“Get this,” said Baird seriously. “You may think I’m kidding, but only yesterday I was trying to think if I couldn’t dig up some guy that looked more like Parmalee than Parmalee himself does—just enough more to get the laugh, see? And you spring this lad on me. All he needs is the eyebrows worked up a little bit. But how about him—will he handle? Because if he will I’ll use him in the new five-reeler.”
“Will he handle?” Miss Montague echoed the words with deep emphasis. “Leave him to me. He’s got to handle. I already got twenty-five bucks invested in his screen career. And, Jeff, he’ll be easy to work, except he don’t know he’s funny. If he found out he was, it might queer him—see what I mean? He’s one of that kind—you can tell it. How will you use him? He could never do Buckeye stuff.”
“Sure not. But ain’t I told you? In this new piece Jack is stage struck and gets a job as valet to a ham that’s just about Parmalee’s type, and we show Parmalee acting in the screen, but all straight stuff, you understand. Unless he’s a wise guy he’ll go all through the piece and never get on that it’s funny. See, his part’s dead straight and serious in a regular drama, and the less he thinks he’s funny the bigger scream he’ll be. He’s got to be Harold Parmalee acting right out, all over the set, as serious as the lumbago—get what I mean?”
“I got you,” said the girl, “and you’ll get him to-morrow morning. I told him to be over with his stills. And he’ll be serious all the time, make no mistake there. He’s no wise guy. And one thing, Jeff, he’s as innocent as a cup—custard, so you’ll have to keep that bunch of Buckeye roughnecks from riding him. I can tell you that much. Once they started kidding him, it would be all off.”
“And, besides—” She hesitated briefly. “Somehow I don’t want him kidded. I’m pretty hard-boiled, but he sort of made me feel like a fifty-year-old mother watching her only boy go out into the rough world. See?”
“I’ll watch out for that,” said Baird.
CHAPTER XII. ALIAS HAROLD PARMALEE
Merton Gill awoke to the comforting realization that he was between sheets instead of blankets, and that this morning he need not obscurely leave his room by means of a window. As he dressed, however, certain misgivings, to which he had been immune the day before, gnawed into his optimism. He was sober now. The sheer intoxication of food after fasting, of friendly concern after so long a period when no one had spoken him kindly or otherwise, had evaporated. He felt the depression following success.
He had been rescued from death by starvation, but had anything more than this come about? Had he not fed upon the charity of a strange girl, taking her money without seeing ways to discharge the debt? How could he ever discharge it? Probably before this she had begun to think of him as a cheat. She had asked him to come to the lot, but had been vague as to the purpose. Probably his ordeal of struggle and sacrifice was not yet over. At any rate, he must find a job that would let him pay back the borrowed twenty-five dollars.