"Pinochle!" yells the Kid. "I'll stake you to a hundred aces and beat you from here to Denver!"
"Ugh!" snorts the other guy—and castin' a sneer at both of us, he passes in the gate.
We went in after him, and the Kid tells me how he come to flatten this baby, which, from the card he give us, was J. Harold Cuthbert. The Kid says Harold stopped him outside the portals of Film City and asked him why no auto had met him at the train. Scanlan says he didn't know, but he had seen the mayor and two brass bands goin' down and hadn't Harold met 'em? Harold says he had not and he was gonna file a complaint about it, because he was the greatest movie actor that ever bawled out a director. With that, says the Kid, he reeled off the names of the pictures he had been featured in, and from the list he give out the only thing he wasn't featured in was "Microbes at Play," a educational film tore off by the company last year. The Kid asks him if he ever heard of Kid Scanlan, the shop girls' delight, who was bein' starred in a five-reeler called "Lay Off, MacDuff." Harold throwed out his chest and says he wrote it and practically made Scanlan by directin' it. At that the Kid tells him that he may be a movie star, but he looks like a liar to him. Harold makes a pass at him, and Scanlan hit him to see would he bounce. He didn't, and he was just comin' around when I blowed on the scene.
When we got to Genaro's office, Harold was tellin' Eddie Duke the reason he was bunged up was because he had fell off the train comin' out, and Eddie says that was tough and it was time Congress got after them railroads, but the thing he'd like to know was why Harold had come out at all. They had looked up the files and there was nothin' to show who had ordered this guy shipped on.
Harold looks over the bunch in the office for a minute, registers "I-am-thinking-deeply," and then snaps his fingers.
"Oh!" he says. "I had a letter of introduction from Mr. Potts, but I suppose it's in my gray morning suit which will arrive with my trunks in a day or so. Mr. Potts and myself are old friends," he winks at Genaro confidentially. "I really think my father owns a slew of the company's stock, but then Dad is connected with so many vast enterprises that—"
"Joosta wan minoote!" interrupts Genaro, turnin' a cold eye on Harold. "Joosta wan minoote! We're very busy joosta now, sometime nex' week everybody she'sa listen about your father. What we wanna know is what Meester Potts he'sa senda you out here to do?"
"Yeh!" says Duke. "That's the idea—what's your act?"
"Why, I intend to play romantic leads," pipes Harold, "and I have an idea that—"
"Ha, ha!" laughs the Kid. "That's fair enough. All Edison had was a idea, and look at him now!"