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Promptly at six-thirty I turned through the swing doors of the restaurant to find him sitting at one of the tables inside. I suggested a cocktail, which he refused, and under my breath I cursed myself for a fool. One does not offer cocktails to men who haven't fed for thirty hours or more. Instead I ordered dinner at once, with a pint of the Chianti for which Bordini's is famous. And then for the next half-hour I watched one of the most pathetic sights in the world—a gentleman who is starving, with food before him. For the man was a gentleman all right—his hands alone were sufficient to prove it. And he was trying to eat as a gentleman eats, while all the time hunger—stark hunger—was gnawing at him. And I wondered what he'd had even so recently as midday the day before.

But at last he finished, and with another flagon of Chianti between us, and a cigarette alight in his mouth, he leaned back in his chair and stared at me with a gleam of mocking humour in his eyes.

"And now I suppose I must pay for my dinner," he remarked.

"Damn it!" I said, a little stiffly, "it was you who suggested it. If you look at it that way, please consider the matter ended and we'll go."

"Forgive me!" He leaned across the table. "I'm a sarcastic brute, though I wasn't once. But there are some people, my friend, for whom nothing ever seems to go right in this world. Maybe it's their own fault—maybe it isn't. Incidentally, the cause doesn't make much odds—it's the effect that counts."

He broke off abruptly. "How did you like that film to- day?"

"Very much," I answered. "Very much indeed."

He nodded thoughtfully. "I wrote it."

"You did what?" I said, staring at him in surprise.

"I wrote it. I wrote the scenario, and I played in the original film."

"But surely," I cried, "that was an original production this afternoon? It was announced as such."

"Parts of it were original; parts of it had never been done before. But parts of it had; I suppose half of it had—quite half. And that half I have seen once on the screen. There's just one copy of it in existence to- day."

"But do these people who produced 'Loaded Dice' know about it?" I asked.

"I don't know if they do or not," he answered. "And it doesn't make much odds, because it will never be shown."

"What part did you play?" I asked.

"Hubert Malden," he remarked, quietly. "The part taken by Carlton Bellairs this afternoon."

I preserved a discreet silence. I could hardly see this lean, cadaverous, down-at-heels man in the character as it had been created for to by Bellairs.

"Yes—I played the part of Hubert Malden," he continued, after a while. "But that's the end of the story. I'll begin at the beginning." He refilled his glass and lit another cigarette. "I don't know if you're interested in the film business. I am, or rather"—and he smiled faintly—"I was. Right from the very start the immense possibilities of the moving picture impressed me. Even in those days when the standard consisted of a one-reel play which gave you a headache to look at, I had visualised in my own mind something of the perfection which you can see to-day. And I went into the show heart and soul. I acted a bit, and I did a certain amount of producing—you'll remember that this was in the days before a producer, if he knew his job, could command almost any salary he liked to ask—and in my spare time I wrote one or two scenarios. I didn't attach myself to any particular company; I was just a free- lance. And though I say it myself, my name was fairly well known in the industry. What that name is doesn't make much odds; it's forgotten to-day."

He paused a moment to press out his cigarette. "One day in London the agent of a certain Italian firm approached me with an offer to produce their new film for them in Italy. They wanted an English producer, as the film was an English film and most of the artistes were English also. They offered me what in those days was quite a considerable sum; to-day a producer would laugh in your face if you mentioned such a figure. However, it was good enough for me, and I accepted. I read the scenario going out to Italy, and was ready to begin work as soon as I arrived. It was just an ordinary straightforward English story, the adaptation of a novel—and I've only mentioned it because I said I'd start at the beginning. That film was the beginning of nay acquaintance with—well, shall we call her Mary Maxwell? She was one of the English actresses engaged by the firm, and I fell in love with her the first moment I saw her."

Again he smiled faintly as he looked at me.

"I'm not going to bore you with lover's rhapsodies," he continued. "I'm only going to say that she was then, and has remained ever since, the loveliest girl I have ever seen. She made one catch one's breath with the wonder of her, and she was utterly and absolutely unspoiled. She was so immeasurably more lovely than Sylvaine Lankester that any comparison even would be ludicrous. And somewhat naturally I was not the only man who had noticed the fact. Love has a knack of quickening up ones powers of observation, and I hadn't been in that studio for two days before I realised that one of the Italian actors in the cast—Paolo Cimetti by name—was in love with her, too. A film studio, as you probably know, is a fairly free-and-easy place, and sometimes for hours on end actors and actresses will be sitting about doing nothing, while other scenes in which they do not appear are being taken. Only the producer is busy the whole time, and often it was as much as I could do to concentrate on my job, when I knew that Mary and the Italian were not in the studio where I could see them. I used to imagine things; I used to grow almost mad with jealousy; once I let down a complete scene because my mind was wandering.

"Not that I had the slightest right to be jealous; beyond talking to her as a producer I had hardly said two words to Mary since I had arrived. As far as I knew I was less than nothing to her; but men in the condition I was in are not over-logical. Certain it was that she gave the Italian not the slightest encouragement—at any rate in public, though his attitude to her very soon became obvious to everybody. He followed her about like a dog; he brought her flowers and chocolates, and his eyes used to be on her wherever she was. God! how I hated that man, though I did my best not to show it. But he knew—right from the beginning he knew—and he hated me just as bitterly.

"And then one day came the first flare-up between him and me. He was a good actor—a very good actor—and be was fully aware of the fact. In addition, he was playing lead—by the way, I don't think I mentioned that Mary was also playing lead. And he was fully aware of that fact also. On this particular occasion we were doing a close-up of him alone. In a corner of the studio was Mary talking to someone, and in the middle of the shot her laugh rang out suddenly. And Cimetti looked across at her. It was an unpardonable thing to do, and he knew it, even before I stopped the camera.

" 'Again, please,' I said. 'And kindly pay attention.'

"He said nothing; there was nothing he could say, but for the first time in my life I realised the meaning of the phrase to have murder in one's eyes. There was murder in Cimetti's eyes as he looked at me.

"And then very soon afterwards matters came to a head. What took me upstairs past the dressing-rooms I don't know, but as I rounded a corner I saw Mary struggling in Cimetti's arms. They were standing in the passage outside her room, and he was trying to kiss her whilst she was pushing him away with both her hands. It was enough for me; I hit him on the point of the jaw with every atom of strength I could put into it. He crashed like a log, hitting his head against the wall as he fell. And then—well, my friend, it's difficult to say how these things happen—I found Mary in my arms, and this time she didn't struggle. Instead she gave me her lips—her wonderful mouth—to kiss."

He said the words almost under his breath, and then for a while sat motionless, staring across the little restaurant thick with the blue haze of tobacco smoke. In his eyes was a look of dumb, hopeless longing; he was back in the past with his memories. For the moment I was forgotten; nothing lived, nothing counted with the man opposite save the touch of a woman's lips on his.

"What is it that Goethe says somewhere?" he continued after a while. " 'There are many echoes, but few voices.' There's only been one voice in my life, and that voice there was no misunderstanding. My love for that girl dwarfed everything else, and when I found that it was the same with her the whole world just changed. You're a stranger to me, and I don't really know why I'm telling you all this, except that you've given me a dinner. I don't know whether you've ever been in love, and—what is far more wonderful —been loved as I was. But if you have, then you will know that I do not exaggerate when I say that no Heaven of imagination can give anything quite so marvellous if it lasts, and no Hell anything quite so agonising if it ceases. Time heals the wound a little but it's always there, my friend, it's always there."

Thoughtfully he lit another cigarette.

"However, I'm not here to bore you with a dissertation on love. Let us go back for a moment to where I was standing in the passage with Mary in my arms. Cimetti was forgotten, and then some movement on his part reminded us of his presence. I looked down and saw him, and for a second my heart stood still. He was crouching back against the wall, with every tooth in his head bared in a snarl, and a long stiletto half-pulled from his pocket. But it was his eyes that fascinated me. They were gleaming with such a frenzy of diabolical hatred that for a moment I thought the man was a maniac. And then, even as he saw me looking at him over Mary's shoulder, the madness faded and was replaced by an expressionless mask. So quickly did he control himself that, when I came to think about it afterwards, I wondered if I hadn't made a mistake. Some trick of the light, perhaps, in the passage. He stood up, muttered a word or two of apology to Mary, and walked away. And she shuddered in my arms.

" 'He frightens me,' she whispered, and I soothed her and comforted her till she forgot him.

"And now I must get on. You're wondering, maybe, where the film you saw this afternoon comes in. Well—it comes in very soon. I told you, didn't I? that I had written the scenario of 'Loaded Dice,' and I had taken it with me to Italy to polish it up and round off one or two edges. And one night I read it to Mary. She was immensely struck with it—as you saw for yourself to- day, it made a good film—and she at once suggested to me that I should offer the scenario to the firm we were then working with. Further, she suggested that she and I should play joint lead if the directors agreed. And then we sat together seeing visions and dreaming dreams of the future. How we would stagger the film industry with our consummate acting; how we should leave this small firm we were with and go over to America where the big money lies; above all, how we would get married. We'd do it before we took the Egyptian part of the film, we decided. It wouldn't mean long to wait; the present production was nearly over. Another six weeks, perhaps two months, would see us through all the Italian interiors of 'Loaded Dice,' and then—marriage. Of course, I need hardly tell you that no film is taken in the actual order in which it is shown. All the scenes of any one place are taken at the same time, and later; when the film is finally joined together, they are put into the proper sequence.

"So we dreamed that night, and next day we could scarcely believe our eyes when it seemed as if all the dreams were coming true. The firm jumped at the scenario, and bought it from me on the spot. At first they wanted me to produce it, but Mary pleaded and argued. She was insistent that I should play lead with her, and when the directors discovered that we were engaged they agreed with true Southern gallantry. I'd played lead before, of course, with English companies.

"There was an American producer—quite a well-known man—in Rome at the time, and they engaged him in my place. And then we came to the question of casting the various parts. First and foremost came Edward Latford—the part taken by John Drage to-day. Unanimously they decided on Cimetti, and Mary and I looked at one another. We didn't want him in the cast at all, but there was no possible way of dispensing with him. He was under contract—the firm would have had to pay his salary in any case, and he was a first-class actor. To the directors the choice was obvious, so obvious that to protest against it would have been an impossibility. For, after all, what could we have said? That we didn't like him! Likes and dislikes are as common in the film world as elsewhere—perhaps commoner. And to do the man justice I had to admit to myself that I had no fault to find with his behaviour since Mary and I had become engaged. He had been consistently polite and courteous, and had been one of the first to congratulate me on my good fortune. And so the wheel of fate took another relentless turn towards the inevitable end."

He rested his elbows on the table and stared at me with sombre eyes.

"I suppose you've guessed that end already," he went on, slowly. "Sometimes now, when I look back on the weeks that followed, I nearly go mad. When I realise that all through those wonderful days every beat of the clock was just one second nearer the end, my brain seems almost bursting. If only one could have known: if only one could have had some premonition of what was to happen. And yet perhaps it was better so. It could have done no good it would have only made my Mary miserable and unhappy had she been frightened with vague fears of impending danger. Because by the very nature of the thing it was inevitable: you see, it was a part of the film itself. And so I who wrote the film am responsible for killing the woman I loved."

His hands were clenching and unclenching, and the sweat was glistening on his forehead.

"I killed her, man—I killed her just as surely, just as inevitably, as that devil Cimetti who actually fired the shot. Listen carefully—for there's not much more to tell.

"You remember the scene, don't you—the climax of the film—where Hubert Malden and Mary Maxwell, having rung the bell for the butler, sit waiting on the sofa and then Edward Latford enters instead: the scene about which I spoke to Sylvaine Lankester this afternoon. It was almost the last scene to be taken before we left and went to Egypt, and though it's so long ago I can recall every detail of that morning.

"Everybody was in the best of spirits—excited over going to Egypt. And as for me—well, you can imagine my feelings. In two days I was going to marry Mary. And as we sat a little apart from the others on the sofa which was to be used in the scene I felt almost dazed with the wonder of it. A carpenter was putting a finishing touch on the door; the photographer was fixing up lights. But at last we were ready and the producer took charge.

" 'Now we'll run through this scene,' he began. 'Cimetti—are you ready?' Cimetti, who had just appeared, stepped forward and bowed to Mary. 'You'll open the door slowly,' went on the producer, and then you'll stretch out your hand with the revolver in it so that only the shadow is seen by the camera. Try that.'

"Cimetti tried it, and the lights had to be adjusted because there was a double shadow. And all this time Mary and I sat on the sofa, just utterly happy because we were near one another. The actual entrance, you see, was a separate scene into which we didn't come.

"At last we heard the camera turning, and we watched Cimetti come round the door, the revolver in his hand. It was a good entrance, splendid it couldn't have been done better, and Mary congratulated him. Again he bowed, but for the first time a vague fear shot through me. It seemed to me as if there was a smouldering look in his eyes as if— But I hadn't time to worry; it was Mary's turn now and mine. First, Cimetti alone: then Mary and I: then all three of us together in the great scene.

" 'You'll get up, said the producer,' showing fear and horror. 'And you,' he said to me, 'make one step forward as if to get in front of her.'

"We tried it once, and it seemed to me as if a mocking smile had shown for a moment on Cimetti's face. But when that scene was over it was his turn to come and congratulate Mary.

" 'Fine!' said the producer. 'Now for the last one.'

"The cameras were adjusted, the lights were moved, and Cimetti stayed with us, talking.

" 'To-morrow is it—or the next day?' he asked. And a honeymoon in Egypt. How delightful—how romantic!'

"The smile glinted again, and once more a dreadful fear shot through me: a presentiment of some awful danger. And yet—what danger could there be? Here—in a film studio, surrounded by people.

"And now the producer was ready, and we ran through the final scene. We faced Cimetti, whose back was towards the camera, and on his lips the smile still lingered.

" 'Hold it like that,' said the producer, 'and when I shout "Now," you will fire, Cimetti, and you,' he said to me, 'pitch forward on your face.'

"And so we ran through it—once, twice, and still Cimetti smiled.

"'That's bully.' The producer was rubbing his hands together. 'I think, Miss Maxwell,' he went on, that as he falls you had better say: "Oh, God!" as you go on your knees beside him. Camera ready? Right: let's get on with it.' "

The man opposite drew a deep breath.

"And that was the end. The next few records are a little blurred in my mind. The camera started and with it the smile faded from Cimetti's face, to be replaced by the same look of diabolical hatred that I had seen that day weeks before when I had knocked him down. Only Mary and I could see it; but I think she knew as well as I did that it was no pretence this time. I think she hew as well as I did that the revolver was loaded.

" 'Great!' I heard the producer's voice as if from a great distance. And then it came. Simultaneous with the 'Now' there was the crack of a revolver. I felt something sear through me there was a roaring in my ears, and I knew nothing more."

He paused and lit a cigarette with a hand that trembled a little.

"And if the camera-man had not gone on mechanically turning the handle, it would have ended there. I should not have said what I did to Miss Lankester to-day, for my Mary was told to show fear, too. But the photographer, dazed by what had happened, went on winding automatically. And the police took the result.

"I saw it six months later when I came out of hospital—still more dead than alive. And when I saw it I wished that Cimetti's aim had been truer in my case. I saw myself facing him: I saw Mary standing beside me. And then, my friend—for the camera doesn't lie—I saw the scene played as it should have been—not as the producer thought it should have been. It was Mary who tried to step in front of me, even as he fired. And then—she didn't say 'Oh, God!' and fall beside me. No she faced Cimetti for the half second in which she lived with contempt, indifference and indomitable courage. Of fear there was no trace—no vestige.

"And that was the way that Mary died. I think he shot her through the heart, and she fell on top of me as I lay at her feet, covering sits with her dear arms. Then the devil shot himself."

He fell silent, and I was silent, too: there seemed to be nothing to say.

"I don't think now that I shall be long in joining her," he went on after a while. "My money is gone I've dropped out of sight in the film world—and I'm not strong. Cimetti's bullet did that for me, though it failed to kill me as I would have wished. And Mary—my Mary is calling me to go to her. She wants our honeymoon in Egypt. I think I should have gone before, but I heard our film—Mary's and mine—had been sold to another company, and I wanted to see it before I met Mary again. You see, I must tell her how they've done it: she'll be interested."

And with that he was gone. It seemed to me as if he had seen someone in the street that he knew, but when I followed him to the door he was walking rapidly towards Shaftesbury Avenue alone. And yet was he alone—or was he talking to someone who walked at his side—someone I could not see? The street lamps play strange tricks with one's sight, and maybe it was just my imagination. It was Bordini himself who looked at me significantly as I paid my bill.

"He always leaves like that—quite suddenly," he said. "Just as if someone had passed the door whom he wanted to overtake. And often the street is empty at the time."

And then he tapped his head.

I wonder. Some day, when I have time, I shall make it my business to find out.