Movie Pictorial (September 19, 1914)

THE MOVIE PICTORIAL Septeviber 19, 1014 And—she had been afraid. For the first time she feared Forster. Knowing what he thought, or had thought, con- cerning her; know- ing, too, his views of life, she had felt certain that he would, sooner or later, renew the talk they had begun on the night of the mo- tor accident. And— could she resist him again? Burdened with gratitude, knowing what she owed him, how much he had sacrificed for her, could she trust herself? That fear, too, had been a fac- tor in her flight. But she was learn- ing, in her suffering, that flight is never a solution. Certainly her flight had solved no problem for Harry Forster. It had pre- sented him, instead, with a host of new ones. After their parting, on the day when both of them had left the Climax Film Company. Forster, as he had told her would be the case, had been more than busy. He had told her even less than the truth when he had said that he had no re- grets for his action. He had, even more than he knew, been falling into a rut. The malign influ- ence of Beatrice Brewster would, be- fore long, have ar- rested his progress and his growth entirely. Now he found himself with his whole stock of enthusiasms renewed. He went at the task of building up a new connection with an en- ergy that delighted and surprised him. Naturally, too, he made discoveries concern- ing himself. Half a dozen offers reached him that day. As soon as it was definitely known that he was at liberty, bidding for his services began. Neither he nor the Climax Film Com- pany had realized in what esteem his work was held by others. He discovered, to his amaze- ment, that several concerns would have sought to engage him long'before, had they not sup- posed him irrevocably bound to the Climax by a long term contract. All this pleased him, of course. But it did not throw him off his balance. He had left the studio of the Climax Company with a definite plan in his mind; a plan that involved, not only his own success, and provision for Vera’s future, but a personal, obvious revenge upon Beatrice, conceived in the only way that could possibly avail to hurt her. It was a revenge, moreover, that appealed to him aesthetically, for it would stop at hurting the woman who had so deeply aggrieved him; it would do her no real injury. It would lacerate her feelings, but that would be all, unless, as might well prove to be the case, she suffered through los- ing his direction of her work. That, of course, time alone could prove, and it was something, in any case, for which he was not responsible, since it was she herself who had made it im- possible for them to work together on the old basis any longer. Forster’s execution of his plan was helped by the fact that he was invited to pick and choose between various concerns that wanted to employ him. Two hours of going about made it plain to him that he had arrived; that stop. He tried other stores; somehow he felt certain that if she were hiding from him Gudge and Bartlett’s would be the last resort. And, as his search went on, with failure as its only reward, the whole plan he had made and begun to execute was threat- ened with the direst of failures. Vera was essential to his success. He de- pended upon her to carry out what he intended to do. So far as he knew there was no one he could substitute for her, even had he been willing to make the effort to do so. And he grew desperate. Half angry, half sorry, he realized only one thing clear- ly—he must find her. He engaged de- tectives, finally, for he began to be afraid. He did not know what she might not have done. And the bu- reau he retained had orders to stop at nothing, so long as it found her. He had set it a difficult task, however—one far more difficult than at first ap- peared. For Vera, not knowing that she was being hunt- ed, would do none of the things that those consciously seeking to evade discovery do. De- tectives, as a mat- ter of fact, work according to a formula al- most algebraic, so little does it vary. They know that criminals, or those who, for any reason, are likely to try to keep themselves hidden, almost invariably do certain things to maintain their seclusion—and that these very things, as a result of their almost universal employment, are the most likely to betray their users. * But Vera, in utter ignorance of the trouble she was causing, simply went on living the normal life that had been hers before her great adventure, so pitifully brief in its duration. She rose in the morning, ate her scanty break- fast, and went to the store. At noon, with hundreds of others, she was released for the brief luncheon interval; at the closing hour she was free to take her aching body and her swollen feet to the tiny cubicle she called home. For days there were no breaks in the rou- tine, though there were chances. Old Hazzard, like the girls in the store, drew his own con- clusions from the gap in Vera’s service, and from her changed appearance on her return. She had succumbed at last, he reasoned—to some one else. Well—all the more reason, then, why she should be willing now to listen to him. He approached her again, in his sly, detestable fashion. “So you’re back, my dear,” he said one night, falling into step beside her as she walked away from the store, alone—as she always was now. “You’re looking well—you’re prettier than ever.” Vera was silent. She quickened her pace, but he clung close to her, though he did not venture to touch her. Three girls, just ahead, turned and saw—and she heard them snick- ering. A blind rage assailed her, and her (Continued on page 27) “So You’re Back, My Dear,” Hazzard Said, Falling into Step Beside Her. “You’re Looking Well. You’re Prettier than Ever” his position in the film industry was hereafter to be a much bigger and more important one than he ’had dreamed of. And, as his plan involved using Vera, this made it easier for him to get the terms he wanted for her. She was unknown; a manufacturer, asked to give a contract to a girl he had never heard of, might be expected to balk. But when that contract was made a condition of getting Forster, the whole situation was changed. By nightfall he understood how things were going, and he tried to reach Vera on the tele- phone. Only the maid answered; he did not understand her attempt to tell him that Vera had gone, and, assuming that she was simply out, dismissed the matter until morning. That night he might, conceivably, have managed to trace her; in the morning it was too late. She had vanished utterly. At first he was angry. The thought that she should leave him thus, without even a note, irritated him. But he put it down to caprice; he still expected, three days later, when all his arrangements had been made, to hear from her at any moment. But he did not. And then, seriously alarmed, he began a real search. The one place that should have come first to his mind, Gudge and Bartlett’s, he never thought of. Vera, in the moments when she had allowed herself to think that he would look for her, had antici- pated that. But, actually, she had never seri- ously believed that he would spend much time looking for her. She had fancied that he would be more likely to heave a sigh of relief and forget her. He did not. He searched, instead, in every place that he did think of. He went to her old boarding house; there he was rebuffed. And, though he knew that to look for her was like seeking a needle in a haystack, he did not