Picture Play Magazine (Oct-Nov 1915)

PICTURE-PLAY WEEKLY 7 "You poor little girl," he cried, takig both her hands in his arid pulling er gently down into a broad-armed nair. "It isn't right that you should jffer like this." "Don't let us talk about suffering, rIamilton. Just let us be happy totight." "Happy — very, very happy," he murnired, and, putting his arm about her, e lifted her chin and bent to kiss fr. "Wait — wait !" she panted, breaking rom his clasp and running across the bom. "I like a pretty stage setting, ee! The lights must be softened. So. ,'hen I want to burn a little incense to ie god of happiness. Come with me, Ir." And coming back to him, she layfully caught his arm and dragged Sim to a corner of the room where she ad prepared a brazier. A settee had een drawn up in front, and she made dm sit down in it. Now, sir, for the incense." She cruck a match, and a little cloud crept jp to the ceiling. Ross stared fascinated. She had sat 'jown beside him, her small hand in his. 'Don't speak," she whispered. "Just 'f' 'atch — and think — and breathe — Vcathe." Obediently the man, as one hypnozed, let his gaze follow the drifting intense. Then over his senses stole a lerfume well remembered, a terrible erfume, a deadly odor that set his brain eeling, that made his eyes grow with 'horror, that turned his face a ghastly ray. His hand felt cold and clammy n the girl's grasp. "Let me go !" he screamed. "I can't :and it." "Oh, yes, you can. This will help ou !" And from her bosom she drew :ie notebook marked: "The Moscow arffiCase." "The Death Dew ! My God !" She had clutched his hand, but he roke from her grasp and flung himself t the door. It did not open. He was jcked in. He toppled into a chair and overed his' face with his hands. "Come — quick !" Jane's voice rose to shriek. Came the noise of a key in le lock. The door opened and two men /ntered. One a police captain. The ther a physician. Without words the doctor flung open le windows and extinguished the razier. Then he turned to the man in le chair. P "It isn't deadly, doctor," said Jane, half hysterical now, but gaining control of herself. "I stole the Death Dew from his laboratory, but I only used a very mild distillation of it. There was no need of my bringing you here, but I provided against chances, for this man must not die." Ross listened, but his ashen lips did not move, and Jane went on, more calmly now : • "Oh, no, not the doctor we need now — but the policeman. Come, Hamilton, dear friend who was to make life worth living for me, play the man now. You're caught. Turn back the pages of your life for the benefit of these listeners. Or shall I do it? "What? No answer?" His lips trembled, his body crouched lower in the chair. "Come," she went on mercilessly. "Tell them that you could not bear that any man should carry off the woman you thought you loved; that you plotted his death ; that you hit upon the method when you solved the Moscow case and discovered that a volatile poison called Pzokraz " "The Death Dew !" She caught the faint whisper from his white lips. "Ah, you remember. You remember, too, how minutely you described it in this little notebook, even to your sensations as you came upon the secret, and plotted how you would use the deadly aroma while Kato watched, curious, but not concerned. It was a picture to gloat over, and so you morbidly set it down." "Yes, yes ; I remember," he moaned. "You remember, too, the tests you made and how you finally arrived at the possibility of saturating a letter with the Death Dew so that he who should open it would die. Diabolical, but you did it. Doubly diabolical that, when you sent the letter to my husband, whose death you plotted, you should have written the despicable words you did, so that Murray's last thought might be that I had been unfaithful. A devil, you are." "A devil," said the broken man. "It was a rare chance that poor Harry Strong should open the letter — rarer, too, that the Death Dew did not kill him on the spot, for I hear now that he will recover, which God grant, for a truer soul never lived." "Enough ! Enough !" Hamilton Ross gathered the remnant of his strength and rose. The police captain stepped forward and put the manacles on his wrists. "It had to come," said Ross. "I judged what I thought was the right course. But I was wrong. This is the final judgment. I loved you as no man ever loved woman. What I did was through love of you. I deserve the limit of the law, and I make no plea for mercy. How you found it all out I can guess, but not one woman in a million would have had the courage to do what you have done. I pay you this homage not theatrically, but as a man recognizing grit in another. It is my good-by to you. The State may do what it will with me." He turned to the police officer : "I am ready." So passed Hamilton Ross. Film Flams By Dean Bowman IT is estimated that there are approxi* mately seven hundred moving-picture theaters in New England. A large number of these houses are up to date in every detail. As a general rule, two operating machines, run by a motor, are used for projection of the films. "Crazy about the movies" is a common expression these days. However, it is taking on a new meaning out in California, where a moving-picture theater has been fitted up at the State Hospital for the Insane at Patton, and will be operated as a possible cure for insanity. They may call it cinema in London on the ground that cinema is the short cut of the Greek "cinematograph," but over here it is movie now and forever, according to a leading theatrical magazine which recently championed editorially the use of the word movie, without quotation marks. Moving pictures have been a boon to many persons, but perhaps no one has appreciated the modern invention more than the detective. In more than one case the whereabouts of lost persons or fugitives from justice have been discovered through viewing a crowd "movied" by the picture camera. At this time, when there is a very gen