“Ever been? Do you know how long the cinema has been going? Since about 1900.”
“Well! What a thing! I’m writing a skit on it!”
“How—a skit?”
“Parody—wildest yarn you ever read.”
He took up a sheet of paper and began chuckling to himself.
“My heroine,” he said, “is an Octoroon. Her eyes swim, and her lovely bosom heaves. Everybody wants her, and she’s more virtuous than words can say. The situations she doesn’t succumb to would freeze your blood; they’d roast your marrow. She has a perfect devil of a brother, with whom she was brought up, and who knows her deep dark secret and wants to trade her off to a millionaire who also has a deep dark secret. Altogether there are four deep dark secrets in my yarn. It’s a corker.”
“What a waste of your time!” I said.
“My time!” he answered fiercely. “What’s the use of my time? Nobody buys my books.”
“Who’s attending you?”