wearing overalls and tousled 
 hair in the first part, and coming out in city clothes and 
 eight dollar neckties at the last, with his hair slicked back 
 same as a seal?" 
 
 "Oh, yes, I like it. He's fine. He has a great appeal." 
 
 "Good! That's the kind of a part you're going to get in 
 this new piece. Lots of managers in my place would say 
 'No he's a capable young chap and has plenty of talent, 
 but he lacks the experience to play an Edgar Wayne part.' 
 That's what a lot of these wisenheimers would say. But 
 me not so. I believe you can get away with this part, and 
 I'm going to give you your chance." 
 
 251 
 
MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 "I'm sure I don't know how to thank you, Mr. Baird, and 
 I'll try to give you the very best that is in me " 
 
 "I'm sure of that, my boy; you needn't tell me. But now 
 what I want you to do while you got this lay-off between 
 pieces, chase out and watch all the Edgar Wayne pictures 
 you can find. There was one up on the Boulevard last 
 week I'd like you to watch half-a-dozen times. It may 
 be at another house down this way, or it may be out in one 
 of the suburbs. I'll have someone outside call up and 
 find where it is to-day and they'll let you know. It's called 
 Happy Homestead or something snappy like that, and it 
 kind of suggests a layout for this new piece of mine, see 
 what I mean? It'll suggest things to you. 
 
 "Edgar and his mother and little sister live on this farm 
 and Edgar mixes in with a swell dame down at the summer 
 hotel, and a villain tries to get his old mother's farm and 
 another villain takes his little sister off up to the wicked city, 
 and Edgar has more trouble than would patch Hell a mile, 
 see? But it all comes right in the end, and the city girl 
 falls for him when she sees him in his stepping-out clothes. 
 
 "It's a pretty little thing, but to my way of thinking it 
 lacks strength; not enough punch to it. So we're sort of 
 building up on that general idea, only we'll put in the pep 
 that this piece lacked. If I don't miss my guess, you'll be 
 able to show Wayne a few things about serious acting 
 especially after you've studied his methods a little bit in this 
 piece." 
 
 "Well, if you think I can do it," began Merton, then 
 broke off in answer to a sudden thought. "Will my mother 
 be the same actress that played it before, the one that mopped 
 all the time?" 
 
 "Yes, the same actress, but a different sort of mother. 
 She she's more enterprising; she's a sort of chemist, in a 
 way; puts up preserves and jellies for the hotel. She never 
 touches a mop in the whole piece and dresses neat from start 
 to finish." 
 
 "And does the cross-eyed man play in it? Sometimes, in 
 
A NEW TRAIL 253 
 
 scenes with him, I'd get the idea I wasn't really doing my 
 best." 
 
 "Yes, yes, I know." Baird waved a sympathetic hand. 
 "Poor old Jack. He's trying hard to do something worth 
 while, but he's played in those cheap comedy things so long 
 it's sort of hard for him to get out of it and play serious stuff, 
 if you know what I mean." 
 
 "I know what you mean," said Merton. 
 
 "And he's been with me so long I kind of hate to discharge 
 him. You see, on account of those eyes of his, it would be 
 hard for him to get a job as a serious actor, so I did think 
 I'd give him another part in this piece if you didn't object, 
 just to sort of work him into the worth-while things. He's 
 so eager for the chance. It was quite pathetic how grateful 
 he looked when I told him I'd try him once more in one 
 of the better and finer things. And a promise is a promise." 
 
 "Still, Merton, you're the man I must suit in this cast; 
 if you say the word I'll tell Jack he must go, though I know 
 what a blow it will be to him " 
 
 "Oh, no, Mr. Baird," Merton interrupted fervently, "I 
 wouldn't think of such a thing. Let the poor fellow have a 
 chance to learn something better than the buffoonery he's 
 been doing. I'll do everything I can to help him. I think 
 it is very pathetic, his wanting to do the better things; it's 
 fine of him. And maybe some day he could save up enough 
 to have a good surgeon fix his eyes right. It might be 
 done, you know." 
 
 "Now that's nice of you, my boy. It's kind and generous. 
 Not every actor of your talent would want Jack working in 
 the same scene with him. And perhaps, as you say, some 
 day he can save up enough from his wages to have his eyes 
 fixed. I'll mention it to him. And this reminds me, 
 speaking of the cast, there's another member who might 
 bother some of these fussy actors. She's the girl who will 
 take the part of your city sweetheart. As a matter of fact, 
 she isn't exactly the type I'd have picked for the part, 
 because she's rather a large, hearty girl, if you know what 
 
254 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 I mean. I could have found a lot who were better lookers; 
 but the poor thing has a bedridden father and mother and 
 a little crippled brother and a little sister that isn't well, and 
 she's working hard to send them all to school I mean the 
 children, not her parents; so I saw the chance to do her a 
 good turn, and I hope you'll feel that you can work har- 
 moniously with her. I know I'm too darned human to be 
 
 in this business " Baird looked aside to conceal his 
 
 emotion. 
 
 "I'm sure, Mr. Baird, I'll get along fine with the young 
 lady, and I think it's fine of you to give these people jobs 
 when you could get better folks in their places." 
 
 "Well, well, we'll say no more about that," replied Baird 
 gruffly, as one who had again hidden his too-impressionable 
 heart. "Now ask in the outer office where that Wayne 
 film is to-day and catch it as often as you feel you're getting 
 any of the Edgar Wayne stuff. We'll call you up when 
 work begins." 
 
 He saw the Edgar Wayne film, a touching story in which 
 the timid, diffident country boy triumphed over difficulties 
 and won the love of a pure New York society girl, meantime 
 protecting his mother from the insulting sneers of the idle 
 rich and being made to suffer intensely by the apparent 
 moral wreck of his dear little sister whom a rich scoundrel 
 lured to the great city with false promises that he would 
 make a fine lady of her. Never before had he studied the 
 acting method of Wayne with a definite aim in view. Now 
 he watched until he himself became the awkward country 
 boy. He was primed with the Wayne manner, the appeal- 
 ing ingenuousness, the simple embarrassments, the manly 
 regard for the old mother, when word came that Baird was 
 ready for him in the new piece. 
 
 This drama was strikingly like the Wayne piece he had 
 watched, at least in its beginning. Baird, in his striving 
 for the better things, seemed at first to have copied his 
 model almost too faithfully. Not only was Merton to be 
 the awkward country boy in the little hillside farmhouse. 
 
A NEW TRAIL 255 
 
 but his mother and sister were like the other mother and 
 sister. 
 
 Still, he began to observe differences. The little sister 
 played by the Montague girl was a simple farm maiden as 
 in the other piece, but the mother was more energetic. She 
 had silvery hair and wore a neat black dress, with a white 
 lace collar and a cameo brooch at her neck, and she em- 
 braced her son tearfully at frequent intervals, as had the 
 other mother; but she carried on in her kitchen an active 
 business in canning fruits and putting up jellies, which, sold 
 to the rich people at the hotel, would swell the little fund 
 that must be saved to pay the mortgage. Also, in the pres- 
 ent piece, the country boy was to become a great inventor, 
 and this was different. Merton felt that this was a good 
 touch; it gave him dignity. 
 
 He appeared ready for work on the morning designated. 
 He was now able to make up himself, and he dressed in the 
 country-boy costume that had been provided. It was per- 
 haps not so attractive a costume as Edgar Wayne had worn, 
 consisting of loose-fitting overalls that came well above his 
 waist and were fastened by straps that went over the shoul- 
 ders; but, as Baird remarked, the contrast would be greater 
 when he dressed in rich city clothes at the last. His hair, 
 too, was no longer the slicked-back hair of Parmalee, but 
 tousled in country disorder. 
 
 For much of the action of the new piece they would require 
 an outside location, but there were some interiors to be shot 
 on the lot. He forgot the ill-fitting overalls when shown 
 his attic laboratory where, as an ambitious young inventor, 
 sustained by the unfaltering trust of mother and sister, he 
 would perfect certain mechanical devices that would bring 
 him fame, fortune, and the love of a pure New York society 
 girl. It was a humble little room containing a work-bench 
 that held his tools and a table littered with drawings over 
 which he bent until late hours of the night. 
 
 At this table, simple, unaffected, deeply earnest, he was 
 shown as the dreaming young inventor, perplexed at mo* 
 
256 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 ments, then, with brightening eyes, making some needful 
 change in the drawings. He felt in these scenes that he was 
 revealing a world of personality. And he must struggle to 
 give a sincere interpretation in later scenes that would re- 
 quire more action. He would show Baird that he had not 
 watched Edgar Wayne without profit. 
 
 Another interior was of the neat living room of the humble 
 home. Here were scenes of happy family life with the little 
 sister and the fond old mother. The Montague girl was a 
 charming picture in her simple print dress and sunbonnet 
 beneath which hung her braid of golden hair. The mother 
 was a sweet old dear, dressed as Baird had promised. She 
 early confided to Merton that she was glad her part was not 
 to be a mopping part. In that case she would have had to 
 wear knee-pads, whereas now she was merely, she said, to 
 be a tired business woman. 
 
 Still another interior was of her kitchen where she busily 
 carried on her fruit-canning activities. Pots boiled on the 
 stove and glass jars were filled with her product. One of 
 the pots, Merton noticed, the largest, had a tightly closed 
 top from which a slender tube of copper went across one 
 corner of the little room to where it coiled in a bucket filled 
 with water, whence it discharged its contents into bottles. 
 
 This, it seemed, was his mother's improved grape juice, 
 a cooling drink to tempt the jaded palates of the city folks 
 up at the big hotel. 
 
 The laboratory of the young inventor was abundantly 
 filmed while the earnest country boy dreamed hopefully 
 above his drawings or tinkered at metal devices on the 
 work-bench. The kitchen in which his mother toiled was 
 repeatedly shot, including close-ups of the old mother's in- 
 genious contrivances especially of the closed boiler with its 
 coil of copper tubing by which she was helping to save the 
 humble home. 
 
 And a scene in the neat living room with its old-fashioned 
 furniture made it all too clear that every effort would be 
 required to save the little home. The cruel money-lender, 
 
A NEW TRAIL 257 
 
 a lawyer with mean-looking whiskers, confronted the three 
 shrinking inmates to warn them that he must have his money 
 by a certain day or out they would go into the streets. The 
 old mother wept at this, and the earnest boy took her in his 
 arms. The little sister, terrified by the man's rough words, 
 also flew to this shelter, and thus he defied the intruder, calm, 
 fearless, dignified. The money would be paid and the in- 
 truder would now please remember that, until the day named, 
 this little home was their very own. 
 
 The scoundrel left with a final menacing wave of his 
 gnarled hand; left the group facing ruin unless the invention 
 could be perfected, unless Mother could sell an extraordinary 
 quantity of fruit or improved grape juice to the city folks, or, 
 indeed, unless the little sister could do something wonderful. 
 
 She, it now seemed, was confident she also could help. 
 She stood apart from them and prettily promised to do some- 
 thing wonderful. She asked them to remember that she was 
 no longer a mere girl, but a woman with a woman's deter- 
 mination. They both patted the little thing encouragingly 
 on the back. 
 
 The interiors possible on the Holden lot having been 
 finished, they motored each day to a remote edge of the city 
 where outside locations had been found for the humble farm- 
 house and the grand hotel. The farmhouse was excellently 
 chosen, Merton thought, being the neat, unpretentious abode 
 of honest, hard-working people; but the hotel, some distance 
 off, was not so grand, he thought, as Baird's new play seemed 
 to demand. It was plainly a hotel, a wooden structure with 
 balconies; but it seemed hardly to afford those attractions 
 that would draw the wealthier element from New York. 
 He forebore to warn Baird of this, however, fearing to dis- 
 courage a manager who was honestly striving for the serious 
 in photodrama. 
 
 His first exterior scene saw him, with the help of Mother 
 and little sister, loading the one poor motor car which the 
 family possessed with Mother's products. These were then 
 driven to the hotel. The Montague girl drove the car, and 
 
258 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 scenes of it in motion were shot from a car that preceded 
 them. 
 
 They arrived before the hotel; Merton was directed to 
 take from the car an iron weight attached to a rope and 
 running to a connection forward on the hood. He was to 
 throw the weight to the ground, plainly with the notion that 
 he would thus prevent the car from running away. The 
 simple device was, in fact, similar to that used, at Gash- 
 wiler's strict orders, on the delivery wagon back in Simsbury, 
 for Gashwiler had believed that Dexter would run away if 
 untethered. But of course it was absurd, Merton saw, to 
 anchor a motor car in such a manner, and he was somewhat 
 taken aback when Baird directed this action. 
 
 "It's all right," Baird assured him. "You're a simple 
 country boy, and don't know any better, so do it plumb 
 serious. You'll be smart enough before the show's over. Go 
 ahead, get out, grab the weight, throw it down, and don't 
 look at it again, as if you did this every time. That's it. 
 You're not being funny; just a simple country boy like 
 Wayne was at first." He performed the action, still with 
 some slight misgiving. 
 
 Followed scenes of brother and sister offering Mother's 
 wares to the city folks idling on the porch of the hotel. Each 
 bearing a basket they were caught submitting the jellies and 
 jams. The brother was laughed at, even sneered at, by the 
 supercilious rich, the handsomely gowned women and the 
 dissipated looking men. No one appeared to wish his jellies. 
 
 The little sister had better luck. The women turned from 
 her, but the men gathered about her and quickly bought out 
 the stock. She went to the car for more and the men followed 
 her. To Merton, who watched these scenes, the dramatist's 
 intention was plain. These men did not really care for 
 jellies and jams, they were attracted solely by the wild-rose 
 beauty of the little country girl. And they were plainly the 
 sort of men whose attentions could mean no good to such 
 as she. 
 
 Left on the porch, he was now directed to approach a dis- 
 
A NEW TRAIL 259 
 
 tinguished looking old gentleman, probably a banker and a 
 power in Wall Street, who read his morning papers. Timidly 
 he stood before this person, thrusting forward his basket. 
 The old gentleman glanced up in annoyance and brutally 
 rebuffed the country boy with an angry flourish of the 
 paper he read. 
 
 "You're hurt by this treatment," called Baird, "and 
 almost discouraged. You look back over your shoulder to 
 where sister is doing a good business with her stuff, and you 
 see the old mother back in her kitchen, working her fingers 
 to the bone we'll have a flash of that, see? and you try 
 again. Take out that bottle in the corner of the basket, 
 uncork it, and try again. The old man looks up he's 
 smelled something. You hold the bottle toward him and 
 you're saying so-and-so, so-and-so, so-and-so, 'Oh, Mister, if 
 you knew how hard my poor old mother works to make this 
 stuff! Won't you please take a little taste of her unproved 
 grape juice and see if you don't want to buy a few shillings' 
 worth' so-and-so, so-and-so, so-and-so see what I mean? 
 That's it, look pleading. Think how the little home de- 
 pends on it." 
 
 The old gentleman, first so rude, consented to taste the 
 improved grape juice. He put the bottle to his lips and 
 tilted it. A camera was brought up to record closely the look 
 of pleased astonishment that enlivened his face. He arose 
 to his feet, tilted the bottle again, this time drinking abund- 
 antly. He smacked his lips with relish, glanced furtively 
 at the group of women in the background, caught the country 
 boy by a sleeve and drew him farther along the porch. 
 
 "He's telling you what fine stuff this grape juice is," ex- 
 plained Baird; "saying that your mother must be a wonder- 
 ful old lady, and he'll drop over to meet her; and in the 
 meantime he wants you to bring him all this grape juice she 
 has. He'll take it; she can name her own price. He hands 
 you a ten dollar bill for the bottle he has and for another in 
 the basket that's it, give it to him. The rest of the bottles 
 are jams or something. You want him to take them, but 
 
230 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 he pushes them back. He's saying he wants the improved 
 grape juice or nothing. He shows a big wad of bills to show 
 he can pay for it. You look glad now the little home may 
 be saved after all." 
 
 The scene was shot. Merton felt that he carried it 
 acceptably. He had shown the diffident pleading of the 
 country boy that his mother's product should be at least 
 tasted, his frank rejoicing when the old gentleman approved 
 of it. He was not so well satisfied with the work of the 
 Montague girl as his innocent little sister. In her sale of 
 Mother's jellies to the city men, in her acceptance of their 
 attentions, she appeared to be just the least bit bold. It 
 seemed almost as if she wished to attract their notice. He 
 hesitated to admit it, for he profoundly esteemed the girl, 
 but there were even moments when, in technical language, 
 she actually seemed to "vamp" these creatures who thronged 
 about her to profess for her jams and jellies an interest he 
 was sure they did not feel. 
 
 He wondered if Baird had made it plain to her that she 
 was a very innocent little country girl who should be un- 
 pleasantly affected by these advances. The scene he watched 
 shot where the little sister climbed back into the motor car, 
 leered at by the four New York club-men, he thought es- 
 pecially distasteful. Surely the skirt of her print dress 
 was already short enough. She needed not to lift it under 
 this evil regard as she put her foot up to the step. 
 
 It was on the porch of the hotel, too, that he was to have 
 his first scene with the New York society girl whose hand 
 he won. She proved to be the daughter of the old gentle- 
 man who liked the improved grape juice. As Baird had 
 intimated, she was a large girl; not only tall and stoutly 
 built, but somewhat heavy of face. Baird's heart must 
 have been touched indeed when he consented to employ 
 her, but Merton remembered her bedridden father and 
 mother, the little crippled brother, the little sister who was 
 also in poor health, and resolved to make their scenes to- 
 gether as easy for her as he could. 
 
A NEW TRAIL 261 
 
 At their first encounter she appeared in a mannish coat 
 and riding breeches, though she looked every inch a woman 
 in this attire. 
 
 "She sees you, and it's a case of love at first sight on her 
 part," explained Baird. "And you love her, too, only 
 you're a bashful country boy and can't show it the way she 
 can. Try out a little first scene now." 
 
 Merton stood, his basket on his arm, as the girl approached 
 him. "Look down," called Baird, and Merton lowered his 
 gaze under the ardent regard of the social butterfly. She 
 tossed away her cigarette and came nearer. Then she 
 mischievously pinched his cheek as the New York men had 
 pinched his little sister's. Having done this, she placed her 
 hand beneath his chin and raised his face to hers. 
 
 "Now look up at her," called Baird. "But she frightens 
 you. Remember your country raising. You never saw 
 a society girl before. That's it look frightened while 
 she's admiring you in that bold way. Now turn a little and 
 look down again. Pinch his cheek once more, Lulu. Now, 
 Merton, look up and smile, but kind of scared you're still 
 afraid of her and offer her a bottle of Ma's preserves. 
 Step back a little as you do it, because you're kind of afraid 
 of what she might do next. That's fine. Good work, both 
 of you." 
 
 He was glad for the girl's sake that Baird had approved the 
 work of both. He had been afraid she was overdoing the 
 New York society manner in the boldness of her advances 
 to him, but of course Baird would know. 
 
 His conscience hurt him a little when the Montague girl 
 added her praise to Baird 's for his own work. "Kid, you 
 certainly stepped neat and looked nice in that love scene," 
 she warmly told him. He would have liked to praise her own 
 work, but could not bring himself to. Perhaps she would 
 grow more shrinking and modest as the drama progressed. 
 
 A part of the play now developed as he had foreseen it 
 would, in that the city men at the hotel pursued the little 
 sister to her own door-step with attentions that she should 
 
MERTON OP THE MOVIES 
 
 have found unwelcome. But even now she behaved in a 
 way he could not approve. She seemed determined to 
 meet the city men halfway. "I'm to be the sunlight arc 
 of this hovel," she announced when the city men came, 
 one at a time, to shower gifts upon the little wild rose. 
 
 Later it became apparent that she must in the end pay 
 dearly for her too-ready acceptance of these favours. One 
 after another the four city men, whose very appearance 
 would have been sufficient warning to most girls, endeavoured 
 to lure her up to the great city where they promised to make 
 a lady of her. It was a situation notoriously involving 
 danger to the simple country girl, yet not even her mother 
 frowned upon it. 
 
 The mother, indeed, frankly urged the child to let all 
 of these kind gentlemen make a lady of her. The brother 
 should have warned her in this extremity; but the brother 
 was not permitted any share in these scenes. Only Merton 
 Gill, in his proper person, seemed to feel the little girl was 
 all too cordially inviting trouble. 
 
 He became confused, ultimately, by reason of the scenes 
 not being taken consecutively. It appeared that the little 
 sister actually left her humble home at the insistence of one 
 of the villains, yet she did not, apparently, creep back 
 months later broken in body and soul. As nearly as he 
 could gather, she was back the next day. And it almost 
 seemed as if later, at brief intervals, she allowed herself to 
 start for the great city with each of the other three scoun- 
 drels who were bent upon her destruction. But always she 
 appeared to return safely and to bring large sums of money 
 with which to delight the old mother. 
 
 Il was puzzling to Merton. He decided at last he did 
 not like to ask the Montague girl that Baird had tried the 
 same scene four times, and would choose the best of these 
 for his drama. 
 
 Brother and sister made further trips to the hotel with 
 their offerings, only the sister now took jams and jellies 
 exclusively, which she sold to the male guests, while the 
 
A NEW TRAIL 263 
 
 brother took only the improved grape juice which the rich 
 old New Yorker bought and generously paid for. 
 
 There were other scenes at the hotel between the country 
 boy and the heavy-faced New York society girl, in which 
 the latter was an ardent wooer. Once she was made to 
 snatch a kiss from him as he stood by her, his basket on his 
 arm. He struggled in her embrace, then turned to flee. 
 She was shown looking after him, laughing, carelessly 
 slapping one leg with her riding crop. 
 
 "You're still timid," Baird told him. "You can hardly 
 believe you have won her love." 
 
 In some following scenes at the little farmhouse it be- 
 came impossible for him longer to doubt this, for the girl 
 frankly told her love as she lingered with him at the 
 gate. 
 
 "She's one of these new women," said Baird. "She's 
 living her own life. You listen it's wonderful that this 
 great love should have come to you. Let us see the great 
 joy dawning in your eyes." 
 
 He endeavoured to show this. The New York girl became 
 more ardent. She put an arm about him, drew him to her. 
 Slowly, almost in the manner of Harold Parmalee, as it 
 seemed to him, she bent down and imprinted a long kiss upon 
 his lips. He had been somewhat difficult to rehearse in this 
 scene, but Baird made it all plain. He was still the bashful 
 country boy, though now he would be awakened by love. 
 The girl drew him from the gate to her waiting automobile. 
 Here she overcame a last reluctance and induced him to 
 enter. She followed and drove rapidly off. 
 
 It was only now that Baird let him into the very heart of 
 the drama. 
 
 "You see," he told Merton, "you've watched these city 
 folks; you've wanted city life and fine clothes for yourself; 
 so, in a moment of weakness, you've gone up to town with 
 this girl to have a look at the place, and it sort of took hold 
 of you. In fact, you hit up quite a pace for awhile; but at 
 last you go stale on it " 
 
264 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 "The. blight of Broadway," suggested Merton, wonder- 
 ing if there could be a cabaret scene. 
 
 "Exactly," said Baird. "And you get to thinking of the 
 poor old mother and little sister back here at home, working 
 away to pay off the mortgage, and you decide to come back. 
 You get back on a stormy night; lots of snow and wind; you're 
 pretty weak. We'll show you sort of fainting as you reach 
 the door. You have no overcoat nor hat, and your city 
 suit is practically ruined. You got a great chance for some 
 good acting here, especially after you get inside to face the 
 folks. It'll be the strongest thing you've done, so far." 
 
 It was indeed an opportunity for strong acting. He 
 could see that. He stayed late with Baird and his staff one 
 night and a scene of the prodigal's return to the door of the 
 little home was shot in a blinding snow-storm. Baird warmly 
 congratulated the mechanics who contrived the storm, and 
 was enthusiastic over the acting of the hero. Through the 
 wintry blast he staggered, half falling, to reach the door 
 where he collapsed. The light caught the agony on his 
 pale face. He lay a moment, half -fainting, then reached up 
 a feeble hand to the knob of the door. 
 
 It was one of the annoyances incident to screen art that 
 he could not go in at that moment to finish his great scene. 
 But this must be done back on the lot, and the scene could 
 not be secured until the next day. 
 
 Once more he became the pitiful victim of a great city, 
 crawling back to the home shelter on a wintry night. It 
 was Christmas eve, he now learned. He pushed open the 
 door of the little home and staggered in to face his old mother 
 and the little sister. They sprang forward at his entrance; 
 the sister ran to support him to the homely old sofa. He 
 was weak, emaciated, his face an agony of repentance, as he 
 mutely pled forgiveness for his flight. 
 
 His old mother had risen, had seemed about to embrace 
 him fondly when he knelt at her feet, but then had drawn 
 herself sternly up and pointed commandingly to the door. 
 The prodigal, anguished anew at this repulse, fell weakly 
 
A NEW TRAIL 265 
 
 back upon the couch with a cry of despair. The little 
 sister placed a pillow under his head and ran to plead with 
 the mother. A long time she remained obdurate, but at 
 last relented. Then she, too, came to fall upon her knees 
 before the wreck who had returned to her. 
 
 Not many rehearsals were required for this scene, difficult 
 though it was. Merton Gill had seized his opportunity. 
 His study of agony expressions in the film course was here 
 rewarded. The scene closed with the departure of the little 
 sister. Resolutely, showing the light of some fierce deter ^ 
 ruination, she put on hat and wraps, spoke words of promise- 
 to the stricken mother and son, and darted out into the night. 
 The snow whirled in as she opened the door. 
 
 "Good work," said Baird to Merton. "If you don't hear 
 from that little bit you can call me a Swede." 
 
 Some later scenes were shot in the same little home, which 
 seemed to bring the drama to a close. While the returned 
 prodigal lay on the couch, nursed by the forgiving mother, the 
 sister returned in company with the New York society girl 
 who seemed aghast at the wreck of him she had once wooed. 
 Slowly she approached the couch of the sufferer, tenderly she 
 reached down to enfold him. In some manner, which Merton 
 could not divine, the lovers had been reunited. 
 
 The New York girl was followed by her father it would 
 seem they had both come from the hotel and the father, 
 after giving an order for more of Mother's grape juice, ex- 
 amined the son's patents. Two of them he exclaimed with 
 delight over, and at once paid the boy a huge roll of bills for 
 a tenth interest in them. 
 
 Now came the grasping man who held the mortgage and 
 who had counted upon driving the family into the streets 
 this stormy Christmas eve. He was overwhelmed with 
 confusion when his money was paid from an ample hoard, 
 and slunk, shame-faced, out into the night. It could be 
 seen that Christmas day would dawn bright and happy 
 for the little group. 
 
 To Merton's eye there was but one discord in this finale. 
 
266 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 He had known that the cross-eyed man was playing the part 
 of hotel clerk at .the neighbouring resort, but he had watched 
 few scenes in which the poor fellow acted; and he surely had 
 not known that this man was the little sister's future hus- 
 band. It was with real dismay that he averted his gaze 
 from the embrace that occurred between these two, as the 
 clerk entered the now happy home. 
 
 One other detail had puzzled him. This was the bundle 
 to which he had clung as he blindly plunged through the 
 storm. He had still fiercely clutched it after entering the 
 little room, clasping it to his breast even as he sank at his 
 mother's feet in physical exhaustion and mental anguish, 
 to implore her forgiveness. Later the bundle was placed 
 beside him as he lay, pale and wan, on the couch. 
 
 He supposed this bundle to contain one of his patents; 
 a question to Baird when the scene was over proved him 
 to be correct. "Sure," said Baird, "that's one of your 
 patents." Yet he still wished the little sister had not 
 been made to marry the cross-eyed hotel clerk. 
 
 And another detail lingered in his memory to bother him. 
 The actress playing his mother was wont to smoke cigarettes 
 when not engaged in acting. He had long known it. But 
 he now seemed to recall, in that touching last scene of 
 reconciliation, that she had smoked one while the camera 
 actually turned. He hoped this was not so. It would 
 mean a mistake. And Baird would be justly annoyed by 
 the old mother's carelessness. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 OF SARAH NEVADA MONTAGUE 
 
 THEY were six long weeks doing the new piece. The 
 weeks seemed long to Merton Gill because there 
 were so many hours, even days, of enforced idleness. 
 
 To pass an entire day, his face stiff with the make-up, 
 without once confronting a camera in action, seemed to him 
 a waste of his own time and a waste of Baird's money. 
 Yet this appeared to be one of the unavoidable penalties 
 incurred by those who engaged in the art of photodrama. 
 Time was needed to create that world of painted shadows, 
 so swift, so nicely consecutive when revealed, but so in- 
 coherent, so brokenly inconsequent, so meaningless in the 
 recording. 
 
 How little an audience could suspect the vexatious delays 
 ensuing between, say, a knock at a door and the admission 
 of a visitor to a neat little home where a fond old mother 
 was trying to pay off a mortgage with the help of her little 
 ones. How could an audience divine that a wait of two 
 hours had been caused because a polished city villain had 
 forgotten his spats? Or that other long waits had been 
 caused by other forgotten trifles, while an expensive com- 
 pany of artists lounged about in bored apathy, or smoked, 
 gossiped, bantered? 
 
 Yet no one ever seemed to express concern about these 
 waits. Rarely were their causes known, except by some 
 frenzied assistant director, and he, after a little, would 
 cease to be frenzied and fall to loafing calmly with the 
 others. Merton Gill's education in his chosen art was 
 progressing. He came to loaf with the unconcern, the 
 
 267 
 
68 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 vacuous boredom, the practised nonchalance, of more 
 seasoned artists. 
 
 Sometimes when exteriors were being taken the sky would 
 overcloud and the sun be denied them for a whole day. 
 The Montague girl would then ask Merton how he liked 
 Sunny Cafeteria. He knew this was a jesting term that 
 would stand for sunny California, and never failed to laugh. 
 
 The girl kept rather closely by him during these periods 
 of waiting. She seemed to show little interest in other 
 members of the company, and her association with them, 
 Merton noted, was marked by a certain restraint. With 
 them she seemed no longer to be the girl of free ways and 
 speech. She might occasionally join a group of the men 
 who indulged hi athletic sports on the grass before the little 
 farmhouse for the actors of Mr. Baird's company would 
 all betray acrobatic tendencies in their idle moments 
 and he watched one day while the simple little country 
 sister turned a series of hand-springs and cart-wheels that 
 evoked sincere applause from the four New York villains 
 who had been thus solacing their ennui. 
 
 But oftener she would sit with Merton on the back seat 
 of one of the waiting automobiles. She not only kept her- 
 self rather aloof from other members of the company, 
 but she curiously seemed to bring it about that Merton 
 himself would have little contact with them. Especially 
 did she seem to hover between him and the company's 
 feminine members. Among those impersonating guests 
 at the hotel were several young women of rare beauty with 
 whom he would have been not unwilling to fraternize in 
 that easy comradeship which seemed to mark studio life. 
 These were far more alluring than the New York society 
 girl who wooed him and who had secured the part solely 
 through Baird's sympathy for her family misfortunes. 
 
 They were richly arrayed and charmingly mannered in 
 the scenes he watched; ^moreover, they not too subtly be- 
 trayed a pleasant consciousness of Merton's existence. 
 But the Montague girl noticeably monopolized him when 
 
OF SARAH NEVADA MONTAGUE 269 
 
 a better acquaintance with the beauties might have come 
 about. She rather brazenly seemed to be guarding him. 
 She was always there. 
 
 This very apparent solicitude of hers left him feeling 
 pleasantly important, despite the social contacts it doubt- 
 less deprived him of. He wondered if the Montague girl 
 could be jealous, and cautiously one day, as they lolled in 
 the motor car, he sounded her. 
 
 "Those girls in the hotel scenes I suppose they're all 
 nice girls of good family?" he casually observed. 
 
 "Huh?" demanded Miss Montague, engaged with a 
 pencil at the moment in editing her left eyebrow. "Oh, 
 that bunch? Sure, they all come from good old Southern 
 families Virginia and Indiana and those places." She 
 tightened her lips before the little mirror she held and re- 
 newed their scarlet. Then she spoke more seriously. " Sure, 
 Kid, those girls are all right enough. They work like dogs 
 and do the best they can when they ain't got jobs. I'm 
 strong for 'em. But then, I'm a wise old trouper. I under- 
 stand things. You don't. You're the real country wild 
 rose of this piece. It's a good thing you got me to ride herd 
 on you. You're far too innocent to be turned loose on a 
 comedy lot. 
 
 "Listen, boy " She turned a sober face to him 
 "the straight lots are fairly decent, but get this: a comedy 
 lot is the toughest place this side of the bad one. Any 
 comedy lot." 
 
 "But this isn't a comedy lot. Mr. Baird isn't doing 
 comedies any more, and these people all seem to be nice 
 people. Of course some of the ladies smoke cigarettes " 
 
 The girl had averted her face briefly, but now turned to 
 him again. "Of course that's so; Jeff is trying for the 
 better things; but he's still using lots of his old people. 
 They're all right for me, but not for you. You wouldn't 
 last long if mother here didn't look out for you. I'm play- 
 ing your dear little sister, but I'm playing your mother, 
 too. If it hadn't been for me this bunch would have taught 
 
270 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 you a lot of things you'd better learn some other way. 
 Just for one thing, long before this you'd probably been 
 hopping up your reindeers and driving all over in a Chinese 
 sleigh." 
 
 He tried to make something of this, but found the words 
 meaningless. They merely suggested to him a snowy winter 
 scene of Santa Glaus and his innocent equipage. But he 
 would intimate that he understood. 
 
 "Oh, I guess not," he said knowingly. The girl appeared 
 not to have heard this bit of pretense. 
 
 "On a comedy lot," she said, again becoming the oracle, 
 "you can do murder if you wipe up the blood. Remember 
 that." 
 
 He did not again refer to the beautiful young women who 
 came from fine old Southern homes. The Montague girl 
 was too emphatic about them. 
 
 At other times during the long waits, perhaps while they 
 ate lunch brought from the cafeteria, she would tell him of 
 herself. His old troubling visions of his wonder-woman, of 
 Beulah Baxter the daring, had well-nigh faded, but now and 
 then they would recur as if from long habit, and he would 
 question the girl about her life as a double. 
 
 "Yeah, I could see that Baxter business was a blow to you, 
 Kid. You'd kind of worshiped her, hadn't you?" 
 
 "Well, I yes, in a sort of way " 
 
 "Of course you did; it was very nice of you " She 
 
 reached over to pat his hand. "Mother understands just 
 how you felt, watching the flims back there in Gooseberry " 
 He had quit trying to correct her as to Gashwiler and Sims- 
 bury. She had hit upon Gooseberry as a working composite 
 of both names, and he had wearily come to accept it "and 
 I know just how you felt" Again she patted his hand 
 "that night when you found me doing her stuff." 
 
 "It did kind of upset me." 
 
 "Sure it would! But you ought to have known that all 
 these people use doubles when they can men and women 
 both. It not only saves 'em work, but even where they could 
 
OF SARAH NEVADA MONTAGUE 271 
 
 do the stuff if they had to and that ain't so often it saves 
 'em broken bones, and holding up a big production two or 
 three months. Fine business that would be. So when you 
 see a woman, or a man either, doing something that someone 
 else could do, you can bet someone else is doing it. What 
 would you expect? Would you expect a high-priced star 
 to go out and break his leg? 
 
 "And at that, most of the doubles are men, even for the 
 women stars, like Kitty Carson always carries one who used 
 to be a circus acrobat. She couldn't hardly do one of the 
 things you see her doing, but when old Dan gets on her 
 blonde transformation and a few of her clothes, he's her to 
 the life in a long shot, or even in mediums, if he keeps his 
 map covered. 
 
 "Yeah, most of the doublers have to be men. I'll hand 
 that to myself. I'm about the only girl that's been doing 
 it, and that's out with me hereafter, I guess, the way I seem 
 to be making good with Jeff. Maybe after this I won't have 
 to do stunts, except of course some riding stuff, prob'ly, or 
 a row of flips or something light. Anything heavy comes up 
 me for a double of my own." She glanced sidewise at her 
 listener. "Then you won't like me any more, hey, Kid, after 
 you find out I'm using a double?" 
 
 He had listened attentively, absorbed in her talk, and 
 seemed startled by this unforeseen finish. He turned anxious 
 eyes on her. It occurred to him for the first time that he 
 did not wish the Montague girl to do dangerous things any 
 more. " Say," he said quickly, amazed at his own discovery, 
 "I wish you'd quit doing all those stunts, do you call 
 'em?" 
 
 "Why? " she demanded. There were those puzzling lights 
 back in her eyes as he met them. He was confused. 
 
 "Well, you might get hurt." 
 
 "Oh!" 
 
 "You might get killed sometime. And it wouldn't make 
 the least difference to me, your using a double. I'd like you 
 just the same." 
 
272 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 " I see; it wouldn't be the way it was with Baxter when you 
 found it out." 
 
 "No; you you're different. I don't want you to get 
 killed," he added, rather blankly. He was still amazed at 
 this discovery. 
 
 "All right, Kid. I won't," she replied soothingly. 
 
 "I'll like you just as much," he again assured her, "no 
 matter how many doubles you have." 
 
 "Well, you'll be having doubles yourself, sooner or later 
 and I'll like you, too." She reached over to his hand, but 
 this time she held it. He returned her strong clasp. He had 
 not liked to think of her being mangled perhaps by a fall into 
 a quarry when the cable gave way and the camera men 
 would probably keep on turning! 
 
 "I always been funny about men," she presently spoke 
 again, still gripping his hand. "Lord knows I've seen 
 enough of all kinds, bad and good, but I always been kind of 
 afraid even of the good ones. Any one might not think it, 
 but I guess I'm just natural-born shy. Man-shy, anyway." 
 
 He glowed with a confession of his own. "You know, I'm 
 that way, too. Girl-shy. I felt awful awkward when I had 
 
 to kiss you in the other piece. I never did, really " He 
 
 floundered a moment, but was presently blurting out the 
 meagre details of that early amour with Edwina May Pulver. 
 He stopped this recital in a sudden panic fear that the girl 
 would make fun of him. He was immensely relieved when 
 she merely renewed the strength of the handclasp. 
 
 "I know. That's the way with me. Of course I can put 
 over the acting stuff, even vamping, but I'm afraid of men 
 off-stage. Say, would you believe it, I ain't ever had but one 
 beau. That was Bert Stacy. Poor old Bert! He was lots 
 older than me; about thirty, I guess. He was white all 
 through. You always kind of remind me of him. Sort of a 
 feckless dub he was, too; kind of honest and awkward you 
 know. He was the one got me doing stunts. He wasn't 
 afraid of anything. Didn't know it was even in the diction- 
 ary. That old scout would go out night or day and break 
 
OF SARAH NEVADA MONTAGUE 273 
 
 everything but his contract. I was twelve when I first knew 
 him and he had me doing twisters in no time. I caught on to 
 the other stuff pretty good. I wasn't afraid, either, I'll say 
 that for myself. First I was afraid to show him I was afraid, 
 but pretty soon I wasn't afraid at all. 
 
 "We pulled off a lot of stuff for different people. And of 
 course I got to be a big girl and three years ago when I was 
 eighteen Bert wanted us to be married and I thought I might 
 as well. He was the only one I hadn't been afraid of. So we 
 got engaged. I was still kind of afraid to marry any one, but 
 being engaged was all right. I know we'd got along together, 
 too, but then he got his with a motorcycle. 
 
 "Kind of funny. He'd do anything on that machine. 
 He'd jump clean over an auto and he'd leap a thirty-foot 
 ditch and he was all set to pull a new one for Jeff Baird when 
 it happened. Jeff was going to have him ride his motorcycle 
 through a plate-glass window. The set was built and every- 
 thing ready and then the merry old sun don't shine for three 
 days. Every morning Bert would go over to the lot and 
 wait around in the fog. And this third day, when it got too 
 late in the afternoon to shoot even if the sun did show, he 
 says to me, 'c'mon, hop up and let's take a ride down to the 
 beach.' So I hop to the back seat and off we start and on a 
 ninety-foot paved boulevard what does Bert do but get 
 caught in a jam? It was an ice wagon that finally bumped 
 us over. I was shook up and scraped here and there. But 
 Bert was finished. That's the funny part. He'd got it on 
 this boulevard, but back on the lot he'd have rode through 
 that plate-glass window probably without a scratch. And 
 just because the sun didn't shine that day, I wasn't engaged 
 any more. Bert was kind of like some old sea-captain that 
 comes back to shore after risking his life on the ocean in all 
 kinds of storms, and falls into a duck-pond and gets 
 drowned." 
 
 She sat a long time staring out over the landscape, still 
 holding his hand. Inside the fence before the farmhouse 
 three of the New York villains were again engaged in athletic 
 
274 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 sports, but she seemed oblivious of these. At last she turned 
 to him again with an illumining smile. 
 
 "But I was dead in love once before that, and that's how I 
 know just how you feel about Baxter. He was the preacher 
 where we used to go to church. He was a good one. Pa 
 copied a lot of his stuff that he uses to this day if he happens 
 to get a preacher part. He was the loveliest thing. Not so 
 young, but dark, with wonderful eyes and black hair, and his 
 voice would go all through you. I had an awful case on him. 
 I was twelve, and all week I used to think how I'd see him the 
 next Sunday. Say, when I'd get there and he'd be working 
 doing pulpit stuff he'd have me in kind of a trance. 
 
 "Sometimes after the pulpit scene he'd come down right 
 into the audience and shake hands with people. I'd almost 
 keel over if he'd notice me. I'd be afraid if he would and 
 afraid if he wouldn't. If he said 'And how is the little lady 
 this morning?' I wouldn't have a speck of voice to answer 
 him. I'd just tremble all over. I used to dream I'd get a 
 job workin' for him as extra, blacking his shoes or fetching his 
 breakfast and things. 
 
 " It was the real thing, all right. I used to try to pray the 
 way he did asking the Lord to let me do a character bit or 
 something with him. He had me going all right. You must 
 'a' been that way about Baxter. Sure you were. When you 
 found she was married and used a double and everything, it 
 was like I'd found this preacher shooting hop or using a 
 double in his pulpit stuff." 
 
 She was still again, looking back upon this tremendous 
 episode. 
 
 "Yes, that's about the way I felt," he told her. Already 
 his affair with Mrs. Rosenblatt seemed a thing of his child- 
 hood. He was wondering, rather, if the preacher could have 
 been the perfect creature the girl was now picturing him. It 
 would not have displeased him to learn that this refulgent 
 being had actually used a double in his big scenes, or had been 
 guilty of mere human behaviour at odd moments. Probably, 
 after all, he had been just a preacher. 
 
OF SAEAH NEVADA MONTAGUE 275 
 
 "Uncle Sylvester used to want me to be a preacher," he 
 said, with apparent irrelevance, "even if he was his own 
 worst enemy." He added presently, as the girl remained 
 silent, "I always say my prayers at night." He felt vaguely 
 that this might raise him to the place of the other who had 
 been adored. He was wishing to be thought well of by this 
 girl. 
 
 She was aroused from her musing by his confession. " You 
 do? Now ain't that just like you? I'd have bet you did 
 that. Well, keep on, son. It's good stuff." 
 
 Her serious mood seemed to pass. She was presently 
 exchanging tart repartee with the New York villains who 
 had perched in a row on the fence to be funny about that long- 
 continued holding of hands in the motor car. She was quite 
 unembarrassed, however, as she dropped the hand with a 
 final pat and vaulted to the ground over the side of the car. 
 
 "Get busy, there!" she ordered. "Where's your under- 
 stander where's your top-mounter?" She became a circus 
 ringmaster. "Three up and a roll for yours," she com- 
 manded. The three villains aligned themselves on the lawn. 
 One climbed to the shoulders of the other and a third found 
 footing on the second. They balanced there, presently to 
 lean forward from the summit. The girl played upon an 
 imaginary snare drum with a guttural, throaty imitation of 
 its roll, culminating in the "boom!" of a bass-drum as the 
 tower toppled to earth. Its units, completing their turn with 
 somersaults, again stood in line, bowing and smirking their 
 acknowledgments for imagined applause. 
 
 The girl, a moment later, was turning hand-springs. Mer- 
 ton had never known that actors were so versatile. It was an 
 astounding profession, he thought, remembering his own 
 registration card that he had filled out at the Holden office. 
 His age, height, weight, hair, eyes, and his chest and waist 
 measures; these had been specified, and then he had been 
 obliged to write the short "No" after ride, drive, swim, 
 dance to write "No" after "Ride?" even in the artistically 
 photographed presence of Buck Benson on horseback! 
 
276 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 Yet in spite of these disabilities he was now a successful 
 actor at an enormous salary. Baird was already saying that 
 he would soon have a contract for him to sign at a still larger 
 figure. Seemingly it was a profession in which you could 
 rise even if you were not able to turn hand springs or were 
 more or less terrified by horses and deep water and dance 
 music. 
 
 And the Montague girl, who, he now fervently hoped, 
 would not be killed while doubling for Mrs. Rosenblatt, was 
 a puzzling creature. He thought his hand must still be warm 
 from her enfolding of it, even when work was resumed and he 
 saw her, with sunbonnet pushed back, stand at the gate of 
 the little farmhouse and behave in an utterly brazen manner 
 toward one of the New York clubmen who was luring her up 
 to the great city. She, who had just confided to him that 
 she was afraid of men, was now practically daring an un- 
 doubted scoundrel to lure her up to the great city and make a 
 lady of her. And she had been afraid of all but a clergyman 
 and a stunt actor! He wondered interestingly if she were 
 afraid of Merton Gill. She seemed not to be. 
 
 On another day of long waits they ate their lunch from 
 the cafeteria box on the steps of the little home and discussed 
 stage names. "I guess we better can that 'Clifford Army- 
 tage' stuff," she told him as she seriously munched a sand- 
 wich. "We don't need it. That's out. Merton Gill is a 
 lot better name." She had used "we" quite as if it were a 
 community name. 
 
 "Well, if you think so " he began regretfully, for 
 
 Clifford Armytage still seemed superior to the indistinction of 
 Merton Gill. 
 
 "Sure, it's a lot better," she went on. "That 'Clifford 
 Armytage' say, it reminds me of just another such feckless 
 dub as you that acted with us one time when we all trouped in 
 a rep show, playing East Lynne and such things. He was 
 just as wise as you are, and when he joined out at Kansas 
 City they gave him a whole book of the piece instead of just 
 his sides. He was a quick study, at that, only he learned 
 
OF SARAH NEVADA MONTAGUE 27? 
 
 everybody's part as well as his own, and that slowed him. 
 They put him on in Waco, and the manager was laid up, so 
 they told him that after the third act he was to go out and 
 announce the bill for the next night, and he learned that 
 speech, too. 
 
 "He got on fine till the big scene in the third act. Then 
 he went blooey because that was as far as he'd learned, so he 
 just left the scene cold and walked down to the foots and 
 bowed and said, 'Ladies and gentlemen, we thank you for your 
 attendance here this evening and to-morrow night we shall 
 have the honour of presenting Lady Audley's Secret.' 
 
 " With that he gave a cold look to the actors back of him 
 that were gasping like fish, and walked off. And he was like 
 you in another way because his real name was Eddie Duffy, 
 and the lovely stage name he'd picked out was Clyde Mal- 
 travers." 
 
 "Well, Clifford Armytage is out, then,"Merton announced, 
 feeling that he had now buried a part of his dead self in a 
 grave where Beulah Baxter, the wonder-woman, already lay 
 interred. Still, he was conscious of a certain relief. The 
 stage name had been bothersome. 
 
 "It ain't as if you had a name like mine," the girl went 
 on. "I simply had to have help." 
 
 He wondered what her own name was. He had never 
 heard her called anything but the absurd and undignified 
 "Flips." She caught the question he had looked. 
 
 "Well, my honest-to-God name is Sarah Nevada Mon- 
 tague; Sarah for Ma and Nevada for Reno where Ma had 
 to stop off for me she was out of the company two weeks 
 and if you ever tell a soul I'll have the law on you. That 
 was a fine way to abuse a helpless baby, wasn't it?" 
 
 "But Sarah is all right. I like Sarah." 
 
 "Do you, Kid? " She patted his hand. "All right, then, 
 but it's only for your personal use." 
 
 "Of course the Nevada " he hesitated. "It does 
 
 sound kind of like a geography lesson or something. But 
 I think I'll call you Sarah, I mean when we're alone." 
 
278 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 "Well, that's more than Ma ever does, and you bet it'll 
 never get into my press notices. But go ahead if you want 
 to." 
 
 "I will, Sarah. It sounds more like a true woman than 
 Tlips." 3 
 
 "Bless the child's heart," she murmured, and reached 
 across the lunch box to pat his hand again. 
 
 "You're a great little patter, Sarah," he observed with 
 one of his infrequent attempts at humour. 
 
 On still another day, while they idled between scenes, 
 she talked to him about salaries and contracts, again with 
 her important air of mothering him. 
 
 "After this picture," she told him, "Jeff was going to sew 
 you up with a long-time contract, probably at a hundred 
 and fifty per. But I've told him plain I won't stand for it. 
 No five-year contract, and not any contract at that figure. 
 Maybe three years at two hundred and fifty, I haven't 
 decided yet. I'll wait and see " she broke off to re- 
 gard him with that old puzzling light far back in her 
 eyes "wait and see how you get over in these two 
 pieces. 
 
 "But I know you'll go big, and so does Jeff. We've caught 
 you in the rushes enough to know that. And Jeff's a good 
 fellow, but naturally he'll get you for as little as he can. He 
 knows all about money even if he don't keep Yom Kippur. 
 So I'm watching over you, son I'm your manager, see? 
 And I've told him so, plain. He knows he'll have to give 
 you just what you're worth. Of course he's entitled to con- 
 sideration for digging you up and developing you, but a 
 three-year contract will pay him out for that. Trust 
 mother." 
 
 "I do," he told her. "I'd be helpless without you. It 
 kind of scares me to think of getting all that money. I 
 won't know what to do with it." 
 
 "I will; you always listen to me, and you won't be camp- 
 ing on the lot any more. And don't shoot dice with these 
 rough-necks on the lot." 
 
OF SARAH NEVADA MONTAGUE 279 
 
 "I won't," he assured her. "I don't believe in gam- 
 bling." He wondered about Sarah's own salary, and was 
 surprised to learn that it was now double his own. It was 
 surprising, because her acting seemed not so important to the 
 piece as his. " It seems like a lot of money for what you have 
 to do," he said. 
 
 "There," she smiled warmly, "didn't I always say you 
 were a natural-born trouper? Well, it is a lot of money for 
 me, but you see I've helped Jeff dope out both of these pieces. 
 I'm not so bad at gags I mean the kind of stuff he needs in 
 these serious dramas. This big scene of yours, where you 
 go off to the city and come back a wreck on Christmas night 
 that's mine. I doped it out after the piece was started 
 after I'd had a good look at the truck driver that plays op- 
 posite you." 
 
 Truck driver? It appeared that Miss Montague was 
 actually applying this term to the New York society girl 
 who in private life was burdened with an ailing family. He 
 explained now that Mr. Baird had not considered her ideal 
 for the part, but had chosen her out of kindness. 
 
 Again there flickered far back in her eyes those lights that 
 baffled him. There was incredulity in her look, but she 
 seemed to master it. 
 
 "But I think it was wonderful of you," he continued, "to 
 write that beautiful scene. It's a strong scene, Sarah. I 
 didn't know you could write, too. It's as good as anything 
 Tessie Kearns ever did, and she's written a lot of strong 
 scenes." 
 
 Miss Montague seemed to struggle with some unidentified 
 emotion. After a long, puzzling gaze she suddenly said: 
 "Merton Gill, you come right here with all that make-up 
 on and give mother a good big kiss!" 
 
 Astonishingly to himself, he did so in the full light of 
 day and under the eyes of one of the New York villains who 
 had been pretending that he walked a tight-rope across the 
 yard. After he had kissed the girl, she seized him by both 
 arms and shook him. " I'd ought to have been using my own 
 
280 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 face in that scene," she said. Then she patted his shoulder 
 and told him that he was a good boy. 
 
 The pretending tight-rope walker had paused to applaud. 
 "Your act's flopping, Bo," said Miss Montague. "Work 
 fast." Then she again addressed the good boy: "Wait 
 till you've watched that scene before you thank me," she 
 said shortly. 
 
 "But it's a strong scene," he insisted. 
 
 "Yes," she agreed. "It's strong." 
 
 He told her of the other instance of Baird's kindness of 
 heart. 
 
 "You know I was a little afraid of playing scenes with the 
 cross-eyed man, but Mr. Baird said he was trying so hard 
 to do serious work, so I wouldn't have him discharged. 
 But shouldn't you think he'd save up and have his eyes 
 straightened? Does he get a very small salary?" 
 
 The girl seemed again to be harassed by conflicting 
 emotions, but mastered them to say, "I don't know exactly 
 what it is, but I guess he draws down about twelve fifty a 
 week." 
 
 "Only twelve dollars and fifty cents a week!" 
 
 "Twelve hundred and fifty," said the girl firmly. 
 
 "Twelve hundred and fifty dollars a week!" This was 
 monstrous, incredible. "But then why doesn't he have his 
 eyes " 
 
 Miss Montague drew him to her with both her capable 
 arms. "My boy, my boy!" she murmured, and upon his 
 painted forehead she now imprinted a kiss of deep reverence. 
 "Run along and play," she ordered. "You're getting me all 
 nervous." Forthwith she moved to the centre of the yard 
 where the tight-rope walker still endangered his life above 
 the heads of a vast audience. 
 
 She joined him. She became a performer on the slack 
 wire. With a parasol to balance her, she ran to the centre 
 of an imaginary wire that swayed perilously, and she swung 
 there, cunningly maintaining a precarious balance. Then 
 she sped back to safety at the wire's end, threw down her 
 
OF SARAH NEVADA MONTAGUE 281 
 
 parasol, caught the handkerchief thrown to her by the first 
 performer, and daintily touched her face with it, breathing 
 deeply the while and bowing. 
 
 He thought Sarah was a strange child "One minute one 
 thing and the next minute something else." 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 MISS MONTAGUE USES HER OWN FACE 
 
 WORK on the piece dragged slowly to an end. In 
 these latter days the earnest young leading man. 
 suffered spells of concern for his employer. He was 
 afraid that Mr. Baird in his effort to struggle out of the slough 
 of low comedy was not going to be wholly successful. He 
 had begun to note that the actors employed for this purpose 
 were not invariably serious even when the cameras turned. 
 Or, if serious, they seemed perhaps from the earnestness 
 of their striving for the worth-while drama, to be a shade too 
 serious. They were often, he felt, over-emphatic in their 
 methods. Still, they were, he was certain, good actors. 
 One could always tell what they meant. 
 
 It was at these times that he especially wished he might 
 be allowed to view the "rushes." He not only wished to 
 assure himself for Baird' s sake that the piece would be ac- 
 ceptably serious, but he wished, with a quite seemly curios- 
 ity, to view his own acting on the screen. It occurred to him 
 that he had been acting a long time without a glimpse of 
 himself. But Baird had been singularly firm in this matter, 
 and the Montague girl had sided with him. It was best, 
 they said, for a beginning actor not to see himself at first. 
 It might affect his method before this had crystallized; make 
 him self-conscious, artificial. 
 
 He was obliged to believe that these well-wishers of his 
 knew best. He must not, then, trifle with a screen success 
 that seemed assured. He tried to be content with this de- 
 cision. But always the misgivings would return. He would 
 not be really content until he had watched his own triumph. 
 
 282 
 
MISS MONTAGUE USES HER OWN FACE 283 
 
 Soon this would be so securely his privilege that not even 
 Baird could deny it, for the first piece in which he had worked 
 was about to be shown. He looked forward to that. 
 
 It was toward the end of the picture that his intimacy 
 with the Montague girl grew to a point where, returning 
 from location to the studio late, they would dine together. 
 "Hurry and get ungreased, Son," she would say, "and you 
 can take an actress out to dinner." Sometimes they would 
 patronize the cafeteria on the lot, but oftener, in a spirit of 
 adventure, they would search out exotic restaurants. A 
 picture might follow, after which by street-car he would escort 
 her to the Montague home in a remote, flat region of palm- 
 lined avenues sparsely set with new bungalows. 
 
 She would disquiet him at these times by insisting that 
 she pay her share of the expense, and she proved to have 
 no mean talent for petty finance, for she remembered every 
 item down to the street-car fares. Even to Merton Gill 
 she seemed very much a child once she stepped from the 
 domain of her trade. She would stare into shop windows 
 wonderingly, and never failed to evince the most childish 
 delight when they ventured to dine at an establishment other 
 than a cafeteria. 
 
 At times when they waited for a car after these dissipations 
 he suffered a not unpleasant alarm at sight of a large-worded 
 advertisement along the back of a bench on which they would 
 sit. "You furnish the Girl, We furnish the House," screamed 
 the bench to him above the name of an enterprising trades- 
 man that came in time to bite itself deeply into his memory. 
 
 Of course it would be absurd, but stranger things, he 
 thought, had happened. He wondered if the girl was as 
 afraid of him as of other men. She seemed not to be, but 
 you couldn't tell much about her. She had kissed him one 
 day with a strange warmth of manner, but it had been quite 
 publicly in the presence of other people. When he left her 
 at her door now it was after the least sentimental of partings, 
 perhaps a shake of her hard little hand, or perhaps only a 
 "S'long see you at the show-shop!" 
 
284 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 It was on one of these nights that she first invited him to 
 dine with the Montague family. "I tried last night to get 
 you on the telephone," she explained, "but they kept giving 
 me someone else, or maybe I called wrong. Ain't these 
 six-figured Los Angeles telephone numbers the limit? When 
 you call 208972 or something, it sounds like paging a box-car. 
 I was going to ask you over. Ma had cooked a lovely mess 
 of corned beef and cabbage. Anyway, you come eat with 
 us to-morrow night, will you? She'll have something else 
 cooked up that will stick to the merry old slats. You can 
 come home with me when we get in from work." 
 
 So it was that on the following night he enjoyed a home 
 evening with the Montagues. Mrs. Montague had indeed 
 cooked up something else, and had done it well; while Mr. 
 Montague offered at the sideboard a choice of amateur distilla- 
 tions and brews which he warmly recommended to the guest. 
 While the guest timidly considered, having had but the slight- 
 est experience with intoxicants, it developed that the con- 
 fidence placed in his product by the hospitable old craftsman 
 was not shared by his daughter. 
 
 "Keep off it," she warned, and then to her father, "Say, 
 listen, Pa, have a heart; that boy's got to work to-morrow." 
 
 "So be it, my child," replied Mr. Montague with a visible 
 stiffening of manner. "Sylvester Montague is not the man 
 to urge strong drink upon the reluctant or the over-cautious, 
 I shall drink my aperatif alone." 
 
 "Go to it, old Pippin," rejoined his daughter as she van- 
 ished to the kitchen. 
 
 "Still, a little dish of liquor at this hour," continued the 
 host suggestively when they were alone. 
 
 "Well" Merton wished the girl had stayed- "perhaps 
 just a few drops." 
 
 "Precisely, my boy, precisely. A mere dram." He 
 poured the mere dram and his guest drank. It was a colour- 
 less, fiery stuff with an elusive taste of metal. Merton con- 
 trived an expression of pleasure under the searching glance 
 of his host. 
 
MISS MONTAGUE USES HER OWN FACE 235 
 
 "Ah, I knew you would relish it. I fancy I could amaze 
 you if I told you how recently it was made. Now here" 
 He grasped another bottle purposely "is something a 
 full ten days older. It has developed quite a bouquet. 
 Just a drop " 
 
 The guest graciously yet firmly waved a negation. 
 
 "Thanks," he said, "but I want to enjoy the last it it 
 has so much flavour." 
 
 "It has; it has, indeed. I'll not urge you, of course. Later 
 you must see the simple mechanism by which I work these 
 wonders. Alone, then, I drink to you." 
 
 Mr. Montague alone drank of two other fruits of his loom 
 before the ladies appeared with dinner. He was clean- 
 shaven now and his fine face glowed with hospitality as he 
 carved roast chickens. The talk was of the shop: of what 
 Mr. Montague scornfully called "grind shows" when his 
 daughter led it, and of the legitimate hall-show when he 
 gained the leadership. He believed that moving pictures 
 had sounded the knell of true dramatic art and said so in 
 many ways. 
 
 He tried to imagine the sensations of Lawrence Barrett 
 or Louis James could they behold Sylvester Montague, whom 
 both these gentlemen had proclaimed to be no mean artist, 
 enacting the role of a bar-room rowdy five days on end by 
 reclining upon a sawdust floor with his back supported by a 
 spirits barrel. The supposititious comments of the two 
 placed upon the motion-picture industry the black guilt of 
 having degraded a sterling artist to the level of a peep-show 
 mountebank. They were frankly disgusted at the spectacle, 
 and their present spokesman thought it as well that they had 
 not actually lived to witness it even the happier phases 
 of this so-called art in which a mere chit of a girl might 
 earn a living wage by falling downstairs for a so-called star, 
 or the he-doll whippersnapper Merton Gill flinched in 
 spite of himself could name his own salary for merely pos- 
 sessing a dimpled chin. 
 
 Further, an artist in the so-called art received his pay- 
 
286 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 ment as if he had delivered groceries at one's back door. 
 "You, I believe " The speaker addressed his guest 
 "are at present upon a pay-roll; but there are others, your 
 elders possibly your betters, though I do not say that " 
 
 "You better not," remarked his daughter, only to be 
 ignored. 
 
 " others who must work a day and at the close of it 
 receive a slip of paper emblazoned * Talent Pay Check.' 
 How more effectively could they cheapen the good word 
 'talent'? And at the foot of this slip you are made to sign, 
 before receiving the pittance you have earned, a consent to 
 the public exhibition for the purpose of trade or advertising, 
 of the pictures for which you may have posed. Could trades- 
 men descend to a lower level, I ask you?" 
 
 "I'll have one for twelve fifty to-morrow night," said 
 Mrs. Montague, not too dismally. "I got to do a duchess 
 at a reception, and I certainly hope my feet don't hurt me 
 again." 
 
 "Cheer up, old dears! Pretty soon you can both pick 
 your parts," chirped their daughter. "Jeff's going to give 
 me a contract, and then you can loaf forever for all I care. 
 Only I know you won't, and you know you won't. Both of 
 you'd act for nothing if you couldn't do it for money. What's 
 the use of pretending?" 
 
 "The chit may be right, she may be right," conceded Mr. 
 Montague sadly. 
 
 Later, while the ladies were again in the kitchen, Mr. 
 Montague, after suggesting, "Something in the nature of an 
 after-dinner cordial," quaffed one for himself and followed 
 it with the one he had poured out for a declining guest who 
 still treasured the flavour of his one aperatif . 
 
 He then led the way to the small parlour where he placed 
 in action on the phonograph a record said to contain the 
 ravings of John McCullough in his last hours. He listened 
 to this emotionally. 
 
 "That's the sort of technique," he said, "that the so- 
 called silver screen has made but a memory." 
 
MISS MONTAGUE USES HER OWN FACE 287 
 
 He lighted his pipe, and identified various framed photo- 
 graphs that enlivened the walls of the little room. Many 
 of them were of himself at an earlier age. 
 
 "My dear mother-in-law," he said, pointing to another. 
 "A sterling artist, and in her time an ornament of the speak- 
 ing stage. I was on tour when her last days came. She 
 idolized me, and passed away with my name on her lips. 
 Her last request was that a photograph of me should be 
 placed in her casket before it went to its final resting place." 
 
 He paused, his emotion threatening to overcome him. 
 Presently he brushed a hand across his eyes and continued, 
 "I discovered later that they had picked out the most wretch- 
 ed of all my photographs an atrocious thing I had supposed 
 was destroyed. Can you imagine it?" 
 
 Apparently it was but the entrance of his daughter that 
 saved him from an affecting collapse. His daughter re- 
 moved the record of John McCullough's ravings, sniffed at 
 it, and put a fox-trot in its place. 
 
 "He's got to learn to dance," she explained, laying hands 
 upon the guest. 
 
 "Dancing dancing!" murmured Mr. Montague, as if the 
 very word recalled bitter memories. 
 
 With brimming eyes he sat beating time to the fox-trot 
 measure while Merton Gill proved to all observers that his 
 mastery of this dance would, if ever at all achieved, be only 
 after long and discouraging effort. 
 
 "You forget all about your feet," remarked the girl as 
 they paused, swaying to the rhythm. "Remember the feet 
 
 they're important in a dance. Now! " But it was 
 
 hard to remember his feet or, when he did recall them, to 
 relate their movements even distantly to the music. When 
 this had died despairingly, the girl surveyed her pupil with 
 friendly but doubting eyes. 
 
 "Say, Pa, don't he remind you of someone? Remember 
 the squirrel that joined out with us one time in the rep show 
 and left 'East Lynne' flat right in the middle of the third act 
 while he went down and announced the next night's play 
 
288 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 the one that his name was Eddie Duffy and he called himself 
 Clyde Maltravers?" 
 
 "In a way, in a way," agreed Mr. Montague dismally. 
 "A certain lack of finish in the manner, perhaps." 
 
 "Remember how Charlie Dickman, the manager, nearly 
 murdered him for it in the wings? Not that Charlie didn't 
 have a right to. Well, this boy dances like Eddie Duffy 
 would have danced." 
 
 "He was undeniably awkward and forgetful," said Mr. 
 Montague. "Well do I recall a later night. We played Un- 
 der the Gaslight; Charlie feared to trust him with a part, so 
 he kept the young man off stage to help with the train noise 
 when the down express should dash across. But even in 
 this humble station he proved inefficient. When the train 
 came on he became confused, seized the cocoanut shells in- 
 stead of the sand-paper, and our train that night entered 
 to the sound of a galloping horse. The effect must have been 
 puzzling to the audience. Indeed, many of them seemed to 
 consider it ludicrous. Charlie Dickman confided in me 
 later. *Syl, my boy/ says he, 'this bird Duffy has caused 
 my first gray hairs.' It was little wonder that he persuaded 
 young Duffy to abandon the drama. He was not meant 
 for the higher planes of our art. Now our young friend 
 here"-- he pointed to the perspiring Merton Gill "doesn't 
 even seem able to master a simple dance step. I might say 
 that he seems to out-Duffy Duffy for Duffy could dance 
 after a fashion." 
 
 "He'll make the grade yet," replied his daughter grimly, 
 and again the music sounded. Merton Gill continued un- 
 conscious of his feet, or, remembering them, he became deaf 
 to the music. But the girl brightened with a sudden thought 
 when next they rested. 
 
 "I got it!" she announced. "We'll have about two hun- 
 dred feet of this for the next picture you trying to dance 
 just the way you been doing with me. If you don't close 
 to a good hand I'll eat my last pay-check." 
 
 The lessons ceased. She seemed no longer to think it 
 
MISS MONTAGUE USES HER OWN FACE 289 
 
 desirable that her pupil should become proficient in the mod- 
 ern steps. He was puzzled by her decision. Why should 
 one of Baird's serious plays need an actor who forgot his feet 
 in a dance? 
 
 There were more social evenings at the Montague home. 
 Twice the gathering was enlarged by other members of the 
 film colony, a supper was served and poker played for in- 
 considerable stakes. In this game of chance the Montague 
 girl proved to be conservative, not to say miserly, and was 
 made to suffer genuinely when Merton Gill displayed a 
 reckless spirit in the betting. That he amassed winnings 
 of ninety-eight cents one night did not reassure her. She 
 pointed out that he might easily have lost this sum. 
 
 She was indeed being a mother to the defenceless boy. 
 It was after a gambling session that she demanded to be 
 told what he was doing with his salary. His careless hazard- 
 ing of poker-chips had caused her to be fearful of his general 
 money sense. 
 
 Merton Gill had indeed been reckless. He was now, he 
 felt, actually one of the Hollywood set. He wondered how 
 Tessie Kearns would regard his progress. W 7 ould she be 
 alarmed to know he attended those gay parties that so often 
 brought the film colony into unfavourable public notice? 
 Jolly dinners, dancing, gambling, drinking with actresses 
 for Mr. Montague had at last turned out a beer that met with 
 the approval not only of his guests but of his own more ex- 
 acting family. The vivacious brew would now and again 
 behave unreasonably at the moment of being released, but 
 it was potable when subdued. 
 
 It was a gay life, Merton felt. And as for the Montague 
 girl's questions and warnings about his money, he would 
 show her! He had, of course, discharged his debt to her in 
 the first two weeks of his work with Baird. Now he would 
 show her what he really thought of money. 
 
 He would buy her a gift whose presentation should mark 
 a certain great occasion. It should occur on the eve of his 
 screen debut, and would fittingly testify his gratitude. For 
 
290 MERTGN OF THE MOVIES 
 
 the girl, after all, had made him what he was. And the first 
 piece was close to its premiere. Already he had seen ad- 
 vance notices in the newspapers. The piece was called 
 Hearts On Fire, and in it, so the notices said, the comedy 
 manager had at last realized an ambition long nourished. 
 He had done something new and something big: a big thing 
 done in a big way. The Montague girl would see that the 
 leading man who had done so much to insure the success of 
 Baird's striving for the worth-while drama was not unfor- 
 getful of her favours and continuous solicitude. 
 
 He thought first of a ring, but across the blank brick 
 wall of the jewellery shop he elected to patronize was an enor- 
 mous sign in white: The House of Lucky Wedding Rings. 
 This staring announcement so alarmed him that he not only 
 abandoned the plan for a ring any sort of ring might be 
 misconstrued, he saw but in an excess of caution chose 
 another establishment not so outspoken. If it kept wedding 
 rings at all, it was decently reticent about them, and it did 
 keep a profusion of other trinkets about which a possible 
 recipient could entertain no false notions. Wrist watches, 
 for example. No one could find subtle or hidden meanings 
 in a wrist watch. 
 
 He chose a bauble that glittered prettily on its black silk 
 bracelet, and was not shocked in the least when told by the 
 engaging salesman that its price was a sum for which in the 
 old days Gashwiler had demanded a good ten weeks of his 
 life. Indeed it seemed rather cheap to him when he re- 
 membered the event it should celebrate. Still, it was a pleas- 
 ing trifle and did not look cheap. 
 
 "Do you warrant it to keep good time?" he sternly de- 
 manded. 
 
 The salesman became diplomatic, though not without an 
 effect of genial man-to-man frankness. "Well, I guess you 
 and I both know what women's bracelet- watches are.'* 
 He smiled a superior masculine smile that drew his customer 
 within the informed brotherhood. "Now here, there's a 
 platinum little thing that costs seven hundred and fifty, 
 
MISS MONTAGUE USES HER OWN FACE 291 
 
 and this one you like will keep just as good time as that one 
 that costs six hundred more. What could be fairer than 
 that?" 
 
 "All right," said the customer. "I'll take it." 
 
 During the remaining formalities attending the purchase 
 the salesman, observing that he dealt with a tolerant man 
 of the world, became even franker. "Of course no one," 
 he remarked pleasantly while couching the purchase in a 
 chaste bed of white satin, "expects women's bracelet- watches 
 to keep time. Not even the women." 
 
 "Want 'em for looks," said the customer. 
 
 "You've hit it, you've hit it!" exclaimed the salesman 
 delightedly, as if the customer had expertly probed the heart 
 of a world-old mystery. 
 
 He had now but to await his great moment. The final 
 scenes of the new piece were shot. Again he was resting 
 between pictures. As the date for showing the first piece 
 drew near he was puzzled to notice that both Baird and the 
 Montague girl curiously avoided any mention of it. Several 
 times he referred to it in their presence, but they seemed 
 resolutely deaf to his "Well, I see the big show opens Monday 
 night." 
 
 He wondered if there could be some recondite bit of screen 
 etiquette which he was infringing. Actors were supersti- 
 tious, he knew. Perhaps it boded bad luck to talk of a 
 forthcoming production. Baird and the girl not only ignored 
 his reference to Hearts on Fire, but they left Baird looking 
 curiously secretive and the Montague girl looking curiously 
 frightened. It perplexed him. Once he was smitten with 
 a quick fear that his own work in this serious drama had not 
 met the expectations of the manager. 
 
 However, in this he must be wrong, for Baird not only 
 continued cordial but, as the girl had prophesied, he urged 
 upon his new actor the signing of a long-time contract. 
 The Montague girl had insisted upon being present at this 
 interview, after forbidding Merton to put his name to any 
 contract of which she did not approve. 
 
292 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 "I told Jeff right out that I was protecting you," she said. 
 "He understands he's got to be reasonable." 
 
 It appeared, as they set about Baird's desk in the Buckeye 
 office, that she had been right. Baird submitted rather 
 gracefully, after but slight demur, to the terms which Miss 
 Montague imposed in behalf of her proteg. Under he* 
 approving eye Merton Gill affixed his name to a contract 
 by which Baird was to pay him a salary of two hundred and 
 fifty dollars a week for three years. 
 
 It seemed an incredible sum. As he blotted his signature 
 he was conscious of a sudden pity for the manager. The 
 Montague girl had been hard hard as nails, he thought 
 and Baird, a victim to his own good nature, would probably 
 lose a great deal of money. He resolved never to press his 
 advantage over a man who had been caught in a weak mo- 
 ment. 
 
 "I just want to say, Mr. Baird," he began, "that you 
 needn't be afraid I'll hold you to this paper if you find it's 
 too much money to pay me. I wouldn't have taken it at 
 all if it hadn't been for her. " He pointed an almost accusing 
 finger at the girl. 
 
 Baird grinned; the girl patted his hand. Even at grave 
 moments she was a patter. "That's all right, Son," she 
 said soothingly. "Jeff's got all the best of it, and Jeff knows 
 it, too. Don't you, Jeff?" 
 
 "Well " Baird considered. "If his work keeps up 
 
 I'm not getting any the worst of it." 
 
 "You said it. You know very well what birds will be 
 looking for this boy next week, and what money they'll have 
 in their mitts." 
 
 "Maybe," said Baird. 
 
 "Well, you got the best of it, and you deserve to have. 
 I ain't ever denied that, have I? You've earned the best 
 of it the way you've handled him. All I'm here for, I didn't 
 want you to have too much the best of it, see? I think I 
 treated you well." 
 
 "You're all right, Flips." 
 
MISS MONTAGUE USES HER OWN FACE 293 
 
 "Well, everything's jake, then?" 
 
 "Everything's jake with me." 
 
 "All right! And about his work keeping up trust your 
 
 old friend and well-wisher. And say, Jeff " Her eyes 
 
 gleamed reminiscently. "You ain't caught him dancing yet. 
 Well wait, that's all. We'll put on a fox-trot in the next 
 picture that will sure hog the footage." 
 
 As this dialogue progressed, Merton had felt more and 
 more like a child in the presence of grave and knowing elders. 
 They had seemed to forget him, to forget that the amazing 
 contract just signed bore his name. He thought the Mon- 
 tague girl was taking a great deal upon herself. Her face, 
 he noted, when she had stated terms to Baird, was the face 
 she wore when risking a small bet at poker on a high hand. 
 She seemed old, indeed. But he knew how he was going to 
 make her feel younger. In his pocket was a gift of rare 
 beauty, even if you couldn't run railway trains by it. And 
 pretty things made a child of her. 
 
 Baird shook hands with him warmly at parting. "It'll 
 be a week yet before we start on the new piece. Have a 
 good time. Oh, yes, and drop around some time next week 
 if there's any little thing you want to talk over or maybe 
 don't understand." 
 
 He wondered if this were a veiled reference to the piece 
 about to be shown. Certainly nothing more definite was 
 said about it. Yet it was a thing that must be of momentous 
 interest to the manager, and the manager must know that 
 it would be thrilling to the actor. 
 
 He left with the Montague girl, who had become suddenly 
 ^rave and quiet. But outside the Holden lot, with one of 
 those quick transitions he had so often remarked in her, she 
 brightened with a desperate sort of gaiety. 
 
 "I'll tell you what!" she exclaimed. "Let's go straight 
 down town it'll be six by the time we get there and have 
 the best dinner money can buy: lobster and chicken and va- 
 nilla ice-cream and everything, right in a real restaurant 
 none of this tray stuff and I'll let you pay for it all by your- 
 
294 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 self. You got a right to, after that contract. And we'll be 
 gay, and all the extra people that's eating in the restaurant'll 
 think we're a couple o' prominent flim actors. How about 
 it?" She danced at his side. 
 
 "We'll have soup, too," he amended. "One of those 
 thick ones that costs about sixty cents. Sixty cents just 
 for soup!" he repeated, putting a hand to the contract that 
 now stiffened one side of his coat. 
 
 "Well, just this once," she agreed. "It might be for 
 the last time." 
 
 "Nothing like that," he assured her. "More you spend, 
 more you make that's my motto." 
 
 They waited for a city-bound car, sitting again on the 
 bench that was so outspoken. "You furnish the girl, we 
 furnish the home," it shouted. He put his back against 
 several of the bold words and felt of the bracelet-watch in 
 his pocket. 
 
 "It might be the last time for me," insisted the girl. 
 "I feel as if I might die most any time. My health's break- 
 ing down under the strain. I feel kind of a fever coming on 
 right this minute." 
 
 "Maybe you shouldn't go out." 
 
 "Yes, I should." 
 
 They boarded the car and reached the real restaurant, a 
 cozy and discreet resort up a flight of carpeted stairs. Side 
 by side on a seat that ran along the wall they sat at a table 
 for two and the dinner was ordered. "Ruin yourself if 
 you want to," said the girl as her host included celery and 
 olives in the menu. "Go on and order prunes, too, for all 
 I care. I'm reckless. Maybe I'll never have another din- 
 ner, the way this fever's coming on. Feel my hand." 
 
 Under the table she wormed her hand into his, and kept 
 it there until food came. "Do my eyes look very feverish?" 
 she asked. 
 
 "Not so very," he assured her, covering an alarm he felt 
 for the first time. She did appear to be feverish, and the 
 anxiety of her manner deepened as the meal progressed. 
 
MISS MONTAGUE USES HER OWN FACE 295 
 
 It developed quickly that she had but scant appetite for the 
 choice food now being served. She could only taste bits 
 here and there. Her plates were removed with their delicacies 
 almost intact. Between courses her hand would seek his, 
 gripping it as if in some nameless dread. He became worried 
 about her state; his own appetite suffered. 
 
 Once she said as her hot hand clung to his, "I know where 
 you'll be to-morrow night. " Her voice grew mournful, des- 
 pairing. "And I know perfectly well it's no good asking 
 you to stay away." 
 
 He let this pass. Could it be that the girl was already 
 babbling in delirium? 
 
 "And all the time," she presently went on, "I'll simply 
 be sick a-bed, picking at the covers, all blue around the gills. 
 That'll be me, while you're off to your old motion picture 
 'the so-called art of the motion picture,' " she concluded 
 with a careful imitation of her father's manner. 
 
 He tried to determine whether she were serious or jesting. 
 You never could tell about this girl. Whatever it was, it 
 made him uneasy. 
 
 Outside he wished to take her home in a taxi-cab, but she 
 would not hear to this. "We'll use the town-car, Gaston," 
 she announced with a flash of her old manner as she waved 
 to an on-coming street-car. During the long ride that fol- 
 lowed she was silent but restless, tapping her foot, shifting 
 in her seat, darting her head about. The one thing she did 
 steadily was to clutch his arm. 
 
 During the walk from the car to the Montague house she 
 twice indulged in her little dance step, even as she clung to 
 the arm, but each time she seemed to think better of it and 
 resumed a steady pace, her head down. The house was 
 dark. Without speaking she unlocked the door and drew 
 him into the little parlour. 
 
 "Stand right on that spot," she ordered, with a final 
 pat of his shoulder, and made her way to the dining room 
 beyond where she turned on a single light that faintly illu- 
 mined the room in which he waited. She came back to him, 
 
296 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 removed the small cloth hat, tossed it to a chair, and faced 
 him silently. 
 
 The light from the other room shone across her eyes and 
 revealed them to him shadowy and mysterious. Her face 
 was set in some ominous control. At last she looked away 
 from him and began in a strained voice, "If anything happens 
 to me " 
 
 He thought it time to end this nonsense. She might be 
 feverish, but it could be nothing so serious as she was intimat- 
 ing. He clutched the gift. "Sarah," he said lightly, 
 "I got a little something for you see what I mean?" He 
 thrust the package into her weakly yielding hands. 
 
 She studied it in the dusk, turning it over and over. Then 
 with no word to him she took it to the dining room where 
 under the light she opened it. He heard a smothered excla- 
 mation that seemed more of dismay than the delight he 
 expected, though he saw that she was holding the watch 
 against her wrist. She came back to the dusk of the parlour, 
 beginning on the way one of her little skipping dance steps, 
 which she quickly suppressed. She was replacing the watch 
 on its splendid couch of satin and closing the box. 
 
 "I never saw such a man!" she exclaimed with an irri- 
 tation that he felt to be artificial. "After all you've been 
 through, I should think you'd have learned the value of 
 money. Anyway, it's too beautiful for me. And anyway, 
 I couldn't take it not to-night, anyway. And anyway " 
 
 Her voice had acquired a huskiness in this speech that 
 now left her incoherent, and the light revealed a wetness in 
 her eyes. She dabbed at them with a handkerchief. 
 
 "Of course you can take it to-night," he said in masterful 
 tones, "after all you've done for me." 
 
 "Now you listen," she began. "You don't know all I've 
 done for you. You don't know me at all. Suppose some- 
 thing came out about me that you didn't think I'd 'a' been 
 guilty of. You can't ever tell about people in this business. 
 You don't know me at all not one little bit. I might 'a' 
 done lots of things that would turn you against me. I tell 
 
MISS MONTAGUE USES HER OWN FACE 297 
 
 you you got to wait and find out about things. I haven't 
 the nerve to tell you, but you'll find out soon enough " 
 
 The expert in photoplays suffered a sudden illumination. 
 This was a scene he could identify a scene in which the 
 woman trembled upon the verge of revealing to the man cer- 
 tain sinister details of her past, spurred thereto by a scoun- 
 drel who blackmailed her. He studied the girl in a new light. 
 Undoubtedly, from her words, he saw one panic-stricken by 
 the threatened exposure of some dreadful complication in 
 her own past. Certainly she was suffering. 
 
 "I don't care if this fever does carry me off," she went on. 
 " I know you could never feel the same toward me after you 
 found out " 
 
 Again she was dabbing at her eyes, this time with the 
 sleeve of her jacket. A suffering woman stood before him. 
 She who had always shown herself so competent to meet 
 trouble with laughing looks was being overthrown by this 
 nameless horror. Suddenly he knew that to him it didn't 
 matter so very much what crime she had been guilty of. 
 
 "I don't care what you've done," he said, his own voice 
 husky. She continued to weep. 
 
 He felt himself grow hot. "Listen here, Kid" He now 
 spoke with more than a touch of the bully in his tone 
 "stop this nonsense. You you come here and give me a 
 good big kiss see what I mean?" 
 
 She looked up at him from wet eyes, and amazingly 
 through her anguish she grinned. "You win!" she said, 
 and came to him. 
 
 He was now the masterful one. He took her protectingly 
 in his arms. He kissed her, though with no trace of the Par- 
 malee technique. His screen experience might never have 
 been. It was more like the dead days of Edwina May 
 Pulver. 
 
 "Now you stop it," he soothed "all this nonsense!" 
 His cheek was against hers and his arms held her. "What 
 do I care what you've done in your past what do I care? 
 And listen here, Kid" There was again the brutal note 
 
298 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 of the bully in his voice "don't ever do any more of those 
 stunts see what I mean? None of that falling off street- 
 cars or houses or anything. Do you hear?" 
 
 He felt that he was being masterful indeed. He had 
 swept her off her feet. Probably now she would weep vio- 
 lently and sob out her confession. But a moment later he 
 was reflecting, as he had so many times before reflected, 
 that you never could tell about the girl. In his embrace 
 she had become astoundingly calm. That emotional crisis 
 threatening to beat down all her reserves had passed. She 
 reached up and almost meditatively pushed back the hair 
 from his forehead, regarding him with eyes that were still 
 shadowed but dry. Then she gave him a quick little hug 
 and danced away. It was no time for dancing, he thought. 
 
 "Now you sit down," she ordered. She was almost gay 
 again, yet with a nervous, desperate gaiety that would at 
 moments die to a brooding solemnity. "And listen," she 
 began, when he had seated himself in bewilderment at her 
 sudden change of mood, "you'll be off to your old motion 
 picture to-morrow night, and I'll be here sick in bed ' 
 
 "I won't go if you don't want me to," he put in quickly. 
 
 "That's no good ; you'd have to go sometime. The quicker 
 the better, I guess. I'll go myself sometime, if I ever get 
 over this disease that's coming on me. Anyway, you go, 
 
 and then if you ever see me again you can give me this " 
 
 She quickly came to put the watch back in his hands. "Yes, 
 yes, take it. I won't have it till you give it to me again, if 
 I'm still alive." She held up repulsing hands. "Now we've 
 had one grand little evening, and I'll let you go." She 
 went to stand by the door. 
 
 He arose and stood by her. "All this nonsense!" he 
 grumbled. "I I won't stand for it see what I mean?" 
 Very masterfully again he put his arms about her. "Say," 
 he demanded, "are you afraid of me like you said you'd 
 always been afraid of men?" 
 
 "Yes, I am. I'm afraid of you a whole lot. I don't know 
 how you'll take it." 
 
MISS MONTAGUE USES HER OWN FACE 299 
 
 "Take what?" 
 
 "Oh, anything anything you're going to get." 
 
 "Well, you don't seem to be afraid of me." 
 
 "I am, more than any one." 
 
 "Well, Sarah, you needn't be no matter what you've 
 done. You just forget it and give me a good big " 
 
 "I'm glad I'm using my own face in this scene," murmured 
 Sarah. 
 
 Down at the corner, waiting for his car, he paced back and 
 forth in front of the bench with its terse message "You 
 furnish the girl, we furnish the house" Sarah was a funny 
 little thing with all that nonsense about what he would find 
 out. Little he cared if she'd done something forgery, 
 murder, anything. 
 
 He paused in his stride and addressed the vacant bench: 
 "Well, I've done my part." 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 "FIVE REELS 500 LAUGHS" 
 
 YT OCCURRED to him the next morning that he might 
 have taken too lightly Sarah's foreboding of illness. 
 A Reviewing her curious behaviour he thought it possible 
 she might be in for something serious. 
 
 But a midday telephone call at the Montague home 
 brought assurances from the mother that quieted this fear. 
 Sarah complained of not feeling well, and was going to 
 spend a quiet day at home. But Mrs. Montague was cer- 
 tain it was nothing serious. No; she had no temperature. 
 No fever at all. She was just having a spell of thinking about 
 I things, sort of grouchy like. She had been grouchy to both 
 her parents. Probably because she wasn't working. No, 
 she said she wouldn't come to the telephone. She also said 
 she was in a bad way and might pass out any minute. But 
 that was just her kidding. It was kind of Mr. Gill to call 
 up. He wasn't to worry. 
 
 He continued to worry, however, until the nearness of 
 his screen debut drove Sarah to the back of his mind. Un- 
 doubtedly it was just her nonsense. And in the meantime, 
 that long-baffled wish to see himself in a serious drama was 
 about to be gratified in fullest measure. He was glad the 
 girl had not suggested that she be with him on this tremen- 
 dous occasion. He wanted to be quite alone, solitary in 
 the crowd, free to enjoy his own acting without pretense of 
 indifference. 
 
 The Pattersons, of course, were another matter. He had 
 told them of his approaching debut and they were making 
 an event of it. They would attend, though he would not sit 
 
"FIVE REELS 500 LAUGHS" 301 
 
 with them. Mr. Patterson in his black suit, his wife in 
 society raiment, would sit downstairs and would doubtless 
 applaud their lodger; but he would be remote from them; in 
 a far corner of the topmost gallery, he first thought, for 
 Hearts on Fire was to be shown in one of the big down-town 
 theatres where a prominent member of its cast could lose 
 himself. 
 
 He had told the Pattersons a little about the story. It 
 was pretty pathetic in spots, he said, but it all came right in 
 the end, and there were some good Western scenes. When 
 the Pattersons said he must be very good in it, he found 
 himself unable to achieve the light fashion of denial and 
 protestation that would have become him. He said he had 
 struggled to give the world something better and finer. 
 
 For a,moment he was moved to confess that Mrs. Patter- 
 son, in the course of his struggles, had come close to losing 
 ten dollars, but he mastered the wild impulse. Some day, 
 after a few more triumphs, he might laughingly confide this 
 to her. 
 
 The day was long. Slothfully it dragged hours that 
 seemed endless across the company of shining dreams that 
 he captained. He was early at the theatre, first of early 
 comers, and entered quickly, foregoing even a look at the 
 huge lithographs in front that would perhaps show his very 
 self in some gripping scene. 
 
 With an empty auditorium to choose from, he compromised 
 on a balcony seat. Down below would doubtless be other 
 members of the company, probably Baird himself, and he 
 did not wish to be recognized. He must be alone with 
 his triumph. And the loftier gallery would be too far 
 away. 
 
 The house filled slowly. People sauntered to their seats 
 as if the occasion were ordinary; even when the seats were 
 occupied and the orchestra had played, there ensued the 
 annoying delays of an educational film and a travelogue. 
 Upon this young actor's memory would be forever seared the 
 information that the conger eel lays fifteen million eggs at 
 
302 MEHTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 one time and that the inhabitants of Upper Burmah have 
 quaint native pastimes. These things would stay with him, 
 but they were unimportant. Even the prodigal fecundity 
 of the conger eel left him cold. 
 
 He gripped the arms of his seat when the cast of Hearts 
 on Fire was flung to the screen. He caught his own name 
 instantly, and was puzzled. "Clifford Armytage By 
 Himself." Someone had bungled that, but no matter. 
 Then at once he was seeing that first scene of his. As a 
 popular screen idol he breakfasted in his apartment, served 
 by a valet who was a hero worshipper. 
 
 He was momentarily disquieted by the frank adoration 
 of the cross-eyed man in this part. While acting the scene, 
 he remembered now that he had not always been able to 
 observe his valet. There were moments when he seemed 
 over-emphatic. The valet was laughed at. The watcher's 
 sympathy went out to Baird, who must be seeing his serious 
 effort taken too lightly. 
 
 There came the scene where he looked at the photograph 
 album. But now his turning of the pages was interspersed 
 with close-ups of the portraits he regarded so admiringly. 
 And these astonishingly proved to be enlarged stills of 
 Clifford Armytage, the art studies of Lowell Hardy. It was 
 puzzling. On the screen he capably beamed the fondest 
 admiration, almost reverent in its intensity and there 
 would appear the still of Merton bidding an emotional fare- 
 well to his horse. The very novelty of it held him for a 
 moment Gashwiler's Dexter actually on the screen! He 
 was aroused by the hearty laughter of an immense audience. 
 
 "It's Parmalee," announced a hoarse neighbour on his 
 right. "He's imitatin' Harold! Say, the kid's clever!" 
 
 The laughter continued during the album scene. He 
 thought of Baird, somewhere in that audience, suffering 
 because his play was made fun of. He wished he could 
 remind him that scenes were to follow which would surely not 
 be taken lightly. For himself, he was feeling that at least 
 his strong likeness to Parmalee had been instantly admitted. 
 
"FIVE REELS 500 LAUGHS" 303 
 
 They were laughing, as the Montague girl had laughed that 
 first morning, because the resemblance was so striking. 
 
 But now on the screen, after the actor's long fond look at 
 himself, came the words, "The Only Man He Ever Loved." 
 Laughter again. The watcher felt himself grow hot. Had 
 Baird been betrayed by one of his staff? 
 
 The scene with the letters followed. Clothes baskets of 
 letters. His own work, as he opened a few from the top, 
 was all that he could have wished. He was finely Harold 
 Parmalee, and again the hoarse neighbour whispered, "Ain't 
 he got Parmalee dead, though?" 
 
 "Poor, silly little girls!" the screen exclaimed, and the 
 audience became noisy. Undoubtedly it was a tribute to his 
 perfection in the Parmalee manner. But he was glad that 
 now there would come acting at which no one could laugh. 
 
 There was the delicatessen shop, the earnest young cashier 
 and his poor old mother who mopped. He saw himself 
 embrace her and murmur words of encouragement, but 
 incredibly there were giggles from the audience, doubtless 
 from base souls who were impervious to pathos. The giggles 
 coalesced to a general laugh when the poor old mother, again 
 mopping on the floor, was seen to say, "I hate these mopping 
 mothers. You get took with house-maid's knee in the 
 first reel." 
 
 Again he was seized with a fear that one of Baird's staff 
 had been clumsy with subtitles. His eyes flew to his own 
 serious face when the silly words had gone. 
 
 The drama moved. Indeed the action of the shadows was 
 swifter than he supposed it would be. The dissolute son of 
 the proprietor came on to dust the wares and to elicit a 
 laugh when he performed a bit of business that had escaped 
 Merton at the time. Against the wire screen that covered 
 the largest cheese on the counter he placed a placard, "Dan- 
 gerous. Do not Annoy." 
 
 Probably Baird had not known of this clowning. And 
 there came another subtitle that would dismay Baird when 
 the serious young bookkeeper enacted his scene with the 
 
304 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 proprietor's lovely daughter, for she was made to say: "You 
 love above your station. Ours is 125th Street; you get off 
 at 59th." 
 
 He was beginning to feel confused. A sense of loss, of 
 panic, smote him. His own part was the intensely serious 
 thing he had played, but in some subtle way even that was 
 being made funny. He could not rush to embrace his old 
 mother without exciting laughter. 
 
 The robbery of the safe was effected by the dissolute son, 
 the father broke in upon the love scene, discovered the loss 
 of his money, and accused an innocent man. Merton felt 
 that he here acted superbly. His long look at the girl for 
 whom he was making the supreme sacrifice brought tears 
 to his own eyes, but still the witless audience snickered. 
 
 Unobserved by the others, the old mother now told her 
 son the whereabouts of the stolen money, and he saw himself 
 secure the paper sack of bills from the ice-box. He de- 
 tected the half -guilty look of which he had spoken to Baird. 
 Then he read his own incredible speech "I better take this 
 cool million. It might get that poor lad into trouble!" 
 
 Again the piece had been hurt by a wrong subtitle. But 
 perhaps the audience laughed because it was accustomed to 
 laugh at Baird's productions. Perhaps it had not realized 
 that he was now attempting one of the worth-while things. 
 
 This reasoning was refuted as he watched what occurred 
 after he had made his escape. 
 
 His flight was discovered, policemen entered, a rapid 
 search behind counters ensued. In the course of this the 
 wire screen over the biggest cheese was knocked off the 
 counter. The cheese leaped to the floor, and the searchers, 
 including the policemen, fled in panic through the front door. 
 The Montague girl, the last to escape, was seen to announce, 
 "The big cheese is loose it's eating all the little ones!" 
 
 A band of intrepid firemen, protected by masks and armed 
 with axes, rushed in. A terrific struggle ensued. The deli- 
 catessen shop was wrecked. And through it all the old 
 mother continued to mop the floor. 
 
"FIVE REELS 500 LAUGHS" 305 
 
 Merton Gill, who had first grown hot, was now cold. Icy 
 drops were on his chilled brow. How had Hearts on Fire 
 gone wrong? 
 
 Then they were in the great open spaces of the Come All 
 Ye dance hall. There was the young actor in his Buck 
 Benson costume, protecting his mother from the brutality of 
 a Mexican, getting his man later by firing directly into a 
 mirror Baird had said it would come right in the exposure, 
 but it hadn't. And the witless cackled. 
 
 He saw his struggle with the detective. With a real 
 thrill he saw himself bear his opponent to the ground, then 
 hurl him high and far into the air, to be impaled upon the 
 antlers of an elk's head suspended back of the bar. He saw 
 himself lightly dust his sleeves after this feat, and turn aside 
 with the words, "That's one Lodge he can join." 
 
 Then followed a scene he had not been allowed to witness. 
 There swung Marcel, the detective, played too emphatically 
 by the cross-eyed man. An antler point suspended him by 
 the seat of his trousers. He hung limply a moment, then 
 took from his pocket a saw with which he reached up to 
 contrive his release. He sawed through the antler and 
 fell. He tried to stand erect, but appeared to find this 
 impossible. A subtitle announced: "He had put a per- 
 manent wave in Marcel." 
 
 This base fooling was continuously blown upon by gales 
 of stupid laughter. But not yet did Merton Gill know the 
 worst. The merriment persisted through his most affecting 
 bit, the farewell to his old pal outside how could they 
 have laughed at a simple bit of pathos like that? But the 
 watching detective was seen to weep bitterly. 
 
 "Look a* him doin' Buck Benson," urged the hoarse 
 neighbour gleefully. " You got to hand it to that kid say, 
 who is he, anyway?" 
 
 Followed the thrilling leap from a second-story window to 
 the back of the waiting pal. The leap began thrillingly, but 
 not only was it shown that the escaping man had donned a 
 coat and a false mustache in the course of his fall, but at its 
 
306 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 end lie was revealed slowly, very slowly, clambering into the 
 saddle ! 
 
 They had used here, he saw, one of those slow cameras 
 that seem to suspend all action interminably, a cruel device 
 in this instance. And for his actual escape, when he had 
 ridden the horse beyond camera range at a safe walk, they 
 had used another camera that gave the effect of intense 
 speed. The old horse had walked, but with an air of swift- 
 ness that caused the audience intense delight. 
 
 Entered Marcel, the detective, in another scene Merton had 
 not watched. He emerged from the dance-hall to confront 
 a horse that remained, an aged counterpart of the horse 
 Merton had ridden off. Marcel stared intently into the 
 beast's face, whereupon it reared and plunged as if terrified 
 by the spectacle of the cross-eyed man. 
 
 Merton recalled the horse in the village that had seemed 
 to act so intelligently. Probably a shot-gun had stimulated 
 the present scene. The detective thereupon turned aside, 
 hastily donned his false mustache and Sherlock Holmes 
 cap, and the deceived horse now permitted him to mount. 
 He, too, walked off to the necromancy of a lens that multi- 
 plied his pace a thousandfold. And the audience rocked in 
 its seats. 
 
 One horse still remained before the dance-hall. The old 
 mother emerged. With one anguished look after the de- 
 tective, she gathered up her disreputable skirts and left the 
 platform in a flying leap to land in the saddle. There was 
 no trickery about the speed at which her horse, belaboured 
 with the mop-pail, galloped in pursuit of the others. A sub- 
 title recited "She has watched her dear ones leave the 
 old nest flat. Now she must go out over the hills and mop 
 the other side of them!" 
 
 Now came the sensational capture by lasso of the de- 
 tective. But the captor had not known that, as he dragged 
 his quarry at the rope's end, the latter had somehow possessed 
 himself of a sign which he later walked in with, a sign 
 reading, "Join the Good Roads Movement!" nor that the 
 
"FIVE REELS 500 LAUGHS" 307 
 
 fahhful old mother had ridden up to deposit her inverted 
 mop-pail over his head. 
 
 Merton Gill had twice started to leave. He wanted to 
 leave. But each time he found himself chained there by the 
 evil fascination of this monstrous parody. He remained to 
 learn that the Montague girl had come out to the great open 
 spaces to lead a band of train-robbers from the "Q. T. 
 ranche." 
 
 He saw her ride beside a train and cast her lasso over the 
 stack of the locomotive. He saw her pony settle back on 
 its haunches while the rope grew taut and the train was 
 forced to a halt. He saw the passengers lined up by the 
 wayside and forced to part with their valuables. Later, 
 when the band returned to the ranche with their booty, he 
 saw the dissolute brother, after the treasure was divided, 
 winning it back to the family coffers with his dice. He saw 
 the stricken father playing golf on his bicycle in grotesque 
 imitation of a polo player. 
 
 And still, so incredible the revealment, he had not in 
 the first shock of it seemed to consider Baird in any way to 
 blame. Baird had somehow been deceived by his actors. 
 Yet a startling suspicion was forming amid his mental 
 flurries, a suspicion that bloomed to certainty when he saw 
 himself the ever-patient victim of the genuine hidalgo spurs. 
 
 Baird had said he wanted the close-ups merely for use in 
 determining how the spurs could be mastered, yet here they 
 were. Merton Gill caught the spurs in undergrowth and 
 caught them in his own chaps, arising from each fall with 
 a look of gentle determination that appealed strongly to the 
 throng of lackwits. They shrieked at each of his failures, 
 even when he ran to greet his pictured sweetheart and fell 
 headlong. They found the comedy almost unbearable when 
 at Baird 's direction he had begun to toe in as he walked. 
 And he had fallen clumsily again when he flew to that last 
 glad rendezvous where the pair were irised out in a love 
 triumphant, while the old mother mopped a large rock in the 
 background. 
 
308 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 An intervening close-up of this rock revealed her tearful 
 face as she cleansed the granite surface. Above her loomed 
 a painted exhortation to "Use Wizard Spine Pills.'' And of 
 this pathetic old creature he was made to say, even as he 
 clasped the beloved in his arms "Remember, she is my 
 mother. I will not desert her now just because I am rich 
 and grand!" 
 
 At last he was free. Amid applause that was long and 
 sincere he gained his feet and pushed a way out. His 
 hoarse neighbour was saying, "Who is the kid, anyway? 
 Ain't he a wonder!" 
 
 He pulled his hat down, dreading he might be recognized 
 and shamed before these shallow fools. He froze with the 
 horror of what he had been unable to look away from. 
 The ignominy of it! And now, after those spurs, he knew 
 full well that Baird had betrayed him. As the words shaped 
 in his mind, a monstrous echo of them reverberated through 
 its caverns the Montague girl had betrayed him! 
 
 He understood her now, and burned with memories of 
 her uneasiness the night before. She had been suffering 
 acutely from remorse; she had sought to cover it with pleas 
 of physical illness. At the moment he was conscious of no 
 feeling toward her save wonder that she could so coolly have 
 played him false. But the thing was not to be questioned. 
 She and Baird had made a fool of him. 
 
 As he left the theatre, the crowd about him commented 
 approvingly on the picture: " Who 's this new comedian?" 
 he heard a voice inquire. But "Ain't he a wonder!" seemed 
 to be the sole reply. 
 
 He flushed darkly. So they thought him a comedian. 
 Well, Baird wouldn't think so not after to-morrow. He 
 paused outside the theatre now to study the lithograph hi 
 colours. There he hurled Marcel to the antlers of the elk. 
 The announcement was Hearts on Fire! A Jeff Baird 
 Comedy. Five Reels 500 Laughs." 
 
 Baird, he sneeringly reflected, had kept faith with his 
 patrons if not with one of his actors. But how he had pro- 
 
"FIVE REELS-500 LAUGHS" 309 
 
 faned the sunlit glories of the great open West and its virile 
 drama ! And the spurs, as he had promised the unsuspecting 
 wearer, had stood out! The horror of it, blinding, deso- 
 lating! 
 
 And he had as good as stolen that money himself, taking 
 it out to the great open spaces to spend in a bar-room. 
 Baird's serious effort had turned out to be a wild, incon- 
 sequent farrago of the most painful nonsense. 
 
 But it was over for Merton Gill. The golden bowl was 
 broken, the silver cord was loosed. To-morrow he would 
 tear up Baird's contract and hurl the pieces in Baird's face. 
 As to the Montague girl, that deceiving jade was hopeless. 
 Never again could he trust her. 
 
 In a whirling daze of resentment he boarded a car for the 
 journey home. A group seated near him still laughed about 
 Hearts on Fire. "I thought he'd kill me with those spurs," 
 declared an otherwise sanely behaving young woman 
 "that hurt, embarrassed look on his face every time he'd 
 get up!" 
 
 He cowered in his seat. And he remembered another 
 ordeal he must probably face when he reached home. He 
 hoped the Pattersons would be in bed, and walked up and 
 down before the gate when he saw the house still alight. 
 But the light stayed, and at last he nerved himself for a 
 possible encounter. He let himself in softly, still hoping 
 he could gain his room undiscovered; but Mrs. Patterson 
 framed herself in the lighted door of the living room and 
 became exclamatory at sight of him. 
 
 And he who had thought to stand before these people in 
 shame to receive their condolences now perceived that his 
 trial would be of another but hardly less-distressing sort. 
 For somehow, so dense were these good folks, that he must 
 seem to be not displeased with his own performance. Amaz- 
 ingly they congratulated him, struggling with reminiscent 
 laughter as they did so. 
 
 "And you never told us you was one of them funny 
 comedians," chided Mrs. Patterson. "We thought you 
 
310 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 was just a beginner, and here you got the biggest part in the 
 picture! Say, the way you acted when you'd pick yourself 
 up after them spurs threw you I'll wake up in the night 
 laughing at that." 
 
 "And the way he kept his face so straight when them 
 other funny ones was cutting their capers all around him," 
 observed Mr. Patterson. 
 
 "Yes! wasn't it wonderful, Jed, the way he never let on, 
 keeping his face as serious as if he'd been in a serious play?" 
 
 "I like to fell off my seat," added Mr. Patterson. 
 
 "I'll tell you something, Mr. Armytage," began Mrs. 
 Patterson with a suddenly serious manner of her own, "I 
 never been one to flatter folks to their faces unless I felt it 
 from the bottom of my heart I never been that kind; when 
 I tell a person such-and-such about themselves they can 
 take it for the truth's own truth; so you can believe me now 
 I saw lots of times in that play to-night when you was 
 even funnier than the cross-eyed man." 
 
 The young actor was regarding her strangely; seemingly 
 he wished to acknowledge this compliment but could find no 
 suitable words. "Yes, you can blush and hem and haw," 
 went on his critic, "but any one knows me '11 tell you I mean 
 it when I talk that way yes, sir, funnier than the cross-eyed 
 man himself. My, I guess the neighbours 11 be talking soon's 
 they find out we got someone as important as you be in our 
 spare-room and, Mr. Armytage, I want you to give me a 
 signed photograph of yourself, if you'll be so good." 
 
 He escaped at last, dizzy from the maelstrom of conflicting 
 emotions that had caught and whirled him. It had been 
 impossible not to appear, and somehow difficult not to feel, 
 gratified under this heartfelt praise. He had been bound 
 to appear pleased but incredulous, even when she pro- 
 nounced him superior, at times, to the cross-eyed man 
 though the word she used was "funnier." 
 
 Betrayed by his friends, stricken, disconsolate, in a panic 
 of despair, he had yet seemed glad to hear that he had been 
 "funny." He flew to the sanctity of his room. Not again 
 
"FIVE REELS-500 LAUGHS" 311 
 
 could he bear to be told that the acting which had been his 
 soul's high vision was a thing for merriment. 
 
 He paced his room a long time, a restless, defenceless 
 victim to recurrent visions of his shame. Implacably they 
 returned to torture him. Reel after reel of the ignoble 
 stuff, spawned by the miscreant, Baird, flashed before him; 
 a world of base painted shadows in which he had been the 
 arch offender. 
 
 Again and again he tried to make clear to himself just 
 why his own acting should have caused mirth. Surely he 
 had been serious; he had given the best that was in him. 
 And the groundlings had guffawed! 
 
 Perhaps it was a puzzle he could never solve. And now he 
 first thought of the new piece. 
 
 This threw him into fresh panic. What awful things, with 
 his high and serious acting, would he have been made to do 
 in that? Patiently, one by one, he went over the scenes in 
 which he had appeared. Dazed, confused, his recollection 
 could bring to him little that was ambiguous in them. But 
 also he had played through Hearts on Fire with little sus- 
 picion of its low intentions. 
 
 He went to bed at last, though to toss another hour in 
 fruitless effort to solve this puzzle and to free his eyes of 
 those flashing infamies of the night. Ever and again as he 
 seemed to become composed, free at last of tormenting 
 visions, a mere subtitle would flash in his brain, as where 
 the old mother, when he first punished her insulter, was 
 made by the screen to call out, "Kick him on the knee-cap, 
 too!" 
 
 But the darkness refreshed his tired eyes, and sleep at 
 last brought him a merciful outlet from a world in which 
 you could act your best and still be funnier than a cross-eyed 
 man. 
 
 He awakened long past his usual hour and occupied his 
 first conscious moments in convincing himself that the 
 scandal of the night before had not been a bad dream. 
 
 The shock was a little dulled now. He began absurdly 
 
312 MERTON OP THE MOVIES 
 
 to remember the comments of those who had appeared 
 to enjoy the unworthy entertainment. Undoubtedly many 
 people had mentioned him with warm approval. But such 
 praise was surely nothing to take comfort from. He was 
 aroused from this retrospection by a knock on his door. 
 
 It proved to be Mr. Patterson bearing a tray. "Mrs. P. 
 thought that you being up so late last night mebbe would 
 like a cup of coffee and a bite of something before you went 
 out." The man's manner was newly respectful. In this 
 house, at least, Merton Gill was still someone. 
 
 He thanked his host, and consumed the coffee and toast 
 with a novel sense of importance. The courtesy was unprec- 
 edented. Mrs. Patterson had indeed been sincere. And 
 scarcely had he finished dressing when Mr. Patterson was 
 again at the door. 
 
 "A gentleman downstairs to see you, Mr. Armytage. "He 
 says his name is Walberg but you don't know him. He says 
 it's a business matter." 
 
 "Very well, I'll be down." A business matter? He had 
 no business matters with any one except Baird. 
 
 He was smitten with a quick and quite illogical fear. 
 Perhaps he would not have to tear up that contract and hurl 
 it in the face of the manager who had betrayed him. Perhaps 
 the manager himself would do the tearing. Perhaps Baird, 
 after seeing the picture, had decided that Merton Gill would 
 not do. Instantly he felt resentful. Hadn't he given the 
 best that was in him? Was it his fault if other actors had 
 turned into farce one of the worth-while things? 
 
 He went to meet Mr. Walberg with this resentment so 
 warm that his greeting of the strange gentleman was gruff 
 and short. The caller, an alert, businesslike man, came 
 at once to his point. He was, it proved, not the repre- 
 sentative of a possibly repenting Baird. He was, on the 
 contrary, representing a rival producer. He extended h ; s 
 card The Bigart Comedies. 
 
 "I got your address from the Holden office, Mr. Army- 
 tage. I guess I routed you out of bed, eh? Well, it's like 
 
"FIVE REELS 500 LAUGHS" 313 
 
 this, if you ain't sewed up with Baird yet, the Bigart people 
 would like to talk a little business to you. How about 
 it?" 
 
 "Business?" Mr. Armytage fairly exploded this. He 
 was unhappy and puzzled; in consequence, unamiable. 
 
 "Sure, business," confirmed Mr. Walberg. "I under- 
 stand you just finished another five-reeler for the Buckeye 
 outfit, but how about some stuff for us now? We can give 
 you as good a company as that one last night and a good line 
 of comedy. We got a gag man that simply never gets to 
 the end of his string. He's doping out something right now 
 that would fit you like a glove and say, it would be a great 
 idea to kind a' specialize in that spur act of yours. That 
 got over big. We could work it in again. An act like that's 
 good for a million laughs." 
 
 Mr. Armytage eyed Mr. Walberg coldly. Even Mr. Wal- 
 berg felt an extensive area of glaciation setting in. 
 
 "I wouldn't think of it," said the actor, still gruffly. 
 
 "Do you mean that you can't come to the Bigart at ali- 
 en any proposition?" 
 
 "That's what I mean," confirmed Mr. Armytage. 
 
 "Would three hundred and fifty a week interest you?" 
 
 "No," said Mr. Armytage, though he gulped twice before 
 achieving it. 
 
 Mr. Walberg reported to his people that this Armytage 
 lad was one hard-boiled proposition. He'd seen lots of 'em 
 in his time, but this bird was a wonder. 
 
 Yet Mr. Armytage was not really so granitic of nature as 
 the Bigart emissary had thought him. He had begun the 
 interview with a smouldering resentment due to a mis- 
 apprehension; he had been outraged by a suggestion that 
 the spurs be again put to their offensive use; and he had 
 been stunned by an offer of three hundred and fifty dollars 
 a week. That was all. 
 
 Here was a new angle to the puzzles that distracted him. 
 He was not only praised by the witless, but he had been 
 found desirable by certain discerning overlords of filnidom. 
 
314 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 What could be the secret of a talent that caused people, 
 after viewing it but once, to make reckless offers? 
 
 And another thing why had he allowed Baird to "sew 
 him up"? The Montague girl again occupied the fore- 
 ground of his troubled musings. She, with her airs of wise 
 importance, had helped to sew him up. She was a helpless 
 thing, after all, and false of nature. He would have matters 
 out with her this very day. But first he must confront 
 Baird in a scene of scorn and reprobation. 
 
 On the car he became aware that far back in remote 
 caverns of his mind there ran a teasing memory of some book 
 on the shelves of the Simsbury public library. He was 
 sure it was not a book he had read. It was merely the title 
 that hid itself. Only this had ever interested him, and it 
 but momentarily. So much he knew. A book's title had 
 lodged in his mind, remained there, and was now curiously 
 stirring in some direct relation to his present perplexities. 
 
 But it kept its face averted. He could not read it. Vaguely 
 he identified the nameless book with Tessie Kearns; he 
 could not divine how, because it was not her book and he 
 had never seen it except on the library shelf. 
 
 The nameless book persistently danced before him. He 
 was glad of this. It kept him at moments from thinking of 
 the loathly Baird. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 THE TRAGIC COMEDIAN 
 
 PENETRATING the Holden lot he was relieved to 
 finjl that he created no immediate sensation. People 
 did not halt to point derisive fingers at him; he had 
 half feared they would. As he approached the office build- 
 ing he was almost certain he saw Baird turn in ahead of him. 
 Yet when he entered the outer room of the Buckeye offices 
 a young woman looked up from her typewriter to tell him that 
 Mr. Baird was not in. 
 
 She was a serious-eyed young woman of a sincere manner; 
 she spoke with certainty of tone. Mr. Baird was not only out, 
 but he would not be in for several days. His physician had 
 ordered him to a sanitarium. 
 
 The young woman resumed her typing; she did not again, 
 glance up. The caller seemed to consider waiting on a chance 
 that she had been misinformed. He was now sure he had 
 seen Baird enter the building, and the door of his private 
 office was closed. The caller idled outside the railing, ab- 
 sently regarding stills of past Buckeye atrocities that had 
 been hung upon the walls of the office by someone with 
 primitive tastes in decoration. He was debating a direct 
 challenge of the young woman's veracity. 
 
 What would she say if told that the caller meant to 
 wait right there until Mr. Baird should convalesce? He 
 managed some appraising side-glances at her as she bent 
 over her machine. She seemed to believe he had already 
 gone. 
 
 Then he did go. No good talking that way to a girl. If 
 it had been a man, now "You tell Mr. Baird that Mr. 
 
 315 
 
316 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 Gill's got to see him as soon as possible about something 
 important," he directed from the open door. 
 
 The young woman raised her serious eyes to his and 
 nodded. She resumed her work. The door closed. 
 
 Upon its closing the door of Baird's private office opened 
 noiselessly to a crack that sufficed for the speaking voice at 
 very moderate pitch to issue. 
 
 "Get Miss Montague on the 'phone," directed the voice. 
 The door closed noiselessly. Beyond it Mr. Baird was 
 presently speaking in low, sweet tones. 
 
 "'Lo, Sister! Listen; that squirrel just boiled in here, 
 and I ducked him. I told the girl I wasn't to be in unless he 
 was laughing all over, and he wasn't doing the least little 
 thing that was anywheres near laughing. See what I 
 mean? It's up to you now. You started it; you got to 
 finish it. I've irised out. Get me?" 
 
 On the steps outside the rebuffed Merton Gill glanced at 
 his own natty wrist-watch, bought with some of the later 
 wages of his shame. It was the luncheon hour; mechanically 
 he made his way to the cafeteria. He had ceased to re- 
 hearse the speech a doughtier Baird would now have been 
 hearing. 
 
 Instead he roughly drafted one that Sarah Nevada Mon- 
 tague could not long evade. Even on her dying bed she 
 would be compelled to listen. The practising orator with 
 bent head mumbled as he walked. He still mumbled as he 
 indicated a choice of foods at the cafeteria counter; he con- 
 tinued to be thus absorbed as he found a table near the 
 centre of the room. 
 
 He arranged his assortment of viands. "You led me 
 on, that's what you did," he continued to the absent 
 culprit. "Led me on to make a laughing-stock of myself, 
 that's what you did. Made a fool of me, that's what you 
 did." 
 
 "All the same, I can't help thinking he's a harm to the 
 industry," came the crisp tones of Henshaw from an adjoin- 
 ing table. The rehearsing orator glanced up to discover 
 
THE TRAGIC COMEDIAN 317 
 
 that the director and the sunny-faced brown and gray man 
 he called Governor were smoking above the plates of their 
 finished luncheon. 
 
 "I wouldn't worry too much," suggested the cheerful 
 governor. 
 
 "But see what he does: he takes the good old reliable, 
 sure-fire stuff and makes fun of it. I admit it's funny to 
 start with, but what '11 happen to us if the picture public ever 
 finds that out? What '11 we do then for drama after they've 
 learned to laugh at the old stuff?" 
 
 "Tush, tush, my boy!" The Governor waved a half- 
 consumed cigarette until its ash fell. "Never fear. Do you 
 think a thousand Jeff Bairds could make the picture public 
 laugh at the old stuff when it's played straight? They 
 laughed last night, yes; but not so much at the really fine 
 burlesque; they guffawed at the slap-stick stuff that went 
 with it. Baird's shrewd. He knows if he played straight 
 burlesque he'd never make a dollar, so notice how he'll give 
 a bit of straight that is genuine art, then a bit of slap-stick 
 that any one can get. The slap-stick is what carries the 
 show. Real burlesque is criticism, my boy; sometimes the 
 very high-browest sort. It demands sophistication, a pretty 
 high intelligence in the man that gets it. 
 
 "All right. Now take your picture public. Twenty 
 million people every day; not the same ones every day, but 
 with same average cranial index, which is low for all but 
 about seven out of every hundred. That's natural be- 
 cause there aren't twenty million people in the world with 
 taste or real intelligence probably not five million. Well, 
 you take this twenty million bunch that we sell to every 
 day, and suppose they saw that lovely thing last night 
 don't you know they'd all be back to-night to see a real 
 mopping mother with a real son falsely accused of crime 
 sure they'd be back, their heads bloody but unbowed. 
 Don't worry; that reliable field marshal, old General Hokum, 
 leads an unbeatable army." 
 
 Merton Gill had listened to the beginning of this harangue, 
 
318 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 but now he savagely devoured food. He thought this so- 
 called Governor was too much like Baird. 
 
 "Well, Governor, I hope you're right. But that was 
 pretty keen stuff last night. That first bit won't do Parma- 
 lee any good, and that Buck Benson stuff you can't tell 
 me a little more of that wouldn't make Benson look around 
 for a new play." 
 
 "But I do tell you just that. It won't hurt Parmalee a 
 bit; and Benson can go on Bensoning to the end of time to 
 big money. You keep forgetting this twenty-million audi- 
 ence. Go out and buy a picture magazine and read it 
 through, just to remind you. They want hokum, and pay 
 for it. Even this thing of Baird's, with all the saving slap- 
 stick, is over the heads of a good half of them. I'll make a 
 bet with you now, anything you name, that it won't gross 
 two thirds as much as Benson's next Western, and in that 
 they'll cry their eyes out when he kisses his horse good-bye. 
 See if they don't. Or see if they don't bawl at the next old 
 gray-haired mother with a mop and a son that gets in bad. 
 
 "Why, if you give 'em hokum they don't even demand 
 acting. Look at our own star, Mercer. You know as well 
 as I do that she not only can't act, but she's merely a beauti- 
 ful moron. In a world where right prevailed she'd be 
 crowned queen of the morons without question. She may 
 have an idea that two and two make four, but if she has 
 it's only because she believes everything she hears. And 
 look at the mail she gets. Every last one of the twenty 
 million has written to tell he^ what a noble actress she is. 
 She even believes that. 
 
 "Baird can keep on with the burlesque stuff, but his 
 little old two-reelers '11 probably have to pay for it, es- 
 pecially if he keeps those high-priced people. I'll bet that 
 one new man of his sets him back seven hundred and fifty a 
 week. The Lord knows he's worth every cent of it. My boy, 
 tell me, did you ever in all your life see a lovelier imitation 
 of a perfectly rotten actor? There's an artist for you. Who 
 is he, anyway? Where'd he come from?" 
 
THE TRAGIC COMEDIAN 319 
 
 Merton Gill again listened; he was merely affecting to 
 busy himself with a fork. It was good acting. 
 
 "I don't know," replied Henshaw. "Some of the crowd 
 last night said he was just an extra that Baird dug up on 
 the lot here. And, on the subject of burlesque, they also 
 said Baird was having him do some Edgar Wayne stuff in a 
 new one." 
 
 "Fine!" The Governor beamed. "Can't you see him as 
 the honest, likable country boy? I bet he'll be good to his 
 old mother in this one, too, and get the best of the city 
 slickers in the end. For heaven's sake don't let me miss 
 it! This kid last night handed me laughs that were better 
 than a month's vacation for this old carcass of mine. You 
 say he was just an extra?" 
 
 "That's what I heard last night. Anyway, he's all you 
 say he is as an artist. Where do you suppose he got it? Do 
 you suppose he's just the casual genius that comes along from 
 time to time? And why didn't he stay * straight' instead 
 of playing horse with the sacred traditions of our art? That's 
 what troubled me as I watched him. Even in that wild 
 business with the spurs he was the artist every second. He 
 must have tricked those falls but I couldn't catch him at it. 
 Why should such a man tie up with Baird?" 
 
 "Ask me something hard. I'd say this bird had been tried 
 out in serious stuff and couldn't make the grade. That's the 
 way he struck me. Probably he once thought he could play 
 Hamlet one of those boys. Didn't you get the real pathos 
 he'd turn on now and then? He actually had me kind of 
 teary a couple of times. But I could see he'd also make 
 me laugh my head off any time he showed in a straight 
 piece. 
 
 "To begin with, look at that low-comedy face of his. 
 And then something peculiar even while he's imitating 
 a bad actor you feel somehow that it isn't all imitation. 
 It's art, I grant you, but you feel he'd still be a bad actor 
 if he'd try to imitate a good one. Somehow he found out 
 his limits and decided to be what God meant him to be. 
 
320 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 Does that answer you? It gives you acting-plus, and if 
 that isn't the plus in this case I miss my guess." 
 
 "I suppose you're right something like that. And of 
 course the real pathos is there. It has to be. There never 
 was a great comedian without it, and this one is great. I 
 admit that, and I admit all you say about our audience. I 
 suppose we can't ever sell to twenty million people a day 
 pictures that make any demand on the human intelligence. 
 But couldn't we sell something better to one million or 
 a few thousand?" 
 
 The Governor dropped his cigarette end into the dregs 
 of his coffee. "We might," he said, "if we were endowed. 
 As it is, to make pictures we must make money. To make 
 money we must sell to the mob. And the mob reaches full 
 mental bloom at the age of fifteen. It won't buy pictures 
 the average child can't get." 
 
 "Of course the art is in its infancy," remarked Henshaw, 
 discarding his own cigarette. 
 
 "Ours is the Peter Pan of the arts," announced the Gov- 
 ernor, as he rose. 
 
 "The Peter Pan of the arts " 
 
 "Yes. I trust you recall the outstanding biological 
 freakishness of Peter." 
 
 "Oh! "replied Henshaw. 
 
 When Merton Gill dared to glance up a moment later the 
 men were matching coins at the counter. When they went 
 out he left a half -eaten meal and presently might have been 
 observed on a swift-rolling street-car. He mumbled as he 
 blankly surveyed palm-bordered building sites along the way. 
 He was again rehearsing a tense scene with the Montague 
 girl. In actor parlance he was giving himself all the best 
 of it. But they were new lines he mumbled over and over. 
 And he was no longer eluded by the title of that book he 
 remembered on the library shelf at Simsbury. Sitting in 
 the cafeteria listening to strange talk, lashed by cruel memo- 
 ries, it had flashed upon his vision with the stark definition 
 of a screened subtitle. 
 
THE TRAGIC COMEDIAN 321 
 
 He rang the Montague bell twice before he heard a faint 
 summons to enter. Upon the parlour couch, under blankets 
 that reached her pillowed head, lay Sarah. She was pale 
 and seemed to suffer. She greeted him in a feeble voice, 
 lids fluttering over the fires of that mysterious fever burning 
 far back in her eyes. 
 
 "Hullo, Kid," he began brightly. "Here's your watch." 
 
 Her doubting glance hovered over him as he smiled down 
 at her. "You giving it to me again, Merton?" She seemed 
 unable to conquer a stubborn incredulity. 
 
 "Of course I'm giving it to you again. What'd you think 
 I was going to do?" 
 
 She still surveyed him with little veiled glances. "You 
 look so bright you give me Kleig eyes," she said. She man- 
 aged a wan smile at this. 
 
 "Take it," he insisted, extending the package. "Of 
 course it won't keep Western Union time, but it'll look good 
 on you." 
 
 She appeared to be gaining on her incredulity, but a 
 vestige of it remained. "I won't touch it," she declared 
 with more spirit than could have been expected from the 
 perishing, "I won't touch it till you give me a good big 
 kiss." 
 
 "Sure," he said, and leaned down to brush her pale cheek 
 with his lips. He was cheerfully businesslike in this cere- 
 mony. 
 
 "Not till you do it right," she persisted. He knelt be- 
 side the couch and did it right. He lingered with a hand 
 upon her pale brow. 
 
 "What you afraid of?" he demanded. 
 
 "You," she said, but now she again brought the watch to 
 view, holding it away from her, studying its glitter from 
 various angles. At last she turned her eyes up to his. They 
 were alive but unrevealing. "Well?" 
 
 "Well?" he repeated coolly. 
 
 "Oh, stop it!" Again there was more energy than the 
 moribund are wont to manifest. There was even a vigorous 
 
MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 , impatience in her tone as she went on, "You know well 
 enough what I was afraid of. And you know well enough 
 what I want to hear right now. Shoot, can't you?" 
 
 He shot. He stood up, backed away from the couch to 
 where he could conveniently regard its stricken occupant, 
 and shot gaily. 
 
 "Well, it'll be a good lesson to you about me, this thing 
 of your thinking I was fooled over that piece. I s'pose you 
 and Baird had it between you all the time, right down to the 
 very last, that I thought he was doin' a serious play. Ho, ho ! " 
 He laughed gibingly. It was a masterful laugh. "A 
 serious play with a cross-eyed man doing funny stuff all 
 through. I thought it was serious, did I? Yes, I did!" 
 Again the dry, scornful laugh of superiority. "Didn't you 
 people know that I knew what I could do and what I couldn't 
 do? I should have thought that little thing would of 
 occurred to you all the time. Didn't you s'pose I knew as 
 well as any one that I got a low-comedy face and couldn't 
 ever make the grade in a serious piece? 
 
 "Of course I know I got real pathos look how I turned 
 it on a couple o' times in that piece last night but even when 
 I'm imitating a bad actor you can see it ain't all acting. 
 You'd see soon enough I was a bad actor if I tried to imitate 
 a good one. I guess you'd see that pretty quick. Didn't 
 you and Baird even s'pose I'd found out my limits and de- 
 cided to be what God meant me to be? 
 
 "But I got the pathos all right, and you can't name one 
 great comedian that don't need pathos more'n he needs 
 anything else. He just has to have it and I got it. I got 
 acting-plus; that's what I got. I knew it all the time; and 
 a whole lot of other people knew it last night. You could 
 hear fifty of 'em talking about it when I came out of the 
 theatre, saying I was an artist and all like that, and a certain 
 Los Angeles society woman that you can bet never says 
 things she don't mean, she told me she saw lots of places 
 in this piece that I was funnier than any cross-eyed man 
 that ever lived. 
 
THE TRAGIC COMEDIAN 323 
 
 "And what happens this morning?" Hands in pockets 
 he swaggered to and fro past the couch. 
 
 "Well, nothing happens this morning except people 
 coming around to sign me up for three hundred and fifty 
 a week. One of 'em said not an hour ago he's a big pro- 
 ducer, too that Baird ought to be paying me seven hun- 
 dred and fifty because I earned every cent of it. Of course 
 I didn't want to say anything the other day, with you pre- 
 tending to know so much about contracts and all that I 
 just thought I'd let you go on, seeing you were so smart 
 and I signed what you told me to. But I know I should 
 have held off with this Bamberger coming over from the 
 Bigart when I was hardly out of bed, and says will three 
 hundred and fifty a week interest me and promising he'll 
 give me a chance to do that spur act again that was the hit 
 of the piece " 
 
 He broke off, conscious suddenly that the girl had for 
 some time been holding a most peculiar stare rigidly upon 
 him. She had at first narrowed her right eye at a calculating 
 angle as she listened; but for a long time now the eyes had 
 been widened to this inexplicable stare eloquent of many 
 hidden things. 
 
 As he stopped his speech, made ill at ease by the in- 
 cessant pressing of the look, he was caught and held by it 
 to a longer silence than he had meant to permit. He could 
 now read meanings. That unflinching look incurred by his 
 smooth bluster was a telling blend of pity and of wonder. 
 
 "So you know, do you," she demanded, "that you look 
 just enough too much like Harold Parmalee so that you're 
 funny? I mean," she amended, seeing him wince, "that 
 you look the way Parmalee would look if he had brains?" 
 
 He faltered but made a desperate effort to recover his 
 balance. 
 
 "And besides, what difference does it make? If we did 
 good pictures we'd have to sell 'em to a mob. And what's 
 a mob? It's fifteen years old and nothing but admirons, or 
 something like that, like Muriel Mercer that wouldn't know 
 
324 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 how much are two times two if the neighbours didn't get it 
 to her " 
 
 Again he had run down under her level look. As he 
 stopped, the girl on the couch who had lain with the blankets 
 to her neck suddenly threw them aside and sat up. Sur- 
 prisingly she was not garbed in sick-bed apparel. She 
 seemed to be fully dressed. 
 
 A long moment she sat thus, regarding him still with 
 that slow look, unbelieving yet cherishing. His eyes fell 
 at last. 
 
 " Merton ! " he heard her say. He looked up but she did not 
 speak. She merely gave a little knowing nod of the head 
 and opened her arms to him. Quickly he knelt beside her 
 while the mother ing arms enfolded him. A hand pulled 
 his head to her breast and held it there. Thus she rocked 
 gently, the hand gliding up to smooth his hair. Without 
 words she cherished him thus a long time. The gentle rock- 
 ing back and forth continued. 
 
 "It's it's like that other time you found me " His 
 
 bluster had gone. He was not sure of his voice. Even 
 these few words had been hard. He did not try more. 
 
 "There, there, there!" she whispered. "It's all right, 
 everything's all right. Your mother's got you right here 
 and she ain't ever going to let you go never going to let 
 you go." 
 
 She was patting his head in rhythm with her rocking 
 as she snuggled and soothed him. There was silence for 
 another interval. Then she began to croon a song above 
 him as she rocked, though the lyric was plainly an improv- 
 isation. 
 
 "Did he have his poor old mother going for a minute? 
 Yes, he did. He had her going for a minute, for a minute. 
 Yes, he had her going good for a minute. 
 
 "But oh, he won't ever fool her very long, very long, not 
 very long, because he can't fool his dear old mother very 
 long, very long; and he can bet on that, bet on that, so he can, 
 bet a lot of money on that, that, that!" 
 
THE TRAGIC COMEDIAN 325 
 
 Her charge had grown still again, but she did not relax 
 her tightened arms. 
 
 "Say," he said at last. 
 
 "Well, honey." 
 
 "You know those benches where we wait for the cars?" 
 
 "Do I know them?" The imperative inference was that 
 she did. 
 
 "I looked at the store yesterday. The sign down there 
 says TETimebaugh's dignified system of deferred payments.' ' 
 
 "Yes, yes, I know." 
 
 "Well, I saw another good place it says 'The house of 
 lucky rings' you know ring*!" 
 
 "Sure, I know. That's all right." 
 
 "Well," he threw off the arms and got to his feet. She 
 stood up then. 
 
 "Well, all right!" 
 
 They were both constrained now. Both affected an ease 
 that neither felt. It seemed to be conceded without words 
 that they must very lightly skirt the edges of Merton Gill's 
 screen art. They talked a long time volubly of other things : 
 of the girl's illness from which she now seemed most happily 
 to have recovered, of whether she was afraid of him she 
 professed still to be of the new watch whose beauties were 
 newly admired when it had been adjusted to its owner's 
 wrist; of finances they talked, and even, quite simply, of 
 accessible homes where two could live as cheaply as one. 
 
 It was not until he was about to go, when he stood at the 
 door while the girl readjusted his cravat, smoothed his hair,- 
 and administered a final series of pats where they seemed 
 most needed, that he broke ever so slightly through the re- 
 serve which both had felt congealing about a certain topic. 
 
 "You know," he said, "I happened to remember the title 
 of a book this morning; a book I used to see back in the 
 public library at home. It wasn't one I ever read. Maybe 
 Tessie Kearns read it. Anyway, she had a poem she likes 
 a lot written by the same man. She used to read me good 
 parts of it. But I never read the book because the title 
 
326 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 sounded kind of wild, like there couldn't be any such thing. 
 The poem had just a plain name; it was called 'Lucile,' 
 but the book by the same man was called 'The Tragic Com- 
 edians/ You wouldn't think there could be a tragic com- 
 edian would you? well, look at me." 
 
 She looked at him, with that elusive, remote flickering 
 back in her eyes, but she only said, "Be sure and come take 
 me out to dinner. To-night I can eat. And don't forget 
 your overcoat. And listen don't you dare go into Hime- 
 baugh's till I can go with you." 
 
 One minute after he had gone the Montague girl was at 
 the telephone. 
 
 "Hello! Mr. Baird, please. Is this Mr. Baird? Well, 
 Jeff, everything's jake. Yeah. The poor thing was pretty 
 iwild when he got here. First he began to bluff. He'd got 
 an earful from someone, probably over on the lot. And 
 he put it over on me for a minute, too. But he didn't last 
 good. He was awful broke up when the end came. Bless 
 his heart. But you bet I kissed the hurt place and made it 
 well. How about him now? Jeff, I'm darned if I can telf 
 except he's right again. When he got here he was some 
 heart-broke and some mad and some set up on account of 
 things he hears about himself. I guess he's that way still, 
 except I mended the heart-break. I can't quite make him 
 out he's like a book where you can't guess what's coming 
 in the next chapter, so you keep on reading. I can see we 
 ain't ever going to talk much about it not if we live to- 
 gether twenty years. What's that? Yeah. Didn't I tell 
 you he was always getting me, somehow? Well, now I'm 
 got. Yeah. We're gonna do an altar walk. What? Oh, 
 right away. Say, honest, Jeff, I'll never have an easy 
 minute again while he's out of my sight. Helpless! You 
 said it. Thanks, Jeff. I know that, old man. Good-by !" 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 ONWARD AND UPWARD 
 
 A' THE first showing of the Buckeye company's new 
 five-reel comedy Five Reels 500 Laughs en- 
 titled Brewing Trouble, two important members 
 of its cast occupied balcony seats and one of them throughout 
 the piece brazenly applauded the screen art of her husband. 
 "I don't care who sees me," she would reply ever and again 
 to his whispered protests. 
 
 The new piece proved to be a rather broadly stressed 
 burlesque of the type of picture drama that has done so much 
 to endear the personality of Edgar Wayne to his public. 
 It was accorded a hearty reception. There was nothing to 
 which it might be compared save the company's previous 
 Hearts on Fire, and it seemed to be felt that the present 
 offering had surpassed even that masterpiece of satire. 
 
 The Gills, above referred to, watched the unwinding cel- 
 luloid with vastly different emotions. Mrs. Gill was hearty 
 in her enjoyment, as has been indicated. Her husband, 
 superficially, was not displeased. But beneath that surface 
 of calm approval beneath even the look of bored indifference 
 he now and then managed there still ran a complication 
 of emotions, not the least of which was honest bewilderment. 
 People laughed, so it must be funny. And it was good to be 
 known as an artist of worth, even if the effects of your art 
 were unintended. 
 
 It was no shock to him to learn now that the mechanical 
 appliance in his screen-mother's kitchen was a still, and that 
 the grape juice the honest country boy purveyed to the rich 
 New Yorker had been improved in rank defiance of a con- 
 
 827 
 
328 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 stitutional amendment. And even during the filming of 
 the piece he had suspected that the little sister, so engagingly 
 played by the present Mrs. Gill, was being too bold. With 
 slight surprise, therefore, as the drama unfolded, he saw 
 that she had in the most brazen manner invited the atten- 
 tions of the city villains. 
 
 She had, in truth, been only too eager to be lured to the 
 great city with all its pitfalls, and had bidden the old home 
 farewell in her simple country way while each of the villains 
 in turn had awaited her in his motor-car. What Merton 
 had not been privileged to watch were the later develop- 
 ments of this villainy. For just beyond the little hamlet at 
 a lonely spot in the road each of the motor-cars had been 
 stopped by a cross-eyed gentleman looking much like the 
 clerk in the hotel, save that he was profusely bewhiskered 
 and bore side-arms in a menacing fashion. 
 
 Declaring that no scoundrel could take his little daughter 
 from him, he deprived the villains of their valuables, so that 
 for a time at least they should not bring other unsuspecting 
 girls to grief. As a further precaution he compelled them 
 to abandon their motor-cars, in which he drove off with the 
 rescued daughter. He was later seen to sell the cars at a 
 wayside garage, and, after dividing their spoils with his daugh- 
 ter, to hail a suburban trolley upon which they both returned 
 to the home nest, where the little girl would again languish 
 at the gate, a prey to any designing city man who might 
 pass. 
 
 She seemed so defenceless in her wild-rose beauty, her 
 longing for pretty clothes and city ways, and yet so capably 
 protected by this opportune father who appeared to foresee 
 the moment of her flights. 
 
 He learned without a tremor that among the triumphs of 
 his inventive genius had been a machine for making ten- 
 dollar bills, at which the New York capitalist had exclaimed 
 that the state right for Iowa alone would bring one hundred 
 thousand dollars. Even more remunerative, it would seem, 
 had been his other patent the folding boomerang. The 
 
ONWARD AND UPWARD 329 
 
 manager of the largest boomerang factory in Australia stood 
 ready to purchase this device for ten million dollars. 
 
 And there was a final view of the little home after pros- 
 perity had come to its inmates so long threatened with ruin. 
 A sign over the door read "Ye Olde Fashioned Gifte Shoppe," 
 and under it, flaunted to the wayside, was the severely sim- 
 ple trade-device of a high boot. 
 
 These things he now knew were to be expected among the 
 deft infamies of a Buckeye comedy. But the present piece 
 held in store for him a complication that, despite his already 
 rich experience of Buckeye methods, caused him distressing 
 periods of heat and cold while he watched its incredible un- 
 folding. 
 
 Early in the piece, indeed, he had begun to suspect in the 
 luring of his little sister a grotesque parallel to the bold ad- 
 vances made him by the New York society girl. He at once 
 feared some such interpretation when he saw himself coy 
 and embarrassed before her down-right attack, and he was 
 certain this was intended when he beheld himself embraced 
 by this reckless young woman who behaved in the manner 
 of male screen idols during the last dozen feet of the last 
 reel. But how could he have suspected the lengths to 
 which a perverted spirit of satire would lead the Buckeye 
 director? 
 
 For now he staggered through the blinding snow, a bundle 
 clasped to his breast. He fell, half fainting, at the door of 
 the old home. He groped for the knob and staggered in 
 to kneel at his mother's feet. And she sternly repulsed him, 
 a finger pointing to the still open door. 
 
 Unbelievably the screen made her say, "He wears no 
 ring. Back to the snow with 'em both! Throw 'em Way 
 Down East!" 
 
 And Baird had said the bundle would contain one of hig 
 patents ! 
 
 Mrs. Gill watched this scene with tense absorption. When 
 the mother's iron heart had relented she turned to her hus- 
 band. "You dear thing, that was a beautiful piece of work. 
 
330 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 You're set now. That cinches your future. Only, dearest, 
 never, never, never let it show on your face that you think 
 it's funny. That's all you'll ever have to be afraid of in your 
 work." 
 
 "I won't," he said stoutly. 
 
 He shivered or did he shudder? and quickly reached 
 to take her hand. It was a simple, direct gesture, yet some- 
 how it richly had the quality of pleading. 
 
 " Mother understands," she whispered. " Only remember, 
 you mustn't seem to think it's funny." 
 
 "I won't," he said again. But in his torn heart he stub- 
 bornly cried, "I don't, I don't!" 
 
 Some six months later that representative magazine, 
 Silver Screenings, emblazoned upon its front cover a promise 
 that in the succeeding number would appear a profusely 
 illustrated interview by Augusta Blivens with that rising 
 young screen actor, Merton Gill. 
 
 The promise was kept. The interview wandered amid 
 photographic reproductions of the luxurious Hollywood 
 bungalow, set among palms and climbing roses, the actor 
 and his wife in their high-powered roadster (Mrs. Gill at 
 the wheel) ; the actor in his costume of chaps and sombrero, 
 rolling a cigarette; the actor in evening dress, the actor in 
 his famous scene of the Christmas eve return in Brewing 
 Trouble; the actor regaining his feet in his equally famous 
 scene of the malignant spurs; the actor and his young wife, 
 on the lawn before the bungalow, and the young wife 
 aproned, in her kitchen, earnestly busy with spoon and mixing 
 bowl. 
 
 "It is perhaps not generally known," wrote Miss Blivens, 
 "that the honour of having discovered this latest luminary in 
 the stellar firmament should be credited to Director Howard 
 Henshaw of the Victor forces. Indeed, I had not known 
 this myself until the day I casually mentioned the Gills in 
 his presence. I lingered on a set of Island Love, at present 
 
ONWARD AND UPWARD 331 
 
 being filmed by this master of the unspoken drama, having 
 but a moment since left that dainty little reigning queen of 
 the celluloid dynasty, Muriel Mercer. Seated with her in 
 the tiny bijou boudoir of her bungalow dressing room on the 
 great Holden lot, its walls lined with the works of her favour- 
 ite authors for one never finds this soulful little girl far 
 from the books that have developed her mentally as the art 
 of the screen has developed her emotionally she had re- 
 ferred me to the director when I sought further details of 
 her forthcoming great production, an idyl of island romance 
 and adventure. And presently, when I had secured from him 
 the information I needed concerning this unique little drama 
 of the great South Seas, I chanced to mention my approach- 
 ing encounter with the young star of the Buckeye forces, 
 an encounter to which I looked forward with some dis- 
 may. 
 
 "Mr. Henshaw, pausing in his task of effecting certain 
 changes in the interior of the island hut, reassured me. 'You 
 need have no fear about your meeting with Gill,' he said. 
 'You will find him quite simple and unaffected, an artist, 
 and yet sanely human.' It was now that he revealed his own 
 part in the launching of this young star. 'I fancy it is not 
 generally known,' he continued, 'that to me should go the 
 honour of having "discovered" Gill. It is a fact, how- 
 ever. 
 
 " ' He appeared as an extra one morning in the cabaret scene 
 we used in Miss Mercer's tremendous hit, The Blight of 
 Broadway. Instantly, as you may suppose, I was struck 
 by the extraordinary distinction of his face and bearing. 
 In that crowd composed of average extra people he stood 
 out to my eye as one made for big things. After only a 
 moment's chat with him I gave him a seat at the edge of the 
 dancing floor and used him most effectively in portraying 
 the basic idea of this profoundly stirring drama in which 
 Miss Mercer was to achieve one of her brightest triumphs. 
 
 " ' Watch that play to-day; you will discover young Gill in 
 many of the close-ups where, under my direction, he brought 
 
332 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 out the psychological, the symbolic if I may use the term 
 values of the great idea underlying our story. Even in these 
 bits he revealed the fine artistry which he has since demon- 
 strated more broadly under another director. 
 
 1 ' To my lasting regret the piece was then too far along to 
 give him a more important part, though I intended to offer 
 him something good in our next play for Muriel Mercer 
 you may recall her gorgeous success in Her Father's Wife 
 but I was never able to find the chap again. I made in- 
 quiries, of course, and felt a really personal sense of loss when 
 I could get no trace of him. I knew then, as well as I know 
 now, that he was destined for eminence in our world of painted 
 shadows. You may imagine my chagrin later when I 
 learned that another director was to reap the rewards of a 
 discovery all my own.' 
 
 "And so," continued Miss Blivens, "it was with the Hen- 
 shaw words still in my ears that I first came into the pres- 
 ence of Merton Gill, feeling that he would as he at once 
 finely did put me at my ease. Simple, unaffected, modest, 
 he is one whom success has not spoiled. Both on the set 
 where I presently found him playing the part of a titled 
 roue in the new Buckeye comedy to be called, one hears, 
 'Nearly Sweethearts or Something* and later in the luxur- 
 ious but homelike nest which the young star has provided 
 for his bride of a few months she was 'Flips' Montague, one 
 recalls, daughter of a long line of theatrical folk dating back 
 to days of the merely spoken drama he proved to be finely 
 unspoiled and surprisingly unlike the killingly droll mime 
 of the Buckeye constellation. Indeed one cannot but be 
 struck at once by the deep vein of seriousness underlying the 
 comedian's surface drollery. His sense of humour must be 
 tremendous ; and yet only in the briefest flashes of his whim- 
 sical manner can one divine it. 
 
 "'Let us talk only of my work,' he begged me. 'Only that 
 can interest my public.' And so, very seriously, we talked 
 of his work. 
 
 "'Have you ever thought of playing serious parts?' I 
 
"It's all right, everything's all right" 
 
ONWARD AND UPWARD 333 
 
 asked, being now wholly put at my ease by his friendly, 
 unaffected ways. 
 
 "He debated a moment, his face rigidly set, inscrutable 
 to my glance. Then he relaxed into one of those whimsi- 
 cally appealing smiles that somehow are acutely eloquent of 
 pathos. 'Serious parts with this low-comedy face of mine !' 
 he responded. Aiid my query had been answered. Yet 
 he went on, 'No, I shall never play Hamlet. I can give a 
 good imitation of a bad actor but, doubtless, I should give 
 a very bad imitation of a good one. 
 
 " ( Et voilh, Messieurs!' I remarked to myself. The man 
 with a few simple strokes of the brush had limned me his 
 portrait. And I was struck again with that pathetic appeal 
 in face and voice as he spoke so confidingly. After all, is 
 not pure pathos the hall-mark of great comedy? We laugh, 
 but more poignantly because our hearts are tugged at. And 
 here was a master of the note pathetic. 
 
 "Who that has roared over the Gill struggle with the dread- 
 Tul spurs was not even at the climax of his merriment sym- 
 pathetically aware of his earnest persistence, the pained sin- 
 cerity of his repeated strivings, the genuine anguish distorting 
 his face as he senses the everlasting futility of his efforts? 
 Who that rocked with laughter at the fox-trot lesson in 
 Object, Alimony, could be impervious to the facial agony 
 above those incompetent, disobedient, heedless feet? 
 
 "Here was honest endeavour, an almost prayerful determi- 
 nation, again and again thwarted by feet that recked not of 
 rhythm or even of bare mechanical accuracy. Those feet, 
 so apparently aimless, so little under control, were perhaps 
 the most mirthful feet that ever scored failure in the dance. 
 But the face, conscious of their clumsiness, was a mask of 
 fine tragedy. 
 
 "Such is the combination, it seems to me, that has pro- 
 duced the artistry now so generally applauded, an artistry 
 that perhaps achieved its full flowering in that powerful bit 
 toward the close of Brewing Trouble the return of the erring 
 son with his agony of appeal so markedly portrayed that for 
 
334 MERTON OF THE MOVIES 
 
 the moment one almost forgot the wildly absurd burlesque 
 of which it formed the joyous yet truly emotional apex. I 
 spoke of this. 
 
 "True burlesque is, after all, the highest criticism, don't 
 you think?' he asked me. 'Doesn't it make demands which 
 only a sophisticated audience can meet isn't it rather high- 
 brow criticism?' And I saw that he had thought deeply 
 about his art. 
 
 "'It is because of this,' he went on, 'that we must re-, 
 sort to so much of the merely slap-stick stuff in our comedies. 
 For after all, our picture audience, twenty million people a 
 day surely one can make no great demands upon their in- 
 telligence/ He considered a moment, seemingly lost in 
 memories of his work. 'I dare say,' he concluded, 'there are 
 not twenty million people of taste and real intelligence in 
 the whole world.' 
 
 "Yet it must not be thought that this young man would 
 play the cynic. He is superbly the optimist, though now 
 again he struck a note of almost cynic whimsicality. 'Of 
 
 course our art is in its infancy J He waited for my nod 
 
 of agreement, then dryly added, 'We must, I think, consider 
 it the Peter Pan of the arts. And I dare say you recall the 
 outstanding biological freakishness of Peter.' But a smile 
 that slow, almost puzzled smile of his accompanied the 
 words. 
 
 "'You might,' he told me at parting, 'call me the tragic 
 comedian.' And again I saw that this actor is set apart 
 from the run of his brethren by an almost uncanny gift fo* 
 introspection. He has ruthlessly analysed himself. He 
 knows, as he put it, 'what God meant him to be.' Was 
 here a hint of poor Cyrano? 
 
 "I left after some brief reference to his devoted young 
 wife, who, in studio or home, is never far from his side. 
 
 "'It is true that I have struggled and sacrificed to give 
 the public something better and finer,' he told me then; 
 'but I owe my real success all to her.' He took the young 
 wife's hand in both his own, and very simply, unaffectedly, 
 
ONWARD AND UPWARD 335 
 
 raised it to his cheek where he held it a moment, with that 
 dreamy, remembering light in his eyes, as of one striving 
 to recall bits of his past. 
 
 <4< I think that's all,' he said at last. But on the instant 
 of my going he checked me once more. 'No, it isn't either.' 
 He brightened. *I want you to tell your readers that this 
 little woman is more than my wife she is my best pal; and, 
 I may also add, my severest critic.' " 
 
 THE END 
 
There's More to Follow! 
 
 More stories of the sort you like; 
 more, probably, by the author of this 
 one; more than 500 titles all told by 
 writers of world-wide reputation, in 
 the Authors' Alphabetical List which 
 you will find on the reverse side of the 
 wrapper of this book. Look it over 
 before you lay it aside. There are 
 books here you are sure to want some, 
 possibly, that you have always wanted. 
 
 It is a selected list; every book in it 
 has achieved a certain measure of 
 success. 
 
 The Grosset & Dunlap list is not only 
 the greatest Index of Good Fiction 
 available, it represents in addition a 
 generally accepted Standard of Value. 
 It will pay you to 
 
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KATHLEEN NORRIS' STORIES 
 
 May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Cresset & Dunbp's liet 
 
 SISTERS. Frontispiece by Frank Street. 
 
 The California Redwoods furnish the background for this 
 beautiful story of sisterly devotion and sacrifice. 
 
 POOR. DEAR. MARGARET KIRBY. 
 Frontispiece by George Gibbs. 
 
 A collection of delightful stories, including "Bridging the 
 Years " and "The Tide-Marsh." This story is now shown in 
 moving pictures. 
 
 )OSSELYN'S WIFE. Frontispiece by C. Allan Gilbert 
 
 The story of a beautiful woman who fought a bitter fight for 
 happiness and love. 
 
 MARTIE. THE UNCQNQUERED. 
 Illustrated by Charles E. Chambers. 
 The triumph of a dauntless spirit over adverse conditions. 
 
 THE HEART OF RACHAEL. 
 Frontispiece by Charles E. Chambers. 
 
 An interesting story of divorce and the problems that come 
 with a second marriage. 
 
 THE STORY OF JULIA PAGE. 
 
 Frontispiece by C. Allan Gilbert. 
 
 \ A sympathetic portrayal of the quest of a normal girl, obscure 
 
 and lonely, for the happiness of life. 
 
 SATURDAY'S CHILD. Frontispiece by F. Graham Cootes. 
 
 Can a girl, born in rather sordid conditions, lift herself through 
 sheer determination to the better things for which her soul 
 hungered ? 
 
 MOTHER. Illustrated by F. C. Yohn. 
 
 A story of the big mother heart that beats in the background 
 of every girl's life, and some dreams which came true. 
 
 Ask for Complete free list of G. & D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction 
 
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BOOTH TARKINGTON'S 
 NOVELS 
 
 May be bad wherever books are sold. Asklfor Grosset & Dunlap's list 
 
 SEVENTEEN. Illustrated by Arthur William Brown. 
 
 No one but the creator ef Penrod could have portrayed 
 the immortal young people of this story. Its humor is irre- 
 sistible and reminiscent of the tune when the reader was 
 Seventeen. 
 
 PENROD. Illustrated by Gordon Grant. 
 
 This is a picture of a boy's heart, full of the lovable, hu- 
 morous, tragic things which are locked secrets to most older 
 folks. It is a finished, exquisite work. 
 
 PENROD AND SAM. Illustrated by Worth Brehm. 
 
 Like " Penrod " and " Seventeen," this book contains 
 some remarkable phases of real boyhood and some of the best 
 stories of juvenile prankishness that have ever been written. 
 
 THE TURMOIL. Illustrated by C. E. Chambers. 
 
 Bibbs Sheridan is a dreamy, imaginative youth, who re- 
 volts against his father's plans for him to be a servitor of 
 'big business. The love^of a fine girl turns Bibb's life from 
 failure to success. 
 
 THE GENTLEMAN FROM INDIANA. Frontispiece. 
 
 A story of love and politics, more especially a picture of 
 a country editor's life in Indiana, but the charm of the book 
 lies in the love interest. 
 
 THE FLIRT. Illustrated by Clarence F. Underwood. 
 
 The " Flirt," the younger of two sisters, breaks one girl's 
 engagement, drives one man to suicide, causes the murder 
 of another, leads another to lose his fortune, and in the end 
 marries a stupid and unpromising suitor, leaving the really 
 worthy one to marry her sister. 
 
 Ak for Complete free list of G. 6- D. Popular Copyrighied Fiction 
 
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PETER B. KYNE'S NOVELS 
 
 May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list. 
 
 THE PRIDE OF PALOMAR 
 
 When two strong men clash and the under-dog has Irish 
 blood in his veins there's a tale that Kyne can tell! And 
 " the girl " is also very much in evidence. 
 
 KINDRED OF THE DUST 
 
 Donald McKay, son of Hector McKay, millionaire lum- 
 ber king, falls in love with " Nan of the Sawdust Pile," a 
 charming girl who has been ostracized by her townsfolk. 
 
 THE VALLEY OF THE GIANTS 
 
 The fight of the Cardigans, father and son, to hold the 
 Valley of the Giants against treachery. The reader finishes 
 with a sense of having lived with big men and women in a 
 big country. 
 
 GAPPY RICKS 
 
 The story of old Cappy Ricks and of Matt Peasley, the 
 boy he tried to break because he knew the acid test was 
 good for his soul. 
 
 WEBSTER: MAN'S MAN 
 
 In a little Jim Crow Republic in Central America, a man 
 and a woman, hailing from the " States," met up with a 
 revolution and for a while adventures and excitement came 
 so thick and fast that their love affair had to wait for a lull 
 in the game. 
 
 CAPTAIN SCRAGGS 
 
 This sea yarn recounts the adventures of three rapscal- 
 lion sea-faring men a Captain Scraggs, owner of the green 
 vegetable freighter Maggie, Gibney the mate and McGuff- 
 ney the engineer. 
 
 THE LONG CHANCE 
 
 A story fresh from the heart of the West, of San Pasqual, 
 a sun-baked desert town, of Harley P. Hennage, the best 
 gambler, the best and worst man of San Pasqual and of 
 lovely Donna. 
 
 GROSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK