The Moving Picture Girls in War Plays | Page 2

her shoulder, she found her skirt caught on a corner of the trunk.
"There! Did you ever?" she cried. "I can't even give you a sisterly hug without pulling myself to pieces. I'm all upset--excited--unstrung--Wellington Bunn doing Hamlet isn't to be compared to me. I must get straightened out."
"I guess that's it--you're all tangled up in your packing," said Ruth, with a laugh. "Truly, I don't mean to lecture, Alice, but you must go a bit slower."
"Not with this packing--I can't, and be ready in time. Why! you are all prepared to go. I'll just throw the things into my trunk and----"
"Now, don't do that. Don't throw things in. You can put in twice as much if you lay the things in neatly. I'll help you. But--oh, dear----!"
Ruth made a gesture of despair.
"What's the matter now? What are you registering?" and Alice used the moving picture term for depicting one of the standard emotions. The girls were both moving picture actresses.
"I'm trying to register dismay at the muddy state of those scout shoes, as you call them, Alice. They may be nice and comfortable, as you say, and really they do look so. And I have no doubt you will find them useful if we have to do much tramping over the hills of Oak Farm. But----"
"Oh, we'll have to do plenty of hiking, as Russ Dalwood warned us," Alice put in. "You know, there are to be several Civil War plays filmed, and they didn't have automobiles or motor cycles to get about on in those days. So we'll have to walk. And it will be over rough ground, so I thought these shoes would be just the thing."
"They will, Alice. I must get a pair myself, I think. But I was just wondering how you got them so terribly muddy. How did you?"
"Oh, Paul Ardite and I were in that Central Park scene the other day. You know, 'A Daughter of the Woods,' and some of the scenes were filmed in the park. It was muddy, and I didn't get a chance to have the brogans cleaned, for I had to jump from the park into the ballroom scene of 'His Own Enemy,' and there was no time. We had to retake in that scene because one of the extras was wearing white canvas shoes instead of ballroom slippers, and the director didn't notice it until the film was run out in the projection room.
"So that accounts for the mud on the shoes, Ruth. But I suppose I can 'phone down to the janitor and have him send them out to the Italian at the corner. He'll take the mud off."
"No, I don't know that you can do that, Alice. We haven't any too much time. If I had an old newspaper, I could wrap the shoes up in that for you, and pack them in the bottom of your trunk. Then the mud wouldn't soil your clothes."
"An old newspaper? Here's a stack of them. Daddy just brought them from his room. Guess he's going to throw them away."
Alice reached up to a table and lifted the top paper from a pile near the edge. She opened it with a flirt of her hand and was about to wrap the muddy shoes in it when some headlines on one page caught her attention. She leaned eagerly forward to read them, and spent more than a minute going over the article beneath.
"Well," remarked Ruth finally, with a smile, "if you're going to do that, Alice, you'll never get packed. What is it that interests you?"
"This, about a missing girl. Why, look here, Ruth, there's a reward of ten thousand dollars offered for news of her! Why, I don't remember seeing this before. Look, it's quite startling. A San Francisco girl--Mildred Passamore--mysteriously disappears while on a train bound for Seattle--can't find any trace of her--parents distracted--they've got detectives on the trail--going to flood the country with photographs of her--all sorts of things feared--but think of it!--ten thousand dollars reward!"
"Let me see," and in spite of the necessity for haste in the packing, Ruth DeVere forgot it for the moment and came to look over her sister's shoulder to read the account of the missing California girl.
"It is strange," murmured Ruth. "I don't remember about that. I wonder if she could be around here? The New York police are wonderful in working on mystery cases."
"But the funny part of it is," said Alice, "that I haven't noticed anything about it in the New York papers. Have you? This is a San Francisco paper. Naturally they'd have more about it than would the journals here. But even the New York papers would have big accounts of such a case, especially where such a large reward is offered."
"That's so," agreed Ruth. "I wonder why