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