The two big sets mentioned by Manton, a banquet hall and a ballroom, were being erected simultaneously.  Carpenters were at work sawing and hammering.  Werner’s technical director was shouting at a group of stage hands putting a massive mirror in position at the end of the banquet hall, a clever device to give the room the appearance of at least double its actual length.  In one corner several electricians and a camera man were experimenting with a strange-looking bank of lights.  In the ballroom set, where the flats or walls were all in place, an unexcited paperhanger was busy with the paraphernalia of his craft, somehow looking out of his element in this reign of pandemonium.

It seemed hard indeed to believe that any sort of order or system lay behind this heterogeneous activity, and the incident which took Carey Drexel away from us only added to the wonder in my mind, a wonder that anything tangible and definite could be accomplished.

“Oh, Carey!” Another assistant director, or perhaps he was only a property boy, rushed up frantically the moment he saw Drexel.  “Miss Miller’s on a rampage because the grand piano you promised to get for her isn’t at her apartment yet, and Bessie Terry’s in tears because she left her parrot here overnight, as you suggested, and some one taught the bird to swear.”  The intruder, a youth of perhaps eighteen, was in deadly earnest.  “For the love of Mike, Carey,” he went on, “tell me how to unteach that screeching thing of Bessie’s, or we won’t get a scene today.”

Carey Drexel looked at Kennedy helplessly.

With all these troubles, how could he pilot us about?  Later we learned that this was nothing new, once one gets on the inside of picture making.  Props., or properties, particularly the living ones, cause almost as much disturbance as the temperamental notions of the actors and actresses.  Sometimes it is a question which may become the most ridiculous.

Kennedy seemed to be satisfied with his preliminary visit to this studio floor.

“We can get back to Manton’s office alone,” he told Drexel.  “We will just keep on circling the quadrangle.”

Relieved, the assistant director pointed to the door of the manufacturing building, as the four-story structure in the rear was called.  Then he bustled off with the other youth, quite unruffled himself.

When we passed through the heavy steel fire door we found ourselves in another long hallway of fire-brick and reinforced-concrete construction.  Unquestionably there was no danger of a serious conflagration in any part of Manton’s plant, despite the high inflammability of the film itself, of the flimsy stage sets, of practically everything used in picture manufacture.

Immediately we entered this building I detected a peculiar odor, at which I sniffed eagerly.  I was reminded of the burnt-almond odor of the cyanides.  Was this another clue?

I turned to Kennedy but he smiled, anticipating me.