Could you tie Harold?

Van Aylstyne, the guy that committed the scenarios, went out one night to get some atmosphere for a thriller at Montana Joe's. He got the atmosphere O.K., bringin' most of it back on his breath and the Kid asked him to stick out his tongue so he could see was they any revenue stamps on it. In the mornin' he grabbed a container of ice water and a pen and dashed off a atrocity in five reels based on what atmosphere of Montana Joe's that was still with him. He called the thing "The End of the World!" Potts says the t.i.tle alone sounded good enough to him to remove the b.u.mpers from his bankroll without lookin' further, addin', in a loud aside, that if the plot wasn't a knockout, Van Aylstyne could change the t.i.tle to "The End of My Job!" De Vronde, the popular heart-breaker, is given the lead opposite Miss Vincent, and, of course, Kid Scanlan is to be dragged in as a special feature. Harold has hypnotised Genaro into lettin' him take off a "enter with others" in the first reel. Everything was ready to have the cameras pointed at it, when somethin' come along that balled it all up.

Her name was Gladys O'Hara.

Gladys was no ravin' beauty and I heard her say "ain't it" twice, but she was one of them dames that the first flash you get at 'em you wonder are they still enforcin' the law against mashers! She had a wonderful complexion and although if you looked close you could see she had give nature a helpin' hand, she did the retouchin' so well that you was glad she had. She had one of the latest model, twin-six figures and she dressed with the idea of givin' the natives a treat, even if she was takin' chances on pneumonia. Gladys was the kind of dame that starts the arguments in the newspapers on what is our offices comin'

to, look how them stenographers dress!

When J. Harold Cuthbert met Gladys, she had got as far as bein' a saleslady in the Busy Bee, Frisco. She could have beat that with her eyes closed, but Gladys kept hers open and, bein' a female wise guy, she knew who to eat lunch with and who to say, "I don't get you!"

to--which is a art! As a result, she had never got no further than sellin' shirtwaists and had her first home to break up. She never advanced beyond that counter--up or down! Many a necktie salesman had flashed Gladys and gone right out to buy the tickets, before he even asked her would she look over a show, windin' up by throwin' 'em away and tellin' her what a sweet old woman his mother was and how strong he was for his own gas meter. That was Gladys. She looked like what she wasn't, and she fooled 'em all.

All but Harold!

I found Gladys very easy to look at myself, and I helped the Sante Fe over a tough year by runnin' over to Frisco to the Busy Bee whenever I could get away. It took me a short month to find out that I had the same chance of winnin' out as I'd have of gettin' elected King of Montenegro by acclamation, because Harold had been there first and got in his deadly work.

I was standin' in the next aisle to where Gladys held forth, one afternoon, waitin' for a couple of fatheads to call it a day and move away from the counter, when along comes Harold. As usual, he was all dressed up like a horse, with the even fare back to Film City in them one-way pockets of his. He b.u.t.ts right into the conversation, and I nearly fainted when he pa.s.ses a box of candy over to Gladys. Then I seen the label on the package, and I revived, because it was one of a dozen that some simp had sent Miss Vincent and in order to please the Kid she had give 'em all away. Harold had brought his all the way over to Frisco on a ticket furnished by the Maudlin Movin' Picture Company, which sent him over for props.

Well, Harold gets warmed up and in a minute he's press agentin' himself at the rate of fifty-five words a minute--I clocked him! He tells Gladys he's bein' _starred_ in "The End of the World" and the amount of money they're payin' him would startle Europe, if it ever got out. He claims he made 'em all faint at the rehearsals and offers from other companies is comin' in so fast that he's got a charley horse on his thumb from openin' telegrams. From that he works into the fact that after the picture is made he's gonna run around Europe--that's just the way he said it, "Run around Europe!" Oh, boy!--that bein' the way he usually spent his vacations. When Gladys staggers over to wait on a customer, Harold charges himself up again and when she comes back he's off to a runnin' start. He remarks that his father has just made a killin' in Wall Street that has caused Rockefeller to weep and gnash his teeth and that the last affair his mother give at Newport got four columns on the front page, although the mayor of the town had been shot the same afternoon.

Gladys takes this all in with her mouth as open as Kelly pool and her eyes half closed and dreamy like she was dyin' happy.

When Harold put on the brakes and eased up, she throwed him a look that I would have walloped Dempsey for. Harold says he must go, because the picture would be ruined if he wasn't there to direct it, and Gladys holds out a tremblin' hand. Then Harold plays his ace--he takes off his hat, bows, kisses that hand and blows.

When I seen Gladys deliberately walk back of the wrappin' booth, put her hand to her lips and kiss it herself--I pulled my hat down over my ears and went back to Film City.

The next mornin' they begin work on the first reel of "The End of the World," and Harold had a field day at bein' rotten. He got in everybody's way, ruined twenty feet of film by firin' off a cannon at the wrong time and made Genaro hysterical by gettin' caught in a papier mache tower and pullin' it down. Not content with that, he goes back of a interior to try out one of the Kid's cigarettes and by simply flickin' the thing into a can of kerosene he set the Maudlin Movin'

Picture Company back about five hundred bucks.

They run him out of the picture, and he went, yellin' that it would be a farce without him in it.

About four o'clock me and the Kid is trottin' along the road outside of Film City like we did every day so's Scanlan could keep in condition, when we all but fell over Harold. He's sittin' on a rock and gazin'

off very sad in the general direction of New York. His dashin', smashin', soft hat was yanked down over his home-breakin' face, and his dimpled chin was buried in his lily white hands. He looked like a guy that has worked twenty-seven years inventin' a new steamboat and then seen it sink the first time he tried it out.

The Kid runs over and slaps him on the back just hard enough to make his hat fall off.

"Cheer up, Cutey!" pipes Scanlan. "They can't hang a guy for tryin'!"

Harold retrieves his hat, smoothes it out carefully and lets loose the gloomiest sigh I ever heard in my life.

"Have you a cigarette?" he asks sadly.

The Kid pulls out a deck, and Harold takes two, droppin' one in his pocket.

"Alas!" he remarks, strikin' a match on my shoe. "Alas!"

"When can the body be seen?" asks Scanlan. "And is it a church funeral or will they pull it off at the house?"

"This is no time for levity," mutters Harold. "I'm ruined!"

"I only got ten bucks with me," the Kid tells him, "but I'll part with--"

"Poof!" sneers Harold, wavin' his hands like a head waiter. "Money! I am not in need of that. Why, my father--" He breaks off to take the bill from the Kid's hand and shove it in his pocket. "Rather than offend you!" he explains. "No," he goes on, "this is a more serious matter than money. I--" He flicks away the cigarette, jumps up off the rock and gives us both the up and down. "I am going to take you two into my confidence," he says, "and perhaps you will help me."

"Go on!" encourages the Kid. "I'm all worked up--shoot it!"

"Well, then," says Harold, with the air of a guy pleadin' guilty to save his old father. "In the first place, my name is not J. Harold Cuthbert!"

There was no answer from us, and Harold seemed peeved because we had not collapsed at his confession.

"What is it?" I asks, when the silence begin to hurt the ears.

"Trout!" pipes Harold, bitterly. "Joe Trout!"

"Yeh?" says the Kid. "Well, what's the matter with that? What did you can it for?"

"Ha, ha!" hisses Harold, with a "curse you!" giggle. "Where could a man get with a name like _that_?"

"In the aquarium!" yells the Kid. "I knew you'd fall!"

Harold shakes his head and blows himself to another sigh.

"Imagine a moving picture leading man named Trout!" he goes on. "I changed my name as a sacrifice to the movies, for--"

"Just a minute!" I b.u.t.ts in. "On the level now, where _did_ you get your movin' picture experience?"

"As a.s.sistant bookkeeper in a grocery store!" he answers. "Now you have it!"

"But you said your father was a big man in Wall Street!" I busts out.

"He is!" answers Harold, lookin' over at the Santa Fe. "They don't come any bigger. He's a traffic policeman at the corner of Broadway and Wall Street and stands six foot four in his socks!"

"Sweet Cookie!" shouts the Kid, and falls off the rock.

When we recover from that, Harold has smoked the other cigarette, and he nods for my box. Then he asks us do we want to hear the rest.

"If you don't tell it," says the Kid, "you'll never leave here alive!

Hurry up, I'm dyin' to hear it!"

"Well," says the ex-J. Harold Cuthbert, "I am about to be married and at the eleventh hour Nemesis has gripped me. I told my fiancee that I was being featured in 'The End of the World' and that it would be exceedingly easy for me to get _her_ a part in the picture--she having expressed a desire to that effect at various times. She will be here within the hour to watch me being filmed and to hold me to my promise to place her as leading woman opposite me." He stops and moans.

"Gentlemen," he goes on, "picture for yourself the contretemps when she finds I am nothing but a super and that Genaro wouldn't give Sarah Bernhardt a job on a recommendation from me! My romance will be shattered, and the--the humiliation will kill me!"

There was a heavy silence for a minute, and then the Kid whistles.

"Well, pal," he says, "you have certainly balled things up a few, haven't you?"

Joe Trout just let loose another moan.

"Gimme one of them good cigarettes!" pipes the Kid to me. He lights it and looks over at friend Joe. "The first thing," he says, puffin'

away; "the first thing, is this--just how _much_ do you think of this dame, all jokes aside?"