nasty ambition! "What's the percentage?"

"You don't understand," he said warming to his subject. "The further back I go the more nearly I approach total recall. At present I can contact any memory in my experience back to six months, day by day, minute by minute. I can run off these memories like colored movies, recalling every sight, sound, smell, feel and taste."

"So what happened earlier than six months that's so important?"

"Probably nothing of great interest," Hardy granted, "but the further back I go, the more intense is the reality of all my memories. For instance, right now I can return to the day, hour, minute and second I went to school for the first time. I can remember the look on the teacher's face and hear the screams of twenty-six kindergarten kids. I can smell the freshly oiled floors and the newly painted walls. I can feel the wart on my mother's finger, the one I was holding onto for dear life."

The almost fanatic glow in his eager, young face impressed me. Realism of memory! Could that be the essence of his successful first play? Did his down-to-earth touch account for Updraft's surprising audience appeal?

I pleaded, "Don't let me down now, Hillary. I gambled thousands of dollars on your first play. If you can repeat we'll both enjoy an even better pay-off. Besides, have you looked into what your taxes will be?"

"Taxes? No, I really haven't, but I'm sure I have enough to last another year. Sorry, Mr. Crocker. Maybe later, but right at the moment—"

His broad-shouldered, lean athletic form drifted through my door and was gone.

Two weeks later Parodisiac arrived, typed on fools-cap, uncorrected, with pencil notations and coffee-spots on it, but it was by-lined, "Hillary Hardy," and after a single, quick scanning I was overjoyed to pay the expense of transcribing it to more durable paper. The play was powerful, witty and emotion-stirring. It was a work of art.

And on the last page was scribbled in the border: "I looked into my tax bill, and found you were right. I'm almost broke after Uncle Sam takes his cut, so here is the play you asked for. Hope you like it. (signed) H. H."

There was a P.S. "Expect to hit birth this week."

When I phoned him at the sanitarium, asking for Sam Buckle, the name he had left originally with Ellie, he refused to come to the phone. So I wired him. "Quit worrying about taxes. I accept your earlier offer to be your agent as well as producer. Good luck on your experiments."

Parodisiac was much too good to hold for the closing of Updraft. Indeed, the first play was showing no signs of weakening, so I began rounding up talent outside the original cast. This was a cinch. Meredith Crawley finished Act I, Scene I, and accepted the male lead without turning another page. So did Alicia Pennington, even though it meant giving up a personal appearance tour to publicize her latest Hollywood release that was supposed to win her an Oscar.

Not that I had to go after talent like this to put Parodisiac across. It was so potent I believe I could have made it a hit with a cast out of a burleycue revue.

The season was getting late, so I did the unthinkable. I cut normal rehearsal time in half and slammed it at the big town without even a trial run in the back-country. Nobody connected with the show objected—not even Hec Blankenship, my publicity manager. In fact it was he who suggested the sleeper treatment.

With nothing more than last-minute newspaper notices we opened the box-office to a completely uninformed public, and did it knock the critics for a loop! Only a couple showed up for the first performance, along with less than a third-full house of casual first-nighters.

People wandered out stunned. A substitute drama-critic from the Times looked me up after the show, and there were tears of gratitude in his eyes. "My review of this play will establish my reputation," he told me. "If the boss had had any notion of