Motion Picture Magazine (Feb-Jul 1919)

MOTION piCTURF 'I I MAGAZINE U seemed to keep remembering, be like home. Cissy didn't profess to understand. And, being something of an uncomplex little soul, she gave the matter up and walked along quite satisfactorily, and oddly comforted, with her hand in the warm, reassuring one of the strangerman's. He asked her a lot of questions. But he j asked them so kindly, so tenderly, so considerately, that Cissy, who had her own notions of pride and reticence, answeyjeaV , them all without compunction, even' to matters of her mother's appearance and apparel. "No, they aren't primroses," she told him, thoughtfully, in response to a peculiarly eager query, "not primroses at all, I dont think, sir. Lilies, tho, you might call them lilies, you know." And she thought him odder still when he gave a little sort of a groan and wiped his eyes with a big and immaculate handkerchief. She also told him all about the Grange, and how she had used to live there, and about the new owner, who said "Shut up !" to her so horridly. This was an utmost confidence, because that crude "Shut up !" had wounded Cissy's sensibilities very keenly, and she didn't like to talk about it. When they parted they were pals, and the stranger-man told her that doubtless she did remember his eyes, and that he was going to see her again very, very soon, and that the primroses would come back in Motherdy's cheeks long before they faded along the narrow lane. He also pressed a thickish wad of bills into her all unaccustomed little palm, because she said that one of the worst troubles was that Motherdy didn't have enough to pay Mr. Coombs, who came for the rent, and he wasn't a bit nice about it, and didn't seem to understand that it wasn't Motherdy's fault, and how could she help it? Also, that brother had bronchitis, and doctors weren't so expensive, being kind, but medicines, 'specially for bronchitis, were. She didn't know just what to do about the wad of bills, but the stranger-man, whom she felt in her child's heart, knew, said it was quite all right ; in fact, her right, and she was far from associating it with the rent and the medicines for bronchitis. After she had gone with fleet footsteps, Denver turned back. He had begun to get the lay of the land. He had known of Coombs, of the Spider, before. He had known no good of them. Craft, underhand dealings, conspiracies murky as the pasts from which they sprang. Somehow or other, all this fastened itself to that night over the bleeding body of Geoffrey Ware — the sudden switching on of the lights — the prior darkness. He felt that he had hold of an elusive bit of thread which, unravelled and followed to its finish, would lead straight back again to Wilfred Denver, county squire, English gentleman. "I'm not done yet," he muttered to himself; "there is still time — for many things. Down there, in the veins and entrails of the earth, I learnt the sturdy strength I didn't have before. This time, please God, I win." Wilfred Denver didn't make himself known to his family with the swiftness, the immediateness his heart ached for. He felt that the radiance would be dimmed unless he could come to them free of the blot of blood with which, and for which he had gone away. Then, too, he felt that he had something to go on — the Master of the Grange; Coombs, who collected poor Nellie's rent; Corkett, who 112 iA<3£ Q The Silver King (Continued from page 61) had worked for Geoffrey Ware with a bad grace and a surly gratitude. The Master of the Grange had become master amazingly soon after the mysterious death of Geoffrey Ware. Coombs was collecting rents where he had, briefly ago, been evading his own profession. Corkett was to be seen in the pub at any time .'buying drinks for himself and his roystering familiars. An air of prosperity sat, like a suspicious and ill-fitting coat, upon their shoulders. -"Wilfred Denver has learnt perspicuity, too, over there where men fought with the earth for the sheer right to dominate it. The veil of soft living had been torn from his eyes. He had grappled with facts in the raw, and men in the raw. He was not to be deluded. He knew that as John Franklin, the spectacular Silver King, he would be too lavishly feted to play the cunning sleuth for the murderer he himself was supposed to be. As Wilfred Denver the law would step righteously forth. He hid in a vaguely respectable hostelry and endeavored to be neither. Law is keen — so is affection. Denver had not inhabited the hostelry a week before he recognized Baxter, of Scotland Yard, hovering with a fond persistency, in his vicinity. He noted, too, not without satisfaction, that the master of the Grange likewise seemed to merit some of the astute Baxter's scrutiny. Baxter was obviously adrift. He remembered the humble member of the hostelry and he did not remember him. No doubt upon the lens of his brain was impressed images of Wilfred Denver, of John Franklin, whose fame had crossed and then recrossed the seas, of the modest comer and goer at the vague hostelry. Which, if any? If not, then whom? Detached queries to which there seemed (to Baxter) to be no answer. He dared not accuse this white-haired, stern man of being young 'Squire Denver, suspect in the Ware case. He dared not accuse this shabby stranger of being the Arabian Nights trillionaire. He walked about in circles, and met himself coming and going. The master of the Grange was almost equally baffling. Baxter could have sworn he had arraigned the gentleman upon divers unsavory charges. He could have sworn that he was a human rat, who had fed upon the offal. Then how ? Things like this dont happen. Baxter began to ponder the fact that much crime might have at last unhinged the delicate, deliberate mechanism of his brain. Affection is keen — and it is still more veracious and unerring than the law. Meeting the Silver King in the narrow lane one evening, old Jaikes fell upon him and never doubted. "Master," he cried, brokenly, "Master, my dear, you've come back. We're in sore need, sir!" Denver pulled the old servitor into a clump of bushes and swore him to secrecy, and told him the Arabian Nights tale of the Silver King. "I'm going to get free of the slime, Jaikes," he said, "then I'm coming back and make your mistress again the Lovely Lady of the Grange.w And when he left the old man he did not remove from his hands the venerable tears that wetted them. From that day forth Baxter, of Scotland Yard, was outrivalled in persistence and ferret cunning only by Wilfred Denver. When he was not tracking Coombs he was tracking the higher pathways of the Master of the Grange ; when he was not following them he was slunk into a pub listening to the fetid yarns of Corkett. Noisome things were pulled to light. Lives like filthy rags were aired in reach of his offended nostrils. Geoffrey Ware alone was left to lie in his uncleared blood. It was in a small lane that Denver came at last upon that which was more priceless to him than all the bursting veins of the Silver City. The master of the Grange had stooped to speak with Corkett. "Will you never let be?" he was snarling, "never give me any peace until I kill you?" Evidently he had said the most combustible thing. Corkett's hardening ar-" teries rose in his neck. His bloodshot eyes inflamed. "Never!" he yelled, "until you kill me as you killed Geoffrey Ware !" Skinner gurgled inarticulately in his thick throat. He might have done more, but the Silver King was upon him, and the hands that had compelled the earth and rock to give up their hidden treasure compelled this loathsome masquerader to give up his secret. "You've got to write that down," he said, when Skinner had finished. "Not necessary," said a cool voice, and Baxter, of Scotland Yard, rose up from behind the privet. "I've heard — and I've transcribed," he smiled, and he showed his authoritative badge. It didn't gain much notoriety in the press, save for the connection with it of the Silver King, who was likewise Wilfred Denver, county 'squire. It was a murky, smutty tale of Corkett, who had robbed his master and had drunkenly confessed to Skinner and to Coombs. Their promise to keep the secret only on Corkett's promise to admit them to the Ware safes. Geoffrey Ware coming in upon them in the midst of their thieving, Skinner's deadly shot, lights out, lights on, and Wilfred Denver standing over a body. It was quite simple, quite uncomplex. It was tragical to no one save the man whose head had whitened delving for silver that he might make impervious his heart — and to the woman who had waited till the roses in her cheeks whitened to lilies and the dreams in her eyes gave place to white despairs. Nellie came to meet him in the daffodil gown, and a brave, soft effort of the old, dear song, and footsteps that, if they were not light and fleet, were very glad and steady. Cissy, being uncomplex, just snuggled. "I knew" she confided, rosily, "that Daddies were like this. I knew." MY QUEEN By Arthur L. Kaser I thought I'd lost you, Movie Queen, When to my country's call I answered as a true man should, Content to give my all. But in a rough-hewed shack I find You smiling out to me, A blessing to the boys in camp, Both here and o'er the sea. WALSH IS FACETIOUS _ "I hear that they are going to put billiard tables in all the colleges," said George Walsh, the athletic star, recently. "Yes, yes, go on," a companion urged, "what's the idea?" "Oh, to teach them the better use of English," said George nonchalantly. Will someone page the firing squad?