The scenario writer looked up quickly.  “Do you—­do you know who it is?” he asked, soberly.

“Not exactly, but I will identify the guilty person just as soon as we are assembled down in front of the screen.”

Shirley had left the studio floor, apparently to go to his dressing room.  Now I noticed that he returned and passed close just in time to hear Millard’s question and Kennedy’s answer.  His eyes dilated.  As he turned away his face fell.  He went on into the set, but his legs seemed to wabble beneath him.  I was sure it was more than the weakness resulting from his experience in the fire.

Kauf’s voice, through the megaphone, echoed suddenly from wall to wall, reverberating beneath the roof.

“All ready!  Everyone in the set!  Masks on!  Take your places!”

At a signal the orchestra struck up and the couples started to dance.  It was a wonderfully colorful scene and I saw that Kauf proposed to rehearse it thoroughly, doing it over and over without the cameras until every detail reached a practiced perfection.  In this I was certain he achieved results superior to Werner’s slap, dash, and bang.

Then came the call for action.

“Camera!” Kauf began to bob up and down.  “Into it, everybody!”

For fascination and charm this far exceeded the banquet scene which we had witnessed in the taking previously.  The music was surprisingly good, so that it was impossible for the people not to get into the swing, and the result was a riotous swirling of gracefully dancing pairs; the girls, selected for their beauty, flashing half-revealed faces toward the camera, displaying eyes which twinkled through their masks in mockery at a wholly ineffectual attempt at concealment.

Enid maintained her stately carriage, but made full use of the dazzling whiteness of her teeth.  Early she permitted the attentions of the cowled monk whom she knew to be her lover.  Marilyn was everywhere, making mischief the best she could.  Shirley stalked about in his satanic red, which would photograph black and appear even more somber on the screen.

Of course the whole was not photographed in a continuous strip from one camera position.  I saw that Kauf made several long shots to catch the general atmosphere.  Then he made close-up scenes of all the principals and of some of the best appearing extras.  At one time he ordered a panorama effect, in which the cameras “pammed,” swept from one side to the other, giving a succession of faces at close range.

Finally everything was ready for the climax.  Shirley had been playing a sort of Jekyll and Hyde role in which he was at once the young lawyer friend of Enid and the Black Terror.  Unmasked and cornered at this function of a society terrified by the dread unknown menace, he was to make the transformation directly before the eyes of everyone, using the mythical drug which changed him from a young man of good appearance and family to the being who was a very incarnation of evil.