me bluntly where I stood. Why did Marjory break off with Van?'

The clergyman told what he knew, and at the conclusion of the story
Selwyn rose to his feet.

'I must see Van at once,' he said. 'There's more in this than appears
on the surface. If you will give me his number, I'll find out when we
can get together.'

Receiving the necessary information, Selwyn went downstairs to the
telephone, returning in a couple of minutes to the den.

'I just caught him,' he said to his host, 'and I am going to his rooms
at nine tonight.'

'Good work. Now sit down and tell me about the English. You'll find
me the most attentive audience you ever had.'

II.

It was theatre-time when Selwyn left his hotel and walked over to
Broadway. That diagonal, much-advertised avenue of Gotham was ablaze
with light. From shop windows, from illuminated signs, from office
buildings, street-cars, and motors, the carnival of theatre-hour was
lit with glaring brilliancy. Women, in all the semi-barbaric
costliness with which their sex loves to adorn itself of a night,
stepped from limousines with their tiny silvery feet twinkling beneath
the load of gorgeous furs and vivid opera-cloaks; while well-groomed
men, in the smart insignificance of their evening clothes, guided the
perilous passage of their fair consorts from the motor's step to the
pavement.

Momentarily reduced to the democracy of pedestrianism, they would lose
themselves in the surging mob of passers-by--shop-girls on their way to
a cinema; rural visitors shocked and thrilled with everything;
keen-faced, black-haired Jews speculating on life's profits;
sallow-faced, lustrous-eyed girls hungry for romance, imagining every
begowned woman to be an adventuress, and every man a Prince Charming;
here and there an Irish policeman, proving that his people can control
any country but their own. Of such threads is woven the pattern of New
York's theatre-hour on Broadway.

From sheer inability to stem the traffic, Selwyn stepped into a
doorway. On the opposite side of the street a theatrical sign
announced that 'Lulu' was 'the biggest, most stupendous, comedy of the
season.' He wondered what constituted largeness in a comedy. Surely
not the author's wit! Before he could formulate a solution of the
mystery, a great overhead sign suddenly ignited with the searching
question--

DO YOU CHEW SWORDSAFE'S GUM?

Hastily detaching his mind from the biggest, most stupendous, come