the queerest thing!" he said. "Is that Mark?
He's just gone round to the Wellington Theater, I guess. How far is it
from here?"

"Not a hundred yards, sir."

Off went Spencer, without his hat. He had intended to follow in a cab,
but a sprint would be more effective over such a short distance. He
crossed the Strand without heed to the traffic, turned to the right,
and, to use his own phrase, "butted into a policeman" at the first
corner.

"I'm on the hunt for the Wellington Theater," he explained.

"You needn't hunt much farther," said the constable good humoredly.
"There it is, a little way up on the left."

At that instant Spencer saw Bower raise his hat to the two women. They
hurried inside the theater, and their escort turned to reenter his
motor. The American had learned what he wanted to know. Miss Jaques
had shaken off her presumed admirer, and Miss Wynton had aided and
abetted her in the deed.

"You don't say!" he exclaimed, gazing at the building admiringly.
"It looks new. In fact the whole street has a kind of San
Francisco-after-the-fire appearance."

"That's right, sir. It's not so long since some of the worst slums in
London were pulled down to make way for it."

"It's fine; but I'm rather stuck on antiquities. I've seen plenty of
last year's palaces on the other side. Have a drink, will you, when
time's up?"

The policeman glanced surreptitiously at the half-crown which Spencer
insinuated into his palm, and looked after the donor as he went back
to the hotel.

"Well, I'm jiggered!" he said to himself. "I've often heard tell of
the way some Americans see London; but I never came across a chap who
rushed up in his bare head and took a squint at any place in that
fashion. He seemed to have his wits about him too; but there must be a
screw loose somewhere."

And indeed Charles K. Spencer, had he paused to take stock of his
behavior, must have admitted that it was, to say the least, erratic.
But his imagination was fired; his sympathies were all a-quiver with
the thought that it lay within his power to share with a kin soul some
small part of the good fortune that had fallen to his lot of late.

"Wants a fairy godmother, does she?" he asked himself, and the quiet
humor that gleamed in his face caused more than one passerby to turn
and watch him as he strode along the pavement. "Well, I guess I'll
play a character not hitherto heard of in the legitimate drama. What
price the fairy godfather? I'v