"Of course not," agreed Baird cordially. "I realized that you were a serious artist, and you came in the nick of time, just when I was wanting to be serious myself, to get away from that slap-stick stuff into something better and finer. You came when I needed you. And, look here, Merton, I signed you on at forty a week"
"Yes, sir: I was glad to get it."
"Well, I'm going to give you more. From the beginning of the new picture you're on the payroll at seventy-five a week. No, no, not a word" as Merton would have thanked him. "You're earning the money. And for the picture after that—well, if you keep on giving the best that's in you, it will be a whole lot more. Now take a good rest till we're ready for you."
At last he had won. Suffering and sacrifice had told. And Baird had spoken of the Montague girl as his leading lady—quite as if he were a star. And seventy-five dollars a week! A sum Gashwiler had made him work five weeks for. Now he had something big to write to his old friend, Tessie Kearns. She might spread the news in Simsbury, he thought. He contrived a close-up of Gashwiler hearing it, of Mrs. Gashwiler hearing it, of Metta Judson hearing it.
They would all be incredulous until a certain picture was shown at the Bijou Palace, a gripping drama of mother-love, of a clean-limbed young American type wrongfully accused of a crime and taking the burden of it upon his own shoulders for the sake of the girl he had come to love; of the tense play of elemental forces in the great West, the regeneration of a shallow society girl when brought to adversity by the ruin of her old father; of the lovers reunited in that West they both loved.
And somehow—this was still a puzzle—the very effective weaving in and out of the drama of the world's most popular screen idol, played so expertly by Clifford Armytage who looked enough like him to be his twin brother.
| ∗ | ∗ | ∗ | ∗ | ∗ | ∗ | ∗ |
