He strolled on with the rose in his hand. Later, and much nearer the end of the street where the cameras were, he saw the sheik of noble mien halt the flower seller, haggle for another rose, place this daintily behind his left ear and stalk on, his musket held over one shoulder, his other hand on a belted pistol. Merton disposed of his rose in the same manner. He admired the sheik for his stature, his majestic carriage, his dark, handsome, yet sinister face with its brooding eyes. He thought this man, at least, would be a true Arab, some real son of the desert who had wandered afar. His manner was so much more authentic than that of the extra people all about.
A whistle blew and the street action was suspended. There was a long wait while cameras were moved up and groups formed under the direction of Henshaw and his assistant. A band of Bedouins were now to worship in the porch of a mosque. Merton Gill was among these. The assistant director initiated them briefly into Moslem rites. Upon prayer rugs they bowed their foreheads to earth in the direction of Mecca.
“What’s the idea of this here?” demanded Merton Gill’s neighbour in aggrieved tones.
“Ssh!” cautioned Merton. “It’s Mass or something like that.” And they bent in unison to this noon-tide devotion.
When this was done Henshaw bustled into the group. “I want about a dozen or fifteen good types for the cafe,” he explained to his assistant. Merton Gill instinctively stood forward, and was presently among those selected. “You’ll do,” said Henshaw, nodding. The director, of course, had not remembered that this was the actor he had distinguished in The Blight of Broadway, yet he had again chosen him for eminence. It showed, Merton felt, that his conviction about the screen value of his face was not ill founded.
The selected types were now herded into a dark, narrow, low-ceiled room with a divan effect along its three walls. A grizzled Arab made coffee over a glowing brazier. Merton Gill sat cross-legged on the divan and became fearful that he would be asked to smoke the narghileh which the assistant director was now preparing. To one who balked at mere cigarettes, it was an evil-appearing device. His neighbour who had been puzzled at prayer-time now hitched up his flowing robe to withdraw a paper of cigarettes from the pocket of a quite occidental garment.
“Go on, smoke cigarettes,” said the assistant director.
“Have one?” said Merton’s neighbour, and he took one. It seemed you couldn’t get away from cigarettes on the screen. East and West were here one. He lighted it, though smoking warily. The noble sheik, of undoubtedly Asiatic origin, came to the doorway overlooking the assistant director’s work on the narghileh. A laden camel halted near him, sneered in an evil manner at the bystanders, and then, lifting an incredible length of upper lip, set his yellow teeth in the nearest shoulder. It was the shoulder of the noble sheik, who instantly rent the air with a plaintive cry: “For the love of Mike!—keep that man-eater off’n me, can’t you?”
His accent had not been that of the Arabian waste-land. Merton Gill was disappointed. So the fellow was only an actor, after all. If he had felt sympathy at all, it would now have been for the camel. The beast was jerked back with profane words and the sheik, rubbing his bitten shoulder, entered the cafe, sitting cross-legged at the end of the divan nearest the door.
“All right, Bob.” The assistant director handed him the tube of the water pipe, and the sheik smoked with every sign of enjoyment. Merton Gill resolved never to play the part of an Arab sheik—at the mercy of man-eating camels and having to smoke something that looked murderous.