Pictures and the Picturegoer (Jan-Dec 1924)

JUNE 1924 Pictures and Pi ct\j reaver Four 31 Elizabeth West stood a moment at her window on the sixth floor of the Hotel Superbe, looking down to the moon-lit, empty street below. She drew wide the curtain and closed it rapidly. Twice she repeated this unexpected manoeuvre and then came an answering signal from the street. A man appeared round the corner of a bush across the way and waved a .handkerchief. Elizabeth lifted the sash. A narrow white ledge ran round the Superbe at the sixth floor. It looked, perhaps, unsafe for a fly, but it was Elizabeth West's plan to walk along it now. All her life she had taken risks. She took risks now, great risks. She did not care. It was part of the game. Part of the wildly exhilarating game at which she was one of the most expert players in all the world. Had it been another kind of game she might well have been world-famous. As it was, in a way she was at least world-notorious. That is, men whose business it was to know of such artists knew Elizabeth as one of the cleverest. SI e climbed to the ledge and began her perilous adventure. Half a dozen yjirds away was a window, the window of a room in another suite, the suite next to her own. She paused a moment here, but instead of raising the sash and entering the room she went along, passed the next one and the next and did not stop until she had come to the sixth window. She aeemed it better to start from the other end and work homeward, so that with ever fresh step from the beginning of her enterprise she was nearer to her sure refuge. She came to the sixth window and this she raised and entered. It was a room similar in all respects to that one of her own suite which she had so recently left. Over in the far wall, skilfully disguised as an old master, was *he wall-safe. A clever CAST: Elizabeth West Betty Compson Richard Templer Richard Dix Judge Westcott George Fawcett Jim Hartigan Theodore Von Eltz Judson Osgood Joseph Kilgour idea, but that in every suite in the Superbe was a wall-safe disguised as an old master. It did not take her long to have it open and its contents transferred to the little grip she carried. Then she overturned a chair or two, dragged out a drawer or two and scattered the contents broadcast for the sake of appearances, and departed. Sh£ departed by the way she had come — through the window. The fifth suite next, and the fourth — the third, and back to her own. In each she had hasty dealings with the old master on the wall ; from each she brought something worth the bringing away in her grip. It totalled perhaps fifty thousand dollars — perhaps more; the actual value could not be decided hastily now, but must await the verdict of Joe, down at the " Dive," Joe who v/as a past master of such valuing. She dropped back into her own room and stood a moment regaining her breath. Then again she manipulated the curtains and got her answering signal from below. All was well ! Leaning far out she dropped the grip to the lawn, six floors beneath, and was satisfied to see her confederate creep from his hiding place, gain possession of the spoils and vanish. Then she turned back to cover her tracks. TTie window she left open, forced from the outside. The wall-safe behind her own particular old master was conveniently empty. A few drawers she ransacked, turned a few chairs on end, and then, pleased with these little flourishes, she undressed, went to bed, and pretended to sleep. It was perhaps three o'clock in the morning before the alarm was given. The gentleman in Suite 37 had been indulging in a iittle celebration with some of the " boys " uptown, and the celebration had delayed him long. The east was paling to dawn when at length he crept up the grand staircase to the sixth floor (the elevator at that hour not