The Technicolor Time Machine

“Go right in, Mr. Hendrickson,” Miss Zucker said and she even smiled slightly. She was the perfect barometer and Barney knew that his stock was soaring in Climactic.

“We were waiting for you,” L.M. said when he came in. “Have a cigar.”

Barney took it and put it into his breast pocket as he nodded around at the others.

“How do you like it?” L.M. asked, pointing to the stuffed tiger’s head on the wall. “I got the rest home making a rug.”

“Greatest,” Barney said. “But I never saw a tiger like that before.” The head was almost a yard long and two immense canine teeth, each twelve inches or more, protruded down below the lower jaw.

“It’s a sword-tooth tiger,” L.M. said proudly.

“Are you sure you don’t mean saber-tooth?”

“So? A saber is a kind of sword, isn’t it? Those two stunt men, what’s their names? gave it to me. They are running some kind of safaris, hunting, you know, and Climactic is getting a percentage of the gross for no investment at all except they use some of our equipment.”

“Very nice,” Barney said.

“Which is enough,” L.M. said, rapping on the desk with his gold lighter. “I’m as sociable as the next guy, maybe better, but we have some work to do. We have to plan at once, immediately, to follow up the smash success of Viking Columbus with an even more smashing success and that is what we are here to decide about today. Just before you came in, Barney, Charley Chang commented that religious pictures are swinging up on the charts again.”

“I wouldn’t doubt it,” Barney said, then sat bolt upright. “L.M., no…”

But L.M. was smiling and not listening. “And that,” he said, “gives me an idea for the absolutely infinitive religious picture of all time, a theme that positively cannot miss!”