Bert Traymore shook his head despairingly and his face puckered up as though he were about to cry.
“No use, Miss Fielding. Some one has been tampering with the magazines and cut off several hundred feet of film!”
Ruth experienced a moment of physical sickness. Edith Lang’s big scene had been ruined, the morale of her company seriously threatened, and all for the loss of a few hundred feet of film!
Of course the scene could be shot again, Miss Lang could undoubtedly work herself up to “acting pitch” again, but for that day at least no more could be expected of her.
Meanwhile her company had gathered about her in consternation. Edith Lang was almost in tears with vexation and the sudden shift of her emotions. Bert Traymore was standing staring at his camera with a bewildered, hang-dog expression that at any other time would have appealed to Ruth’s sense of humor. For a cameraman to come off for a day’s work with an insufficient amount of film in his magazines is an offense that ordinarily costs him his position. Atwater, who had been grinding his machine from another angle, was in a like situation.
In this case Ruth was not inclined to be too hard on the jovial Traymore and his comrade. She was not forced to hunt very far or very long for the origin of this tampering. Bloomberg, with his allies, had evidently started on the campaign of obstruction. This, Ruth felt, was only the first of a long series of annoyances.
She carried off the situation as well as she could. Traymore and Atwater were let off with a warning to examine their magazine boxes more carefully in the future and to be sure hereafter that they had the required length of film before starting out on a day’s work.
Of course there was a good deal of gossip among the actors, but Ruth told them nothing concerning her suspicions.
With her own intimate friends she was hardly more communicative. Though Helen and Tom were wrathful over the episode and Chess sympathetic, Ruth made scarcely any comment.
“I’ve been expecting something of the sort,” was all she would say. “From now on I can see that this thing is going to be a fight between me and Bloomberg, and I’ve got to conserve my forces to win.”