“You can’t tell. You can’t tell till you try him out. He might be good, and he might blow up right at the start.”
“I bet he’ll be good. I tell you. Jeff, that boy is just full of acting. All you got to do—keep his stuff straight, serious. He can’t help but be funny that way.”
“We’ll see. To-morrow we’ll kind of feel him out. He’ll see this Parmalee film to-day—I caught it last night—and there’s some stuff in it I want to play horse with, see? So I’ll start him to-morrow in a quiet scene, and find out does he handle. If he does, we’ll go right into some hokum drama stuff. The more serious he plays it the better. It ought to be good, but you can’t ever tell in our trade. You know that as well as I do.”
The girl was confident. “I can tell about this lad,” she insisted.
CHAPTER XIII. GENIUS COMES INTO ITS OWN
Merton Gill, enacting the part of a popular screen idol, as in the play of yesterday, sat at breakfast in his apartments on Stage Number Five. Outwardly he was cool, wary, unperturbed, as he peeled the shell from a hard-boiled egg and sprinkled salt upon it. For the breakfast consisted of hard-boiled eggs and potato salad brought on in a wooden dish.
He had been slightly disturbed by the items of this meal; it was not so elegant a breakfast as Hubert Throckmorton’s, but he had been told by Baird that they must be a little different.
He had been slightly disturbed, too, at discovering the faithful valet who brought on the simple repast was the cross—eyed man. Still, the fellow had behaved respectfully, as a valet should. He had been quietly obsequious of manner, revealing only a profound admiration for his master and a constant solicitude for his comfort. Probably he, like Baird, was trying to do something distinctive and worth while.
Having finished the last egg—glad they had given him no more than three—the popular screen idol at the prompting of Baird, back by the cameras, arose, withdrew a metal cigarette case, purchased that very morning with this scene in view, and selected a cigarette. He stood negligently, as Parmalee had stood, tapped the end of the cigarette on the side of the case, as Parmalee had done, lighted a match on the sole of his boot, and idly smoked in the Parmalee manner.