Comedy—­that was it.  Comedy, that had slipped in with cap and bells just when the door was flung open for black-robed Tragedy.  But it was too late to stop laughing when they discovered the trick.  They saw it now, in the very sub-titles which Luck had twisted impishly into sly humor that pointed to the laugh, in the deeds of blood that followed.  They saw it in the goggling ferocity of Big Medicine; in the innocent-eyed, dimpled fiendishness of Pink; in the lank awkwardness of Happy Jack.  They saw it in the sentimental mannerisms of Lenore Honiwell, whose sickish emotionalism slipped pat into the burlesque.  They rocked in their seats at the heroics of Tracy Gray Joyce, who could never again be taken seriously, since Luck had tagged him mercilessly as an unconscious comedian.

Oh, yes, there was zip to the picture!  But there was no explanation of the title. The Soul of Littlefoot Law remained as great a mystery when the picture was finished as it had been at the start.  Littlefoot Law, by the way, was Pink.  That much the audience discovered, and no more; for as to his soul, he did not seem to own one.

Luck, still hunched down so that his back hair rubbed against his chair back, was laughing with his jaws wide apart and his fine teeth still gleaming in the half darkness, when Ted, general errand boy at the office, came straddling over intervening laps and laid a compelling hand on his shoulder.

“Say, Luck,” he whispered excitedly, “the audience author’s with Mart, and they both want t’ see you.  And, say, I guess you’re in Dutch, all right; the author’s awful mad, and so is Mart.  But say, no matter what they do to you, Luck, take it from me, that pit’cher’s a humdinger!  I like to died a-laughing!”

CHAPTER SEVEN

BENTLY BROWN DOES NOT APPRECIATE COMEDY

Luck unhooked his hat from his knee, brought his laughing jaws together with that eloquent, downward tilt to the corners of his mouth, sat up straight, considered swiftly the possibilities of the next half hour, and paid tribute in one expressive word of four letters before he went crawling over half a dozen pairs of knees to do battle for his picture.  His picture, you understand.  For since he had made it irresistible comedy instead of very mediocre drama, he felt all the pride of creation in his work.  That was his picture that had set the Acme people laughing,—­they who had come to carp and to talk knowingly of continuity and of technique and dramatic values, and to criticize everything from the sets to the photography.  It was his picture; he had made it what it was.  So he went as a champion rather than as a culprit to face the powers above him.

Martinson and Bently Brown were waiting for him near the door.  They were not going to stay and see the next picture run, and that, in Luck’s opinion, was a bad-weather sign.  But he came up to them cheerfully, turning his hat in his fingers to find the front of it before he set it on his head. (These limp, wool, knockabout hats are always more or less confusing, and Luck was fastidious about his apparel.)