orget something he could
not possibly forget. Once more in the Patterson kitchen he pressed his
suit and dreamt of new eminences in his chosen art.

The following morning he was again the first to reach the long dressing
room, the first to be made up by the grumbling extra, the first to reach
the big stage. The cabaret of yesterday had overnight been transformed
into a palatial gambling hell. Along the sides of the room and at its
centre were tables equipped for strange games of chance which only his
picture knowledge enabled him to recognize. He might tarry at these
tables, he thought, but he must remember to look bored in the near
presence of Henshaw. The Spanish girl of yesterday appeared and he
greeted her warmly. "I got some cigarettes this time," he said, "so let
me pay you back all those I smoked of yours yesterday." Together they
filled the golden case that hung from her girdle.

"It's swell, all right," said the girl, gazing about the vast room now
filling with richly clad gamblers.

"But I thought it was all over except the tenement-house scenes where
Vera Vanderpool has gone to relieve the poor," he said.

The girl explained. "This scene comes before the one we did yesterday.
It's where the rich old boy first sees Vera playing roulette, and she
loses a lot of money and is going to leave her string of pearls, but
he says it's a mere trifle and let him pay her gambling losses, so in
a weak moment she does, and that's how he starts to get her into his
power. You'll see how it works out. Say, they spent some money on this
set, all right."

It was indeed a rich set, as the girl had said. It seemed to Merton Gill
that it would be called on the screen "One of those Plague Spots that
Eat like a Cancer at the Heart of New York." He lighted a cigarette and
leaned nonchalantly against a pillar to smile a tired little smile at
the pleasure-mad victims of this life who were now grouping around the
roulette and faro tables. He must try for his jaded look.

"Some swell shack!" The speaker was back of him, but he knew her for the
Montague girl, and was instantly enabled to increase the blighted look
for which he had been trying. "One natty little hovel, I'll tell the
world," the girl continued. "Say, this puts it all over the Grand
Central station, don't it? Must be right smack at the corner of Broadway
and Fifth Avenue. Well, start the little ball rolling, so I can make a
killing." He turned his head slightly and saw