“I can get every foot of that atmosphere,” Luck put in crisply.

“Oh, I suppose—­but you don’t want that much.  Too expensive, where it doesn’t carry the action along.  I’d put in some dance-hall scenes; you haven’t enough interiors.  Make your lead a victim of card sharps, why don’t you, and have his sister come there after him?  You could get some great dramatic action—­have her meet the heavy there—­”

“After the tried-and-tested recipe.  Sure, Mart!  We can take the middle out of that Her-Brother’s-Honor film and use that; and if you’re afraid the public may recognize it, we’ll run it backwards.  Or we can mix it with some Western-Girl’s-Romance film, or take—­”

“Now, Luck, wait a minute.  Wait-a-minute!” Martinson’s hand went up in the approved gesture of stopping another’s speech.  “You can give it an original twist.  You know you can; you always have.”

Luck swore, accustomed though he was to the makeshifts of the business.  The street cars had stopped running the night before, while he was still hammering that scenario out on the typewriter; the street cars had stopped running, and the steam heat had been turned off in the hotel where he lived, and he had finished with an old Mexican serape draped about his person for warmth.  But his enthusiasm had not cooled, though his room grew chill.  He had gone to bed when the typing was done, and had dreamed scene after scene vividly while he slept.  Still glowing with the pride of creation, he had read the script while his breakfast coffee had cooled, and he had been the first man in the office, so eager was he to share his secret and see Martinson’s eyes gleam with impatience to have the story filmed.

Knowing this, you will know also why he swore.  Martinson thrust out his under lip at the oath, and tossed the script neatly into the clear space on the desk.  “Oh, if that’s the way you feel about it!” His tone was trenchant.  “Sorry I offered any suggestions.  There are some good bits, if they’re worked up right, and I naturally supposed you wanted my opinion.”

“I did.  I never saw you square up to anything but the same old dime-novel West before.  I wanted to see how it would hit you.”

“Well, it don’t.”  Martinson waited a minute while that sunk in.  When he spoke again, his manner was that of a man who has dismissed a disagreeable subject, and has taken up important business.

“We’ve made quite a haul since you left.  A bunch of one-reelers from Bently Brown.  You’ll eat ’em up, Luck,—­all those stories of his featuring the adventures of the XY cowboys.  You’ve read ’em; everybody has, according to him.  They’ll be cheap to put on, because the same sets and the same locations will do for the lot.  Same cast, too.  He blew in here temporarily hard up and wanting to unload, and we got the whole series for next to nothing.”  He opened a desk drawer, and took out a bundle of folded scripts tied with a dingy blue tape.  Martinson was a matter-of-fact man; he really did not understand just how much Luck’s new story meant to its author.  If he had, he surely would not have been quite so brisk and so frankly elated over that untidy lot of Bently Brown scenarios.