"Rotten!" said an annoyed voice through the megaphone. "Can't you boys give me a little action? Jazz it, jazz it! Think it's a love scene? Go to it, now--plenty of jazz--understand what I mean?" He turned to the camera man beside him. "Ed, you turn ten--we got to get some speed some way. Jack"--to the other camera man--"you stay on twelve. All ready! Get some life into it, now, and Lafe"--this to the handsome actor--"don't keep trying to hold your front to the machine. We'll get you all right. Ready, now. Camera!"Again the fight was on. It went to a bitter finish in which the vanquished bully was sent with a powerful blow backward into the water, while the beautiful young girl ran to the victor and nestled in the protection of his strong arms.
Merton Gill passed on. This was the real thing. He would have a lot to tell Tessie Kearns in his next letter. Beyond the sawmill he came to an immense wooden structure like a cradle on huge rockers supported by scaffolding. From the ground he could make nothing of it, but a ladder led to the top. An hour on the Holden lot had made him bold. He mounted the ladder and stood on the deck of what he saw was a sea-going yacht. Three important-looking men were surveying the deckhouse forward. They glanced at the newcomer but with a cheering absence of curiosity or even of interest. He sauntered past them with a polite but not-too-keen interest. The yacht would be an expensive one. The deck fittings were elaborate. A glance into the captain's cabin revealed it to be fully furnished, with a chart and a sextant on the mahogany desk.
"Where's the bedding for this stateroom?" asked one of the men.
"I got a prop-rustler after it," one of the others informed him.
They strolled aft and paused by an iron standard ingeniously swung from the deck.
"That's Burke's idea," said one of the men. "I hadn't thought about a steady support for the camera; of course if we stood it on deck it would rock when the ship rocked and we'd get no motion. So Burke figures this out. The camera is on here and swings by that weight so it's always straight and the rocking registers. Pretty neat, what?""That was nothing to think of" said one of the other men, in apparent disparagement. "I thought of it myself the minute I saw it." The other two grinned at this, though Merton Gill, standing by, saw nothing to laugh at. He thought the speaker was pretty cheeky;for of course any one could think of this device after seeing it. He paused for a final survey of his surroundings from this elevation.
He could see the real falseness of the sawmill he had just left, he could also look into the exposed rear of the railway station, and could observe beyond it the exposed skeleton of that New York street. He was surrounded by mockeries.
He clambered down the ladder and sauntered back to the street of offices. He was by this time confident that no one was going to ask him what right he had in there. Now, too, he became conscious of hunger and at the same moment caught the sign "Cafeteria" over a neat building hitherto unnoticed. People were entering this, many of them in costume. He went idly toward the door, glanced up, looked at his watch, and became, to any one curious about him, a man who had that moment decided he might as well have a little food. He opened the screen door of the cafeteria, half expecting it to prove one of those structures equipped only with a front. But the cafeteria was practicable. The floor was crowded with little square polished tables at which many people were eating. A railing along the side of the room made a passage to the back where food was served from a counter to the proffered tray. He fell into line. No one had asked him how he dared try to eat with real actors and actresses and apparently no one was going to. Toward the end of the passage was a table holding trays and napkins the latter wrapped about an equipment of cutlery. He took his tray and received at the counter the foods he designated. He went through this ordeal with difficulty because it was not easy to keep from staring about at other patrons.
Constantly he was detecting some remembered face. But at last, with his laden tray he reached a vacant table near the centre of the room and took his seat. He absently arranged the food before him. He could stare at leisure now. All about him were the strongly marked faces of the film people, heavy with makeup, interspersed with hungry civilians, who might be producers, directors, camera men, or mere artisans, for the democracy of the cafeteria seemed ideal.
At the table ahead of his he recognized the man who had been annoyed one day by the silly question of the Montague girl. They had said he was a very important director. He still looked important and intensely serious. He was a short, very plump man, with pale cheeks under dark brows, and troubled looking gray hair. He was very seriously explaining something to the man who sat with him and whom he addressed as Governor, a merry-looking person with a stubby gray mustache and little hair, who seemed not too attentive to the director.
"You see, Governor, it's this way: the party is lost on the desert--understand what I mean--and Kempton Ward and the girl stumble into this deserted tomb just at nightfall. Now here's where the big kick comes--"Merton Gill ceased to listen for there now halted at his table, bearing a laden tray, none other than the Montague girl, she of the slangy talk and the regrettably free manner. She put down her tray and seated herself before it. She had not asked permission of the table's other occupant, indeed she had not even glanced at him, for cafeteria etiquette is not rigorous. He saw that she was heavily made up and in the costume of a gypsy, he thought, a short vivid skirt, a gay waist, heavy gold hoops in her ears, and dark hair massed about her small head. He remembered that this would not be her own hair. She fell at once to her food. The men at the next table glanced at her, the director without cordiality; but the other man smiled upon her cheerfully.
"Hello, Flips! How's the girl?"
