Do you know, Maggie darlin', what I was saying to myself there in the box, while I watched the stage and waited for Obermuller? He said he'd drop in later, perhaps.

"Nance," I said, "I kind of fancy that apartment sort of idea myself. They tell you, Nancy, that when you've got the artistic temperament, that that's all you'll ever have. But there's a chance—one in a hundred—for a body to get that temperament mixed with a business instinct. It doesn't often happen. But when it does the result is—dollars. It may be, Nance—I shrewdly suspect it is a fact that you've got that marvelous mixture. Your early successes, Miss Olden, in another profession that I needn't name, would encourage the idea that you're not all heart and no head. I think, Nance, I shall have you mimic the artists during working hours and the business men when you're at play. I fancy apartment houses. They appeal to me. We'll call one 'The Nancy' and another 'Olden Hall' and another..."

"What'll I call the third apartment house, Mr. O?" I asked aloud, as I heard the rings on the portiere behind me click.

He didn't answer.

Without turning my head I repeated the question. And yet—suddenly—before he could have answered, I knew something was wrong.

I turned. And in that moment a man took the seat beside me and another stood facing me, with his back against the portieres.

"Miss Olden?" the man beside me asked.

"Yes."

"Nance Olden, the mimic, who entertains at private houses?"

I nodded.

"You—you were at Mrs. Paul Gates' just a week ago, and you gave your specialties there?"

"Yes—yes, what is it you want?"

He was a little man, but very muscular. I could note the play of his muscles even in the slight motion he made as he turned his body so as to get between me and the audience, while he leaned toward me, watching me intently with his small, quick, blue eyes.

"We don't want to make any scene here," he said very low. "We want to do it up as quietly as we can. There might be some mistake, you know, and then you'd be sorry. So should we. I hope you'll be reasonable and it'll be all the better for you because—"

"What are you talk—what—" I looked from him to the other fellow behind us.

He leaned a bit farther forward then, and pulling his coat partly open, he showed me a detective's badge. And the other man quickly did the same.

I sat back in my chair. The fat star on the stage, with her big mouth and big baby-face, was doing a cake-walk up and down close to the footlights, yelling the chorus of her song.

I'll never mimic that song, Mag, although I can see her and hear it as plain as though I'd listened and watched her all my life. But there's no fun in it for me. I hate the very bars the orchestra plays before she begins to sing. I can't bear even to think of the words. The whole of it is full of horrible things—it smells of the jail—it looks like stripes—it ...

"You're not going to faint?" asked the man, moving closer to me.

"Me? I never fainted in my life... Where is he now—Tom Dorgan?"

"Tom Dorgan!"

"Yes. I was sure I saw him sail, but, of course, I was mistaken. He has sent you after me, has he? I can hardly believe it of Tom—even—even yet."

"I don't know anything that connects you with Dorgan. If he was in with you on this, you'd better remember, before you say anything more, that it'll all be used against you."

The curtain had gone down and gone up again. I was watching the star. She has such a boyish way of nodding her head, instead of bowing, after she waddles out to the center; and every time she wipes her lips with her lace handkerchief, as though she'd just taken one of the cocktails she makes in the play with all the skill of a bartender. I found myself doing the same thing—wiping my lips with that very same gesture, as though I had a fat, bare forearm like a rolling-pin—when all at once the thought came to me: "You needn't bother, Nancy. It's all up. You won't have any use for it all."

"Just what is the charge?" I asked, turning to the man beside me.

"Stealing a purse containing three hundred dollars from Mrs. Paul Gates' house on the night of April twenty-seventh."

"What!"

It was Obermuller. He had pushed the curtains aside; the crashing of the orchestra had prevented our hearing the clatter of the rings. He had pushed by the man standing there, had come in and—he had heard.

"Nance!" he cried. "I don't believe a word of it." He turned in his quick way to the men. "What are your orders?"

"To take her to her flat and search it."

Obermuller came over to me then, and took my hand for a minute.

"It's a pity they don't know about the Gray rose diamond," he whispered, helping me on with my jacket. "They'd see how silly this little three-hundred dollar business is.... Brace up, Nance Olden!"

Oh, Mag, Mag, to hear a man like that talk to you as though you were his kind, when you have the feel of the coarse prison stripes between your dry, shaking fingers, and the close prison smell is already poisoning your nostrils!

"I don't see—" my voice shook—"how you can believe—in me."

"Don't you?" he laughed. "That's easy. You've got brains, Nance, and the most imbecile thing you could do just now, when your foot is already on the ladder, would be just this—to get off in order to pick up a trinket out of the mud, when there's a fortune up at the top waiting for you. Clever people don't do asinine things. And other clever people know that they don't. You're clever, but so am I—in my weak, small way. Come along, little girl."

He pulled my hand in his arm and we walked out, followed by the two men.

Oh, no! It was all very quiet and looked just like a little theater party that had an early supper engagement. Obermuller nodded to the manager out in the deserted lobby, who stopped us and asked me what I thought of the star.

You'll think me mad, Mag. Those fellows with the badges were sure I was, but Obermuller's eyes only twinkled, and the manager's grin grew broad when, catching up the end of my skirt and cake-walking up and down, I sang under my breath that coon-song that was trailing over and over through my head.

"Bravo! bravo!" whispered the manager, hoarsely, clapping his hands softly.

I gave one of those quick, funny, boyish nods the star inside affects and wiped my lips with my handkerchief.

That brought down my house. Even the biggest fellow with the badge giggled recognizingly, and then put his hand quickly in front of his mouth and tried to look severe and official.

The color had come back to Obermuller's face; it was worth dancing for—that.

"Be patient, Mag; let me tell it my way."

There wasn't room in the coupe waiting out in front for more than two. So Obermuller couldn't come in it. But he put me in—Mag, dear, dear Mag—he put me in as if I was a lady—not like Gray; a real one. A thing like that counts when two detectives are watching. It counted afterward in the way they treated me.

The big man climbed up on the seat with the driver. The blue-eyed fellow got in and sat beside me, closing the door.

"I'll be out there almost as soon as you are," Obermuller said, standing a moment beside the lowered window.

"You good fellow!" I said, and then, trying to laugh: "I'll do as much for you some day."

He shook his fist laughingly at me, and I waved my hand as we drove of.

"You know, Miss, there may be some mistake about this," said the man next to me, "and—"

"Yes, there may be. In fact, there is."

"I'm sure I'll be very glad if it is a mistake. They do happen—though not often. You spoke of Dorgan—"

"Did I?"

"Yes, Tom Dorgan, who busted out of Sing Sing the other day."

"Surely you're mistaken," I said, smiling right into his blue eyes. "The Tom Dorgan I mentioned is a sleight-of-hand performer at the Vaudeville. Ever see him?"

"N—no."

"Clever fellow. You ought to. Perhaps you don't recognize him under that name. On the bills he's Professor Haughwout. Stage people have so many names, you know."

"Yes, so have—some other people."

I laughed, and he grinned back at me.

"Now that's mean of you," I said; "I never had but one. It was all I needed."

It flashed through me then what a thing like this might do to a name. You know, Mag, every bit of recognition an actress steals from the world is so much capital. It isn't like the old graft when you had to begin new every time you took up a piece of work. And your name—the name the world knows—and its knowing it makes it worth having like everything—that name is the sum of every scheme you've planned, of every time you've got away with the goods, of every laugh you've lifted, of every bit of cleverness you've thought out and embodied, of everything that's in you, of everything you are.

But I didn't dare think long of this. I turned to him.

"Tell me about this charge," I said. "Where was the purse? Whose was it? And why haven't they missed it till after a week?"

"They missed it all right that night, but Mrs. Gates wanted it kept quiet till the servants had been shadowed and it was positively proved that they hadn't got away with it."

"And then she thought of me?"

"And then she thought of you."

"I wonder why?"

"Because you were the only person in that room except Mrs. Gates, the lady who lost the purse, Mrs. Ramsay, and—eh?" "N—nothing. Mrs. Ramsay, you said?"

"Yes."

"Not Mrs. Edward Ramsay, of Philadelphia?"

"Oh, you know the name?"

"Oh, yes, I know it."

"It was printed, you know, in gold lettering on the inside flap and—"

"I don't know."

"Well, it was, and it contained three hundred dollars, Mrs. Ramsay says. She had slipped it under the fold of the spread at the top of the bed in the room where you took off your things in Mrs. Gates' presence, and put them on again when no one else was there."

"And you mean to tell me that this is all?" I raged at him; "that every bit of evidence you have to warrant your treating an innocent girl like—"

"You didn't behave like a very innocent girl, if you'll remember," he said dryly, "when I first came into the box. In fact, if that fellow hadn't just come in then I believe you'd 'a' confessed the whole job.... 'Tain't too late," he added.

I didn't answer. I put my head back against the cushions and closed my eyes. I could feel the scrutiny of his blue eyes on my naked face—your face is so unprotected with the eyes closed; like a fort whose battery is withdrawn. But I was tired—it tires you when you care. A year ago, Mag, this sort of thing—the risk, the nearness to danger, the chances one way or the other—would have intoxicated me. I used to feel as though I was dancing on a volcano and daring it to explode. The more twistings and turnings there were to the labyrinth, the greater glory it was to get out. Maggie darlin', you have before you a mournful spectacle—the degeneration of Nancy Olden. It isn't that she's lost courage. It's only that she used to be able to think of only one thing, and now—What do you suppose it is, Mag? If you know, don't you dare to tell me.

When we got to the flat Obermuller was already there. At the door I pulled out my key and opened it with a flourish.

"Won't you come in, gentlemen, and spend the evening?" I asked.

They followed me in. First to the parlor. The two fellows threw off their coats and searched that through and through—not a drawer did they miss, not a bit of furniture did they fail to move. Obermuller and I sat there guying them as they pried about in their shirt-sleeves. That Trust business has taken the life out of him of late. All their tricks, all their squeezings, their cheatings, their bossing and bragging and bullying have got on to his nerves till he looks like a chained bear getting a drubbing. And he swears that they're in a conspiracy to freeze him and a few others like him out; he believes there's actually a paper in existence that would prove it. But this affair of the purse seemed to excite him till he behaved like a bad school-boy.

And I? Well, Nance Olden was never far behind at the Cruelty when there was anything going on. We trailed after them, and when they'd finished with the bedrooms—yours and mine—I asked the big fellow to come into the kitchen with Mr. O. and me, while the blue-eyed detective tackled the dining-room, and I'd get up a lunch for us all.

Mag, you should have seen Fred Obermuller with a big apron on him, dressing the salad while I was making sandwiches. The Cruelty taught me how to cook, even if it did teach me other things. You wouldn't have believed that the Trust had got him by the throat, and was choking the last breath out of him. You wouldn't have believed that our salaries hadn't been paid for three weeks, that our houses were dwindling every night, that—

I was thinking about it all there in the back of my head, trying to see a way out of it—you know if there is such an agreement as Obermuller swears there is, it's against the law—while we rattled on, the two of us, like a couple of children on a picnic, when I heard a crash behind me.

The salad bowl had slipped from Obermuller's fingers. He stood with his back turned to me, his eyes fixed upon that searching detective.

But he wasn't searching any more, Mag. He was standing still as a pointer that's scented game. He had moved the lounge out from the wall, and there on the floor, spread open where it had fallen, lay a handsome elephant-skin purse, with gold corners. From where I stood, Mag, I could read the plain gold lettering on the dark leather. I didn't have to move. It was plain enough—quite plain.

Mrs. EDWARD RAMSAY

Hush, hush, Mag; if you take on so, how can I tell you the rest?

Obermuller got in front of me as I started to walk into the dining-room. I don't know what his idea was. I don't suppose he does exactly—if it wasn't to spare me the sight of that damned thing.

Oh, how I hated it, that purse! I hated it as if it had been something alive that could be glad of what it had done. I wished it was alive that I could tear and rend it and stamp on it and throw it in a fire, and drag it out again, with burned and bleeding nails, to tear it again and again. I wanted to fall on it and hide it; to push it far, far away out of sight; to stamp it down—down into the very bottom of the earth, where it could feel the hell it was making for me.

But I only stood there, stupidly looking at it, having pushed past Obermuller, as though I never wanted to see anything else.

And then I heard that blue-eyed fellow's words.

"Well," he said, pulling on his coat as though he'd done a good day's work, "I guess you'd just better come along with me."



XI.

"Don't you think you'd better get out of this?" I asked Obermuller, as he came into the station a few minutes after I got there.

"No."

"I do."

"Because?"

"Because it won't do you any good to have your name mixed up with a thing like this."

"But it might do you some good."

I didn't answer for a minute after that. I sat in my chair, my eyes bent on the floor. I counted the cracks between the chair and the floor of the office where the Chief was busy with another case. I counted them six times, back and forth, till my eyes were clear and my voice was steady.

"You're awfully good," I said, looking up at him as he stood by me. "You're the best fellow I ever knew. I didn't know men could be so good to women... But you'd better go—please. It'll be bad enough when the papers get hold of this, without having them lump you in with a bad lot like me."

He put his hand on my shoulder and gave it a quick little shake.

"Don't say that about yourself. You're not a bad lot."

"But—you saw the purse."

"Yes, I saw it. But it hasn't proved anything to me but this: you're innocent, Nance, or you're crazy. If it's the first, I want to stand by you, little girl. If it's the second—good God! I've got to stand by you harder than ever."

Can you see me sitting there, Mag, in the bright, bare little room, with its electric lights, still in my white dress and big white hat, my pretty jacket fallen on the floor beside me? I could feel the sharp blue eyes of that detective Morris feeding on my miserable face. But I could feel, too, a warmth like wine poured into me from that big fellow's voice.

I put my hand up to him and he took it.

"If I'm innocent and can prove it, Fred Obermuller, I'll get even with you for—for this."

"Do you want to do something for me now?"

"Do I?"

"Well, if you want to help me, don't sit there looking like the criminal ghost of the girl I know."

The blood rushed to my face. Nance Olden, a sniveling coward! Me, showing the white feather—me, whimpering like a whipped puppy—me—Nance Olden!

"You know," I smiled up at him, "I never did enjoy getting caught."

"Hush! But that's better.... Tell me now—"

A buzzer sounded. The blue-eyed detective got up and came over to me.

"Chief's ready," he said. "This way."

They stopped Obermuller at the door. But he pushed past them.

"I want to say just a word to you, Chief," he said. "You remember me. I'm Obermuller, of the Vaudeville. If you'll send those fellows out and let me speak to you just a moment, I'll leave you alone with Miss Olden."

The Chief nodded to the blue-eyed detective, and he and the other fellow went out and shut the door behind them.

"I want simply to call your attention to the absurdity and unreasonableness of this thing," Obermuller said, leaning up against the Chief's desk, while he threw out his left hand with that big open gesture of his, "and to ask you to bear in mind, no matter what appearances may be, that Miss Olden is the most talented girl on the stage to-day; that in a very short time she will be at the top; that just now she is not suffering for lack of money; that she's not a high-roller, but a determined, hard-working little grind, and that if she did feel like taking a plunge, she knows that she could get all she wants from me even—"

"Even if you can't pay salaries when they're due, Obermuller." The Chief grinned under his white mustache.

"Even though the Trust is pushing me to the wall; going to such lengths that they're liable criminally as well as civilly, if I could only get my hands on proof of their rascality. It's true I can't pay salaries always when they're due, but I can still raise a few hundred to help a friend. And Miss Olden is a friend of mine. If you can prove that she took this money, you prove only that she's gone mad, but you don't—"

"All right, Obermuller. You're not the lawyer for the defense. That'll come later—if it does come. I'll be glad to bear in mind all you've said, and much that you haven't."

"Thank you. Good night.... I'll wait for you, Nance, outside."

"I'm going to ask you a lot of questions, Miss Olden," the old Chief said, when we were alone. "Sit here, please. Morris tells me you've got more nerve than any woman that's ever come before me, so I needn't bother to reassure you. You don't look like a girl that's easily frightened. I have heard how you danced in the lobby of the Manhattan, how you guyed him at your flat, and were getting lunch and having a regular picnic of a time when—"

"When he found that purse."

"Exactly. Now, why did you do all that?"

"Why? Because I felt like it. I felt gay and excited and—"

"Not dreaming that that purse was sure to be found?"

"Not dreaming that there was such a purse in existence except from the detective's say—so, and never fancying for an instant that it would be found in my flat."

"Hm!" He looked at me from under his heavy, wrinkled old lids. You don't get nice eyes from looking on the nasty things in this world, Mag.

"Why," I cried, "what kind of a girl could cut up like that when she was on the very edge of discovery?"

"A very smart girl—an actress; a good one; a clever thief who's used to bluffing. Of course," he added softly, "you won't misunderstand me. I'm simply suggesting the different kinds of girl that could have done what you did. But, if you don't mind, I'll do the questioning. Nance Olden," he turned suddenly on me, his manner changed and threatening, "what has become of that three hundred dollars?"

"Mr. Chief, you know just as much about that as I do."

I threw up my head and looked him full in the face. It was over now—all the shivering and trembling and fearing. Nance Olden's not a coward when she's fighting for her freedom; and fighting alone without any sympathizing friend to weaken her.

He returned the look with interest.

"I may know more," he said insinuatingly.

"Possibly." I shrugged my shoulders.

No, it wasn't put on. There never yet was a man who bullied me that didn't rouse the fighter in me. I swore to myself that this old thief-catcher shouldn't rattle me.

"Doesn't it occur to you that under the circumstances a full confession might be the very best thing for you? I shouldn't wonder if these people would be inclined to be lenient with you if you'd return the money. Doesn't it occur—"

"It might occur to me if I had anything to confess—about this purse."

"How long since you've seen Mrs. Edward Ramsay?" He rushed the question at me.

I jumped.

"How do you know I've ever seen her?"

"I do know you have."

"I don't believe you."

"Thank you; neither do I believe you, which is more to the point. Come, answer the question: how long is it since you have seen the lady?"

I looked at him. And then I looked at my glove, and slowly pulled the fingers inside out, and then—then I giggled. Suddenly it came to me—that silly, little insane dodge of mine in the Bishop's carriage that day; the girl who had lost her name; and the use all that affair might be to me if ever—

"I'll tell you if you'll let me think a minute," I said sweetly. "It—it must be all of fifteen months."

"Ah! You see I did know that you've met the lady. If you're wise you'll draw deductions as to other things I know that you don't think I do.... And where did you see her?"

"In her own home."

"Called there," he sneered, "alone?"

"No," I said very gently. "I went there, to the best of my recollection, with the Bishop—yes, it was the Bishop, Bishop Van Wagenen."

"Indeed!"

I could see that he didn't believe a word I was saying, which made me happily eager to tell him more.

"Yes, we drove up to the Square one afternoon in the Bishop's carriage—the fat, plum-colored one, you know. We had tea there—at least, I did. I was to have spent the night, but—"

"That's enough of that."

I chuckled. Yes, Mag Monahan, I was enjoying myself. I was having a run for my money, even if it was the last run I was to have.

"So it's fifteen months since you've seen Mrs. Ramsay, eh?"

"Yes."

He turned on me with a roar.

"And yet it's only a week since you saw her at Mrs. Gates'."

"Oh, no."

"No? Take care!"

"That night at Mrs. Gates' it was dark, you know, in the front room. I didn't see Mrs. Ramsay that night. I didn't know she was there at all till—"

"Till?"

"Till later I was told."

"Who told you?"

"Her husband."

He threw down his pencil.

"Look here, this is no lark, young woman, and you needn't trouble yourself to weave any more fairy tales. Mr. Ramsay is in a—he's very ill. His own wife hasn't seen him since that night, so you see you're lying uselessly."

"Really!" So Edward didn't go back to Mrs. Gates' that night. Tut! tut! After his telephone message, too!

"Now, assuming your innocence of the theft, Miss Olden, what is your theory; how do you account for the presence of that purse in your flat?"

"Now, you've hit the part of it that really puzzles me. How do you account for it; what is your theory?"

He got to his feet, pushing his chair back sharply.

"My theory, if you want to know it, is that you stole the purse; that your friend Obermuller believes you did; that you got away with the three hundred, or hid it away, and—"

"And what a stupid thief I must be, then, to leave the empty purse under my lounge!"

"How do you know it was empty?" he demanded sharply.

"You said so... Well, you gave me to understand that it was, then. What difference does it make? It would be a still stupider thief who'd leave a full purse instead of an empty one under his own lounge."

"Yes; and you're not stupid, Miss Olden."

"Thank you. I'm sorry I can't say as much for you."

I couldn't help it. He was such a stupid. The idea of telling me that Fred Obermuller believed me guilty! The idea of thinking me such a fool as to believe that! Such men as that make criminals. They're so fat-witted you positively ache—they so tempt you to pull the wool over their eyes. O Mag, if the Lord had only made men cleverer, there'd be fewer Nancy Oldens.

The Chief blew a blast at his speaking-tube that made his purple cheeks seem about to burst. My shoulders shook as I watched him, he was so wrathy.

And I was still laughing when I followed the detective out into the waiting-room, where Obermuller was pacing the floor. At the sight of my smiling face he came rushing to me.

"Nance!" he cried.

"Orders are, Morris," came in a bellow from the Chief at his door, "that no further communication be allowed between the prisoner and—"

Phew! All the pertness leaked out of me. Oh, Mag, I don't like that word. It stings—it binds—it cuts.

I don't know what I looked like then; I wasn't thinking of me. I was watching Obermuller's face. It seemed to grow old and thin and haggard before my eyes, as the blood drained out of it. He turned with an exclamation to the Chief and—

And just then there came a long ring at the telephone.

Why did I stand there? O Mag, when you're on your way to the place I was bound for, when you know that before you'll set foot in this same bright little room again, the hounds in half a dozen cities will have scratched clean every hiding-place you've had, when your every act will be known and—and—oh, then, you wait, Mag, you wait for anything—anything in the world; even a telephone call that may only be bringing in another wretch like yourself; bound, like yourself, for the Tombs.

The Chief himself went to answer it.

"Yes—what?" he growled. "Well, tell Long Distance to get busy. What's that? St. Francis—that's the jag ward, isn't it? Who is it? Who? Ramsay!"

I caught Obermuller's hand.

"I don't hear you," the Chief roared. "Oh—yes? Yes, we've got the thief, but the money—no, we haven't got the money. The deuce you say! Took it yourself? Out of your wife's purse—yes.... Yes. But we've got the—What? Don't remember where you—"

"Steady, Nance," whispered Obermuller, grabbing my other hand.

I tried to stand steady, but everything swayed and I couldn't hear the rest of what the Chief was saying, though all my life seemed condensed into a listening. But I did hear when he jammed the receiver on the hook and faced us.

"Well, they've got the money. Ramsay took the purse himself, thinking it wasn't safe there under the spread where any servant might be tempted who chanced to uncover it. You'll admit the thing looked shady. The reason Mrs. Ramsay didn't know of it is because the old man's just come to his senses in a hospital and been notified that the purse was missing."

"I want to apologize to you, Chief," I mumbled.

"For thinking me stupid? Oh, we were both—"

"No, for thinking me not stupid. I am stupid—stupid—stupid. The old fellow I told you about, Mr. O., and the way I telephoned him out of the flat that night—it was—"

"Ramsay!"

I nodded, and then crumbled to the floor.

It was then that they sent for you, Mag.

Why didn't I tell it straight at the first, you dear old Mag? Because I didn't know the straight of it, then, myself. I was so heavy-witted I never once thought of Edward. He must have taken the bills out of the purse and then crammed them in his pocket while he was waiting there on the lounge and I was pretending to telephone and—

But it's best as it is—oh, so best! Think, Mag! Two people who knew her—who knew her, mind—believed in Nancy Olden, in spite of appearances: Obermuller, while we were in the thick of it, and; you, you dear girl, while I was telling you of it.



XII.

When Obermuller sent for me I thought he wanted to see me about that play he's writing in which I'm to star—when the pigs begin to fly.

Funniest thing in the world about that man, Mag. He knows he can't get bookings for any play on earth; that if he did they'd be canceled and any old excuse thrown at him, as soon as Tausig heard of it and could put on the screws. He knows that there isn't an unwatched hole in theatrical America through which he can crawl and pull me and the play in after him. And yet he just can't let go working on it. He loves it, Mag; he loves it as Molly loved that child of hers that kept her nursing it all the years of its life, and left her feeling that the world had been robbed of everything there was for a woman to do when it died.

Obermuller has told me all the plot. In fact, he's worked it out on me. I know it as it is, as he wanted it to be, and as it's going to be. He tells me he's built it up about me; that it will fit me as never a comedy fitted a player yet, and that we'll make such a hit—the play and I together—that ...

And then he remembers that there's no chance; not the ghost of one; and he falls to swearing at the Trust.

"Don't you think, Mr. O.," I said, as he began again when I came into his office, "that it might be as well to quit cursing the Syndicate till you've got something new to say or something different to rail about? It seems to me a man's likely to get daffy if he keeps harping on—"

"Oh, I've got it all right, Nance, be sure of that! I've got something different to say of them and something new to swear about. They've done me up; that's all. Just as they've fixed Iringer and Gaffney and Howison."

"Tell me."

He threw out his arms and then let them fall to his side.

"Oh, it's easy," he cried, "so easy that I never thought of it. They've just bought the Vaudeville out of hand and served notice on me that when my lease expires next month they'll not be able to renew it, 'unfortunately'! That's all. No; not quite. In order to kill all hope of a new plan in me they've just let it get to be understood that any man or woman that works for Obermuller needn't come round to them at any future time."

"Phew! A blacklist."

"Not anything so tangible. It's just a hint, you know, but it works all right. It works like—"

"What are you going to do; what can you do?"

"Shoot Tausig or myself, or both of us."

"Nonsense!"

"Yes, of course, it's nonsense, or rather it's only what I'd like to do.... But that's not the question. Never mind about me. It's what are you going to do?"

He looked straight at me, waiting. But I didn't answer. I was thinking.

"You don't realize, Nance, what those fellows are capable of. When Gaffney told me, before he gave up and went West, that there was a genuine signed conspiracy among them to crush out us independents, I laughed at him. 'It's a dream, Gaffney,' I said. 'Forget it.' 'It's no dream, as you'll find out when your turn comes in time,' he shouted. 'It's a fact, and what's more, Iringer once taxed Tausig to his face with it; told him he knew there was such a document in existence, signed by the great Tausig himself, by Heffelfinger of the Pacific circuit; by Dixon of Chicago, and Weinstock of New Orleans, binding themselves to force us fellows to the wall, and specifying the per cent. of profit each one of 'em should get on any increase of business; to blacklist every man and woman that worked for us; to buy up our debts and even bring false attachments, when—'"

"Now, weren't there enough real debts to satisfy 'em? They're hard to please, if you haven't creditors enough to suit 'em!"

He looked grim, but he didn't speak.

"I don't believe it, anyway, Mr. O; and 'tisn't good for you to keep thinking about just one thing. You'll land where Iringer did, if you don't look out. How did he know about it, anyway?"

"There was a leak in Tausig's office. Iringer used to be in with them, and he had it from a clerk who—but never mind that. It's the blacklisting I'm talking about now. Gray's just been in to see me, to let me know that she quits at the end of the season. And his Lordship, too, of course. You're not burdened with a contract, Nance. Perhaps you'd better think it over seriously for a day or two and decide if it wouldn't be best—"

"I don't have to," I interrupted then.

"Nance!" he cried, jumping up, as though he'd been relieved of half his troubles.

"I don't have to think it over," I went on slowly, not looking at the hand he held out to me. "It doesn't take long to know that when you're between the devil and the deep sea, you'd better try—the devil rather than be forced out into the wet."

"What?—you don't mean—"

I knew he was looking at me incredulously, but I just wouldn't meet his eye.

"My staying with you will do you no good—" was hurrying now to get it over with—"and it would do me a lot of harm. I think you're right, Mr. Obermuller; I'd better just go over to where it's warm. They'll be glad to get me and—and, to tell the truth, I'll be glad to get in with the Syndicate, even if I can't make as good terms as I might have by selling that contract, which—like the famous conspiracy you're half mad about—never existed."

He sat down on the edge of the desk. I caught one glimpse of his face. It was black; that was enough for me. I turned to go.

"Ah, but it did, Miss Olden, it did!" he sneered.

"I won't believe it on the word of a man that's been in the lunatic asylum ever since he lost his theater."

"Perhaps you'll believe it on mine."

I jumped. "On yours!"

"Didn't that little bully, when he lost his temper that day at the Van Twiller, when we had our last fight—didn't he pull a paper out of his box and shake it in my face, and—"

"But—you could have them arrested for conspiracy and—"

"And the proof of it could be destroyed and then—but I can't see how this interests you."

"No—no," I said thoughtfully. "I only happened to lump it in with the contract we haven't—you and I. And as there's no contract, why there's no need of my waiting till the end of the season."

"Do you mean to say you'd—you'd—"

"If 'twere done, 'twere better it'd be done—quickly," I said Macbethically.

He looked at me. Sitting there on his desk, his clenched fist on his knee, he looked for a moment as though he was about to fly at me. Then all of a sudden he slipped into his chair, leaned back and laughed.

It wasn't a pleasant laugh, Mag. No—wait. Let me tell you the rest.

"You are so shrewd, Olden, so awfully shrewd! Your eye is so everlastingly out for the main chance, and you're still so young that I predict a—a great future for you. I might even suggest that by cultivating Tausig personally—"

"You needn't."

"No, you're right; I needn't. You can discount any suggestion I might make. You just want to be the first to go over, eh? To get there before Gray does—to get all there is in it for the first rebel that lays down his arms; not to come in late when submission is stale—and cheap. Don't worry about terms, you poor little babe in the woods. Don't—" His own words seemed to choke him.

"Don't you think—" I began a bit unsteadily.

"I think—oh, what a fool I've been!"

That stiffened me.

"Of course, you have," I said cordially. "It's silly to fight the push, isn't it? It's only the cranks that get cocky and think they can upset the fellows on top. The thing to do is to find out which is the stronger—if you're a better man than the other fellow, down him. If he's the champion, enlist under him. But be in it. What's the use of being a kicker all your life? You only let some one else come in for the soft things, while you stay outside and gnaw your finger-nails and plot and plan and starve. You spend your life hoping to live to-morrow, while the Tausigs are living high to-day. The thing to do is to be humble if you can't be arrogant. If they've got you in the door, don't curse, but placate them. Think of Gaffney herding sheep out in Nevada; of Iringer in the asylum; of Howison—"

"Admirable! admirable!" he interrupted sarcastically. "The only fault I have to find with your harangue is that you've misconceived my meaning entirely. But I needn't enlighten you. Good morning, Miss Olden—good-by."

He turned to his desk and pulled out some papers. I knew he wasn't so desperately absorbed in them as he pretended to be.

"Won't you shake hands," I asked, "and wish me luck?"

He put down his pen. His face was white and hard, but as he looked at me it gradually softened.

"I suppose—I suppose, I am a bit unreasonable just this minute," he said slowly. "I'm hard hit and—and I don't just know the way out. Still, I haven't any right to—to expect more of you than there is in you, you poor little thing! It's not your fault, but mine, that I've expected—Oh, for God's sake—Nance—go, and leave me alone!"

I had to take that with me to the Van Twiller, and it wasn't pleasant. But Tausig received me with open arms.

"Got tired of staying out in the cold—eh?" he grinned.

"I'm tired of vaudeville," I answered. "Can't you give me a chance in a comedy?"

"Hm! Ambitious, ain't you?"

"Obermuller has a play all ready for me—written for me. He'd star me fast enough if he had the chance."

"But he'll never get the chance."

"Oh, I don't know."

"But I do. He's on the toboggan; that's where they all get, my dear, when they get big-headed enough to fight us."

"But Obermuller's not like the others. He's not so easy. And he is so clever; why, the plot of that comedy is the bulliest thing—"

"You've read it—you remember it?"

"Oh, I know it by heart—my part of it. You see, he wouldn't keep away from me while he was thinking of it. He kept consulting me about everything in it. In a way, we worked over it together."

The little man looked at me, slowly closing one eye. It is a habit of his when he's going to do something particularly nasty.

"Then, in a way, as you say, it is part yours."

"Hardly! Imagine Nance Olden writing a line of a play!"

"Still you—collaborated; that's the word. I say, my dear, if I could read that comedy, and it was—half what you say it is, I might—I don't promise, mind—but I might let you have the part that was written for you and put the thing on. Has he drilled you any, eh? He was the best stage-manager we ever had before he got the notion of managing for himself—and ruining himself."

"Well, he's all that yet. Of course, he has told me, and we agreed how the thing should be done. As he'd write, you know, he'd read the thing over to me, and I—"

"Fine—fine! A reading from that fool Obermuller would be enough to open the eyes of a clever woman. I'd like to read that comedy—yes?"

"But Obermuller would never—"

"But Olden might—"

"What?"

"Dictate the plot to my secretary, Mason, in there," he nodded his head back toward the inner room. "She could give him the plot and as much of her own part in full as she could remember. You know Mason. Used to be a newspaper man. Smart fellow, that, when he's sober. He could piece out the holes—yes?"

I looked at him. The little beast sat there, slowly closing one eye and opening it again. He looked like an unhealthy little frog, with his bald head, his thin-lipped mouth that laughed, while the wrinkles rayed away from his cold, sneering eyes that had no smile in them.

"I—I wouldn't like to make an enemy of a man like Obermuller, Mr. Tausig."

"Bah! Ain't I told you he's on the toboggan?"

"But you never can tell with a man like that. Suppose he got into that combine with Heffelfinger and Dixon and Weinstock?"

"What're you talking about?"

"Well, it's what I've heard."

"But Heffelfinger and Dixon and Weinstock are all in with us; who told you that fairy story?"

"Obermuller himself."

The little fellow laughed. His is a creaky, almost silent little laugh; if a spider could laugh he'd laugh that way.

"They're fooling him a bunch or two. Never you mind Obermuller. He's a dead one."

"Oh, he said that you thought they were in with you, but that nothing but a written agreement would hold men like that. And that you hadn't got."

"Smart fellow, that Obermuller. He'd have been a good man to have in the business if it hadn't been for those independent ideas he's got. He's right; it takes—"

"So there is an agreement!" I shouted, in spite of myself, as I leaned forward.

He sat back in his chair, or, rather, he let it swallow him again.

"What business is that of yours? Stick to the business on hand. Get to work on that play with Mason inside. If it's good, and we decide to put it on, we'll pay you five hundred dollars down in addition to your salary. If it's rot, you'll have your salary weekly all the time you're at it, just the same as if you were working, till I can place you. In the meantime, keep your ears and eyes open and watch things, and your mouth shut. I'll speak to Mason and he'll be ready for you to-morrow morning. Come round in the morning; there's nobody about then, and we want to keep this thing dark till it's done. Obermuller mustn't get any idea what we're up to.... He don't love you—no—for shaking him?"

"He's furious; wouldn't even say good-by. I'm done for with him, anyway, I guess. But what could I do?"

"Nothing, my dear; nothing. You're a smart little girl," he chuckled. "Ta-ta!"



XIII.

Just what I'd been hoping for I don't know, but I knew that my chance had come that morning.

For a week I had been talking Obermuller's comedy to Mason, the secretary. In the evenings I stood about in the wings and watched the Van Twiller company in Brambles. There was one fat role in it that I just ached for, but I lost all that ache and found another, when I overheard two of the women talking about Obermuller and me one night.

"He found her and made her," one of 'em said; "just dug her out of the ground. See what he's done for her; taught her every blessed thing she knows; wrote her mimicking monologues for her; gave her her chance, and—and now—Well, Tausig don't pay salaries for nothing, and she gets hers as regularly as I draw mine. What more I don't know. But she hasn't set foot on the stage yet under Tausig, and they say Obermuller—"

I didn't get the rest of it, so I don't know what they say about Obermuller. I only know what they've said to him about me. 'Tisn't hard to make men believe those things. But I had to stand it. What could I do? I couldn't tell Fred Obermuller that I was making over his play, soul and as much body as I could remember, to Tausig's secretary. He'd have found that harder to believe than the other thing.

It hasn't been a very happy week for me, I can tell you, Maggie. But I forgot it all, every shiver and ache of it, when I came into the office that morning, as usual, and found Mason alone.

Not altogether alone—he had his bottle. And he had had it and others of the same family all the night before. The poor drunken wretch hadn't been home at all. He was worse than he'd been that morning three days before, when I had stood facing him and talking to him, while with my hands behind my back I was taking a wax impression of the lock of the desk; and he as unconscious of it all as Tausig himself.

The last page I had dictated the day before, which he'd been transcribing from his notes, lay in front of him; the gas was still burning directly above him, and a shade he wore over his weak eyes had been knocked awry as his poor old bald head went bumping down on the type-writer before him.

The thing that favored me was Tausig's distrust of everybody connected with him. He hates his partners only a bit less than he hates the men outside the Trust. The bigger and richer the Syndicate grows, the more power and prosperity it has, the more he begrudges them their share of it; the more he wants it all for himself. He is madly suspicious of his clerks, and hires others to watch them, to spy upon them. He is continually moving his valuables from place to place, partly because he trusts no man; partly because he's so deathly afraid his right hand will find out what his left is doing. He is a full partner of Braun and Lowenthal—with mental reservations. He has no confidence in either of them. Half his schemes he keeps from them; the other half he tells them—part of. He's for ever afraid that the Syndicate of which he's the head will fall to pieces and become another Syndicate of which he won't be head.

It all makes him an unhappy, restless little beast; but it helped me to-day. If it'd been any question of safe combinations and tangled things like that, the game would have been all up for Nancy O. But in his official safe Tausig keeps only such papers as he wants Braun and Lowenthal to see. And in his private desk in his private office he keeps—

I stole past Mason, sleeping with his forehead on the type-writer keys—he'll be lettered like the obelisk when he wakes up—and crept into the next room to see just what Tausig keeps in that private desk of his.

Oh, yes, it was locked. But hadn't I been carrying the key to it every minute for the last forty-eight hours? There must be a mine of stuff in that desk of Tausig's, Mag. The touch of every paper in it is slimy with some dirty trick, some bad secret, some mean action. It's a pity that I hadn't time to go through 'em all; it would have been interesting; but under a bundle of women's letters, which that old fox keeps for no good reason, I'll bet, I lit on a paper that made my heart go bumping like a cart over cobbles.

Yes, there it was, just as Obermuller had vowed it was, with Tausig's cramped little signature followed by Heffelfinger's, Dixon's and Weinstock's; a scheme to crush the business life out of men by the cleverest, up-to-date Trust deviltry; a thing that our Uncle Sammy just won't stand for.

And neither will Nancy Olden, Miss Monahan.

She grabbed that precious paper with a gasp of delight and closed the desk.

But she bungled a bit there, for Mason lifted his head and blinked dazedly at her for a moment, recognized her and shook his head.

"No—work to-day," he said.

"No—I know. I'll just look over what we've done, Mr. Mason," she answered cheerfully.

His poor head went down again with a bob, and she caught up the type-written sheets of Obermuller's play. She waited a minute longer; half because she wanted to make sure Mason was asleep again before she tore the sheets across and crammed them down into the waste-basket; half because she pitied the old fellow and was sorry to take advantage of his condition. But she knew a cure for this last sorry—a way she'd help him later; and when she danced out into the hall she was the very happiest burglar in a world chock full of opportunities.

Oh, she was in such a twitter as she did it! All that old delight in doing somebody else up, a vague somebody whose meannesses she didn't know, was as nothing to the joy of doing Tausig up. She was dancing on a volcano again, that incorrigible Nance! Oh, but such a volcano, Maggie! It atoned for a year of days when there was nothing doing; no excitement, no risk, nothing to keep a girl interested and alive.

And, Maggie darlin', it was a wonderful volcano, that ones that last one, for it worked both ways. It paid up for what I haven't done this past year and what I'll never do again in the years to come. It made up to me for all I've missed and all I'm going to miss. It was a reward of demerit for not being respectable, and a preventive of further sins. Oh, it was such a volcano as never was. It was a drink and a blue ribbon in one. It was a bang-up end and a bully beginning. It was—

It was Tausig coming in as I was going out. Suddenly I realized that, but I was in such a mad whirl of excitement that I almost ran over the little fellow before I could stop myself.

"Phew! What a whirlwind you are!" he cried. "Where are you going?"

"Oh, good morning, Mr. Tausig," I said sweetly. "I never dreamed you'd be down so early in the morning."

"What're you doing with the paper?" he demanded suspiciously.

My eye followed his. I could have beaten Nancy Olden in that minute for not having sense enough to hide that precious agreement, instead of carrying it rolled up in her hand.

"Just taking it home to go over it," I said carelessly, trying to pass him.

But he barred my way.

"Where's Mason?" he asked.

"Poor Mason!" I said. "He's—he's asleep."

"Drunk again?"

I nodded. How to get away!

"That settles his hash. Out he goes to-day ... It seems to me you're in a deuce of a hurry," he added, as I tried to get out again. "Come in; I want to talk something over with you."

"Not this morning," I said saucily. I wanted to cry. "I've got an engagement to lunch, and I want to go over this stuff for Mason before one."

"Hm! An engagement. Who with, now?"

My chin shot up in the air. He laughed, that cold, noiseless little laugh of his.

"But suppose I want you to come to lunch with me?"

"Oh, thank you, Mr. Tausig. But how could I break my engagement with—"

"With Braun?"

"How did you guess it?" I laughed. "There's no keeping anything from you."

He was immensely satisfied with his little self. "I know him—that old rascal," he said slowly. "I say, Olden, just do break that engagement with Braun." "I oughtn't—really."

"But do—eh? Finish your work here and we'll go off together, us two, at twelve-thirty, and leave him cooling his heels here when he comes." He rubbed his hands gleefully.

"But I'm not dressed."

"You'll do for me."

"But not for me. Listen: let me hurry home now and I'll throw Braun over and be back here to meet you at twelve-thirty."

He pursed up his thin little lips and shook his head. But I slipped past him in that minute and got out into the street.

"At twelve-thirty," I called back as I hurried off.

I got around the corner in a jiffy. Oh, I could hardly walk, Mag! I wanted to fly and dance and skip. I wanted to kick up my heels as the children were doing in the Square, while the organ ground out, Ain't It a Shame? I actually did a step or two with them, to their delight, and the first thing I knew I felt a bit of a hand in mine like a cool pink snowflake and—

Oh, a baby, Mag! A girl-baby more than a year old and less than two years young; too little to talk; too big not to walk; facing the world with a winning smile and jabbering things in her soft little lingo, knowing that every woman she meets will understand.

I did, all right. She was saying to me as she kicked out her soft, heelless little boot:

"Nancy Olden, I choose you. Nancy Olden, I love you. Nancy Olden, I dare you not to love me. Nancy Olden, I defy you not to laugh back at me!"

Where in the world she dropped from, heaven knows. The organ-grinder picked up the shafts of his wagon and trundled it away. The piccaninnies melted like magic. But that gay little flirt, about a year and a half old, just held on to my finger and gabbled—poetry.

I didn't realize just then that she was a lost, strayed or stolen. I expected every moment some nurse or conceited mamma to appear and drag her away from me. And I looked down at her—oh, she was just a little bunch of soft stuff; her face was a giggling dimple, framed in a big round hat-halo, that had fallen from her chicken-blond head; and her white dress, with the blue ribbons at the shoulders, was just a little bit dirty. I like 'em a little bit dirty. Why? Perhaps because I can imagine having a little coquette of my own a bit dirty like that, and can't just see Nance Olden with a spick-and-span clean baby, all feathers and lace, like a bored little grown-up.

"You're a mouse," I gurgled down at her. "You're a sweetheart. You're a—"

And suddenly I heard a cry and rush behind me.

It was a false alarm; just a long-legged girl of twelve rushing round the corner, followed by a lot of others. It hadn't been meant for me, of course, but in the second when I had remembered that precious paper and Tausig's rage when he should miss it, I had pulled my hand away from that bit baby's and started to run.

The poor little tot! There isn't any reason in the world for the fancies they take any more than for our own; eh, Mag? Why should she have been attracted to me just because I was so undignified as to dance with the piccaninnies?

But do you know what that little thing did? She thought I was playing with her. She gave a crow of delight and came bowling after me.

That finished me. I stooped and picked her up in my arms, throwing her up in the air to hear her crow and feel her come down again.

"Mouse," I said, "we'll just have a little trip together. The nurse that'd lose you deserves to worry till you're found. The mother that's lucky enough to own you will be benefited hereafter by a sharp scare on your account just now. Come on, sweetheart!"

Oh, the feel of a baby in your arms, Mag! It makes the Cruelty seem a perfectly unreal thing, a thing one should be unutterably ashamed of imagining, of accusing human nature of; a thing only an irredeemably vile thing could imagine. Just the weight of that little body riding like a bonny boat at anchor on your arm, just the cocky little way it sits up, chirping and confident; just the light touch of a bit of a hand on your collar; just that is enough to push down brick walls; to destroy pictures of bruised and maimed children that endure after the injuries are healed; to scatter records that even I—I, Nancy Olden—can't believe and believe, too, that other women have carried their babies, as I did some other woman's baby, across the Square.

On the other side I set her down. I didn't want to. I was greedy of every moment that I had her. But I wanted to get some change ready before climbing up the steps to the L-station.

She clutched my dress as we stood there a minute in a perfectly irresistible way. I know now why men marry baby-women: it's to feel that delicious, helpless clutch of weak fingers; the clutch of dependence, of trust, of appeal.

I looked down at her with that same silly adoration I've seen on Molly's face for her poor, lacking, twisted boy. At least, I did in the beginning. But gradually the expression of my face must have changed; for all at once I discovered what had been done to me.

My purse was gone.

Yes, Maggie Monahan, clean gone! My pocket had been as neatly picked as I myself—well, never mind, as what. I threw back my head and laughed aloud. Nance Olden, the great doer-up, had been done up so cleverly, so surely, so prettily, that she hadn't had an inkling of it.

I wished I could get a glimpse of the clever girl that did it. A girl—of course, it was! Do you think any boy's fingers could do a job like that and me not even know?

But I didn't stop to wish very long. Here was I with the thing I valued most in the world still clutched in my hand, and not a nickel to my name to get me, the paper, and the baby on our way.

It was the baby, of course, that decided me. You can't be very enterprising when you're carrying a pink lump of sweetness that's all a-smile at the moment, but may get all a-tear the next.

"It's you for the nearest police station, you young tough!" I said, squeezing her. "I can't take you home now and show you to Mag."

But she giggled and gurgled back at me, the abandoned thing, as though the police station was just the properest place for a young lady of her years.

It was not so very near, either, that station. My arm ached when I got there from carrying her, but my heart ached, too, to leave her. I told the matron how and where the little thing had picked me up. At first she wouldn't leave me, but—the fickle little thing—a glass of milk transferred all her smiles and wiles to the matron. Then we both went over her clothes to find a name or an initial or a laundry mark. But we found nothing. The matron offered me a glass of milk, too, but I was in a hurry to be gone. She was a nice matron; so nice that I was just about to ask her for the loan of car-fare when—

When I heard a voice, Maggie, in the office adjoining. I knew that voice all right, and I knew that I had to make a decision quick.

I did. I threw the whole thing into the lap of Fate. And when I opened the door and faced him I was smiling.

Oh, yes, it was Tausig.



XIV.

He started as though he couldn't believe his eyes when he saw me. "The Lord hath delivered mine enemy into my hand," shone in his evil little face.

"Why, Mr. Tausig," I cried, before he could get his breath. "How odd to meet you here! Did you find a baby, too?"

"Did I find—" He glared at me. "I find you; that's enough. Now—"

"But the luncheon was to be at twelve-thirty," I laughed. "And I haven't changed my dress yet."

"You'll change it all right for something not so becoming if you don't shell out that paper."

"Paper?"

"Yes, paper. Look here, if you give it back to me this minute—now—I'll not prosecute you for—for—"

"For the sake of my reputation?" I suggested softly.

"Yes." He looked doubtfully at me, mistrusting the amiable deference of my manner.

"That would be awfully good of you," I murmured.

He did not answer, but watched me as though he wasn't sure which way I'd jump the next moment.

"I wonder what could induce you to be so forgiving," I went on musingly. "What sort of paper is this you miss? It must be valuable—"

"Yes, it's valuable all right. Come on, now! Quit your fooling and get down to business. I'm going to have that paper."

"Do you know, Mr. Tausig," I said impulsively, "if I were you, and anybody had stolen a valuable paper from me, I'd have him arrested. I would. I should not care a rap what the public exposure did to his reputation, so long—so long," I grinned right up at him, "so long as it didn't hurt me, myself, in the eyes of the law."

Mad? Oh, he was hopping! A German swear-word burst from him. I don't know what it meant, but I can imagine.

"Look here, I give you one more chance," he squeaked; "if you don't—"

"What'll you do?"

I was sure I had him. I was sure, from the very whisper in which he had spoken, that the last thing in the world he wanted was to have that agreement made public by my arrest. But I tripped up on one thing. I didn't know there was a middle way for a man with money.

His manner changed.

"Nance Olden," he said aloud now, "I charge you with stealing a valuable private paper of mine from my desk. Here, Sergeant!"

I hadn't particularly noticed the Sergeant standing at the other door with his back to us. But from the way he came at Tausig's call I knew he'd had a private talk with him, and I knew he'd found the middle way.

"This girl's taken a paper of mine. I want her searched," Tausig cried.

"Do you mean," I said, "that you'll sign your name to such a charge against me?"

He didn't answer. He had pulled the Sergeant down and was whispering in his ear. I knew what that meant. It meant a special pull and a special way of doing things and—

"You'll do well, my girl, to give up Mr. Tausig's property to him," the Sergeant said stiffly.

"But what have I got that belongs to him?" I demanded.

He grinned and shrugged his big shoulders.

"We've a way of finding out, you know, here. Give it up or—"

"But what does he say I've taken? What charge is there against me? Have you the right to search any woman who walks in here? And what in the world would I want a paper of Tausig's for?"

"You won't give it up then?" He tapped a bell.

A woman came in. I had a bad minute there, but it didn't last; it wasn't the matron I'd brought the baby to.

"You'll take this girl into the other room and search her thoroughly. The thing we're looking for—" The Sergeant turned to Tausig.

"A small paper," he said eagerly. "A—a contract—just a single sheet of legal cap paper it was type-written and signed by myself and some other gentlemen, and folded twice."

The woman looked at me. She was a bit hard-mouthed, with iron-gray hair, but her eyes looked as though they'd seen a lot and learned not to flinch, though they still felt like it. I knew that kind of look—I'd seen it at the Cruelty.

"What an unpleasant job this of yours is," I said to her, smiling up at her for all the world as that tike of a baby had smiled at me, and watching her melt just as I had. "I'll not make it a bit harder. This thing's all a mistake. Which way? ... I'll come back, Mr. Tausig, to receive your apology, but you can hardly expect me to go to lunch after this."

He growled a wrathful, resenting mouthful. But he looked a bit puzzled just the same.

He looked more puzzled yet, even bewildered, when we came back into the main office a quarter of an hour later, the woman and I, and she reported that no paper of any kind had she found.

Me? Oh, I was sweet amiability personified with the woman and with the Sergeant, who began to back-water furiously. But with Tausig—

What? You don't mean to say you're not on, Mag? Oh, dear, dear, it's well you had that beautiful wig of red hair that puts even Carter's in the shade; for you'd never have been a success in—in other businesses I might name.

Bamboozled the woman? Not a bit of it; you can't deceive women with mouths and eyes like that. It was just that I'd had a flash of genius in the minute I heard Tausig's voice, and in spite of my being so sure he wouldn't have me arrested I'd— Guess, Mag, guess! There was only one way.

The baby, of course! In the moment I had—it wasn't long—I'd stooped down, pretending to kiss that cherub good-by, and in a jiffy I'd pinned that precious paper with a safety-pin to the baby's under-petticoat, preferring that risk to—

Risk! I should say it was. And now it was up to Nance to make good.

While Tausig insisted and explained and expostulated and at last walked out with the Sergeant—giving me a queer last look that was half-cursing, half-placating—I stood chatting sweetly with the woman who had searched me.

I didn't know just how far I might go with her. She knew the paper wasn't on me, and I could see she was disposed to believe I was as nice as she'd have liked me to be. But she'd had a lot of experience and she knew, as most women do even without experience, that if there's not always fire where there is smoke, it's because somebody's been clever enough and quick enough to cover the blaze.

"Well, good-by," I said, putting out my hand. "It's been disagreeable but I'm obliged to you for—why, where's my purse! We must have left it—" And I turned to go back into the room where I'd undressed.

"You didn't have any."

The words came clear and cold and positive. Her tone was like an icicle down my back.

"I didn't have any!" I exclaimed. "Why, I certainly—"

"You certainly had no purse, for I should have seen it and searched it if you had."

Now, what do you think of a woman like that?

"Nancy Olden," I said to myself, more in sorrow than in anger, "you've met your match right here. When a woman knows a fact and states it with such quiet conviction, without the least unnecessary emphasis and not a superfluous word, 'ware that woman. There's only one game to play to let you hang round here a bit longer and find out what's become of the baby. Play it!"

I looked at her with respect; it was both real and feigned.

"Of course, you must be right," I said humbly. "I know you wouldn't be likely to make a mistake, but, just to convince me, do you mind letting me go back to look?"

"Not at all," she said placidly. "If I go with you there's no reason why you should not look."

Oh, Mag, it was hard lines looking. Why?—Why, because the place was so bare and so small. There were so few things to move and it took such a short time, in spite of all I could do and pretend to do, that I was in despair.

"You must be right," I said at length, looking woefully up at her.

"Yes; I knew I was," she said steadily.

"I must have lost it."

"Yes."

There was no hope there. I turned to go.

"I'll lend you a nickel to get home, if you'll leave me your address," she said after a moment.

Oh, that admirable woman! She ought to be ruling empires instead of searching thieves. Look at the balance of her, Mag. My best acting hadn't shaken her. She hadn't that fatal curiosity to understand motives that wrecks so many who deal with—we'll call them the temporarily un-straight. She was satisfied just not to let me get ahead of her in the least particular. But she wasn't mean, and she would lend me a nickel—not an emotionally extravagant ten-cent piece, but just a nickel—on the chance that I was what I seemed to be.

Oh, I did admire her; but I'd have been more enthusiastic about it if I could have seen my way clear to the baby and the paper.

I took the nickel and thanked her, but effusiveness left her unmoved. A wholesome, blue-gowned rock with a neat, full-bibbed white apron; that's what she was!

And still I lingered. Fancy Nance Olden just heartbroken at being compelled to leave a police station!

But there was nothing for it. Go, I had to. My head was a-whirl with schemes coming forward with suggestions and being dismissed as unsuitable; my thoughts were flying about at such a dizzy rate while I stood there in the doorway, the woman's patient hand on the knob and her watchful eyes on me, that I actually—

Mag, I actually didn't hear the matron's voice the first time she spoke.

The second time, though, I turned—so happy I could not keep the tremor out of my voice.

"I thought you had gone long ago," she said.

Oh, we were friends, we two! We'd chummed over a baby, which for women is like what taking a drink together is for men. The admirable dragon in the blue dress didn't waver a bit because her superior spoke pleasantly to me. She only watched and listened.

Which puts you in a difficult position when your name's Nance Olden—you have to tell the truth.

"I've been detained," I said with dignity, "against my wish. But that's all over. I'm going now. Good-by." I nodded and caught up my skirt. "Oh!" I paused just as the admirable dragon was closing the door on me. "Is the baby asleep? I wonder if I might see her once more."

My heart was beating like an engine gone mad, in spite of my careless tone, and there was a buzzing in my ears that deafened me. But I managed to stand still and listen, and then to walk off, as though it didn't matter in the least to me, while her words came smashing the hope out of me.

"We've sent her with an officer back to the neighborhood where you found her. He'll find out where she belongs, no doubt. Good day."



XV.

Ah me, Maggie, the miserable Nance that went away from that station! To have had your future in your grasp, like that one of the Fates with the string, and then to have it snatched from you by an impish breeze and blown away, goodness knows where!

I don't know just which way I turned after I left that station. I didn't care where I went. Nothing I could think of gave me any comfort. I tried to fancy myself coming home to you. I tried to see myself going down to tell the whole thing to Obermuller. But I couldn't do that. There was only one thing I wanted to say to Fred Obermuller, and that thing I couldn't say now.

But Nance Olden's not the girl to go round long like a molting hen. There was only one chance in a hundred, and that was the one I took, of course.

"Back to the Square where you found the baby, Nance!" I cried to myself. "There's the chance that that admirable dragon has had her suspicions aroused by your connection with the baby, which she hadn't known before, and has already dutifully notified the Sergeant. There's the chance that the baby is home by now, and the paper found by her mother will be turned over to her papa; and then it's good-by to your scheme. There's the chance that—"

But in the heart of me I didn't believe in any chance but one—the chance that I'd find that blessed baby and get my fingers just once more on that precious paper.

I blew in the A.D.'s nickel on a cross-town car and got back to the little Square. There was another organ-grinder there grinding out coon-songs, to which other piccaninnies danced. But nary a little white bundle of fluff caught hold of my hand. I walked that Square till my feet were sore. It was hot. My throat was parched. I was hungry. My head ached. I was hopeless. And yet I just couldn't give it up. I had asked so many children and nurse-maids whether they'd heard of the baby lost that morning and brought back by an officer, that they began to look at me as though I was not quite right in my mind. The maids grabbed the children if they started to come near me, and the children stared at me with big round eyes, as though they'd been told I was an ogre who might eat them.

I was hungry enough to. The little fruit-stand at the entrance had a fascination for me. I found myself there time and again, till I got afraid I might actually try to get of with a peach or a bunch of grapes. That thought haunted me. Fancy Nance Olden starved and blundering into the cheapest and most easily detected species of thieving!

I suppose great generals in their hour of defeat imagine themselves doing the feeblest, foolishest things. As I sat there on the bench, gazing before me, I saw the whole thing—Nancy Olden, after all her bragging, her skirmishing, her hairbreadth scapes and successes, arrested in broad daylight and before witnesses for having stolen a cool, wet bunch of grapes, worth a nickel, for her hot, dry, hungering throat! I saw the policeman that'd do it; he looked like that Sergeant Mulhill I met 'way, 'way back in Latimer's garden. I saw the officer that'd receive me; he had blue eyes like the detective that came for me to the Manhattan. I saw the woman jailer—oh, she was the A.D., all right, who'd receive me without the slightest emotion, show me to a cell and lock the door, as calm, as little triumphant or affected, as though I hadn't once outwitted that cleverest of creatures—and outwitted myself in forestalling her. I saw—

Mag, guess what I saw! No, truly; what I really saw? It made me jump to my feet and grab it with a squeal.

I saw my own purse lying on the gravel almost at my feet, near the little fruit-stand that had tempted me.

Blank empty it was, stripped clean, not a penny left in it, not a paper, not a stamp, not even my key. Just the same I was glad to have it. It linked me in a way to the place. The clever little girl that had stolen it had been here in this park, on this very spot. The thought of that cute young Nance Olden distracted my mind a minute from my worry—and, oh, Maggie darlin', I was worrying so!

I walked up to the fruit-stand with the purse in my hand. The old fellow who kept it looked up with an inviting smile. Lord knows, he needn't have encouraged me to buy if I'd had a penny.

"I want to ask you," I said, "if you remember selling a lot of good things to a little girl who had a purse this—this morning?"

I showed it to him, and he turned it over in his crippled old hands.

"It was full then—or fuller, anyway," I suggested.

"You wouldn't want to get her into trouble—that little girl?" he asked cautiously.

I laughed. "Not I. I—myself—"

I was going to say—well, you can imagine what I was going to say, and that I didn't say it or anything like it.

"Well—there she is, Kitty Wilson, over yonder," he said.

I gasped, it was so unexpected. And I turned to look. There on one of the benches sat Kitty Wilson. If I hadn't been blind as a bat and full of trouble—oh, it thickens your wits, does trouble, and blinds your eyes and muffles your ears!—I'd have suspected something at the mere sight of her. For there sat Kitty Wilson enthroned, a hatless, lank little creature about twelve, and near her, clustered thick as ants around a lump of sugar, was a crowd of children, black and white, boys and girls. For Kitty—that deplorable Kitty—had money to burn; or what was even more effective at her age, she had goodies to give away. Her lap was full of spoils. She had a sample of every good thing the fruit-stand offered. Her cheeks and lips were smeary with candy. Her dress was stained with fruit. The crumbs of cake lingered still on her chin and apron. And Kitty—I love a generous thief—was treating the gang.

It helped itself from her abundant lap; it munched and gobbled and asked for more. It was a riot of a high old time. Even the birds were hopping about as near as they dared, picking up the crumbs, and the squirrels had peanuts to throw to the birds.

And all on Nancy Olden's money!

I laughed till I shook. It was good to laugh. Nancy Olden isn't accustomed to a long dose of the doleful, and it doesn't agree with her. I strolled over to where my guests were banqueting.

You see, Mag, that's where I shouldn't rank with the A.D. I'm too inquisitive. I want to know how the other fellow in the case feels and thinks. It isn't enough for me to see him act.

"Kitty," I said—somehow a twelve-year-old makes you feel more of a grown-up than a twelve-months-old does—"I hope you're having a good—time, Kitty Wilson, but—haven't you lost something?"

She was chewing at the end of a long string of black candy-shoe-strings, all right, the stuff looks like—and she was eating just because she didn't want to stop. Goodness knows, she was full enough. Her jaws stopped, though, suddenly, as she looked from the empty purse in my outstretched hand to me, and took me in.

Oh, I know that pause intimately. It says: "Wait a minute, till I get my breath, and I'll know how much you know and just what lie to tell you."

But she changed her mind when she saw my face. You know, Mag, if there's a thing that's fixed in your memory it's the face of the body you've done up. The respectables have their rogues' gallery, but we, that is, the light-fingered brigade, have got a fools' gallery to correspond to it.

In which of 'em is my picture? Now, Margaret, that's mean. You know my portrait hangs in both.

I looked down on the little beggar that had painted me for the second salon, and lo, in a flash she was on her feet, the lapful of good things tumbled to the ground, and Kitty was off.

I was bitterly disappointed in that girl, Mag! I was altogether mistaken in my diagnosis of her. Hers is only a physical cleverness, a talented dexterity. She had no resource in time of danger but her legs. And legs will not carry a grafter half so far as a good, quick tongue and a steady head.

She halted at a safe distance and glared back at me. Her hostility excited the crowd of children—her push—against me, and the braver ones jeered the things Kitty only looked, while the thrifty ones stooped and gathered up the spoil.

"Tell her I wouldn't harm her," I said to one of her lieutenants.

"She says she won't hurt ye, Kit," the child screamed.

"She dassent," yelled back Kitty, the valiant. "She knows I'd peach on her about the kid."

"Kid! What kid?" I cried, all a-fire.

"The kid ye swiped this mornin'. Yah! I told the cop what brought her back how ye took her jest as I—"

"Kitty!" I cried. "You treasure!" And with all my might I ran after her.

Silly? Of course it was. I might have known what the short skirts above those thin legs meant. I couldn't come within fifty feet of her. I halted, panting, and she paused, too, dancing tantalizingly half a block away.

What to do? I wished I had another purse to bestow on that sad Kitty, but I had nothing, absolutely nothing, except—all at once I remembered it—that little pin you gave me for Christmas, Mag. I took it off and turned to appeal to the nearest one of the flying body-guard that had accompanied us.

"You run on to her and tell her that if she'll show me the house where that baby lives I'll give her this pin."

He sped on ahead and parleyed with Kit; and while they talked I held aloft the little pin so that Kit might see the price.

She hesitated so long that I feared she'd slip through my hands, but a sudden rival voice piping out, "I'll show ye the house, Missus," was too much for her.

So, with Kit at a safe distance in advance to guard against treachery, and a large and enthusiastic following, I crossed the street, turned a corner, walked down one block and half up another, and halted before a three-story brownstone.

I flew up the stairs, leaving my escort behind, and rang the bell. It wasn't so terribly swagger a place, which relieved me some.

"I want to see the lady whose baby was lost this morning," I said to the maid that opened the door.

"Yes'm. Who'll I tell her?"

Who? That stumped me. Not Nance Olden, late of the Vaudeville, later of the Van Twiller, and latest of the police station. No—not Nance Olden ... not ...

"Tell her, please," I said firmly, "that I'm Miss Murieson, of the X-Ray, and that the city editor has sent me here to see her."

That did it. Hooray for the power of the press! She showed me into a long parlor, and I sat down and waited.

It was cool and quiet and softly pretty in that long parlor. The shades were down, the piano was open, the chairs were low and softly cushioned. I leaned back and closed my eyes, exhausted.

And suddenly—Mag!—I felt something that was a cross between a rose-leaf and a snowflake touch my hand.

If it wasn't that delectable baby!

I caught her and lifted her to my lap and hugged the chuckling thing as though that was what I came for. Then, in a moment, I remembered the paper and lifted her little white slip.

It was gone, Mag. The under-petticoat hadn't a sign of the paper I'd pinned to it.

My head whirled in that minute. I suppose I was faint with the heat, with hunger and fatigue and worry, but I felt myself slipping out of things when I heard the rustling of skirts, and there before me stood the mother of my baby.

The little wretch! She deserted me and flew to that pretty mother of hers in her long, cool white trailing things, and sat in her arms and mocked at me.

It was easy enough to begin talking. I told her a tale about being a newspaper woman out on a story; how I'd run across the baby and all the rest of it.

"I must ask your pardon," I finished up, "for disturbing you, but two things sent me here—one to know if the baby got home safe, and the other," I gulped, "to ask about a paper with some notes that I'd pinned to her skirt."

She shook her head.

It was in that very minute that I noticed the baby's ribbons were pink; they had been blue in the morning.

"Of course," I suggested, "you've had her clothes changed and—"

"Why, yes, of course," said baby's mother. "The first thing I did when I got hold of her was to strip her and put her in a tub; the second, was to discharge that gossiping nurse for letting her out of her sight."

"And the soiled things she had on—the dress with the blue ribbons?"

"I'll find out," she said.

She rang for the maid and gave her an order.

"Was it a valuable paper?" she asked.

"Not—very," I stammered. My tongue was thick with hope and dread. "Just—my notes, you know, but I do need them. I couldn't carry the baby easily, so I pinned them on her skirt, thinking—thinking—"

The maid came in and dumped a little heap of white before me. I fell on my knees.

Oh, yes, I prayed all right, but I searched, too. And there it was.

What I said to that woman I don't know even now. I flew out through the hall and down the steps and—

And there Kitty Wilson corralled me.

"Say, where's that stick-pin?" she cried.

"Here!—here, you darling!" I said, pressing it into her hand. "And, Kitty, whenever you feel like swiping another purse—just don't do it. It doesn't pay. Just you come down to the Vaudeville and ask for Nance Olden some day, and I'll tell you why."

"Gee!" said Kitty, impressed. "Shall—shall I call ye a hansom, lady?"

Should she! The blessed inspiration of her!

I got into the wagon and we drove down street—to the Vaudeville.

I burst in past the stage doorkeeper, amazed to see me, and rushed into Fred Obermuller's office.

"There!" I cried, throwing that awful paper on the desk before him. "Now cinch 'em, Fred Obermuller, as they cinched you. It'll be the holiest blackmail that ever—oh, and will you pay for the hansom?"



XVI.

I don't remember much about the first part of the lunch. I was so hungry I wanted to eat everything in sight, and so happy that I couldn't eat a thing.

But Mr. O. kept piling the things on my plate, and each time I began to talk he'd say: "Not now—wait till you're rested, and not quite so famished."

I laughed.

"Do I eat as though I was starved?"

"You—you look tired, Nance."

"Well," I said slowly, "it's been a hard week."

"It's been hard for me, too; harder, I think, than for you. It wasn't fair to me to let me—think what I did and say what I did. I'm so sorry, Nance,—and ashamed. So ashamed! You might have told me."

"And have you put your foot down on the whole thing; not much!"

He laughed. He's got such a boyish laugh in spite of his chin and his eye-glasses and the bigness of him. He filled my glass for me and helped me again to the salad.

Oh, Mag, it's such fun to be a woman and have a man wait on you like that! It's such fun to be hungry and to sit down to a jolly little table just big enough for two, with carnations nodding in the tall slim vase, with a fat, soft-footed, quick-handed waiter dancing behind you, and something tempting in every dish your eye falls on.

It's a gay, happy, easy world, Maggie darlin'. I vow I can't find a dark corner in it—not to-day.

None but the swellest place in town was good enough, Obermuller had said, for us to celebrate in. The waiters looked queerly at us when we came in—me in my dusty shoes and mussed hair and old rig, and Mr. O. in his working togs. But do you suppose we cared?

He was smoking and I was pretending to eat fruit when at last I got fairly launched on my story.

He listened to it all with never a word of interruption. Sometimes I thought he was so interested that he couldn't bear to miss a word I said. And then again I fancied he wasn't listening at all to me; only watching me and listening to something inside of himself.

Can you see him, Mag, sitting opposite me there at the pretty little table, off in a private room by ourselves? He looked so big and strong and masterful, with his eyes half closed, watching me, that I hugged myself with delight to think that I—I, Nancy Olden, had done something for him he couldn't do for himself.

It made me so proud, so tipsily vain, that as I leaned forward eagerly talking, I felt that same intoxicating happiness I get on the stage when the audience is all with me, and the two of us—myself and the many-handed, good-natured other fellow over on the other side of the footlights—go careering off on a jaunt of fun and fancy, like two good playmates.

He was silent a minute when I got through. Then he laid his cigar aside and stretched out his hand to me.

"And the reason, Nance—the reason for it all?"

I looked up at him. I'd never heard him speak like that.

"The reason?" I repeated.

"Yes, the reason." He had caught my hand.

"Why—to down that tiger Trust—and beat Tausig."

He laughed.

"And that was all? Nonsense, Nance Olden, there was another reason. There are other tiger trusts. Are you going to set up as a lady-errant and right all syndicate wrongs? No, there was another, a bigger reason, Nance. I'm going to tell it to you—what!"

I pulled my hand from his; but not before that fat waiter who'd come in without our noticing had got something to grin about.

"Beg pardon, sir," he said. "This message must be for you, sir. It's marked immediate, and no one else—"

Obermuller took it and tore it open. He smiled the oddest smile as he read it, and he threw back his head and laughed a full, hearty bellow when he got to the end.

"Read it, Nance," he said, passing it over to me. "They sent it on from the office."

I read it. "Mr. Fred W. Obermuller, Manager Vaudeville Theater, New York City, N.Y.:

Dear Obermuller:—I have just learned from your little protegee, Nance Olden, of a comedy you've written. From what Miss Olden tells me of the plot and situations of And the Greatest of These—your title's great—I judge the thing to be something altogether out of the common; and my secretary and reader, Mr. Mason, agrees with me that properly interpreted and perhaps touched up here and there, the comedy ought to make a hit.

Would Miss Olden take the leading role, I wonder?

Can't you drop in this evening and talk the matter over? There's an opening for a fellow like you with us that's just developed within the past few days, and—this is strictly confidential—I have succeeded in convincing Braun and Lowenthal that their enmity is a foolish personal matter which business men shouldn't let stand in the way of business. After all, just what is there between you and them? A mere trifle; a misunderstanding that half an hour's talk over a bottle of wine with a good cigar would drive away.