Page:Minnie Flynn (1925).pdf/103

 "Keep up your dancing and laughing!" yelled Bacon to whip up their wearying feet. "Music! Laughter!" with irritating persistence. "Laughter! Louder!"

The carpenter hidden behind one of the painted drops raised a forty-four, cocked it and at the signal from the property man fired off half a dozen blank cartridges. The explosion in that closed space was terrific, and for one moment pandemonium broke loose. Women screamed. The dancers mobbed together. . . . Then they stopped still, rigid, electrified with fear.

Down the stairway rushed the leading woman with hair and gown disheveled, wild screams tearing out of her.

"Rush to her! Surround her!" bawled Bacon, jumping up and down the platform, raging. "You blockheads! You idiots! Don't look this way or by God I'll"

Frothing, inarticulate, he swung the megaphone into the crowd as they stood there, frozen in wonder and bewilderment, gripped by a fear they could not understand.

"Lights out!" shouted Letcher. "Stop the camera! Back to your places, you blockheads! You idiots!"

Minnie had fled to the far end of the stage at the explosion. She returned when she saw the workmen going methodically back to their usual tasks, and crept up to the platform to find out what had happened. She wasn't one who suspected a trick on Bacon's part to force realism artificially into the scene.

Still cursing, Bacon paced the platform. He might have known he couldn't expect anything from those sheep, he was ejaculating. What a fool he was to be wasting his time!

Binns and the director-in-chief of the studio, Hal Deane, who were watching the scene from the background, now stepped forward. Both were smiling enigmatically.

"Did you see that?" Bacon roared. "Tried an experiment