The Umbrella Man and Other Stories Read Free

them back. It’s very depressing.”
    Mr. Bohlen relaxed. “I can see quite well how you feel, my boy.” His voice was dripping with sympathy. “We all go through it one time or another in our lives. But now—now that you’ve had proof—positive proof—from the experts themselves, from the editors, that your stories are—what shall I say—rather unsuccessful, it’s time to leave off. Forget it, my boy. Just forget all about it.”
    “No, Mr. Bohlen! No! That’s not true! I
know
my stories are good. My heavens, when you compare them with the stuff some of those magazines print—oh my word, Mr. Bohlen!—the sloppy, boring stuff that you see in the magazines week after week—why, it drives me mad!”
    “Now wait a minute, my boy . . . ”
    “Do you ever read the magazines, Mr. Bohlen?”
    “You’ll pardon me, Knipe, but what’s all this got to do with your machine?”
    “Everything, Mr. Bohlen, absolutely everything! What I want to tell you is, I’ve made a study of magazines, and it seems that each one tends to have its own particular type of story. The writers—the successful ones—know this, and they write accordingly.”
    “Just a minute, my boy. Calm yourself down, will you. I don’t think all this is getting us anywhere.”
    “
Please
, Mr. Bohlen, hear me through. It’s all terribly important.” He paused to catch his breath. He was properly worked up now, throwing his hands around as he talked. The long, toothy face, with the big ears on either side, simply shone with enthusiasm,and there was an excess of saliva in his mouth which caused him to speak his words wet. “So you see, on my machine, by having an adjustable coordinator between the ‘plot-memory’ section and the ‘word-memory’ section I am able to produce any type of story I desire simply by pressing the required button.”
    “Yes, I know, Knipe, I know. This is all very interesting, but what’s the point of it?”
    “Just this, Mr. Bohlen. The market is limited. We’ve got to be able to produce the right stuff, at the right time, whenever we want it. It’s a matter of business, that’s all. I’m looking at it from
your
point of view now—as a commercial proposition.”
    “My dear boy, it can’t possibly be a commercial proposition—ever. You know as well as I do what it costs to build one of these machines.”
    “Yes sir, I do. But with due respect, I don’t believe you know what the magazines pay writers for stories.”
    “What do they pay?”
    “Anything up to twenty-five hundred dollars. It probably averages around a thousand.”
    Mr. Bohlen jumped.
    “Yes
sir
, it’s true.”
    “Absolutely impossible, Knipe! Ridiculous!”
    “No sir, it’s true.”
    “You mean to sit there and tell me that these magazines pay out money like that to a man for . . . just for scribbling off a story! Good heavens, Knipe! Whatever next! Writers must all be millionaires!”
    “That’s exactly it, Mr. Bohlen! That’s where the machine comes in. Listen a minute, sir, while I tell you some more. I’ve got it all worked out. The big magazines are carrying approximately three fiction stories in each issue. Now, take the fifteen most important magazines—the ones paying the most money. A few of them are monthlies, but most of them come out every week. All right. That makes, let us say, around forty big stories being bought each week. That’s forty thousand dollars. So with our machine—when we get it working properly—we can collar nearly the whole of this market!”
    “My dear boy, you’re mad!”
    “No sir, honestly, it’s true what I say. Don’t you see that with volume alone we’ll completely overwhelm them! This machine can produce a five-thousand-word story, all typed and ready for dispatch, in thirty seconds. How can the writers compete with that? I ask you, Mr. Bohlen,
how?
”
    At that point, Adolph Knipe noticed a slight change in the man’s expression, an extra brightness in the eyes, the nostrils