ded in his ear.

"What is this," it demanded, "a bum joke you're trying to put over, or
what? Come home at once!--Don't you know a packed house is waiting to
see Miss Burton in her act? What do ye mean, come home at once?"

"But I tell you--"

"Go tell it somewhere else." Thomas Burton did not know that it was
Abey Lewis himself who spoke. "I don't believe you--you're trying to
string somebody--and if the Queen of China was dying she couldn't come
now anyways."

Slowly Abey Lewis turned from the receiver he had abruptly hung up and
beckoned the subordinate who had first taken the message.

"Don't mention this to anybody," directed the chief tersely. "Do you get
me? The girl mustn't hear it--and if any telegrams or messages come, you
bring 'em to me, first, see?" Then to the stage door-man he gave a
similar command, and looked at his watch. It was two forty-five. Mary's
act, held for the latter part of the bill, was not due for an hour. For
just a moment Mr. Lewis considered the advisability of advancing it on
the program. That might be safer--but also it would mar the climacteric
effect and so offend his sense of artistic fitness. He thought that,
after all, he had safeguarded matters well enough.

But Old Tom Burton had rushed out of the saloon and was hastening at his
awkward gallop to the Eighth-street station of the elevated. He was
going to tell Mary in person and to bring her home.

Around the turn of the rails he saw a train coming, and, urged by his
obsession of haste, he strove for a greater speed. The top steps were
slippery, and Old Tom was giddy and his legs uncertain. His foot shot
sideways without warning, and his body went hurtling backward. He
clutched desperately for the hand-rail and missed it. Down the long
flight of iron-edged stairs, in a bundle of ragged old humanity, he
rolled limply, and lay shapeless on the pavement. At once, a rush of
feet brought a little crowd, and the same policeman who had helped him
home earlier bent over him.

"Who is he?" asked someone, and the officer shook his head.

"Search me," he said. "He smells like a booze-barrel. I ought to have
locked him up the first time."

An ambulance came with much clanging of its gong, and when they examined
him at Bellevue, searching his pockets, they found some letters and
Mary's memorandum. So they learned his identity, and sent a telephone
message to the theater--to be followed a half-hour later by a second
announcing that