"As there's yet an hour to midnight, we have time for one of your stories."

"I can tell this in five minutes. All I know of the story is the beginning. No one ever heard of the end. It was like this:

"When I lived in Glasgow, I knew a young fellow there who was timekeeper in a shipyard. He was a very quiet, pleasant boy, so bashful that I used to wonder how he had ever summoned the courage to propose to the pretty Scotch girl who was his wife. As I got to know more of the pair, I divined the secret. Although poor, he was of good Glasgow parentage, while the wife had been a country girl so eager to get to the city that she had courted him while he was on a visit to the village in which she had lived. She had merely used him as a means for finding the life for which she had longed.

"How much he really loved her was never suspected until he came home one evening and found that she had run away with the youngest son of one of the proprietors of the shipyard.

"He learned within a week that they had sailed for America. He packed a valise, took the money that he had saved, and started out.

"'But where are you going to look for them?' I asked him.

"'To America,' he said, turning toward me, his face drawn and gaunt with the grief that he had survived.

"'But America is a vast country.'

"'I will hunt till I find her.'

"'And when you find her—you will not kill her, surely!'

"'I will try to get her to come back to me.'

"He took passage in the steerage, and I do not know what happened to him after that."

Each of us hid his emotions in his beer-mug. Then Max ordered fresh mugs, and said that Breffny's story recalled a somewhat similar thing that he had witnessed in Denver.

"When I was a reporter out there, I was standing one evening in front of a hotel. A crowd collected to see the body of a guest brought out and placed upon an ambulance.

"'Where are you taking him, and what is it?' I asked the driver.

"'To the lazaretto. Smallpox.'"

For a moment, while he was being lifted into the ambulance, the victim's face was visible. A loud cry was heard in the crowd. It came from a ragged, wild-looking man, whose unkempt beard made him look much older than I afterward found him to be. As the ambulance hurried off, he ran after it, shouting:

"'I must see that man! Stop! I must ask him something!'

"But he tripped upon a horse-car track, and when he had staggered to his feet, the ambulance was out of sight.

"I ran into the hotel and asked the clerk about the lazaretto patient. He was a young European—an Englishman—they thought, who had arrived from the East two days ago, and whose condition had just been discovered.

"Coming out, I went to the tramp who had cried out at the sight of the ill man. I found him seated on the curbstone, weeping like a child. I asked him why he wished to see the smallpox victim, and said that I could get him admission to the lazaretto, if he would tell me what he knew, and wouldn't let any other reporter have the story.

"He jumped up eagerly.

"'It's this,' he said. 'That man ran away with my wife, and I've hunted them over sea and land. This is the first sight I've had of him.'

"'Then,' I said, 'if you mean to harm him, I'm afraid I can't bring you to him.'

"'Him!' said the ragged man, disdainfully. 'I don't want to hurt him. I only want to find out where she is. I swear I wouldn't harm either of them.'

"I accompanied him to the city physician, with whom he had a long talk. That official finally promised to take him to the lazaretto. The doctor led the man to the side of the iron bed where the smallpox patient lay. The latter started like a frightened child at sight of his pursuer.

"'Remember,' said the doctor to the sick man, 'you have scarcely a chance for life. You would do well to tell the truth.'

"'Only tell me where she is,' pleaded the husband, 'and I'll forgive you all.'

"The sick man gasped:

"'I left her in Philadelphia—at the station. She had smallpox. It was from her I got it. I was a coward—a cur. I left her to save myself. The money I had brought from home was nearly all gone. Ask her to forgive me.'

"He was dead that evening. The husband was then upon an east-bound freight-train. The newspaper telegraphed to Philadelphia, but nothing could be found out about the woman. I've often wondered what became of the man."

The loud hubbub of conversation,—nearly all in German,—the shouts of the waiters, the noise of their footfalls upon the stone floor, the sound of mugs being placed upon tables and of Max draining his "stein" of beer, bridged the hiatus between the ending of Max's narrative and the beginning of my own:

"Your story reminds me of one to which the city editor assigned me on one of my 'late nights.' I took a cab and went to the station-house. The case had been reported by a policeman at Ninth and Locust Streets, who had called for a patrol-wagon. From him I got the story. He had seen the thing happen.

"He was walking down Locust at half-past twelve that night, and was opposite the Midnight Mission, when his attention was attracted to the only two persons who were at that moment on the other side of the street. One was a man of the appearance of a vagabond, coming from Ninth Street. The other was a woman, who had come from Tenth Street, and who seemed to walk with great difficulty, as if ready to sink at every step from weakness.

"The woman dropped her head as she neared the man. The man peered into her face, in the manner of one who had acquired the habit of examining the countenances of passers-by.

"The two met under the gas-lamp that is so conspicuous a night feature of the north side of Locust Street, between Ninth and Tenth.

"The woman gave no attention to the man. So exhausted was she that she leaned helplessly against the fence. The man ran forward, shrieking like a lunatic.

"'Jeannie!'

"The woman lifted her eyes in a dull kind of amazement and whispered:

"'Donald!'

"She fell back, but he caught her in his arms and kissed her lips a dozen times, with a half-savage gladness, crying and laughing hysterically, as women do.

"When the policeman had reached the pair, the woman had seen the last of this world.

"Afterward we found that she had been discharged from the municipal hospital, where she had been in the smallpox ward two weeks before; and we surmised that she had virtually had nothing to eat since then.

"At the station-house the man explained that the woman was his runaway wife. He had started in search of her two years before, with no other clue as to her whereabouts than the knowledge that she had sailed for America with a man named Ferriss—"

"What?" cried Max. "Was the name Archibald Ferriss? That was the name of the man who died in the Denver lazaretto—"

But Max was stopped by Breffny, who almost shouted in excitement:

"And the name of the son of McKeown & Ferriss, of Glasgow, in whose shipyard was employed as timekeeper the Donald Wilson—"

"Donald Wilson was the name of the man who met his wife that night in front of the Midnight Mission," said I, in further confirmation.

It was remarkable. One of the three chapters of this tragic story had entered into the experience of each of us three who sat there emptying stone mugs. Now, for the first time, was the story complete to each of us.

"But what became of the man?" asked Breffny.

"When the police lieutenant spoke of having her body interred in Potter's Field, the husband spoke up indignantly. He brought forth two gold pieces, saying:

"'I have the money for her grave. I saved this through all my wanderings, because I thought that when I should find her she might be homeless and hungry and in need.'

"So he had her buried respectably in the suburbs somewhere, and I was too busy at that time to follow up his subsequent movements. It is enough for the story that he found his wife."



XXIV

NEWGAG THE COMEDIAN

It was not his real name or his stage name, but it was the one under which he was best known by those who best knew him. It had been thrown at him in a cafe one night by a newspaper man after the performance, and had clung to him. Its significance lay in the fact that his "gags"—supposedly comic things said by presumably comic men in nominal opera or burlesque—invariably were old. The man who bestowed the title upon him thought it a fine bit of irony.

Newgag received it without expressed resentment, but without mirth, and he bore its repetition patiently as seasons went by. He was accustomed to enduring calmly the jests, the indignities that were elicited by his peculiar appearance, his doleful expression, his slow and bungling speech and movement, his diffident manner.

He was one of the forbearing men, the many who are doomed to continual suffering of a kind that their sensitiveness and timidity make it the more difficult for them to bear.

Undying ambition burned beneath his undemonstrative surface; dauntless courage lay under his lack of ability.

He was an extremely spare man, of extraordinary height, and the bend of his shoulders gave to his small head a comical thrust forward. His black hair was without curl, and it would tolerate no other arrangement than being combed back straight. It was allowed to grow downward until it scraped the back of Newgag's collar, a device for concealing the meagreness of his neck.

He had a smooth, pale face, slanting from ears to nose like a wedge, and the dimness of the blue eyes added to its introspective cast. He blushed, as a rule, when he met new acquaintances or was addressed suddenly. He had a gloomy look and a hesitating way of speech. An amusing spectacle was his mechanical-looking smile, which, when he became conscious of it, passed through several stages expressive of embarrassment until his normal mournful aspect was reached.

As he usually appeared in a sack coat when off the stage, the length of his legs was divertingly emphasized. After the fashion of great actors of a bygone generation, he wore a soft black felt hat, dinged in the crown from front to rear.

He had entered "the profession" from the amateur stage, by way of the comic opera chorus, and to that chance was due his being located in the comic opera wing of the great histrionic edifice. He had originally preferred tragedy, but the first consideration was the getting upon the stage by any means. Having industriously worked his way out of the chorus, he had been reconciled by habit to his environment, and had come to aspire to eminence therein. He had reached the standing of a secondary comedian,—that is to say, a man playing secondary comic roles in the pieces for which he is cast. He was useful in such companies as were directly or indirectly controlled by their leading comedians, for there never could be any fears of his outshining those autocratic personages. Only in his wildest hopes did he ever look upon the centre of the stage as a spot possible for him to attain.

His means of evoking laughter upon the stage were laborious on his part and mystifying to the thoughtful observer. He took noticeable means to change from his real self. It mattered not what was the nature of the part he filled, he invariably assumed an unnatural, rasping voice; he stretched his mouth to its utmost reach and lowered the extremities of his lips; he turned his toes inward (naturally his feet described an abnormal angle) and bowed his arms. Brought up in the school which teaches that to make others laugh one must never smile one's self, he wore a grotesquely lugubrious and changeless countenance. Such was Newgag in his every impersonation. When he thought he was funniest, he appeared to be in most pain and was most depressing.

"My methods are legitimate," he would say, when he had enlisted one's attention and apparent admiration across a table bearing beer-bottles and sandwiches. "The people want horse-play nowadays. But when I've got to descend to that sort of thing, I'll go to the variety stage or circus ring at once—or quit."

"That's a happy thought, old man," said a comedian of the younger school, one night, when Newgag had uttered his wonted speech. "Why don't you quit?"

Such a speech sufficed to rob Newgag of his self-possession and to reduce him to silence. He could not cope with easy, offhand, impromptu jesters. In truth, no one tried more than Newgag to excel in "horse-play," but his temperament or his training did not equip him for excelling in it; he defended the monotony, emptiness, and toilsomeness of his humour on the ground that it was "legitimate."

One night Newgag drank two glasses of beer in rapid succession and looked at me with a touching countenance.

"Old boy," he said, in his homely drawl, "I'm discouraged! I begin to think I'm not in it!"

"Why, what's wrong?"

"Well, I've dropped to the fact that, after all these years in the business, I can't make them laugh."

I was just about to say, "So you've just awakened to that?" but pity and politeness deterred me. Every one else had known it, all these years. Newgag, to be sure, should naturally have been, as he was, the last to discover it.

Newgag thus went one step further than any comedian I have ever known. Having detected his inability to amuse audiences, he confessed it.

People who know actors and read this will already have said that it is a fiction, and that Newgag's admission is false to life. Not so; I am writing not about comedians in general, but about Newgag.

That he had come to so exceptional a concession marked the depth of his despair. I tried to cheer him.

"Nonsense, my boy! They give you bad parts. Go out of comic opera. Try tragedy."

I had spoken innocently and sincerely, but Newgag thought I was jesting. Instead of his usual attempt at lofty callousness, however, he smiled that dismal, marionette-like smile of his. That gave me an idea, of which I said nothing at the time.

Several months afterward, a manager, who is a friend of mine, was suddenly plunged in distress because of the serious illness of an actor who was to fill a part in a new American comedy that the manager was to produce on the next night.

"What on earth shall I do?" he asked.

"Play the part yourself, as Hoyt does in such an emergency—or get Newgag."

"Who's Newgag?"

"He's a friend of mine, out of a position. I met him to-day very much frayed."

"Bring him to me."

Newgag was overwhelmed when I told him of the opportunity.

"I never acted in straight comedy," he said. "I can't do it. I might as well try to play Juliet."

"He wants you only to speak the lines, that's all. You're a quick study, you know. Come on!"

I had almost to drag the man to the manager. He allowed himself, in a semistupefied condition, to be engaged. He took the part, sat up all night in his boarding-house and learned it, went to rehearsal almost letter-perfect in the morning, and nervously prepared to face the ordeal of the evening.

At six o'clock, he wished to go to the manager and give up the part.

"I can never do it," he wailed to me. "I haven't had time to form a conception of it and to get up byplay. You see, it's an eccentric character part,—a man from the country whom everybody takes for a fool, but who shows up strong at the last. I can't—"

"Oh, don't act it. You're only engaged in the emergency, you know. Simply go on and say your lines and come off."

"That's all I can do," he said, with a dubious shake of the head. "If only I'd had time to study it!"

American plays had taken foothold, and this premier of a new one by an author of two previous successes drew a "typical first night audience." Newgag, having abandoned all idea of making a hit, or of acting the part any further than the mere delivery of the speeches went, was no longer inordinately nervous. When he first entered he was a trifle frightened, and his unavoidable lack of prepared stage business made him awkward and embarrassed for a time. The awkwardness remained, but the embarrassment eventually passed away. He spoke in his natural voice and retained his actual manner. When the action required him to laugh, he did so, exhibiting his characteristic perfunctory smile.

He received a special call before the curtain after the third act. He had no thought that it was meant for him until the stage manager pushed him out from the wings. He came back looking distressed.

"Are they guying me?" he asked the stage manager.

The papers agreed the next day that one of the hits of the performance was made by Newgag "in an odd part which he had conceived in a strikingly original way, and impersonated with wonderful finish and subtle drollery."

"What does it mean?" he gasped.

I enlightened him.

"My boy, you simply played yourself. Did it never occur to you that in your own person you're unconsciously one of the drollest men I ever saw?"

"But I didn't act!"

"You didn't. And take my advice—don't!"

And he doesn't. Upon the reputation of his success in that comedy he arranged with another manager to appear in a play especially written for him. He is a prosperous star now. Whatever his play or part he always presents the same personality on the stage and he has made that personality dear to many theatre-goers. He does not appear too frequently or too long in any one place; hence he is warmly welcomed wherever and whenever he returns. He is classed among leading actors, and the ordinary person does not stop sufficiently long to observe that he is no actor at all.

"This isn't exactly art," he said to me, the other night, with a tinge of self-rebuke. "But it's success."

And the history of Newgag is the history of many.



XXV

AN OPERATIC EVENING

I

A Desperate Youth

The second act of "William Tell" had ended at the Grand Opera House. The incandescent lights of ceiling and proscenium flashed up, showering radiance upon the vast surface of summer costumes and gay faces in the auditorium. The audience, relieved of the stress of attention, became audible in a great composite of chatter. A host streamed along the aisles into the wide lobbies, and thence its larger part jostled through the front doors to the brilliantly illuminated vestibule. Many passed on into the wide sidewalk, where the electric light poured its rays upon countless promenaders whose footfalls incessantly beat upon the aural sense. Scores of bicyclists of both sexes sped over the asphalt up and down, some now and then deviating to make way for a lumbering yellow 'bus or a hurrying carriage.

Men and women, young people composing the majority, strolled to and fro in the roomy lobby that environs the auditorium on all sides save that of the stage. A group of enthusiasts stood between the rear door of the box-office and the wide entrance to the long middle aisle.

"How magnificently Guille held that last note!"

"What good taste and artistic sense Madame Kronold has!"

"Del Puente hasn't been in better voice in years."

"But you know, Mademoiselle Islar is decidedly a lyric soprano."

These were some of the scraps of the conversation of that group. A lithe, athletic-looking man of thirty stood mechanically listening to them, as he stroked his black moustache. He was in summer attire, evidently disdaining conventionalities, preferring comfort.

Suddenly losing interest in the conversation in his vicinity, he started toward the Montgomery Avenue side of the lobby, with the apparent intention of breathing some outside air at one of the wide-barred exits, where children stood looking in from the sidewalk, and catching what glimpses they could of the audience through the doorways in the glass partition bounding the auditorium.

He by chance cast his glance up the unused staircase leading to the balcony from the northern part of the lobby. He saw upon the third step a young woman in a dark flannel outing-dress, her face concealed by a veil. She seemed to be watching some one among those who stood or moved near the Montgomery Avenue exits, which had wire barriers.

"By Jove!" he said, within himself, "surely I know that figure! But I thought she had gone to the Catskills, and I never supposed her capable of wearing negligee clothes at the theatre. There can be no mistaking that wrist, though, or that turn of the shoulders."

He stepped softly to her side and lightly touched one of the admired shoulders.

She turned quickly and suppressed an exclamation ere it was half-uttered.

"Why, Harry—Doctor Haslam, I mean! How did you know it was I?"

"Why, Amy—that is to say, Miss Winnett! What on earth are you doing here? Pardon the question, but I thought you were on the mountains. I'm all the more glad to see you."

While he pressed her hand she looked searchingly into his eyes, a fact of which he was conscious despite her veil.

"I'm not here—as far as my people may know. I'm at the Catskills with my cousins—except to my cousins themselves. To them I've come back home for a week's conference with my dressmaker. Our house isn't entirely closed up, you know. Aunt Rachel likes the hot weather of Philadelphia all summer through, and she's still here. When I arrived here this morning, I told her the dressmaker story. She retires at eight and she thinks I'm in bed too. But I'm here, and nobody suspects it but you and Mary, the servant at home, who knows where I've come, and who's to stay up for me till I return to-night. That's all of it, and now, as you're a friend of mine, you mustn't tell any one, will you?"

"But I know nothing to tell," said the bewildered doctor. "What does all this subterfuge, this mystery mean?"

Amy Winnett considered silently for a moment, while Doctor Haslam mentally admired the slim, well-rounded figure, the graceful poise of the little head with its mass of brown hair beneath a sailor hat of the style that "came in" with this summer.

"I may as well tell you all," she answered, presently. "I may need your assistance, too. I can rely upon you?"

"Through fire and water."

"I've come to Philadelphia to prevent a suicide."

"Good gracious!"

"Yes. You see, I've broken the engagement between me and Tom Appleton."

"What! You don't mean it?"

There was a striking note of jubilation in the doctor's interruption. Miss Winnett made no comment thereupon, but continued:

"I finally decided that I didn't care as much for Tom as I'd thought I did, and then I had a suspicion—but I won't mention that—"

"No, you needn't. Your fortune—pardon me, I simply took the privilege of an old friend who had himself been rejected by you. Go on."

"Don't interrupt again. As I said, I concluded that I couldn't be Tom's wife, and I told him so. He went to the Catskills when we went, you know, as he thought he could keep up his law studies as well there as here. You can't imagine how he took it. I'd never before known how much he—he really wished to marry me. But I was unflinching, and at last he left me, vowing that he would return to Philadelphia and commit suicide. He swore a terrible oath that my next message from him would be found in his hands after his death. And he set to-night as the time for the deed."

"But why couldn't he have done it there and then?"

"How hard-hearted you are! Probably because he wanted to put his affairs in order before putting an end to his life."

She spoke in all seriousness. Doctor Haslam succeeded with difficulty in restraining a smile.

"You don't imagine for a moment," he said, "that the young man intended keeping his oath."

"Don't I? You should have seen the look on his face when he spoke it."

"Well?"

"Well, I couldn't sleep with the thought that a man was going to kill himself on my account. It makes me shudder. I'd see his face in my dreams every night of my life. Then if a note were really found in his hands, addressed to me, the whole thing would come out in the newspapers, and wouldn't that be horrible? Of course I couldn't tell my cousins anything about his threat, so I invented my excuse quickly, packed a small handbag, disguised myself with Cousin Laura's hat and veil, and took the same train that Tom took. I've kept my eye on him ever since, and he has no idea I'm on his track. The only time I lost was in hurrying home with my handbag to see my aunt, but I didn't even do that until I'd followed him on Chestnut Street to the down-town box-office of this theatre and seen him buy a seat, which I later found out from the ticket-seller was for to-night. So here I am, and there he is."

"Where?"

"Standing over there by that wire thing like a fence next the street."

The doctor looked over as she motioned. He soon recognized the slender figure, the indolent attitude of Tom Appleton, the blase young man whom he was so accustomed to meeting at billiard-tables, in clubs, or hotels. A tolerant, amiable expression saved the youth's smooth, handsome face from vacuity. He was dressed with careful nicety.

"But," said Haslam, "a man about to take leave of this life doesn't ordinarily waste time going to the opera."

"Why not? He probably came here to think. One can do that well at the opera."

"Tom Appleton think?—I beg pardon again. But see, he's talking to a girl now, Miss Estabrook, of North Broad Street. His smile to her is not the kind of a smile that commonly lights up a man's face on his way to death."

"You don't suppose he would conceal his intentions from people by putting on his usual gaiety, do you?" she replied, ironically; adding, rather stiffly, "He has at least sufficiently good manners to do that, if not sufficient duplicity."

"I didn't mean to offend you. My motive was to comfort you with the probability that he has changed his mind about shuffling off his mortal coil."

"You're not very complimentary, Doctor Haslam. Perhaps you don't think that being jilted by me is sufficient to make a man commit suicide."

"Frankly I don't. If I had thought so three years ago, I'd be dust or ashes at this present moment. It can't be that you would feel hurt if Tom Appleton there should fail to keep his oath and should continue to live in spite of your renunciation of him?"

"How dare you think me so vain and cruel, when I've taken all this trouble and come all this distance simply to prevent him from keeping his oath?"

"But how in the world would you prevent him if he were honestly bent on getting rid of himself?"

"By watching him until the moment he makes the attempt, and then rushing up and telling him that I'd renew our engagement. That would stop him, and gain time for me to manage so that he'd fall in love with some other girl and release me of his own accord."

"But think a moment. You can watch him until the opera is out and perhaps for some time later. But if he means to die he certainly has a sufficient share of good manners to induce him to die quietly in his own home. So he'll eventually go home. When his door is locked, how are you going to keep your eye on him, and how can you rush to him at the proper moment?"

"I never thought of that."

"No, you're a woman."

She proceeded to do some thinking there upon the stairs.

"Oh," she said, finally, "I know what to do. I'll follow him until he does go home, to make sure he doesn't attempt anything before that time, and then I'll tell the police. They'll watch him."

"You'll probably get Mr. Tom Appleton into some very embarrassing complications by so doing."

"What if I do," she said, heroically, "if I save his life? Now, will you assist me to watch him? I'll need an escort in the street, of course."

"I put myself at your command from now henceforth, if only for the joy of the time that I am thus privileged to pass with you."

She smiled pleasantly, and with pleasure, trusting to her veil to hide the facial indication of her feelings. But Haslam's trained gray eye noted the smile, and also what kind of smile it was, and the discovery had a potent effect upon him. It deprived him momentarily of the power of speech, and he looked vacantly at her while colour came and went in his face.

Then he regained control of himself and he sighed audibly, while she dropped her eyes.

They were still standing upon the stairs, heedless of the confusion of vocal sounds that arose from the lobby strollers, from the boys selling librettos, from the people returning from the vestibule in a thick stream, from the musicians afar in the orchestra, tuning their instruments, from the many sources that provide the delightful hubbub of the entr'acte.

"Hush!" said Amy to Haslam. "Stand in front of me, so that Tom won't see me if he looks up here as he passes. He's coming this way."

Young Appleton, chaffing with the persons whom he had met at the exit, was sharing in the general movement from the byways of the lobby to the middle entrance of the parquet. The electric bell in the vestibule had sounded the signal that the third act was to begin. Mr. Hinrichs had returned to the director's stand in the orchestra and was raising his baton.

Arrived at the middle entrance, Appleton raised his hat to those with whom he had been talking, as if not intending to go in just then.

Mr. Hinrichs's baton tapped upon the stand, the music began, and the curtain rose.

"Why doesn't he go in?" whispered Amy, alluding to Appleton.

But the young man yawned, looked at his watch, and departed from the lobby—not to the auditorium, but out to the vestibule.

"He's going to leave the theatre," said Miss Winnett, excitedly. "We must follow."

And she tripped hastily down the stairs, Haslam after her.

II

A Triangular Chase

Tom Appleton sauntered out through the great vestibule, turning his eyes casually from the marble floor up to the balconies that look down from aloft upon this outer lobby. He was whistling an air from "Apollo" which he had heard a few weeks before at the New York Casino.

He hastened his steps when he saw a 'bus passing down Broad Street. A leap down the Grand Opera House steps and a lively run enabled him to catch the 'bus before it reached Columbia Avenue. He clambered up to the top and was soon being well shaken as he enjoyed the breeze and the changing view of the handsome residences on North Broad Street.

Haslam's sharp eyes took note of Appleton's action.

"He's on that 'bus," said the doctor to Amy as she took his arm on the sidewalk. "Shall we take the next one?"

"No; for then we can't see where he gets off. Can't we find a cab?"

"There's none in sight. We can have one called here, but we'll have to wait for it at least ten minutes."

"That will never do. To think he could elude us so easily, without even knowing that we're after him!"

Vexation was stamped upon the dainty face, with its soft brown eyes, as she raised her veil.

"Ah! I have it," said Haslam, who would have gone to great lengths to drive that vexation away.

"A bicycle! This section teems with bicycle shops. We can hire a tandem. It's a good thing we're both expert bicyclists."

"And that I'm suitably dressed for this kind of a race," replied Amy, as the two hurried down the block.

She stood outside the bicycle store and kept her gaze upon the 'bus, which was growing less and less distinct to the eye as it rolled down the street, while Haslam hastily engaged a two-seated machine.

The 'bus had not yet disappeared in the darkness when the pursuers, Amy upon the front seat, glided out from the sidewalk and down over the asphalt. The passage became rough below Columbia Avenue, where the asphalt gives away to Belgian block paving. Haslam's athletic training and the acquaintance of both with the bicycle served to minimize this disadvantage.

The frequent stoppages of the 'bus made it less difficult for them to keep in close sight of it. Conversation was not easy between them. Both kept silence, therefore, their eyes fixed upon the 'bus ahead, and carefully watching its every stop.

"You're sure he hasn't gotten off yet?" she asked, at Girard Avenue.

"Certain."

"He's probably going to his rooms down-town."

"Or to his club."

So they pressed southward. Before them stretched the lone vista of electric lights away down Broad Street to the City Hall invisible in the night.

The difficulty of talking made thinking more involuntary. Haslam's mind turned back three years. Was it, as he had dared sometimes to fancy, a juvenile capriciousness that had impelled this girl in front of him to reject him when she was seventeen, after having manifested an unmistakable tenderness for him? And now that she was twenty, and had in the meantime rejected several others, and broken one engagement, was it too late to attempt to revive the old spark?

His meditations were suddenly interrupted by an exclamation from the girl herself.

"Look! He's left the 'bus. He's going into the Park Theatre."

So he was. His slim person was easily distinguishable in the wealth of electric light that flooded the street upon which looked the broad doorways and the allegorical facades of the Park.

The second act of "La Belle Helene" was not yet over when Appleton entered and stood at the rear of the parquet circle. He indifferently watched the finale, made some mental comments upon the white flowing gown of Pauline Hall, the make-up of Fred Solomon, and the grotesqueness of the five Hellenic kings. Then he scanned the audience.

Haslam and Amy dismounted near the theatre and entrusted the bicycle to a small boy's care. When they had bought admission tickets and reached the lobby, the gay finale of the second act was being given. The curtain fell, was called up three times, and then people began to pour forth from the entrance to drink, smoke, or enjoy the air in the entr'acte.

Appleton was involved in the movement of those who resorted to the little garden with flowers and fountain and asphalt paving, accessible through the northern exits. He paused for a time by the fountain, not sufficiently curious to join the crowd that stood gaping at the apertures through which the members of the chorus could be seen ascending the stairs to the upper dressing-rooms, many of them carolling scraps of song from the opera as they went.

Appleton soon reentered the lobby and again surveyed the audience closely. Haslam caught sight of him just in time to avoid him. Amy had resumed the concealment of her veil.

To the surprise of his watchers, Appleton left the theatre before the third act opened. Again he jumped upon a 'bus, but this time it was upon one moving northward.

"It looks as if he were going back to the Grand Opera House," suggested Amy, as she and her companion started to repossess the bicycle.

"His movements are a trifle unaccountable," said Haslam, thoughtfully.

"Ah! Now you admit he is acting queerly. Perhaps you'll see I was quite right."

Again mounted upon the bicycle, the doctor and the young woman returned to the chase. They were soon brought to a second stop by Appleton's departure from the 'bus at Girard Avenue.

"Where can he be going to now?" queried Amy.

"He's going to take that east-bound Girard Avenue car."

"So he is. What can he mean to do in that part of town?"

They turned down Girard Avenue. The car was half a block in advance of them.

"You're energetic enough in this pursuit," Amy shouted back to the doctor as the machine fled over the stones, "even if you don't believe in it."

"Energetic in your service, now and always."

She made no answer.

This time her reflections were abruptly checked—as his had been on Broad Street—by the cry of the other.

"See! He's getting off at the Girard Avenue Theatre."

Again they found a custodian for their bicycle and followed Appleton into a theatre.

The young man stopped at the box-office in the long vestibule, bought a ticket, and had a call made for a coupe. Then he passed through the luxurious little foyer, beautiful with flowers and soft colours, and stood behind the parquet circle railing.

Adelaide Randall's embodiment of "The Grand Duchess" held his attention for a time. Haslam and Miss Winnett, to avoid the risk of being discovered by him, sought the seclusion of the balcony stairs.

"We had a few bars of Offenbach at the Park, and here we have Offenbach again," commented the doctor.

"And again, only a few bars, for there goes our man."

Appleton, having given as much attention to the few spectators as to the players, left the theatre and got into the cab that had been ordered for him.

Haslam, behind the pillar at the entrance to the theatre, overheard Appleton's direction to the driver. It was:

"To the Grand Opera House. Hurry! The opera will soon be over."

The cab rumbled away.

"It's well we heard his order," observed Haslam to Amy. "We couldn't have hoped to keep up with a cab. He'll probably wait at the Grand Opera House till we get there."

"But we mustn't lose any time, for, as he said, the performance will soon be over."

"Oh, 'Tell' is a long opera and Guille will have an encore for the aria in the last act. That will give us a few minutes more."

III

A Telegraphic Revelation

A boy walking down Girard Avenue, as Appleton got into the cab, had been whistling the tune of "They're After Me,"—a thing that was new to the variety stage last fall, but is dead this summer. The air, whistled by the boy, clung to Appleton's sense, and he unconsciously hummed it to himself as his cab went on its grinding way over the stones.

The cabman was considerate of his horse, and he coolly ignored Appleton's occasional shouts of, "Get along there, won't you?"

It was, therefore, not impossible for the bicyclists to keep in sight of the coupe.

"All this concern about a man you say you don't care for," said Haslam to Amy, as the bicycle turned up Broad Street. "It's unprecedented."

"It's only humanity."

"You didn't bother about following me around like this when you threw me over."

"You didn't threaten to kill yourself."

"No; if I had, I'd have carried out my threat. But for months I endured a living death—or worse."

"Really? Did you, though?"

Eager inquiry and sudden elation were expressed in this speech.

"Of course I did. Why do you ask in that way?"

"Oh—you took me by surprise. Why did you never tell me it affected you so? I thought—I thought—"

"What did you think?"

"That if you really cared for me you would have—tried again."

"What? Then I was fatally ignorant! I thought that when you said a thing, you meant it."

"I didn't know what I meant until it was too late."

"But is it too late—ah! see, he's getting out of the cab at the Grand Opera House."

They quickly switched the bicycle from the street to the sidewalk, and both dismounted.

They were checked at the entrance to the theatre by the appearance of Appleton. He was coming from within the building, and with him were two women, one elderly and unattractive, the other a plump young person with bright blue eyes in a saucy face that had more claim to piquant effrontery than to beauty. She was simply dressed and was all smiles to Appleton.

Amy and Haslam quickly turned their backs, thus avoiding recognition, and while they seemed to be looking through the glass front into the vestibule, they overheard the following conversation between the blue-eyed girl and Appleton.

"I'm glad you found us at last, Tom. Three acts of grand opera are about enough for me, thanks, and we'd have left sooner if your telegram that you'd be in town to-night hadn't made me expect to see you."

"Well, I've been hunting for you in every open theatre in town where there's grand opera. In your answer to my telegram from the Catskills, you said merely you were going to the opera this evening. You didn't say what opera, but I supposed it was this one, so I bought a ticket as soon as I arrived in town at the down-town office. I got here after the first act, and spent all the second act looking around for you."

"It's strange you didn't see us. We were in the middle of row K, right."

"Well, I missed you, that's all, and I kept a watch on the lobby after the act, thinking you'd perhaps come out between the acts. Then I went to the Park Theatre, and then to the Girard Avenue."

Amy and Haslam went into the vestibule. Amy was crimson with anger. Haslam quietly said:

"Do you wish to continue the pursuit?"

Before she found time to answer, another matter distracted her attention.

"Look! There's Mary, the housemaid, who was to stay up for me till I got home. She has come here for me."

The servant stood by the door leading into the lobby, in a position enabling her to scan the faces of people coming out from the auditorium.

"Oh, Miss Amy, are you here? I was waiting for you to come out. Here's a telegram that came about a half-hour ago. I thought it might be important."

Amy tore open the envelope.

"Why," she said to Haslam, "this was sent to-day from Philadelphia to me at the Catskills, and my cousins have had it repeated back to me. And look—it's signed by you."

"I surely didn't send it."

But there was the name beyond doubt, "Henry Haslam, M.D."

"This is a mystery to me, I assure you," reiterated the doctor.

"But not to me," cried Amy. "Read the message and you'll understand."

He read these words:

"Mr. Appleton is very ill. His life depends upon his will-power. He tells me that you alone can say the word that will save him. Henry Haslam, M.D."

Haslam smiled.

"A clever invention to make you think he tried to execute his threat. Now you know what he was doing while you were taking your handbag home. He probably concocted the scheme on his journey. But why did he sign my name, I wonder?"

She dropped her eyes and answered in a low tone:

"Because he knew that I would believe anything said by you."

"Would you believe that I love you still more than I did three years ago?"

"Yes; if it came from your own lips—not by telegraph."

She lifted her eyes now, and her lips, too; Mary the housemaid sensibly looked another way.

THE END.