Even though he’d missed most of it, he quickly had the plot in hand: it had to be a two-reeler, and hardy Frank McShane and his rival, the foul Dusty, were loggers desperate for the affections of pretty Monica Beale (May Allison). Dusty had tried to rob the main office, pinning it on McShane. At any minute, for time was running short in this final reel, forgotten evidence would have to be found, exonerating McShane and sending Dusty to jail. Lee could feel this as a definitive fact, the laws of melodrama rooted as strongly within him as his molars.

And yet he was drifting away from it, as if it did not matter. An old feeling, like the “why”s he had asked as a child—why was this story even happening?

The organ played an Oriental theme. And Aktu, the trusty Inuit, to whom no one would listen before, appeared. He had a map to the office drawn in Dusty’s hand, and in large letters were the words “We’ll rob it tonight!” and it was signed “Dusty.” Which was highly incriminating.

This set off a fresh round of fighting, Dusty now thrashing like a fish on a hook, strength ebbing. And now the just deserts, thought Lee. And yet, instead, a messenger boy raced up, shouting. The fighters paused. The organ played a series of suspended notes, a voice asking, “And then? And then?” The crowd onscreen milled around the boy, begging him to tell them what was wrong. He held up a newspaper. The headlines were a mile high: GERMANS SINK LUSITANIA!

Lee had not seen this coming. Dusty and McShane were no longer at each other’s throats. McShane stepped forward, into a shining light not previously seen. McShane declared that if his country was at war he was needed. He grabbed Monica by the shoulders, gave her a perfunctory kiss. “I’ll enlist today!” the card read. “Will you wait for me?”

There was a swell from the pipe organ, a rising insistence that the climax had come. A policeman hauled up Dusty by the collar. He gesticulated with his baton, jabbing for emphasis.

A card came up. “I could run you in, Dusty. But you can make it right by enlisting instead.”

Dusty’s hooked-fish face fell away, and a spirit of enlightenment rose in its place. Didn’t his face, once greasy with sweat and shining with untrustworthiness, now take on a handsome glint?

“I’ll do it!” he exclaimed. The organ was now at full volume, each note its own shaft of light and revelation, and McShane and Dusty shook hands, and at their sides were now a marine, a naval ensign, a doughboy, and a flyboy in a leather cap. They all put their hands into the handshake, and THE END was on the screen as the organ went up and over and out with a final flourish on the keys.