Jack and Susan in 1913 by Michael McDowell Page A

Ida—and her boss’s rich and handsome son—to foil the bank robbery, only the boss’s son is shot trying to protect Ida from the gang’s bullets. She is then kidnapped and taken to a farmhouse in New Jersey, where her purity and innocence convinces the old man who’s guarding her to allow her to escape. She returns to New York and there’s a breathless rescue on the top of a building, and the boss’s son calls out for her in his delirium and his life won’t be saved unless he marries her, so he does.”
    â€œWhat happens to the ruffians?” asked Susan, who saw several holes in the story.
    â€œOh, Ida throws them off the top of the building. It’s a two-reeler. In twenty-eight minutes you can tell a lot more story than you can in just fourteen.”
    â€œI guess you can,” said Susan uncertainly.
    â€œCosmic is in the forefront,” said Hosmer proudly, “because we’re hardly doing one-reelers anymore. People want more for their nickels. They’re tired of pictures ending just minutes after they’ve begun. They want real life, and they want stars .”
    â€œLike Ida?”
    â€œYes,” Hosmer agreed anxiously. “Ida will be the greatest of them all. Wouldn’t you like to visit the studio and see her at work, Suss?”
    â€œPlease call me Susan, Hosmer.”
    â€œAt the studio they call me Colley,” said Hosmer, “and everybody seems to have a nickname there. But won’t you visit us? And watch Ida be shot?”
    â€œI’d love to come sometime,” said Susan, “but…” She raised her skirt, revealing a little bit of her plaster cast.
    â€œBut you get around very well with your crutches. Please do come tomorrow. I’ve invited Mr. Beaumont as well, and I’m sure that he wouldn’t mind escorting you, if you’re—”
    â€œMr. Beaumont?”
    â€œYes, he’s—”
    â€œI know very well who he is. But why did you invite him, Hosmer? He is not—from what I can tell—a very friendly person.”
    â€œHe’s been quite pleasant to me,” said Hosmer, surprised. “He’s offered me cigars—even though I don’t smoke. And last evening he asked if I wouldn’t go with him to the theater. And I went. We saw the new Irish play, Peg o’ My Heart . He asked about you, in fact.”
    â€œAbout me?”
    â€œHe asked who lived in the room above him, is what I mean to say.”
    â€œI fail to see what business it is of his.”
    â€œHe asked your story, your history—not snooping-like, but casual,” Hosmer hastened to add.
    â€œAnd what did you tell him?”
    â€œTold him you’d been splendid in He and She and other things, and about how you’d broken your leg—saving the life of the Russian consul. He seemed very impressed by that.”
    â€œWhat do you know about him ?”
    â€œHe’s an inventor, he says. Can’t make much money at it, by the look of his clothes.” Here Hosmer preened just a little, taking pride in what sartorial elegance a man might achieve on limited means.
    â€œWhere does he come from?”
    â€œUpstate,” he said. “Elmira.”
    â€œAnd why did he come here?”
    â€œTo be nearer the people who pay money for inventions, I suppose. He may be poor now, but in a few years, if he’s able to invent something that will make people happier than they are now, well, then, I suppose he could make himself very rich. Just as you could be very rich once you’re able to go back on the stage,” he added with a little of the deliberate flattery of old— of old being the time before he’d transferred his affections to Ida Conquest.
    â€œAnd just as Ida will become very rich as the Cosmic star,” said Susan with a smile, having more confidence in Ida’s dramatic future than in her own. Hosmer readily agreed to this