Daring Darleen, Queen of the Screen

by Anne Nesbet

  Up! Up! Up!

  She was closing in on the scaffolding now; her dangling feet must be the only part of her that the camera could still see. One of the fellows on the scaffold was kneeling, reaching down to help Darleen along as soon as she was just a few inches farther up the rope.

  And then there was a change in the sound of the studio ruckus, and the eyes of the men on the scaffold left Darleen and looked down over the top of the set toward the uncles on their loft. The helpful hand that had been stretched down to help Darleen forgot what it was intending to do and floated away out of reach again, and poor Darleen was left dangling from the rope by herself.

  “JASPER LUKES!” Uncle Charlie was saying. Followed by “Stop cranking, Dan.”

  It is hard to keep dangling after your body has happily reconciled itself to being rescued and relieved by someone else’s strong arms. Darleen tried very hard to hang on to that rope, to make her hand fly up another few inches, but it was no good.

  So instead, she let herself slip and then fall — not far, just onto the slanting roof of the set. It held her weight for a moment and then remembered it was just a set, not a real roof, and started sagging and cracking.

  Uncle Charlie would not be pleased if she managed to destroy his set. With a last effort, she rolled herself over to the skylight and, falling back through it, landed with a whomp on the sturdier planks of the attic floor. Darleen huddled on the floor there for a moment, counting her new bruises and bracing herself for a volcano’s worth of Uncle Charlie’s angry words.

  But that lava was already flowing, and in a different direction:

  “Jasper Lukes! At the crack of ten a.m.!” (When Uncle Charlie was really in a lather, his words could make even a bystander flinch.) “SO! What have you got to say for yourself, you hopeless character?”

  What Jasper Lukes had to say for himself, at least at first, was nothing.

  Darleen rolled into a less awkward sitting position. Now she could see the face of Jasper Lukes, and it rattled her more than any mere tumble from skylight to floor.

  He had always been what she considered conceited, full of thoughts about himself and rather lacking in thoughts about anybody else. But hanging out with actual kidnappers had done something to him: his eyes were angry and resentful and tired and cagey all at once. Villainous eyes.

  He can’t do anything to me here, Darleen told her gasping inner self. He can’t! Not with all these people right around us!

  And the other thing she told herself: Don’t let anything slip about Victorine!

  “Let’s get this thing rolling,” said Uncle Charlie in disgust after waiting a moment for an apology that apparently was not going to materialize.

  Those words unfroze everybody all at once; technicians and carpenters and cameramen leaped into action. The place became noisy again in the usual way, with cheerful shouting and things being dropped and a piano being played rather nicely at the end of the studio, where, Darleen realized, they must have found a musician among the extras.

  “Don’t you worry about the roof,” said one of the carpenters quietly to Darleen, as he punched the canvas and thin board back into position. “As long as nobody lands on it a second time, we’ll be fine.”

  “We need the ropes back on Darleen!” shouted Uncle Charlie. “So our heretofore missing Salamander can shake his worthless fist at her!”

  While they bound Darleen’s hands together and tied her to that chair again, Dar found that unexpected emotions were bubbling up inside her — that is to say, emotions she was not used to feeling on the set of a photoplay, although she certainly had felt them many a time out and about in everyday real life. She felt angry and anxious and even — embarrassing though it was to admit it — afraid. What she did not feel like, just at the moment, was an actor. And that was strange too.

  She wanted to catch another glimpse of Jasper Lukes’s face, to see what he might be thinking, but of course she also really didn’t want to see him at all, not now and possibly not ever.

  People were so much more frightening than cliffs.

  “On the count of three, Lukes, you’ll come up those stairs with that envelope. Darleen, I’d like a nice reaction from you. You’re terrified but being brave, of course. One . . . two . . . three, and crank away, Dan!”

  Jasper Lukes came stomping up the half staircase, an envelope crushed in his angry hand, and as Darleen saw his face this second time, her heart began to pound in some alarm.

  “Look menacing, now, Lukes!” called out Uncle Charlie. “Oh, very nice! Good work, Darleen. Now Lukes, ask her where that Black Sapphire thing is. You’ve got a photograph of that father of hers, that exiled King. Lay those threats on thick!”

  Darleen hardly heard these words, however, because Jasper Lukes was looming over her now, and anger and barely contained violence were practically popping out of his skin. Darleen had never seen him in such a state. She actually yelped and tried to lean away.

  “Looks fine,” said Uncle Dan, cranking steadily away. “Looks dandy.”

  Jasper Lukes leaned forward, turning his head just an inch so that the camera wouldn’t play any lip-reading games with him.

  “Listen, Darleen,” he hissed at her, quietly enough that only she would hear what he was saying. “What are you up to? How’d you end up back here? They say you know where she is. Where is she? You better get this clear, stupid girl: if they don’t get her back, you’re all in hot water.”

  He wasn’t talking about the Black Sapphire, that was clear.

  “Rip that envelope open and show her the photograph now, Lukes!”

  Jasper Lukes tore the edge of the envelope off as if he wished he could make something suffer.

  Then he grabbed Darleen’s wrist and twisted it a little as he waved the photograph in her face. She gasped. Uncle Charlie called out something encouraging (the uncles must have thought Dar was acting). Darleen’s heart was pumping away so fast that she couldn’t pay proper attention anymore to anything Uncle Charlie was saying, because the awful, villainous Jasper Lukes was hissing at her:

  “Tell me where she is. That Berryman girl.”

  “She — she went home, I guess,” said Darleen, her teeth chattering just a bit. “To wherever she lives. Anyway, I don’t know where she is right now.”

  Maybe it was the subtle influence of Victorine at work, but Darleen actually felt a little proud that that last bit of her fib was technically true. She didn’t know exactly where Victorine was at the moment, did she?

  And then, a few seconds later, even that little scrap of truth turned, retrospectively, into a lie. Because she couldn’t help hearing that piano playing for the Western picture, way at the other end of the glassed-in studio. She had noticed, but only idly, that the music seemed a little fancier than the usual amateur keyboard banging. But now it struck her: the pianist was playing on the out-of-tune studio piano with extraordinary accuracy and refinement. And playing some sort of high-class music, too, probably a sonata by one of those old fellows in wigs who used to write all the fancy music.

  She blinked. That was all. She certainly didn’t turn her head or say anything aloud. But that blink caught the attention of Jasper Lukes, who was apparently pretty desperate.

  “You’re lying to me!” he said. “You are lying! Don’t think I can’t tell!”

  What could she say to that? Not much. All she could do was flinch under the pressure of his anger and his threats.

  “You’re messing with things you don’t understand, you little fool,” he said to her in that venomous whisper of his. “You couldn’t even manage to be kidnapped by the right people! And now you’re ruining everything. But let me tell you, if you don’t hand over that girl, it’s not just your daddy they’ll be hitting over the head. It’s you and everything here that will suffer —”

  “Stop! Stop! Stop!” Uncle Charlie had apparently been yelling at Jasper Lukes for a while already.

  “How can you possibly even think about handing any person over to
kidnappers?” whispered Darleen anyway, she was so angry with him. “Especially a poor girl who has lost her grandma and is all alone in the world. Give her to people who might just drop her in the river? Are you a monster? Or just working with monsters?”

  “Don’t talk about things you don’t understand. She belongs to them. That’s what the law says, doesn’t it? So tell me where —”

  “STOP!” said Uncle Charlie, and then he started laughing so hard, he almost choked. “You two! That was the best scene you’ve ever done, and you just won’t quit! But we can stop now, really!”

  Jasper Lukes sprang away from Darleen.

  “Stubborn girl! People are going to get hurt, just you wait and see,” he snarled at Darleen, and then he turned toward the uncles and increased the volume of his angry words. “I should have quit this long ago. Well, now I am! I’m done with this and with all of you. This time, I’m really gone, and for good!”

  He looked around with wild eyes, and then he sprinted down the cutaway half staircase and ran through the studio, everyone gaping after him.

  “Don’t we need him to drop the letter?” said Uncle Dan mildly from behind his camera.

  “Oh, rats, yes! LUKES!” called out Uncle Charlie. “Come back and do the letter-dropping scene properly!”

  But Jasper Lukes was gone.

  Darleen slumped down into the chair for a moment while, with trembling hands, she freed herself from all of those ropes. She felt shaken, right to her inmost marrow. It was a shock to her system to see that something had broken inside that awful Jasper Lukes. He was capable of much more wickedness than Darleen had ever suspected. When one realizes that about a person one has known a long time — even if it’s a person one hasn’t particularly liked — the world tilts back and forth on its axis for a while, and all a person can do is hang on and feel seasick.

  “What was that?” said Uncle Charlie. “Can someone explain to me what just happened here?”

  Darleen, who could have explained but for good reasons thought she’d better hold her tongue instead, said nothing. Plus, there were parts of what he had said to her that didn’t seem to make any sense. Who was Jasper Lukes working for, anyway?

  Uncle Dan shrugged.

  “Time for lunch,” he proposed instead as a distraction.

  Uncle Charlie rallied.

  “Right, then,” he said. “We’re doing the big party scene this afternoon, so, Darleen, we’ll need you tidied up nicely. And I’ll have to get the extras into place if your aunt still isn’t able to come help us.”

  Darleen said, “Party, Uncle Charlie? Wasn’t I getting into a balloon just now?”

  “Balloon exteriors tomorrow,” said Uncle Charlie, checking through more pages of notes. “And a train to shoot too. All I can say is, Shirley’d better get back here to Matchless soon, or we’ll be dropping scenes right and left.”

  They all depended so very much on Aunt Shirley’s organizational genius.

  “But the party?”

  “That’s where you get to at the end of the episode, yes? Your dear Royal Father — with amnesia, remember! — is being held prisoner by a mysterious wealthy family. All Salamanders actually, of course. Anyway, a ball. And a poignant encounter in which the King doesn’t recognize his own child. The usual menu. Dan and I are going to hole up now and organize. You all right, Darleen?”

  “Fine, fine,” said Darleen.

  Darleen moved along down the length of the studio, keeping alert in case Jasper Lukes or any other spider was anywhere in this building.

  Exciting things were happening in the saloon at the far end: bandits ran through, brandishing their pistols and shouting quite a bit. And underneath the shouting was the intricate roar of whatever that fancy piece was that someone was playing on the battered old studio piano. Darleen circled around behind the pianist so as not to accidentally catch her eye, and, sure enough, it was the very elegant-looking, straight-backed Victorine, her hands rippling over the keys while some of the extras who weren’t wanted on set hung around behind her, admiring her skill.

  “Stop cameras!” cried the director on this film, and Victorine dutifully stopped as well, folding her hands in her lap and looking around.

  “New girl sure can play!” said one of the boys who ran messages back and forth from Uncle Charlie to the office and back again. “What’s your name, new girl?”

  “Why, here they call me Bella Mae Goodwin,” said Victorine with the confidence of a person stating the simple truth.

  And the amazing thing was this: even under the name Bella Mae, Victorine still managed to seem entirely and completely herself, layer upon layer, all the way down.

  It was quite wonderful to witness what a few hammers, a good supply of backdrops and fake walls, a properties room kept by pack rats, and five or six pairs of nimble arms could put together over lunch: in this case, the majestic mansion room where a masquerade ball would soon be underway. A woman from properties and scripts was briefing the extras, all wearing fancy clothes and holding masks in their hands. Among them was Bella Mae, looking believably aristocratic in her silk frock (which was in remarkably good shape, given everything). “There’s a dance going on in this scene, yes? So your job is to not look at the cameraman and to make us all believe that this party is real, while Daring Darleen — oh, there you are, Darleen! — winds through the lot of you, looking for her poor Royal Father.”

  “What kind of dance?” asked one of the extras, looking swell in his suit, which he had almost certainly rented for the day. (Extras had to rent their own suits, it’s true. And pay the ferry fare over from New York and buy themselves meals and everything. Being an extra in a photoplay wasn’t anybody’s best get-rich-quick plan, that was for sure.)

  “You all can waltz, yes?” said the woman from properties and scripts. “So you’ll waltz. Listen, people. I want a nice, controlled little waltz. No grand gestures. No falling into the scenery and bringing it down. No bumping into one another, despite all these masks, or stumbling into our Darleen. Got that?”

  The extras agreed with very good cheer.

  Uncle Charlie and Uncle Dan, meanwhile, were setting up the camera for the first pictures. They had the carpenters change the angle of the mansion room’s right-side wall so that the door could be more prominent.

  “Darleen!” said Uncle Charlie. “You’ll be coming from over there and snaking your way over here. Fresh from your balloon adventure, remember — we’ll film that tomorrow. All right. Get yourself to the front so we can see you, and then you’ll notice that door, peek through it, and in you go. Into position, everyone!”

  It was an odd thing, how the world looked from a photoplay set. Darleen was at the rear of the scene to start. She could look back and see the painted garden outside the French doors she had supposedly just come through. She could see all the flaws in the thin, painted walls that would look like the solid walls of a rich man’s house once the camera captured them, and strangest of all, of course, she could look out past the shoulders and arms of the dancing extras to the place where the fancy room suddenly ended, to Uncle Dan and his camera, to the guys with white sheets casting yet more light onto the scene, to the glass panes of the studio wall and roof farther beyond. It was really like being in two worlds at once.

  No, three. Because if a world meant a story, then there was also the story Uncle Charlie didn’t know and couldn’t direct: the story of Victorine, who had become Bella Mae for the day and was now standing very elegantly with one of the suit-renting extras, waiting for the music and the filming to begin. She was right near Darleen but knew better than to let that affect her or make her give herself away. Anyway, a number of the female extras were rather short, so Victorine blended in surprisingly well, even though she was so much younger. In fact, she had an elegant way of standing that made it seem like she belonged at an aristocratic ball.

  And then Uncle Charlie did some shouting and waving from up front, and Joe from scenery pounded out the worst excuse for a waltz
that Matchless Photoplay had ever heard, and most of the extras fiddled with their masks a little, and then they were off.

  Darleen made her way through the dancing extras, who weren’t supposed to be chatting but were saying occasional things anyway like “That’s my foot you’re on, buster.”

  “Look into those faces as you go by! You’re looking for your father! But keep moving! You lot, don’t be gawking at Darleen!”

  She moved forward until she was in front of the dancers, raised her mask, and looked dramatically from side to side.

  “Over to the door!” said Uncle Charlie. “Check over your shoulder that nobody’s paying attention to you. All right, fine, open the door and slip on in.”

  But of course the door in the set wall did as stage doors will do: it got stuck.

  Darleen paused for a while with her hand on the knob. She knew better than to yank too hard at the doorknob, because she’d seen set walls come tumbling right down that way. (And even if the wall doesn’t come down exactly, a smaller but still illusion-destroying ripple can run across the canvas of the set, or a “house” can begin to shake because someone is pulling too hard on the door.)

  “It’s stuck, Uncle Charlie,” Darleen said, and she tried not to let her lips move as she spoke, in case they would need to use these images.

  “Stop cranking, Dan,” said Uncle Charlie. He did a little cussing, and the piano stopped, too, partly because the dancers didn’t need to be dancing, and partly because Joe was the nearest scenery man and was hopping over to fiddle with the door handle.

  “Got it!” said a voice from the other side of the door, which was a large one, and Joe popped a smiling head around the edge of the door, just to show that it really, truly worked.

  “All right, then,” said Uncle Charlie. “We’ll patch this up afterward with a little hand-on-doorknob shot. Let’s get ourselves into that foolish room now. Count of three . . . two . . . one — and crank away, Dan!”

  Darleen pulled the door open, peeked inside (a couple of crew members were waiting there, out of the camera’s sight), pretended to see something that caught her interest, and slipped in through the opening, closing the door behind her.