ecause I
want to make movies more real. And she's angry with me. She turned
me out of her studio because I wouldn't promise not to. Of course, I
wouldn't promise such a thing. I think I see how it can be done. The
great difficulty is to secure an exact adjustment of the mirrors. There
are other difficulties. There's the awkwardness of transparent figures
crossing in front of each other. Also----"

"My dear boy," I said, "don't explain the thing to me. I am totally
incapable of understanding anything connected with mechanics, optics or
hydrostatics."

I can make as good an attempt as most men at replying intelligently to
Mrs. Ascher even when she talks of "values," atmospheres, feeling
and sympathy, though her use of these familiar words conveys only
the vaguest ideas to my mind. I can, after a period of intense mental
effort, understand what Ascher means by exchanges, premiums, discounts
and bills, though he uses these words in unfamiliar ways. But I am
defeated utterly by the man who talks about escapements, compensating
balances and clutches. I suspected that Tim Gorman would pelt me with
even more recondite scientific terms if I let things go on.

"You may take my word for it," I said, "that you'll get a thousand
dollars and more, in the end; but you may have to wait for it. In the
meanwhile keep on thinking out your plan for doubling the horrors of our
places of popular entertainment."

That was all I could do for Tim Gorman. I do not think that he deserved
more than cold comfort and disagreeable advice. I might have given him,
or lent him, a little money, if he had been at work on a really useful
invention, something which would benefit humanity. There are lots
of such things waiting to be invented. There ought to be some way
of stabbing a man who insists on ringing you up on the telephone at
unreasonable hours and saying tiresome things. We cannot claim to be
civilised until we have some weapon for legitimate self defence attached
to every telephone, something which could be operated easily and swiftly
by pressing a button at the side of the receiver. It is not necessary
that the man at the other end of the wire should be struck dead, but
he ought to suffer severe physical pain. If Tim Gorman would turn his
inventive genius in that direction, I should not hesitate to advance
money to him, even to the half of my possessions.

I called on Mrs. Ascher again before I left New York. I wanted to hear
her version o