“‘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,” replied Frank. “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.”