Most writers look like writers whether they want to or not. It is hard to say why — for they model their exteriors whimsically on Wall Street brokers, cattle kings or English explorers — but they all turn out looking like writers, as definitely typed as ‘The Public’ or ‘The Profiteers’ in the cartoons.

Pat Hobby was the exception. He did not look like a writer. And only in one corner of the Republic could he have been identified as a member of the entertainment world. Even there the first guess would have been that he was an extra down on his luck, or a bit player who specialized in the sort of father who should never come home. But a writer he was: he had collaborated in over two dozen moving picture scripts, most of them, it must be admitted, prior to 1929.

A writer? He had a desk in the Writers’ Building at the studio; he had pencils, paper, a secretary, paper clips, a pad for office memoranda. And he sat in an overstuffed chair, his eyes not so very bloodshot taking in the morning’s Reporter.

‘I got to get to work,’ he told Miss Raudenbush at eleven. And again at twelve:

‘I got to get to work.’

At quarter to one, he began to feel hungry — up to this point every move, or rather every moment, was in the writer’s tradition. Even to the faint irritation that no one had annoyed him, no one had bothered him, no one had interfered with the long empty dream which constituted his average day.

He was about to accuse his secretary of staring at him when the welcome interruption came. A studio guide tapped at his door and brought him a note from his boss, Jack Berners:

Dear Pat:

Please take some time off and show these people around the lot.

Jack

‘My God!’ Pat exclaimed. ‘How can I............