The Early Ayn Rand

The Husband I Bought

Ayn Rand arrived in the United States from Russia in February 1926, at the age of twenty-one, and spent several months with relatives in Chicago before leaving for Hollywood. Although she had studied some English in Russia, she did not know the language well, and she devoted herself at first to writing scenarios for the silent screen. "The Husband I Bought" seems to be the only writing other than scenarios from these early months. It is the first story she wrote in English.

Miss Rand was aware that this story (like all her work in the 1920s) was a beginner's exercise, written in effect in a foreign language, and she never dreamed of publishing it. She did not even sign her name to it privately (although she had chosen the name "Ayn Rand" before she left Russia). She signed it with a pseudonym invented for this one case and never used again: Allen Raynor.

Many years later, Ayn Rand was asked to give a lecture defining the goal of her work. "The motive and purpose of my writing," she said, "is the projection of an ideal man. The portrayal of a moral ideal, as my ultimate literary goal, as an end in itself..." (The Romantic Manifesto).

Prior to The Fountainhead, however, she did not consider herself ready for this task; she knew that she had too much still to learn, both as a philosopher and as a writer. What she did regard as possible to her in these early years was the depiction of a woman's feeling for the ideal man, a feeling which she later called "manworship." She herself had experienced this feeling as a driving passion since childhood, primarily in response to the projections of heroes she discovered in Romantic literature.

Concepts such as "worship," "reverence," "exaltation," and the like are usually taken as naming emotions oriented to the supernatural, transcending this world. In Ayn Rand's view, however, this concedes to religion or mysticism what are actually the highest moral concepts of our language... [S]uch concepts do name actual emotions, even though no supernatural dimension exists; and these emotions are experienced as uplifting or ennobling, without the self-abasement required by religious definitions. What, then, is their source or referent in reality? It is the entire emotional realm of man's dedication to a moral ideal... It is this highest level of man's emotions that has to be redeemed from the murk of mysticism and redirected at its proper object: man.[1]

"Man-worship" means the enraptured dedication to values — and to man, man the individual, as their only achiever, beneficiary, and ultimate embodiment. This is basically a metaphysical-ethical feeling, open to either sex, a feeling uniting all those "who see man's highest potential and strive to actualize it" — those "dedicated to the exaltation of man's self-esteem and the sacredness of his happiness on earth."[2]

When a woman with this kind of character sees her deepest values actualized and embodied in a specific man, man-worship becomes (other things being equal) romantic love. Thus the special quality of the Ayn Rand romantic love: it is the union of the abstract and the concrete, of ideal and reality, of mind and body, of uplifted spirituality and violent passion, of reverence and sexuality.

Throughout the early years, female protagonists predominate in Ayn Rand's fiction; and one of their essential traits is this kind of man-worship. The early heroes are merely suggested; they are not fully realized until Roark. But whatever the language and literary problems still unresolved, the motif of the woman's feeling for a hero is realized. Even in this first story, Ayn Rand can write eloquent scenes on this theme (especially the moving farewell scene). Even this early, she can make effective use of the dramatic, short-sentence style that became famous with The Fountainhead.

Henry, in the present story, is the earliest ancestor of Leo (in We the Living), of Roark, of Francisco or Rearden (in Atlas Shrugged). Those who know the later heroes can see the first faint glimmer of them here. The focus, however, lies in Irene's response to him, which may be symbolized by a single line: "When I am tired, I kneel before the table [on which Henry's picture stands] and I look at him."

On the surface, this story might appear to be quite conventional. I can imagine someone reading it as the tragic story of an unloved wife "selflessly" removing herself from her husband's path. But the actual meaning is the opposite. Irene is not a selfless wife, but a passionate valuer; her decision to leave Henry is not self-sacrifice, but self-preservation and the reaffirmation of her values. She cannot accept anyone less than Henry, or any relationship with him less than what she has had.

Nor does Irene draw a tragic conclusion from her suffering. The glory of her life, she feels, is that Henry exists, that she had him once, and that she will love him always. Even in the agony of unrequited love, her implicit focus is on values, not on pain. This is especially clear in her desire to protect her ideal from suffering, to protect him for her own sake, although she is leaving him, to keep her supreme value whole, radiant, godlike, not dimmed or diminished by loss and sorrow. "Henry, you must be happy, and strong, and glorious. Leave suffering to those that cannot help it. You must smile at life... And never think about those that cannot. They are not worthwhile."

The story's events are conventional — but their meaning and motivation are vintage Ayn Rand, and utterly unconventional. What makes this possible is the profound seriousness of Irene's passion. This is what transforms and transfigures an otherwise ordinary tale.

There are, of course, major flaws in the story's execution. Important events are not dramatized, but merely narrated (and sometimes only sketchily explained). This is a practice opposite to that of the mature Ayn Rand. The moral code of the small town — the narrow respectability of sixty years ago — is thoroughly dated, and, in our age, virtually unbelievable. Above all, there is the problem of the language, which reflects a mind still unfamiliar with many essentials of English grammar, vocabulary, and idiom; as a result, the dialogue in particular is often stilted and unreal. I have edited out the most confusing lapses of English grammar and wording and the most obvious foreignisms, but have allowed the rest of the text to stand as written, so as to leave to posterity a record of where Ayn Rand began. Those who have read her novels can judge for themselves how far she was able to travel. It may be wondered why Ayn Rand chose to present man-worship first of all in the form of a story of unrequited love. My conjecture — it is only that — is that this aspect of the story was autobiographical Ayn Rand as a college student was in love with a young man in Russia who was the real-life source of the character of Leo. She remembered this young man, and her feeling for him, all her life. The relationship between them, however, was never fulfilled — whether for personal reasons or political ones (I believe he was exiled to Siberia) I do not know. But, either way, it is easy to imagine that alone in a new country, on the threshold of a new life, she should be drawn to focus as a kind of farewell on the man she loved and had now lost forever — or, more exactly, to focus on her own feeling for that man and loss.

L.P.

I should not have written this story. If I did it all — I did it only by keeping silent. I went through tortures, such as no other woman on earth, perhaps just to keep silent. And now — I speak. I must not have written my secret. But I have a hope. My one and only, and last hope. And I have no time before me. When life is dead and you have nothing left on your way — who can blame you for taking a last chance, a poor little chance... before the end? And so I write my story.

I loved Henry. I love him. It is the only thing I know and I can say about myself. It is the only thing, that was my life. There is no person on earth that has never been in love. But love can go beyond all limits and bounds. Love can go beyond all consciousness, beyond your very soul.

I never think of how I met him. It has no importance for me. I had to meet him and I did. I never think of how and when I began to love him or how I realized that he loved me. The only thing I know is that two words only were written on my life: "Henry Stafford."

He was tall and slim, and beautiful, too beautiful. He was intensely ambitious and never made a step to realize it. He had an immense, indefinite longing and did not trouble himself to think about it. He was the most perfectly refined and brilliant man, whom society admired and who laughed at society. A little lazy, very skeptical, indifferent to everything. Haughty and self-conceited for himself — gracious and ironical for everybody.

In our little town Henry Stafford was, of course, the aim and target of all the girls and "homemade" vamps. He flirted openly with everyone; that made them all furious.

His father had left him a big business. He managed it just enough to have the necessary money and the least trouble possible. He treated his business with the same smile of perfect politeness and perfect indifference with which he spoke to our society ladies or read a popular best-seller, from the middle.

Mr. Barnes, an old lawyer and a friend of mine, said once, with that thoughtful, indefinite look afar that was so characteristic to him: "That impossible man... I could envy the girl he shall love. I would pity the one he will marry."

For the moment, I could have been envied by Mr. Barnes, and not by Mr. Barnes only: Henry Stafford loved me. I was twenty-one then, just graduated from one of the best colleges. I had come to live in my little native town, in the beautiful estate that belonged to me after my parents' death. It was a big, luxurious house, with a wonderful old garden, the best in the town. I had a considerable fortune and no near relatives at all. I was accustomed to ruling my existence quietly and firmly myself.

I tell the whole truth here, so I must tell that I was beautiful and I was clever, I knew it; you always know it when you are. I was considered a "brilliant girl," "a girl with a great future" by everybody in our society, though they did not like me too much, for I was a little too willful and resolute.

I loved Henry Stafford. It was the only thing I ever understood in my life. It was my life. I knew I would never have another one, never could have. And I never did. Perhaps you should not love a human being like this. I cannot tell and I will not listen, if someone tells me you should not. I cannot listen: it was my whole life.

Henry Stafford loved me. He loved me seriously. It was the first thing he did not smile at in his life.

"I did not know I would be so helpless before love," he said sometimes. "It was impossible, that you would not be mine, Irene. I must always have the things I wish, and it is the only thing I ever wished!" He kissed my arms, from the fingertips to the shoulder... As for me, I looked at him and felt nothing else. His every movement, his manners, the sound of his voice made me tremble. When a passion like this gets hold of you, it never lets you go, never till your last breath. It burns all in you, and still flames, when there is nothing more to burn... But then, how happy, oh! how happy I was!

I remember one day better than everything. It was summer and there was as much sun on the bushes in my garden as water in a flood. We were flying on a swing, he and I. Both all in white, we stood at each side of the long, narrow plank, holding strongly to the ropes with both hands, and making the swing fly madly from one side to the other. We went so fast that the ropes cracked piteously and I could hardly breathe... Up and down! Up and down! My skirt flew high above my knees, like a light white flag.

"Faster, faster, Irene!" he cried.

"Higher, higher, Henry!" I answered.

With his white shirt open at the chest and the sleeves rolled above the elbows, he held the ropes with his arms, burned by the sun, and pushed the swing by easy, gracious movements of his strong, flexible body. His hair was flying in the wind...

And in the breathtaking speed, in the glowing sun, I saw and felt nothing but the man with the flying hair that was before me.

Then, without saying anything to each other, with one thought, we jumped down from the highest position of our swing, in its fastest moment we scratched our arms and legs badly in falling; but we did not mind it. I was in his arms. He kissed me with more madness than there had been in our flight. It was not for the first time, but I shall never forget it. To feel his arms around me made me dizzy, almost unconscious. I clutched his shoulders with my hands, so that my nails must have scratched him through his shirt, till blood. I kissed his lips. I kissed his neck, where the shirt was open.

The only words we said then were pronounced by him, or rather whispered, so that he could hardly distinguish them himself: "Forever... Irene, Irene, say that it is forever..."

I did not see him the next day. I waited anxiously till the evening- He did not come. Neither did he on the second day. A young fellow, a very self-confident and very clumsy "sheik," who tried hopelessly to win a little attention from me, called upon me that day and, talking endlessly and quickly about everything imaginable, like a radio, dropped finally: "By the way, Henry Stafford has got into some business trouble... serious, they say."

I learned the whole terrible news in the next days: Henry was ruined. It was a frightful ruin: not only had he lost everything, but he owed a whole fortune to many persons. It was not his fault, even though he had always been so careless with his business. It was circumstance. Everybody knew it; but it looked like his fault. And it was a terrible blow, a mortal blow to his name, his reputation, all his future.

Our little town was greatly excited. There were persons who sympathized with him, but most of them were maliciously, badly glad. They had always resented him, despite the admiration they surrounded him with, or just because of it, perhaps. "I would like to see what kind of face he'll make now," said one. "O-oh! That's great!" "Such a shame!" said others.

Many remarks turned upon me, also. They had always resented me for being Henry's choice. "Don't know what he'd find 'bout that Irene Wilmer," had said once Patsy Tillins, the town's prize vamp, summing up the general opinion. Now, Mrs. Hughes, one of our social leaders, a respectable lady, but who had three daughters to marry, said to me, with a charming smile: "I am sincerely happy that you escaped it in time, dear child... Always thought that man was good for nothing"; to which Patsy Tillins added, in a white cloud, as she was quickly powdering her nose: "Who's it you'll pick up next, dearie?"

I did not pay any attention to it all and I was not hurt. I only tried to understand the position and wondered if it was really so serious for Henry or not. One sentence only, pronounced by a stern, serious businessman whom I always respected, explained all to me and cleared the terrible truth. "He is an honest man," he said to a friend, not knowing that I heard it, "but the only honorable thing left to him is to shoot himself, and the sooner the better." Then I understood. I did not think long. I threw a wrap on my shoulders and ran to his house.

I trembled when I saw him. I scarcely even recognized him. He was sitting at his desk, with a stone face and immobile eyes. One of his arms was hanging helplessly by his side and I saw that only his fingers were trembling, so lightly I could scarcely notice it...

He did not hear me enter. I approached him and fell at his feet, burying my head in his knees. He shuddered. Then he took my arms strongly and forced me to rise. "Go home, Irene," he said with a stern, cold, expressionless voice, "and never come again."

"You... you don't love me, Henry?" I muttered.

There was suffering now in his voice, but anger also when he answered: "There can be nothing between us, now... Can't you understand it?"

I understood. But I smiled, I just smiled from fun, because it was too impossible to be true. Money was now between us, money pretended to take him from me. Him!... I laughed, a frightful laugh. But would you not laugh if one would try to deprive you of your whole life, your one and only aim, your god... because that god has no money?...

He did not want to listen to me. But I made him listen...

I could not tell how many long, horrible hours I spent begging and imploring him. He refused. He was tender at times, asking me to forget him; then he was cold and stern, and turned his back to me, not to hear my words, ordering me to leave him. But I saw the passionate love in his eyes, the despair that he tried in vain to hide. I remained- I fell on my knees; I kissed his hands. "Henry... Henry, I cannot live without you! ... I just cannot!" I cried.

It took a long time to conquer him. But I was desperate and despair always finds a way. He surrendered himself at last and agreed... And when he held me in his arms, covering my face with kisses, flooded by tears, when he whispered: "Yes... Irene... yes," and his lips trembled, I knew that he loved me, that an immense love made his eyes so dark with emotion...

The town exploded with surprise when they learned the news. No one was able to believe it, at first. When they did — the terror was general. Even Mrs. Hughes rushed to me and cried with a real sincerity and a sincere terror: "But... but you will not marry him, Irene! ... It's foolish! Why, but it's... it's foolish!" She was unable to find another word. "The girl is crazy!" said her friend, Mrs. Brogan, who was not so particular about expressions.

Mr. Davis, an old friend of my parents, came to speak to me. He asked me to think it over again. He advised me not to marry Henry, to remember that if I gave my fortune to pay my husband's debt, it would take all I possess — and could I be sure of the future? All this only made me laugh. I was so happy!

The most farsighted of all was Mr. Barnes. He looked at me with his long, thoughtful glance. He had a sad, kind smile, which his experience with life and men had given him. He said: "I fear you will be very unhappy, Irene... One is never happy with a passion like this."

Then he said to Henry, in a voice unusually stern for him: "Now, be careful with yourself, Stafford."

"I think it was superfluous to tell me this," answered Henry coldly.

We were married. Some persons say there is no perfect happiness on earth. There was. I was. I could not even call it happiness — the word is too small.

I was his wife. I was not Irene Wilmer any longer, I was Irene Stafford. I can hardly describe the first time of my married life. I do not remember anything. If one asks me what was then, I could answer one word only: "Henry!" He was there, and what could I have noticed besides this? We sold all I had, the debt was paid, and he was saved. We could live just for one another, with nothing to disturb us, in the maddest, the wildest of happiness two human beings had ever experienced.

The day came, however, when we were obliged to think of the future. We had paid all the money I possessed, sold my estate and my jewels. So we had to think of some work. Henry had been educated as an engineer. He found employment. It was not a very big position, but it was good enough for the beginning, considering the fact he had never worked in his specialty before.

I rented a little flat. And then we lived, and I took all my strength, all my soul to make his life as it should be. I helped him in his work. He had not enough character to do it always with the necessary energy. He would often, in the middle of an important work, lie down on the sofa, his feet on his desk, with some eccentric new book in hand and a current of smoke from his cigarette. I always found a way to make him work and be more and more successful

I never allowed myself to become just his "pal," his good friend and servant-for-all-work. I was his mistress, as well as his wife, and he was my lover. I managed to put a certain indefinite aloofness about me, that made me always seem somewhat inaccessible. He never noticed who was doing all the housework for him. I was a queen in his house, a mysterious being, that he was never sure to possess wholly and unquestionably, that he could never call his property and habitual commodity. I can say, we did not notice our home life; we had no home life. We were lovers, with an immense passion between us. Only.

I made a romance out of his life. I made it seem different, strange, exciting every day, every moment. His house was not a place to rest, eat, and sleep in. It was an unusual, fascinating palace, where he had to fight, win, and conquer, in a silent, thrilling game.

"Who could have thought of creating a woman like you, Irene!" he said sometimes, and his kisses left burning red marks on my neck and shoulders. "If I live it is only because I have you!" I said nothing. I never showed him all my adoration. You must not show a man that he is your whole life. But he knew it; he felt it...

The town's society, which had met our marriage with such disapproval, began to look more kindly at us, after a while. But through the first hard time of fight, work, and loneliness, I led him, I alone, and I am proud to say that he did not need anyone else, through all those years.

A frequent guest of ours and my best friend was Mr. Barnes. He watched our life attentively. He saw our impossible, unbelievable happiness. It made him glad, but thoughtful. He asked me once: "What would happen if he stopped loving you?"

I had to gather all my strength to make my voice speak: "Don't ever repeat it. There are things too horrible that one must not think about."

Time went, and instead of growing cold and tedious, our love became greater and greater. We could understand each other's every glance, every movement now. We liked to spend long evenings before a burning fireplace in his study. I sat on a pillow and he lay on the carpet, his head on my knees. I bent to press my lips to his, in the dancing red glow of the fire. "I wonder how two persons could have been made so much for one another, Irene," he said.

We lived like this four years. Four years of perfect, delirious happiness. Who can boast of such a thing in his life? After all, I wonder sometimes whether I have the right to consider myself unhappy now. I paid a terrible price to life, but I had known a terrible happiness. The price was not too high. It was just. For those days had been, they were, and they were mine.

Society had taken us back, even with more appreciation than before, perhaps. Henry became the most popular, the most eagerly expected guest everywhere. He had made a rapid career. He was not very rich yet, but his name began to be mentioned among those of the most brilliant engineers. When a man is so interesting, so fascinating as he was, lack of money will never mean much to society...

Then it happened... I have had the strength to live through it, I shall have the strength to write it down...

A new woman came to our town and appeared in our society. Her name was Claire Van Dahlen. She was divorced and had come from New York after a trip to Europe to rest in our little town, where she had some distant relatives. I saw her on the first evening she appeared in our society, at a dancing party.

She had the body of an antique statuette. She had golden skin and dark-red lips. Her black hair was parted in the middle, combed straight and brilliant, and she wore long, hanging perfume-earrings. She had slow, soft, fluent movements; it seemed that her body had no bones at all. Her arms undulated like velvet ribbons. She was dressed very simply, but it was the simplicity that costs thousands of dollars... She was gorgeously, stunningly beautiful.

Our society was amazed with admiration; they had never seen a woman like this... She was perfectly charming and gracious with everybody, but she had that haughty, disinterested smile of women accustomed to and tired of admiration.

Henry looked at her... he looked too long and too fixedly. The glance with which he followed her every movement was full of a strange admiration, too intense for him. He danced with her several times.

At the end of the party, a crowd of young men rushed to ask the favor of bringing Mrs. Van Dahlen home. "I will have to choose," she said, with a charming, indulgent smile.

"Choose from everyone present!" proposed one of her eager new admirers.

"From everyone?" she repeated, with her smile. She paused, then: "Well, it will be Mr. Stafford."

Henry had not asked for the favor; he was astonished. But it was impossible to refuse. Mr. Barnes brought me home.

When Henry came back and I asked his opinion of her, he said shortly and indifferently: "Yes, very interesting." I had seen that he was much more impressed than this, but I did not pay any attention to it.

The next time we had to go to a party, Henry had no desire to go out that evening. He was tired, he had work to do. "Why, Henry, they expect us," I said. "There will be many persons tonight: Mr. and Mrs. Harwings, Mr. and Mrs. Hughes, Mrs. Brooks, Mrs. Van Dahlen, Mr. Barnes..."

"Well, yes, I think we might go," he said suddenly.

He danced with Claire Van Dahlen that evening more than anyone else. Her dress had a very low neck in back, and I saw his fingers sometimes touch her soft silken skin. The look in her eyes, which were fixed straight into his, between her long, dark lashes, astonished me... At the table, they were placed near one another: the hostess wanted to please Mrs. Van Dahlen.

After this Henry missed no party where she appeared. He took her for rides in his automobile. He called at her relatives', where she lived. He managed to be in theaters the evenings she was there. He had a strange look, eager and excited. At home, he was always busy, working with an unusual speed, then hurrying somewhere.

I saw it, I was astonished; that was all. I had no suspicion whatever. The thing I could have suspected was so horrible, so unbelievably atrocious, that it simply could not slip into my mind. I could not think of it.

Then, suddenly, he broke off every relation with her. He did not want to go out. He refused sternly every invitation.

He was dark, and beneath his darkness I distinguished one thing — fear.

Then I understood. His courtship had meant nothing to me; his break told me everything. Oh, not immediately, of course. These things never happen immediately. First, a vague, uncertain thought, a supposition, that made my blood cold. Then a doubt. A desperate fight against this doubt, which only made it stronger. Then an attentive, frightful study. Then — certainty. Henry loved Claire Van Dahlen... Yes, it is my own hand that writes this sentence.

There are things, there are moments in life, which you must not speak about. That was what I felt when I told this sentence to myself for the first time. I found some gray hair on my head that day.

Then came a madness. I could not believe it. It was there and it could not enter into my brain. Oh, that awful feeling of everything falling, falling down, everything around me and in me!... There were days when I was calm, hysterically calm, and I cried it was impossible. There were nights when I bit my hands till blood... And then I resolved to fight.

There was a cold, heavy terror in my head now, and life had changed its whole appearance for me. But I gathered all my strength. I told myself that one must not give up one's husband so easily. He had been mine — he might be again.

I understood clearly what was going on in his soul. He had flirted with Claire at first, thinking he was just a little interested in her as in a new acquaintance. The supposition of something serious seemed as impossible to him as it seemed to me. He did not think of it. And it came. And when it came — he broke all off, resolved to crush it immediately.

So we both fought. I, for him; he, against himself. Oh, it was long and hard! We fought bravely. We lost — both.

He was never cold, stern, or irritable with me during those days of his struggle. He was tender as ever. I was gay, quiet as always, attractive as never before. But I could not win him back even for a moment: it was done, and finished.

"Henry," I said once, very calmly and very firmly, "we shall go to this party." We had been refusing all invitations for a long time. Now we went to the party.

He saw her and I watched him. We both knew what we wanted to know. There was no use fighting any longer.

I did not sleep that night. I made all my efforts to breathe. Something strangled me. "One of us has to go through this torture, for life," I thought, "he or I… It shall be I…" I breathed with effort. "He will tell me everything at last... and I shall give him a divorce... And if he should be too sorry for me... I shall tell him that I do not love him as much as before... if I have the strength to do it..." One thing only was clear and without doubt — he could never be happy with me again.

"Henry," I asked one evening, sitting at the fireplace with him and forcing my voice not to tremble, "what will you say... if I tell you I do not love you any more?"

He looked into my eyes, kindly and seriously. "I will not believe it," he answered.

Time passed and he did not say a word to me about the truth. I could not understand him. He pitied me, perhaps; but he must tell it sooner or later. He was calm, quiet, and tender; but I saw his pale face, the drooping corners of his mouth, his dark, desperate eyes. When a passion like this gets him — a man is helpless, and I could not blame him. He must have gone through a terrible torture. But he was silent.

In those heartbreaking days, there was one thing which made me furious, for it looked as though fate was playing a grim joke on me. This thing was Gerald Gray. He was a young English aristocrat who came to our town not long ago for a trip. He was thirty years old, elegant, flawlessly dressed, gracious and polite to the points of his nails, and flirting was his only occupation in life. Many women in our town had fallen in love with him. I do not know what made him become interested, too much interested in me. Gracious, polite, yet firm in his courtship, he called upon me, even after I almost plainly threw him out. And this during the time when I awoke every morning, thinking that it is the last day, that I shall hear the fatal words from Henry, at last!

But I waited and Henry said nothing. He refused any possibility of meeting Claire Van Dahlen. She did all she could to meet him. We were flooded with invitations. She sent an invitation to him herself, at last. He refused.

Then came the day when I understood everything. And that day decided my fate. I went to a party alone that evening. Henry stayed at home, as usual, and besides, he had work to do. I could not refuse this invitation without seriously offending the hostess. So I went, but it was a kind of torture for me. I waited with the greatest impatience for the time when it would be possible for me to leave.

I never regretted afterwards that I went to that party. As I was passing near a curtain, I heard two women speaking on the other side of it. It was Mrs. Hughes and Mrs. Brogan. They were speaking about Henry and Claire; they were speaking about me. "Well, she has given all her fortune," said Mrs. Hughes, "she paid enough for him. He cannot leave her now."

"I'll say so," said Mrs. Brogan. "She bought her husband. He might be miserable as a starving dog now — he could not show it!"

I stuffed my handkerchief into my mouth. I knew, now...

I went home alone, on foot... I bought my husband... I bought my husband!... So this was the mystery. He could not leave me. He will never tell me. He will be tortured and keep silent He cannot be happy with me and his life will be ruined... because of my money!... Oh! if he will not speak, I must speak!

Perhaps I would not have done what I did, had it not been for that money. I would have fought more, perhaps, and might have gained him back. But now — I could not. I had no right. If he ever came back to me, how would I know whether it was love or thankfulness for my "sacrifice" and the resolution to sacrifice himself in his turn? How would I know that he was not ruining his happiness to recompense me for that money?

I must give him up now — voluntarily and myself. I must give him up — because he owed me too much. I had no right to my husband any more — because I had done too much for him...

I must act now. But what to do? Offer him a divorce? He will not accept it. Tell him I do not love him? He will not believe.

I took off my hat; I could not keep it on. Little drops of rain fell on my forehead and the wind blew my hair — it was such a relief!

I saw a light in the window of Henry's study as I approached our house. I went in noiselessly, not to disturb him. And when I passed by the door of his study, I heard a sound that made my heart stop. I approached the door and looked through the opening, not believing my ears. Sitting at the desk with his arms on his plans and his head on his arms, Henry was sobbing. I saw his back, which shuddered, racked by deep, desperate sobs.

I made a step from the door. I looked before me with senseless eyes... Henry cried!...

"... He might be miserable as a starving dog now — he could not show it!"

I knew what I had to do. He will not believe that I do not love him? I must make him believe it!...

I went up to my room. I entered it mad, horrified, desperate. I came out in the morning, quiet and calm. What had gone on in me during that night — I will never speak about it with any living creature.

"What is the matter, Irene?" asked Henry, looking into my face, when I came downstairs in the morning.

"Nothing," I answered. "It was a bad dream; it's over now."

I was conscious of one thing only then: I must find a way, an opportunity to prove to Henry my unfaithfulness, so that there should remain no doubt. I found that opportunity. It came the same day.

I returned home after being out, and, entering the hall, I heard a voice in Henry's study. I knew that voice. It was Claire Van Dahlen. I was not astonished. I approached the study door calmly and listened, looking through the keyhole. She was there. I saw her long, bright-green silk shawl on a tan suit. She was perfectly beautiful.

I heard Henry's voice: "Once more, I ask you to leave my house, Mrs. Van Dahlen. I do not want to see you. Do you not understand this?"

"No, I don't, Mr. Stafford," she answered. She looked at him with half-closed eyes. "You are a coward," she said slowly.

He made a step towards her and I saw him. His face was white and, even from the distance where I was, I could see his lips tremble.

"Go away," he said in a strangled voice.

She opened her eyes wholly then. They had a strange look of passion, command, and immense tenderness, that she tried to hide. "Henry..." she said slowly, and her voice seemed velvet like her body.

"Mrs. Van Dahlen..." he muttered, stepping back.

She approached him more. "You cannot fight... I love you, Henry!... I want you!"

He was unable to speak. She continued, with a haughty, lightly mocking smile: "You love me and you know it, as well as I. Will you dare to deny it?"

There was torture in his eyes that I could not look upon; and, as though he felt it, he covered them with his hand. "Why did you come here!" he groaned.

She smiled. "Because I want you!" she answered. "Because I love you, Henry, I love you!" She slowly put her hands on his shoulders. "Tell me, Henry, do you love me?" she whispered.

He tore his hand from his eyes. "Yes!... Yes!... Yes!..." he cried. He seized her wildly in his arms and pressed his lips to hers with a desperate greediness.

I was not stricken. There was nothing new for me in all this. But to see him kiss her — it was hard. I closed my eyes. That was all.

"I expected it long ago," she said at last, with her arms embracing him more passionately than she wanted to show.

But he pushed her aside, suddenly and resolutely. "You will never see me again," he said sternly.

"I will see you tonight," she answered. "I will wait for you at nine o'clock at the Excelsior."

"I shall not come!"

"You shall!"

"Never!...Never!"

"I ask you a favor, Henry... Till nine o'clock!" And she walked out of the study. I had just time to throw myself behind a curtain-When I looked into his room again, Henry had fallen on a chair, his head in his hands. I saw all his despair in the fingers that clutched his hair convulsively.

I had found my opportunity. Now — I had to act.

I went to my room, took off my hat and overcoat. I moved towards the door, to go downstairs, to Henry... and begin. Then I stopped. "Do you realize," I muttered to myself, "do you understand whom and what you are going to lose?" I opened my mouth to take a breath.

There was a photograph of Henry on my table, the best he had ever taken. There was an inscription on it: "To my Irene — Henry — Forever." I approached it. I fell on my knees. I looked at it with a silent prayer. "Henry... Henry..." I whispered. I had no voice to say more. I asked him for the strength to do what I had to do.

Then I arose and walked downstairs.

"Henry," I said, entering his room, "I have received a letter from Mrs. Cowan. She is ill and I am going to visit her." Mrs. Cowan was an old acquaintance that lived in a little town four hours' ride from ours. I visited her very rarely.

"I would not like you to go," answered Henry, tenderly passing his hand on my forehead. "You look pale and tired; you must need a rest."

"I am perfectly well," I answered. "I shall be back tomorrow morning."

I had a telephone in my room, and Henry could not hear me talk. At seven o'clock I called Gerald Gray. "Mr. Gray," I said, "would you be at half past eight at the Excelsior?"

"W-what?... Oh! Mrs. Stafford!" he muttered in the telephone, losing his perfect countenance before this unexpected favor. I hung up the receiver.

My plan was simple. Henry shall come to the Excelsior for Claire Van Dahlen and he shall see me with Mr. Gray. I had told him that I was going away for the whole night. That's all.

I dressed myself slowly and carefully. I tried to be very attentive, very busy with my toilet, and to drown all thoughts in it. I put on my best gown, a silver gauze dress, all glimmering with rhinestones. I made up my face to look as pretty as possible: I had to use a lot of rouge for it.

Then, suddenly, a thought flashed through my mind, a thought that made me jump from my chair. What if Henry did not come to the Excelsior? He had cried "Never! Never!" so resolutely... What if he had the strength to resist Claire?

The porcelain powder box which I held dropped from my hand and broke to pieces.

Oh, then, if he does not come, it means that he does not love her so much! Then, I will run home and fall at his feet and tell him everything!... I had not cried all day; now, tears rolled down my cheeks, so big that I was astonished. Once a person has lost hope, its return is more cruel than the most terrible tortures. I was calm when I began to dress. Now my hands trembled, so that I could hardly touch things.

When I was ready, I put on my traveling overcoat; it hid my evening dress completely. Then I went downstairs.

"Take care of yourself, Irene," said Henry, fastening tightly and carefully the collar of my overcoat. "Don't tire yourself. Don't take too much out of your strength."

"No, Henry, I won't... Goodbye, Henry." I kissed him. For the last time, perhaps...

I walked on foot through the dark streets. It was a cold night and the wind ran under my overcoat, on my naked arms and shoulders. I felt the soft cloud of silver gauze blown close to my legs. I walked firmly and steadily, with a high head.

The Excelsior was a big nightclub in our town. It had not a bad reputation, but somehow women came there with their husbands or did not come at all. I saw the gigantic electric letters "Excelsior," so white that it hurt the eyes to look upon, above the wide glass entrance. I went upstairs. I did not hear my own footsteps on the deep, soft carpets, and the waiters' metallic buttons gleamed like diamonds in the strong, unnatural light around me.

The sharp, piercing rumble of a jazz band struck my head like a blow when I entered the great hall I saw big round white lanterns, white tables, black suits and naked shoulders. I saw glittering glasses, silk stockings, and diamonds.

Mr. Gray was waiting for me. He looked like the best pictures in the most exclusive men's style magazine. As a perfect gentleman, he did not show the slightest sign of astonishment or surprise at all this. He smiled as courteously and respectfully as it is possible for a man to smile. I chose a table behind a screen, from where I could see the entrance door. Then I sat looking at it, and, strangely, all seemed to be veiled by a cloud. I distinguished the room very vaguely, as in a mist, while I saw the door clearly, precisely, as though through a magnifying glass, with every little detail, to the slightest reflection of the glass, to the smallest curves of the knob.

I remember that Mr. Gray spoke about something and I spoke. He smiled and I smiled, probably, also... There was a clock above the entrance door. It was eight-thirty when I arrived. The hands on the dial moved. I watched them. And if someone could look into my soul then — he would have seen there a round white dial with moving hands. Nothing more.

Just at nine, in the very second when the big hand reached the middle of the 12, the wide glass door opened. I knew it would be opened... However, it was not Henry, no. But it was Claire Van Dahlen.

She was alone. She had a plain black velvet dress, just a piece of soft velvet wrapped around her body; but she had the most gorgeous diamond tiara on her head, with sparkling stones falling to her beautiful golden shoulders.

She stopped at the door and inspected the hall with a quick glance around. She saw at once that he was not there. Her lips had an imperceptible movement of anger and grief. She moved slowly across the hall and sat at a table. I could observe her through a hole in the screen.

Nine-fifteen... The door opened every two minutes. Men in dress coats and women in silk wraps and furs entered and walked noiselessly into the brilliant crowd. I watched the endless torrent of patent-leather shoes and little silver slippers on the soft lavender carpet at the entrance. Oh, why, why were there so many visitors in this restaurant! Every time I heard the door open, with a sinister creaking sound, a cold shudder ran through my back and knees.

My eyes could not leave the door for a second. "Careful, Mrs. Stafford!" I heard Mr. Gray's voice, as in a dream. I noticed that I had been holding a glass of water and the water was spilling on my dress. I took a little piece of ice from the glass and swallowed it. Mr. Gray looked at me with astonishment.

Nine twenty-five... My knees trembled convulsively. It seemed to me that I would never be able to walk. I looked at Claire through the screen's hole. She, too, was waiting. Her eyes were also fixed at the door. She was nervously breaking a flower's stem in her fingers.

Nine-thirty... I could not have told whether the jazz band was rumbling or it was the heavy, striking, knocking noise in my temples... I held my throat with my hand: there was so little air in this hall and a strange leaden humming strangled me.

At nine forty-five he came. The door opened and I saw Henry. For a second it seemed to me that he was standing in the air: there was nothing around. Then I saw the door, but did not see him, though he was standing there: I saw a black hole. Then I saw him again and he moved. And there was a strange dead silence around. No sounds in my ears.

Then I threw back my head and cried: "Let us be merry, Mr. Gray!" I flung my arms around his neck and, burying my face in his shoulder, I bit convulsively his coat: I understood plainly one thing only — I must not shout.

Mr. Gray was amazed; he had been sitting with his back to the door and had not seen Henry. But with his perfect, courteous self-possession, he remained calm and even passed his hand cautiously on my hair.

I raised my head and he could read nothing in my face now. But my eyes must have been horrible, for he looked into them and grew a little uneasy. I seized nervously at all the glasses that were on the table. "Where is the wine, Mr. Gray?" I cried. "Why is there no wine? I want wine!" Afraid to make any opposition, he called a waiter and whispered some words, and the waiter winked.

I looked through the screen's hole. Henry approached Claire. She had involuntarily jumped from her chair and smiled, with more happiness and passionate tenderness than she wanted to show, perhaps. She must have been very anxious, for she did not even say a word about his delay. He was pale and serious. This delay told me more than anything: he had struggled, oh! horribly struggled, and lost... He sat at her table. I saw his eyes light with an unconquerable joy as he looked at her, and his lips smiled... And he was so beautiful!

The waiter brought the wine, two bottles. Mr. Gray wanted to pour it. I seized the bottle from his hand and filled a glass, so that the wine ran over, on my dress. Then I lifted the glass as high as I could and let it fall to the floor, breaking with a sharp, ringing sound. I burst into a loud, piercing, provocative laugh.

Mr. Gray was amazed. "Laugh!" I whispered threateningly. "I want you to laugh! Laugh loudly!" He laughed. I looked through the hole. Many persons glanced in our direction, wondering who could be making that vulgar noise. That was what I wanted.

I seized my hair and brought it to a wild disorder, so that threads flew in all directions. Then I seized a bottle of wine and flung it to the floor, with a terrible noise. I laughed again and cried: "O-oh! Gerry!" Then I overturned my chair and jumping on Mr. Gray's knees, embracing him, I pressed my face to his, as though I was kissing him. He could not notice that I pushed the screen with my foot in the same moment. The screen fell and there I was, on "Gerry's" lap!

Many persons arose from their seats to look, and when I arose, pretending to be very vexed and ashamed — I stood face to face with Henry.

I shall never forget his eyes... We were silent... "Irene... Irene," he muttered.

I pretended to be stricken, afraid, terrified the first minutes. Then I raised my head and looking at him with the greatest insolence: "Well?" I asked.

He stepped back. He shuddered. He passed his hand over his eyes. Then he said slowly: "I will not disturb you." He turned and walked to Mrs. Van Dahlen. "Let us go to another restaurant... Claire," he said. They walked out. I followed them with my eyes, till they disappeared behind the door. That was all...

I was completely, deeply calm now. I turned to Mr. Gray. He had put the screen around our table again. "Do not grieve yourself, Mrs. Stafford," he said. "It is for the best, perhaps."

"Yes, Mr. Gray, it is for the best," I answered.

We sat down and we finished our dinner, calmly and quietly. I had all my consciousness now. I spoke, and smiled, and flirted with him so gently, so graciously, that he was wholly charmed and forgot the wild scene. At half past ten I asked him to take me home. He was disappointed that our meeting was so short, but said nothing and courteously brought me to my house door, in an automobile. "Shall we meet again soon?" he asked, holding my hand in his.

"Yes, very soon... and very often," I answered. He went away, completely happy.

I entered our apartment. I stood motionless, I could not tell for how long... It was done...

I entered Henry's study. I saw some papers on the floor and, picking them up, replaced them on the desk. A chair was pushed into the middle of the room — I put it back. I adjusted the pillows on the sofa. I put in order the plans and drawings that covered all the desk. His rulers, compasses, and other objects were thrown all over the room. I put them on the desk. I made a fire in the fireplace... It was for the last time that I could do a wife's duty for him.

When there was nothing more to arrange, I went to the fireplace and sat on the floor. Henry's armchair was standing by the fire, and there was a pillow near it, on which he put his feet. I did not dare to sit in the armchair. I lay on the floor and put my head on the pillow... The wood was burning with a soft red glow in the darkness and a little crackling sound in the silence. I lay motionless, pressing the pillow to my lips...

I arose quickly when I heard a key turn in the entrance door's lock. I went into the hall. Henry was pale, very pale. He did not look at me. He took off his hat and overcoat and hung them on the clothes peg. Then he walked to his study and, passing by me, looked at me with a long glance. He entered first; I followed him.

We were silent for a long time. Then he spoke, sternly and coldly: "Will you explain to me anything?"

"I have nothing to explain, Henry," I answered. "You have seen."

"Yes," he said, "I have seen."

He walked up and down the room, then stopped again. He smiled, a smile of disgust and hatred. "It was great!" he said. I did not answer. He trembled with fury. "You... you..." he cried, clasping his fists.

"How could you?" I was silent. "And I called my wife during four years a woman like that!" He pressed his head. "You make me crazy! It is impossible! It is not you! You were not like this! You could not be like this!"

I said nothing. He seized me by the arms and flung me to the floor. "Speak, dirt! Answer! Why did you do it?"

I looked at him, I looked straight into his eyes and told a lie. It was the most atrocious lie that could be and the only one he could believe and understand. "I hid it from you because I did not want to make you unhappy. I struggled a long time against this love and could not stand it any longer," I said.

And he understood this. He left my arms and stepped back. Then laughed. "Well, I can make you happy, then!" he cried. "I don't love you at all and I am not unhappy at all! I love another woman! I am only happy now!"

"You are happy, Henry?"

"Yes, immensely! I see that you are disappointed!"

"No, Henry, I am not disappointed. It is all right."

"All right?... What are you doing lying on the floor? Get up!... All right? You have the insolence to say that?"

He walked up and down the room. "Don't look at me!" he cried. "You have no right any more even to look at me! I forbid it to you!"

"I will not look, Henry," I answered, bowing my head.

"No, you will! You will look at yourself!" he cried and, seizing me by the arm, flung me to the looking glass. "Look at your dress!" he cried. Dark wine spots covered the silver gauze of my dress.

"You loved him, you went with him, well. But wine! But kisses! But that conduct in a public place!" he cried. Oh, my plan had worked perfectly! I said nothing.

He was silent for some time, then he said, more calmly and coldly: "You understand that there will be nothing between us, now. I wish I could forget that there ever was... And I want you to forget that I was your husband. I want you to give me back everything you have from me, any kind of remembrance."

"Well, Henry, I can give them now," I answered.

I went to my room and brought everything, all his pictures, his presents, some letters, all I had from him. He took them all and threw them into the fireplace. "May I... may I keep this one, Henry?" I asked, handing him the best picture, with the inscription. My fingers trembled. He took it, looked, and threw it back to me disdainfully. It fell on the floor. I picked it up.

"I will see to it that we are divorced as soon as possible," he said. He fell into an armchair. "Let me alone now," he added.

I walked to the door, then stopped. I looked at him. And I said, with a voice that was very firm and very calm: "Forgive me, Henry... if you can... and forget me... And don't grieve with grim thoughts, think about Claire, and be happy... and don't think about me... it is not worthwhile."

He looked at me. "You were like this... before," he said slowly.

"I was... I am no longer... Everything changes, Henry... everything has an end. But life is beautiful... life is great... You must be happy, Henry."

"Irene," he said, in a very low voice, "tell me, why have you changed?"

I have gone through it all calmly. This simple sentence, my name, his low voice, made something rise in my throat. But for one second only. "I could not help it, Henry," I answered.

Then I went upstairs to my room.

I bit my lips, when I entered, so that I felt the heavy taste of blood in my mouth. "That's nothing," I muttered. "That's nothing, Irene... That's nothing..." I felt a strange necessity to speak; to say something; to drown with words something that has no name and that was there, waiting for me. "That's nothing... nothing... It will be over... it will be over... just one minute, Irene, it will be over... one minute..."

I knew I was not blind, but I did not see anything. I did not hear a sound... When I began to hear again I noticed that I was repeating senselessly, "... one minute... one minute..."

Henry's picture, which I held, fell to the floor. I looked at it. Then, suddenly, I saw clearly, wholly, and exactly what had happened and what was going to happen. It lasted less than a second, as though in the glow of a sudden lightning, but it seized me at the throat, like pincers of red-hot iron. And I shouted. I uttered a cry. It was not even a cry, it was not a human sound. It was the wild howl of a wounded animal; the primitive, ferocious cry of life for help.

I heard running footsteps on the staircase. "What happened?" cried Henry, knocking at my door.

"Nothing," I answered. "I saw a mouse." I heard him go downstairs.

I wanted to move, to take some steps. But the floor was running under my feet, running down, down. And there was a black smoke in my room that turned, turned, turned in columns with a frightful speed. I fell...

When I opened my eyes, I was lying on the floor. It was quite dark in the room, and cold. A window had been left open and the curtains moved slowly, blown by the wind. "I was unconscious," I said to myself.

I rose to my feet and tried to stand. My knees seemed broken. I let myself slowly down again. Then I saw his picture on the floor. A long shudder ran through all my body.

I took the picture and put it in an armchair. Then I whispered, and my voice was human now, weak and trembling: "Henry... Henry... my Henry... that is nothing... It is not true, is it, Henry? It was a dream, perhaps, and we shall awaken soon... And I will not cry. Don't look at my eyes, Henry, lam not crying... it will be over... in a minute... Because, you see, it was hard... I think it was even very hard... But that is nothing. You are with me, aren't you, Henry?... And you know everything... You do... I am foolish to grieve like this, am I not, Henry? Say that I am... Smile, Henry, and laugh at me... and scold me for torturing myself like this, when there is nothing... nothing at all... Nothing happened... and you know everything... You see, I am smiling... And you love me... You are my Henry... I am a little tired, you know, but I will take a rest... and it will be over... No, I am not crying, Henry... I love you... Henry…"

Tears ran down my cheeks, big, heavy, silent tears. I did not cry, there were no sobs, no sound. I spoke and I smiled. Only tears rolled down, without interruption, without sound, without end...

I do not remember much about the months that followed. We had applied for a divorce, on the ground of wife's unfaithfulness. Waiting for it, I lived in Henry's house. But we did not meet often. When we met, we greeted one another politely.

I managed to live, somehow. I remember that I read books, lots of books. But I cannot remember a word of them now, their titles or how they looked; not one of them. I walked much too, in the little deserted streets of the poorest neighborhoods, where nobody could see me. I think I was calm then. Only I remember that I once heard a boy say, pointing at me: "Here's one that's goofy!"

I met Gerald Gray often, as often as I could, and I flirted with him, I had to. I do not remember one of our meetings. But I must have played my part perfectly well, for I remember, as though out of a deep fog, one sentence said by him: "You are the most bewitching, the most exquisite of women, Mrs. Stafford, and your husband is a fool... for which I am immensely happy." I do not know how I could have done it; I must have acted with the precision and unconsciousness of a lunatic.

One thing I remember well: I watched Henry. He spent all his time with Claire. His eyes were brilliant, and sparkling, and smiling, now. I, who knew him so well, who understood every line of his face, I saw that he was happy. He seemed to have come out of a heavy nightmare, which his existence for the last months had been, and to breathe life again, and as before to be young, strong, beautiful, oh! too beautiful!

I watched Claire, also. She loved Henry. It was not a mere flirt for her, or a victory that flattered her pride. It was a deep, great passion, the first in her life, perhaps. She was no "vamp." She was a clever, noble, refined woman, as clever as she was beautiful... He will be happy.

I saw them together once. They were walking in the street. They were talking and smiling. She wore an elegant white suit. They looked perfectly happy.

The town was indignant at our divorce, indignant with me, of course. I was not admitted in any house any more. Many persons did not greet me in the street. I noticed disdainful, mocking smiles, despising grins on the faces of persons that had been my friends. I met Mrs. Brogan once. She stopped and told me plainly, for she always said what she thought: "You dirty creature! Do you think nobody understands that you sold yourself for Gray's money?" And Patsy Tillins approached me once in the street and said: "You've made a bad bargain, dearie: I wouldn't have changed Henry Stafford for no one, from heaven to hell!"

The day came when we got the divorce... I was Irene Wilmer again; divorced for unfaithfulness to my husband. That was all.

When Henry spoke to me about money that I might need, I refused to take anything and said cynically: "Mr. Gray has more money than you!"

Gerald Gray was to leave for New York, just on the next day, to take a ship for Europe from there. I was to go with him.

That evening, Mr. Barnes called upon me. He had been out of town for the last months and, returning only today, heard about everything. He came to me immediately. "Now, Irene," he said very seriously, and his voice trembled in spite of him, "there is some terrible mistake in what I have heard. Would you tell me?"

"Why, Mr. Barnes," I answered calmly, "I don't think there could be any mistake: I am divorced, just today."

"But... but... but is it really your fault? Are you really guilty?"

"Well, if you call it guilty... I love Gerald Gray, that's all."

His face grew red, purple, then white. He could not speak for some long minutes. "You... you don't love your husband?" he muttered at last.

"Henry Stafford, you mean? He is not my husband any longer... No, I don't love him."

"Irene..." He tried to speak calmly and there was a strange solemn strength in his voice. "Irene, it is not true. I will tell everybody that you could not have done it."

"I'm no saint."

He stepped back and his grayish old head shook piteously. "Irene," he said again, and there was almost a plea in his voice, "you could not have traded a man like your husband for that silly snob."

"I did."

"You, Irene, you? I cannot believe it!"

"Don't. Who cares?"

This was too much. He raised his head. "Then," he said slowly, "I have nothing more to say... Farewell, Irene."

"Bye-bye!" I answered with an indifferent insolence.

I looked through the window, when he was going away. His poor old figure seemed more bent and heavy than ever. "Farewell, Mr. Barnes," I whispered. "Farewell... and forgive me."

That night, the last night I spent in my home, I awoke very late. When all was silent in the house, I went noiselessly downstairs. I thought that I could not say farewell to Henry, tomorrow, and I wanted to say it. I cautiously opened the bedroom door: he was sleeping. I entered. I raised slightly the window curtain, to see him. I stood by his bed, that had been mine also. I looked at him. His face was calm and serene. The dark lashes of his closed eyes were immobile on his cheeks. His beautiful lips seemed carved of marble on his face, pale in the darkness. I did not dare to touch him. I put my hand slowly and cautiously on the pillow, near his head.

Then I knelt down, by the bed. I could not kiss his lips; it would have awakened him. I took his hand cautiously and pressed it to my lips. "Henry," I whispered, "you shall never know. And you must not know. Be happy, very happy... And I shall go through life with one thing, one right only left to me: the right to say that I loved you, Henry... and the right to love you... till the end." I kissed his hand with a long, long kiss.

Then I arose, closed the curtain, and went out.

It was a cold, gray day, the next and the last. There was a little chilly rain sometimes, and a wind that carried gray smoky clouds in the sky.

The train was leaving our town at ten-fifteen P.M. Mr. Gray called me in the morning. He was radiant with joy. He wanted to come in the evening to bring me to the station. I refused. "Wait for me there," I said shortly. "I shall come myself."

It was already dark and I sat in my room waiting. Waiting with such a despair that it astonished me, for I thought that I was unable to feel anything now. I waited for Henry. He was not at home. He must have gone to Claire, to spend with her the first day of his freedom. I could not say farewell to him, no; but I wanted to take a last look at him, the last one before going forever. And he was not there... I sat by the window. It was cold, but I opened it. I watched the street. The roofs and pavement were wet and glittering. There were few passersby that walked rarely, with a nervous hurry, lonely, hopeless shadows in glittering raincoats...

It was nine-thirty. Henry had not come.

I closed the window and took a little bag. I had not much to pack. I put some linen in it and one dress — my wedding dress, with the veil; I put in Henry's photograph. It was all I took with me.

When I was closing the bag, I heard a key turn in the entrance door and footsteps, his footsteps. He had come!

I put on my hat and overcoat, took my bag. "I shall pass through the hall and open the door of his study a little. He will not notice and I shall take a look, just one look," I thought.

I went downstairs. I entered the hall and opened his door: the study was empty; he was not there. I took a deep breath and walked to the entrance door. I put my hand on the knob.

"Irene, are you not going to say farewell to me?" I turned. It was Henry. His voice was calm and sad.

I was so stricken that I almost lost all my self-possession in the first second. "Yes... yes..." I muttered incoherently.

We entered his study. There was a fire in the fireplace. He looked at me with his dark eyes, and they were very clear and very sad.

"We are parting forever, perhaps, Irene," he said, "and we had meant much to one another."

I nodded. My voice would have betrayed me, if I spoke.

"I cannot blame or judge you, Irene... That evening, in the restaurant, it was a sudden madness, perhaps, that you did not realize yourself... I do not think you are really the woman you were then."

"No, Henry... perhaps not." I could not help whispering.

"You are not. I shall always think of you as the woman I loved." He paused. I had never seen him so quiet and hopeless.

"Life goes on," he continued. "I shall marry another woman and you — another man... And everything is over." He took my hands in his and there was a sudden light in his eyes when he said: "But we were so happy, Irene!"

"Yes, Henry, we were," I answered firmly and calmly.

"Did you love me then, Irene?"

"I did, Henry."

"That time has gone... But I could never forget you, Irene. I cannot. I shall think about you."

"Yes, Henry, think about me... sometimes."

"You will be happy, Irene, won't you? I want you to be happy."

"I will be, Henry."

"I will be also... Maybe even as happy as I was with you... But we cannot look behind now. One has to go on... Will you think about me a little, Irene?"

"I will, Henry."

His eyes were dark and there was a deep sorrow in them. I raised my head. I put my hand on his shoulder. I spoke with a great calm, with a majesty, perhaps, to which I had the right now.

"Henry, you must be happy, and strong, and glorious. Leave suffering to those that cannot help it. You must smile at life... And never think about those that cannot. They are not worthwhile."

"Yes... you are right... Everything finished well. It could have broken the life of one of us. I am so happy it did not!"

"Yes, Henry, it did not..."

We were silent. Then he said: "Farewell, Irene... We shall never meet on this earth again..."

"Life is not so long, Henry." I trembled when I said this, but happily he did not understand. "Who knows?" I added quickly. "We shall meet, perhaps... when we are sixty."

He smiled. "Yes, perhaps... and then we shall laugh at all this."

"Yes, Henry, we shall laugh..."

He bent his head and kissed my hand. "Go now," he whispered, and added, in a very low voice: "You were the greatest thing in my life, Irene." He raised his head and looking into my eyes: "Will you not say something to me... for the last time?" he asked.

I looked straight into his eyes. All my soul was in my answer: "I loved you, Henry."

He kissed my hand again. His voice was a very faint whisper when he said: "I shall be happy. But there are moments when I wish I would never have met that woman... There is nothing to do... Life is hard, sometimes, Irene."

"Yes, Henry," I answered.

He took me in his arms and kissed me. His lips were on mine; my arms — around his neck. It was for the last time, but it was. And no one can deprive me of it now.

He went with me outside. I called a taxi and entered it. I looked through the window: he was standing on the steps. The wind blew his hair and he was immobile like a statue. It was the last time I ever saw him.

I closed my eyes and when I opened them — the taxi was stopped before the station. I paid the driver, took my bag, and went to the train.

Gerald Gray was waiting for me. He had a brilliant traveling costume, a radiant smile, and a gigantic bouquet of flowers, which he presented to me. We entered the car.

At ten-fifteen there was a crackling, metallic sound, the wheels turned, the car shook and moved. The pillars of the station slipped faster and faster beyond us, then some lanterns, on corners of the dark streets, some lights in the windows. And the town remained behind us... The wheels were knocking quickly and regularly.

We were alone in our part of the car. Mr. Gray looked at me and smiled. Then he smiled again, as though to make me smile in answer. I sat motionless. "We are free and alone at last," he whispered and tried to put his arm around me. I moved from him.

"Wait, Mr. Gray," I said coldly. "We shall have time enough for that."

"What is the matter with you, Mrs. Stafford... Miss Wilmer, I mean?" he muttered. "You are so pale!"

"Nothing," I answered. "I am a little tired."

For two hours we sat, silent and motionless. There was nothing but the noise of the wheels around us.

After two hours' ride, there was the first station. I took my bag and rose. "Where are you going?" asked Mr. Gray, surprised. Without answer, I left the train. I approached the open window of the car where he sat looking at me anxiously, and I said slowly: "Listen, Mr. Gray: there is a millionaire in San Francisco waiting for me. You were only a means to get rid of my husband. I thank you. And don't ever say a word about this to anybody — they will laugh at you terribly."

He was stricken, furious and disappointed, oh, terribly disappointed- But as a perfect gentleman, he did not show it. "I am happy to have rendered you that service," he said courteously. The train moved at this moment. He took off his hat, with the most gracious politeness.

I remained alone on the little platform. There was an immense black sky around me, with slow, heavy clouds. There was an old fence and a wretched tree, with some last, wet leaves... I saw a dim light in the little window of the ticket office.

I had not much money, only what was left in my pocketbook. I approached the lighted window. "Give me a ticket, please," I said, handing over all my money, with nickels and pennies, all.

"To which station?" asked the employee shortly.

"To... to... That is all the same," I answered.

He looked at me and even moved a little back. "Say..." he began.

"Give me to the end of the line," I said. He handed me a ticket and pushed back some of my money. I moved from the window, and he followed me with a strange look.

"I shall get out at some station or other," I thought. A train stopped at the platform and I went in. I sat down at a window. Then I moved no more.

I remember it was dark beyond the window, then light, then dark again. I must have traveled more than twenty-four hours. Perhaps. I don't know.

It was dark when I remembered that I must alight at some station. The train stopped and I got out. On the platform I saw that it was night. I wanted to return to the car. But the train moved and disappeared into the darkness. I remained.

There was nobody on the wet wooden platform. I saw only a sleepy employee, a dim lantern, and a dog rolled under a bench, to protect himself from the rain. I saw some little wooden houses beyond the station, and a narrow street. The rails glittered faintly and there was a poor little red lantern in the distance.

I looked at the clock: it was three A.M. I sat on the bench and waited for the morning.

All was finished... I had done my work... Life was over...

I live in that town now. I am an employee in a department store and I work from nine to seven. I have a little flat — two rooms — in a poor, small house, and a separate staircase — nobody notices me when I go out or return home.

I have no acquaintances whatever. I work exactly and carefully. I never speak. My fellow workers hardly know my name. My landlady sees me once a month, when I pay my rent.

I never think when I work. When I come home — I eat and I sleep. That is all.

I never cry. When I look into a looking glass — I see a pale face, with eyes that are a little too big for it; and with the greatest calm, the greatest quietness, the deepest silence in the world.

I am always alone in my two rooms. Henry's picture stands on my table. He has a cheerful smile: a little haughty, a little mocking, very gay. There is an inscription: "To my Irene — Henry — Forever." When I am tired, I kneel before the table and I look at him.

People say that time rubs off everything. This law was not for me. Years have passed. I loved Henry Stafford. I love him. He is happy now — I gave him his happiness. That is all.

They were right, perhaps, those who said that I bought my husband. I bought his life. I bought his happiness. I paid with everything I had. I love him... If I could live life again — I would live it just as I did...

Women, girls, everyone that shall hear me, listen to this: don't love somebody beyond limits and consciousness. Try to have always some other aim or duty. Don't love beyond your very soul... if you can. I cannot.

One has to live as long as one is not dead. I live on. But I know that it will not be long now. I feel that the end is approaching. I am not ill. But I know that my strength is going and that life simply and softly is dying away in me. It has burned out. It is well.

I am not afraid and I am not sorry. There is only one thing more that I dare to ask from life: I want to see Henry once again. I want to have one look more, before the end, at him that has been my whole life. Just one look only. That is all I ask.

I cannot return to our town, for I will be seen and recognized at once. I wait and I hope. I hope hopelessly. There is not much time left. When I walk in the street — I look at every face around me, searching for him. When I come home — I say to his picture: "It is not today, Henry... But it will be tomorrow, perhaps..."

Shall I see him again? I tell myself that I shall. I know that I shall not... Now I have written my story. I gathered all my courage and I wrote it. If he reads it — he will not be unhappy. But he will understand all...

And then, perhaps, after reading it, he will... oh, no! not come to see me, he will understand that he must not do it... he will just pass by me in the street, seeming not to notice me, so that I might see him once again, once more... and for the last time.

The Night King

This story represents the writing of the very early Ayn Rand. She wrote the story, probably in 1926, while living at the Hollywood Studio Club. She was still learning English — especially the use of American slang and how to re-create the same on the printed page.

"The Night King" clearly reflects her admiration of O. Henry. (See Leonard Peikoff's preface to "Escort.")

This story is being published here with minimal editing in order accurately to convey her literary and linguistic starting point, and thus her development as a writer both of fiction and of English in the ensuing years.

R.E.R.

That one was to be the best crime I ever pulled off, if I say so myself, it was to be a masterpiece. And a masterpiece it was, all right, but every time I think of it my blood boils with fury and I wonder if I'm not going to be a murderer instead of a mild, harmless hold-up man.

Some people may be so heartless as to feel a certain lack of respect for me, when they hear of this memorable affair. But I defy anyone to tell me that he would have acted differently, that he would have been able to act differently in this strange case.

I'm not an average crook and my mind is the best in the business. I sacrificed two years of my valuable life to that one job. Believe it or not, for two whole years I was as straight as a telegraph pole and earned my modest living by holding the honorable, respectable position of a valet. The cops back in Chicago would never believe that of me, Steve Hawkins, the great Steve Hawkins who used to pull stick-up jobs faster than the crime reporters could write down in short-hand. Me — to become a valet! Yet that's just what I had been doing — for two years. For, you see, I was after the most precious thing and against the most dangerous man in New York.

The thing was the Night King; the man — Winton Stokes.

Winton Stokes had a nasty smile, sixteen million dollars and no fear whatsoever.

He also had the Night King.

He was one of those wealthy loafers that spend their lives looking for danger and never getting enough of it. Big-game hunting, aviation, jungle-exploring, mountain-peak climbing — there wasn't a thing that man hadn't had time to do in the thirty-four years of his life. And he always took a particular pleasure in doing the things that would shock people, that nobody could expect or think of. Some brain, too! The keenest, sharpest and, damn it!, queerest brain I ever came across. I often thought it was too bad he was born a millionaire, for he would have made a perfect crook — just the type for it.

His smile? I hated it. I hated almost everything about him: his slow, soft movements that looked as though his bones were of velvet, and with it his tanned skin that looked as though his body were of bronze; and then, his grey eyes, the eyes of a tamed tiger, that you weren't so sure whether it's tamed or not. But his smile was the worst of all. He always had it when he looked at people — just two little wrinkles in the corners of his mouth, which seemed to say you were terribly funny, but that he was too polite to laugh.

The Night King was a black diamond; one of those perfect gems that have a world-renown, and their owners — a world-envy. A marvelous stone, famous like a movie star, but different from one in that it never had a double.

Was it valuable? Well, you could buy a small city, inhabitants and all, for the price of that one little splinter of black fire. Winton Stokes was so proud of it that he wouldn't have traded it for all the rest of his possessions — and that was plenty.

There had been more loss of life from trying to get that stone than there is from traffic accidents in a big city. All of our big guys tried it. Then, it was given up as impossible. No one could get it; not with Winton Stokes as the owner.

But I told them that there was nothing impossible to Steve Hawkins, the master-criminal. I had made up my mind to succeed where all had failed. They laughed at me for giving up my brilliant hold-up career and slaving as Winton Stokes' valet. During the two years of my working at his New York residence, I never once got even a hint of where the Night King was hidden, no matter how hard I tried. I don't believe anybody on earth knew that secret, except Winton Stokes. But I waited and played the part of as honest a guy as they make 'em. I was a model valet and just as sweet and white as sugar. Then, finally, my big chance came — and oh! How it did come!

I wanted to show them all an unusual crime to knock them cockeyed with amazement. And they were amazed, though not quite in the way I had expected. But just try to mention the Night King case to the New York cops and see what happens!

It started like this: Winton Stokes was going on a trip to San Francisco. He was engaged to some charming little girl who lived there. I've seen her picture on his desk. A blonde little thing, with a smile like a glass of champagne and legs like a hosiery ad. Winton Stokes was to marry her there, in her home town. But I knew something else about this trip of his, something that no one knew, but me, and Stokes, and his girl.

I learned it in a very simple manner, but the news was as unexpected to me as a fresh orchid in a garbage can. You may be sure that for two years I've been opening secretly all of Winton Stokes' letters that I could lay my hands on. So I opened this particular one that he had ordered me to mail. I don't remember a word of it, except one sentence, and here is the sentence that took hold of my brains, memory and consciousness so as to knock out everything else I had on my mind:

"My dearest one, I'll bring with me, as my wedding gift, the thing that has been my most precious possession, but isn't any more — not since I looked into the blue diamonds of your eyes — I'll bring the Night King, that you asked me about once."

Oh boy!

The first thing I did when I read this was to take a deep breath. The second — to swear, energetically. The third — to laugh. The big fool! To give that stone away like this to a woman! Just like him, too.

Well, here was my chance.

In the day that followed I turned my brain upside down and back again, trying to figure out a way to accompany him on this trip. But I didn't have to think much. He saved me the trouble.

I was called into his study on that beautiful spring morning. He was sitting in a deep,

Oriental chair, his legs crossed, a long cigarette between his lips, looking at me with half-closed eyes.

"Williams," he said (this being the name I had adopted), "you might be interested to know that in three days you are leaving with me for San Francisco."

There must have been something funny in my face, for he added:

"What is it? Are you surprised?"

I muttered something about how grateful I was for the honor. Fact is, I was so grateful that I almost felt like sparing him and not touching his diamond at all!

"Your services have been most satisfactory during the time you have worked for me and I chose you to accompany me on this trip," he explained, adding, "I trust you more than my other men."

Now, I had to act and act quick. After some careful deliberation, a plan was ready in my mind, a brilliant plan that only a bright thinker like me could have devised.

That evening, I made my way to a certain part of New York, very far from the residential district and very different from it. I went directly to a certain pool-parlor, unofficially called "The Hanged Cat," which was a pool-parlor and many other things besides. Since the time I started on my valet job, I didn't mix with any rough work, as I've said before, but I knew where to find the boys if I needed them. "The Hanged Cat" was their favorite social club.

It didn't take me long to choose my men — three of them — and to get them into a dark corner, around an old, shaking table that had four legs all of different lengths.

"Boys," I said, "I have a job for us and if we pull it through we can all retire and start putting burglar-proof alarms on our safes!"

I explained the whole thing. I told them just what I wanted them to do and also just how much they'd get from me. Two of them, Pete Crump and "Snout" Timkins, agreed at once, and enthusiastically, too. But the third, and I might have expected it, started trouble. The third was Mickey Finnegan.

I had known Mickey back in my Chicago days and we had always been rivals in business. That sap had the nerve to think he was as good as me, and just as much of a master-crook! Every success of mine always made him green with jealousy and every one of his didn't make me pink, either. Mickey was a big, husky fellow, with fists like water-melons, hair like a floor-mop, lips like beef-steaks, eyes like a fish and an atrocious odor of tobacco that he was always chewing, slowly and senselessly, like a cow. I had no respect whatever for that big brute's mentality, of which he had a nickel's worth. But I had to admit he was strong, and that's what I needed now — strength.

I had hesitated before choosing him for my accomplice, but his hairy fists looked so promising and besides, I thought our old misunderstandings were forgotten. I was mistaken.

"It's all right, Steve," he said in his slow, dragging voice, "it's fine — except one thing, which's this: I'm gonna get half of it, see? Fifty-fifty."

"What? You don't mean that...!"

"Yeh, I do. I wasn't never Steve Hawkins' under-dog yet and I don't crave to start now, neither. I'm just as good as you, and I'll get just as much, so I will."

"Well, for pity sakes, Mickey! Isn't it my job? Didn't I prepare it? Didn't I spend two years on it?"

"That," said Mickey, "don't make no difference to me."

I argued for some time, for a long time. But what was the use? Mickey had always been as stubborn as a bull-dog.

"Shut up," he said finally, "you're wastin' yer breath and my time, and one o'them is valuable. It's either I gets half of it or I don't and if I don't you don't see none of Mickey Finnegan with your gang, either."

"Mickey," I said solemnly, "you're a skunk."

"Am I?" roared Mickey, and then followed something which is hard to describe, and which was stopped only by the other boys stepping between Mickey and me and tearing us apart. And the result of it was that I had to spit from my mouth two teeth knocked out by Mickey's fist.

My two friends assured me that we could manage the job between the three of us and didn't need Mickey at all. So I told him just what I thought of him and went home.

But when I got there and glanced into a mirror, I was terrified to see what my face looked like. My jaw was swollen and as I open my mouth very wide when I talk, the empty black hole on the side was very much in evidence.

What would Winton Stokes think when he saw his model valet with a mug like that? He might change his mind about taking me along. And he might even suspect something. My brilliant plan might be ruined because of Mickey. I shuddered.

"What happened to your face?" asked Winton Stokes calmly, when he saw me on the next morning.

"I — I had a fall..." I stammered, rather uncertainly. "I fell on the basement steps in the dark, last night."

He looked at me fixedly for some moments, as though thinking it over. "He suspects!" I trembled. But he said, rather indifferently:

"Well, see to it that you have a more decent appearance by the day of our departure, and have some false teeth put in — it doesn't look proper."

He sent me to a dentist, and forgot about this episode, and I felt an immense relief. But I made up my mind that someday I'd make Mickey Finnegan pay dearly for it.

In the days that preceded our departure I watched Winton Stokes like a police-dog that trails a crook. I watched his every movement. There wasn't a place where I didn't manage to follow him, and watch. I didn't sleep nights. I hoped to see him take the Night King out of its mysterious hiding-place and see where he was going to put it for the trip. I didn't see a thing. I didn't get the slightest clue. I didn't see him make one move that could be connected with the diamond, or that even looked suspicious.

And so, the day of our departure came and we started on our trip, just Winton Stokes, me, and a little suitcase of his. He didn't take any other baggage.

Now, I knew that he had the Night King with him somewhere. He would never disappoint a lady and he would take the stone to her in spite of all danger. Besides, it was just the kind of thing he would enjoy doing.

But what got me mad was his utter, perfect calm. He was just as serene as a summer morning; not the slightest shade of worry or preoccupation. And just as we were leaving the house, I remarked that he had left behind the automatic he always carried.

"I won't need it," he said, "not on this trip."

Not on this trip!

When we found ourselves in the luxurious express flying westward, Winton Stokes sat by a window, calm and indifferent, his head thrown back and his eyes half closed. And I, Steve Hawkins, fidgeted nervously in my corner, biting my dry lips and looking anxiously around.

My big moment was approaching- Two years of my life! I thought of the financial loss I had suffered by being out of business for such a long time. The Night King would make up for it all. I had a customer all ready and it takes my breath away when I think of the sum he had offered me for it.

I looked over the car and watched the passengers. I was afraid there might be some detective around, hired by Stokes for protection. But there didn't seem to be any. My heart was beating fast and I was as nervous as an author on his play's first night. Winton Stokes was immobile, like an inscrutable Oriental idol.

All of a sudden I jumped in my seat and stuck both my gloves into my mouth to stifle a cry. In a far corner I noticed a gentleman who seemed to be slumbering in his seat, his head hanging down on his breast and a fly walking across his red, moist forehead. That gentleman had a dirty shirt-collar, a brand new suit that didn't fit, fat legs squeezing out of patent-leather shoes, and all the appearance of one who isn't used to decent clothes. His mouth was chewing slowly and heavily. It was Mickey Finnegan.

What was he doing here? What was he going to do? Would he betray me, or try to pull the job for himself? For the first time it occurred to me he knew the secret of the Night King's trip and might wish to try his own luck at it.

I felt cold in my spine. But there was nothing I could do, except watch Mickey carefully and hope that he wouldn't have time to act before I did. After a while I was a little reassured: I decided that a master-mind like me didn't have to fear the rivalry of that brainless boob. Besides, Mickey didn't seem to have any accomplices around and he looked dead tired and sleepy.

I could hardly wait for night to come. The hours just dragged forever. The speeding strokes of car-wheels on the rails sounded like a slow funeral march to me. But everything comes to him who waits.

It was near midnight. Winton Stokes was still sitting in the day coach. He always went to sleep very late and I had counted on it. The night was black as ink. The train stopped at a miserable little station that had only one dim, dirty light and two sleepy, dirty employees on its deserted platform.

I asked Stokes for permission to go out and buy some cigarettes. I went and, having made sure that everything was as I had prepared, returned into the car.

"I thought you might like to know, sir," I said, "that Mr. Harvey Clayton is traveling with this train, too, in the next car."

Harvey Clayton was a good friend of his and was, probably, by this time, sleeping peacefully in his New York apartment.

"Harvey Clayton? On this train?" asked Winton Stokes, surprised.

"Yes, sir. I just saw him in the next car, as I was going out."

Winton Stokes got up and walked towards the next car. I cast a quick glance at Mickey Finnegan in his corner. I drew a breath of relief. That fat fool was sound asleep.

Unseen behind the door, I watched what happened then on the car's little platform. As Winton Stokes stepped out he found himself between Pete Crump and "Snout" Timkins and felt two guns pressed against his ribs.

"Now you follow and not a squeal outta you, or we'll pump you full o'holes like a lace curtain!" whispered Pete Crump.

There was no one around to witness the little scene. Pete and "Snout" put their arms under Stokes', one on each side, and stepped down from the train. Stokes followed calmly. They walked away across the dark station platform. They looked like three good friends. No one could notice the two guns that were pressed against Stokes' body, under his arms. The sleepy station employees couldn't see anything suspicious.

I rushed back to the place where Winton Stokes had been sitting and took his coat, hat and suitcase. Then I followed my boys.

They had taken Stokes to a car parked on a dark street-corner, behind the station. Before joining them I tied a handkerchief around my face and put on a big, long coat they had prepared for me, so that Stokes wouldn't recognize me by my clothes.

I jumped into the car and we drove away into the darkness.

The whole little town had about two streets, one grocery store and a dozen houses. In a moment we were out in the country, flying along a deserted, muddy road. We saw in the distance the train going away to San Francisco, without its most valuable passenger this time. The long line of lighted car windows rolled faster and faster under a rain of red sparks from the puffing engine. It whistled away into the night and disappeared with a moaning of trembling rails. We were alone in the dark country, going at full speed, with all lights turned off. Nothing but desolated plains, lonely bushes and an immense black sky around us.

We all were tense and silent. But Winton Stokes was perfectly calm and seemed to be curious about it all.

We came to a stop before a shabby little hot-dog stand on the road, a couple of miles from the town. I can't imagine what kind of a business it was doing in that God-forsaken spot, but it fitted our purpose perfectly. It was locked for the night. We forced the lock easily and took our prisoner in.

The old shack was full of dirty pans, onion-peels, bread crumbs, rusty cans and an odor of cheap grease. We lighted a kerosene lamp and awakened a cloud of flies and night-bugs that came buzzing around and beating against the dusty, smoked lamp-chimney.

"Mr. Stokes," I said gracefully, "you are a sensible man and so are we. You realize that you are entirely in our power, and you can save yourself a lot of trouble by giving to us peacefully and of a free will the Night King, which is as good as ours already."

"It never pays," answered Winton Stokes, "to jump to conclusions."

"Yeh?" I said, less gracefully. "If you don't obey, that stone'll be in my hand here within the next ten minutes!"

"That," answered Winton Stokes, "remains to be seen."

"All right!" I sneered. "Look!"

At a sign from me, the boys seized him and started the search, while I busted his suitcase open and looked it over myself. Winton Stokes seemed amused and he had the nasty light smile that I hated playing on his lips.

We searched carefully and thoroughly. During the first five minutes of it I was casting mocking glances at Winton Stokes and whistling a musical comedy tune. At the end of ten minutes I stopped the whistling. At the end of half an hour I began to think that my blood was getting unusually cold.

We looked over every inch of his clothes; we tore off the lining of his coat; we examined every grain of dust in his suitcase — to no avail.

"Hang it!" burst out Pete. "The stone ain't big, but it couldn't have gone into thin air, could it?"

"We'll find it, if we have to spend all night here!" I said.

"Take your time, boys, I'm not in a hurry," remarked Winton Stokes.

"Listen," I groaned to him in a hoarse whisper. "Get this into your head: I'll have that stone!"

"Well, what's stopping you?" he inquired.

At the end of three hours we sat down on the floor and looked helplessly at each other: we didn't know what more we could search. We had torn every seam in his clothes; we had broken his suitcase to pieces; we had busted the heels of his shoes; squeezed his hat into a pan-cake; crushed flat all his cigarettes; chopped to pieces his soap and towel; ragged his underwear into a mass of fringe; smashed every object he had in his suitcase. We had a pile of wreckage before us and no sign of anything like a diamond.

Pete was perspiring. "Snout" was shaking. I was breathing heavily. Winton Stokes looked indifferent and slightly bored. Believe it or not, he even yawned once.

"Damn you!" I roared, at last. "You'll tell me where it is or we'll make you tell, if we have to tear your whole damn body to bits, too!"

"I'll tell you."

"Yeah?!"

"I'll tell you that you're a fool: nothing on earth can tear a sound from me when I want to be silent — and you know it!"

I answered by a series of expressions that I can't write down.

"I have been thinking," he said suddenly, "that I know your voice."

And before I had time to jump back, he seized the handkerchief covering my face and pulled it off.

All his self-control was not enough to stop a gasp. He stepped back and looked at my face.

"Surprised, eh?" I sneered. He didn't answer.

"Listen, you," I yelled. "I'd give my life, hear me? — my life to get that stone! And I wouldn't mind taking yours, if it would help me to find it!"

At that — he laughed uproariously, a long, loud, insolent laugh...

When morning came and a cold grey light crawled into the shack through the dusty window, we were still there, hopeless, broken, beaten. We didn't even talk any more-There was nothing to be done. We couldn't stay here much longer: the owner would come soon to open his stand. And besides, what should we stay for?

Silently, without looking at each other, we went to our car and rode away. Of course, we didn't take Winton Stokes with us. I remember I turned around and saw him standing at the door of the shack, following us with his eyes, his beautiful brown body trembling slightly in the morning cold under the torn rags of his clothes...

I was half insane when I got back to New York. I walked around in a daze. "The Night King!" was the only name on my brain. It haunted me. Everything black and round, even shoe-buttons and raisins in bread-loaves seemed to me black diamonds that were tempting, mocking, torturing me.

For hours I sat in a dark corner, in some joint, racking my brain hopelessly over that unexplainable mystery, gnawing over and over again at the same questions: What had happened? Where had that stone been hidden? Where was it now, while I was eating my soul away for it? I drank like a sponge.

So if you have any imagination, imagine, for I can't describe it, imagine my feelings when I saw the following headlines on newspaper extras:

THE NIGHT KING STOLEN

Winton Stokes Robbed on Trip West

Was I going goofy? I read the paper, hardly believing my eyes. It didn't say much. It said only that the well-known young millionaire, Winton Stokes, had been robbed of his famous black diamond, "The Night King," on his way to San Francisco. And that the police were looking for a certain notorious criminal who committed the robbery and whose name they were keeping a secret.

It was a long time before I gathered my senses and even then I couldn't understand a thing. It occurred to me that Winton Stokes might have faked that news himself, to protect his diamond from further attempts. But I soon realized that I was mistaken: for Stokes was back in New York and didn't start on another trip, and was reported seriously perturbed; besides, the police were in a big turmoil and really searching for some one.

And then the thought struck me: Mickey Finnegan! Yes, that must be it. How on earth had that big sap managed to do it when I had failed was more than I could understand. It was unbelievable. Yet, Mickey was the only human being that had been in on the secret.

I turned green with fury. Then, I thought it over. Then I almost felt happy.

The first thing I wanted to do was to learn something of Mickey's present whereabouts. That evening I went to "The Hanged Cat" to try and get some information.

And whom should I see there, right before my eyes, sitting alone at a table in a dark corner, but Mickey Finnegan himself! Well, he was just enough of a dumbbell to do that. He was sipping slowly some booze and his face had a senseless expression, if any.

I walked to his table and sat down.

"Hello!" I said, amiably.

"Hello," he answered, dark and surprised.

"Mickey, I have an offer for you: give me half of it."

"Half o'what?"

"You know very well — half of the Night King's price."

He looked at me with open mouth and didn't answer.

"I know you got it," I said impatiently, "I know you have it. And it's healthier for you to be partners with me, Mickey Finnegan, understand?"

"Whatcha talking about?"

"Aw, can that stuff! If you were so lucky as to get it, you owe it to me, for I gave you the tip. It's only fair that we split now. And if you don't — I'll go straight to police headquarters and tell them who's got the Night King and where to find him!"

"Listen, buddy, you're cracked. How could I have gotten it when you grabbed it first? Yeh, I was on the train, an' I figured to try it, but I was too damn tired an' I fell asleep, an' when I woke the Stokes guy was gone — so who pulled it?"

"I didn't know you were such a good actor, Mickey Finnegan! But it's no use, you can't fool me. Now, do I get half of it or do I not?"

"I know you've got it yerself, an' you're lying, but I'll be damned if I can understand why."

"Mickey," I said desperately, "Mickey! We've always been good friends. Give me that stone, Mickey! Show it to me! Let me see it!"

"You've been drinkin', buddy."

"For the last time, Mickey, are we partners?"

"Like fun we are!"

I got up. "All right," I growled, "all right. So long, Mickey Finnegan. You know where I'm going!"

"Go to hell!" was Mickey's answer-There was but one feeling left in me and it was a blind fury against Mickey Finnegan. Forgetting everything else, I had but one thought now — revenge. I decided to go straight to headquarters. I hesitated for a moment, thinking that they were probably looking for me, too, after my attempted robbery. But I reassured myself with the thought that they wouldn't know me, for Stokes never had a picture of me, and besides, I would be forgiven and maybe even rewarded for helping to catch the real thief.

I remembered the fist fight and all that I had suffered from Mickey Finnegan and my mad fury choked me. I went to headquarters.

I walked right in, head high and with assured steps, like an honest, respectable citizen. I asked proudly and imperatively to see the Chief Inspector.

The cops were looking at me with the queerest looks I ever saw in human eyes. When I asked for the Chief Inspector, two or three of them rushed to his office much too hurriedly.

When I walked into the Chief's office, he looked at me with bulging eyes.

"Well, for goodness' sake!" he gasped.

"Inspector," I said solemnly, "I know who stole the Night King and I know the man you're looking for: it's Mickey Finnegan!"

He looked at me silently for a long time, with the funniest expression on his face.

"You're mistaken, Hawkins," he said slowly at last, "it isn't Finnegan we're looking for — it's you!"

"Me?! Me? W-why?"

"Because you've got the Night King."

"What?!!"

"You've got it and what's more, you're going to return it."

"Who the hell told you that?"

"Mr. Stokes did. And I'm going to get in touch with him at once and tell him that we've got you."

"Mr. Stokes?!" I roared. "Mr. Stokes? Why, the guy's gone bugs! Call him, call him at once! He knows it's a lie! He ought to know!"

When I confronted Winton Stokes, he looked at me with that darned mocking smile of his twisting his mouth.

"What the hell does that mean?" I yelled. "You know damn well I didn't get your sparkler! You know it as well as I do, don'tcha?"

"That's just it," he said, so very kindly, "that's just the trouble: I happen to know a little more than you do."

The cops around were grinning so that their mouths almost reached their ears.

"What's the joke?" I asked furiously.

"Oh boy!" roared one of them.

"We owe the gentleman an explanation," said Winton Stokes. "You fooled me, Hawkins, and it's a compliment I don't pay to people often. I believed you to be an honest, trustworthy servant and I chose you for a very important mission. You see, I had to carry the Night King with me and I had to hide it in a place where no one would think of looking for it. I knew it wasn't safe anywhere on my person. By chance, you yourself gave me the idea for its hiding-place. But even though I trusted you, I didn't want to take any chances and give you any temptations. So I made you serve my purpose without your knowing it. The only person I had to trust with the secret was a good old friend of mine who happens to be a dentist. Well, the whole thing turned out to be more unusual than I had expected. Open your mouth!"

In the next moment I uttered a yell, the yell of a mad beast, and if the cops hadn't seized me in time, I would have jumped at Winton Stokes and murdered him on the spot: for I opened my mouth wide, he unscrewed something in it and there, in my teeth, in my own false teeth, was the Night King!

Good Copy

This story was written a year or more after "The Husband I Bought," probably sometime in 1927, when Ayn Rand was living at the Hollywood Studio Club, had obtained a position as a junior screenwriter for Cecil B. DeMille, and was just beginning to date Frank O'Connor, her future husband. The spirit of the story matches these auspicious events.

Miss Rand's silent-screen synopses from the 1920s — about a dozen remain — are examples of pure, even extravagant Romanticism. Most are imaginative adventure stories, with daring heroes, a strong love interest, non-stop action, and virtually no explicit philosophy- "Good Copy" is one of the few works of this type that are not scenarios- As such, it represents a major change in mood from "The Husband I Bought."

"The Husband I Bought" portrays the dedication of the passionate valuer, who will bear the greatest suffering, if necessary, rather than settle for something less than the ideal. "Good Copy" reminds us of another crucial aspect of Ayn Rand's philosophy: her view that suffering is an exception, not the rule of life. The rule, she held, should not be pain or even heroic endurance, but gaiety and lighthearted joy in living. It is on this premise that "Good Copy" was written.

I first heard the story some twenty-five years ago, when it was read aloud in a course on fiction-writing given by Ayn Rand to some young admirers. The class was told merely that this was a story by a beginning writer, and was asked to judge whether the writer had a future. Some students quickly grasped who the author was, but a number did not and were astonished, even indignant, when they found out. Their objection was not to the story's flaws but to its essential spirit. "It is so unserious," the criticism went. "It doesn't deal with big issues like your novels; it has no profound passions, no immortal struggles, no philosophic meaning."

Miss Rand replied, in effect: "It deals with only one 'big issue,' the biggest of all: can man live on earth or not?"

She went on to explain that malevolence — the feeling that man by nature is doomed to suffering and defeat — is all-pervasive in our era; that even those who claim to reject such a viewpoint tend to feel, today, that the pursuit of values must be a painful, teeth-clenched crusade, a holy but grim struggle against evil. This attitude, she said, ascribes far too much power to evil. Evil, she held, is essentially impotent (see Atlas Shrugged); the universe is not set against man, but is "benevolent." This means that man's values (if based on reason) are achievable here and in this life; and therefore happiness is not to be regarded as a freak accident, but, metaphysically, as the normal, the natural, the to-be-expected.

Philosophically, in short, the deepest essence of man's life is not grave, crisis-ridden solemnity, but lighthearted cheerfulness. A story reflecting this approach, she concluded, a story written specifically to project pure "benevolent universe," should be written as though all problems have already been answered and all big issues solved, and now there is nothing to focus on but man acting in the world and succeeding — nothing but unobstructed excitement, romance, adventure.

In Atlas Shrugged, Dagny hears Francisco laughing: "it was the gayest sound in the world... The capacity for unclouded enjoyment, she thought, does not belong to irresponsible fools... to be able to laugh like that is the end result of the most profound, most solemn thinking." In these terms, we may say that if her more philosophic works represent Ayn Rand's profound thinking, then "Good Copy" is like the unclouded laugh of Francisco.

The story, of course, is still very early, and must be read in part for its intention, which is not consistently realized.

Laury, the young hero, is but a faint, even humorous suggestion of the heroes still to come. Reflecting the primacy of women in the early works, Jinx, the heroine, is the more mature character, and the one dominant in the action. She is ahead of Laury all the way. Yet, as one would expect from Ayn Rand, Jinx's feeling for Laury is one of the most convincing elements in the story — and she is the opposite of a feminist. "Women," she tells Laury warmly at one point, "are the bunk."

As a piece of writing, "Good Copy" represents a major advance over "The Husband I Bought." The author's command of English, though still imperfect, has increased substantially. The originality of certain descriptions and the sudden flashes of wit begin to foreshadow what is to come. The dialogue, especially the use of slang, is still not quite right; and the tone of the piece is unsteady, verging, I think, on being overly broad. But despite these flaws, the story as a whole does manage to convey a real exuberance of spirit.

Decades later, after she had completed Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand occasionally said that she wanted to write a pure adventure story without any deep philosophical theme. (At one point, she had even chosen the hero's name — Faustin Donnegal — and his description; like Laury McGee, he was to have dimples.) But she never did write it.

"Good Copy," therefore, though early and imperfect, is all we have from her in this genre. It reflects a side of Ayn Rand that her admirers will not find isolated in this pure form anywhere else.

A note on the text: In the 1950s, for the reading to her class, Miss Rand modernized some of the period expressions in the piece, substituting "sports car" for "roadster," "panties" for "step-ins," and the like. I have retained these changes in the following.

L.P.

"I wish there was a murder! Somebody chopped to pieces and blood all over the pavements... And I wish there was a fire, an immense fire, so that the gas tank would bust like a peanut and half the town'd be blown up!... And I'd like to see somebody stick up the bank and sweep it to the last nickel, clean like a bald head!... And I wish there was an earthquake!"

Laury McGee walked fast, fast, so that each step struck the pavement furiously, like a blow to an enemy. His shirt collar thrown open, the veins in his sunburnt neck trembled and tensed as he tried to draw his lips into a grim, straight line. This was very difficult, for Laury McGee's lips were young, delightfully curved, with tempting, mischievous dimples in the corners that always looked as though he was trying to hold back a sparkling smile. But he was very far from any desire to smile, now.

His steps rang like gunshots in the sweet peace of the summer afternoon — and the summer afternoon on Dicksville's Main Street was very sweetly peaceful. There were almost no passersby, and those that did pass moved with a speed implying human life to be five hundred years long. The store windows were hot and dusty, and the doors wide open, with no one inside. A few old, overheated tomatoes were transforming themselves into catsup on the sidewalk in front of the Grocery Market. In the middle of Dicksville's busiest traffic thoroughfare a dog was sleeping in the sun, cuddled in a little depression of the paving. Laury was looking at it all and clenching his fists.

It was Laury McGee's twenty-third summer on earth and his first on the Dicksville Dawn. He had just had a significant conversation with his City Editor. This conversation was not the first of its kind; but it was to be the last.

"You," said City Editor Jonathan Scraggs, "are a sap!"

Laury looked at the ceiling and tried to give his face an expression intended to show that his dignity was beyond anything the gentleman at the desk might choose to say.

"One more story like that from you and I'll send you to wash dishes in a cafeteria — if they'll take you in!"

Laury could not help following with his eyes the Editor's powerful five fingers as they closed over his beautiful, neatly typed pages, crunched them with the crisp, crackling sound of a man chewing celery, and flung them furiously into an overflowing wastebasket; the pages that he had hoped would double the Dicksville Dawn's circulation with his name on the front page.

Laury was very sure of being perfectly self-possessed, but he bit his lips in a way that might have been called self-possession — in a bulldog.

"If you don't like it," he threw at the Editor, "it's your own fault, yours and your town's. No story is better than its material!"

"You aren't even a cub!" roared Jonathan Scraggs. "You're a pup, and a lousy one! Just because you were the star quarterback at college doesn't mean that you can be a reporter now! I still have to see you use your head for something besides as a show window to parade your good looks on!"

"It's not my fault!" Laury protested resolutely. "I've got nothing to write about! Nothing ever happens in this swamp of a town!"

"You're at it again, aren't you?"

"Since I've been here you've sent me on nothing but funerals, and drunken quarrels, and traffic accidents! I can't show my talent on such measly news! Get somebody else for your fleas' bulletins! Let me have something big, big!— and you'll see what's in my head besides good looks, which I can't help, either!"

"How many times have I told you that you've got to write about anything that comes along? What do you expect to happen? Dicksville is no Chicago, you know. Still, I don't think we can complain — things are pretty lively and the Dawn is doing nicely, and I can't say that much of the Dicksville Globe, for which the Lord be praised! You should be proud, young man, to work for Dicksville's leading paper."

"Yeah! Or for Dicksville's leading paper's wastebasket! But you'll learn to appreciate me, Mr. Scraggs, when something happens worthy of my pen!"

"If you can't write up a funeral, I'd like to see you cover a murder!... Now you go home, young man, and try to get some ideas into your head, if it's possible, which I doubt!"

Somebody had said that Laury's gray eyes looked like a deep cloudy sky behind which one could feel the sun coming out. But there was no trace of sun in his eyes when they stared straight at City Editor Jonathan Scraggs, and if there was anything coming behind their dark gray it looked more like a thunderstorm, and a serious one.

"Mr. Scraggs," he said slowly, ominously, "things are going to happen!"

"Amen!" answered Mr. Scraggs, and turning comfortably in his chair lit a cigar, then dropped his head on his breast and closed his eyes to enjoy the peace of the Dicksville afternoon, with the hot summer air breathing in through the open windows that needed a washing.

Laury took his coat from an old rack in a corner and looked fiercely at the room; no one had paid any attention to the conversation. The city room was hot and stuffy, and smelled of print, dust, and chewing gum. One walked as though in a forest on a thick carpet of fallen leaves cracking under the feet — a carpet of old, yellow newspapers, cigarette wrappers, bills, ads, everything that has ever been made out of paper. The walls were an art museum of calendars, drawings, cartoons, comic strips, pasted on the bare bricks and alternated by philosophical inscriptions such as "Easy on the corkscrew!" and "Vic Perkins is a big bum!" The dusty bottle of spring water on a shaking stand was hopelessly and significantly empty; water, after all, was not the only drink that had been used in the room.

The energetic activity of Dicksville's leading paper made Laury grind his teeth. The chief copy man was very busy making a sailboat out of a paper drinking cup. The sports editor was carefully drawing a pair of French-heeled legs on the dust of a file bureau. Two reporters were playing an exciting game of rummy; and a third was thoroughly cleaning his fingernails with a pen and trying to catch a fly that kept annoying him. The copy boy was sound asleep on a pile of paper, his back turned disdainfully on the room, his face red like his hair and his hair red like a carrot, his decided snores shaking the mountain of future newspapers under him.

However, at one of the central desks, under an imposing sign of: "Don't park here. Busy" Vic Perkins, the Dawn's star reporter, was profoundly absorbed in some serious work. Vic Perkins had a long, thin face and a little black mustache under his nose that looked like he needed a handkerchief, more than like anything else. He always wore his hat on the back of his head and never condescended to use a toothbrush. He was chewing zealously the end of a pencil and looking up at a green-shaded lamp, in deep meditation.

"Any news?" asked Laury, approaching him.

"There's always news for the man who's smart enough to write 'em!" replied Vic Perkins in a tone of disdainful superiority.

Laury glanced at the story he was writing. It was a gripping account of Dicksville's latest sensational crime — $550 cash and a silver pepper shaker stolen by Pug-Nose Thomson, the town's desperate outlaw.

Laury swung on his heels and walked out of the building, slamming the door ferociously, hoping one of the dusty glass panes would bust for a change; but it didn't.

Laury had graduated from college with a B.A. degree, high honors, and the football championship, this spring. He had accepted the first opportunity to work on a newspaper, to start on the road of his buoyant ambition. He came to the Dicksville Dawn with an overflowing energy, a wild enthusiasm, an irresistible smile, and no experience whatsoever. And he was disappointed.

He had expected a glorious career full of action, danger, and thrills, the career of a glamorous being whose every word on the printed pages sends thousands of hearts beating fast, like a sonorous trumpet that rings through the country thrilling and terrifying men. And now he had found himself hustling after news that wouldn't disturb a mosquito...

Laury walked fast, his hands in his pockets, a lock of unruly hair falling down to mix with his long, long eyelashes. The sky was blue, blue like a color postcard- An odor of frying grease floated from the open door of Ye Buttercup Tea Room. In a music shop a hoarse radio was singing "My Blue Heaven." Clampitt's Grocery Market was having a big event — a canned-goods sale.

Oh, if only something would happen here! Laury's heart throbbed. But what could happen — here?

A drowsy newsboy was muttering: "Dicksville Dawn poiper," as though he were selling sleeping tablets. Laury threw a quick glance at the front page, passing by. The headline announced the birth of the town Mayor's fifth child; there was a prominent news item about the Spinsters' Club annual convention; and an editorial by Victor Z. Perkins on the importance of animal pets.

Were these, then, the scorching, flamboyant headlines, roaring into people's eyes, that he had dreamed about? Oh, if only somebody would do something! Somebody, anybody... It seemed hopeless in Dicksville. And yet... was it so hopeless? Wasn't it possible to...?

Laury quickened his steps and clenched his fists in his pockets. His eyes narrowed and glistened. His heart beat faster. For City Editor Jonathan Scraggs' opinion to the contrary notwithstanding, Laury McGee had an idea.

It would be dangerous, he knew. He had had that idea for a long time. It would be a mad chance to take, a frightful risk. And yet... and yet...

"Sap!!"

He felt a strong knock across his body and when he turned his head all he could see was a slim, swift, sparkling sports car, like a thrown torpedo, speeding away, and a wild mass of brown hair flying above it like a flag.

He realized that he had been crossing a street, too absorbed in his serious thoughts to notice anything, automobiles included. The result of which was a considerable pain and a greasy line on his tan trousers where the sports car's fender had struck him.

He looked again at the disappearing car and started as though hit by a sudden inspiration. He had recognized the driver. It was Miss Winford, the "dime-a-hair girl"; called so for being the sole heiress to her father's fortune, that could number a dime for each hair on her head; which may not seem much, but try to figure it out!

Christopher A. Winford was a big steel magnate from Pittsburgh who had the bad taste to spend his summers in Dicksville. He owned half the town and the white residence on a hill overlooking it, a royal building whose glass-and-marble turrets looked like glistening fountains thrown to the blue sky from a sea of green foliage.

Miss Winford was eighteen and the absolute leader of Dicksville's younger set, of her parents, and of her sports car. Laury had never met her, but he had seen her often in town. She looked like an antelope and acted like a mustang. She had big, slightly slanting, ominously glistening eyes that made people feel a little nervous wondering just what was going on behind their suspicious calm; she had thin, dancing eyebrows and a determined mouth. Her brown hair was thrown behind her ears in a long, disheveled cut. From the tips of her little feet to that stormy tangle of hair she was slim, straight, strong like a steel spring.

Her ambitious mother had christened her Juliana Xenia. But her friends of the younger set, to the horror of said mother, called her simply Jinx.

Laury stood staring at her car long after it had disappeared. He had a strange, fixed, enraptured expression on his face, the expression of a man who has just been struck by an idea for the invention of an interplanetary communication. That girl... was it a coincidence? His idea — this was just what he needed for his idea. He had the aim — here was the means...

He walked home without noticing the streets around him, the sky above or the pavement under his feet...

That night, in his apartment, Laury McGee sat on the desk, his feet on a chair, his elbows on his knees, his chin on his fists, his eyes unblinking — and thought. The result of these thoughts was the lively happenings which occurred in Dicksville in the days that followed.

Jinx Winford was speeding home at fifty miles an hour, as usual; and at midnight, as usual, too. She had been visiting a girl friend out of town and now was on her way back, not in the slightest measure disturbed by the fact that her little gray sports car was the only sign of life on the dark, deserted road. Under a heavy black sky the endless plain stretched like a frozen sea with immobile waves of hills. Far ahead, a pale glow rose to the sky like a faint luminous fog, and the lights of Dicksville twinkled mysteriously, in straight lines bordering streets and in lonely, disorderly sparks, as though a tangle of golden beads had been thrown into the dark plain and some strings had broken in the fall.

The gray sports car was flying down the road like a swift, humming bug with two long, shuddering feelers of light sweeping the ground and tiny wings beating in the wind — the silk scarf on Jinx's shoulders. Her two firm hands on the wheel, Jinx was whistling a song. And she remained perfectly calm when, turning a sharp curve, she saw an automobile standing straight across the road, barring the way. It was an old sports car with no one at the wheel. But its lights were turned on, two glaring white spots that made the darkness beyond it seem empty and impenetrable, like a bottomless black hole.

She stepped on the brakes just in time to make her car stop with a jerk and a sharp, alarmed creaking a few inches from the strange sports car.

"Hey, what's the idea?" she threw into the darkness where it seemed she could distinguish the shadow of a man.

In the darkness, behind the old sports car, Laury McGee was ready. He had been waiting there for two hours. He had a black mask and a revolver. The lips under the mask were grim and determined; the fingers clutching the revolver trembled. Laury McGee was not hunting for news any more — he was making it.

The time had come. He looked, catching his breath, at the girl in the gray sports car, who sat clutching the wheel and peering into the darkness interrogatively, with raised eyebrows.

"How will she take it?" he shuddered. "I hope she doesn't scream too loud! Oh, I hope she doesn't faint!"

Then, resolutely, with broad steps, he walked towards her and stopped in full light, his threatening eyes behind the mask and the muzzle of his revolver looking straight at her. He waited silently for the effect that his appearance would produce. But there was no particular effect. Jinx raised one eyebrow higher and looked at him with decided curiosity, waiting.

"Don't scream for help!" he ordered in his most lugubrious voice. "No man can save you!"

"I haven't screamed yet," she observed. "Why suggest it?"

"Not a sound from you nor a movement! And step out of that car!"

"Well, I can't do that, you know," she answered sweetly.

Laury bit his lips. "I mean, get out of your car at once! Men like me are used to having their slightest order obeyed immediately!"

"Well, I haven't had the pleasure of meeting any men like you before, I'm sorry to say. As it happens, I'm not well acquainted with the profession."

"Then you better remember that my name is whispered with terror from coast to coast!"

"What's your name? Mine's Jinx Winford."

"You'll be sorry to learn my name! Everybody will tell you that my hand is of steel; that my heart is of granite; that I pass in the night like a death-bearing lightning, leaving terror and desolation behind!"

"Oh, really? I am sorry and you have all my sympathy: it must be awfully hard to live up to such a reputation!"

Laury looked at her strangely. Then he remembered that great bandits are always courteous to women. So he spoke gallantly:

"However, you have nothing to fear: I crush all men, but I spare women!"

"That's nothing to be proud of: women are the bunk and you ought to know it!"

"I'm profoundly sorry that I have to do this," he continued, "but you'll be treated with the greatest respect and courtesy, so you don't have to be afraid."

"Afraid? What of?"

"Say, will you please step out of your car and get into mine?"

"Is that absolutely necessary?"

"Yes!"

"Will you please kindly tell me what the hell this is all about?" she asked very suavely.

"You are being kidnapped," he explained politely.

"Oh!"

He didn't like that "Oh!" — it was not what he had expected at all. There was no terror or indignation in it; it sounded rather simple, matter-of-fact, as a person would say: "Oh, I see!"

She jumped lightly to the ground, her short skirt whirling high above graceful legs in tight, glistening stockings. The wind blew her clothes tight around her body and for a moment she looked like a slim little dancer in a wet, clinging dress, on an immense black stage, torn out of the darkness by the bright circle of the car's spotlight. And behind her, as a background — a gray, sandy piece of hill with bushes of dry, thorny weeds sticking out like deer horns.

"Will you please kindly wait while I lock my car?" she asked. "I don't mind being kidnapped, but I don't want some other gentleman to get the notion of kidnapping my car."

Calmly, she turned off the headlights, locked the car, and slipped the key into her pocketbook. She approached his old sports car and looked it over critically.

"Your business doesn't pay, does it?" she asked. "That buggy of yours doesn't look as though you get three meals a day."

"Will you please step in!" he almost shouted, exasperated. "We have no time to waste!"

She stepped in and snuggled comfortably on the seat, stretching her pretty legs far out on the slanting floorboard, her pleated skirt hardly covering the knees. He jumped to the wheel beside her.

"Do you expect a lot of money out of this?" she asked.

He did not answer.

"Are you desperately in love with me, then?"

"I should say not!" he snapped.

With a sharp, hoarse growl and a convulsive jerk from top to tire, the sports car tore forward, snorted, shuddered and rolled, wavering, into the darkness, towards the lights of Dicksville.

The wind and the dark hills rushed to meet them and rolled past. They were both silent. She studied him furtively from the corner of her eye. All she could see was a black mask between a gray cap and gracefully curved lips. He did not look at her once. All he knew of her presence was a faint, expensive perfume and tangled locks of soft hair that the wind blew into his face occasionally.

The first houses of Dicksville rose by the side of the road. Laury drove into town cautiously, choosing the darkest, emptiest streets. There were few streetlamps and no passersby. He stepped on the gas involuntarily, when passing through the white squares of light streaming from lonely corner drugstores.

Laury lived in an old apartment house in a narrow little street winding up a hill, in a new, half-built neighborhood. The house had two floors, big windows, and little balconies with no doors to them. There was an empty, unfinished bungalow next to it and a vacant lot across the street. Only two apartments on the first floor were occupied. Laury was the sole tenant on the second floor.

As the car swung around the corner into his street, Laury turned off the headlights and drove up to the house as noiselessly as he could. He looked carefully around before stopping. There was no one in sight. The little street was as dark and empty as an abandoned stage setting.

"Now, not a sound! Don't make any noise!" he whispered, clutching the girl's arm and dashing with her to the front door.

"Sure, I won't," she answered. "I know how you feel!"

They tiptoed noiselessly up the carpeted steps to Laury's door. The first thing that met Jinx's eyes, as Laury politely let her enter first, was one of his dirty shirts in the middle of the little hall, that had rolled out of an open clothes closet. Laury blushed under his mask and kicked it back into the closet, slamming its door angrily.

The living room had two windows and a soft blue carpet. A desk stood between the windows, a tempestuous ocean of papers with a typewriter as an island in it. The blue davenport had a few cushions on it, also a newspaper, a safety razor, and one shoe. The only big, low armchair was occupied by a pile of victrola records with an alarm clock on top of them; and a portable victrola stood next to it on a soap box covered with an old striped sweater. A big box marked "Puffed Wheat Cereal" served as a bookcase. A graceful glass bowl on a tall stand, intended for goldfish, contained no water, but cigarette ashes and a telephone, instead. The rest of the room was occupied by old newspapers, magazines without covers, covers without magazines, a tennis racket, a bath towel, a bunch of dry, shriveled flowers, a big dictionary, and a ukulele.

Jinx looked the room over slowly, carefully. Laury threw his coat and cap on a chair, took off the mask, wiped his forehead with a sigh of relief, and ran his fingers through his hair. Jinx looked at him, looked again, then took out her compact, powdered her face quickly, and passed the lipstick over her lips with unusual care.

"What's your name?" she asked in a somewhat changed voice.

"It doesn't matter, for the present," he answered.

She settled herself comfortably on the edge of his desk. He looked at her now, in the light. She had a lovely figure, as her tight silk sweater showed in detail, he thought. She had inscrutable eyes, and he could not decide whether their glance, fixed on him, was openly mocking or sweetly innocent.

"Well, you showed good judgment in choosing me for kidnapping," she said. "I don't know who else would be as good a bet. If you had less discrimination you might have chosen Louise Chatterton, perhaps, but, you know, her old man is so tight he never gets off a trolley before the end of the line, to get all his money's worth!"

She glanced over the room.

"You're a beginner, aren't you?" she asked. "Your place doesn't look like the lair of a very sinister criminal."

He looked at the room and blushed. "I'm sorry the room looks like this," he muttered. "I'll straighten it out. I'll do my best to make you comfortable. I hope your stay here will be as pleasant as possible."

"There's no doubt about that, I'm beginning to think. But then, where's your sweetheart's picture? Haven't you got a 'moll'?"

"Are you hungry?" Laury asked briskly. "If you want something to eat, I can..."

"No, I do not. Have you got a gang? Or are you a lonely mastermind?"

"If there's anything you want..."

"No, thanks. Have you ever been in jail yet? And how does it feel?"

"It's getting late," Laury said abruptly. "Do you want to sleep?"

"Well, you don't expect me to stay up all night, do you?"

Laury arranged the davenport for her. For himself he had fixed something like a bed out of a few chairs and an old mattress, in the kitchen.

"Tomorrow," he said before leaving her, "I'll have to go out for a while. You'll find food in the icebox. Don't make any attempts to run away. Don't make any noise — no one will hear you. You will save yourself a lot of trouble if you will promise me not to try to escape."

"I promise," she said, and added with a strange look straight into his sunny gray eyes: "In fact, I'll do my best not to escape!"...

Laury's heart was beating louder than the alarm clock at his side when he stretched himself on his uncomfortable couch in the dark kitchen. The couch felt like a mountainous landscape under his body and there was an odor of canned chili floating from the sink above his head. But he felt an ecstasy of triumph beating rapturously, like victorious drums, over all his body, to his very fingertips. He had done it! There had been no one in that dump of a town bright enough to commit a good crime. He had committed it; a crime worthy of his pen; a crime that would make good copy. Tomorrow, when the Dawn's headlines would thunder like wild beasts...

"Mr. Gunman!" a sweet voice called from the living room.

"What's the matter?" he cried.

"Is it an RCA victrola you have there in the corner?"

"Yes!"

"That's fine...Goodnight."

"Goodnight."

The headlines on the Dicksville Dawn were three inches high and blazed on the front pages like huge, black mouths screaming to an astounded world:

SOCIETY GIRL KIDNAPPED

And an army of newsboys rolled over Dicksville like a tidal wave, with swift currents branching into every street and an alarming, tempestuous roar of hoarse voices: "Extray! Extra-a-ay!"

The eager citizens who snatched from each other the crisp, fresh sheets, with the black print still wet and smearing under their fingers, read, shivering, of how the charming young heiress, Miss Juliana X. Winford, had disappeared on her way home from a visit and of how her sports car had been examined by the police on a lonely road two miles out of town. The sports car had two bullet holes in its side and one in a rear tire; the windshield was broken, the upholstery ripped and torn. Everything indicated a grim, desperate struggle. The sports car had been discovered, the Dicksville Dawn proudly announced, by "our own reporter, Mr. L. H. McGee."

There was a big photograph of Miss Winford, where all one could distinguish were bare legs, a tennis racket, and an intoxicating smile. The thrilling front-page story that related all these events was entitled: "Society Beauty Victim of Unknown Monster" — by Laurence H. McGee. It started with: "A profound sorrow clutched our hearts at the news that our fair city's peace and respect for law, of which we had always been so proud, was suddenly disturbed by a most atrocious, terrifying, revolting crime..."

The old building of the Dicksville Dawn looked like an anthill that somebody had stepped on. The presses thundered; the typewriters cracked furiously like machine guns; a current of frenzied humanity streamed down the main stairs and another one rolled up. City Editor Jonathan Scraggs dashed around, sweat streaming down his red face, rubbing his hands with a grin of ecstatic satisfaction at the thought that the Dawn had received the great news two hours before its rival, the Dicksville Globe. Laury McGee sat on the Editor's desk, his legs crossed, calmly smoking a cigarette.

"Great stuff, that story of yours, Laury, my boy!" Mr. Scraggs repeated. "Never thought you had it in you!"

The telephones screamed continuously, calls from all over the town, anxious voices begging news and details.

Chief Police Inspector Rafferty himself dropped in to see the City Editor. He was short, square, and nervous. He had a big black mustache, like a shaving brush, and little restless, suspicious eyes always watching for someone to offend his dignity.

"Cats and rats!" he shouted. "What's all this? Now, I ask you, what the hell is all this?"

"It's quite an unexpected occurrence," agreed Jonathan Scraggs.

"Occurrence be blasted! That any scoundrel should have the nerve to pull that off in my town! Cats and rats! I'll be hashed into hamburger if I know who the lousy mongrel could be! It isn't Pug-Nose Thomson, 'cause he was seen stewed like a hog in some joint, last night!"

"The affair does seem rather mysterious and..."

"I've sent every man on the force to comb the town! I'll fire them all, each goddamn boob, if they don't pull the bum out by the gullet!"

That afternoon, Mr. Christopher A. Winford's gray automobile stopped before the Dawn building and the tall gentleman walked up to the city room, with a step that implied a long acquaintance with respectfully admiring eyes and news cameras. He was cool, poised, distinguished. He had gray eyes, and a mustache that matched his eyes, and a suit that matched his mustache.

"Yes, it's most annoying," he said slowly, his eyes half-closed as one used to conceal his superior thoughts. "I wish my daughter back, you understand."

There was a slight wonder in his voice, as though he was unable to see how his wish could be disobeyed.

"Certainly, certainly, Mr. Winford," Mr. Scraggs assured him. "You have all our sympathy. A father's heart in a misfortune like this must..."

"I came here personally to arrange for an announcement in your paper," Mr. Winford went on slowly, "that I will pay a reward to anyone who furnishes information leading to the discovery of my daughter's whereabouts. Name the sum yourself, whatever you find necessary. I will pay for everything."

He had the calm tone of a man who knows the surest means of attaining his desires and does not hesitate to use it.

"There's an extra for us!" Mr. Scraggs cried enthusiastically when Mr. Winford left. "Rush to your mill, Laury, old pal, and fix us a good one! 'Heartbroken father in Dawn's office'... and all that, you know!"

"You seem to be in an unusually happy humor, today," Mr. Scraggs chuckled, watching Laury's sparkling eyes and swift fingers dancing on the typewriter keys. "So am I, boy, so am I!"

When Laury went home, late that evening, there was under every streetlamp an enthusiastic newsboy yelling himself hoarse with:

"Extree-e! Big ree-word for missin' goil! Here's yer cha-ance!"

And the headlines announced:

DESPERATE FATHER OFFERS $5,000 REWARD

That, in Mr. Scraggs' eyes, had been the most sensational sum he could name...

Laury's heart missed a few beats when he walked up the steps to his apartment and turned the key in the door lock. Was everything all right?

As he entered, Jinx dashed gaily to meet him. He gasped- She was wearing his best violet silk pajamas! They were too big for her and she draped them gracefully in soft, clinging folds around her little body.

"Hello, darling!" she greeted him. "Why so late? I've missed you terribly!"

"Why... why did you put these on?"

"These? Pretty, aren't they? Well, you didn't leave me anything to change and I was tired of wearing the same dress for two days!"

She led the way into the living room, and he stopped short with another gasp. The living room had been thoroughly cleaned, and not a single object stood in its former place. The whole room had been rearranged to look like a very impressionistic stage setting. The window curtains were hanging over the davenport, forming a cozy, inviting tent. The sofa cushions were capriciously thrown all over the floor. Jinx's colored silk scarf hung on the wall over his desk, like an artistic banner. The fishbowl stood at the foot of the davenport, and some incense that she had unearthed in one of his desk drawers was burning in it, a long, thin column of blue smoke swaying gracefully like a light, misty scarf.

"What did you do that for?" he muttered, amazed.

"Don't you like it?" She smiled triumphantly. "Your room looked as though it needed a woman's influence badly. I thought that you ought to have a little beauty in your hard life, to relax after a day of danger and gun-shooting!"

Laury laughed. She looked at him calmly, with a sweet look that seemed too innocent to be trusted.

"By the way," she said casually, "you better disconnect that phone. You left it here and I might have called up the police, you know!"

Laury's face went crimson, then white; with one jump, he snatched the phone and tore the wires furiously out of the wall. Then he turned to her, puzzled.

"Well, why didn't you?" he asked.

She smiled, a smile that seemed at once indulgent, cunning, and perfectly naive.

"I wanted to," she answered innocently, "but I had no time, I was too busy." And she added imperatively: "Take off your coat. Dinner is ready."

"What?"

"Dinner! And hurry up, 'cause it's late and I'm darn hungry!"

"But... but..."

"Come on, now, help me pull that table out!"

In a few seconds he was seated at a neatly arranged table covered with one of his pillowcases, there being no tablecloth in the house. And Jinx was serving a delicious dinner, hot, steaming dishes whose tempting odor made him realize how very tired and hungry he really was after this exciting day.

"Now, don't look so dumbfounded!" she said, settling down to her plate. "I'm a good cook, I am. I got the first prize in high school. I don't care much about cooking, but I like first prizes, no matter what for!"

"I must thank you," Laury muttered, eating hungrily, "although I didn't expect you to …”

"I bet you haven't had a homemade dinner in ages," she remarked sympathetically. "I bet you're used to eating in dingy pool parlors and saloons, where you meet to divide the loot with your gangsters. See, I know all about it. They must have pretty tough food, though, don't they?"

"Why... y-yes... yes, they do," Laury agreed helplessly.

After dinner, she asked for a cigarette, crossed her legs in the violet silk trousers, like a little Oriental princess, and leaned comfortably back in her chair, sending slowly graceful snakes of smoke to float into space.

"Get me a drink!" she ordered.

"Oh, sure!" He jumped up, eager to serve her in turn. "What do you wish? Tea, coffee?"

She smiled and winked at him significantly.

"Well, what do you wish?" he repeated.

"Well, now, as though you didn't understand!" She frowned impatiently.

"No, I don't understand. Surely, you don't mean to say that... that you want... liquor?"

"Oh, any kind of booze you've got will do!"

Laury stared at her with open mouth.

"Well, what's the matter?" she asked.

"I never thought that you would... that you might... that you..."

"You don't mean to say that you haven't got any?"

"No, I haven't!"

"Well, I'll be hanged! A crook, a real crook, with nothing to drink in his house! What kind of a gangster are you, anyway?"

"But, Miss Winford, I never thought that you..."

"You've got a lot to learn, my child, you've got a lot to learn!"

Laury blushed; then remembered that he was the kidnapper and had to show some authority.

"Now, don't disturb me," he ordered, sitting down at his desk before the typewriter. "I've got something very important to write... Here," he added, "you might be interested in this!" And he threw to her the day's newspapers.

"O-oh! Sure!" she cried. "The papers!"

She jumped on the sofa, the cushions bouncing under her, folded her legs criss-cross, and bent eagerly over the papers, her tousled hair hanging down over her face, almost touching the wide sheets.

He attacked the typewriter furiously, pounding the keys energetically in an attempt to write the important message he had in mind. But it was not so easy. The words did not seem to him impressive enough. He started one sheet after another, and tore them to pieces, and flung them into the wastebasket.

Jinx interrupted him every few seconds with a gasp of sincere delight: "Oh, look, my picture!... Oh, what a fuss for the old town!... Aren't they dumbfounded!... Don't worry, they'll never find you out, not that bunch of saps!... Lizzie Chatterton's going to chew her nails to the bone from envy — she's never been kidnapped!... Say, what's this about my car? Who wrecked it and why?"

"Some reporter must have done it," Laury answered disdainfully. "It makes better copy."

"Oh, listen to this!" she laughed happily. " 'Every heart in our town is convulsed with anxiety at the thought of this helpless young beauty in the cruel claws of some pitiless beast...' Oh boy! Who wrote that? Gee, what a sap that McGee fellow must be!"

Laury was working hard, very hard — writing the ransom letter. It was not easy, since it had to be good front-page stuff. And a blissful smile of satisfaction spread on his face when he finished it at last and turned to Jinx.

"Here," he said. "Listen — it concerns you."

And he read:

Dear Sir,

This is not an offer or a request, this is a command and you will do well to obey it at once or hell itself will seem a sweet baby's dream compared to the fate I have in store for you. At an hour and place that I will communicate to you later, you will deliver into my hands ten thousand dollars cash, as the price of your daughter's freedom. Be careful not to oppose me, for you are dealing with the most dangerous enemy that any mortal has ever encountered. You are warned.

Damned Dan

Jinx sprang to her feet, her eyes blazing, her body shaking with indignation.

"How dare you?" she cried. "You cheap scoundrel! How dare you ask my father for ten thousand dollars?"

She snatched the letter from him and tore it to pieces furiously.

"Now sit down!" she commanded, pointing proudly at the typewriter. "Sit down and write another one — and ask for one hundred thousand dollars!"

And as Laury did not move, she added:

"Ten thousand dollars! It's an insult to be sold for ten thousand! I won't stand for my price being that low! Why, it's only the price of a car, and of not such a very good one, at that!"

It was a long time before Laury had recovered enough to sit at the typewriter and obey her order...

"But that is not all, Miss Winford," he said severely, when he had finished the new ransom message. "You, too, are going to write a letter to your father."

"Oh, with pleasure!" she answered willingly.

He gave her a pen and a sheet of paper. She wrote quickly: "Dear Pop."

"What do you mean?" he shouted. "Dear Pop! Do you realize that your letter will be published in all the papers? You write what I dictate!"

"All right," she agreed sweetly and took another sheet.

"Dear Father," he dictated solemnly. "If there is in your heart a single drop of pity for your unfortunate daughter, you will..."

"I never write like that," she observed.

"Never mind, write now! '... you will come to my rescue at once.' Exclamation point! 1 can't tell you all the suffering I am going through.' Have you got that? 'Please, oh! please save me.' Exclamation point! If you could only see what your poor daughter is doing now...'"

"Say, don't you think that if he could see that, he'd be rather surprised, and not in the way you want?"

"Go on, write what I say!'... is doing now, your heart would break!'"

"Most probably!"

"Go on! 1 can't write very well, because my eyes are dimmed with tears...'"

"Aren't you laying it on too thick?"

"'... with tears! I implore you to spare no effort to save me!' Now sign it! 'Your desperate daughter...' No! Gosh! Not Jinx! 'Juliana Xenia Winford.'"

"Here you are," she said, handing him the letter.

He read it and frowned slightly.

"Let's make it a little stronger," he said. "Write a postscript to it: 'P.S. I'm miserable, miserable.' Exclamation point — two of them! Have you finished? Here, fold it and put it into this envelope. Fine! Thank you, Miss Winford!"

He put the envelope with the two letters into his pocket. He smiled triumphantly. It had turned out better than he had expected. Of course, he did not intend to take any ransom money from Mr. Winford; he did not even intend to fix an hour and place for it; and he was certain that, anyway, Mr. Winford would never agree to pay ten thousand dollars, much less a hundred thousand.

He stretched himself with a sigh of relaxation.

"Well, I'm going to bed. I've got to get up early tomorrow."

"Are you going out tomorrow?" Jinx asked.

"Yes. Why?"

"I've got a little errand for you. There are a few things that you'll have to buy for me tomorrow."

"A few things? What things?"

"Why, if you intend to keep me here for quite a while, you can't expect me to wear the same clothes all the time, can you? A woman needs a few little things, you know. Here's the list I've written for you."

He took the list. It occupied four pages. It included everything from dresses and slippers to underwear and nightgowns to nail polish and French perfume at forty dollars an ounce.

He blushed. He thought with a shudder of what would be left of his bank account, if anything. But he was too much of a gentleman to refuse.

"All right," he said humbly. "You'll get it tomorrow."

"Now, don't forget, I want the chiffon dress flame-red and the silk one electric-blue. And I want the panties real short, see, like the ones I have."

And she held out the dainty little cloud of lace that she had thrown into one of his desk drawers. She didn't blush; but he did.

"All right," he said, "I'll remember... Goodnight, Miss Winford."

"Goodnight — Mr. Damned Dan!"

"I can't figure it out!" Vic Perkins was saying acidly, on the next morning- "Spray me with insect powder if I can figure it out! For one thing, I don't see anything so brilliant in these stories of his. And for two things, all this news he's getting first, well, it's just a fool's luck. And why all this fuss the Editor's raising over that McGee bum what never got two words in print before is more than my intellect can digest!"

Vic Perkins was not quite satisfied with the turn of events. The Dawn's morning number had come out with blazing stories, each bearing a line in big black print: "by Laurence H. McGee." Practically the whole front page was by Laurence H. McGee. There was even a picture of him. And Victor Z. Perkins, the Dawn's star, had to be satisfied with two measly columns on the third page, where he expressed his opinions on the great crime, and they sounded like a mouse's squeal, compared to the roar of Laury's flaming stories.

It had been reported, to City Editor Jonathan Scraggs' extreme satisfaction, that the Dicksville Globe was seriously perturbed by his brilliant new reporter's activity. There could be no one to compete with Laurence H. McGee. He was getting all the news hours ahead of everybody else. He seemed to know just where to go to get it. He interviewed Miss Winford's parents, her servants, her friends. He wrote heartbreaking stories on the vanished girl. He wrote terrifying warnings to parents to watch their children. He seemed to burst with inspiration, and Dicksville's citizens were beginning to gulp eagerly every issue of the Dawn for its gripping, thrilling articles.

"My congratulations, Mr. McGee," said the Managing Editor himself, when Mr. Scraggs announced Laury's raise in salary. "I have a presentiment of a brilliant future for you!"

"Great, Laury, kid, great!" Mr. Scraggs chuckled rapturously. "You have a positive genius for that kind of stuff Oh boy, ain't we cleaning up, though! Extras go like pancakes!"

Laury sat in Mr. Scraggs' comfortable armchair, his feet on the editorial desk, and looked bored. Some of the Dawn staffs elite had found a few minutes to gather around him and congratulate the new star. Laury was smoking one of Mr. Scraggs' cigars, and it made him sick, but he looked superior.

"Your stories are... are gorgeous! Just simply... simply wonderful!" muttered an enthusiastic and anemic little cub.

"How d'you do it?" asked Vic Perkins gruffly.

"It's all in the day's work," answered Laury modestly.

"Oh, Mr. McGee!" cackled Aurelia D. Buttersmith, the flower of the Dawn's womanhood, who wore glasses and had never been kissed. "I'm doing a story on Miss Winford's personality. Do you think it will be appropriate to call her 'a sweet little lily-of-the-valley that the slightest wind could break'? Will it suit her?"

"Perfectly, Miss Buttersmith," Laury answered. "Oh, perfectly!"

"That whole affair is a godsend!" Mr. Scraggs enthused. "By gum, I almost feel I could thank the guy who pulled it!"

Early that afternoon, Mr. Scraggs had another thrill that sent him jumping in his chair like a rubber ball. Laury rushed into the city room, his shirt collar flung open, his hair like a storm, his eyes like lightning.

"An extra!" he cried. "Quick! I've got the letters Winford received from the kidnapper!"

"O-oo-ooh!" was all Mr. Scraggs could answer.

It was lucky for Laury that no one noticed the fact that the Dicksville Dawn received the copy of the two letters half an hour before the postman delivered the originals to Mr. Winford...

While the fresh extras were flowing from the press, Laury went out again, "to look for news," he said. But this time, he went "to look for news" in Harkdonner's big department store.

Laury thought that if he deserved a punishment for his crime, he got it, and plenty, in the hours that he spent at Harkdonner's department store. He went from counter to counter, Jinx's list in hand, perspiration gluing his shirt to his back and his hair to his forehead, and his face red as a tomato. He thought he had acquired a habit of stuttering for life before he got through with the lingerie counter. He did not dare to look at the courteous saleslady, for fears she would be blushing, too.

"It's... it's for my wife... for my wife," he repeated helplessly, hoping desperately that no one would see him in the store.

And as it always happens in such cases, two stenographers from the Dawn passed by, saw him at the ladies' lingerie counter, waved to him, giggled, and winked significantly.

And he almost murdered the salesman who, with an understanding grin, offered him a weekend suitcase.

Finally, with four huge boxes, two in each hand, Laury emerged from the store, put the boxes in his faithful old sports car, and left the car in a garage where no one could see it until evening. Then he walked back to the Dawn building.

His good humor returned to him on the way. Damned Dan's name was all over Dicksville. It blazed on headlines of extras everywhere. It echoed in the terrified whispers of little groups of people gathered all along Main Street. It ran like the swift fire of a dynamite cord, spreading over the whole town to explode in a frenzy of general panic. Laury felt a personal pride.

Besides, he noticed that many passersby looked at him, pointed him out to each other, whispered, and turned around. "The one that writes those marvelous stories in the Dawn" he heard.

And two charming young ladies even had the courage to stop him.

"Oh, Mr. McGee!" sang one of them in a lovely voice from lovely lips. "Excuse our boldness, but we recognized you and couldn't help stopping you to ask about that terrible crime. Do you really think that man is as horrible as he seems?"

"Do you really think all of us girls are in danger?" breathed the other one, very becomingly frightened. "Your stories are so fascinating! I thought, 'Here's a man to protect us all!'"

And it was hard to decide whether their smiles sparkled with admiration for the stories or for the big gray eyes and tempting lips of the young man before them.

So Laury entered the Dawn offices, head high, whistling nonchalantly, with the proud air of a conqueror tired of victories.

"Hey, where on earth have you been?" shouted the copy boy, meeting him on the stairs. "The Editor's hollering for you!"

Laury strolled into the city room, a superior smile on his lips.

"You nearsighted, blind boob!" Mr. Scraggs greeted him. "You brainless, straw-stuffed sap!"

"W-why, Mr. Scraggs!" Laury suffocated.

"Why the hell," Mr. Scraggs roared, "why the hell when you brought us Miss Winford's letter did you leave out the best part of it?"

"What?"

"Why did you omit the second postscript?"

"The second postscript?!"

"Look here!" And Mr. Scraggs threw to him an extra of the Dicksville Globe that had just come out, an hour after the Dawn, with the two sensational letters that Mr. Winford had received. Laury found Jinx's letter and read:

Dear Father,

If there is in your heart a single drop of pity for your unfortunate daughter, you will come to my rescue at once! I can't tell you all the suffering I am going through. Please, oh! please save me! If you could only see what your poor daughter is doing now your heart would break. I can't write very well because my eyes are dimmed with tears. I implore you to spare no effort to save me.

Your desperate daughter, Juliana Xenia Winford.

P.S. I'm miserable, miserable!!

P.S.II Like fun I am!

"When interviewed on the subject," the Globe added, "Mrs. Winford remarked: 'Unfortunately, only the second postscript sounds like my daughter's style of self-expression!'"

Laury entered his apartment that evening with a scowl on his face, darker than printing ink. He threw the four boxes in the middle of the room, without answering Jinx's greeting, and slumped down on the sofa, turning his back to her.

"O-oh! Isn't that sweet of you!" Jinx cried, throwing herself eagerly on the packages. In a second the living-room floor looked like a combination salad made out of a woman's boudoir after an earthquake. And Jinx sat on the carpet in the middle of the waves of lace and silk, enthusiastically examining her new possessions.

"My goodness! What's this?" she cried suddenly.

And she pulled out the nightgown that Laury had chosen for her. As his excuse it must be said that he had no way of knowing what girls wear at night and so he had chosen the most decent-looking gown in the store, which was an immense thing of heavy flannel with long sleeves, high collar, and little pockets, a dignified garment to which his grandmother could have found no objection.

"What do you think this is, an Eskimo raincoat?" Jinx asked indignantly, waving the gown before Laury's eyes.

"Well, but..." he muttered, embarrassed.

"Have you ever seen a woman in a nightgown like that?" she thundered.

"No, I haven't!" he answered sharply.

His face was dark and indifferent. And it did not change when, after carrying her new things away, Jinx emerged suddenly from the kitchen, wearing one of her new dresses.

It was the flame-red chiffon. The light red mist clung to her slim waist tightly like a bathing suit and then flowed down to her knees in wide waves that floated around her like trembling tongues of fire. She stood immobile, her head thrown back. Her hair looked tornado-blown. Her lips were parted, glistening like wet petals; and her eyes sparkled strangely with a joyous, intense, and eager glitter.

"Do you like it?" she asked softly.

"Yes!" he threw indifferently, without looking at her.

She laughed. She turned on the victrola, a thundering jazz record.

"Let's dance!" she invited.

Laury turned to her abruptly.

"What did you write that second postscript for?" he asked.

"Oh! Wasn't that clever?" she laughed, dancing all over the room, her body shaking with the gracefully convulsive jerks of a fox-trot. "You're not angry, are you — Danny?"

"Please stop that dancing, Miss Winford! Do you want the neighbors to hear you?"

"Don't call me Miss Winford!"

"What shall I call you? And leave that ukulele alone! You'll wake up the whole house, Miss Winford!"

"My name's Jinx!"

"No wonder!"

She laughed again. With one graceful leap she landed on her knees at his feet and her strong little hands turned his head towards her.

"Now, Danny," she whispered tenderly, her hair brushing his chin, her laughing eyes fixed straight on his, "can't you smile, just once?"

He did not want to, but he could not help it and he smiled. When Laury smiled he had little dimples playing on his cheeks, gay like flickers of light, and in his eyes — dancing sparks, mischievous like dimples. And the strange, eager, almost hungry look glittered again in Jinx's eyes.

She pulled him up to his feet and threw his arms around her and pushed him into the gay rhythm of a fox-trot. He laughed wholeheartedly and obeyed. They glided, swaying, over the room. The victrola screamed joyously and in the buoyant roar of the jazz orchestra some instrument knocked dryly, rhythmically, like a cracking whip spurring the sounds to dance. Laury's hands clasped her slim little body, the tremulous red cloud with the faint, sweet perfume. And Jinx pressed herself to him, closer, closer.

They danced until their feet could move no longer and then they both fell on the sofa, in the cozy tent of the window curtains that Jinx had arranged. She looked at him with smiling, encouraging, impatient eyes.

"You're a wonderful dancer, Miss Winford," he said.

"Thanks! So are you," she answered indifferently.

"Are you tired?"

"No!" she threw coldly.

They were silent for several minutes.

"Have you ever kidnapped a girl before?" she asked suddenly.

"Now, just why do you want to know that?" he inquired.

"Oh, I just wonder... I just wonder if you ever kiss the girls who are your prisoners."

"You don't have to be afraid of that!" he answered, with a sincere indignation.

And he could not quite make out what the look that she gave him meant...

They danced again; then, he played the ukulele and sang to her the songs he knew; and she sang the ones he didn't know; and they sang together; and she taught him a new dance; and she thought that Lizzie Chatterton had certainly missed something having never been kidnapped.

When he finally stretched himself on his mountainous bed in the kitchen and turned off the light, Laury somehow did not feel like sleeping and the sweet perfume lingered with him, as though breathing from the other room, and he looked at the closed door.

"Oh!... Danny!!" a frightened voice screamed in the living room.

He jumped up and rushed to her. She threw her arms around him and clung to him, trembling, making him fall on his knees by the side of her bed.

"Oh!... I heard a noise... as though somebody was moving in the hall!" she whispered with a terror that looked almost perfectly genuine.

Her blanket was half thrown off and she clung to him, trembling, frightened, helpless. His hands clasped her nightgown, and the body under the nightgown, and he felt her heart beating under his fingers.

"There's no one there... What are you afraid of... Jinx?" he whispered.

"Oh!" she breathed. "Oh, I'm afraid the police might come!"

Laury was surprised to see that he was trembling when he returned to his kitchen and that it had cost him a hard effort to return there.

"I wish," he thought, closing his eyes, "I wish the police would never come here... and for more reasons than one!"

"Extray!... Extray-ay!"

The sun was shining so gaily in the sky and in Laury's eyes, on this following morning, that he did not pay any particular attention to the ominous roar bursting suddenly in the street under the city room windows. The sky was blue and Laury's desk at the window looked like a square of gold. He had won back Mr. Scraggs' favor by his brilliant story on the mysterious personality of Damned Dan, in the morning number. He was writing another article now, and the cubs around him looked respectfully at the great journalist at work.

So when the unexpected roar of yelling voices thundered in the street, proclaiming some eventful news, Laury was not disturbed and only wondered dimly what the Globe could have an extra for.

But he did not have much time for meditation. He was summoned hurriedly to Mr. Scraggs' desk. His heart fell when he saw the Editor's face. He knew at once that something had happened, something frightful.

"What excuse have you got to offer?" Mr. Scraggs asked with sinister calm.

"Excuse... for what?" Laury muttered, steadying his voice.

"I had an impression that you were supposed to cover the Winford case, young man?"

"Well..."

"Then how do you account for the fact," Mr. Scraggs roared, "that a punk, lousy, measly paper like the Globe gets such news ahead of us?" And he waved a Globe extra into Laury's face.

"News, Mr. Scraggs? News on the Winford case?"

"And how!... Or perhaps you wouldn't call it news that Winford received a second letter from the kidnapper?"

"What?!"

"You heard me! And the letter orders him to deliver the money tonight!"

Laury saw stars swimming between him and Mr. Scraggs. He seized the extra, almost tearing it in half; and he read the great news. Mr. Winford had received this morning a second message from Damned Dan, fixing the time and place for the ransom money to be delivered. Mr. Winford had decided to obey, for, he had declared: "I would rather search for my money than for my daughter." Therefore, he had refused to make public all of the letter and the place appointed for the meeting. The Globe's reporter was only able to state that the kidnapper's letter was written with a pencil on a piece of brown wrapping paper; and that it started with:

Deer Ser enuff monkay biznes. Come across with the dough and make it pretti darn snappi or I'l get sor and wat'l hapen to yur gal then will be plenti...

It was signed:

Veri trooli yur's Dammd Dan

Laury swayed on his feet, and Mr. Scraggs wondered at the color of his face.

"It's... it's impossible!" he muttered hoarsely. "It's impossible!"

"What's impossible? The Globe getting it first and you asleep on your job?"

"But... but it can't be, Mr. Scraggs! Oh, God! It can't be!"

"Just why can't it be?"

Laury straightened himself slowly, straight and tense like a piano string.

"There's something happening somewhere, Mr. Scraggs!" he said, white as a sheet. "Something horrible!"

"There sure is," answered Mr. Scraggs, "and it's right here, in my city room, from which you're going to be kicked out, head first, if you ever miss a piece of news like this again!"

Eight hours passed after this conversation; eight desperate hours that Laury spent ransacking the town in search of some clue to that inexplicable development. He was too astounded to be quite conscious of what he was doing. He wondered if he was not going insane — the thing seemed so ridiculously incredible. He was searching frantically for something that would give him the faintest suspicion of an explanation.

He interviewed Mr. Winford and saw the first half of the letter on brown wrapping paper; he interviewed the police; he went around town actually hunting for news on the Winford case, looking for — Damned Dan! The idea made him laugh — with a gnashing of teeth.

And when he dragged himself back towards the Dawn building at six-thirty P.M., he had discovered nothing. The sun was setting far at the end of Main Street and red fires blazed on the windshields of cars rolling west. The peaceful traffic streamed by as usual and the shop awnings were being pulled up over darkened windows, locked for the night, as usual; but it seemed to Laury that somewhere behind these quiet houses, somewhere in this peaceful town, an invisible, frightful doom was silently awaiting him...

"No," said Mr. Scraggs, when Laury reached the city room, "you can't go home tonight. You'll be needed here. Grave developments are coming, I feel. Take an hour off for dinner and then be back on the job. Hang around Winford, be the first to learn the results of the ransom meeting this evening. And be sure to get here before the deadline!"

Laury walked home, his hands deep in his pockets and his thoughts deep in misery. What was he to do now? He could not let Mr. Winford be robbed of that huge sum, robbed and cheated, for he knew that the second "Dammd Dan" could not deliver Jinx to her father. He must warn him. But how? He did not dare to act, now that he felt himself watched and had not the slightest idea of the enemy he was dealing with.

Just the same, he jerked his head up proudly and muttered behind a firmly set mouth:

"But if that lousy bum, whoever he is, thinks he can scare me, he has a surprise coming that he'll long remember! I'll learn what his game is and damn soon!"

"Congratulations, buddy!" said a thick voice above his ear.

He stopped short and wheeled around. A tall, huge shadow towered above him in the coming darkness. That shadow had a crumpled little cap, too small for its big head, and greasy clothes that smelled of whiskey. It had a flat face, heavy eyes, and a broken, prizefighter's nose. Laury recognized it at once: it was Pug-Nose Thomson.

"Sir?" Laury asked indignantly, backing away from the man's strange, significant grin.

"Yeah, buddy, yeah, I says it was a slick one!" answered the man with a slow chuckle.

"What are you talking about? I don't know you! Whom do you think you're talking to?" Laury threw sharply.

"I'm talkin' to Damned Dan hisselfl" the man answered happily.

Laury wanted to make a reply and couldn't.

"I says, yuh pulled the best job any guy ever tried in this burg," the man went on. "For an a matcher it was pretty slick, I'll say!"

"I don't know what you're talking about!" Laury pronounced with a tremendous effort, wondering himself at the calm of his voice. "Leave me alone! You've been drinking!"

"So I have. Which don't make no difference," answered Pug-Nose Thomson quietly. "An' yuh better don't pull that line on me, kiddo, 'cause I know what I know, an' yuh know it, too... But I don't mean no offense to yuh, on the conterry, I mean to pay my compliments. If that's yer begginin', yuh'll go far, young fella, yuh'll go far!"

"I don't understand you!" Laury insisted. "You're taking me for somebody else!"

"No, I ain't! Now, lissen here, I've got a offer fer yuh: Let's be partners on this job!"

"You crazy fool! If you think..."

"Aw, cut that out, I'm talkin' bizness! I know pretty damn well that yuh're the guy what writes all them stories in the poipers an' what's got the Winford dame locked up in his own joint! Which's pretty darn smart, I agrees!"

"But..."

"An' if yuh wanna know how I knows it, it's right simple: I read the poipers an' I noticed as how yuh was gettin' all them news on this bizness first. 'That's funny,' I thought to myself, 'nobody never heard of this guy before.' An' then I watched yuh, an' I saw yuh buy all them Jane's duds an' yuh ain't never got a sweetie, so there! An' I watched yer joint from acrost the street an' sure thing, there was the Winford gal at yer winder!

"Now keep yer mouth shut!" he went on, without giving Laury time to reply. "No use tryin' to fool me! Here's the main thing: I wrote that second letter to the Winford gent an' he's bringin' the dough over tonight, in an hour. Yuh bring the gal an' we go fifty-fifty on it!

"That's still plenty fer yuh," he added, as Laury remained silent and immobile. "No one ever got fifty grand fer his first job!"

Laury looked calmly, steadily into the man's eyes.

"All right, then, if you are so well informed," he said coldly, narrowing his eyes. "Now, suppose I refuse your offer?"

"Yuh won't," Pug-Nose declared with conviction, " 'cause then I go an' tell the bulls what I know on this case. An' I get the five grand of reward. So yuh better accept my offer!"

"Well," said Laury, "I accept it!"

"Great, buddy! Now..."

"I accept it on one condition: you give me twenty-four hours. We'll meet Winford at the same time tomorrow!"

"Why should I?" Pug-Nose protested. "I don't wanna wait!"

"Then go to the police at once, and denounce me, and get your five thousand, instead of the fifty you'll get tomorrow! I won't bring the girl tonight, and that's final!"

"Well, okay," said Pug-Nose slowly, after some deliberation. "We'll make it tomorrow. Yuh meet me here, same time, with the gal."

"Yes!" said Laury. "Goodnight, partner!"

"Goodnight!"

The darkness was gathering and Pug-Nose Thomson disappeared behind a corner so swiftly that Laury hardly heard his footsteps. There was no one around that could have witnessed their meeting. Lonely streetlamps flared up feebly in the deserted street with two rows of silent, drooping houses, in the brown shadows of a rusty sunset. A woman was gathering the wash from a clothesline in a backyard, and a car rattled through the silence, somewhere in the distance.

Cold sweat was rolling down Laury's face. He hurried home. But his mind was made up when he entered his apartment.

"Take your things and come on," he said to Jinx sternly.

"Where?" she asked.

"I've decided to take you back to your parents tonight!"

"That's too bad," she said sweetly, with a smile of compassion for him. "I won't go!"

He stepped back and stared at her, wide-eyed.

"What did you say?" he asked.

"Just that I won't go," she repeated calmly, "that's all!"

"How... how am I to understand that?"

"Oh, any way you please! Just any way!"

"You mean, you don't want to be free?"

"No!... I enjoy being a prisoner... your prisoner!"

There was only one shaded little lamp lighted in the room. She was wearing her electric-blue silk dress, tight, luminous, glittering faintly, and in the half-darkness she looked like a phosphorescent little firefly.

"Danny," she said softly, "you aren't going to send me away like that, are you?"

He did not answer. He was surprised to feel his heart beating furiously somewhere in his throat. She smiled scornfully:

"Why, there's no fun in being kidnapped if that's all there is to it!"

"But, Miss Winford..."

"Do you realize that I'm your prisoner and you can do with me anything you want?"

He was silent.

"Oh, Damned Dan!" she threw at him. "Aren't you going to take advantage of a girl who is in your power?"

He turned to her sharply and looked at her with half-closed eyes, curious, a little mocking, unexpectedly masterful, a dangerous look. And she felt that look like a hand squeezing her heart with delightful pain.

She stood straight, immobile, from the tips of her feet to her wide, sparkling eyes — waiting. "You have no right! You have no right! What are you thinking about?" he cried soundlessly to himself.

He turned away. "Come on, you're going home!" he ordered sharply.

"I'm not!" she answered.

"You're not, eh?" He turned to her fiercely. "You terrible little thing! You're the worst little creature I ever saw! I'm glad to get rid of you! You'll go now, do you hear me?"

He seized her wrist with a bruising grip. She whirled around and threw her body close against his.

"Oh, Danny! I don't want to go away!" She breathed so softly and she was so close that he heard it with his lips rather than his ears.

And then he closed his eyes, and crushed his lips against hers, and thought, when his arms clasped her, that he was going to break her in two...

"Jinx... darling... darling!"

"Danny, you wonderful thing! You most adorable of all."

They seemed to be cut away from the whole world by the little tent over the sofa, and not by the little tent only. His arms closed around her, like the gates of a kingdom that no more than two can ever enter. Their eyes were laughing soundlessly at each other. And he was saying to her the most eloquent things which a man's lips can say and for which no words are needed.

And Laury forgot all about having ever been a reporter...

It was ten minutes to nine when he remembered.

"Oh, my goodness!" he cried, jumping up. "The deadline!"

"The dead who?"

"The deadline! I must run now! Dearest, I'll be back soon!"

"Oh! Do you have to go? Well, hurry back then — you know how I'll miss you, darling!"

Laury threw his old sports car as fast as it could go, flying towards the Dawn building. He was too happy to think much about anything else. His soul was dancing, and so was his sports car. The old machine went zigzagging to right and left, jumping buoyantly and senselessly, like a young calf turned loose for the first time in a green, sunny meadow. The drivers around him swore frantically; Laury laughed joyously, his head thrown back.

Then he remembered that he had no story for Mr. Scraggs. He seized his notebook and jotted words down hurriedly. It was a miracle that he reached the Dawn building without an accident, driving as he was with his one hand on the wheel, his other on the notebook, and his mind on a pair of slanting, sparkling eyes and soft, laughing lips, back home.

"Ah, so here you are!" Mr. Scraggs exclaimed ominously, when Laury whirled into the city room.

Laury was too far away in his overflowing happiness to notice the storm on Mr. Scraggs' face.

"Yes! I'm on time, am I not?" he cried gaily.

"You are? And what about the news?"

"The news? Oh, sure, the news!... I got it! Most sensational news, Mr. Scraggs! Winford came to the meeting place and — Damned Dan was not there to meet him!"

Such a dead silence fell over the city room that Laury looked around, surprised.

"I'd like to know," Mr. Scraggs said slowly with the tense, shivering calm of a fury hard to restrain, "I'd like to know where the hell you are getting your news from!"

"Why... why, what's the matter?"

"What's the matter? You blockheaded, half-witted, confounded idiot! Nothing's the matter, except that the Globe came out half an hour ago with the news and..."

"Oh, well..."

"... and Damned Dan did come to the meeting, you skunk of a reporter!"

"He...came?"

"Where have you been all that time, you lazy cub? Sure, he came, but he didn't bring the girl, so he got one grand in advance and promised to bring her later!"

Laury had no strength to make a comment or an answer; he stood, his eyes closed, his arms drooping helplessly.

"In fact," Mr. Scraggs added, "he promised to bring her in an hour!"

"What?" Laury jumped forward as though he was going to choke Mr. Scraggs.

"I'd like to know," Mr. Scraggs cried in furious amazement, "what the hell is the meaning of your strange… Where are you going?! Hey! Stop! Come here at once! Where are you going?"

But Laury did not hear him. He was flying madly down the stairs, out into the street, into his sports car...

His apartment was empty when he got there. Jinx's perfume was still lingering in the air. A pair of adorable little slippers was thrown into a chair. The sofa cushions were still crumpled where they had been sitting together...

He found a note on his desk.

Deer partner I changed my mind. Wy shood I wait fer a haff toomoro wenn I can hav oil of it too-nyt? I'l giv yu a litle of it later fer a consolashun. So good lukk and happi dreems. Dont skueel coz then I'l skueeltoo.

Pug Noz Thomson

"You gentlemen of the press," said Mr. Winford to Laury, "are most decidedly aggravating, I must say. You should realize that I am not exactly in the mood to give you interviews and information on this painful subject... No, I repeat, the individual who calls himself Damned Dan did not come to this second meeting, as he promised, an hour after the first. I waited for him to no avail and I just returned home. That is all I know... But I do wish that you gentlemen would not be so insistent in paying me visits that are becoming rather too frequent."

Laury stared at him hopelessly.

"And, young man," Mr. Winford added severely, "I would give a little more consideration to my personal appearance before calling at people's houses, if I were you."

Laury glanced indifferently into a big, full-size mirror in the white marble hall of the Winford residence, and the mirror showed to him a haggard, disheveled young man, with his hair hanging down on his wet forehead, his cap backwards on his head, his shirt torn open and his necktie on his shoulder.

The sight did not affect him at all; he had had too many shocks this day to retain any faculty of reaction. The last shock had been the worst of all; from his apartment he had rushed straight to the Winford residence, hoping to find Jinx there; he had found only Mr. Winford just returned from his second appointment with Pug-Nose Thomson and Pug-Nose had not come to this meeting! Why? Jinx was in his power now. What had happened?

Laury bowed to Mr. Winford wearily.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Winford," he said in a dull voice. "I'm rather upset over a very serious matter... Thank you for the information... Goodnight!"

He turned and left the wide, empty hall dimly lighted by crystal chandeliers reflected in the dark mirrors and polished marble floor, Mr. Winford's lonely figure motionless among tall, white columns and the faint sound of Mrs. Winford's sobs, somewhere in a distant room.

He drove his rattling sports car on the graveled road of the Winford gardens, rolling downhill, with a fountain tinkling somewhere in the darkness like breaking glass and the lights of Dicksville glittering far down under his feet between the branches of tall, black cypresses.

With each turn of the wheels his face was becoming grimmer and grimmer. He was calm now, and implacable. There was only one thing to do — and he had decided to do it.

He was going straight to Police Headquarters to throw them on Pug-Nose Thomson's trail. He knew that once Pug-Nose was caught, it would be the end of him, too, for the bum certainly would not keep silent. For the first time he felt a cold shudder at the thought of jail. So that was the fate awaiting him! Such was to be the end of his glorious journalistic career that had just been starting so brilliantly! A kidnapper, a criminal, a convict... Oh, well, it had to be done!

He did not hesitate for a moment, for there was only one reason, expressed in one word, that pushed him to action: Jinx! His whole being was one immense anxiety for her. Where was she now and what was happening to her? He closed his eyes not to see Pug-Nose Thomson's picture that rose in his mind...

It was a proud, determined Laury that entered Chief Police Inspector Rafferty's office; a Laury cold, imperative, and impersonal, like a general ready for a dangerous battle, calm with the calm of a great moment.

"Get your men, Inspector," he ordered, "to arrest Miss Winford's kidnapper!"

"Cats and rats!!" cried Chief Police Inspector Rafferty.

Pug-Nose Thomson's hangouts were pretty well known to the police. It would not take long to make their round, and Inspector Rafferty decided to go himself in his excitement over the biggest case of his whole career. He called two husky policemen to accompany him.

Laury, true to his duty to the last, rushed to a telephone.

"Mr. Scraggs?" he cried, when he got the Dawn's editorial desk. "It's McGee speaking! Send your best man over to Police Headquarters right away! There's going to be a knockout of a story!... No, I won't be able to cover it!... You'll learn why, very soon!... Goodbye! Hurry!"

Such was the interest aroused by the Winford case that when Inspector Rafferty, Laury, and the two policemen were leaving Headquarters, Mr. Jonathan Scraggs in person bounced out of a speeding taxi before it had quite stopped, and joined them. He was accompanied by Vic Perkins.

"So Pug-Nose Thomson is Damned Dan?" asked Mr. Scraggs, a note of disappointment in his voice, as the police car dashed into the dark streets, its siren screaming piercingly.

"Well, not quite. But you're going to find Damned Dan, too," answered Laury with resignation...

They found Pug-Nose Thomson in the dirty back room of an old, miserable tenement. The room had one tiny window with dusty pieces of broken glass sticking out and a wretched little gas lamp that hardly gave enough light to distinguish Pug-Nose Thomson's huge bulk huddled over an old, unpainted table, drinking desperately. He was alone.

"Where's Miss Winford?" cried Laury.

Pug-Nose looked with hazy eyes at the group of men in his doorway, and the gleaming brass buttons were the first thing he understood.

"So yuh squealed, yuh goddamn louse, yuh did?" he yelled, jumping at Laury, but the two policemen seized him, one by each arm, and handcuffed his big, hairy fists.

"Where's the girl?" asked Inspector Rafferty in a threatening voice.

"The girl? The girl, she's gone, damn her, she escaped from me!"

"How could she escape?"

"How could she? Oh boy! The only thing I wonder 'bout is how that boob managed to keep her fer three days!" And he shook his fist at Laury.

"What do you mean?" cried Mr. Scraggs.

"Haw-haw! So yuh don't know, do yuh? Damned Dan — there he is, in his own person! Shake hands an' make yerself acquainted!" And he bellowed his ferocious laugh into Laury's face.

"The man's insane!" Mr. Scraggs exclaimed.

"Who's insane, yuh old fool? Sure, I stole the girl, but I stole her from him! He's the one that pulled the whole thing! Yuh thought maybe I wouldn't squeal on yuh, yuh dirty double-crosser?"

Five pairs of bulging eyes turned to Laury. He looked at them, cold, silent, immobile. He did not want to deny it; he knew that his guilt could be proved too easily.

"Why... Laury!... Why..." choked Mr. Scraggs.

Silently, Laury stretched his hand out to Inspector Rafferty for the handcuffs.

"My stars in heaven!" was all Mr. Scraggs could utter.

"Hot diggity dog!" added Vic Perkins...

Laury was silent in the car all the way down to the jail, and the five men did not dare to look at him. Pug-Nose snored by his side.

The big door of the damp, gray jail building opened like a gaping mouth, eager to swallow Laury, and the heavy iron gratings clicked like hungry teeth. Inspector Rafferty had to kick the jailer on the back to get him out of the trance he had fallen into, on learning who his new prisoner was and why.

When the rusty grate of his cell closed after him, Laury turned suddenly and handed a piece of paper to the jailer with a few words written in the form of a headline. The words were:

RENEGADE IN OUR MIDST: OUR OWN REPORTER-ATROCIOUS KIDNAPPER!

"Give that to Mr. Scraggs," said Laury sadly. "That, too, will make good copy!"

"I suppose," said Inspector Rafferty, entering his office with Mr. Scraggs, Vic Perkins, and the two policemen, "I suppose Miss Winford is safe at home by this time. I shall inquire."

He called up the Winford residence and asked if Miss Winford had returned home.

"No! Oh, my God, no!" answered Mrs. Winford's hysterical voice.

The five men looked at each other, dumbfounded.

"Well, I'll be damned!" cried Inspector Rafferty, falling into a chair. "What a case! What's happened now?"

Laury's apartment being the only place they could think of searching, all five of them rushed back to the car and hurried there at full speed. They were not only anxious by this time, they were panic-stricken.

When they entered Laury's apartment, Jinx herself met them. She had one of Laury's shirts draped gracefully instead of an apron, with the two sleeves tied around her waist, and she was in the kitchen, cooking dinner.

"To what do I owe the honor of this visit?" she asked with the charming smile of a gracious hostess.

"Miss... Miss Winford!" gulped Inspector Rafferty. He was the only one that had retained the use of his voice.

Jinx stood facing them, perfectly poised, smiling, unperturbed, a slight interrogative frown raising her eyebrows, as though waiting politely for an explanation.

"I... I'm glad to see you safe, Miss Winford," muttered Inspector Rafferty, not at all sure whether he quite understood just what the situation was. "I'm glad we managed to rescue you at last!"

"Oh, you did?"

"Yes, Miss Winford! You have nothing to fear from him any more!"

"Fear from whom?"

"The young man that kidnapped you, Laurence McGee!"

"Laurence McGee?" Jinx shouted. "Laurence McGee?"

And such a thunder of laughter exploded like a bomb with splinters ringing all over the room, that Inspector Rafferty and his companions started, terrified.

"Oh... oh, how adorable!" Jinx laughed, understanding the real meaning and reason of the whole case.

"You are glad that we arrested him, is that it?" asked Inspector Rafferty timidly, very much surprised.

"Arrested? Him? Oh, my God!... Inspector, you must release him immediately!"

Vic Perkins, who had been taking notes, dropped his pad and pencil.

"It's all a big misunderstanding, Inspector!" Jinx said quickly, still anxious, but regaining her calm.

"A misunderstanding, Miss Winford?"

"You see, I've never been kidnapped," she explained, so sweetly, so sincerely that it would have been hard to doubt the straight look of her bold, mocking eyes. "I feel that you ought to know the truth, and I must confess everything. Mr. McGee did not kidnap me. We have known each other for a long time, and we were in love, and we eloped to get married; because, you see, my parents would have objected to it. So we made it look like a kidnapping to throw them off the track. It was all my idea!"

The five faces before her were frozen with the queerest expressions she had ever seen.

"Of course, I escaped from that broken-nosed bum, who tried to butt in, and then I came right back here. So there wasn't any particular need to rescue me."

"I... I don't... I've never in my life... I..." Inspector Rafferty felt that his power of speech had been knocked out together with the rest of his reasoning abilities.

"Oh, dear Inspector!" Jinx gave him her sweetest smile and her most innocent look. "Surely you won't break my heart and be too severe with my poor fiancé?"

"Of... of course... I see that it... it changes the situation," stuttered Inspector Rafferty.

"Where is he now?"

"In jail, Miss Win-"

"In jail? How dare you! Come, at once, set him free!"

And she rushed out, flying like a bullet down the stairs, the five men hardly able to follow her.

She jumped at the wheel of the police car, pushing the chauffeur aside.

"Never mind, I'm a better driver than any of you!" she cried in reply to Inspector Rafferty's protest. "Jump in! Hurry!"

And the big car tore forward like a rocket, with a deafening whistle of the siren, in the hands of the little blue driver with wild, flying hair...

"Don't try to write it, Vic, old boy!" Mr. Scraggs cried, striving to be heard above the roar of the speeding machine. "No words will ever cover that story!"

Jinx had to wait in the jail reception room, while Inspector Rafferty and the jailer went to bring Laury.

They found him lying on his cot, his face in his hands. But he jumped up when they entered the cell and faced them calmly, the brave gray eyes steady and unfaltering.

"I must apologize, Mr. McGee," said Inspector Rafferty, "though, of course, you shouldn't have kept silent. But I'm glad to say that you are free to go now."

"I'm... free?"

"Yes, we know the whole truth. Miss Winford confessed everything."

"She did?"

Laury was stupefied, but he had learned by this time that it was better not to protest against anything Jinx said.

He walked to the reception room. Jinx rushed to him, threw her arms around his neck, and kissed him, before the eyes of all the witnesses.

"Oh, Laury darling, I'm so sorry you had to suffer like that for me!" she cried.

"It was very noble of you to keep silent, but, really, you should have told them the truth," she went on, as though without noticing the amazed look in his eyes. "I told them everything, how we eloped to get married and how I made up the kidnapping story to deceive my parents. You can tell them it's true now, darling!"

"Oh! Yes!... Yes, it's true!" confirmed Laury enthusiastically, for he would not have denied it, even if he could.

"Oh, Laury!" cried Mr. Scraggs with admiration. "And to think that he works on our paper!"

"The headlines, Mr. Scraggs," said Jinx to the Editor, "the headlines will be: 'Society Beauty Elopes with Our Own Reporter!'"

"Don't thank me, you helpless, unimaginative sap of a criminal!" Jinx whispered to Laury, squeezing his hand, as they walked down the steps and his arm encircled her in the darkness of the narrow jail stair way. "So you wanted to give them sensational news, didn't you? Now think of the sensation my news is going to give them!"

Escort

This brief story seems to have been written in 1929, the year Ayn Rand married Frank O'Connor- One of his earliest gifts to her was a pair of small, stuffed lion cubs, christened Oscar and Oswald, who soon became to the young couple a private symbol of the "benevolent universe." Every Christmas the cubs were brought out, dressed in colorful hats, to preside over the gaiety of the season.

I mention this because "Escort," in manuscript, is signed by one "O. O. Lyons." This means, I take it, that the story is intended as humor, the kind of fine, twinkling humor that Ayn Rand associated with her husband, and with Oscar and Oswald.

Ayn Rand by this time had read a great deal of O. Henry. She admired his cheerful lightheadedness and virtuoso plot ingenuity. "Escort" (and "The Night King") may be read as her own private salute to O. Henry, her own attempt at his kind of twist ending.

L.P.

Before he left the house, Sue asked:

"You won't be back until morning, dear?"

He nodded dejectedly, for he had heard the question often and he wished his wife would not ask it. She never complained, and her blue eyes looked at him quietly and patiently, but he always felt a sadness in her voice, and a reproach. Yet tonight, the question and the voice seemed different somehow. Sue did not seem to mind. She even repeated:

"You won't be back until the small hours?"

"God knows, darling," he protested. "I don't like it any better than you do. But a job's a job."

He had explained it so many times so very carefully: shipping clerks in warehouses could not choose their hours; and since he could not choose jobs, he had to work nights, even though he knew how wistfully she looked at the women whose husbands came home each evening, after the day's work, to a bright dinner table under a bright lamp. And Sue had done such a grand job of their little house with less than nothing to go on. He had not noticed how the dreary shack they had rented had turned into a bright, warm little miracle, with rows of red-and-white-checkered dishes gleaming in the kitchen, and Sue among them in a wide, starched dress of red and white checks, slim and blond and gay as a child among toys. It was the third year of their marriage, and such a far cry from the first, when he had come, fresh from college, to these same rooms, then full of dust and cracked paint and desolation, when he had brought his young bride here, with nothing to offer her save the menacing monster of rent to be paid, which stared at them each month and which they could not pay. When he thought of those days, his lips tightened grimly and he said:

"I've got to hang on to this job, sweetheart, much as you hate it. I hate it too, but I won't let you go through what we've been through ever again."

"Yes," said Sue, "of course." But she seemed to be looking past him, without hearing his voice.

He kissed her and hurried to the door, but Sue stopped him.

"Larry," she reminded him sweetly, "it's Saturday."

So it was. He had forgotten. He groped for his billfold and slipped her weekly allowance into her hand. Her hand seemed much too eager as it closed over the bills.

Then she smiled at him, her gay, impish smile, her eyes sparkling and open and innocent. And he left.

He raised the collar of his neat, modest gray overcoat against the thin drizzle of the street. He looked back once, with regret, at the light over their door, over the number 745, his number, his home, 745 Grant Street. Then he hurried to the subway.

When he alighted upon the milling platforms of Grand Central, Larry Dean did not walk to an exit. He hurried to a locker room instead, opened a locker, took from it a neat suitcase, and then walked to the men's room. Fifteen minutes later, he emerged from it, and the fat black attendant looked with respectful admiration at his tall, slender figure in full dress clothes, trim and resplendent from the tips of his shining pumps to his shining top hat set at the right careless angle of a dazzling man of the world bent upon a gay evening- He put the suitcase with his modest working clothes back in the locker, snapped his fingers lightly, and walked to an exit, carelessly, without hurry.

The gold-braided doorman at a magnificent entrance on Park Avenue greeted Larry with a respectful bow denoting a long acquaintance. Larry entered the elevator with just the right touch of nonchalant swagger. But he stopped and his gay smile vanished before an imposing door marked: CLAIRE VAN NUYS ESCORT BUREAU.

Larry hated the place and he hated his job. Each evening, night after night, he had to accompany fat dowagers, rich spinsters, and foolish, giggling out-of-town matrons on an endless round of dinners, suppers, dances, nightclubs. He had to bow gracefully, and smile enchantingly, and laugh, and dance, and throw tips to waiters as if he were a millionaire. He had to keep going an endless stream of charming, entertaining drivel, and listen to more drivel in answer, and try to know what he was talking about, while his thoughts ran miserably miles away, to a quiet little room and Sue's lonely shadow under the lamp.

At least, Sue did not know of this and she would never know. He would rather die than let her guess the kind of job he really had. It was respectable enough, oh yes, most respectable! Miss Van Nuys saw to that. But it was no job for a man, Larry felt. Still, he had to be grateful, for it was a job and it kept the little house at 745 Grant Street going.

Sue must never know of his sacrifice, the shy, quiet Sue who would be horrified at the thought of a nightclub and who had never seen one. At first, she had asked him timidly to take her out some night, but his anger had made her drop the subject, and she never asked it again. He could not let her enter one of those vile, noisy places where he was so well known, and his job as well. Besides, he was sick of the glitter, of the jazz, of the waiters.

He sighed, squared his shoulders for the night's ordeal, and walked into Miss Van Nuys' office...

When Larry had left his house, Sue stood for a long time looking at the closed door, the money clutched in her hand. Then she took out the little tin box hidden deep in a kitchen drawer, and added the last dollar to her secret fund. It was a hundred dollars now, an even hundred, and this was the night she had been waiting for.

She had saved the money out of the household allowance, so carefully, with such painstaking little economies, for such a long time. Now she was ready. She went to a closet and took out her evening gown, her lovely blue, shimmering evening gown, which she had had no chance to wear for two years. She laid it out cautiously on the bed, and stood looking at it happily. For one night, for just one night, she would wear it, and dance, and laugh, and see one of those brilliant nightclubs she had heard so much about ever since she came to New York. She was deceiving Larry, she thought, but it was such a harmless deception! Just a few hours of dancing and some innocent fun, which Larry would not understand, the earnest, hardworking Larry who never thought of such things. She loved him so much, she was so happy in their little home, but the lonely evenings were so long, and she was still young, and she looked so pretty in her blue evening gown. Just one night... there was no harm in that, and Larry need never know.

It would be different if she allowed some man to take her out. But she wasn't going to. She was going to pay for it herself, and do it right, one hundred dollars for one grand, reckless smash. She had heard how it could be arranged safely and respectably. Her heart beating, she went to the phone.

In the office on Park Avenue, a trimly permanented, efficient secretary looked up at Larry Dean standing before her desk.

"Your assignment for tonight, Mr. Dean," she said, "will be dinner, dancing, best place in town, full dress clothes. You are to call in an hour for Mrs. Dean — no relation, I presume? — at 745 Grant Street."

Her Second Career

"Her Second Career" seems to date from 1929. It was probably written soon after Ayn Rand had begun working in the office of the RKO wardrobe department (a job she hated, but had to hold for three years, until she began to earn money by writing).

The subject matter of "Her Second Career" remains, in a broad sense, that of the early stories: the importance of values in human life. But here the focus is on the negative, on those who do not live life but merely posture at it, those who do something other than pursue values.

By 1929, Ayn Rand had a fund of observations on this subject: she had been working in and around Hollywood for three years. She respected the potential of the film medium, and she loved certain movies (her favorites were the great German Romantic silent films, with stars such as Conrad Veidt and Hans Albers, and directors such as Ernst Lubitsch and Fritz Lang). But she rejected out of hand the syrupy, platitudinous stories enshrining mediocrity, offering odes to "the boy next door" or "the sweet maiden next door." She despised what she saw as Hollywood's trite values, its undiscriminating taste, its "incommunicable vulgarity of spirit," as she put it in The Romantic Manifesto.

Unlike most critics, however, Ayn Rand did not ascribe the movies' low estate to "commercialism" or "box-office chasing." She singled out as the basic cause an inner mental practice or default, described by the hero in this story as follows:

There's no one in this business with an honest idea of what's good and what's bad. And there's no one who's not scared green of having such an idea for himself. They're all sitting around waiting for someone to tell them. Begging someone to tell them. Anyone, just so they won't have to take the awful responsibility of judging and valuing on their own. So merit doesn't exist here.

The Fountainhead would not appear in print for fourteen years; but here is its author's first recognition in writing of the psychology of Peter Keating, the secondhander, the man who abdicates his inner sovereignty, then lives without real thought or values, as a parasite on the souls of others. Claire Nash in this story — again, a woman in the central role — is Peter Keating's earliest ancestor; she is the antonym of Irene in "The Husband I Bought"; she is the woman who does not even know that values exist.

"Her Second Career" is not, however, a psychological study or a serious analysis of secondhandedness. It is a satire and, like "Good Copy," an essentially jovial, lighthearted piece. (This story, too, is signed by "O. O. Lyons.") Claire, despite her character, is a mixed case, with enough virtue to be attracted to the hero. Moreover, events reveal that there is, after all, a place for merit, even in Hollywood, and this functions as a redeeming note, making the satire a relatively gentle element in the context of a romantic story, rather than a biting denunciation or a bitter commentary.

This story, I believe, is the last of the preliminary pieces composed by Miss Rand before she turned to her first major literary undertaking, her novel We the Living. Several signs of her increasing maturity are apparent. Winston Ayers and Heddy Leland are more recognizably Ayn Rand types of hero and heroine than any of the figures in earlier stories. Though there is still a certain foreign awkwardness and, as in "Good Copy," an overly broad tone at times, the writing as a whole is more assured. Parts of the story, especially on the set during the filming, are genuinely funny. Above all, "Her Second Career" presents, for the first time in the early pieces, an element essential to the mature Ayn Rand: an intriguing plot situation, integrated with the broader theme. On the whole, the logic of the events has been carefully worked out (although I have some doubt about Claire's motivation in accepting Ayers' wager, and about an element of chance that occurs near the end).

With developments such as these, the period of private writing exercises draws to a close. Ayn Rand is now ready for professional work.

A note on the text: three pages of the original manuscript are missing. To preserve the continuity, I have inserted in their place several paragraphs — about one-third the length of the missing pages — from an earlier version of the story which happens to have been preserved. The inserted material runs from the sentence "She reached the little hotel she was living in" through the sentence "... I am sure that I could not have found a better interpreter for my story."

L. P.

"Heart's Desire narrowly misses being the worst picture of the year. The story is mossgrown and the direction something we had better keep charitably silent about. BUT... but Claire Nash is the star. And when this is said, everything has been said. Her exquisite personality illuminates the picture and makes you forget everything but her own matchless magic. Her portrayal of the innocent country maiden will make a lump rise in the most sophisticated throat. Hers is the genius that makes Screen History..."

The newspaper hanging lightly, rustling between two pink-nailed fingertips, Claire Nash handed it to Winston Ayers. Her mouth, bright, pink, and round as a strawberry, smiled lightly her subtlest smile of indulgent pity. But her eyes, soft violets hidden among pine needles of mascara, watched closely the great Winston Ayers reading.

He read and handed the paper back to her without a word.

"Well?" she asked.

"Perhaps I shouldn't have said what I said, Miss Nash," he answered in his low, clear voice, and she could not tell whether it was perfectly polite or perfectly mocking. "But you asked for my candid opinion, and when I'm asked I usually give it."

"You still hold to that opinion?"

"Yes. Perhaps I should add I'm sorry."

She gave a little unnatural laugh which tried to be gay and friendly, but failed. "You realize that it's a rather... well, unusual opinion, Mr. Ayers, to put it gently?"

"Quite," he answered with a charming smile, "and I'm certain that it means nothing whatever."

"Quite," she was tempted to reply, but didn't. Of course, his opinion should mean nothing to Claire Nash, because she was Claire Nash. She had a palace in Beverly Hills and two Rolls-Royces, and she had immortalized the ideal of sweet maidenhood on the screen. For her, five gentlemen had committed suicide — one of them fatally — and she had had a breakfast cereal named in her honor. She was a goddess, and her shrines were scattered all over the world, little shrines of glass with a tiny window in front, through which an endless stream of coins poured night and day; and the sun never set on that golden stream. Why should she feel such anger at the insult of any single man?

But Winston Ayers had come to Hollywood, and Winston Ayers had been expected and invited and begged to come to Hollywood for more than three years. Winston Ayers was England's gift to the theaters of the world, or perhaps the theaters of the world had been a gift thrown into Winston Ayers' nonchalant, expert hands; and these hands had created without effort or notice such miracles of drama and laughter that Ayers' opening nights became riots, and from the theatrical pages of the world press there looked upon his worshiping public the face of a new playwright, a young playwright who looked bored. Winston Ayers had been offered one hundred thousand dollars for one screen story. And Winston Ayers had refused.

Claire Nash tightened the soft, luminous folds of her sky-blue negligee around her shoulders, pink as clouds of dawn over the satin sky. She bent her head wistfully to one shoulder, her head with the golden tangle of hair as a sun rising from the clouds, and she smiled the sweet smile of a helpless child which had made her famous. It had cost more sleepless nights and diplomacy than she cared to imagine for Mr. Bamburger, president of Wonder-Pictures, to arrange this interview between his great star and the man he wished to become his great scenarist. Mr. Bamburger had hoped that Claire Nash would succeed where all had failed, as she usually did, and induce the Box-Office Name to sign. "Don't stop at the price," Mr. Bamburger had instructed her, and she hadn't known whether he had meant himself or her.

But the interview did not seem to succeed. For the Box-Office Name had said a thing... a thing... well, she would not care to repeat it to Mr. Bamburger nor to anyone else.

The soft twilight of her dressing room hid the angry little flash of red on Claire's cheeks. She looked at the man who sat before her. He was tall, young, inexplicable. He had very clear, very cold eyes, and when he spoke, he narrowed his eyelids with a strange, slow movement that seemed to insult whatever he was looking at; she hated the movement, yet found herself watching eagerly to see it. "Much too handsome for a writer," she decided in her mind.

"So you think," she began bravely, "that screen actresses..." She could not force herself to finish the sentence.

"... are not worth writing for," he finished it for her courteously, just as courteously as he had said it before, in the same even, natural voice that seemed utterly unconscious of the bombshell his words set off in her mind.

“Of course..." She fumbled desperately for something brilliant and shattering to say. "Of course, I..." She failed and ended up in a furious hurry of stumbling words. "Of course I wouldn't hold myself as an example of a great screen actress, far from it, but there are others who..."

"On the contrary," he said charmingly, "on the contrary. You are the perfect example of a great screen actress, Miss Nash." And she didn't know whether she should smile gratefully or throw him out.

The pink telephone on a crystal stand by her side rang sharply. She took the receiver.

"Hello?... Yes..." She listened attentively. She wasn't yawning, but her voice sounded suddenly as if she were. "My dear, how many times do I have to say it? It was final... No... A definite no!... To the Henry Jinx Films as well... I'm sorry."

She let the receiver drop from her hand and leaned back on the pillows of her chaise longue, little sparks glittering through the mascara needles. "My manager," she explained lazily. "My contract here expires after this picture, and all the studios are hounding the poor man to death. I wish he wouldn't bother me about it."

This was what she said; what she wanted to say was: "You see?"

The telephone rang again before she had a chance to observe the effect.

"Hello?... Who?... About Heddy Leland?" Claire's face changed suddenly. Her round cheeks drew up with a jerk and swallowed her eyes, so that there were no violets left, but only two slits of black needles across her face, sticking out like iron lances lowered for battle; and no fan would have recognized the sweet, world-famous voice in the shrill barks showered suddenly upon the pink receiver which seemed to blush under the flow: "You dare ask me again?... No! I said, no!... I won't allow it! I never want to see that girl on my set again!... I don't give a damn about her excuses!... You heard me? I'm not accustomed to repeating twice!... And I hope, my dear Mr. Casting Director, that you won't bother me again for any five-dollar extra!"

She slammed the receiver down so hard that the crystal stand rang under it with a thin, musical whine. Then she noticed an expression, an actual expression in the eyes of Winston Ayers, the first she had seen in them: it was an expression of mocking astonishment. The look on her face did not quite suit the ideal of sweet maidenhood; she realized that.

She shrugged her beautiful shoulders impatiently. "An insolent extra," she tried to explain calmly. "Imagine, today, on the set, I was doing my best scene — oh, what a scene! I had had such a hard time getting into the mood of it — and I'm so sensitive to things like that — and just as I got it, right in the midst of it, that creature tumbled from the sidelines straight into me! Almost knocked me down! Of course, the scene was ruined. We had to retake it and I couldn't do it again! Because of an extra!"

"She did it on purpose, of course?" he asked lightly, and the tone of his voice answered his own question.

"I don't care! She said someone pushed her. It makes no difference. I told them I won't have her on my set again!" She took a cigarette, then broke it and flung the pieces away. "Let us return to our interesting subject, Mr. Ayers. You were saying..."

"I'll enter anyway!" a young, ringing voice exploded suddenly behind the door. The door flew open. Something wild, tall, disheveled burst in, slammed the door behind, and stood suddenly still.

The girl wore a tight little suit that ended abruptly above the knees of two strong, thin, exquisite legs. The legs seemed grown fast to the floor, straight and taut; the light from the pink lamp cut a thin, glittering line on each stocking, and they looked like two jets from a fountain, flung up and frozen. She seemed to be standing on tiptoe, but it was only her small, high-heeled pumps that made her seem so, the pumps and the tenseness of her slim body stopped abruptly in flight. Her short hair was thrown back in disorder, as it had been left after she had torn off her screen costume, and a thin line of greasepaint still showed at the edge of her forehead. Her face had odd, irregular lines, impish and solemn and somber all at once. Her eyes, immense, glittering, incredible, were dark and still.

Claire Nash jumped to her feet and stood looking at the intruder, her little mouth hanging open in amazement.

"Excuse me for entering like this, Miss Nash," said the girl. Her voice was unexpectedly steady, as if she had had time to pull some reins within her and to bring it under control.

"Why... Heddy Leland!" Claire stammered, incredulous and suffocated.

"Your secretary wouldn't let me enter," the girl said evenly, "but I had to enter. It was my last opportunity to see you. If they send me away tonight, I won't be able to get on the lot again."

"Miss Leland, I... I really fail to understand how..." Claire began grandly, and ended much more naturally, exploding, "Of all the brazen nerve...!”

“Please excuse me and listen to me, Miss Nash," the girl said quietly and firmly. "It was not my fault. I am very sorry. I ask your forgiveness. I promise you that it will never happen again."

Claire seated herself slowly on the chaise longue and draped the blue folds of the negligee carelessly and majestically about her. She was beginning to enjoy it. She said leisurely:

"No, it will never happen again. Haven't you understood that I do not want you back on my set?"

"Yes. I have. That's why I came. I thought that perhaps you hadn't understood what my work here meant to me. I was promised two weeks. Please, allow me to remain. I..." She hesitated for the first time. "I... need it very much."

"Really?" said Claire. "Were you under the impression that a studio is a charitable institution?"

The girl's lean, tanned cheeks blushed very slightly, so slightly that Winston Ayers was alone to notice it. She made an effort, as if forcing herself on against an overwhelming desire to say something quite different from what she actually said in her level, steady voice:

"Forgive me. You are quite right. It was in very bad taste on my part to mention that. That doesn't matter. But, you see, I'm just starting in Hollywood. It's difficult to get an opening, even for extra work, to be seen. My whole career may depend on what I do in this picture."

"Your whole career?" said Claire sweetly. "But, my dear girl, what makes you think that you have a career before you?"

The girl hadn't expected it. She looked at Claire closely. Two soft, mocking dimples creased Claire's cheeks. She continued, shrugging, "There are thousands and thousands of girls like you in Hollywood and every one of them thinks she has a career waiting for her."

"But..."

"Let me give you some advice, Miss Leland. Friendly advice — really, I don't hold that little incident against you. Think of the thing you can do best — then go and do it. Forget the movies. I am more experienced than you are and I know the business: the screen is not for you."

"Miss Nash..."

"Oh, don't say it's heartbreaking and all that! Let me tell you the truth. You are not particularly pretty. Thousands of better-looking girls are starving here. You haven't a chance. It really doesn't matter whether you work here or not. You won't get far anyway. Go back home and try to marry some nice, respectable fellow. That would be the best thing for you."

Heddy Leland looked at her; looked at the man who sat silently watching them.

"Please excuse my intrusion, Miss Nash," she said as if she were reciting disjointed words without meaning, for her voice had no expression at all. She turned and walked out and closed the door evenly behind her. The soft curtains of peach velvet rustled and billowed slightly and fell back to immobility.

Claire lit a cigarette with magnificent disdain.

"Why did you give that advice to the girl?" Winston Ayers asked.

"Oh!" Wrinkles gathered on Claire's pretty little nose. "Oh, it makes me sick! When I see one of those girls who gets five bucks a day and wants to be a star! Everybody wants to be a star. They think that to be a star means nothing at all!"

"Precisely, Miss Nash. It means nothing at all"

Claire spilled ashes on her blue satin without noticing it. "You're saying that to me?" she breathed.

"I was under the impression," he answered, "that I had said it before. You were kind enough to inquire why I refuse to write for Hollywood. Perhaps I can make myself clear now. You see, I believe that screen actresses are not great artists, rare talents, exceptions. They are not one in a thousand, they are just one out of the thousand, chosen by..."

"By?"

"... chance."

Claire said nothing. No proper words would come to her.

"Look about you," he continued. "Thousands and thousands of girls struggle for a place in the movies. Some are as beautiful as you are, and some are more beautiful. All can act as you act. Have they a right to fame and stardom? Just as much or just as little as you have."

“Do you realize," said Claire, and her voice made funny little gurgling sounds in her throat, but she was past caring about her voice or what it said, "do you realize, Mr. Ayers, that you are speaking to a woman who is considered one of the world's geniuses?"

"The world," said Winston Ayers, "would never have seen that genius, if someone hadn't told it so — by chance."

"Really," Claire stammered, "I don't mean to be begging for compliments, Mr. Ayers, but..."

"Neither do I mean to be insulting, Miss Nash. But look at it objectively. There's no one in this business with an honest idea of what's good and what's bad. And there's no one who's not scared green of having such an idea for himself. They're all sitting around waiting for someone to tell them. Begging someone to tell them. Anyone, just so they won't have to take the awful responsibility of judging and valuing on their own. So merit doesn't exist here. What does exist is someone's ballyhoo which all the others are only too glad to follow. And the ballyhoo starts with less discrimination and from less respectable sources than the betting at a racetrack. Only this is more of a gamble, because at a track all the horses are at least given a chance to run."

Claire rose. "Most unusual, Mr. Ayers," she said, smiling icily. "I do wish we could continue this stimulating discussion. But I am so sorry, I do have an early call on the set tomorrow and..."

"Keep this, Miss Nash," he said, rising, "as a little memento of me. You have made your career. I do not ask how you made it. You are famous, great, admired. You are considered one of the world's geniuses. But you could not make a second career."

Claire stopped; looked at him; walked back to him.

"A second career? What do you mean?"

"Just that. If you were to start at the beginning now, you would see how easy it is to get your talent recognized. You'd see how many people would notice it. How many people would be eager to notice. How pleasant they would make it for you. How many of them would give a damn!"

"Sit down," she ordered. He obeyed. "What are you driving at?"

He looked at her, and his eyelids narrowed. And he explained exactly what he was driving at. Claire Nash sat before him, her mouth open, her eyes swimming in fascinated terror.

"Well?" he asked.

She hesitated. But there was one thing to Claire Nash: she believed in her own greatness, deeply, passionately, devotedly. Her belief was the warm glow that greeted her when she awakened each morning; that filled her days with radiance; that rose over the set, brighter than the arc lights, and drove her to her best scenes; that shone, as a halo, over her head when she passed other women in the street, those women who were not like her. It was true that she had married a producer's nephew many years ago, at the beginning of her career, and divorced him since; but that had been only a shortcut and it proved nothing. Her genius alone could open the gates of Hollywood again and as many times as she wished. Besides, there was the tall man with the narrowed eyelids before her. She liked him — she hated to admit it — yes, she liked him definitely. Most definitely. She knew suddenly that she wanted to see him again. What triumph there would be in making him retract all those words, in seeing him bow, him, like all those countless others!

"Well?" he repeated.

She raised her head and laughed suddenly. "Of course," she said. "I'll do it"

He looked at her and bowed graciously.

"Miss Nash," he said, "I admire you — for the first time."

She was angry at herself for the senseless pleasure these words gave her.

"Well, then, remember," he continued. "You are starting all over again, at the very beginning. You are taking your real name — Jane Roberts, isn't it? You allow yourself no more money than an average extra girl can have. You know no one in Hollywood. No one has ever heard of you. I wish you luck."

"I shan't need it," said Claire gaily.

"Then, when you have seen what you shall see, you can return to your stardom and bring Claire Nash back. I hope she will enjoy her fame in a somewhat different manner then."

"We'll see."

"And to prove to you the other side of my theory, Miss Nash," he said, "while you try to break into the movies, I'll make a star out of an extra, any extra, the first one we choose — say, out of that little Heddy Leland who was here." A burst of ringing laughter was the answer-Claire Nash was leaving for Europe. She had finished her last picture and was going to take, as the newspapers had explained, a much needed vacation-When the hour came for her to enter the luxurious car of the Chief, a mob of fans was there to see her departure. She appeared, slow, regal, radiant as a sunrise. She crossed the platform through the waves of flowers and worshipers. Newsmen snapped pictures of her, one thin pump poised gracefully on the car step, a huge bouquet hiding the rest of her, all but the blond head bent wistfully to one shoulder, a trim little French hat pulled low over one eye, the lips smiling sadly and gently. Three reporters asked questions she could not hear through the roar, and wrote down answers they never heard. A sob sister rammed her spectacles into Claire's ear, and screamed demands to know Claire's opinion on the European war situation, which Claire gave solemnly and which the woman wrote down in mad haste not to lose a single precious word. The fans fought for a rose that had fallen from Claire's bouquet. A woman fainted. It rained. Policemen worked hard to maintain order. Six citizens were hurt.

The train moved. Standing on the observation platform, Claire Nash bowed graciously to right and left, smiled sweetly and waved a tiny lace handkerchief...

No passenger paid any attention when, at the first stop, a slender little woman in gray slipped quietly from the train. When the train moved again, no one knew that behind the forbidding locked door of Claire Nash's compartment, there was no star left, but only a prim, slightly bewildered secretary going on alone for a much needed vacation.

The slender woman in a plain gray coat took the first train back to Los Angeles. Claire Nash was gone, was far away on her journey to Europe. Jane Roberts was coming to Hollywood to break into the movies.

"The story will be ready in two weeks, Mr. Bamburger." "Oh, Mr. Ayers!"

"One hundred thousand dollars?"

"Yes, Mr. Ayers."

"We sign?"

"Yes, indeed, yes, Mr. Ayers."

Mr. Bamburger pushed the papers forward, thrust a fountain pen toward the hand of the man before him, as if fearing that the hand might change its mind, missed, dropped the pen to the floor, and saw a gurgling spot of blue spread on the rug. Mr. Bamburger plunged down for it, jammed the pen into the man's hand, and mopped his forehead, adding streaks of blue to the shining glow of perspiration. Mr. Bamburger prided himself on his self-control, but here, in his office, at his desk, sat the great Winston Ayers in person, and the great Winston Ayers had surrendered!

"I supervise the production of the story?"

"Certainly, Mr. Ayers."

"I choose the director?"

"Yes, Mr. Ayers."

"And remember, Mr. Bamburger: I choose the cast."

"Yes, Mr. Ayers."

"Can't promise anything. But we might be using crowds later. Drop in next week."

Heddy Leland repeated to herself the words of the casting director in his short, indifferent voice. "Next week... for the sixth time," she added in her own voice, soft and tired.

She was walking home from the studio, from the seventh studio she had visited that day. The answers in the others had been the same. No, not quite the same. She had waited for two hours in one of them, only to be told that the casting director would see no one else today. In another, an assistant, a skinny boy with a dripping nose, had said: "Nothing today, sister," and when she had tried to remind him of his boss' promise, he had snapped: "Who's running this place? Get going, sister."

Six weeks without work. Forty-two days of getting up in the morning, dressing herself like a Parisian doll — while being careful that no one should notice the tears in her silk stockings, hidden by her pumps, the tears in her lace blouse, hidden by her trim jacket — walking into a casting office, asking the same question with the same smile and the same sinking of the heart; and hearing the same answer, always, each day, for all eternity-She reached the little hotel she was living in. "Did the Henry Jinx Films call me, Mrs. Johns?" she asked at the desk, her voice trembling a little.

"Miss Leland?... Let's see... the Henry Jinx Films — yes. They called. A message: they are sorry, but they have nothing right now. They hope that next week..."

Heddy was sitting on the bed, in her room, her elbows in the pillow and her chin in her hands, in a dark meditation, when the telephone rang, with a dry, sharp noise.

"Hello."

"Miss Leland?"

"Yes."

"This is Wonder Pictures. Mr. Bamburger wants to see you at once."

"Mr. Bamb -"

"Mr. Bamburger, yes. At once."

"Miss Leland — Mr. Ayers." Mr. Bamburger introduced them. Winston Ayers looked at her with his slow, cold, curious look. She looked at him with her calm, dark, resolute eyes. He opened his eyelids slightly wider. Hers remained motionless.

"I am very glad to meet you, Miss Leland," he said in his slow, charming voice, a smiling voice from serious lips, "and I am sure that I could not have found a better interpreter for my story."

"I am very grateful for your choice, Mr. Ayers," she answered evenly, "and I shall try to live up to it."

Winston Ayers looked at her again. He knew that only a few minutes ago, Mr. Bamburger had told this girl that the great author himself had chosen her for the part which Hollywood's biggest stars dreamed of playing. She seemed too calm, much too calm. He shrugged his shoulders and turned away, his eyes narrowing indifferently, as Mr. Bamburger resumed his nervous, hurried speech; but he found himself looking again at the strange, thin profile, the long lashes, the hard, set mouth. It isn't indifference in her, he thought, it's something else. He wished suddenly to know the something else, even if he had to break the arrogant little creature to learn it.

The tips of her fingers pressed to the edge of Mr. Bamburger's desk, the only thing to keep her from swaying and falling before them, Heddy Leland had the strength to stand still, to listen, to hear Mr. Bamburger saying: "... for this one picture only... three hundred dollars a week... as a beginning... the future depends on your work..." Then Winston Ayers' slow voice: "You'll have the script at once, Miss Leland, and you can get acquainted with the part of Queen Lani."

Her round cheeks rouged delicately, her blond curls fluttering in the wind, under the brim of her cheapest little hat (she was being honest about it, for the hat had cost a mere thirty dollars and it was most becoming!), a huge round collar of blinding white lace billowing under her chin, Claire Nash was the very picture of sweet girlhood on its way to see the casting director of the Henry Jinx Film Company.

She had a hard time trying not to smile and she lowered her eyes modestly, to keep from looking at the passersby and from betraying in one laughing glance her whole mad adventure. She had been bored in Hollywood for so many months, and she did not remember such a thrilling morning for a long, long time.

She saw the Henry Jinx Studio rise before her, white, majestic, and royally welcoming, as she turned a corner. With her brisk, assured, graceful little step, she walked up the broad, polished steps to the glittering entrance. A sign stopped her. It was a dirty little cardboard sign with crooked letters drawn by hand: CASTING OFFICE AROUND THE CORNER. It hung there as a silent insult. She made a little grimace, shrugged gaily, and walked obediently around the corner.

The thing whose narrow door carried the faded sign CASTING OFFICE was not a building, was not even a shack. It was a dump heap of old boards, upon which no one had wanted to waste the precaution of beams or the courtesy of paint. It seemed to announce silently for whose entrance it had been designed and what the studio thought of those who entered here. Claire had not turned that corner for many years. She stopped, because she thought unreasonably that someone had just slapped her in the face. Then she shrugged, not quite so gaily, and entered.

The room before her had a floor, a ceiling, four walls, and two wooden benches. All these must have been clean sometime, Claire thought, but she doubted it. Without looking left or right, she walked straight to the little window in the wall across the room. A blond, round-faced, short-nosed youth looked at her and yawned.

"I want to see the casting director," said Claire; she had meant to say it; she commanded, instead.

"Gotta wait your turn," the youth answered indifferently.

She sat down on the corner of a bench. She was not alone. There were others, all waiting for the casting director. A tall, red-haired girl in a tight black dress with flowing sleeves of blue chiffon, tomato-red lips, no stockings, and a slave-bracelet on the left ankle. A tall, athletic young gentleman with dark, languorous eyes, a very neat haircut, and a not so neat shirt collar. A stout woman with a red face, a mans overcoat, and a drooping ostrich plume on her hat. An assortment of short, plump little things who remained determinedly "flappers," with fat legs squeezing out of shoes many sizes too small. A sloppy woman with an overdressed child.

Claire pulled her skirt closer to her and tried to look at nothing but the window. She did not know how long she sat there. But she knew that time was passing, for she noticed the flappers producing their compacts and remaking their faces several times. She would permit herself no such vulgarity in public. She sat still. Her right leg went to sleep, from the knee down. She waited.

A door banged against a wall like an explosion. She saw the flash of a man's heavy stomach and above it the face of an angry bulldog, which, she realized in a few seconds, was the man's face after all. "Who's first?" he barked.

Claire rose hastily. Something streaked past her toward the door, hurling her aside roughly in its progress; the door was slammed before she realized that it had been one of the flappers and heard consciously the angry words left in its wake: "Wait your turn, sneak!"

Claire sat down again. She felt damp beads on her upper lip. She took out her compact and remade her face.

Her turn came an hour later. She walked into the next room slowly, conscious of the precise grace of each moving muscle, timing her entrance as carefully as if she were advancing toward a grinding camera.

"Well?" snapped the bulldog behind the desk, without raising his eyes from the papers before him.

Well, thought Claire, what did one say here? She was suddenly, utterly blank. She smiled helplessly, waiting desperately for him to raise his head; no words would be necessary then. He raised his head and looked at her blankly. "Well?" he repeated impatiently.

"I... I want to work in pictures," she stammered foolishly. It was foolish, she thought, and it was not her fault; couldn't he tell at a glance what he had before him and what he should do about it?

It seemed as if he couldn't. He wasn't even looking at her, but was pulling some paper forward.

"Ever done extra work before?"

"Extra work?"

"That's what I asked."

"Extra work?"

"Yes, madam!"

She wanted to argue, to explain, but something choked her, and what did come out of her throat was not what she had intended to say at all:

"No, I'm just beginning my career."

The man pushed the paper aside.

"I see... Well, we don't use extras who've had no previous experience."

"Extras?"

"Say, what's the matter with you? Did you mean to ask for a bit straight off the bat?"

"A... a bit?"

"Lady, we have no time to waste here." He pushed the door open with his foot. "Who's next?"

There was no reason, Claire Nash was telling herself as she walked out into the street, there was no reason to take the whole farce so seriously. No reason at all, she was saying, while she twisted the handle of her bag till she wrenched it off and went on, the bag dangling violently on a broken strap.

But she went on. She went to the Epic Pictures Studio, and three hours later saw its casting director.

"Ever been in pictures before?" the lean, weary, skeptical gentleman asked as if her answer were the last thing in the world he cared to hear.

"No!" she answered flatly, as a challenge.

"No experience?"

"But... no. No experience."

"Whatchur name?"

"Claire-Jane Roberts."

"Well, Miss Roberts," he yawned, "we do not make a practice of it, but we could..." he yawned, "... use you someday, let you try, when..." he yawned, "... oh, dear me!... when we have a very big crowd of extras. Leave your name and phone number with my secretary. Can't promise anything. Come and remind us — next week..."

When a month had passed, Claire Nash had heard "Next week" four times each from six studios; from three others she heard nothing — their casting directors did not interview beginners; from the last one there was nothing to hear — its casting director was away on a trip to Europe to scout for new screen talent.

His eyes fixed, thoughtful, more troubled than he cared to show, Winston Ayers watched the shooting of the first scenes. Work on Child of Danger, his story, had begun. He was watching — with an emotion which made him angry and which he could not control — the camera and that which stood before the camera. For before the camera stood an old fortress wall, a mighty giant of huge, rough stones; and on the wall was Queen Lani.

Queen Lani was the heroine of his story, a wild, sparkling, fantastic creature, queen of a barbarous people in the age of legends; a cruel, lawless, laughing little tyrant who crushed nations under her bare feet. He had seen her vaguely, uncertainly in his dreams. And now she was here, before him, more alive, more strange, more tempting than he had ever imagined her, more "Queen Lani" than the Queen Lani of his script. He looked at her, stricken, motionless.

Her hair flying in the wind, her slim body wrapped only in a bright, shimmering shawl, her naked legs, arms, and shoulders hard as bronze, her huge eyes glittering with menace and laughter, Heddy Leland sat on the rocks of the wall, under the eyes of the cameras, a reckless, wild, incredible, dazzling queen looking down at her limitless dominions.

There was a dead silence on the set. Werner von Halz, the scornful, aristocratic imported director, bit his megaphone in a frenzy of admiration.

"Dat," pronounced Mr. von Halz, pointing a fat finger at the girl, "dat iss de virst real actress I efer vork vit!"

Mr. Hamburger nodded, mopped his forehead, dropped his handkerchief, forgot to pick it up, nodded again, and whispered to the silent man beside him:

"Some find, eh, Mr. Ayers?"

"I... I didn't know... I didn't expect..." Winston Ayers stammered, without tearing his eyes from the girl.

When the scene was over, he approached her as she stepped off the wall.

"It was splendid," he said, tensely, harshly, as if grudgingly, his eyes dark between half-closed, insulting eyelids.

"Thank you, Mr. Ayers," she answered; her voice was polite and meaningless; she turned abruptly and walked away.

"I want," Mr. Bamburger was shouting, "I want articles in all the fan magazines! I want interviews and I want them syndicated! I want photos — where's that fool Miller, has he been sleeping? — photos in bathing suits and without bathing suits! Wonder-Pictures' new discovery! Discovery, hell! Wonder-Pictures' new gold mine!"

Claire Nash struggled, wept, wrote letters, wasted nickels in phone booths, fought for and obtained an interview at Central Casting.

She sat — trembling and stammering, unable to control her part any longer and the part running away with her — before the desk of a thin, gentle, pitiless woman who looked like a missionary. Central Casting ruled the destinies of thousands of extras; it flung opportunities and ten-dollar-a-day calls by the hundreds each single day. Wasn't there, Claire begged with an indignation merging into tears, wasn't there room for one more?

The woman behind the desk shook her head.

"I am sorry, Miss Roberts," she said precisely and efficiently, "but we do not register beginners- We have thousands of experienced people who have spent years in the business and who are starving. We cannot find enough work for them. We are trying to cut our lists in every way possible, not augment them with novices."

"But I... I..." stammered Claire, "I want to be an actress! I may have a great talent... I... God! I know I have a great talent!"

"Very possible," said the woman sweetly and shatteringly. "But so say ten thousand others. It is very ill advised, Miss Roberts, for a lovely, inexperienced young girl like you to be thinking of this hard, heartbreaking business. Very ill advised-... Of course," she added, as Claire rose brusquely, "of course, if your situation is... well, difficult, we can suggest an organization which undertakes to provide the fare back home for worthy girls who..."

Claire forgot her part for the moment; she did a thing which no beginner would have dared to do: she rushed out and slammed the door behind her.

They are fools, Claire thought, sitting in her hotel room, all of them just blind, lazy fools. It was their job to find talent, yet they did not see it, because... because it seemed that they didn't give a damn. Who had said that to her before, so long ago? Then she remembered who had said it, and the cold, mocking eyes of the speaker, and she jumped to her feet with a new determination; a new determination and a brand-new feeling of loneliness.

If they had no eyes to see for themselves, she decided, she would show them. If it's acting experience they want, she would throw the experience in their faces. She started on a round of the little theaters that flourished like mushrooms on Hollywood's darkest corners. She learned that one did not get paid for acting in the wretched little barns, because the "chance to be seen" was considered payment enough for the weeks of rehearsals. She was willing to accept this, even though she did wonder dimly how she would have been able to accept it were she a real beginner left alone to struggle on her own earnings. But her willingness brought no results. In four of the theaters, she was told that they employed no one without previous stage experience. In three others, her name and phone number were taken with the promise of a call "if anything came up," a promise made in such a tone of voice that she knew this would be the end of it, and it was.

But in the eighth theater, the fat, oily manager took one look at the thirty-dollar hat and bowed her eagerly into his office.

"But of course, Miss Roberts," he gushed enthusiastically, "of course! You are born for the screen. You have the makings of a star, a first-class star! Trust me, I'm an old horse in this business and I know. But talent's gotta be seen. That's the secret in Hollywood. You gotta be seen. Now I have just the play for you and a part — boy, what a part! One part like this and you're made. Only, unfortunately, our production has been delayed because of financial difficulties, most unfortunate. Now, two hundred dollars, for instance, wouldn't be too much for you to invest in a future that would bring you millio — Well," said the manager to his secretary, blinking at the slammed door, "what do you suppose is the matter with her?"

The agents, Claire thought, the agents; they made their money on discovering new talent and they would be honest about seeking it. Why hadn't she thought of them before?

She was careful to call only on those agents who had never met Claire Nash in person. She found that the precaution was unnecessary: she was never admitted any farther than the exquisite, soft-carpeted waiting rooms, modernistic riots of glass, copper, and chromium, where trim secretaries sighed regretfully, apologizing because Mr. Smith or Jones or Brown was so busy in conference; but if Miss Roberts would leave her telephone number, Mr. Smith would be sure and call her. Miss Roberts left the number. The call never came.

The agents who had no waiting rooms and no chromium, but only a hole facing a brick wall, and a mid-Victorian armchair shedding dirty cotton upon a spotted rug, were delighted to meet Miss Roberts and to place her name upon the lists of their distinguished clients; which was as much as they were able to accomplish for Miss Roberts.

One of them, tall and unshaved, seemed more delighted to meet her than all the others. "You have come to the right man, kid," he assured her, "the right man. You know Joe Billings down at Epic Pictures? The assistant director? Well, Joe's a partic'lar friend of mine and he's got a lotta pull at Epic. All I gotta do is slip a coupla words to Joe and bingo! you get a screen test. A real, genuine screen test. How about dinner tonight down at my place, kiddo?" She fled.

Her face... her face that had been called "one of the screen's treasures" so often... her face seemed to make no impression on anyone. With a single exception. One of the agents, whom she had never seen before, did look at her closely for a long moment, and then he exclaimed:

"By God but you're a dead ringer for Claire Nash, sister!"

Then he looked again, shook his head, and changed his mind.

"Nope," he said, "not exactly. Claire's eyes are lighter, and her mouth smaller, and she's got it over you as far as the figure's concerned. Great friend of mine, Claire... Tell you what we'll do: you leave your phone number and I'll get you a swell job as Claire's stand-in. You look like her — or near enough for that. Only we'll have to wait — she's away in Europe right now."

Jane Roberts' opportunity came; not exactly in the way she had expected it to come, but it came anyhow.

One evening, as she sat on the bed in her stuffy hotel room, her slippers flung into a corner and her feet aching miserably, a neighbor came in to ask if she hadn't two nickels for a dime. The neighbor was a tall, cadaverous girl with a long nose and seven years of movie-extra experience.

"No luck around the studios, eh?" she asked sympathetically, seeing Claire's eyes. "It's tough, kid, that's what it is, tough. I know." Then she brightened suddenly. "Say, want a bit of work for tomorrow?"

Claire jumped to her feet as if her life depended on it.

"You see," the girl was explaining, "they got a big crowd tomorrow morning and my friend, the propman, got me in and I'm sure he can fix it up for you too."

"Oh, yes!" Claire gasped. "Oh, yes, please!"

"The call's for eight in the morning — ready and made-up on the set. We'll have to be at the studio at six-thirty. I'll go phone the boy friend, but I'm sure it'll be okay."

She was turning to leave the room, when Claire asked:

"What studio is it and what picture?"

"The Wonder-Pictures Studio," the girl answered. "Child of Danger, you know, their big special with that new star of theirs — Heddy Leland."

Claire Nash sat, shivering with cold, in the corner of a bus. Snorting and groaning, the bus rambled on its way to the studio through the dark, empty, desolate streets of early morning. The bus shook like a cocktail shaker on wheels, jumbling its passengers against one another, throwing them up at each rut, to fall and bounce upon the sticky leather seats. All the passengers had the same destination — with their tired faces and old, greasy makeup boxes.

Claire felt cold and broken. Her eyelids felt like cotton and closed themselves against her will. She thought dully, dimly, through the crazy unreality around her, that a director, a real director, would know genius when he saw it.

She was still thinking it as she trudged wearily through the gates of the Wonder-Pictures Studio. Claire Nash had worked for seven years on the Wonder-Pictures lot. But it was for the first time in her life that she entered it through the shabby side-gate of the "Extra Talent Entrance." She kept her head bowed cautiously and her scarf under her nose, not to be recognized. She soon found that she had nothing to fear: no one could pick her out in the dismal stampede of gray shadows streaming past the casting office window; no one could and no one showed any inclination to try. The boy in the window handed her her work ticket without raising his head or looking at her. "Hurry up!" her companion prodded her impatiently, and Claire started running with the others in the mad rush to the wardrobe.

Three stern-faced, gloomy-eyed, frozen individuals in shirtsleeves stood behind a wooden counter, distributing the extras' costumes. They fished the first rags they could reach out of three hampers filled with filthy junk and pushed them across the counter into uncomplaining hands. When Claire's turn came, the lordly individual threw at her something heavy, huge, discolored, with dirty pieces of faded gold ribbon, with a smell of stale makeup and perspiration. "Your ticket?" he ordered briefly, extending his hand for it.

"I don't like this costume," Claire declared, horrified.

The man looked at her incredulously.

"Well, isn't that just too bad!" he observed, seized her ticket, punched it, and turned, with an armful of rags, to the next woman in line.

The extras' dressing room was cold as a cellar, colder than the frozen air outside. With stiff fingers, Claire undressed and struggled into her costume. She looked into a mirror and closed her eyes. Then, with an effort, she looked again: the huge garment could have contained easily three persons of her size; the thick folds gathered clumsily into a lump on her stomach; she tried to adjust them, but they slipped right back to her stomach again; she was awkward, obese, disfigured.

Suffocating, she sat down on a wooden bench before a little crooked mirror on a filthy, unpainted wooden counter — to make up her face. But she knew little about screen makeup and had long since forgotten what she had known. For the last seven years she had had her own expert makeup man who knew how to correct the little defects of her face. Now she realized suddenly that her eyes were a little too narrow; that her cheeks were a little too broad; that she had a slight double chin. She sat twisting the greasy tube helplessly in her fingers, trying to remember and do the best she could.

Around her, the big barrack was full of busy, noisy, hurrying and gossiping females. She saw half-naked, shivering bodies and flabby muscles, vapor fluttering from mouths with every word, barbarian tunics and underwear — not very clean underwear.

She was about to rise when a strong hand pushed her down again.

"What's the hurry, dearie? Put on yar wig, willya?"

A short, plump girl in a blue smock stood before her, with hairpins in her mouth and in her hand something that looked like the fur of a very unsanitary poodle.

"That... for me?" Claire gasped. "But... but I'm blond! I... I can't wear a black wig!"

"D'ya suppose we got time to monkey around with every one of ya?" the girl asked, swishing the hairpins in her mouth. "Ya can't have bobbed hair in this picture. It's the ancient times, this is. Take what ya get. We ain't gonna bother about the color of two hundred heads!"

"But it will look awful!"

"Well, who do ya think ya are? It will ruin the picture, I suppose, will it?"

The wig was too small. The hairdresser rammed it down till it squeezed Claire's temples like a vise. She wound a huge turban over it to keep it in place, and stuck a dozen hairpins inside with such violence that she skinned Claire's skull.

"Now ya're okay. Hurry up, ya got five minutes left to get on the set."

Claire threw a last glance in the mirror. The black poodle fur hung in rags over her face; the huge turban slid down to her eyes; she looked like a mushroom with a lump in

the middle. She was safe; no one would recognize her; she couldn't recognize herself.

"Ef-fry-body on de set!" Werner von Halz roared through his megaphone.

Obedient as a herd, the huge crowd filled the stone-paved yard of Queen Lani's castle. Four hundred pairs of eyes rose expectantly to the high platform where Mr. von Halz's majestic figure stood among seven cameras.

In the solemn silence, Mr. von Halz's voice rang imperiously:

"Vat you haff to do iss diss. Der iss a var going on and your country she hass just von a great fictory. Your queen announces it to you from her castle vail. You greet de news mitt vild joy."

The mighty castle rose proudly to the clear, blue sky, a giant of impregnable granite and plaster in a forest of wooden scaffoldings and steel wires. An army of overalls moved swiftly through the castle, placing metal sheets and mirrors in, under, above the ramparts. The hot rays of the sun focused on the crowd. Hasty, nervous assistant directors rushed through the mob, placing extras all over the set.

Claire followed every assistant with an eager, hopeful glance. No one noticed her. She was not chosen for the best, prominent spots. And when, once, an assistant pointed her out to another, that other shook his head: "No, not that one!"

The cameramen were bent over their cameras, tense, motionless, studying the scene. Werner von Halz watched critically through a dark lens.

"A shadow in de right corner!" he was ordering. "Kill dat light on your left!... I vant sefen more people on dose steps... Break dat line! You're not soldiers on a parade!... Dun't bunch up like sardines on vun spot! Spread all ofer de yard!... All right!" he ordered at last. "Let's try it!"

Heddy Leland's slim, quick figure appeared on the castle wall. She spoke. The crowd roared without moving, only hundreds of arms shot vigorously in every direction, as though practicing their daily dozen.

"Stop! Hold it!!" Werner von Halz roared. "Iss dat de vay people iss glad? Iss dat de vay you vould meet your queen speaking of fictory? Now try to tink she iss saying dat you are going to haff lunch at vunce! Let's see how you vill meet dat!"

Queen Lani spoke again. Her subjects greeted her words enthusiastically. Mr. von Halz nodded.

"Diss vill be picture!" he announced.

Frantic assistants rushed through the crowd, throwing their last orders: "Hey, you there! Take off your spectacles, you fool!... Don't chew gum!... Hide that white petticoat, you, over there!... No chewing gum! They didn't chew gum in that century!"

"Ready?" boomed Werner von Halz. The huge set froze in silence, a reverent silence.

"Cam'ra-a-a!!"

Seven hands fell as levers. Seven small, glistening eyes of glass were suddenly alive, ominous, commanding the scene as seven cannons fixed upon it. Four hundred human beings in a panic of enthusiasm stormed like a boiling kettle of rags at the foot of the castle. On the wall, two thin, strong arms rose to the sky and a young voice rang exultantly through the roar of the crowd.

And Claire Nash felt herself torn off her feet, pushed, knocked, tumbled over, thrown to left and right by human bodies gone mad. She tried to act and register joy. Pressed between two huge, enthusiastic fellows, she could not tell on which side stood the cameras and on which the castle; all she could see was a piece of blue sky over red, sweating necks. She tried to fight her way out. She was thrown back by someone's elbow in her ribs and someone's knee in her stomach. A woman screaming frantically: "Long live our Queen!" was spitting into her face. A gentleman with the figure of a prizefighter stepped on her bare foot, taking the skin off three toes. She smiled pitifully and muttered: "Long live our Queen," waving a limp hand over her head. Even the hand could not be seen by the cameras...

When, at last, the piercing siren blew and assistants shouted "Hold it," when the cameras stopped, when Claire drew a deep breath and pulled the wig's hair out of her mouth, Mr. von Halz wiped his forehead with satisfaction and said:

"Dat's good... Vunce more, pleaz!"

Claire had been standing on her feet for three hours when the cameras were moved at last, and she was able to hobble towards a nurse, to get Mercurochrome smeared over the scratches on her arms and legs, to breathe, to powder her face and to look around.

She saw the tall, slender figure of a man in the simplest gray suit, insolently elegant in

its simplicity. Her heart did a somersault. She recognized the clear, contemptuous eyes, the scornful, irresistible smile. He was bending over Heddy Leland, talking to her intently, as if they were alone on the set. Heddy Leland was sitting in a low, comfortable canvas chair, a dark silk robe drawn tightly over her costume, her thin, brown hands motionless on the chair's arms. She was looking up at Winston Ayers, listening quietly, her face inscrutable; but she was looking at him as if he were the only man on the set.

Claire felt suddenly as if something had struck her through the ribs. She did not mind the set, nor the crowd, nor her place in it, nor Heddy Leland's place. It was the man in gray and the look with which he spoke to the girl in the chair. Claire was surprised to learn how much she minded that. She walked away hastily, with one last, bitter glance at the chair with the black inscription on its canvas back: "Keep off. Miss Heddy Leland."

She fell down wearily on the first chair she could find. " 'scuse me, please!" snapped a prop boy and, without waiting for her to rise, snatched the chair from under her and carried it away. She saw that it was marked: "Keep off. Mrs. McWiggins, Wardrobe." She stumbled away and sat down on the steps of a ladder. " 'scuse me, please!" snapped an electrician and carried the ladder away. She dragged herself into a shady corner and fell miserably down on an empty box.

"Ef-fry-body on de set!" roared Werner von Halz.

She stumbled heavily back to the set, swaying slightly, the white glare of the sun on the metal reflectors blinding her. A swift shadow fell across her face as someone passed by. She opened her eyes and found herself looking straight upon Winston Ayers. He stopped short and looked at her closely. One of his eyebrows rose slowly; he opened his mouth and quickly closed it again. Then he bowed, calmly, precisely, graciously, without a word, turned and walked on. But Claire had seen that his lips were trembling in a tremendous effort to stop the laughter that choked him. She grew crimson as a beet, even through the thick layers of brown makeup.

When the new scene was being rehearsed, Claire pushed her way, resolute and desperate, to the edge of the crowd, in front of the cameras. "They'll notice me!" she whispered grimly. They did.

"Who's dat girl in brown?" asked Werner von Halz after the first rehearsal, pointing his thumb at Claire Nash, who was struggling fiercely with the lump gathering on her stomach and the turban sliding off her head. "Take her out of dere! Put somebody dat can act in front!"

At the end of the day, every bone in her body aching and her feet burning like hot irons, with dust in her eyes and dust creaking on her teeth, Claire Nash stood in line at the cashier's window, curious and anxious, watching girls walk away with seven-fifty and ten-dollar checks. When she asked for her payment, the little slip of paper she received bore the words: "Pay to the order of Jane Roberts — the sum of five dollars."

Claire Nash was an indomitable woman. Besides, the thought of Winston Avers' trembling lips kept her awake all night. On the following day at the studio, she got a bit.

She remembered the beginning of her first career. She smiled and winked at an assistant director; she spoke to him — not too sternly. And as a result, when Mr. von Halz asked for a girl to do a bit, she was pushed forward.

Mr. von Halz looked her over critically, bending his head to one side. "Veil, try it," he said at last, indifferently. "Dat man" — he pointed to a tall, lean, pitiful extra — "iss a covard, he iss afraid of var. You" — he pointed to Claire — "are angry und laugh at him. You are... vat dey call it?... vun rough-und-ready woman."

"I?" gasped Claire. "I — a rough-and-ready woman? But it's not my type!"

"Vat?" said Mr. von Halz, astounded. "You dun't vant to do it maybe?"

"Oh, yes!" said Claire hastily. "Oh, yes, I do!"

The cameras clicked. The coward trembled, covering his face with his hands. Claire laughed demoniacally, her fists on her hips, and slapped him on the back, trying to forget as much of the ideal of sweet maidenhood as she could forget...

On the following evening, Claire saw the rushes of her scene in the projection room. No extra could be admitted lawfully into the sacred mystery of a projection room; but she smiled wistfully upon the susceptible assistant director and he surrendered and smuggled her in through the narrow door, when the lights were off and all the great ones had settled down comfortably in deep leather armchairs: Mr. Bamburger, Mr. von Halz, Mr. Ayers, Miss Leland. Claire stood in a dark corner by the door and looked anxiously at the screen.

She had to confess to herself that she did not photograph as well as she used to; and she remembered that for seven years she had had her own cameraman who knew the secret of the lights which made her face what the fans thought it to be. Besides, rough-and-ready women were definitely not her forte.

Mr. von Halz's opinion was more detailed. "Hm," she heard him say, "dat girl hass not got vun nickel's vorth of personality. And she duss not photograph. And she iss no actress. Cut dat out!"

She did not remember what happened after that. She remembered standing in a dark studio alley, with her head raised to the wind, a cold wind that would not cool her flaming, throbbing forehead; while the assistant director was pleading foolishly, mumbling something about dinner and about something she had promised. She got rid of him at last and fled blindly.

At the studio gate, she saw a long, low roadster sparkling faintly in the moonlight. A slim young girl stood with one foot on the running board, wrapped tightly in a short coat with a huge fur collar; a tall man in gray held the door open for her. They were speaking softly, in low voices Claire could not hear.

Two girls passed by and looked at them. "That's Winston Ayers and his discovery," Claire heard the girls whisper. They heard it too. They looked at each other, looked straight into each other's eyes. They smiled. His smile was warm and soft. Her smile was hard and bitter. She swung behind the wheel, and slammed the door, and was gone. He stood motionless and watched the car disappearing down the long dark road.

"You can think what you wish!" said Claire Nash to Winston Ayers, who had met her in an obscure restaurant at her request. "I'm through with it! I don't think anything and I'm tired of thinking. It's all too silly. I'm putting an end to the stupid comedy."

"Certainly, Miss Nash," he answered imperturbably. "It can be done easily. I am sorry if this little adventure has given you cause for annoyance." It was all he said. He asked no questions. He never mentioned the Child of Danger set, as if he had never seen her there.

She tried to forget it all, and she smiled at him warmly, invitingly, hopefully. The cold, hard face before her remained unmoved. She had known on their first meeting that there was little hope for the wish this man awakened in her. She knew now that there was no hope at all. Something had changed him. She thought she could know also what that was, if she but put her certainty into words; but she did not want to know.

She walked alone back to her hotel room, feeling very tired and very empty.

This was on a Monday. On Wednesday, the screen columns of the Hollywood papers announced that Claire Nash had sailed from Europe, outwitting the reporters who had tried to learn the name of the boat she was taking; she was, the papers further stated, to fly back to Hollywood immediately upon landing in New York.

Claire bought all the papers. She sat in her room looking at them. It seemed to her that she was coming out of a nightmare-Then she sent a long, detailed wire to her secretary in New York. The secretary was to take a Deluxe Transcontinental Flyer for Hollywood in five days; she was to register herself aboard as Claire Nash; she, Claire, would meet the plane at the last stop before Los Angeles and they would exchange places; then a proper welcome would greet her in Hollywood.

She dispatched the wire, entered the first bar she saw, and ordered a drink. She had spent too many nights alone in her room, afraid to venture into the gay night spots where her old friends would see and recognize her. She could stand it no longer. She could not wait another week. She didn't care. But nothing happened at the bar. No one saw her.

The banquet was coming to an end. The long white table, precise and formal, was like a river frozen under a mantle of snow, dotted with crystal, like chunks of ice, with flashes of silver like sparkling water in the cracks of the snow, with flowers floating like islands in midstream. The cash value of the names borne by those who filled the great hall would have stretched in a line of figures from one end of the table to the other. Hollywood's great and costly were gathered to celebrate the signing of a five-year starring contract between Miss Heddy Leland and Wonder-Pictures, Inc.

In the place of honor, a thin little figure modeled in white rose from the billowing waves of an immense skirt, a cloud of white chiffon with rhinestones sparkling as lost raindrops in the mist. She sat, straight, poised, calm, as correct as the occasion demanded, all but her hair, brushed back off her forehead, wild, untamed, ready to fly off and to carry the white cloud away with it, away from the frightening place where she had to smile, and bow, and hide her eyes and her wish to scream. On her left sat Mr. Hamburger's huge, beaming smile and Mr. Hamburger's huge, beaming diamond shirt studs. On her right sat Winston Ayers.

He sat motionless, silent, grim; he seemed to have lost his impeccable manners and forgotten to compose his face into the proper smile of enthusiasm; he showed no enthusiasm whatever; in fact, he seemed not to know or care where he was. Heddy knew suddenly that this day, this day for which she had waited and struggled through such hell, meant nothing to her compared to the thoughts which she could not guess in the mind of the man beside her. He made no effort to speak to her. So she did not turn to him, but smiled dutifully at Mr. Hamburger, at the flowers, at the endless, ringing sentences of the speakers:

"Miss Leland, whose incomparable talent... Miss Leland, whose brilliant youth has achieved... Hollywood is proud to welcome... Fame never smiled so brightly upon a greater future... We, who are ever on the lookout for the great and the gifted..."

"Miss Leland..." Winston Ayers overtook her in a dark gallery of the building, where she had fled to be alone, to leave the great banquet unnoticed and escape. She stopped short. At least, someone had missed her; he had, he who had not seemed to know that she was there.

She stood still, white as a statue in the darkness. A cold wind blew from the Hollywood hills, flaring her skirt out like a sail. He approached. He stood looking down at her. The look in his eyes did not seem to fit the words she heard in his slow, mocking voice:

"I have neglected my duties on this great day, Miss Leland," he said. "Consider yourself congratulated."

She answered without moving:

"Thank you, Mr. Ayers. And thank you — for everything."

"Unnecessary," he shrugged. "From now on, you need no further help from me." She knew he said it as an insult; but it sounded like regret.

"I'm glad of it!" she said suddenly, before she knew she was saying it, her voice alive for the first time, alive and trembling. "I still owe it all to you, but I wish I didn't. Not to you. To anyone but you. Gratitude is such a hard thing to bear. Because it can... it can..." She could not say it. "Because it can take the place of everything else, be considered to cover, to explain everything else, to... I don't want to be grateful to you! Not grateful! I wish I could die for you, but not because of gratitude! Because I..."

She stopped in time. She didn't know what she was saying; surely, she thought, he couldn't know it either. But he stood very close to her now. She looked up at him. She knew what his eyes were saying, she knew it so clearly all of a sudden, that she hardly heard his words and paid no attention to them, his words that were still struggling against that to which his eyes had surrendered.

“You owe nothing to me," he was saying coldly. "I've wanted to tell you this for a long time. I knew I'd have to. I didn't select you because I had faith in you or because I saw anything in you. I'm just as much of a fool as the others. I selected you as a trick, a gag — to prove something unimportant to someone even less important. I'll tell you the whole story someday. I can't claim your gratitude. I can claim nothing from you. I didn't think it would ever make any difference to me, but it does. It does." He finished in a grim, low voice, still hard, still cold, but something in its coldness had broken: "Because I love you."

It was not the mocking, skeptical writer who took in his arms the trembling little white figure and whose lips met hers hungrily...

"Oh, my dear, my dear," said Winston Ayers when he led Heddy Ayers into his apartment, three days later, "more than movie careers depends on chance!"

More than movie careers depends on chance...

"Extry! Extry!" the newsboys were yelling on street corners. "Horrible catastrophe! Airliner crashes with twelve passengers!"

Eager citizens tore the papers out of the boys' hands, with the hungry joy of a big sensation. And the sensation grew when the next editions appeared with huge black headlines:

CLAIRE NASH DEAD

In smaller type it was explained that the star had been registered among the passengers of the ill-fated liner which crashed on its way to the last stop before Los Angeles; that no one aboard had survived; that the bodies were mangled beyond recognition.

Then the flood broke loose. From coast to coast, tragic articles sobbed over the terrible loss in miles of close-printed black columns. It was said that the screen had been deprived of its brightest luminary; that her name was written in the book of Immortality; that the whole world would feel her absence; that there never would be another Claire Nash; that Wonder-Pictures, Inc., had signed Lula Del Mio, the famous ingenue, for the starring part in Heart and Soul, which the unforgettable Claire Nash was to have made.

In her little hotel room, having come back from the city where her plane never landed, Claire Nash sat among an ocean of newspapers. No obituary notices had ever had such a happy reader. That, thought Claire joyously as she read, was that. This was what she meant to the world. They knew her true value, after all. What publicity and what buildup! What sensation to come, when the world would learn suddenly that its brightest luminary was still shining! She delayed her resurrection for a few days. The bright crop of glowing words that fell into her hands with each new paper was like wine to her battered, thirsty soul.

She frowned for the first time, though, when the producer's nephew, whom she had thoroughly forgotten, appeared in print with an article about their years-old divorce; a sad, gentle article which, however, brought out some intimate details of the matter that had better been kept hidden. No doubt, he had been well paid for it and a mangled corpse could not bring suit, but still, there were the Women's Clubs, and that sort of thing did not help a star's reputation.

She stopped smiling entirely when a featured player of smoldering Latin charm, long since unemployed, whose name she had trouble in recalling, published a lengthy confession of his love life with Miss Nash, the details of which she recalled only too well. And the Sunday supplements carried such stories, with snapshots and facsimiles of letters, that she decided the time had definitely come to stop it. What the country was beginning to whisper about Claire Nash was neither as sad nor as beautiful as the obituary notices.

"I really cannot understand, madam, how you can persist in that queer statement," said Mr. Bamburger to Claire Nash, a haggard, green-faced, wild-eyed Claire Nash who sat in his office after her long, desperate struggle to gain admittance.

"But, Jake..." she stammered. "But you... I... for God's sake, Jake, you can't make me think I'm crazy! You know me. You recognize me!"

"Really, madam, I have never seen you before in my life."

Mr. Bamburger's secretary left the room. Mr. Bamburger rose hastily and closed the door.

"Listen, Claire..."

She jumped to her feet, a radiant smile drying her gathering tears.

"Jake, you fool! What's the gag?"

"Listen, Claire. Of course, I recognize you. But I won't recognize you in public. Now, don't stare at me like that. I won't — for your own good."

She sat down again, for she was going to fall.

"I... I don't understand," she muttered.

"You understand," said Mr. Bamburger, "only too damn well. You've read those articles, haven't you? What producer do you think will want to touch you now with a ten-foot pole?"

"But I can..."

"No, you can't. You can't sue those fellows, because they'll prove it all. You know it and I know it. And we know also that the Women's Clubs and all the Moral Uplifters would boycott a studio off the face of the earth, if any of us were fool enough to star you again."

"But..."

"Where were you all this time, you nitwitted idiot? Why did you let all those obituaries go on? If that alone weren't enough! Do you think the public would love you for that kind of a publicity stunt? Capitalizing on a catastrophe! It would ruin all confidence in the picture business, if they knew! The day is past for cheap, fantastic press-agent tricks like these!"

"But I've explained it to you! I did it only because..."

"Oh, so you think you're going to confess the real story? Tell the world that you weren't on that plane because you were pulling a silly, lousy trick on the studios? And do you expect us producers to back you up in that and make ourselves look like a bunch of jackasses?"

"But... but... but I'm popular... I'm a great star... I'm a box-offi- "

"You were. You were also slipping. Oh, definitely slipping, my girl. Take a look at the reports on your last two pictures. The public's getting sick of ingenues. Besides, we have signed Lula Del Mio to take your place. We don't need two of a kind...

"Take my advice, Claire," Mr. Bamburger was saying half an hour later to the white ghost of a woman who was leaving his office. "Stay dead officially, leave Hollywood, and give up the movies. Better for your reputation and your peace of mind. Of course, you can prove your identity easily. But the public won't take you. You'll only make yourself ridiculous. And no producer will take you. Ask them. They'll tell you the same things. You've made quite a fortune in pictures. You don't have to work. Rest and enjoy it. Try to marry some nice, respectable millionaire. Forget the movies. I am more experienced than you are and I know the business: the screen is not for you any more."

Mr. Bamburger objected violently. Werner von Halz objected with a string of invectives in five European languages. But Winston Ayers and Heddy Leland Ayers, his wife, insisted quietly and irrevocably. So Jane Roberts was signed for the second feminine lead in Child of Danger. The character appeared only in the second half of the picture and the part had not yet been filled.

Mr. Bamburger surrendered on condition that Jane Roberts remain strictly Jane Roberts, change the color of her hair and the shape of her eyebrows, keep to herself socially, and let no breath reach the press about any connection between her and Claire Nash.

"Still," sighed Mr. Bamburger, "still the public will know."

"I hope," said Winston Ayers earnestly, "I hope from the bottom of my heart that they do. But I have my own doubts."

Jane Roberts' part was that of a sweet, innocent country maiden in Queen Lani's kingdom. It was not a big part, but it was worth ten starring roles. It gave her an opportunity for all the dramatic emotions she cared to display. It fitted her to perfection. It was a brilliant condensation of all the great parts she had played.

Claire Nash gathered all her strength. She remembered all her famous roles and took the best from each. She brought to her part the sweet, helpless glances, the tremulous lips, the famous smile of innocence, all the movements, manners, and graces that had been admired so much by fans and critics. She did everything she had ever done and more. Never had she acted so well in her life.

Six months later came the reviews:

" Child of Danger is the picture of the century. Words are inadequate before the magnificence of this miracle of the screen. One must see it in order to comprehend the enchantment of this cinematic triumph- The story is as great as its author — Winston Ayers. And when this is said, everything has been said. Werner von Halz gains his right to immortality by his brilliant direction of this one masterpiece. Heddy Leland, the new star, is a discovery that surpasses anything ever seen on the screen before. Her acting bears the flaming seal of that genius which makes Screen History...

"If we may be permitted to carp on minor flaws in such a stupendous achievement, we would like to remark in passing on a small annoyance in a perfect evening- We are speaking of the second feminine lead. It's one of those innocent, insipid little things with nothing but a sweet smile and a pretty face. She reminds us of some star or other, but her weak, colorless portrayal of the country maiden shows the disadvantages of a good part in the hands of an inexperienced amateur. The part is played by one Jane Roberts."