CHAPTER I
A COLLISION
"Hard times don't seem to bother us much."
"No, the crowds still keep on coming. If it only lasts."
The speakers were two young men, part of a little company gathered in the office of a moving picture theatre on upper Broadway, New York City. On a table in front of the party was a pile of bills and silver.
"Yes, we certainly are taking in the coin," observed Randolph Powell, the first speaker, with a glance at the money.
"All I'm afraid of is that there's likely to be a drop, sooner or later," responded the other, a youth with a slightly freckled face who answered to the name of Pepperill Smith—or, more often, Pep.
"Now, don't talk that way!" objected Randolph, whose name had been shortened by his friends to Randy. "Why shouldn't we enjoy our good luck while it's coming?"
"Oh, of course, I didn't mean anything," spoke Pep, quickly. "But what's the matter with you, Frank? You haven't said a word for the last five minutes."
"Frank's up to some scheme; aren't you, old man?" asked Randy. "Come on, let's have the benefit of your ideas. Doesn't this satisfy you?" and he waved his hand toward the pile of money on the table.
"Well, I should say it ought!" exclaimed a man sitting in one corner of the office. "I call it high-falutin' good, that's what I call it, and let me tell you Hank Strapp of Butte, Montana, isn't an easy person to suit when it comes to cold coin. I like mine plenty and with lots of gravy and white meat!" and he laughed in a hearty way at his own joke.
"Well, if you're satisfied, Mr. Strapp, after all the money you've put into this motion picture business, I'm sure Frank Durham ought to be!" declared Pep, with the quickness for which he was noted. His voice had in it just a tinge of sharpness, though perhaps he did not mean it that way. Frank looked up quickly.
"I'm not finding a bit of fault!" declared the lad, whose face showed that he was perhaps a shade deeper thinker than either of his young chums. "We're doing splendidly; we all agree on that."
"Well, then, what ails you?" demanded Pep.
"Nothing. I'm all right," and Frank smiled at his impetuous friend.
"I don't call it all right for a fellow to sit there, with all that money staring him in the face, and not feel good over it," objected Pep. "You might at least offer to treat us to ice-cream sodas after the best day's business in a year."
"Oh, if it's a matter of soda, of course—come on out and have some," replied Frank, with a smile. "But first we'd better put this away," and he waved at the money which had been neatly arranged in piles on the table, the bills of various denominations stacked by themselves, and the silver arranged in dollar lots, for easy counting.
Outside the office of the motion picture theatre could be heard a jumble of sounds. Above the distant hum and roar of the streets came the sound of women cleaning the rows of theatre seats, and there also came the peculiar hissing sound of the hand-disinfectors which porters were carrying about, spraying the air of the recently emptied playhouse, to make it clean and sweet for the coming performance.
It was about nine o'clock in the morning, and the Empire motion picture place opened at eleven, remaining in continuous operation until that same hour at night. Soon it would be ready for the crowds of patrons which would throng to it to view the wonderful motion pictures on the screen.
The money on the table represented what had been taken in the day and evening before, and, as Pep had remarked, it was the largest day's receipts the motion picture chums had ever received from this particular house—one of several they controlled.
"Hurray! Frank's going to treat!" exclaimed Pep, getting up from the table in such a hurry that he nearly upset it.
"Careful!" cried Randy. "Money doesn't come in so easily, these European war times, that we can afford to scatter it."
"That's right!" chimed in Hank Strapp. "I'd sure hate to see this stuff spilled."
"Huh! Don't worry. I'm not going to spill it," declared Pep. "And now would you look at him," and he pointed to Frank. "There he goes again—mooning!"
And indeed Frank did seem to be in a brown study, from which he had roused himself long enough to offer the soda treat, only to again fall into a reverie.
"Frank, look at me straight!" demanded Hank Strapp, in his breezy, Western way, which, while it was light enough, yet had in it a deal of earnestness. "As between man and man, is anything worrying you? Answer me straight now!"
If anyone could answer Hank Strapp other than "straight" with those clear blue eyes of his looking so fearlessly at one, it would have been an occasion out of the ordinary. Certainly Frank Durham had no such intention.
"Are you worried?" asked Mr. Strapp. "Have any of our old enemies been making trouble for you, unbeknownst to us? Is the business going badly? Has the trust tried to gobble up the supply of some of our films? If they have——" and Hank paused to prepare a sufficiently strong, yet proper expression.
"Nothing at all like that," declared Frank. "I don't see why you are making all this fuss."
"Fuss! As if anyone wouldn't make a fuss when you sit here as glum as an oyster, while we count our hard-earned wealth," broke in Pep. "Think of it! We never before had such crowds coming to our New York house, and they never kept it up so! Why, when other motion picture places, not many blocks away from us, are reeling off their stuff to half-empty seats, we're packed to the doors, and straining the fire department regulations to accommodate our crowds. And you——"
"Hold on, Pep," spoke Frank quietly, but determinedly. "I am not at all dissatisfied. In fact, I'm immensely pleased, and I've just been thinking of a way by which we can make more money, I hope."
"You have? Say, old man, I beg your pardon. Forget all I said!" burst out the impulsive Pep. "Let's hear it!"
"More money! That's me!" cried Hank Strapp. "What's the latest scheme, Frank?"
"And don't leave me out!" begged Randy, pushing some of the piles of money to one side that he might sit on the office table, and hear what his chum had to say.
"It's just this," began Frank. "I've got a new idea, and yet it isn't so very new, for I've been mulling over it for some time. What do you say to opening a motion picture theatre at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco?"
Frank's question produced a momentary silence. Then Pep, as usual, was the first to burst out:
"Great! Immense! That's the best ever! How'd you come to think of that?"
"Well, as I said, I've been figuring on it for some time," answered Frank, "and when I saw how we were coining money here, it occurred to me that we couldn't invest it in any better way than by taking a flier out there. But there are several points to be considered."
"Considered!" cried Pep. "I say it's all settled, if you've thought it over, Frank. We'll do it; eh, Randy?"
"Sure, I'll go into it if the rest of you do," and Randy looked at the bluff Westerner, who had proved himself such a friend to the motion picture chums.
"The Panama Exposition! Just the thing, I say!" was Mr. Strapp's exclamation. "I'm for the West, first, last and always! Anybody who knows Hank Strapp knows that. I don't know all the details, but I'm with Frank in anything he sets out to do."
"Thanks," murmured the proposer of the idea. "Better not be too rash. It will take a lot of money, I'm afraid."
"Well, we've got it," declared Pep, impulsively. "Look at it!" and he waved his hand toward the bills on the table.
"This is my idea," went on Frank, when there suddenly came an interruption, in the shape of a pleasant-faced man, who poked his head through the doorway of the office long enough to ask:
"Anything special in the way of music or effects needed for to-day's reels?"
"Oh, hello, Ben Jolly!" cried out Frank. "Come on in! This concerns you as much as any of us."
"Do you mean this—money?" asked Ben with a smile, as he entered the office.
"Well, partly," admitted Frank. "Some of it's yours. But I was just speaking about opening a motion picture theatre at the Panama Exposition. What do you think of it?"
"Great!" cried Ben, who played the music, and managed the "effects," or various simulating sounds that, nowadays, accompany motion pictures. "You'll want to arrange for an extra big pipe organ, though."
"An organ?" questioned Hank. "What's the matter with a piano out there?"
"An organ is the latest," declared Ben. "We've proved that here at the Empire. You can get better effects, especially in the 'sob reels.' I mean the ones that cause the 'weeps.' They're always effective, especially for the ladies, and when they see something sad, and hear me making slow, tremulous music on a deep-toned organ, with the lights turned low, and all the handkerchiefs in the place wet with tears—say, they'll come in droves! You couldn't keep 'em away if you said there were mice in the place, and women are more afraid of them than an elephant is. Get an organ for that new place, and I'll guarantee you'll be turning 'em away in droves! An organ there will draw better than it has here."
"Well, that's something that can be talked of later," decided Frank. "I'm rather inclined to a new and bigger organ myself. It certainly was a success here—a big success. If we can get a suitable place, in the 'Zone,' as the amusement concession space is called, we can probably have a pipe organ put in before we open. Now as to details——"
Frank suddenly interrupted himself to look at his watch.
"Whew!" he whistled. "Eleven o'clock, and the bank closes at noon on Saturday. I'll just about have time to make it, and I want to get this deposit in to-day, to strengthen our account. We have a lot of bills to meet Monday. I'll have to be off!"
He began to sweep the money into a satchel he used on his trips to and from the bank, for Frank acted as treasurer and cashier at times.
"Have you made out the pay roll?" asked Randy.
"Yes, I've left enough out of our receipts for that. I'll deposit the rest."
"But what about that new plan?" demanded Pep. "If we're going out to San Francisco I want to know it!"
"We can't decide in a hurry," answered Frank. "We'll talk more about it when I come back. But I'm glad to see that you all think well of it; so far at least."
"It's a dandy scheme!" exclaimed Mr. Strapp. "I'll be on my own stamping ground once more, if we get out West. You boys won't be sorry you came; take Hank Strapp's word for that."
"Well, if I can have an organ out there, as I have here, to play sad music on, I'll be satisfied," declared Ben Jolly, with a bright smile.
"We'll talk it all over when I come back from the bank," Frank announced, as he put on his hat and set out with the satchel of money. The others remained behind in the office.
"Films come in all right?" Frank called to one of the young operators, who was up in the sheet-iron "cage" getting ready for the day's performance, which would soon begin.
"All here, and some good ones, too," was the answer. "But say, come to think of it, has Ben Jolly any chain-rattling effect in his box?"
"I think so; but you'd better ask him to make sure," advised Frank. In the Empire, as in all first-class motion picture theatres, the musician, in addition to what effects he can produce on the piano, or organ, has a "box," or mechanical device—several of them, in fact—by which he can produce the sound of almost anything, from a thunder storm to the tinkling of a doorbell, or the puffing of an automobile.
Leaving his operator to arrange for the chain-rattling device, which was called for in one of the pictures, Frank hastened on to the bank, for it was nearly closing time.
As he entered the swinging doors, carrying his satchel of money to deposit, the young man ran full tilt into a portly, red-faced man who was coming out with every appearance of haste.
"Ha! Why don't you look where you're going?" demanded the man, rather breathlessly; for Frank's coin-filled satchel had come in violent contact with his stomach.
"I beg your pardon," Frank said, instinctively. "It was an accident. And, as a matter of fact, you ran into me as much as I ran into you."
"Nonsense! Nothing of the sort. You did it deliberately, and if I had time——"
A violent fit of coughing interrupted the man's hoarse voice.