CHAPTER III
SOMETHING OF A MYSTERY
"Look out there!"
"Where you going?"
"Hold him back, somebody! Look out, you'll spoil that scene! Don't cross in front of the camera!"
Half a dozen frantic voices were calling to the sailor who, with dogged persistence, kept on, shaking his grizzled and gray head, and muttering over and over again:
"It won't do for Jack Jepson! No sir! It won't do. I had one experience with trouble and I don't want any more. No sir!"
Evidently utterly unused to a moving picture studio, the old man kept on his way. He was headed directly toward a camera that was "filming" an elaborate ball room scene.
If any figure came between the scene and the camera with the pictures it was imprinting on the sensitive celluloid film (at the rate of sixteen per second) part of the elaborate work would have to be done over again. And as one of the characters in the little play was a celebrated dancer, whose time was paid for at an almost unbelieveable sum per hour, it would mean a heavy expense.
"Stop him!" cried Mr. Pertell. "Come back here!"