's the kind that'd know enough to keep his trap shut. So I've
had him working like a nailer and he's pretty near done.

"Soon as he had the negative ready, which was late yesterday afternoon
after you'd went home, I had it run off with nobody there but me and
Josephson, and I took a flash at it--and, Lobel, it's a bear! No need
for you to worry about the negative--it was a heap too long, of course,
in the shape it was yesterday, but it had everything in it we hoped
would be in it--and more besides.

"So then without losing a minute I stuck Josephson on the printing
machine himself. I'd already gave the girl on the machine a couple of
days off to get her out of the way. Josephson stayed on the job alone
pretty near all last night, I guess. He had things to himself without
anybody to bother him and I tell you he shoved it along.

"Connors ain't lost no time neither. He's got the subtitles pretty near
done, and believe it or not, as you're a mind to, but, Lobel, I'm
telling you that this time to-morrow morning and not a minute later I'll
have the first sample print all cut and assembled and ready for you to
give it a look! Then it'll just be a job of matching up the negative and
sticking in the subtitles and starting to turn out the positives faster
than the shipping-room gang can handle 'em. I guess that ain't moving,
heh?"

"Quinlan," said Mr. Lobel, "I give you right."

By making his word good to the minute the gratified Mr. Quinlan derived
additional gratification. At the time appointed they sat in darkness in
the body of the projection room--Lobel, Quinlan, Geltfin and Appel,
these four and none other--behind a door locked and barred. Promptly on
Quinlan's order the operator in the box behind them started his machine
and the accomplished rough draft of the great masterpiece leaped into
being and actuality upon the lit square toward which they faced.

The beginning was merely a beginning--graphic enough and offering
abundant proof that in this epochal undertaking the Lobel shop had
spared no expense to make the production sumptuous, but after all only
preliminary stuff to sauce the palate of the patron for a greater feast
to come and suitably to lead up to the introduction of the star. Soon
the star was projected upon the screen, a purring, graceful panther of a
woman, to change at once into a sinuous python of a woman and then to
merge the feline and the ophidian into a sinister, splendid, menacing
composite b