But oftener she would sit with Merton on the back seat of one of the waiting automobiles. She not only kept herself 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 betrayed a pleasant consciousness of Merton's existence. But the Montague girl noticeably monopolized him when 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 doubtless 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 renewed 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 understand 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 playing your dear little sister, but I'm playing your mother, too. If it hadn't been for me this bunch would have taught 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 Claus 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 films back there in Gooseberry "—He had quit trying to correct her as to Gashwiler and Simsbury. 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 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."

"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 dictionary. That old scout would go out night or day and break 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 everything 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 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 childhood. 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. "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 understander—where's your top-mounter?" She became a circus ringmaster. "Three up and a roll for yours," she commanded. 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. Merton 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!

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 undoubted 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 Armytage' stuff," she told him as she seriously munched a sandwich. "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 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 bloody 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 Maltravers."

"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 Montague; 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." "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 'Flips.'"

"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 regard 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 consideration 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 camping on the lot any more. And don't shoot dice with these rough-necks on the lot." "I won't," he assured her. "I don't believe in gambling." 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 opposite 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 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 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 acceptably serious, but he wished, with a quite seemly curiosity, 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 them 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 decision. But always the misgivings would return. He would not be really content until he had watched his own triumph. 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 tradesman 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!"

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 distillations and brews which he warmly recommended to the guest. While the guest timidly considered, having had but the slightest experience with intoxicants, it developed that the confidence 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 vanished 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 colourless, fiery stuff with an elusive taste of metal. Merton contrived an expression of pleasure under the searching glance of his host. "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 possessing a dimpled chin.

Further, an artist in the so-called art received his payment 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 tradesmen 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 aperitif.

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." He lighted his pipe, and identified various framed photographs 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 speaking 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 wretched 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 removed 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—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 Under 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 instead 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 unconscious 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 hundred 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 desirable that her pupil should become proficient in the modern 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 inconsiderable 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 hazarding 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. Would 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 exacting 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 the girl, after all, had made him what he was. And the first piece was close to its premiere. Already he had seen advance 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 unforgetful 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 enormous 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 remembered the event it should celebrate. Still, it was a pleasing trifle and did not look cheap.

"Do you warrant it to keep good time?" he sternly demanded.

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, 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 superstitious, 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. "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 protege. Under her 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 moment.

"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." "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 Montague 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 you 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 grave 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 vanilla ice-cream and everything, right in a real restaurant—none of this tray stuff—and I'll let you pay for it all by yourself. 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 film 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 breaking 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 dinner, 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. 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, despairing. "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 followed 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 Lime she seemed to think little 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 illumined the room in which he waited. She came back to him, 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 intimating. 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 exclamation 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 irritation 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 something 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 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 certain sinister details of her past, spurred thereto by a scoundrel 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 Parmalee 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 of the bully in his voice—"don't ever do any more of those stunts—see what I mean? None of that falling off streetcars 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 violently 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." "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"

It occurred to him the next morning that he might have taken too lightly Sarah's foreboding of illness. 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 certain it was nothing serious. No; she had no temperature. No fever at all. She was just having a spell of thinking about 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. Undoubtedly 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 tremendous 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 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. Patterson, 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 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 farewell 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. 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, "Dangerous. 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 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 detected 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 delicatessen shop was wrecked. And through it all the old mother continued to mop the floor. 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 permanent 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 end he 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 swiftness 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 multiplied 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 detective, 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 subtitle 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 detective. 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 faithful 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. 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 in 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 profaned 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, desolating!

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, inconsequent 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. Amazingly 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 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 I'll tell you I mean it when I talk that way—yes, sir, funnier than the cross-eyed man himself. My, I guess the neighbours'll 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 pronounced 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 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 suspicion 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 sun 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 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 unprecedented. 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 representative of a possibly repenting Baird. He was, on the contrary, representing a rival producer. He extended his card—The Bigart Comedies.

"I got your address from the Holden office, Mr. Armytage. I guess I routed you out of bed, eh? Well, it's like 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 understand 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. Walberg 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 all—on 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 misapprehension; 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 filmdom. 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 foreground 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 find 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 building 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, absently 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. 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 rehearse the speech a doughtier Baird would now have been hearing.

Instead he roughly drafted one that Sarah Nevada Montague 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 continued 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 adjoining table. The rehearsing orator glanced up to discover 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'll happen to us if the picture public ever finds that out? What'll 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 because 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, 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 Parmalee 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 audience. 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 slapstick, 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.