The Wings of Victory by Fred M. White

John Bevill's enthusiastic expectations were not destined to be realised quite as soon as he had expected. There had been a great deal more to be done than Frick was aware, so, instead of a series of properly developed films showing the vagaries of the various animals in the park, nothing had materialised beyond an odd picture here and there, which, so Frick said, was largely due to the defects in the electrical arrangements. The cinematograph operators, on the other hand, declared that Frick had been in too much of a hurry, and that he was quite wrong in making all those extravagant promises. They could do nothing on a large scale, they said, with regard to animal pictures until they were in a position to use more power, and this, of course, they could get by accommodating their machinery to the dynamo that supplied Baron's Court with electric light. Once that was done, they had no doubt as to the result, but it would take a few days, and in the meantime, Mr. Bevill would have to possess himself in patience. The cameras were all there and the mechanical appliances in proper working order, but they must have more power. Then, with the aid of Bevill and his keepers, they hoped to do great things both by day and night in the park.

Meanwhile, the majority of the company had begun to settle down in the neighbourhood of Lanton Place. There was fair enough accommodation for them in the adjacent farmhouses, where they were welcomed freely enough and subjected, of course, to hundreds of curious questions. Hatton had gone off on to the moors to study the locality day by day, with a view to the elaboration of what he called his scene plot. And on most of these occasions he was accompanied by Major Dorn, who had deemed it prudent to go back home again, and keep his eye upon the business side of the arrangement. Dorn had been largely influenced in this decision by the fact that de Barsac had been summoned in London for a week or to in connection with an important commission that was being freely discussed in the columns of the daily press. Once more de Barsac was in the limelight, and Dorn smiled cynically to himself as he read those florid paragraphs.