In spite of Helen’s earnest efforts to keep her chum quiet and save the ankle from further injury, Ruth could not sit still. She was the victim of an intolerable restlessness; inertia was positive agony to her.
She had another conference with her cameramen. They took her to the chest in which they had locked up the precious, daylight loaded films.
With lugubrious countenance Schultz, Traymore and Atwater showed her the padlock that had been forced in their absence, the place where the stolen magazines had rested.
The films necessary for the day’s work of the cameramen are contained in daylight loading boxes, or magazines. These magazines are carefully loaded in a dark room and so become daylight loading in the camera. Ruth knew that in the motion picture camera, these magazines are interchangeable, the film passing out of the top magazine through the mechanism of the camera and into the lower magazine. Here it is wound up and carefully protected against light, to be developed later in the laboratory. The lower box is called the “take-up magazine,” and when this is removed the top magazine is put in its place and a freshly loaded box takes the place of the empty one.
It was two of these precious take-up magazines, neatly labeled as to the exact nature of their contents, that had been filched from the chest.
“I wonder,” said Ruth moodily, “why the thief did not take them all?”
“If there were only one or two men operating they could not get away with any more,” said Traymore, haggard lines of worry on his usually merry countenance. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am that this has happened, Miss Fielding. I could hardly sleep last night——”
“I guess none of us could!” Again Ruth’s worry made her words more brusque than she intended. “We must have the locks replaced at once, and please see that some one guards this chest night and day from now on. Although,” she added unhappily, speaking more to herself than to Traymore, “it is very much like locking the stable after the favorite colt is gone!”
After this conference it was impossible for Ruth to remain quiet.
“Let’s get a couple of mounts somewhere and ride up in the woods a way,” she suggested to Helen. “Certainly that can’t hurt my miserable old ankle.”