, at that degenerated and shabby, down-at-heel club he met
another tempter: a plump man who had been in the music-hall line as
a sort of agent. This man had catered for the little shows of
little towns. He had been in America, out West, doing shows there.
He had trailed his way back to England, where he had left his wife
and daughter. But he did not resume his family life. Wherever he
was, his wife was a hundred miles away. Now he found himself more or
less stranded in Woodhouse. He had _nearly_ fixed himself up with a
music-hall in the Potteries--as manager: he had all-but got such
another place at Ickley, in Derbyshire: he had forced his way
through the industrial and mining townlets, prospecting for any sort
of music-hall or show from which he could get a picking. And now, in
very low water, he found himself at Woodhouse.

Woodhouse had a cinema already: a famous Empire run-up by Jordan,
the sly builder and decorator who had got on so surprisingly. In
James's younger days, Jordan was an obscure and illiterate nobody.
And now he had a motor car, and looked at the tottering James with
sardonic contempt, from under his heavy, heavy-lidded dark eyes. He
was rather stout, frail in health, but silent and insuperable, was
A. W. Jordan.

"I missed a chance there," said James, fluttering. "I missed a rare
chance there. I ought to have been first with a cinema."

He admitted as much to Mr. May, the stranger who was looking for
some sort of "managing" job. Mr. May, who also was plump and who
could hold his tongue, but whose pink, fat face and light-blue eyes
had a loud look, for all that, put the speech in his pipe and smoked
it. Not that he smoked a pipe: always cigarettes. But he seized on
James's admission, as something to be made the most of.

Now Mr. May's mind, though quick, was pedestrian, not winged. He had
come to Woodhouse not to look at Jordan's "Empire," but at the
temporary wooden structure that stood in the old Cattle
Market--"Wright's Cinematograph and Variety Theatre." Wright's was
not a superior show, like the Woodhouse Empire. Yet it was always
packed with colliers and work-lasses. But unfortunately there was no
chance of Mr. May's getting a finger in the Cattle Market pie.
Wright's was a family affair. Mr. and Mrs. Wright and a son and two
daughters with their husbands: a tight old lock-up family concern.
Yet it was the kind of show that appealed to Mr. May: pictures
between the turns. The cinematograph