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 industry. No one who lived in New York could long remain ignorant of the oft reiterated statement that pictures were growing bigger and better, or of the fact that cinema theatres were being erected of a size to compare favourably with that of the Colosseum at Rome. The amount of space devoted to advertising these theatres was staggering to one familiar with the prohibitive cost of newspaper theatrical advertising. Such paid publicity, however, had not moved Ambrose to visit the auditoriums these advertisements extolled.

He might have alleged quite truthfully, further meditation convinced him, that a sick friend awaited him at Santa Fe, a friend looking forward to his comforting propinquity as an aid to recuperation. He had, he recalled, offered this excuse, but it had been regarded as wholly trivial. Ringrose had logically assumed that his friend could wait the two brief weeks required for the development of a screenable idea. Ambrose did not believe he could write a story for the cinema in two years, but he had protested no further.

He had telegraphed Jack Story from the train that he was going on to Hollywood, and somewhere in the desert of Arizona he had received a reply: You poor sap, it read, you must be sicker than I am,