THE MOTION PICTURECHUMS’ NEW IDEACHAPTER ISOMETHING NEW
THE MOTION PICTURECHUMS’ NEW IDEA
“Boys, it’s a splendid idea!” cried Frank Durham.
“What is?” asked his friend and business partner, Randolph Powell.
“You look as if you had something big to tell,” chimed in Pepperill Smith, moving his chair nearer to his two comrades. “Out with it, Frank.”
The motion picture chums were seated in the cozy office of the Empire photo playhouse on upper Broadway, New York City. It was “their” playhouse, they might proudly say. Their energy, patience and genius had made it a success. They were lively, up-to-date boys, the kind who work as well as dream and play. Theyhad learned business ways. The animated yet earnest face of their leader just now showed that it was a genuine business proposition that he was bringing to the notice of his companions.
“Why,” returned Frank, “you know what our motto has always been—to keep abreast of the times.”
“And a little ahead of ’em, Durham!” added a new voice, as a bustling man of middle age entered the little office. It was Mr. Hank Strapp of Butte, Montana, the liberal, cheery-hearted financial backer of the boys. “It appears to me that this last venture of ours up at Riverside Grove has about capped the climax.”
“Let Frank go ahead with his story, Mr. Strapp!” cried Pep, who was a privileged character, his constant willingness to help out making full amends for his sometimes boisterous manner. “We’d have been good and sorry if we had missed running the Airdrome; wouldn’t we, now?”
“Well, it has doubled the value of our investment, that’s sure,” admitted Mr. Strapp, with great satisfaction.
“Then how do you know but what Frank now has a proposition up his sleeve that is twice as good? He’s always looking for new ideas. What’s the last one, Frank?”
“Well,” explained the latter, “to tell it in a word: What do you say to opening a photo playhouse that shall be devoted exclusively to educational films?”
Each of Frank’s auditors received this declaration in a characteristic way. Pep came to his feet with a bound and seemed to be ready to voice his opinion in his usual tumultuous fashion. Randy’s eyes snapped as his vivid imagination seized upon the new thought. The impulsive ex-ranchman, Mr. Strapp, brought his bronzed hand down upon his knee emphatically with the words:
“Durham, I believe you’ve struck a big thing! It catches my fancy. There’s one first point we’ve got to look to, though: Can it be made to pay?”
“I feel sure that it can,” replied Frank, “in the right place.”
“And where is that,” inquired the impetuous Pep.
“Boston,” was the reply. “Boston is the home of culture. Anything high up in the entertainment line is encouraged there. I first thought of the plan a week ago. Yesterday, quite by accident, I ran across a gentleman who crystallized my vague ideas.”
“How was that, Durham?” asked the interested Westerner.
“It was down at the film exchange. I was waiting for the crowd to thin out, as I had some special business with the manager, and sat down on a bench. Right next to me was a thin, intellectual looking man whom nobody could help but notice as entirely out of the ordinary. He was nervous, abstracted, impatient. He took out his watch to look at the time.
“I saw that he had opened the back case instead of the dial. I heard him say: ‘Remarkable! Extraordinary!’ Then he began poking in all his pockets. He made a vain search. He got up and looked all over the bench, and knelt down and searched under it.
“‘Can I help you, sir?’ I asked.
“‘Well, yes, I’ve lost my glasses,’ he informed me.
“‘Why,’ I told him, ‘you’ve got them on.’
“‘Aha! So I have,’ he admitted. ‘Ridiculous!’
“‘And you’re looking at the wrong side of your watch,’ I added.
“‘Dear me!’ he groaned. ‘Preposterous!’”
“Say, he’d make a good character in a funny film,” chuckled the mischief-loving Pep.
“Well,” continued Frank, “he came out of his absent-mindedness and gathered his scatteredwits. Those dreamy eyes of his pierced me like a gimlet.
“‘Movies man?’ he asked.
“I told him yes. You ought to have seen how eager he was. He began firing questions at me so fast I could hardly answer. They were all about motion pictures. He was like a curious youngster hungry for facts. We got so interested in my experience, before he got through with me, that he found out about all we know or have down in the movies business. Finally he jumped to his feet.
“‘See here,’ he said, grabbing my arm, ‘you are just the fellow I’ve been looking for. You come along with me.’
“‘Where?’ I asked.
“‘To my hotel,’ he replied. ‘I’ll make you rich and famous.’ There was no resisting him, so I went.”
“Who was he, anyway?” asked Randy.
Frank took a card from his pocket and held it so that all could read the name inscribed upon it:
Professor Achilles Barrington.
“And what was he after?” pressed Pep.
“Someone to exploit his ideas about a great educational film photo playhouse,” repliedFrank. “I never saw a man so enthusiastic over an idea as he was. It seems that he had been a professor of astronomy at Yale, or Harvard, I forget which. A rival professor set up a new theory as to the red spots on Jupiter in opposition to his own. There was a wordy war. Professor Barrington stood on his dignity and resigned. He had a little money and an ardent ambition to ‘enlighten the masses,’ as he termed it. He has mapped out a wonderful series of films for popular exhibition. I tell you, they’re great. He wants to start the finest photo playhouse in the world, facing Boston Common, and his plan has a lot of good points.”
“It would seem so,” nodded Mr. Strapp, whose face showed that he was intensely interested. “Go ahead, Durham. I’m mightily attracted by what you are telling us.”
“The professor must have talked to me for an hour when we got to his hotel. It appears he has been working on his pet idea for several months. I was surprised at the way he had planned his film subjects and sources of information and supply. He convinced me that his plans, influence and scheme for working up business were magnificent.
“It appears he was waiting to see what encouragement the film men would give him in hisscheme when I met him. Now he is thoroughly convinced that there never was a combination so able to put through his plans as ourselves. He was for getting my decision at once, so that some of us could go at once to Boston and see the location he had picked out for the new playhouse. I told him I would have to consult with you people and I promised he should hear from me by noon. What do you think of it, Mr. Strapp?”
“Well, you know we have run across all kinds of dreamers in this business,” replied the Westerner. “I’ve a great respect for college folks, though; little education as I’ve had myself. You’re a shrewd sort of a fellow, Durham, and don’t make many mistakes.”
“That’s right!” came with emphasis from the ever-admiring Pep.
“Thank you,” returned Frank, modestly, and with a laugh.
“Yes, sir-ree! We can trust your judgment every time, Durham,” continued Mr. Strapp. “As to the idea you’ve spoken of, it can’t be beat. As to the man who has worked it up, I suspect we’d all better see him before we come to a decision.”
“I’ll bet he’s an odd genius,” commented Pep, with an expectant twinkle in his eyes.
“He’s smart, or he couldn’t have interested Frank the way he has done,” observed the loyal Randy.
“Well, if you leave it to me,” spoke the young motion picture manager, “I’ll go back to his hotel, as I promised. I think I had better bring him back here with me. It’s three hours before we start the show, so we can have a good long talk.”
“I’ll be glad to see this professor of yours, Durham,” said Mr. Strapp.
“Hello!” broke in Pep, abruptly. “Here’s somebody.”
The door of the little office swung open as someone knocked timidly on it.
Frank, craning his neck, discerned a man standing still and apparently awaiting an answer to his summons. It struck Frank that the visitor must be near-sighted, or very absent-minded, to thus mistake a wide open door for a closed one.
“Come in,” he sang out and the caller seized the knob of the door. As he did this, the unexpected ease with which the door swung towards him moved him off his balance, drove him back and banged shut, quite taking him off his feet.
“Stupendous!” gasped the caller, as he went sprawling upon the floor headlong, his tall silkhat rolling in one direction, the goggles he wore in another.
“Why!” cried Frank, “It’s Professor Barrington himself!”