Merton of the Movies Part 10

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

"Why, Mr. Henshaw's gone!" she exclaimed dramatically. "Boy, boy, page Mr. Henshaw." Mr. Henshaw remained oblivious.

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

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

Then later along comes this Ben Ali Ahab--"

The Montague girl glanced again at the face of the strange young man whose eyes had held a new expression for her, but she and Mr. Henshaw and the so-called governor and all those other diners who rattled thick crockery and talked unendingly had ceased to exist for Merton Gill.

A dozen tables down the room and nearer the door sat none other than Beulah Baxter. Alone at her table, she gazed raptly aloft, meditating perhaps some daring new feat. Merton Gill stared, entranced, frozen.

The Montague girl perfectly understood this look and traced it to its object. Then she surveyed Merton Gill again with something faintly like pity in her shrewd eyes. He was still staring, still rapt.

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

He looked for the check for his meal; it should have been in one hand or the other. But it was in neither. He must have left it back on his tray.

Now he must return for it. He went as quickly as he could. The Montague girl was holding it up as he approached. "Here's the little joker, Kid,"

she said kindly.

"Thanks!" said Merton. He said it haughtily, not meaning to be haughty, but he was embarra.s.sed and also fearful that Beulah Baxter would be lost. "Exit limping," murmured the girl as he turned away. He hurried again to the door, paid the check and was outside. Miss Baxter was not to be seen. His forgetfulness about the check had lost her to him. He had meant to follow, to find the place where she was working, and look and look and look! Now he had lost her. But she might be on one of those stages within the big barns. Perhaps the day was not yet lost.

He crossed the street, forgetting to saunter, and ventured within the cavernous gloom beyond an open door. He stood for a moment, his vision dulled by the dusk. Presently he saw that he faced a wall of canvas backing. Beyond this were low voices and the sound of people moving. He went forward to a break in the canvas wall and at the same moment there was a metallic jar and light flooded the enclosure. From somewhere outside came music, princ.i.p.ally the low, leisurely moan of a 'cello. A beautiful woman in evening dress was with suppressed emotion kneeling at the bedside of a sleeping child. At the doorway stood a dark, handsome gentleman in evening dress, regarding her with a cynical smile. The woman seemed to bid the child farewell, and arose with hands to her breast and quivering lips. The still-smiling gentleman awaited her. When she came to him, glancing backward to the sleeping child, he threw about her an elaborate fur cloak and drew her to him, his cynical smile changing to one of deceitful tenderness. The woman still glanced back at the child, but permitted herself to be drawn through the doorway by the insistent gentleman. From a door the other side of the bed came a kind-faced nurse. She looked first at the little one then advanced to stare after the departing couple. She raised her hands tragically and her face became set in a mask of sorrow and despair. She clasped the hands desperately.

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

The 'cello ceased its moan in the middle of a bar.

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

This was all thrilling to Merton Gill; but Beulah Baxter was not here, her plays being clean and wholesome things of the great outdoors. Far down the great enclosure was another wall of canvas backing, a flood of light above it and animated voices from within. He stood again to watch.

But this drama seemed to have been suspended. The room exposed was a bedroom with an open window facing an open door; the actors and the mechanical staff as well were busily hurling knives at various walls.

They were earnest and absorbed in this curious pursuit. Sometimes they made the knife penetrate the wall, oftener it merely struck and clattered to the floor. Five knives at once were being hurled by five enthusiasts, while a harried-looking director watched and criticised.

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

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

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

"It ain't balanced right," she declared. "Haven't you got one with a heavier handle?"

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

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

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

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

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

"All right, all right! She understands."

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

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

"Good work, Flips. Thanks a whole lot. We'll do as much for you some time."

"You're entirely welcome, Mr. Burke. No trouble to oblige. How you coming?"

"Coming good. This thing's going to be a knockout. I bet it'll gross a million. Nearly done, too, except for some chase stuff up in the hills.

I'll do that next week. What you doing?"

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

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

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

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

"Follow him in and pile up on him when he makes the grand spill--see what I mean? Get your trays loaded now and get off. Now you other people, take your seats. No, no, Annie, you're at the head, I told you.

Tom, you're at the foot and start the rough-house when you get the tray in the neck. Now, all set."

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

"h.e.l.lo, Jeff! Atta boy!"

He knew without turning that the Montague girl was again at his elbow.

He wondered if she could be following him.

"h.e.l.lo, Flips! How's the kid?" The producer had turned cordially to her.

"Just in time for the breakaway stuff. See how you like it."

"What's the big idea?"

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

"Which is Uncle Rollo?"

"That's him at the table, with the herbaceous border under his chin."

"Is he in the fight?"

"I think so. I was going to rehea.r.s.e it once more to see if I could get a better idea. Near as I can see now, everybody takes a crack at him."

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

"Good work, Kid! That's a gag, all right. The little bean's sparking on all six, ain't it? Drop around again. We need folks like you.

Now, listen, Rollo--you there, Rollo, come here and get this. Now, listen--when the fight begins--"