In the novel, Beth de Graf and Patsy Doyle, staying in Hollywood, California after parting from their cousin's California ranch in the previous novel, stumble onto the set of a film depicting a collapsing building. Beth is horrified that they have become unwitting extras in a motion picture, for the films she has seen she found atrocious and contrived. Uncle John Merrick offers to let them meet a filmmaker before they form a lasting opinion on the medium, and this filmmaker turns out to be Otis Werner, the same director who shot the film. He argues that the building was falling apart and that the film uses a story to convey the dangers of the use of crumbling factories, for in the film, the factory owner's daughter is killed by a collapsing wall, and he is forced to rethink his life because he has done it all to provide for her.
