The Moving Picture Weekly (1920-1921)

■THE MOVING PICTURE WEEKLY 21 "THE PLUNGE OF DOOM" Episode Two f^ORIS is saved from death when she falls into a canvas stretched some distance underneath a scaffolding upon which painters had been at work on the wall of the building. The crooks, seeing this, start down to the floor far below to seize her from the window. Bruce, reviving, discovers Doris' plight. He leaps from the eleventh floor window into the canvas at the side of Doris. They climb thini an office window opened by an excited tenant. Doris tells Bruce she must reach the office of Sylvester at once. Bruce tells her the building is just around the corner. They dash off, but the crooks are again on their trail, unobserved. In Sylvester's office Doris finds he has gone home. His secretary, a girl, offers her services, but before Doris can explain the purpose of her visit, the crooks reach the office door, which Bruce locks. From the outside his silhouette is plainly visible. One of the crooks strikes at the silhouette with a sap. The blow crashes through the glass and lays Bruce low. As the crooks rush in, seize and tie the secretary, Doris flees into Sylvester's open vault and closes the heavy door. It is a time lock. She is hopelessly entombed. A GILDED TOMB The secretary pleads with the crooks to save her. They drill to place a blast in the lock, after hurling the secretary aside. In the vault Doris is suffocating. Outside, the secretary manages to drag a phone from the taible with her teeth and calls Sylvester. He, in turn, calls the police and himself speeds on his way to the office. Bruce now revives, sees the situation and attacks the crooks as they drill. But they knock him out again. The blast is set. The crooks retire to the outside, waiting. But the secretary crawls to a water-stand, fills a sanitary cup with water, using her teeth to hold the water cup, manages to get to the vault and dashes the water on the low burning fuse, quenching it. At the same moment Sylvester and the police arrive. The crooks are caught. Sylvester works frantically at the safe. Bruce is carried off to the emergency hospital, Sylvester opens the safe, Doris, nearly suffocated, is borne forth to the table. A pulmotor resuscitates her. When Bruce gets out of the hospital he finds the Harveys gone from their home — no one knows where. Haunted by the girl he can't forget, Bruce begins a cruise of indefinite length on his private yacht — determined that some day he will find her. Zeidt, the diamond king, also leaves New York for South Africa, where he is to inspect his diamond mines. By now Zeidt knows of Harvey's suicide and gloates over it, but has never seen the girl, Doris Harvey. CAPTURED BY SAVAGES A month later, Doris appears in Kimberley, hub of the diamond industry, and sets out, in spite of warnings and protests, for a newly discovered diamond field in a wild territory thronged with savages. She is captured by head-hunters — a tribe long without a king or queen who, listening to their medicine man's legendary urging for a "White Queen," decide to enter her in the list of candidates for ruler. These candidates must undergo a gruesome test. But in years none has survived the test. The tribe of head hunters prepares for the royal torture test with its weird dances and rituals. The hour of the ceremony arrives . and Doris with the other candidates is led forth. She sees one after another hoisted high to a crude box-trap in a tree and precipitated by means of a trap door into a pit of water rimmed with upturned spears. A TERRIBLE TEST Each, like herself, is garbed in a peculiar native costume of shredded, highly inflammable material, which is soaked with oil. Just before each candidate is precipitated toward the pit, this costume is ignited. If the victim is fortunate to fall into the pit, unscathed by the spears, the water extinguishes the flames and the survivor is triumphant. Those impaled on the spears die in agony. Doris is last on the list. None of her predecessors survive the horrible torture. She is hoisted high to the box-trap. Her garb is ignited. The trap door falls open. Doris falls.