Picture Play Magazine (Oct-Nov 1915)

28 PICTURE-PLAY WEEKLY least I wrote that letter to warn them ; so — though they haunt and follow me in the dark at night, those maimed and murdered men — I did not mean to murder them. I tried, at least, to warn them. But that man — yes, you, Pinckney ! — you let it go to murcfer them, without a thought, without a wink of sleep lost ! You murderer ! You thief and traitor! "You thief ! You told me that it was to save me a royalty of one hundred dollars an inch, that you had to register my gun in Rheinstrum's name. But it was so you could steal a thousand ! You said it was to save the lives of our men that we had to spoil the Sommers gun ! You got me to let down the fires, so the gun was never forged and went green to the proving grounds, sure to explode and murder the men tiring it ! "It did murder them ; and you made me a murderer with you, too! Yes; I must be a murderer, for their ghosts haunt me day and night ! "But I'm not a traitor, too — a traitor like you, trying to disgrace in your place a man who saved your life ! Stand back !" "Dick! Oh, Dick— Dick!" Frances caught the young officer's hand, and was crushing it in her sudden confusion of great joy, horror, and terror. "Oh, Dick!" But Dick was tearing away from her grasp. "A moment, Frances. A moment !" he cried, and dashed after Marsh as the little man, with the pistol in his hand, sprang suddenly away. "Stop him ! Look out !" came from Bradley and A I r. Durant almost together. But they were too late; for a muffled shot sounded from the next room. In the cry and confusion, Pinckney broke for the door. But Bradley caught him. "His case is settled, I'm afraid, Pinckney," he said. "But you have one just about to begin with me. Hello ! Ah, then you were in time, Lieutenant Sommers?" he called. Dick reappeared between the portieres, leading the little man. "Yes, but I'm afraid he's made a hole in the paneling, Mr. Durant. However, I believe we can convince him that there's no need for him to try to make another in his head, or elsewhere." Mr. Durant put out his hand, first to Dick, then to Marsh. "No, Marsh, don't try it again," he said. "With Ether — Pinckney gone, we've more need for you ! Don't you want to make things up by taking charge of the forging of the new Sommers gun we start to-morrow? Oh, yes. Dick, of course we'll start it to-morrow ! The gun's al1 right, and there can be only a formal dismissal of two of the charges against you now ! And no one can conceivably connect you with the arms in Bagol !" "Oh, the arms in Bagol !" Bradley started suddenly. "I said I would postpone that till I had finished the others. But now it will be more comprehensive when I tell you that the government has received information that one of the captured chiefs has confessed that they got their arms in payment for some old claims they sold to an American. They cut the price of the gold to him in two if he would pay in arms ; and. though some of the natives attacked him as he was leaving the island, he sent the arms, and they smuggled them through !" "Oh !" cried Frances. "Etherington ! So that was why you had to see those chiefs alone, and why you wouldn't signal the San Juan and — and the rest ! And — oh, Dick, that was what you had discovered, too, the night we took you off from Bagol; and you wouldn't tell when you found you were in disgrace !" "Frances !" Dick stopped her, coming to her and closing his hands over hers. "Frances !" But, before them all, she raised her eyes to his and came closer, until his arms were about her and he held her to him. "Oh, Dick !" she cried. "You are clear now ; and you will not go back to Bagol ! But — I don't care where you go, or what you have ! Never let me be a moment, anywhere, without you, Dick ! Never !" The rest withdrew and left them alone together. News of the Photo-playwrights. William H. Lippert is now with the Eastern branch of the Universal Film Manufacturing Company. Lyllian Brown Leighton, the wellknown character woman of the Selig Polyscope Company, is also a writer of no little ability. Her latest release is Selig's "The Love of Loti San." William S Hart's Views on the Western Drama. THE photo play of the Wild West has * again proved that a thing must but ring true to live," said William S. Hart, a former Broadway favorite, who is now directing the making of Western film dramas for the Triangle under Thomas H. Ince in California. "The first photo-play makers seized this romantic period of our history because of its stirring action and picturesqueness. But they took the West of the dime novels and so created pictures that were untrue ; they did not touch, or else distorted, the fine humaneness, the courage and the aspiration of the pioneers. So they made husks of souls and — lost their public. To-day the theatergoers have turned their backs on the Wild Western drama. They have tired, as they always will, of falsity. "I was born in the West under pioneering conditions. My father was one of the early settlers in the Dakotas, and we knew the privations, the struggles, and the dreams of that period. So it has a powerful appeal to me. "And I can say with conviction that the real keynote of that day was not license and lawlessness, but the noble fight of the pioneers against those things. The early settlers of the West were obsessed by the ambition for what we know as civilization ; for an established order, for education and doctors and churches and the clean living that these things bring. "That is the real story of the West, and it is far more truly romantic than the other. It is this that I have tried to express in the Triangle play, 'The Disciple.' "This play pictures, of course, but a part of the life in pioneering days. The truth about the period is that it is essentially like all periods. There were all sorts of people among the pioneers. The difference lay in the conditions they had to meet,' and that brought out in splendid relief their democracy, their unselfishness, and their courage. " 'The Disciple' is only one of several of the new sort of Western dramas I hope to make, but it illustrates my point exactly." The article, "The Making of Thrillers," in the new PICTURE-PLAY MAGAZINE, out December ist, you ought not to miss.