Picture Play Magazine (Oct-Nov 1915)

10 PICTURE-PLAY WEEKLY "Well, I'm not going to stand by and see her treat you this way, as if you were an old glove to be cast aside without a thought !" said he. "I won't help you to put through this fake divorce ! And I'm ashamed of you, Jimmie, for letting Jeanne make you lie down in the dust, roll over, and play dead this way. My advice to you is to go and kick this man Maddox across the county line, and then " "I'd love to do it !" broke in Jimmie eagerly. "Then why don't you ?" "\ ou forget," Jimmie answered, as he picked up his hat, stick, and gloves, and prepared to depart, "that Jeanne loves him. She wants him, and it's up to me to fix it so that she can have him. You won't change your mind about fixing up the divorce for us, old man?" "No, I won't," answered his friend. "It's not fair to you." "Then," said Jimmie, "I'll have to think of some other way of stepping out and leaving Maddox and Jeanne to claim their happiness." Jimmie went from the lawyer's office to his club, and there spent the next hour in thinking over that problem. At last it came to him — the way he could step out, "Playing dead" to please Jeanne was what his friend had said lie was doing. It was what he would do. He would pretend to have taken his life — by jumping into the river, which would explain the nonappearance of his corpse — and so clear the way to Jeanne's marriage with Maddox beautifully. A quarter of an hour longer Jimmie sat thinking over the details of the plan. First he must manage to make it look as though he had made away with himself for some other reason than that of his wife's ceasing to love him. That might cause Jeanne pain. So that she could marry Maddox. the man she had confessed to being in love with, without a single twinge of conscience. Jimmie would have to make it seem that it was another motive that had prompted him to suicide. "I know !" he exclaimed half aloud, as another idea burst on him. "I'll pretend that I'm going blind — that's the ticket !" Jimmie hurried into the club library. There, poring over the encyclopedias, he found what he had a faint recollection of having seen somewhere before — the mention of an affliction of the eyes that was hopelessly incurable, but which gave no sign of its existence that even an oculist could detect. Jimmie read what the symptoms of the disease were. And then he replaced the en cyclopedia on the shelf and hastenec from the club. He entered an optician's shop. "Let me have a pair of smoked glasses," Jimmie requested of the proprietor. The latter adjusted a pair to his eyes. And, thrusting them into his pocket. Jimmie hurried off to the office of an oculist with whom he was personally acquainted — as were likewise several more of his friends. Jimmie put the smoked glasses on as he drew near the front steps of the oculist's residence on a fashionable side street. And. with the glasses on his eyes, he went into the oculist's presence. "What's the trouble with your eyes, Blagwin?" the latter inquired in surprise at sight of him. Glibly. Jimmie proceeded to reel off the symptoms he had looked up in the encyclopedia in order to be prepared for just such a question. "And a lot of black flies seem to be walking backward across my vision," he finished. The oculist looked grave. He bade Jimmie sit down and proceeded to subject his eyes to a thorough examination. Of course, he found no sign of anything the matter with them. But. in view of what Jimmie had told him of his symptoms, he only looked graver still. "Is it anything serious, doctor?" Jimmie asked, with well-simulated anxiety. "I will tell you the truth, Blagwin," the doctor gravely replied, "if you wish it. But I warn you to bear up, and take it like a man. In another six months you will be blind !" Jimmie started out of his chair, summoning a look of wild-eyed terror to his face. "Is there no hope for me?" he asked. "None !" Then Jimmie played his trump card. Dropping back in his chair, he covered his face with his hands, a picture of despair. "I won't go blind !" he groaned, distinctly enough for the eye specialist to hear the threat, and to be able to repeat it later. "I'll jump into the river first!" The oculist calmed him. Jimmie allowed him to do so, and then he left. But he had made a good start toward accomplishing his end — that, after he was "dead." everybody should think he "Say," the newsboy who sold Jimmie one of the extras that told of his own death, informed him in the cheap furnished room he had engaged, "dis guy looks like youse!"