d what Augustin
Daly had been to Sid Hahn's imagination and ambition, Sid Hahn was to
Wallie's. Wallie, though, had been born to the theatre--if having a
tumbler for a father and a prestidigitator's foil for a mother can be
said to be a legitimate entrance into the world of the theatre.

He had been employed about the old Thalia for years before Hahn noticed
him. In the beginning he was a spindle-legged office boy in the upstairs
suite of the firm of Hahn & Lohman, theatrical producers; the kind of
office-boy who is addicted to shrill, clear whistling unless very
firmly dealt with. No one in the outer office realized how faultless,
how rhythmic were the arpeggios and cadences that issued from those
expertly puckered lips. There was about his performance an unerring
precision. As you listened you felt that his ascent to the inevitable
high note was a thing impossible of achievement. Up--up--up he would go,
while you held your breath in suspense. And then he took the high
note--took it easily, insouciantly--held it, trilled it, tossed it.

"Now, look here," Miss Feldman would snap--Miss Feldman of the outer
office typewriter--"look here, you kid. Any more of that bird warbling
and you go back to the woods where you belong. This ain't a--a--"

"Aviary," suggested Wallie, almost shyly.

Miss Feldman glared. "How did you know that word?"

"I don't know," helplessly. "But it's the word, isn't it?"

Miss Feldman turned back to her typewriter. "You're too smart for your
age, you are."

"I know it," Wallie had agreed, humbly.

There's no telling where or how he learned to play the piano. He
probably never did learn. He played it, though, as he
whistled--brilliantly. No doubt it was as imitative and as unconscious,
too, as his whistling had been. They say he didn't know one note from
another, and doesn't to this day.

At twenty, when he should have been in love with at least three girls,
he had fixed in his mind an image, a dream. And it bore no resemblance
to twenty's accepted dreams. At that time he was living in one room
(rear) of a shabby rooming house in Thirty-ninth Street. And this was
the dream: By the time he was--well, long before he was thirty--he would
have a bachelor apartment with a Jap, Saki. Saki was the perfect
servant, noiseless, unobtrusive, expert. He saw little dinners just for
four--or, at the most, six. And Saki, white-coated, deft, sliding hot
plates when plates should be hot; cold plates when pl