like
they do in the films would nauseate her, she says, and we have no right
to encourage this bunk by feedin' it to an innocent public!"

"Eddie," I says, "she ain't a mile off the track, at that! This--"

"Oh, she ain't, eh?" he snarls. "Well that shows that you and her
knows as much about human nature as I do about makin' a watch! Miss
Devine wants us to put on a movie that she committed herself, and, if
we do, we'll be the laughin' stock of the world and Big Bend. It's got
everything in it but a hero, a heroine, a villain, action and love
interest. It's about as hot as one of them educational thrillers like
'Natives Makin' Panama Hats in Peoria' would be. A couple of these
would put the company on the blink, and I lose a ten-year contract at
ample money a year!"

"Well," I says, "what are you gonna do--quit?"

"Your mind must be as clean as a baby's," he says, "because you got
your first time to use it! No, I ain't gonna quit! I'm gonna show
Miss Dorothy Devine that as a judge of movin' pictures, she's a
swell-lookin' girl. I like these tough games, a guy feels so good all
over when he wins 'em. She's startin' with all the cards--money, looks
and, what counts more, she's just about the Big Boss here now. All I
got is one good card and that's only a jack--Jack Adams, to be
exact--and I'm gonna beat her with him!"

"I'll fall!" I says. "How?"

"Well," he tells me, "my argument is that all these thrillers we put on
are sad, weary and slow compared to some of the things that happen in
real life every day that we never hear about. They's many a telephone
girl, for instance, makin' a man outa a millionaire's no-good son and
many a sure-enough heiress bein' responsible for the first mate on a
whaler becomin' her kind and a director in the firm! I claim it does
_good_ and not harm, to feed this stuff to a trustin' public by way of
the screen. Why? Because every shippin'-clerk that's sittin' out in
front puts himself in the hero's place and every salesgirl dreams that
she's the heroine. Without thinkin', they both get to pickin' up the
virtues we pin on our stars, and it can't _help_ but do 'em good! I
don't know who started the shimmy, but I know women and I know human
nature, and knowin' 'em both, I'm gonna make a sportin' proposition to
Miss Dorothy Devine!"

"What's the bet?" I says. "I may take some of it myself."

"The bet is this," he tells me. "Here's this boy Adams, who, bein' De
Vrond