tabasco. Five pictures
she had done for Lobel Masterfilms since placing herself under Lobel's
management and a Lobel contract, all of them overpowering knock-outs,
sensations, sure-fire hits. On the sixth she now was at work and her
proud employer in conversation and in announcements to the trade stood
sponsor for the pledge that in its filming Monte literally would
out-Monte Monte.

Making his word good, he took over volunteer supervision of the main
scenes. His high-domed forehead glistening with sweat, his spectacles
aflame like twin burning glasses, his coat off, his collar off, his
waistcoat off, he snorted and churned, a ninety-horse dynamo of a
little fat man, through the hot glary studio, demanding this
improvement, detecting that defect, calling for this, that or the other
perfect thing in a voice which would have detained the admiring ear of
an experienced bull whacker. Before him Josephson, the little camera
man, quailed. From his path extra people departed, fleeing headlong; and
in his presence property men were as though they were not and never had
been. Out of the hands of Bertram Colfax, born Sims, he wrenched a
megaphone and through it he bellowed:

"Put more punch in it, Monte--that's what I'm asking you for--the punch!
Choke her, Harcourt! Choke him right back, Monte! Now-w-w then, clinch!
Clinch and hang on! Good! And now the kiss! You know, Monte, the long
kiss--the genuwine Monte kiss! Oh, if you love me, Monte, give me
footage on that kiss! That's it--hold it! Hold it! Keep on holding it!"

"But, Mr. Lobel, now," protested Colfax, born a Sims but living it down
and feeling that never more than at this minute, when rudely the
steersman's helm had been snatched from his grasp, was there greater
need that he should be a Colfax through and through----"but, Mr. Lobel,
it was my idea that up to this point anyway the action should be played
with restraint to sort of prepare the way for----"

"What do you mean restraint?"

"Well, I thought to emphasize what comes later--for a sort of
comparative value--that if we were just a little subtle at the
beginning--"

"Sufficient, Colfax! Listen! Don't come talking to me about no subtles!
When you're working the supporting members of the cast you maybe could
stick in some subtles once in a while to salve them censors, but so far
as Monte is concerned you leave 'em out!"

"But--but--"

"Don't but me any buts! Listen! Ain't I taken my paralyzed oath that