His hand, idly dropped into his overcoat pocket, intuitively closed around his automatic revolver.  A dark silhouette was outlined against the gray luminosity cast up by the lights of Broadway, half a block from the window.  Through the opening another belching flame shot forth, to be answered by the criminologist’s weapon, barking like a miltraileuse.  They heard a stifled cry, and as Shirley ran forward, he exclaimed with disappointment.

“He’s escaped down the fire-escape and through that skylight.”

He faced about to smile grimly at the curious scene within.  The playwright had taken refuge among the brass andirons of the big empty fireplace.  The matinee heroes were under chairs, and Holloway behind the mahogany buffet.  From the direction of the stairway came shrill cries from the speeding merchant, softening in intensity as he neared the street level.

“The battle’s over!” exclaimed Holloway.  “I don’t know whether it was my chorus men wishing the gipsy curse on me, or the stage-carpenters going on a strike.  But look!  See the swag that Jerry left behind!  What shall we do with it?”

“Loot!” suggested the playwright, with rare discrimination, as he dusted off the wood ashes, and approached the table with glistening eyes.  “We’ll divide share and share alike.  It’s the only way to win from Jerry.”

Temperament was asserting its gameness.  Shirley put back into position a shattered portrait of Sarah Bernhardt, and his eyes twinkled as the apostles of the muses hastened to divide the chips of the departed one into five generous piles.  Holloway completed the letter, albeit with a nervous chirography, and handed him the envelope.

“Go now, before a submarine war zone is declared.  I’m going to close up shop before the police come visiting.  Good luck, Monty, in the cause of science.”

Although his conscience was clear about the game having created five surprised winners by his interruption, he was disturbed over the certainty that the voice was aware of his personal work in the case.  The difficulties were now trebled!  Before any policemen appeared Shirley had passed Broadway on his way to the motion picture studio, on the West side of Tenth Avenue.  Whatever secret observers may have been on his tracks, nothing untoward occurred:  still, his senses were quickened into caution by the attempt on his life.

A parley with a grumpy gateman, the presentation of his letter and he was admitted to the presence of the manager, a man exhausted with the strenuosity of night and day work.  Shirley understood the antidote for his sullenness.

“Here, old man, send out for a little luncheon for the two of us.  I have some unusual experimental work, and need the assistance of a well-known expert like yourself.”  The flattery, embellished by a ten-dollar bill, opened a flood-gate of optimism.

A camera man was summoned, and the apparatus prepared for some “close-up” motion pictures.  Under the weird green lights of the mercury vapor lamps, a director and company of players were busily enacting a dramatic scene, before a studio set.  They gave little heed to the newcomer:  boredom is a prime requisite of poise in the motion picture art.