"Gallant—John Gallant."
"Why didn't you say so in the first place? What do you think I am, a mind reader? The clairvoyants are all east of Main street, son, all east of Main street. Keep right on going, you'll find her on stage number three."
His heels crunched into the finely-graveled driveway as he walked in the direction pointed out to him by the guard, who condescended to leave his chair for the purpose of guiding him. He passed two huge barn-like structures and found the third designated in large white letters, "Stage No. 3." A superstructure of black cloth and laths was built out from the doorway at right angles to the stage building, a precaution, he later learned, against daylight.
It was his first visit to a motion picture studio. He had no interest in pictures or the people who played in them. His father, from whom he inherited his love for books and the better class of spoken drama, had always regarded motion pictures as almost a profanation of art. Once he had noticed an advertising poster of a well known star referred to as a "man's man," wearing a shirt open at the neck, sleeves rolled to the elbows, riding trousers and shiny leather puttees, endeavoring desperately to appear like a combination of Sandow and a Northwest Mounted Police officer. He had had the satisfaction of hurling a rock to mar the "virile" face as it looked down defiantly at him from the billboard.
He had always imagined that all motion picture scenes were photographed in the open, on roofless stages, and the idea that Southern California's perpetual sunlight gave the best service for this purpose he believed to be the reason that Los Angeles was the principal producing point of the world. It surprised him when he realized that the barn-like structures were inclosed stages.
Was Consuello a screen player or had she some other work connected with the production of pictures, designer, scenario writer, director, art expert? Or was she only at the studio as a visitor, inviting him to be with her because some particular star was playing or some especially interesting scene being staged?
Entering the cloth and lath superstructure he found himself in pitch darkness. Unable to see his hand before his face he stopped to accustom his eyes to the absence of any light. A voice spoke out of the dark:
"Do you wish to see anyone?" it asked.
"Miss Carrillo," he answered, having an uncanny feeling as he spoke to someone he could not see and yet whom he know was close at hand.
"Miss Carrillo is on the set—was she expecting you?" the voice asked.