Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1922)

know what I am doing with you until I release the picture. I shall take your most important scenes secretly. I shall assemble and cut the picture myself. Not even the company will know until I choose to let them know. You are to tell nothing. Even your family are not to know what we are doing." "Yes, sir." The porter appeared in the doorway. "Bring a table," ordered de Brissac. Then, abruptly distrait, he drew a brief case from under the seat, adding— "That is all now. I have work to do. Take those books back with you, if you like." She got up, and stood holding to the door. She had seen enough in turning the pages of that thicker book to know that it couldn't be explained to Alice and Gran'ma. She felt her color rising. He was looking at her again, and, she knew, reading her thoughts. " Rather leave them here?" She seemed to be nodding. That look of quiet world-weariness that she thought magnificent had come again into his face. "All right. You can sit in here and read any time. Come in this afternoon about three. You'll have the place to yourself then. I'm playing bridge after lunch. But you'd better run along now." 10. THERE was a young man she seemed to have seen somewhere before who had smiled at her in the diner. He dropped into a chair beside her, finding Hattie in the observation car. "You don't remember me," he said, rather moodily. He was thin, angular, with a long, bony face and a high forehead and blue eyes and a thick shock of black hair. "I'm Mr. de Brissac's head camera man. I worked in your test. My name is Henry O'Malley." He talked interestingly of his work, and of de Brissac. Evidently he admired his chief. "The greatest in the business," was his judgment. "A tremendous artist. And you never saw such vitality. The man is a dynamic force. It's marvelous to see him handle people. You've had a little taste of that yourself. He takes no two alike. He bullies and cajoles and stimulates. He drives and he leads. Half the time he's just acting. Back of everything he's doing there's a cold brain working every minute. He never forgets the big plan. Give him about two more pictures and the world will know that he stands alone. You won't hear much about Griffith or Ingram or Cecil de Mille next year. It'll be all de Brissac." Hattie asked herself if it was right to listen to this. But surely he hadn't meant that she was to speak to no living being. Besides, this Mr. O'Malley was his own man. And so when he suggested sitting outside, she yielded. From the moment they boarded the train she had wanted to sit out there. They had the platform to themselves. A crisp wind was blowing, but she enjoyed letting it fan her cheeks and blow her hair around while her eyes roved over the pleasant green prairie of Kansas or watched the smooth ever-narrowing track. Even the advertising signs were exciting. It was hard to keep from telling him of the terribly fascinating new life into which she was rushing with the train. He was an enthusiast. Finding her pliantly feminine, he was soon talking eagerly of himself, telling her of the invention that was to take him out of camera work before such a great while, make a millionaire of him. It was a device for synchronizing the human voice with perfectly colored pictures. "And that's only the beginning," he went on. " I'm working out a scheme for doing the whole thing by wireless. I'll sit in my own headquarters and throw a complete drama on the screen in any picture house in the United States or Canada — through the air, by Jove! I haven't got all the details worked out yet. It may take two or three years. But it's bound to come. And I'm bound to be there first with it. I'm crowding at it all the time — nights and Sundays — every minute I can get to myself." Big-eyed she listened. He seemed very nice. Just an eager boy, really, though much older than herself; and he talked wonderfully, without frightening her as Mr. de Brissac did. When he invited her to lunch with him, she found it hard to decline. But Mr. de Brissac might not like that. Probably she'd better not let him talk to her much. And then the less she had to explain to Alice and Gran'ma the better. But it was pleasant. And the shock of the new experience seemed easier to endure when she let this other excitement possess her. It occurred to her now that she had promised to write Willie Mazzini, and she decided to do so after lunch ; at the pretty desk in the observation compartment. The porter would mail it for her. She had seen a man give him a telegram. That would help, too, to keep her away from those books in Mr. de Brissac's compartment. She had decided not to look at those. It seemed to her that she couldn't. The simplest thing would be to dismiss them from her mind. Mr. de Brissac was in the dining car when she went in with Alice and Emily. She noted that He finished before they did, and went into a car ahead with another man, giving her a careless but courteous nod as he passed. On the way back through the train she saw that his door was open and that the books still lay there on the forward seat. The table had been removed. She felt her color rising again, and lingered a moment behind the others. For a brief time, in the drawing room, she tried to be pleasant with Gran'ma, who was inclined to be car sick. Then, determined (she believed) to be resolute in her resistance, she went out to the observation car. It would help to listen again to Mr. O'Malley, but he wasn't there. . . . And at last she went., with a guilty sensation, back to that compartment. It was the boldest act of her life thus far. She moved slowly past the open door; then, as slowly, returned and entered. And she read and read — unhappy at heart, starting at each passing footstep, yet unable to stop. She was appalled, when she thought to look at the new wrist watch of gun metal that was strapped about her wrist, to discover that two full hours had passed. She closed the thick book and stared out at the endless prairie. It wouldn't do to go back until she could compose herself. Alice and Gran'ma mustn't see her with this flush burning in her face. At that, they might read the truth there. She decided not to come into this compartment again. 11. HER dreams that night were dominated by a new sort of fear. Many times she awoke, trembling. She had always until lately slept like a healthy baby. It was strange now to lie in the stuffy little room — she was in the upper berth with Emily. Gran'ma below her and Alice on the narrow couch bed — and hear the three of them breathing and feel the swaying and jolting of the train and try to quiet her thoughts. The morning brought newly exciting impressions; vivid pictures of yellow mountains and rocks and sand and gray-green little bushes and stretches of yellow-gray desert and queer clusters of Indian houses that might have been made out of toy blocks with ladders from a set of jackstraws, all bathed in a clear warm sun The lot, within, did have a bit here and there of the magic of her day dreams. Fantastically gotten up personages strolled about he ate very lightly. 26