“Bulls!” she gasps.  Looking up at the light burning, she turns it out and closes the trunk at the same time.  And she stands still until she sees the shadow of a man’s hand cast by the moonlight on the wall.  Then she gives a frightened exclamation and cowers on the sofa.

Here we have packed into little more than sixty seconds a revelation of the fear in which all crooks live, the unthinking faith and love Goldie bears The Eel, and a quiet moment which emphasizes the rush of the preceding events—­a space also adding punch to the climax of incidents which follow hot upon its heels.  When the long, low whistle sounds and the policeman’s club raps out its alarm, the audience feels that the action is filled with tense meaning—­The Eel has been caught.  That hand on the wall is like a coming event casting its shadow before, and when Goldie gives her frightened exclamation and cowers on the couch, her visible fear—­coming in contrast to her commonplace packing to get away—­builds up the scene into a thrill that is capped by the meaningful window entrance of Dugan.  “Ah!” says the audience, “here’s the first time they’ve gotten together alone.  It’s the first time we’ve really seen that Dugan is behind it all.  Something big is going to happen.”

All of these revealing flashes, which illumine like searchlights, are told by movement.  The only word that is spoken is Goldie’s cry “Bulls!” The only other sounds are the whistle and the rapping of the club.  But if Goldie had taken up the time with telling the audience how glad she was to pack and get away with The Eel to a new life, and if she had expressed her fear by bewailing the hardness of fate—­the dramatic effect would have been lost.  Do you see how words can kill and soundless movements vivify?

In “The Lollard,” when Miss Carey wants to disillusionize Angela, she does not sit down and argue her out of her insane infatuation for Fred; nor does she tell Angela that Fred is a “lollard” and weakly unmask him by describing his “lollard " points.  She cries “Fire!  Fire!  Fire!” Whereupon Fred dashes out on the stage and Angela and the audience with their own eyes behold Fred as a “lollard.”  Here the whole problem of the playlet is solved in a flash.  Not one word of explanatory dialogue is needed.

In “Three of a Kind,” a comedy playlet produced by Roland West, two crooks fleece a “sucker” and agree to leave the money in a middle room while they sleep in opposite rooms.  They say they trust each other implicitly, but each finds a pretext to sit up and watch that money himself.  The comedy rises from their movements around the room as they try to outmaneuver each other.

These three examples plainly show how movement, unexplained by dialogue, may be used to condense a middle action, a climax, and an opening.  Now, if you will turn to the surprise ending of “The System”—­which has been discussed before in its relation to dialogue—­you will see how business may condense an ending.  Indeed, the very essence of the surprise ending lies in this dramatic principle.  Of course, how the condensation of story into movement is to be made in any given case depends upon the material, and the writer’s purpose.  But as a part of the problem let us see