MIRANDA OF THE MOVIES.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 133, 7 June 1926, Page 16

MIRANDA OF THE MOVIES.

Author ot "Winter Corn,

SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS. I JANET THORPE, daughter of the squire ot Thorpe, whose financial circumstances are | as unsatisfactory as possible, comes to i London in the hope of mending the family j fortunes. She meets MIRIAM SWAYNE, a cinema star, formerly ] a servant at Thorpe, and i DICK COVERDALE, a'seenario writer, for- | merly a shepherd boy at Thorpedale. and, j with their assistance, gets engaged by MR. TAN QUISTEN, of Millenimn Films, ! Ltd., to play a small part in a new film called "Bonnets Over the Border.'' OSWALD THORPE, Janet's brother, a j young officer, is head over heels in debt to MR. JONAH, a moneylender, who charges exorbitant rates of interest. CHAPTER 111. Richard Coverdale had mentioned Fulham as the supposed birthplace of the distinguished near-American, Mr. Van Quieten, and when Janet had run from from her brother's rooms, with only the vaguest of intentions for the future, and had accepted the invitation of a crawling taxi driver, she told him to drive to Fulham as the first place that presented itself to her- mind. "If you know where it is," she added. "If we get lost we can always ask a 'p'lieeman,' " said the driver. He summoned the ghost of a wink. "What part of Fulham, miss? The Pellis Road?" "Pellis Road," replied Janed coldly, "will do very well. Please stop at—er— No. 10." The meter ticked up an alarming total, and No. 10 proved to be the saloon bar of the "Hat and Feathers," but in spite of these drawbacks and another wink, less ghostly than demoniacal, from the taxi driver, Janet had perambulated the Fulham Palace Road with a light heart until she chanced upon Mrs. Pellew's sign, announcing comfortable apartments for a single lady. The sign had not lied. Mrs. Pellew did happen, by the merest chance, to have a beautiful third floor front on her hands—a room which, it appeared, was peculiarly suitable to a lady who was out all day and in all night, who liked to provide her own meals (except Sunday dinner), and run her own errands, who scorned the service of others, rejoiced to carry up her own water on bath night and took a natural pride in making her own bed, which, Mrs. Pellew always thought, was a thing nobody could do quite like oneown self—not to be comfortable and cosy. "Or at least," amended Mrs. Pellew a little thickly, "not to be as comfortable as I like to think my guests are. There's Miss Siviter now, who has the room overlooking the all-night garage. She's that comfortable and cosy she doesn't have to call mc up them stairs not once in a month. It's fortunate, that is, because I suffer from my heart, ypu know. This is the vacant room, Miss—er—" "May," said Janet. "Misa Miranda May." Mr. "Parhamdieu's inspiration seemed to fall' a little flat in these surroundings. Mrs. Pellew scrutinised her doubtfully. "Your own name?" she asked. "Of course," said Janet. " "I see; then you're not a perfessional lady, by any chance?" "Oh, no," said Janet. "An actress." said Mrs. Pellew. "I—er—act for the moving pictures." Mrs. Pellew looked more doubtful still. She made it a practice, she explained, not to let her rooms to the profession, and though, of course, the pictures wern't quite the same thing— in fact were, in a manner of speaking rather different—she wasn't sure but what "

, " Tl , l ? u „ h 1 wiU say *" she interrupted herself, "you don't look like one." At which Janet bade her good evenin<and would have left her then and there only the room began to spin round her in a queer way. She had been travelling all night. 7' 1 cc the same thin S myself," said Mrs. Pellew, when the phenomenon was pointed out to her.

The rest had been vague. She had struck some sort of somnambulist bargain and here she was at the one window m London, that she could, if she pleased, call her own. And the day had provided her with two entirely novel experiences; she had cooked her own dinner on a "as ring and she had been to a cinema. The first experience had filled her with joy and the second with despair. - T , h t, c ,° okin g* in sho", had made her feel Bohemian and the pictures provincial—particularly the close-ups (as she was later to call them), in which the faces of the actors, magnified to a hundred times the size of life, registered emotions on an equally stupendous scale, and with an abandon which the mere thought of imitating had made lier blush in the covering darkness. She had seen nothing like it in Thorpedale. where faces are worn, in the course of nature, hut not used. Yet Miriam was from Thorpe, and she presumably had come successfully through the ordeal of the close-up. But then Miriam had not a Thorpe nose . . .

The Thorpe nose must of necessity bulk large in Janet's story. It is, as Dick Coverdaile had confessed, big. It is not, as Lady (then Mrs.) Heseltine had declared, medieval; for it can be traced back weH beyond the middle ages. Janet, at any rate, had begun for the first time to wonder if she were not a little too true to type. She had tried to register a few simple emotions in front of the fly-blown mirror of her wardrobe, and had shrunk back appalled. It would never do. It was only too clear that Chance, that least reliable of goddesses, had n/>t led her to her true vocation. ■

These were her thoughts as she leaned from her third story window. And at that exact moment Chance, as though to shame her scepticism, responded with one .of those staggering coincidences that so often happen in real life, but that writers of fiction copy only at their own risk. ' It-came with a crash —precisely under Janet's window— : the impact of the near front wheel of a large and shining motor car against the hub of a coal wagon that had drawn in tod tardily to the curb after circumnavigating an ice-cream barrow. The car skidded against .a lamp-post and threw out its only occupant almost upon Mrs. Peliew's doorstep. Janet flew down three nights of stairs to find that lady placidly surveying the damage from her front door. A gentleman of rather more than midd.e-a*re lay on the pavement motionless, while the coal man. the cornet-and-wafer man and the unhurt chauffeur bent over him. closely pressed by a solemn and delighted crowd. The police had not yet arrived; hut, in any case, Janet would probably have taken charge. It is a second nature of her order to give directions in a crisis. Anyway, the wretched man, if alive, was in | immediate danger of being stifled.

By ERIC LEACROFT,

"Silversands," etc., etc

''Briug him in here," commanded Janet. The chauffeur recognised the accents of commend, and passed on the order to the coal man. Between them they managed to lift the limp figure and approach the sanctuary of Mrs. Pellew-'s hall. But they had reckoned without Mrs. Pellew herself. "Xot in here!" cried the landlady, barring tbe way dramatically. '*Xot in my hall, and mc suffering from my heart like I do. I'll kindly ask you to take him somewhere else or wait for the hambulanee. Well, of all the impudence!" This to Janet, who had thrust her aside without ceremony, and opened the door of the front room, whose tenant, a lady reporter on a London daily, was out about her business. "Put him on the bed," Janet directed. "And take his collar off. Now stand back. He's coming round." He not only came round, but spoke, and his first words showed him to be a man of quick decisions. "Samson!" cried the invalid, in a slightly thick voice, and without opening his eyes. "Yes, sir," replied the chauffeur, coming to attention with a start. "Take a week's notice." "Very good, sir. Thank you, sir." The man on tbe bed opened his eyes, sat up and shook himself like a dog coming out of water. Then he began feeling his joints methodically from the ankles upward, unfastening his waistcoat in order to give attention to each rib. "Have you sent for tlie doctor " he asked, with a sudden note of anxiety, chauffeur and the coalman consulted one another. It seemed 1 that, in the excitement of the moment, nobody had. "Then don't," said the victim. "Your fool clumsiness has cost mc quite enough as it is." He turned to Janet with the nearest approach to a bow that can be achieved by one who is sitting with his legs stretched out in front of him. "Madam, I apologise for being in your bed." "It isn't my bed." said Janet. "Then whose bed is it?" "I haven't the faintest idea. I had you brought in here because I was afraid you were seriously hurt." "So I am," he replied gallantly, "to have intruded upon a lady without cause." Now that his normal colouring had returned, Janet realised that tbe of the car possessed an unfamiliar and un-English cast of countenance. Jews are unknown in Thorpedale, the last one having disappeared thence about the time of King John, and Janet was not 'familiar with the type except from caricatures in back numbers of "Punch," But this gentleman —she would not have grudged him the name—was not at all the Jew of caricature. His nose was true to type, but his face was broad and flat and creased with humour, his eyes steady and : frank. • • '

But now a policeman appeared, and, with that nice d_icriniination which is part of a policeman's duty, treated the injured man with deference, the coal man with tolerance, and the ice-cream man with contempt. But he was cut short while he was still licking his pencil.

"I'll have nothing to do with the police," declared the owner of the wrecked ear, abruptly. He produced a pocketbook, extracted a bundle of notes, and approached the coal man and the Italian in turn.

"Xow we're all happy," he announced confidently. "Samson, find a taxi. Policeman, you may go."

"Half a mo'," said the officer, ruffled, but impressed. "There's a little Batter of a lamp post, sir. I'm afraid I shall have to trouble you for your name and address m case the borough council have a word to say."

"Bother!" shouted the gentleman, impatiently. "Jonah!"

"That your name, sir? Or merely an exclamation?"

"My name, idiot. Jonah, 587, Bupert Street."

"Write or call," gasped Janet, in spite of herself. But Mr. Jonah did not hear her.

(To be continued daily.)