espeaking the dramatic conception and the dramatic
presentment of all feminine evil, typifying in every move of the lithe,
half-clad body, in every shift of the big eyes, wickedness unleashed and
unashamed.

Mr. Lobel sitting unseen in the velvet blackness uttered grunts of
approbation. The greatest of all film vampires certainly had delivered
the goods in this her valedictory. Never before had she so well
delivered them. The grunting became a happy rumble.

But all this, too, was in a measure dedicatory--a foretaste of more
vivid episodes to follow, when the glorious siren, displaying to the
full her powers of fascination over the souls and the bodies of men,
would rise to heights yet greater and the primitive passion she so well
simulated would shine forth like a malignant jewel in a setting that was
semibarbaric and semicivilized, too, and altogether prodigal and lavish.
The first of these bigger scenes started--the scene where the queen of
the apaches set herself to win the price of her hire from the Germans by
seducing the young army officer into a betrayal of the Allied cause; the
same scene wherein at the time of filming it Mr. Lobel himself had taken
over direction from Colfax's hands.

The scene was launched, acquired headway, then was halted as a bellow
from Mr. Lobel warned the operator behind him to cut off the power.

"What the hell!" sputtered the master. "There's a blur on the picture
here, a sort of a kind of smokiness. Did you see it, Geltfin? Right
almost directly in front of Monte it all of a sudden comes! Did you,
Quinlan?"

"Sure I seen it," agreed Geltfin. "Like a spot--sort of."

"It wasn't on the negative when I seen it day before yesterday," stated
Quinlan. "I can swear to that. A little defect from faulty printing, I
guess."

"All right then," said Mr. Lobel. "Only where you got efficiency like I
got it in this plant such things should have no business occurring.

"Go on, operator--let's see how goes it from now on."

Out again two shadow figures--the vampire and the vampire's
prey--flashed in motion. Yes, the cloudy spot was there, a bit of murky
shadow drifting between the pair of figures and the audience. It
thickened and broadened--and then from the suddenly constricted throats
of the four watchers, almost as though all in the same moment an
invisible hand had laid gripping hold on each of their several
windpipes, came a chorused gasp.

For they saw how out of the drifting patch