by Anne Nesbet
“Well, of course she did!” said Darleen.
“And the foremost thing in her mind when she was having me write out her will must have been my welfare — then and in the future,” said Victorine. “So sheerly out of respect for my Grandmama, it does seem to me I have to take her wishes seriously. Despite everything! Because perhaps sometimes, Darleen, the wishes — the will — of a Grandmama must rise above any law.”
The next day, Darleen went bumpity-bouncing off in the Matchless Photoplay motorcar to the next little town of Leonia, because there were no trains running through Fort Lee proper, and for Episode Nine, they needed a train.
“I’ll be gone all day,” she had said to Victorine very early that morning when they were sneaking across the dark street back to Darleen’s empty house. They had decided that since Darleen’s Papa would be at Aunt Shirley’s for another day, there was no reason Victorine couldn’t spend the day in an actual house, where she could work on improving her Grandmama’s will without a hundred studio people looking over her shoulder or telling her to get out of the way.
She would have to keep her eyes peeled for human spiders, of course. But Victorine was not particularly frightened of any kind of spiders.
“I’ll be so hard at work,” she said, “I won’t be worrying myself. My ears will keep watch while my brain and hands happily labor along. I will be the juvenile equivalent of a hermit in his alpine cave.”
There was coal in the hob. And some not-too-perishable food items in the pantry. It wouldn’t be luxury living, but it would be fine for a juvenile hermit. Victorine seemed well contented.
Worrying a little about Victorine’s plans meant that Dar didn’t notice the cat-that-swallowed-a-canary look on her Uncle Dan’s face until they were unloading equipment at the train track cutoff in Leonia.
“Why is Uncle Dan grinning that way?” she asked Uncle Charlie, since, when a cameraman is thrilled about the challenges of a shoot coming up, it is often the case that the actors involved should be a bit worried. “There’s no scary cliff here, is there?”
“Don’t you worry about a thing, dear Niece,” said Uncle Charlie, with almost as disturbing a grin as Uncle Dan’s. “Just an air balloon landing on the tracks in front of a speeding express train. Nothing to trouble yourself about.”
Not so comforting, really.
They strolled over the gravel to the track. Connections that Uncle Charlie and Aunt Shirley had carefully cultivated at the Leonia railroad depot sometimes let them use this old engine on a side track when Matchless needed a train. Any photoplay studio is going to need a train on occasion!
The train was sitting there on the tracks right now, looking huge and quiet and harmless, like a resting whale. Darleen tried to figure out what the plan was going to be.
There was a tall bridge over the track here, and to it the properties men had connected a big basket, the large sort of basket that might dangle from a fairground balloon.
“We borrowed it from the amusement park,” said one fellow when he noticed a puzzled-looking Darleen staring at it. “We’re going back there this afternoon to film the actual balloon, so they were all right with our borrowing this basket.”
The basket was now resting right on the tracks, but you could see from the ropes and pulleys and so on that the men up on the bridge would be able to raise or lower the basket at will.
All of this was being set up right in front of the great iron nose of the train engine.
“Who’s in the basket with me?” said Darleen.
“Nobody,” said Uncle Charlie.
“What do you mean, ‘nobody’? Who brought the balloon to rescue me from the Salamanders’ attic, then?”
“Um, nobody,” said Uncle Charlie. “Don’t waste time with details now, Darleen. We couldn’t agree about how to handle the balloon, so we decided it just picked you up, you know, by chance. Maybe the previous aeronaut fell out? Or it got unmoored and made a run for it or something? So anyway, you’ll climb into the nice balloon basket, and there won’t be anyone there, and you’ll be a little surprised, but because you’re Daring Darleen, you’ll decide you need to stop the train and get on it. Because — oh, let’s see if I can keep all this straight — the train’s going to the mansion. Where the party is. Where they’re trying to make your Royal Father sign a new will.”
“You mean what we did yesterday.”
“Right, right, right. Now, let’s start with you climbing up onto the train and explaining to the nice engineers that you need a ride. Big gestures should do the trick.”
It’s not as easy to swing yourself up onto the engine of a train with grace, but after a few tries, Darleen got herself up to the car, where Mr. Jones, an actual train engineer they borrowed whenever they borrowed the engine, gave her a big grin.
“Nice to see you again, Miss Darleen. Your uncles have something strange in mind today, I see. Lowering you in a basket in front of my train, is that it?”
“You won’t hit me, will you, Mr. Jones?” said Darleen, while hanging on to the side of the engine and making dramatic gestures.
“I’ll try not to, my girl! Now I’m supposed to say, ‘Come on in.’”
He was a very good sport, Mr. Jones. Darleen climbed into the engineer’s cab with him, and they waited awhile, until Uncle Charlie shouted up that all had looked just fine.
“I’ll be firing up my engines now,” said Mr. Jones. “See you around, Miss Darleen!”
While Mr. Jones got the train ready to go, Darleen climbed into the basket that was going to dangle from its ropes as if there were an actual lighter-than-air balloon up above it and not three men on a bridge with ropes in their hands. Dar didn’t yet see how this was going to work. She could see Uncle Dan readjusting the camera on its stand. In fact, it looked like he had just flipped the camera part of it right the way upside down.
What was he doing?
“Uncle Dan?” said Darleen.
“Pretty clever, huh?” said Uncle Dan, but Darleen wasn’t sure yet what the clever part of the setup was supposed to be.
“All right, now, listen, Darleen!” said Uncle Charlie. “Some special requests for you. We’re going to get you into a comfortable pose, and then your job is going to be not to move, because movement won’t look good, says Dan. Why don’t you grab the front of the basket with one hand and a rope with the other. Yes, like that.”
“But why can’t I move?” said Darleen.
“Because, see, we’re doing this scene backward. When I give the signal, Mr. Jones is going to start backing up the train, nice and slow, and our guys up on the bridge will pull you up in your fake-balloon basket, and Dan will be cranking this a little slowly so there will be more drama in the scene in the future. Am I right, Dan?”
“Mmm-hmm,” agreed Dan, checking over his upside-down camera.
“I thought I was supposed to be landing the balloon in front of an approaching train, not taking off in front of a train that’s backing up,” said Darleen.
“My darling, daring D.,” said Uncle Charlie, “I said we’re doing it backward. When the film is developed, we’ll flip this bit of upside-down film over, and it will be as though we magically filmed it with time’s arrow pointing the other way around. You will be landing in front of a huge oncoming train then. Just you wait and see!”
“Is this something Uncle Dan thought up?” said Darleen, feeling a bit suspicious. It sounded too complicated for words.
“Yup,” said Uncle Dan. “Together with Bill, whose brain is clearly getting back into fighting form. Clever, right?”
Oh! Her own Papa! Well, then, Darleen was going to make this thing work, even if it seemed harebrained.
Uncle Charlie shouted and signaled, and the guys up high who were handling the ropes of Darleen’s basket began pulling it up into the air. Meanwhile, Mr. Jones’s huge engine roared and hissed and began reversing along the tracks. Darleen tried to look natural while not moving around — which is harder than you might think. Up, up, up,
the basket went, while the engine chugged backward, away, away, away.
“That’s it!” said Uncle Charlie. “Stop filming, Dan!”
And he and Dan danced a bit of a jig right there by the tracks, they were both so pleased with whatever they had just managed to do.
“All right, then, time to get some actual balloon footage,” said Uncle Charlie, post-jig. “Great big ball of gas on a nice safe tether. Ready for the amusement park, Darleen?”
The amusement park! Sweet treats and Ferris wheels and doughnuts! Darleen was ready!
Who, after all, needed Coney Island when you had Palisades Park?
Darleen had never been to Coney Island. It was far, far away, on the other side of New York City entirely, with at least two stretches of water between here and there. But when she counted up the many attractions at Palisades Amusement Park, her heart went pitter pat and (as it were) kicked up its heels: Shows! The almost-brand-new saltwater pool! The carousel! The roller coaster! And, apparently, a friendly purveyor of lighter-than-air balloon rides with whom the local movie studios had an ongoing friendly relationship (because every adventure picture worth its salt needed at least one scene in an air balloon. Who could argue with that?).
So Mr. Mancini, keeper of the balloon, met the crew on the lovely expanse of lawn in front of the dance pavilion and shook everybody’s hands with the good cheer of a longtime business partner.
“What’s on the docket today, Mr. Charlie?”
“We’ll want a nice shot taken on the lawn so we can get the sky behind Darleen as she scrambles into the basket. And what else would you like, Dan?”
Uncle Dan looked up from his camera, which was back in its right-side-up position.
“Hot dog, please,” he said. “Lots of mustard.”
That made Mr. Mancini laugh as loudly and roundly as you would think a balloon keeper should laugh. (Then he sent his nearly-grown-up son running to get some hot dogs from the stand in the park.)
“And some shots of the balloon in the air, using the thin tether, all right? So it won’t show.”
“You got it,” said Mr. Mancini. He knew all about these photoplay people: they wanted a balloon, but a tame balloon. So did amusement parks, for that matter! But the photoplay people didn’t want the tameness to show, so they liked their anchor ropes thin and subtle, hard for the camera to see.
First, Darleen’s uncles had her clamber into the basket, which was really unpleasant, to be honest, especially since the uncles remembered at the last second that Darleen’s legs had been tied together in the attic shots the day before. Mr. Mancini had the balloon tethered solidly (the main rope disguised as the one Darleen was climbing up), but anyone who has ever climbed a rope and then over the rim of a swaying basket (all with bound feet) while the photoplay director is shouting, “A LITTLE MORE GRACEFUL, DARLEEN, PLEASE!” will understand that this particular scene was not Darleen’s favorite of the day.
Uncle Dan was practically lying on the ground, his camera tilted up and at an angle so that it would look like all there was in the world was Darleen, a rope, a swinging basket, and the balloon above. All up in the air!
“All right!” said Uncle Charlie. “Look back down at — Where are you coming from again?”
“Attic,” said Uncle Dan.
“Ha-ha, right,” said Uncle Charlie. “The attic with the broken roof, eh, Darleen?”
Using every drop of her actorly self-control and skill, Darleen turned the scowl that was rising up in her into the furrowed brow of someone who has just clambered into a balloon basket and been surprised to find no one there. Then she made a show of looking at all the ropes and pieces, without actually doing anything that might cause trouble, of course.
“Now you sit tight, Darleen,” said Uncle Charlie, “while we get the next scene set up.”
Actually — and this was just a bit galling — Uncle Charlie and Uncle Dan, not to mention most of the film crew, were taking a cheerful pause to wolf down Palisades hot dogs while Mr. Mancini started working with the tether ropes. He would take off the big, too-visible ropes (or let them dangle if they were short enough), and they would be down to the one thin tether. Darleen took advantage of the pause to wriggle her feet free from the ropes, now that her feet were safely out of the picture.
“We won’t let you go too far, not to worry, miss!” said Mr. Mancini. (Dar wasn’t much worried about the balloon — she was mostly just wishing she had a hot dog too.) “Maybe twenty feet in the air, just enough to make the nice picture with the sky and all, and then we’ll haul you right back down.”
“Places, people!” said Uncle Charlie, licking his mustardy lips. “Dan, are you set?”
“Yep,” said Uncle Dan.
“All right, then! Have a nice ride, Darleen! Up, up, and away! Let ’er go, Mr. Mancini, if you please!”
And the balloon bobbed up into the air, suddenly enough that Darleen had to hang on to the sides of the basket quite tightly. It was a strange thing to be up twenty or thirty feet above the ground, looking out over the sparse crowds in Palisades Amusement Park. (It was still early in the afternoon on a Tuesday, after all.) Below her was Uncle Charlie with his megaphone, shouting, “DON’T LOOK BACK AT US!” to Darleen as if she were an absolute beginner.
And over there to the left — Wait! What was that?
Her attention had been caught by two men with their overcoat collars turned up and their hats pulled down. They wouldn’t have attracted Dar’s attention at all, except that they were moving rather . . . The only way to put it was guiltily. They moved like people not wanting to be noticed, and there’s nothing more noticeable than someone slinking around trying not to be noticed.
Darleen made a show of looking out over the land, shading her eyes. That was all for the camera. And then she stole another glimpse. One of the skulkers was pointing up at her now, while the other one skulked yet more skulkily. And, oh, my goodness! The one pointing at her was that horrible man! The kidnapper who had driven that motorcar!
She almost shouted and pointed herself, but then she remembered that she mustn’t do anything that might possibly alert the police to the whereabouts of Victorine, and she resisted the urge, although she felt a cold sweat break out on the backs of her arms.
And then there was a second very bad thing: the other man was Jasper Lukes. No wonder he was trying to be invisible! Anyone on the film crew would recognize him in a second if they got a good look. But all eyes were turned upward just at the moment. Darleen’s eyes were the only ones glancing down at the ground — intermittently, of course, so as not to ruin the picture.
Second glimpse: the men seemed to be arguing about something but trying to do it quietly.
Third glimpse: the kidnapper had something shiny in his hands. Could it be . . . ? A knife! And he was slithering over toward Mr. Mancini. Darleen couldn’t help it now.
She shouted, “Oh, be careful!”
“Looking good!” cried Uncle Charlie, who thought everyone was still acting.
Darleen looked over the edge of the basket, almost straight down now, where the kidnapper was only a couple of feet away from the thin tether, tied to a nice solid loop hammered into the ground.
“Oh, help, no!” she said. But too late! The balloon lurched upward, flinging her back against the other side of the basket.
“HEY!” they all shouted down below — Mr. Mancini, Uncle Charlie, and Uncle Dan, who was still, Darleen saw, cranking away (because a true cameraman isn’t stopped by mere disaster).
She saw the kidnapper running away with nobody going after him, but she couldn’t see Jasper Lukes anywhere — rot his hide! Nobody on the ground would have caught the slightest glimpse of the kidnapper and his knife, because nobody had been looking anywhere but up.
Some of the younger crew started chasing after the cut tether, even jumping up into the air, trying to get it, but the balloon was so thrilled to be free that it was rising up, up, up, into the air.
“Oh, my,” said Darleen
. She was already so high that the whole of the park was spread against the horizon now, and there, to the right . . .
(Her heart, which was pounding hard, did a bit of a flip in her chest.)
There to the right — that is to say, to the east — was the Hudson River.
“Oh, no, oh, no!” cried Darleen. She was high enough now that it didn’t matter what she did with her hands or her face or anything, because the camera couldn’t catch it.
Way, way below her, and now somewhat to the north, she could see knots of ordinary people at the amusement park looking up and waving at her. They must think I’m an aeronaut and this is all a show, Darleen thought in alarm.
For a moment she looked in a panic at everything in that balloon’s basket and wondered what could possibly be done with any of it. She had never been carried off by a balloon before, and it is hard to make a quick study of aeronautics when your heart is galloping so very hard, and a wild joy is waking up inside you. Her shocked eyes took stock of everything: the slats of the basket; the silk billowing in a huge cloud above her; a mechanical thing — a valve of some kind governing the pinch point of the silk, not far above her head. There were also a few sandbags hanging from the sides of the basket, but Darleen knew enough about gravity to understand that dumping a sandbag overboard would make the balloon rise higher, not descend.
The thing is, balloons aren’t very biddable. They have independent spirits and more or less do what they want.
For now, thank goodness, the breeze that had picked up her balloon seemed to be headed gently inland, not out over the Hudson River, or — horrors! — past the Hudson toward the dangerously busy streets of Manhattan. But if the balloon kept sailing up and up, there was no telling where she might find herself!
If she twisted that mysterious valve, what would happen? Would the balloon be discouraged from rising? And how much of a twist would it take? She wasn’t sure. The dancing balloon bobbled her about terribly, but somehow she managed to reach up and force the valve a bit to the left, hoping she had guessed the right amount of turning necessary and would now neither fly out to sea nor plummet to the ground like a stone.
