Chapter V: Part 5

“What’ll we do?” facetiously echoed the other, gripping him firmly by the arm and dragging him along. “Where’ll we hide, you mean?”

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Chapter Twenty-One

The name of Madame Olga Stephano was conspicuously absent from the columns of the Star next morning, but this fact passed unnoticed by one James Martin, who had moved on to the next town, unwept, unhonored and unsung. Gone was the rakish tilt to his derby hat and vanished like the roses of yesterday were the glad, eager look and the jaunty bearing that usually distinguished him as one upon whom fortune was wont to smile. Gloom was in his heart and a sweet melancholy pervaded his thoughts.

A letter dated before Jimmy’s fatal first meeting with Miss Slosson, awaited him at the theatre. It brought tidings that did not have a tendency to make life more interesting. It was from Jordan, Madame Stephano’s personal manager on tour with the company, and it summoned him back to Cleveland for the opening performance on Monday night.

“There are many matters on which Madame Stephano and myself wish to consult with you,” the letter ran, “among them being the methods of publicity best calculated to further her interests as a star. Our appeal, as you know, is to the intellectual element in the community and you must carefully avoid anything in the nature of cheap or sensational stories or what are vulgarly known as ‘stunts.’ We will go into this at greater length when I see you.”

“I’m in for a spring canning,” Jimmy observed to the manager of the theatre when he had finished reading Jordan’s letter. “I wouldn’t mind that so much if I could have got my exit cue in a blaze of glory, but this thing of being bumped off on top of an awful fall-down like that gets under the little old epidermis.”

Madame Stephano occasionally varied her Ibsen repertoire with performances of plays by other European dramatists. She had chosen a modern Spanish tragedy for her opening in Cleveland, and the first act was under way when a certain forlorn looking figure slouched wearily into the manager’s office and moodily inquired for Mr. Jordan. The company manager, a thoroughly house-broken slave to the temperamental caprices of the star, came forward.

“I’m Martin,” gloomily vouchsafed the visitor.

“You are, eh?” responded the manager, acridly, looking him over with indifferently concealed scorn. “We’ve been waiting for you all day.”

“Who do you mean by ‘we’?” timidly inquired the chastened press agent.

“Why, the madame and myself. We were curious to see what you looked like. You seem fairly intelligent.”

Ordinarily Jimmy would have resented the implied sneer in this remark and would have flared up with an indignant rejoinder, but his spirit seemed crushed to earth never to rise again. The surrounding atmosphere was to him pregnant with impending tragedy. He contented himself with a nervous little laugh.

“I’ve never been accused of it,” he said foolishly.

“Of course, we’ve heard about your ridiculous fiasco last week,” went on Jordan. “You’ve certainly let yourself in for it with the madame. I wonder what you think this attraction is, anyway—a circus side show or a cabaret? I’ll give you credit, though. You had a cast iron nerve to attempt such a thing with her. They say God looks after fools and drunken folks. I hope He’s on your side tonight.”

Jimmy gulped before he made reply.

“Is she—is she a little annoyed?” he stammered.

“Yes, just a little,” laughed the other sarcastically. “Just a wee bit put out. It’s hardly worth mentioning, but if I were you I’d stick around on this side of the footlights until after the show. We’ve got eighteen hundred inside tonight and I wouldn’t like to have to give the money back. Something might happen if you went back stage. I’ll see you later.”

He slipped into an inner office and Jimmy was left alone with his misery. He wandered out into the brilliantly lighted lobby and sauntered into the auditorium for his first view of the great actress. She was on the stage as he entered and he peered at her from behind the plush curtains which hung back of the last row of seats. She was playing a scene of brisk and brittle comedy and she moved about the stage with all the lithe and lissome grace of a beautiful tiger. She was making mordant mockery of another woman in the play, assailing her with wicked rapier thrusts of biting wit and smiling a smile that struck terror into Jimmy’s heart. There was a malicious gleam in her black eyes that fascinated him. They seemed to his over-wrought imagination like the nasty eyes of a serpent he had once seen in a glass case in the zoo. He shuddered with apprehension.

As the curtain fell and the lights went up he caught sight of the figure of E. Cartwright Jenkins coming up the aisle. He effaced himself with surprising suddenness by making for the nearest exit door. It led to a fire-escape and he stood there in the semi-darkness letting the cool night air soothe his fevered brow and trying to collect his befuddled train of thought. This last was impossible. All that he seemed able to comprehend was that he was in for the most disagreeable experience of his fair young life, and that there was no possible escape from it except in flight. He was too good a soldier to run away. That much was certain.

When the lights went out again and the second act began Jimmy resumed his place behind the curtains once more and continued his observations of Madame Stephano. It was in this act that the “big scene” of the play occurred, the scene in which the outraged wife reverted to the primitive passions of her Andalusian peasant ancestors and made things decidedly uncomfortable for her husband and several other characters in the piece. It was full of lines in which, as the old actor said, “one could get one’s teeth into” and it may be stated that the famous Russian-American actress played it for all it was worth and then some. She erupted, exploded, and otherwise comported herself in an extremely violent and disturbing manner. As a final touch she committed aggravated assault and battery on the person of her husband and wound up the festivities by making a general wreck of the drawing room in which the scene was laid. Jimmy watched the early proceedings with growing distrust. When the final nerve-shattering moment arrived and the curtain fell amid a wild uproar from the audience he found himself sagging and he clutched a pillar for support. A clammy perspiration bespangled his brow. He felt decidedly sick and he longed for the comforts of home and the quiet ministrations of some gentle female who would soothe and mother him.

In a daze, he sauntered out into the lobby again. Jordan, who had just come back from back stage, touched him on the arm.

“The madame wishes to see you right after the last act,” he remarked with a sinister smile.

Only that and nothing more. He turned on his heel and disappeared into the office. Jimmy leaned against the wall and eyed with envy the noisy and laughing throng of men who had come out for a smoke between the acts.

At precisely the same time an usher slipped down one of the theatre aisles, touched E. Cartwright Jenkins on the shoulder and handed him a note. The critic adjusted his glasses and tore it open. This is what he read:

Mon Cher Jenkins:—

May I not give myself the great pleasure of meeting you for a moment
after the play? I have for many years been an admirer of your great
and most excellent genius, and I have had what is called the longing
to greet you. I have had the hesitation of asking to see you as I
know you are a most busy man. Tonight there is a matter of the so
great importance that I would speak to you concerning. Please, my
dear sir, do me this very high honor, I implore you.

OLGA STEPHANO.

E. Cartwright smiled expansively. It may also be remarked that he beamed and it may be further added that he felt himself once more securely affixed upon a pedestal in his personal Hall of Fame.

The final moment of the Spanish play found Madame Stephano sitting alone at the dinner table in the heroine’s home. Fate and the fell clutch of circumstance had resulted in her estrangement from her family and from her friends and she had dined alone. As the curtain fell, disillusioned and miserable, she dropped her head in her hands and sobbed bitterly.

Jimmy, having been assured that his nemesis would be on the stage throughout the entire act, had tip-toed back when the scene was half finished. A hopeless fear gnawed at his vitals, but he tried to put on a brave face. He watched the curtain descend from a place in the wings and he saw it rise again and again in response to tumultuous applause. The actress, artist that she was, never raised her head or stepped out of the picture.

After the last call had been taken he heard the orchestra strike up the exit march. Determined to get the unpleasant business over with he stepped through a door leading to the boxed-off scene. To his utter bewilderment at precisely the same moment there entered upon the scene from the opposite side no less a personage than E. Cartwright Jenkins. That gentleman’s buoyant air of self-confidence and serene self-approval left him with an abruptness that was startling. He stopped his progress and stood rooted to the spot. The two gazed at each other in amazement. E. Cartwright’s lips moved, but he found himself inarticulate. Swayed by a common impulse they both turned to Madame Stephano.

That lady still sat with her head in her hands. As they looked she raised herself slowly and gazed from one to the other. A nasty glint came into her eyes. She sprang to her feet so suddenly that she overturned the chair in which she had been sitting. She swept a long arm out in front of her body and shook it at them both in turn.

Jimmy instinctively put up his guard. E. Cartwright’s face paled.

“You have come, eh?” screamed Madame Stephano, “you are both here. You have come to let me tell you what I zink of you, eh?”

Her voice was stridently intense and her whole face was ablaze with uncontrolled fury. Her accent was more marked than usual. She poured out her words with a rapidity that was amazing.

“You have come to let me tell you both zat you have insult Olga Marie Stephano and zat Olga Marie Stephano does not let herself be made ze target for ze insult. You poor leetle fool, you”—this to Jimmy—“you have meex my name up with zis crazee pastree pie announcement. Am I to have no deegnety. Is Olga Marie Stephano a cook or an actress—wheech? And you, Meestaire Cartwright Jeenkens, your paper it preent zis crazee theeng, it preent it and it make me into one great, beeg, foolish crazee—what you call?—what you call, I say?—one great, beeg, foolish, crazee dam fool. Eet ees too much, oh, much too much. Mon Dieu, mon Dieu—eet ees too much.”

She paused, her bosom heaving like a prima donna’s after an aria. Her two visitors began to back gingerly away. She looked from one to the other and then there slowly broke upon her face, a smile. It came like a blessed benison, and it presently merged into a laugh, light and silvery at first and then hearty and uncontrolled.

“Gentlemen,” she said sweetly when the laughter had died down, “excuse me, please, eef I make such a laugh. You look so funee. Pardonnez moi, pardonnez moi. Eet ees just my leetle joke, gentlemen, just my leetle joke. I have here one grand surprise for you. Voila!!”

With all the easy grace and dexterity of a prestidigitator she reached toward the table and plucked a napkin off a dish in the centre. To the astonished eyes of the press agent and the dramatic editor there was revealed an apple pie that transcended in appearance even that famous piece of pastry which had met with such a disastrous end in the Star office a few days before.

“Will you not please take seats,” cooed the actress.

Her hypnotized guests dropped into chairs. Madame Stephano took the place between them. At her side was a bowl filled with whipped cream. Ample portions of the pie were anointed with this by her own hands and served. A mouthful of the delicious dessert proved to each its surpassing excellence. The actress watched them eat with pardonable pride.

“Meestaire Jimmy,” she said, turning to the now thoroughly flabbergasted press agent. “I have play zis leetle scene to—what you call it?—to make good. I have hear all about zat affaire of ze hot pie. I have invite Meestaire Jenkeens to let heem see zat I really can bake ze apple pie pastree. I bake heem in ze hotel keetchen zis afternoon. It was funee—zat hot pie, eh?”

She had turned to E. Cartwright. Concealed somewhere about his person that worthy gentleman had a slight sense of humor which occasionally revealed itself. This was one of the occasions. He laughed heartily. When he left a few minutes afterwards to write his review the entente cordiale had been re-established between himself and Jimmy. She had a way with her when she chose, had Madame Stephano, and never were her wiles more effectively utilized than a moment later when she found herself alone with her press agent.

“Meestaire Jimmy,” she purred. “I have for many years been ze foolish woman. I have been too much what you Americans so quaintly call—ze up stage. I have tried to be oh, so deegnefied, so very much deegnefied. I was mad wiz you, Meestaire Jimmy, when I read about ze pie and when I hear yesterday about ze catastrophe in ze newspaper office I could have keel you. But I find I have ze beegest advance sale I have ever had, and I have change my mind. I am going to lose my deegnety, Meestaire Jimmy. Go ahead, Meestaire Jimmy, you tell ze lies and I will—what you call him again—I will—make good.”

“Say, Madame,” responded Jimmy, whose self-assurance once more enveloped him like an aura, “do you know what you are?”

“No, Meestaire Jimmy. What I am?”

“I’ll say you’re one regular guy.”

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Chapter Twenty-Two

Madame Olga Stephano continued to be a “regular guy” for the remainder of the season, but when the summer rolled around Jimmy began to feel that his enthusiasm for the cause in the future would depend entirely upon an utterly sordid matter of dollars and cents. He politely suggested that a more obese emolument every Saturday night would make all the difference in the world. Madame Stephano exploded like a giant firecracker, shrugged her shapely shoulders and walked away.

Jimmy thereupon decided to leave the uplift flat on its back. He gave in his notice and the next day a summons from Chester Bartlett reached him. Bartlett offered him a place as press agent for his newest musical comedy, “Keep Moving” at a salary which exceeded the demand which Madame Stephano had rejected by twenty-five dollars a week. Jimmy went into executive session with himself and considered a motion for a reconsideration of his previously avowed determination to “keep all song and dance shows for life.” It was passed by a unanimous vote.

Jimmy smiled cynically one Saturday night in the early fall as he stood on the Boylston Street curb and watched a great throng of Boston amusement seekers filing through the main entrance of the Colonial Theatre. He was a backslider and an apostate, but he was no longer conscious of any scruples in the premises. His cynical aspect on this particular occasion was the result of his contemplation of the sign which outlined in incandescent brilliance over the portals of the playhouse the name of his new affiliation. It seemed to him to be, for a moment, a symbol of his downfall and disgrace.

His smile lost its hardness a minute later, however, and became something a shade softer and more human. A vagrant memory of a certain young person from Cedar Rapids, Iowa,—a young person whom Jimmy held in the highest regard—had crossed his train of thought. It was pleasant to think that Lolita Murphy was close at hand and that when the performance was over he could walk across the Common with her to her hotel, whisper words of endearment, and bask in the effulgence of the smiles which she so lavishly bestowed upon him.

Lolita, released from the oblivion of her drudgery as a player in the Mt. Vernon Stock Company, still cherished a great and overwhelming ambition to climb the ladder of theatrical fame and carelessly brush off the more or less distinguished celebrities who, she felt, encumbered the topmost rung.

She had reluctantly consented to accept a minor position in the “Keep Moving” company at Jimmy’s behest. The latter, filled with a pardonable desire to be near her, had convinced her that a little musical comedy experience was a necessary part of her theatrical training and had persuaded Bartlett to give her a microscopic part in the piece. In the first act she separated herself from the ranks of the chorus and remarked “Here comes the prince now.” In the second act she was the hat-check girl in the scene depicting the entrance to the dining-room of the Carlton Hotel and was called upon to say “think you’re fresh, don’t you?” to the principal comedian. In the third and final act she was one of the bridesmaids in the ragtime wedding number.

Jimmy, it must be confessed, had begun to strongly suspect that Lolita would eventually find out that the American stage would be able to worry along without her assistance if the worst came to the worst and that destiny had not selected her to snatch the laurels from the brow of Mrs. Fiske. That was one of the reasons which impelled him to suggest that she associate herself with “Keep Moving.” He didn’t want her to have any heart-aches or artistic growing pains and he felt that she could be spared much distress and disillusion if he were on the sidelines at all times with words of cheer and encouragement.

A smart limousine drew up alongside him and Chester Bartlett, “classiest” of musical comedy entrepreneurs alighted, bringing with him something of the flair of a Parisian boulevard as contrasted with the Broadway manner which usually characterized theatrical men in his particular field of endeavor. University man, cosmopolite, patron of amateur sports, big game hunter and intimate of distinguished literary men in a half dozen countries, Chester Bartlett was a unique figure in the realm of twinkly-toes and tinkly music. As he came towards Jimmy he seemed to exude such a suggestion of perfect poise and supreme savoir faire that the press agent felt for a moment as if he should applaud.

“Hello, old man,” said Bartlett jovially. “What song doth our troubadour sing next? You’ll have to woo the muse in accents soft and low if you expect to equal her performance this morning for your young friend down at the Colonial. That story had a tang that was delightful. Don’t you think so?”

The manager had intended to pierce Jimmy’s Achillian heel and he had succeeded. If there was anything that stirred the latent energies that lay dormant in the press agent’s soul and filled him with the fierce and fiery zest of a crusader it was praise of a rival’s achievements. And that fellow down at the Colonial had put one over that morning. There was no gainsaying that. His story about the group of chorus girls who had organized a Back to Nature club and who had elected to live in tents on the roof of one of the biggest hotels in town had landed with a splash and an extensive pictorial lay-out in every paper in town. Jimmy had been nursing a grouch all day because he hadn’t thought of the idea first. He didn’t permit any outward signs of his annoyance to reach Bartlett, however. He assumed his customary jaunty air of sublime self-confidence in making reply.

“I’ll say it was pretty good,” he said, “but I’ve got something about ready to spring that’ll send that fellow down for the count in the first round. I’ve got a date with this Emily Ann Muse party tomorrow morning and when she’s listened to what I’ve got to say she’ll jump through the paper hoop at the word of command.”

Bartlett laughed good-naturedly. Jimmy’s dazzling metaphorical flights and picturesque similes were a constant source of piquant delight to him.

“You’re not quite as modest as the cooing dove,” he remarked, “but you’re a darned sight more diverting. I hope you’re going to get our stately queens into the web you are weaving. I rather fancy they’re on the war-path tonight after all the notoriety their sisters in art got today.”

“Don’t worry,” replied Jimmy. “They’re goin’ to be right in the little old center of the stage with baby spot lights playin’ on ’em from all sides. There won’t be anythin’ doin’ for about thirty-six hours or so, though. I can’t open cold with this act. I’ve got to call a rehearsal.”

Bartlett chuckled and strolled into the lobby. As Jimmy watched his trim figure disappear past the door-man at the far end he experienced a sinking sensation that was decidedly unpleasant. He suddenly realized that in a moment of expansiveness induced by jealousy of a hated rival he had drawn a check against a sadly depleted bank account. As a matter of plain, ungarnished fact he hadn’t a notion as to how he was going to make good. He had no more idea than Bartlett as to the nature of the story that was to startle the natives in thirty-six hours, but he was the original cheery optimist and somehow he felt that the gods would be good to him. He sauntered leisurely down the street in quest of an inspiration.

* * * * *

The walk across the Common after the performance that night wasn’t quite as stimulating as it generally was. Jimmy’s earlier saunter had failed to result in the production of an idea that was even remotely possible of materialization and he had slowly let himself drop into one of those states of moody pre-occupation which are usually fatal to romance. Lolita, too, was strangely silent and detached and their conversation at first was mono-syllabic and intermittent. Presently they came to a bench on the fringes of the park and sat down under the sheltering branches of a great elm, as they had for several nights past. Neither spoke for a minute or two. Jimmy was the first to find voice.

“I might have ’em organize a literary society and have one of those Harvard ducks come over some off afternoon and slip ’em a lecture,” he said abstractedly as he stared straight ahead.

Lolita eyed him curiously. The speech was so entirely disassociated from his hitherto brief remarks that she couldn’t fathom its significance.

“Who?” she asked.

“There wouldn’t be time for that, though.” He went on unheedingly. “He’d probably have to take a couple of days to decide and another couple to get his nerve up.”

“What are you talking about, Jimmy Martin?” broke in Lolita impatiently.

Jimmy came to with a start and laughed foolishly.

“Excuse me, girlie,” he replied. “I forgot that you didn’t know anything about it. You see I ain’t really here on this bench at all. I’m right out on a sand-bar and the tide’s comin’ in. I’m goin’ to be all awash in a little while if the life guards don’t come out and pull a rescue.”

“I don’t understand,” persisted Lolita.

“It’s easy, girlie. I’ve got a case of goods to deliver and the drivers are out on strike. In words of one syllable, sweetheart, I’ve promised Bartlett that I’m goin’ to back the peace pow-wow off on to the inside pages on Monday morning and I’ve been reachin’ out all night for ideas, but I don’t seem to get anywhere at all, not anywhere at all.”

“Is it something about some old story for the papers or something like that that’s worrying you?”

Jimmy felt impelled to make a snappy rejoinder, but his saner judgment prevailed. He checked himself just in time.

“That’s the general idea, girlie,” he said evenly and lapsed into ruminative silence again.

It was dark under the old elm and Jimmy couldn’t see Lolita’s face. Had he been able to he would have noted an expression on it that might possibly have given him concern. It was an expression that was a blend of petulance and of something wan and a bit forlorn, a mixture of irritation and of anguish that seemed perilously near the breaking point. When she spoke again her voice was tremulous and low.

“Stories, stories, stories,”—she paused with every repetition of the word—“that’s all you think about. What good do they do? What’s the use of them all? They don’t make anybody happier, do they? They don’t mean anything, do they? They really don’t, do they?”

Jimmy slipped out of the silences instantly and edged closer to Lolita. He tried to take her hand, but she drew it away quickly. He was bewildered by her attitude and there was a shade of genuine agitation in his voice as he made reply.

“What’s the matter, honey? Didn’t you like that little yarn and the two column picture of you the Journal ran the other morning? That sheet’s got a circulation of over four hundred thousand. Think of all those people readin’ about you and seein’ your picture and talkin’ about you. Didn’t that make you happy? I hoped it would. That’s what I got ’em to use it for.”

Lolita touched him gently on the arm.

“I didn’t mean to be nasty, Jimmy,” she said. “I really didn’t and I hate to tell you the truth, but you’d really ought to know it. Do you want to?”

“Fire ahead. You don’t even have to blindfold me.”

“It didn’t make me as happy as you’d imagine. There wasn’t a single soul that saw it who knew anything about who I was or anything except the folks in the company, and they were all jealous because you’d put it in. I didn’t mean any more to that four hundred thousand than the printer that set up the type. Oh, no, I didn’t. You can’t tell me.

“Let me tell you something, Jimmy. Old Doc Crandall, the city editor of the Cedar Rapids Democrat-Chronicle, wrote a piece once about the graduation exercises at the Central High School and he said that I recited with ‘fine expression and wonderful emotional control.’ There were only two lines about me, but those two lines made me happier than a whole page in Boston would,—yes, or New York either. Do you know why?”

Jimmy, whose ideals were crashing down to earth, sat entranced at Lolita’s turbulent outburst.

“No,” he replied. “What’s the answer?”

“Because nine out of every ten people that read those two lines either know me to speak to or by sight or knew mother or dad and what was printed meant something to them about someone who meant something to them. That’s kind of mixed up, I guess, but you know what I’m trying to say. What do I mean to anyone here or in New York or any place else here in the east? Nothing—nothing at all, Jimmy—just nothing at all.”

She wound up at a helter-skelter pace that left her quite out of breath and had it not been for the sheltering elm Jimmy might have noticed that she was biting her lip when she paused and that she was holding herself in with a mighty effort. He again tried to take her hand, but she would have none of it.

“Girlie,” he pleaded, making a clumsy attempt at gentleness, “you mean a whole lot to a certain party who’s pretty close at hand. You’ve just naturally got the Cedar Rapids blues again tonight, honey, but you’ll be all right in the mornin’, all right in the mornin’, honey. Take it from me. I don’t lose many bets.”

But Lolita had lapsed into silence again and didn’t reply. Presently she complained of being chilly, got up wearily and begged to be taken home. At the door of her hotel Jimmy made one last effort to lift her out of her mood.

“Paper says fair and warmer tomorrow, honey,” he said. “Maybe we can hire a little old gas wagon and get out among the golden rod and the daisies, if I ain’t too busy. Would you go?”

“Maybe,” replied Lolita listlessly. “Good night.”

And she was gone. Jimmy gazed after her despairingly. Gloom entered his soul and made preparations to settle down for the night.

A strident voiced newsboy turned the corner just then shrilly crying the early or “bull-dog” edition of one of the Sunday papers.

“Hi, Journal,” he called, “Sunday Morning Journal—full account of “Billy” Williams’ sermon on booze and tobacco—hi, Journal—all about “Billy” Williams’ campaign—full account of both meetings—box score world’s champion games—hi, Journal.”

Jimmy mechanically bought a paper. A screaming headline caught his glance:

“BILLY” WILLIAMS
HITS BOOZE
AND TOBACCO
––––
Famous Evangelist Ends Second
Week of Campaign With Bitter
Onslaught on “Poison Slingers
and Hell Hounds.”
––––
357 CONVERTS HIT
THE SAWDUST TRAIL
––––

Only that and nothing more did Jimmy read. The strained look slowly left his face and was replaced by an expression indicative of profound satisfaction. Even Lolita was forgotten for the nonce. The Big Idea had just loomed up in the offing and was heading straight for port.

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Chapter Twenty-Three

The Rev. “Billy” Williams at that particular moment occupied the center of the stage in Boston, and there was no immediate prospect of anyone else usurping that place inasmuch as his local engagement had six weeks more to run. He was a sensational evangelist whose campaigns on behalf of old-fashioned religion and of old-fashioned morals had stirred up the profoundest depths of human feeling in dozens of communities in all parts of the country and had brought tens of thousands of men and women in all stations of life to an emotional crisis in which they pledged themselves anew or for the first time to a faithful adherence to the fundamental tenets of Christianity.

His methods were so bizarre and so baroque and he was such a past-master of the art of publicity that he always afforded first-page “copy” whenever he arrived in a city. His meetings were held in great specially constructed tabernacles seating ten thousand or more persons and were conducted with a splendid sense of dramatic values for he was a keen psychologist and he knew the things best calculated to move and sway great groups of people. The judicious and the ultra-dignified who came to grieve or to sneer were usually carried away in a tumult of emotional excitement and were literally swept off their feet by the cumulative appeal of all his cunningly devised plans to “get to their innards,” as “Billy” himself was wont to phrase it in his own inelegant, but singularly effective style.

Not even Jimmy Martin himself had such a vocabulary of arresting and original slang as “Billy” Williams. His sermons reeked with it when he felt that the occasion warranted its use and even the most conservative of clergymen who at first frowned at such language in the pulpit were eventually obliged to admit that it had its place in a white-hot appeal made to a vast miscellaneous audience seated in an auditorium as long as a city block, an audience which would unquestionably remain unmoved if preached to in the chaste and austere phrases of the conventional pulpit orator. The downright sincerity of the man and the compelling force of his powerful personality turned scoffers into ardent followers and made him indeed a mighty power in any city which he honored with a visit.

Early on the Sunday evening following the events hitherto chronicled a great crowd surged about the entrances to the huge wooden auditorium which sprawled over a lot in the environs of the city. It was a heterogeneous crowd not dissimilar in its composition to the other crowds which flocked in the summer to the great white tents which the circus pitched on this very spot. Most of those comprising it were quiet and orderly—apparently a little self-conscious of the necessity for decorum—but there were, here and there, a group of noisy and irrepressible Spirits, all of them young, who seemed to regard the occasion as one affording unequalled opportunities for a lark. The doors had not yet been opened for the evening service and the throng grew to enormous proportions with each passing minute.

An acute observer in an aeroplane circling over the particular group which awaited entrance on the north side of the tabernacle would have noticed a little cluster of femininity in the front ranks which stood out vividly from the rather dull and neutral tone of the rest of the crowd like some brilliant pattern woven into a field of grayish tinge.

There were rich purples, bright reds and gay greens in this little oasis of color and from it there arose light laughter and frivolous chatter, the echoes of which carried to the shocked ears of those more serious minded persons who patiently waited on its edges for the onrush which always followed the opening of the doors. Jimmy Martin stood in the direct center of the oasis in his capacity as Personal Custodian of the Big Idea and tried to soothe those turbulent spirits among the members of the chorus of the “Keep Moving” company who were beginning to chafe at the delay.

“Say, young fellow,” drawled a svelte creature whose tawny hair glowed like an aureole as the last rays from the setting sun caught and kindled it, “I haven’t stood as long as this since I quit cloak and suit modeling to decorate the drama. Where do you get this stuff anyway? What do you think we are—a troupe of trained seals?”

“That’s what I say,” broke in a young person with the soft eyes of a Rubens’ seraph. “I called off a perfectly good dinner date with a dandy little Harvard rah-rah just because Bartlett made a personal matter out of this thing and here we are standing around with the other hicks waiting for the side-show to begin and wasting perfectly good and valuable time. Press agents always did get my goat.”

“Mine, too,” remarked a languid houri whose pallid face was set off by a pair of enormous green earrings. “In New York I wouldn’t think of standing in line for a chance to see the signing of the Declaration of Independence with the original cast, and here I am getting corns on my tootsies waiting to listen to a fellow that anyone can hear any time for nothing at all. Really, girls, I don’t think any of us are in our right minds.”

“I know it’s a nuisance, ladies,” said Jimmy urbanely, “but when you see the smear that I think we’re goin’ to land in tomorrow’s papers you’ll be thankful that you stuck along. I want you all to sit in a group by yourselves and don’t any of you try to be too shrinking. I want the newspaper bunch to find you’re there without my tellin’ ’em. Then it’ll look as if your bein’ there is more on the level than otherwise. When it comes to the singin’ I want all of you, please, to cut in for all it’s worth just as if Bartlett was sittin’ down in front at a dress rehearsal.”

“When the trail hittin’ begins just sit tight and register intense interest in the proceedings. If any of you laugh it’ll spoil the whole arrangement. I was at one of these meetin’s out in Denver a couple of years ago and when those folks start comin’ down the aisles believe me it ain’t anything to get funny about. If any of the newspaper crowd get to you when it’s all over I want whoever does any talkin’ to say that you’re all profoundly impressed with everything and all that, and that you’re all comin’ again tomorrow afternoon and whenever else you get a chance.”

Jimmy didn’t heed the sarcastic reception with which his final words of instruction were greeted. His eyes were fixed admiringly for the moment on Lolita Murphy who stood near him talking earnestly to one of the “ponies.” To him she never looked prettier than she did in the simple little tailor-made suit and the trim black velvet toque which she had worn on the automobile ride they had taken together that afternoon, an excursion which seemed to have wiped out all traces of the “Cedar Rapids blues,” and which had left her smiling and happy again. She had protested a little against participating in the staging of Jimmy’s Big Idea, but had finally yielded to his persuasive arguments and here she was now, shining and radiant in contrast with her more elaborately attired and highly artificial sisters.

Just then a murmur swept through the crowd; attendants at the entrance shouted “easy, please, everyone,” and Jimmy and his group of more or less merry chorus maidens were caught in a whirling current of humanity which shot them through the door, rumpled and almost panic-stricken, and landed them at the head of a long aisle bisecting the huge empty auditorium which yawned before them, ablaze with lights and festooned with flags. The press agent was the first to collect his thoughts.

“Everybody make a dive for the front seats,” he shouted. “Follow me.”

The “Keep Moving” girls couldn’t do anything else. The surging crowd pressed them forward and they took the aisle on the run to avoid being knocked down. They all managed to get seats in the front rows where hand-mirrors, powder puffs and lip sticks soon came into play to the horror and stupefaction of many in the great choir of a thousand which occupied places on the platform directly in front of them.

Jimmy, having successfully performed his function as counselor and cicerone, was careful to seat himself a considerable distance away on the other side of the aisle where he effaced himself as much as possible by betraying an intense interest in a hymn book which was proffered him by an usher. He knew that it wouldn’t do for him to be seen in close proximity to his charges by any of the keen-eyed reporters who were even now gathering at the press table underneath the reading desk in the center of the platform.

One of these reporters, a curly-headed youngster with laughing eyes, turned his chair around to get a comprehensive view of the thousands of persons who were jostling each other in the center and side aisles as the vast building rapidly filled up. He caught a glimpse of the numerous facial toilettes in progress in the front rows, ran an appraising eye over the entire group; smothered an unchurchly chuckle and nudged his nearest companion. Presently the entire press table was abuzz with whispered comment as the identity of the visitors was established.

While the crowd was still noisily filing into the rear rows “Billy” Williams’ principal assistant put in an appearance on the platform and was loudly applauded by scattered groups who were promptly quieted by the ushers who moved quickly up and down the aisles, ready at a moment’s notice, to insist upon the preservation of the dignities. The assistant was a jovial looking man with an infectious smile. He held a cornet in one hand and he raised the other to command the attention of the great throng. A hush fell over the assemblage and presently the strains of “Onward, Christian Soldiers” cut through the silence with penetrating incisiveness. The effect was electric. When the cornetist had finished he turned swiftly and at precisely the same instant the thousand singers on the platform rose to their feet and burst into song. Another signal and the audience stood up. In response to a pleading gesture from the man with the smile a voice was raised here and there in unison with the chorus. He pleaded pantomimically once more and, as if by the exercise of sheer hypnotic control, he presently cajoled the great crowd into singing.

From that moment he held the audience in the hollow of his hand and played with it. Now he would have everyone on one side of the auditorium singing. Then he would be challenging those on the other side to outdo their competitors. Now it was the women who would be asked to sing alone. Next it would be the men. The choir would be asked to sing a verse. Then the entire audience would be called upon to follow them. By the time he had finished with those preliminaries he had the throats of everyone present in such thorough working order and the feeling of self-consciousness had been so dissipated that when he eventually demanded “a combined effort that will shake the gates of glory” the result was inspiring to the last degree.

As the final words of the final chorus were shaken out by ten thousand throats in one last concentrated burst of glad song the Rev. “Billy” Williams stepped through a door on the side of the platform and quickly crossed to the reading desk. No playwright, craftily scheming for a “good entrance” for a stage star, could ever have contrived a situation or a moment more pregnant with dramatic effectiveness or more tense with emotion. The last word of the hymn had died down and the air seemed to still throb with the dying echoes as the evangelist reached to the center of the platform and held up his hand in a gesture which was an invitation to prayer. Ten thousand heads were bowed in humble submission to his implied command, and in a voice which breathed sincerity and fine feeling he offered up a simple supplication beseeching the blessing of Divine Providence upon all assembled and upon himself, an unworthy instrument of a higher Power.

He was a stockily built man with a rugged and rather rough-hewn face. Blue eyes were set in it below bushy brows that gave him, in moods of intense earnestness, a somewhat ferocious aspect. They were eyes that now glowed with tender warmth, that grew hard or relentlessly cold next moment or that would ever and anon gleam and glint with merriment. They were the most expressive of his features. They mirrored his moods with uncanny accuracy. The movements of his squat and chunky frame were quick and darting when he was in action and even when he was in repose—which was seldom—he seemed to be literally seething with energy beneath the surface. When he permitted himself the luxury of letting down the inhibitive barriers which ordinarily held this energy in check he became a dynamic force that was almost irresistible in its onslaught on the emotions.

The prayer over, another hymn was sung under the magnetic leadership of the assistant, while “Billy” Williams pulled his chair over the edge of the platform and fraternized with the reporters as was his custom. Jimmy Martin, who was watching the proceedings circumspectly over the shoulder of a prim looking maiden lady who stood next him and whose hymn book he was sharing in a pretense of devotional interest, noticed that the curly headed newsgatherer was whispering to the evangelist and directing the latter’s attention to his charges in the front rows.

He saw “Billy” Williams look interestedly at the young women and then smile. It was such a healthy, wholesome, frank smile that it was instantly returned by the “Keep Moving” girls and Jimmy found himself taking note of the fact that even the most utterly blase members of the group seemed to drop their affected air of supreme world-weariness for a moment and become human once more. He noticed the evangelist turn away from the press table as the final chorus of the hymn was sung by everyone in the auditorium and look up towards the flag-bedecked rafters for a half minute or so as if pondering on an idea that had occurred to him. As the great audience seated itself he sprang to his feet with an air of decision.

“My friends,” he announced in a voice which swept to the farthest corners of the vast building, “I have an announcement to make that may disappoint some of you. I regret this but my duty is as clear to me as the unclouded noon-day sky. A Divine opportunity for service presents itself to me tonight and I would be recreant to my ideals if I did not embrace it. I had intended to preach to you on some of the lessons which I draw from the disgusting exhibition of prize-fighting which was tolerated in this city during the past week and I had announced that I would tan the hides of some of the city officials responsible for its sanction, and that I would nail those hides on the door of the house wherein abideth decency and honor.

“I have changed my plan, my friends, not because of any fear of the skulking swine whom I had intended to attack. Their turn on the griddle will come tomorrow night. Instead of preaching on that theme I have decided to devote this evening’s discourse to an attack upon the pernicious evils of the modern theatre,—that hell-hole, that cesspool, that slimy sink of iniquity and despair. Bear with me, my friends, for tonight I may be the humble medium by means of which the truth may be brought not only into your own lives, but into the lives and into the hearts of those more directly connected with this unholy institution for the degradation of mankind.”

He paused for a moment while a whispered buzz of comment spread through the auditorium. Jimmy Martin, who had sat fascinated throughout these introductory remarks and who could hardly credit the validity of his own auditory sensations, darted an apprehensive glance at the chorus girls. A few were registering haughty and contemptuous disdain and were sniffing the circumambient air. The majority, however, seemed gifted with a saving sense of humor and were smiling good-naturedly. Jimmy sighed with relief. It was pleasant to think that the Rev. “Billy” Williams was unconsciously playing into his hand so successfully that the story which was now certain to develop would take on an added value and would unquestionably be featured in the headlines.

There was another hymn and then the evangelist plunged into the body of his discourse. It was a sermon that he had already delivered with sensational success in no less than twenty-three states. It was a fine example of unrestrained denunciatory oratory and it ranked with his other internationally famous sermons such as “Dancing—the Devil’s Device for Drugging Decency”; or, “Modern Women’s Attire—Satan’s Trap for the Unwary Male.” He traced the history of the drama from the flourishing days of its great popularity in ancient Greece down through twenty-five centuries to the present day and on the way he stopped to excoriate a long line of playwrights from Aristophanes to the writer of a salacious bed-room farce then current in Boston. He denounced the comedies of Terence at which ancient Rome laughed; the immoral plays which had their day during the Restoration in England and the modern American musical comedy with equal vehemence and with that complete absence of a sense of proportion which always characterizes the propagandist and the special pleader.

He admitted, and rather gloried in the admission, that he had not been in a theatre in twenty-five years and declared that he would sooner be struck dead than ever cross the threshold of one again. On top of this assertion he declared with convincing sincerity, that “I know whereof I speak when I say to you that never before in the history of the civilized world has the theatre quite so flagrantly flaunted its indecencies in the face of an outraged public as at the present time.” He attacked the defenseless moving picture and consigned it and its progenitors and abettors to the exterior darkness.

Then he grew sentimental and his voice, which had been pitched in a high key, became touched with something soft and tender. He gave his idea of what he felt to be the blasting and devastating effect of the world of the theatre upon a girl who might had known the restraining influences of a simple home in her childhood and he presented a picture of the sordid contacts she would be forced to make in seeking a career upon the stage. Jimmy winced at the unreality of this picture; its unfairness and its gross exaggeration, but there was no doubting that the speaker himself believed it to be gospel truth and that he presented it with such convincing sincerity that the vast majority of those present were all aquiver with moral indignation at the charges he made. He let his voice drop to a lower tone, and there was the vibrant tremor of a deeply-felt emotion in it as he spoke, crouching over the reading desk and bending his head forward in an attitude of eager expectancy.

“Mayhap there is such a girl here tonight, drawn hither by the elusive whisperings of a conscience which was developed at the knee of a saintly mother and under the fond paternal care of a loving father. Perchance she comes, like so many of these poor butterflies of the stage, from a home in a small town untouched by the tinsel glitter and the tawdry allurements of the pleasure-ridden metropolis. Perhaps she was caught defenseless in a moment of passionate revolt against what she, poor foolish thing, felt to be the cramping restrictions of her environment, and perhaps she was swept off her feet into the current that leads swift and ever swifter to destruction.

“Perhaps she said good-bye to the peaceful little town, to the heart-broken mother and to the tender, patient father who was trying so hard to stay the flood of tears surging in his kindly eyes; perhaps she went to the big city and courted the muse of tragedy or of comedy and found, for a time, a specious joy in the glare and brilliance of the footlights. Perhaps there came to her a measure of success in the new realm of pleasure and mayhap she was carried out of herself, out of her real self, into a lotus land of dazzling splendor.”

His voice grew more tremulous now. He leaned forward and seemed to be speaking directly to the little group of girls in the front rows. Jimmy noticed that they were the focus point of observation on the part of the reporters.

“If there are any such girls here tonight,” pleaded the evangelist, “let me hold out to them the helping hand of service. Let me beg them, with all the sincerity of my nature, to give heed to the warning I have sounded. Let me ask them to picture the little home back yonder with the empty chair that’s always waiting for the daughter who has gone out to beat her fragile wings against the candle’s flame. Let them picture again the little mother with the soft, grey eyes. They were so bright and lively once, but now there is an anxious look in them. There is sadness in her heart, too, a heavy sadness, but she tries to be brave for the sake of him who sits so gloomily by the fire-place and aches for the touch of a vanished hand and the sound of a voice that is gone.

“Let me entreat you to bring the roses back to mother’s pale cheeks again if there are any of you here. Let me plead with you, out of a full heart, to bring the laughter back to father’s lips and the smile back to his care-worn face. Let me urge you to fly from the stifling air of the playhouse back to the clean, open spaces where the fair winds blow, where love and tender solicitude await you and where life is real and earnest and not an empty, foolish dream. We will pray for guidance and when we have finished I will ask all those who wish to be consecrated anew to come down the aisles and clasp my hand in a pledge of fealty to the service of Him whom they have forgotten for a while in the fretful rush of selfish living. Let us pray.”