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Show I IllustrateTbTrrT JjjQ 01. .CSFl S MM) 8 BY JACK L'J L. ,. ,, i, i, ,, , n ii 1 if inmmmmcrmcDCcnm' -!i 11 m ,1 11 11 11 rrrittcr;c7lttncr?ttcrirT?cntr7irrT7rnTrTirrTirrirr7irr7iTTlrrr!erirr-it ii " inr-ii 11 t r l r 1 r t m m m m m cm itd n m m r r ri rr 1 r 1 1 r 1 t m 11 ,1 iim 1 r 1 m n c3CT?r72C7l CT3 CT3 ca n c3 n mm m i 1 r 1 1 1, Y 1 EE that eirl 'n h8 9 I " ri salmun-colored lim-t, lim-t, r C1 ouaine?" asked my - friend, the town 1 guide, aa we were I J crossing one of tlie 1 hud. aim was a piercing brunette, slightly less than buxom but distinctly more than frail. Her neck 'twas all I could see below her tartly toqued head v.a.i swathed in the fur of some rare animal. ani-mal. She looked moat piquant, with roused lips and crimsoned cheeks, against tlie background and Hidcgvounds of gln-gray gln-gray velvet that lined the interior of her ear. "Well, that's " and ho leaned over and whinpered. It was a name cne might well -whisper in the hubbub of midday, for had anyone overheard it suddenly he v.'ould have stopped and stared. Tt was a. namo our heard many times a day, withal. Ah now you are guessing. Was phe n notorious gazelle of the demi monde, or a conspicuous divorcee, or a titled lady of aristocratic eccentricities? She was not. Your .second guess was right tihe was a movie star. "I,et me tell you a little story," said my city-broken companion. And we made for a retreat where coffee cof-fee attains the color of a cured meerschaum meer-schaum and the soul of a Javanese dancing danc-ing girl. A nd there, over a marble-topped marble-topped table, he told me: Sibyl Sinclair (nee Jane Potts) had not always boon an artiste, feted, overpaid, over-paid, incased In a velvet-trimmed moving mov-ing glass case, furred and entorpied. She had unco been a manicure in the barber fih op where the proletariat was shorn, whero the soggy clerk and the stripling underling were scraped and flayed somewhere in the region of wholesale warehouses or retail bargain bazaars. Barbers came and barbers got th gate. And then came Pietro. Pietro was a Sicilian. He had laid down the stiletto of his forefathers for the Gilletto of American progress, and he reeked of lotion lo-tion and ho was a live one. Pietro, when he first beheld Jane, who wes just then pruning the superfluous cuticle over the najl-moon of a tailor's apprentice, stopped in his tracks and gaped at her. He had never seen anything any-thing as iridescently intoxicating. For several days he made no overt overtures. But he cut many a cheekbone cheek-bone and nicked many a chin as he stole sighing glances toward the Imitation porcelain sink where Jane plied her profession. pro-fession. Now and then Jano did a trick at Pietro's chair, and ho drank of her fascinations fas-cinations at close proximity. In time he saluted her with a bow and she returned stiffly with a bit of a simper; then began in earnest the famous affair of Pietro and Jane. He worshiped her. He spent the leavings leav-ings of his stingy earnings in buying her useless pasementeries and unappreciated corsage bouquets and highly useful chewing gum. He hated every customer whose hand she touched, and he lived as though on a fire of seething coals as he witnessed through the hours of the long days the men, one after the other, joshing josh-ing and winking and whispering and chit-chatting with her, as is the custom. He offered her marriage many times. She told him that he was bugs that she v aan't marrying anybody, let alone a crimpy-haired wop razor-stropper that didn't make enough wages to buy dog meat for a Chihuahua. But Pietro accepted no refusal, no matter how blunt or pointed, as conclusive conclu-sive or final. Once or twice she consented consent-ed to lunch with him at the adjacent beanery, and then he talked to her seriously seri-ously and at length of his matrimonial intentions, with her as the piece de resistance; re-sistance; and always she looked up at him and told him to go take a chase for himself and quit shooting that hop in his elbow which meant "No." Pietro had told her many times that she was too divine, too superb, too celestial, celes-tial, too ethreal, too exquisite, too transcendent tran-scendent to be a manicure. She agreed . Here was a message from the Black Hand to him what should he do? . with him, but alas, she had a mother and a lazy, loafing brother to "keep," and what could an honest girl do? She was unhappy and out of her natural element, but she "knocked out" some thirty or so dollars the week with the pick and polish, pol-ish, so she wasn't contemplating a change. He assured her that she would grace a castle, embellish a palace, light up a mansion, give class to a throne. She nodded In assent. He struck into her heart, though, when he said: "I seea ev night In movies wimmlna what they ain' no halfa so swell Ilka you, they area stars. I bechou they get blgga do wages, tooa." ' He had stepped right into her kitchen had touched a light under her already JI Ii II II lUULJLJLJUULJLJLJLJLJLLJUUL. bubbiing ducksoup. That was Just what she had been thinking, oh, so many times. She, too, went to the "flliunxs." She, too, had looked upon the slab-sided chromos that the producers and directors unloaded on the 10-cent public as beauties beau-ties and thespians. If these were stars she was a high-noon sun, she had so many times thought. What girl has not? To make the answer even more difficult, what manicure girl has not? She dragged forth a sigh as deep as her tight corsets would stretch and confessed con-fessed that the camera hid her life's ambition, am-bition, her heart's hope. But what chance had she? The girls who "got by" in the movies were either sisters, natural daughters or unnatural mistresses of the bootblacks and butchers who had grown fat on motion pictures because they knew nothing about them and because they had no eye for beauty. Pietro said he'd see what he could do about it what he could do to get her into the focus of the clicking camera. He dropped it lightly en passant. Jane looked up, snapplly and with pique. "What you'll do?" she snarled. "Wny, you nickel-tip-copping Guinea, the floor sweeper in a one-reel studio wouldn' talk to you excep' to say, 'Clip my hair round j in the back.' You'll see? Say you'd make me scream with laughin' if it wasn' that you make me so sore I could swear." Pietro bowed low, as though acknowledging acknowl-edging knighthood from his queen, and backed to his chair again. Peter Krupf, who owned the majority cf otock in the Superhumun Morethan-filni Morethan-filni Syndicate, had made his money as a brewer. He had been let in through the basement door of the motion picture Industry In-dustry when its upper stories were in the scaffolding stages. Now his name was as prominent on the screen as it was on the bottle. He had power. Any man . who disposes of Jobs in the movies has power. Give me the naming of 100 picture pic-ture stars and I will have millionaires, governors, pugilists, editors, toothless clubmen and titled snobs at my feet. Krupf had grown more or less used to It. All his friends and all the men he did business with and all the members of his golf club and his several nephew's and two police officials of his city and the night watchman of the garage at Ills country place had each In turn gone about it in the same way to present before him as many girls, undiscovered but inspired in-spired and bewitching cameraeiads who could out-Pickford Clara Kimball Young, make Theda Bara look like a purring kitten kit-ten and drive Annette Kellormann into a barrel; who stood ready to give to the projection sheet such charms as it had never entertained and to revolutionize all previous conceptions of what constituted consti-tuted pulchritude. Out of the 11,000 amateur girls that Krupf's company had taken on for tests twenty-one had made good and one had become known. Maybe that was because he could say "Nothing doing" so resolutely reso-lutely to all his friends and all the pests. Maybe It was because that was the regu- lar proportion that could prove available. Anyway, Krupf hud reached a humor where he began to smile and followed ' with a yawn when anyone offered him on a platter of personal interest another flower blushing unseen and wasting her sweetness on private circulation of her wonders instead of being whooped before be-fore the stunned gaze of the millions in the filmeries. Krupf had "turned down" so many requests of this na ture that he was .scarcely vulnerable any longer. But he sat up with a bolt and took second notice no-tice when he eyed at his breakfast table the following note: Feter Krupf Mr.: You got a picher factry. In Sis-ser's Sis-ser's barber shop around corner from postofflce is manicure lady what's she name Jane Potts. She so putty she makes your actoresses they look like a sick horse what's die from old age. Anyhow, you come see her. If you like it her you take it her and make it her movie stars. If you don't a bumb he's put under un-der you somewheres maybe your house, maybe your brewrio, maybe your studio, maybe when you eat the lunch, maybe when you walking, walk-ing, maybe when you in your auto-machine. auto-machine. You got 10 (ten) days you do it, or you get the bumb. Black Hand. , Peter Krupf jumped half out of his chair and if you could see his bulk you'd know that this was considerable propulsion! propul-sion! Always a physical coward, scared of injury In any manifestation, a white-livered white-livered poltroon in the face of attack when he was a hefty lion in 'any other style of combat, ho turned white. He had heard of the Black Hand. He had believed little in it. But here was a message from the Black Hand to him what should he do? He thought of the police: but he thought of the bomb it might go off under un-der him despite all that the stupid and negligent police would be able to do. All morning he remained at )home. Though he had ten days, ho was ail ready frightened. Then it struck him tliat his home was the most logical place for the thing to go off, and he rushed oiit. His car stood In front. He thought! .of the threat to blow the car he w a CN-fc:i -tatedly down the street On and on he walked, gnose flesh all over. The blood had left his head, but his feet were of ice. He almost moaned aloud. That this should come to him! And right in the middle of his happiness and his prosperity. An hour ago he had been a rich, smiling man; now he was a fugitive with a price on his head and a bomb under his feet he jumped. He looked up. He was downtown. Why he wasn't far from the barber shop. With thumping heart he sneaked to the window of Sisser's Tonsorlal Parlors, Par-lors, and with fearful eyes he glanced in through the window. Jane was just peeling the skin from arourfd the thumbnail of a fire-insurance-policy penman. She was chewing chattily and smirking smittingly. "WTell she ain't so worse," said Krupf out loud. The alternative was not so bitter. If all it required to save him from destruction destruc-tion was to put that girl Into one of his companies, all was not, lost. She was about as good to look at as most "extra" girls in his plant. Why not? He called a taxi and rushed to his studio. After being closeted for ten minutes min-utes in his private office with one of the directors, he sent that dignitary forth to Sisser's. w The bomb that went off detonaVfcthat night right in the barber shop wN Jane made known with verve, pep an" bombast that she was through; that movies had come after her; thnJr her beauty and her talents had beyn recognized recog-nized from afar, and that Art had cried out to her; that she was off for queen-dom, queen-dom, through with the curved scissors, on her way to glory and to the movies! She passed Pietro as though he were air; and she passed out, A month later a release showed that she "took" well. Krupf ordered her advanced. ad-vanced. He remembered that the Black Hand had demanded stardom no lessi for her. And he still saw that bomb and beard it in his dreams. So he pushed her along, and she did well enough. "That was Jane Sibyl Sinclair Is Jane," said my friend. "And Pietro where Is he?" "ifoing thirty days in the cooler annoying the famous star with his absurd ab-surd attentions. His claims that h 'made her were most amusing to the press. The publicity did much for Miss Sinclair. Mr. Krupf denied any knowledge knowl-edge of an alleged 'Black Hand letter. Have some more coffee?" 'Copyright, 1917, by J. Keetey |