I nodded.
“How’d you like the movies?” I asked.
“Great!” he said. “Say, I want to tell you—”
But I was already overdue at the office, and I made my excuses to the old man. Another time, I said, would do. He agreed, as he always agreed, and I left him at work upon the car. Forgan, at the door, winked in his direction as I passed, and asked,
“Do you make him?”
“Why?” I inquired. “What do you mean?”
“You watch the old coot,” Forgan admonished me. “He’s a new man.”
III
I heard from Ernie, and in fragmentary snatches, the story of his moving-picture experience. There was a studio in one of the more remote suburbs, the plant of a fly-by-night company of none too good repute. The director of this company it was who had enticed Ernie away.
“They wanted me,” he told me seriously one day, “because I looked so much like Tom Edison. Didn’t you ever notice that?”