Picture-Play Weekly (Apr-Oct 1915)

14 PICTURE-PLAY WEEKLY his play — and to the otlier manager that Tom had got his ideas from this. "I want nothing more to do with you," the manager checked Tom coldly, when he tried to explain the circumstances to him in the lobby of the theater, between the acts. "You are a plagiarist, sir. Our business dealings together are at an end." Tom, beside himself at the way he had been victimized, started for the stage door to hunt up Shuman and confront him with his dishonesty. But meanwhile the producer's secretary — the same one who had once helped to put Tom out of Shuman's office — had seen him in the theater, and gone to warn the producer that trouble was likely to ensue. "But I've thought of a way to shut his mouth against your steal," said the secretary. "Let hiiti come in here, and I'll fix it so that he won't be able to bother you again in a hurry." At that moment Tom burst into the star's dressing room, where Shuman and his aid were standing. "You thief !" he raged at the manager. "I see now what a fool I was to trust you when you said. 'Let bygones be bygones.' You read my play so you could steal it — that was all. But I'm going to put a stop to it. I'm going out on the stage now, in the middle of the performance, and tell the audience that it's mine — not yours — but mine, mine!" Tom rushed from the dressing room to, carry out his threat. He brushed by Rose, who was entering it just then. She turned from her dressing table with the cry : "My string of pearls — it's gone !" The secretary ran out and told the policeman who was on duty behind the scenes to sei?e Tcm, who was just then struggling with the stage hands in an endeavor to get out on the stage. "He's stolen Miss Beandet's pearls," the secretary informed the officer, "from the table in her dressing room." The policeman dragged Tom back there, and, at Shuman's demand, searched him. The string of pearls was found in his pocket. The secretary winked at the manager. This was the way he had told the latter he had thought of to prevent Tom's successfully accusing him of the theft of his play. By discrediting him as a thief himself, with the leading lady's pearls found on his person, which he had deftly placed there while Tom was denouncing the manager. Tom was taken to the station house, where he spent the night. The next morning, Shuman and Rose appeared before tlie magistrate to press the charge of grand larceny against him. He was held for trial. The evidence was so strong that the jury's verdict was "guilty," and Tom was sentenced to serve from three to five years in Sing Sing. It had taken all their money to pay the lawyer, and the morning Tom went "up the river" Ruth had not a dollar left on which to face the world. She tried to get work, while a kindhearted neighbor let her have a room in her home in which she and her baby might sleep ; but all her efforts to find employment were vain. Finally, her little girl fell ill. In three days more the child was dead. Ruth's spirit was broken, and soon she had to take to her bed herself. The woman under whose roof she had been living wrote to Tom at the penitentiary, where he had been made a trusty. "Since the baby died,'' her letter ended, "your wife doesn't seem to care whether she lives or not. The doctor says that unless she takes a decided turn, it will only be a question of a few days more before she, too, dies." Tom took the letter to the warden and let him read it. "Can't 3 0U let me get away to see my wife, sir," he begged, "on parole?'' "I'm sorry. Warder," the head of the prison told him, "but that's impossible. I believe I could trust you to come back here, if you gave me your word to do so, but I can't break the rules. Perhaps your wife is not as ill as the doctor thinks, and she may recover, after all." But Tom, as he went back to his post, which was that of a checker with the gang of convicts who were building a State road outside the prison, did not share that hope. "The baby died without my seeing her again," he muttered, "and now my wife's going to go the same way." His shoulders drooped hopelessly. "I wish I could have made the warden let me go to see her — but I'm a failure at everything I try to do." It was a half hour later, when one of the gang of convicts attempted to escape. He was promptly shot down by one of the guards. During the con fusion which followed Tom found himself left momentarily alone and unwatched on the road where he stood. Now was his chance to make a break for liberty himself, if he had the courage to try it, in the face of what he had just seen happen to one of his fellow prisoners who had made the same effort. With the indifferent shrug of a man who feels that he has nothing left to lose, Tom turned and ran for the cover of the woods near by. He gained their shelter unperceived. It was not until he had pushed for some way into the forest that he heard the shouting of the guards in the road behind, which told him that his escape had been discovered. He burrowed into the heart of a clump of bushes, and there lay hidden while he heard the guards searching the woods on either side of him. At the end of an hour they had given up the hunt. He was free — but he could not go far in the convict's garb he wore. And then, as he went forward through the woods, suddenly he stopped short in his tracks. He had almost stepped on a man who was lying, half covered by the underbrush. The man was dead. A partially emptied bottle of poison in his hand proved him a suicide. He wore a suit of shabb}', dark clothes and a soft, black felt hat. Fifteen minutes later Tom had changed to his clothes and put the bottle, with the remainder of the poison in it, in one pocket. He came out of the woods beside the railroad tracks. When a freight came by, an hour later, he swung aboard it and rode away — toward the city where his wife lay dying. She was dead when Tom reached the house of the neighbor who had written him the letter. He took his head in his hands at the bedside. "A failure," he repeated dully. "That's all I am. I got here too late." He groped in the pocket of the suicide's coat where he had placed the bottle of poison. Beside it his fingers touched a coin. He drew the silver piece out and looked at it. It was a quarter. "Enough for two drinks," he mused, rising. "They may make me forget for a while." He went out, and his steps led him, through unconscious force of habit, into a Broadway cafe that was largely patronized by theatrical folk. As he poured his drink at the bar he heard a