walk in fresh-fallen snow, and the parting tirade of Bently Brown had
affected him unpleasantly.

For a full two minutes Luck smoked and did not speak, and as he had done
once before, Martinson repented his harshness when it was too late.
"Personally, your version struck me as awfully funny," he began
placatingly.

"Who gives a cuss how it struck you personally?" Luck stood up with
unexpected haste. "You trim and truckle to every one that comes along
with a gold brick, and that's why you have to sit up nights to nurse the
profits. If you had a little stiffening in your back, the profits would
show up better. You paid good money for this bunch of rot, and turned it
over to me to whip into a profitable investment. You can make the rounds
of the studio and get a vote on whether I've done it or not. Put it up to
your Public; they'll mighty soon let you know whether the film's a
money-getter. If it is, your business as general manager and president of
the Acme Film Company is to get Bently Brown in line for the production
to go on. A clause such as you mention in the agreement with him shows a
bigger blunder on your part than anything I've done or ever will do. If
you'd had as much sense as Ted, you'd have kept that clause out. If you'd
had half as much brains as the comedy burro out in the corral you'd never
have loaded up with that stuff, anyway; you'd have seen at a glance that
it was rotten.

"Now, I've shown what I can do with those stories. I've taken your bad
bargain and put it into a money-making shape. As to the break I made in
getting those boys out here, you'll have to show me--that's all. They
seem, to have made good all right, judging from the way that film took
with the crowd. And if you ask my opinion as a director, they beat any
near-professional on the Acme pay roll. My work, and their work, goes
right along as it has started--or it stops. If you want those stories
worked up in a lot of darned, sickly, slush melodrama, you can set some
simp at it that don't know any better." Luck stopped and shut his teeth
together against some personal remarks that he would later feel ashamed
of having uttered. He turned to the door, swallowed hard, and forced
himself to a dignified calm before he spoke again.

"You know my phone number, Mart. By seven in the morning I'll expect to
hear from you. You can tell me then whether I'm to go ahead with these
stories the way I've started, or whether to pull out of the Company