Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1916)

The Glory Road 117 of what Mania had achieved. She was a little thing with black hair and sparkling black eyes, and her voice had a husky, throaty note. "Gosh, you're just lovely, darling," she breathed as she climbed gingerly into the ear. The Other, gratified by the looked for tribute, smiled and they began to move away. If silence is golden. Queenie Gilmore didn't assay a trace, and her horizon was hounded by immediate personal interests. The chatter, therefore, which she immediately began revolved about studio affairs, and was tinged by a characteristically intense partisanship. Marcia's every thought and feeling found poignant echo in her, and she lent herself passionately to the other's triumphs anil despairs. Thus, on the present occasion, as always, after circling through minor considerations she entered upon the primary matter which was agitating both their lives. "What did I tell you about their starrin' Magregor? Aim they doin' it. just as I said5 And her a dub that can't get out of her own way ' Why, when you come on, darling, she looks like a hunk of the set furniture. But say. what's this new stuff I hear Briscoe's goin' to pull off? Some mystery about it. aint there?" "How should I know, dear?" Marcia inquired. "You could hardly expect they'd tell me. But from what I've heard outside, it's going to be something different." "Yeah, that's all I can find out, too. Every time I go near that end of the stage the set's enclosed, and has a 'Keep Out' sign on it. But I hear it's goin' to cost a bunch of money. Magregor certainly must have Briscoe sewed up in a bag for him to do all that for her." Marcia laughed. "You don't suppose Briscoe can risk the Company's money on his own hook, do you?" she asked, as if stating an elementary fact. • "That's so." Queenie paused a moment, thoughtfully. "Well then, by gosh, it must be Holt," she exclaimed, as light broke upon her. "Oh, Queenie !" "Sure it is. Why, of course, after the way he's been rushin' her." Marcia seemed to muse, so much so that 6he nearly ran over a cat at the corner oi Cherokee Street. Then she •'aid: "I've wondered if thai could be true. Really, I've suspected something ever since tli.it time Magregor was over on the island witli that crowd shooting the 'Vanishing Raci " Ihat time she sprained her ankle, you mean?" Marcia laughed shortly. "Well, yes." There was silence as they turned out of Hollywood Boulevard into Highland Avenue. 'A on mean she didn't hurt her ankle?" "I don't say that. But you know that big house where they took her and left her?" "The place she stayed two days, you mean?" "Yes." "Yes, I remember." "Well," Marcia spoke slowly to give her words weight, "that was Holt's house." Queenie's eyes grew bigger and bigger as this truth sank in. "Gosh !" she breathed ; then, "What do you know about that !" Marcia turned the car into a wide parking space already nearly full, and brought it to a stop. "Well," she cried brightly, "here we are. Nowr, darling, you'll have to run along while I sell my tickets." Queenie, still impressed by the magnitude of the thing she had imagined, got out. Then she took an affectionate leave of her idol. She was accustomed to dismissal, as she was to summons, and accepted either as a favor, being happiest in her infatuation when she .could serve. Presently Marcia, after visiting both the manager of the affair and her maid, appeared among the gathering throng armed with books containing tickets which were chances on an automobile to be raffled later in the afternoon. She sauntered down the paths under the eucalyptus trees, radiant, beautiful, striking, quaint as a china shepherdess, suggestive of exquisite passions. DY three o'clock the lawns and picturesque little glen were a surging mass of people to some extent professional but in great part consisting of the public. For though the "shooting" of a picture in public is now of comparatively small interest to the resident Angeleno, the town is picture-mad,