as tired. He changed his clothes, whistling softly to
himself all the time. At eleven o'clock, he was at the stage-door
of the Universal Theatre, waiting in a taxicab.

CHAPTER XX

LAVERICK IS CROSS-EXAMINED

One by one the young ladies of the chorus came out from the
stage-door of the Universal, in most cases to be assisted into a
waiting hansom or taxicab by an attendant cavalier. Laverick stood
back in the shadows as much as possible, smiling now and then to
himself at this, to him, somewhat novel way of spending the evening.
Zoe was among the last to appear. She came up to him with a
delightful little gesture of pleasure, and took his arm as a matter
of course as he led her across to the waiting cab.

"This sort of thing is making me feel absurdly young," he declared.
"Luigi's for supper, I suppose?"

"Supper!" she exclaimed, clapping her hands. "Delightful! Two
nights following, too! I did love last night."

"We had better engage a table at Luigi's permanently," he remarked.

"If only you meant it!" she sighed.

He laughed at her, but he was thoughtful for a few minutes.
Afterwards, when they sat at a small round table in the somewhat
Bohemian restaurant which was the fashionable rendezvous of the
moment for ladies of the theatrical profession, he asked her a
question.

"Tell me what you meant in your note," he begged. "You said that
you had some information for me.

"I'm afraid it wasn't anything very much," she admitted. "I found
out to-day that some one had been inquiring at the stage-door about
me, and whether I was connected in any way with a Mr. Arthur
Morrison, the stockbroker."

"Do you know who it was?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"The man left no name at all. I tried to get the doorkeeper to tell
me about him, but he's such a surly old fellow, and he's so used to
that sort of thing, that he pretended he didn't remember anything."

"It seems odd," he remarked thoughtfully, "that any one should have
found you out. You were so seldom with Morrison. I dare say," he
added, "it was just some one to whom your brother owes some small
sum of money."

"Very likely," she answered. "But I was going to tell you. He came
again to-night while the performance was on, and sent a note round.
I have brought it for you to see."

The note--it was really little more than a message--was written
on the back of a programme and enclosed in an envelope evidently
borrowed from the box