Movie Pictorial (September 19, 1914)

THE MOVIE PICTORIAL as it was against me! Miss Spencer—” He paused a moment; then, magnificently, he went on. “Miss Spencer is my fiancee! Is it likely that she, an American, is a spy?” Billy gasped. Miss Spencer blushed. But Taggart went on. Once started, he was not to be checked. “Look here!” he cried. “We Americans didn’t start this war—and we’re not trying to interfere with it! We came over to spend our money—and your people were mighty glad to get it! We don’t mind inconvenience and delay—we know that in war time people have got to expect that! But I tell you our state department won’t stand for this sort of thing —American girls being dragged through the streets and searched in police stations! Here —I haven’t done anything! Let me out and I’ll find our consul here—I’ll telegraph to the ambassador in Berlin! Miss Spencer’s his niece—do you think he’ll like this?” Poker is not a German game. It isn’t suited to the German temperament, which prefers the exactitude of pinocle and skat. The A Message to Tsinff-Tan (Continued from page S) The court martial was concluded. Stripped of his Mandarin robes, Tamakura stood before them—unspeaking and unafraid. Buddha had demanded his own, and the will of the emperor was nearly done. Only his heart remained be- yond their mandates, and that was in a little garden in Nippon—in Lonnaveta’s care. “You will not speak?” the officer roared in madness, as he came before Tamakura and glared into the messenger’s unblinking eyes. But the herald of the Mikado returned the gaze unflinchingly. He had often wondered how it would seem to die—how it would be to leave suddenly and never more return. For years, he had not cared, even when the question thrust itself upon him—but it was different now. Why should a man be born alone and struggle all alone and die alone—and still have so small a voice in his own destiny? Of what value was a creed when the bitterness of reality obsessed one? What of Buddha—or the - host of other gods? They dealt with gladness as they answered pain—in silence. All the mighty forces remained silent; only bonded automatons like Tamakura must stir around and about—and suffer. “Well, as a pledge of faith, I offer you this one gift if you speak!” And the German of- ficer bared his sabre-teeth and smiled—a grin as yellow and sickly as the waters of the bay of Kiao-Chau, or the fog that hugged the bay. “You may choose the manner of your death!” the officer continued. “Behead me!” Tamakura replied in dry, la- conic tones, “and deliver my head, as it is, to a man I’ve never met, but whose writings I have read deeply and with reverence—the banker, Len Sun.” The officer bowed, and his smile deepened. He was satisfied. And when the grewsome trophy was handed to Len Sun, he displayed great fear, but ac- cepted it in silence, for he knew that some- where about it—possibly in the tortoise comb— was a message to Kiao-Chau—a message that would call into action the sleeping hordes of China! * * * Lonnaveta awoke from a remarkably pleas- ing dream. A great joy surged through her soul—for she had heard chimes—a thin, golden tinkle, like the distant call of bells. The harvest moon was just melting in the West, and the birds were proclaiming the com- ing of a new day. All night long, the maiden had slumbered in her garden until the roses at her corsage were limp, collapsed and dead. “Oh, Tamakura has won!” she carolled gladly. “Tamakura will be back soon. I feel him near me now! See, I will loose his won- drous incense—I will revive the drooping roses -—his roses—until they once more give out the fragrant breath of heaven.” She grasped the vial from the bench and pulled its stopper. She saturated the petals of the roses with the liquor—and then gathered officer didn’t call Taggart’s bluff. He growled an order, and then he turned balefully to Tag- gart. “The train will proceed for Holland in half an hour,” he said. “See that you take it.” How he did it I cannot pretend to say. Tag- gart, in those days, was accomplishing the supernatural. But he got a compartment for himself, Billy, and the girl, in that train, to themselves. She was strangely silent. Her thanks were expressed in monosyllables. But she changed after a certain point, where the guards gave way to stolid Hollanders and a suspicious German military patrol demanded reassurances. Once they were safely in Hol- land she turned to Taggart. “You were wonderful!” she cried. “But, oh —if they hadn’t believed you! You would have been arrested, too—for being in league with me!” “But—you’re not a spy!” gasped Taggart. “They’d call me one,” she said. “I’m Eng- lish—and I’ve got papers that the man who gave them to me could never have got out of them to her and inhaled their fumes. Lonnaveta pitched forward on the stones of the garden walk without a tremor—and buried her graceful head among the bits of glass of the other vial—the container of the glorious perfume that had blown from the bench, and fashioned her dreams with its incense and imi- tated the tinkling bells with its breaking. Lonnaveta had gone to join Tamakura—at the minute and the second that Len Sun had opened the hollow comb and read the message to Tsing-Tau. Tlhe MaM-lagf of An Actress (Continued from page J2) color rose. But she controlled herself, and made no answer. “Silly little girl,” cackled the old roue. “Oh, I know! I’m too old for you. You found some young fellow you liked better. But—isn’t it hard to come back to this?” Still she refused to answer him, or even to look at him. And, after a time, he left her, still chuckling in his senile way. But such rebuffs could not discourage him. His skin was thick enough to be proof against them. And night after night he lay in wait for her —helped by that rule of the store, designed, it is whispered, for the benefit of just such crea- tures, that made it impossible for Vera to escape by using another exit. And the night came when nature itself con- spired to aid him. Vera was ill; all day black spots had been dancing before her eyes as she tried to wait on her customers. Her feet were like pieces of raw meat; for the last few hours of the afternoon all that sustained her was the thought of the fresh air that would smite her when the doors opened to release her. When closing time came she staggered, rather than walked, to the street. And, outside, she reeled against a post, and stood, clinging to it, while she drank in deep drafts of air that seemed like healing lotions to her lungs. Then, every step an agony, she began the walk to her room. No dinner; she was far too tired and sick for that! All she wanted was to lie down, to get her shoes off, and rest her feet. And, as she began her weary prog- ress, old Hazzard was beside her. “You’re tired,” he said, with the first note of what even sounded like genuine sympathy she had heard in his voice. “Here—I’m an old man. Forget what I want—let me take you home in a taxi. You’re only a child, after all.” She was too tired to look in his eyes for the baleful light she would have found there; it was never absent. She said nothing, but she stopped. A moment later he was helping her into a cab. He whispered his order to the driver; Vera did not try to hear, but leaned back against the cushions, infinitely grateful that at last her weight was off her feet. She closed her eyes in utter exhaustion; when she opened them again it was to see that they had reached the park, and were driving through 27 the country. He got them from our military attache the day before war was declared—- and he passed them on to me. I’m taking them to our government.” Taggart looked at her admiringly. “Really?” he said. “I—well, you know, that’s what I call real pluck! And—I’m sorry—I’m not trying to be impertinent, really—I’m sorry our engagement was so—temporary!” She flashed her first smile at him. “Perhaps we’ll see one another in England,” she hinted. “And—I’m going to claim you as a fiance until we get there! Are you going straight home?” Billy listened for the answer. “No—I’m coming back,” said Taggart. “I’ll be frank, too, Miss Spencer. I’ve got stuff on me that would make anything you carry look like the secret plans of a sehuetzenfest. If you’ve really got a pull with the British gov- ernment, you may have to get me out of a London jail by way of getting even.” (to be continued) leafy roads, where the air was cool and clean. “I want to go home,” she said. “Please—I must go home—” “Soon—soon,” said old Hazzard. He cackled again, in the way she hated. “Can’t let you get away as soon as this!” He slipped his arm about her and drew her to him. In a moment she was vitalized. “Let me'go!” she cried, turning on him, rage in her eyes. “Don’t dare to touch me—” He only laughed. She screamed as he drew her closer. The driver turned around—and grinned! And at once Vera, all her instincts awake again, moved. Old Hazzard she struck, square between the eyes. He staggered back from her, freed her, for the moment, mouthing angrily. And before he could stop her she had torn open the door and was clinging to the step, screaming for help. The driver turned to force her back, slowing down; she seized the chance, and jumped, landing in a sprawled heap in the road. But she was not hurt and she was on her feet, still screaming, when the cab was stopped, and Hazzard and the driver started running toward her. But before they reached her another cab had come up from behind. From it sprang a man. “Here—what’s this?” he said, savagely. And then: “Vera!” It was Harry Forster who faced old Hazzard. (to be concluded next week) Belingl a Her© DROBABLY there is no more enthusiastic * motion-picture actor in the world than Francis X. Bushman. He takes as much in- terest in the production of a new film as the producer himself, and his suggestions as to scenery and costumes are considered invalu- able. “Sometimes I have a longing to return to the stage,” said Mr. Bushman, “but these long- ings are few and far between. I am in love with my work, and I really think a great deal of good can be accomplished by the motion picture actor. He appeals to millions of peo- ple, young and old. On the stage his audiences are necessarily limited. I enjoy thinking that every day I am appearing on the screen and giving enjoyment to thousands. When I say ‘giving enjoyment’ I do not mean that my act- ing is unusual or anything like that. I mean that in most of the pictures I am cast for the hero, and as a hero I am doing big, brave things that must necessarily influence the peo- ple who see me. “When I am appearing as the hero of a play, I try to forget that I am just an ordinary human being, and I try to throw myself into the part as a real hero. I act as I imagine a real hero would act, and as result my audience is with me from the start to the finish. These are some of the things that make motion pic- tures attractive to the actor. “I do not think I will ever return to the stage. I have become a motion-picture fan as well as an actor, and I have ceased to listen to the call of the ‘footlights.’ ”