"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 Imean? I don't want to get nicked nor nothing.""All right, all right! She understands."
Jack leaped through the window to a crouch, weapon in hand. The knife quivered in the wall above him as he shot.
"Fine and dandy. Some class, I'll say. All right, Jack. Get back.
We'll gun this little scene right here and now. All ready, Jack, all ready Miss Montague--camera!--one, two, three--come in, Jack." Again the knife quivered in the wall above his head even while he crouched to shoot at the treacherous Mexican who had thrown it.
"Good work, Flips. Thanks a whole lot. We'll do as much for you some time.""You're entirely welcome, Mr. Burke. No trouble to oblige. How you coming?""Coming good. This thing's going to be a knockout. I bet it'll gross a million. Nearly done, too, except for some chase stuff up in the hills. I'll do that next week. What you doing?""Oh, everything's jake with me. I'm over on Number Four--Toys of Destiny--putting a little pep into the mob stuff. Laid out for two hours, waiting for something--I don't know what."Merton Gill passed on. He confessed now to a reluctant admiration for the Montague girl. She could surely throw a knife. He must practise that himself sometime. He might have stayed to see more of this drama but he was afraid the girl would break out into more of her nonsense. He was aware that she swept him with her eyes as he turned away but he evaded her glance. She was not a person, he thought, that one ought to encourage.
He emerged from the great building and crossed an alley to another of like size. Down toward its middle was the usual wall of canvas with half-a-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 coarse pantomime, their heavy horse-play, did so much to debase a great art. There, even at his side, was the arch offender, none other than Jeff Baird himself, the man whose regrettable sense of so-called humour led him to make these low appeals to the witless. And even as he looked the cross-eyed man entered the scene. Garbed in the weirdly misfitting clothes of a waiter, holding aloft a loaded tray of dishes, he entered on roller skates, to halt before Baird with his uplifted tray at a precarious balance.
"All right, that's better," said Baird. "And, Gertie, listen: don't throw the chair in front of him. That's out. Now we'll have the entrance again. You other boys on the 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.
"Hello, Jeff! Atta boy!"
He knew without turning that the Montague girl was again at his elbow. He wondered if she could be following him.
"Hello, Flips! How's the kid?" The producer had turned cordially to her. "Just in time for the breakaway stuff. See how you like it.""What's the big idea?"
