Page:Minnie Flynn (1925).pdf/92

 voices. . . and far off, merging into the babble of sounds, the whining strains of music. Then above this tangled obbligato there arose a long shrill whistle. Instantly the hammers, voices, footsteps and music ceased. Eleanor gripped Minnie's arm to keep her from stumbling over a heavy cable stretched across the floor from the switch blocks to the bank of lights. A hissing sh-shush carried its echo. Then silence. Crashing into this came a roaring voice through a megaphone.

"Everybody working on Bacon's set get a move on!"

"That means us," whispered Eleanor, "we've got to hurry a bit. Follow me."

Minnie had seen many ballrooms on the screen so the sight wasn't unfamiliar when they stepped in full view of the set. There were the musicians in the balcony behind the palms. There were the four butlers. (Minnie had remembered there were always four butlers in the movie homes of the most refined rich.) There were the men in swallow tails, and the women nearly naked above the waist.

Minnie was thinking that it wasn't a very good floor to dance on, as they paused for a moment, their way blocked by a group of men who were moving the platform on which straddled the three-legged camera.

"What's that thing for?" she whispered.

"Pull a boner like that and they'll sure get onto you," warned Eleanor. "It's the camera."

"It don't look like one," said Minnie, who had noticed a display of kodaks in a shop window only the night before.

"Take a good look at it," said Eleanor. "It's like a living thing. Do you know why? Because it can be your best friend or your worst enemy. God, but it's cruel."

She talked about the camera in such dread tones, about its power to make you or destroy you, with what diabolical