“We’ve got it.”
“I was afraid you would.
If you didn’t, I’d be the one that would have your shirt.”
He grinned, but we all knew he meant it.
“All right, that’s settled.
Let’s talk about release.
“There are two or three outfits around town that will want a crack at it.
My boys will have the word spread around in no time; there’s no point in trying to keep them quiet any longer.
I know—they’ll have sense enough not to talk about the things you want off the record.
I’ll see to that.
But you’re top dog right now.
You got loose cash, you’ve got the biggest potential gross I’ve ever seen, and you don’t have to take the first offer.
That’s important, in this game.”
“How would you like to handle it yourself?”
“I’d like to try.
The outfit I’m thinking of needs a feature right now, and they don’t know I know it.
They’ll pay and pay.
What’s in it for me?”
“That,” I said, “we can talk about later.
And I think I know just what you’re thinking.
We’ll take the usual terms and we don’t care if you hold up whoever you deal with.
What we don’t know won’t hurt us.”
That’s what he was thinking, all right.
That’s a cutthroat game out there.
“Good.
Kessler, get your setup ready for duplication.”
“Always ready.”
“Marrs, start the ball rolling on publicity… what do you want to do about that?” to us.
Mike and I had talked about that before.
“As far as we’re concerned,” I said slowly, “do as you think best.
Personal publicity, O.K. We won’t look for it, but we won’t dodge it.
As far as that goes, we’re the local yokels making good.
Soft pedal any questions about where the picture was made, without being too obvious.
You’re going to have trouble when you talk about the nonexistent actors, but you ought to be able to figure out something.”
Marrs groaned and Johnson grinned.
“He’ll figure out something.”
“As far as technical credit goes, we’ll be glad to see you get all you can, because you’ve done a swell job.”
Kessler took that as a personal compliment, and it was.
“You might as well know now, before we go any further, that some of the work came right from Detroit.”
They all sat up at that.
“Mike and I have a new process of model and trick work.”
Kessler opened his mouth to say something but thought better of it.
“We’re not going to say what was done, or how much was done in the laboratory, but you’ll admit that it defies detection.”
About that they were fervent.
“I’ll say it defies detection.
In the game this long and process work gets by me… where—”
“I’m not going to tell you that.
What we’ve got isn’t patented and won’t be, as long as we can hold it up.”
There wasn’t any griping there.
These men knew process work when they saw it.