into his sanctum, and firmly closed the door, just as Mr.
Adolph Meyers bowed the author into her sanctum and as firmly closed her
door. Mr. Gerald Height, who had been sitting looking indifferently out
of Mr. Meyers' window, looked after the disappearing author as if a
perfumed breeze had suddenly blown across his brow, and whistled softly.

"Say, Pops, who, by thunder is--," he was questioning Mr. Meyers with
extreme interest, when Mr. Vandeford's buzzer sounded and Mr. Meyers was
forced to answer it before he could attend to Mr. Height's question.

Mr. Meyers found Mr. Vandeford pale, but determined.

"Pops," he said, and Mr. Meyers could have sworn that the voice of his
beloved chief trembled, "I'm in the devil of a fix, and you have got to
throw me a line to pull out; in fact, you'll have to cast in a drag-net
if you want to land me."

"If it was a submarine I would make a rescue of you, Mr. Vandeford,
sir," the faithful henchman assured the panic-stricken producer.

"She's worse than any submarine ever floated, and I'm rammed--in a
corner, Pops. To make a story that is going to be long in acting, short
in telling, I've had to put Miss Adair on to what is usually handed out
to the authors of plays, and then to stop her wails, offered to let her
sit in and watch her play baby hacked up. Her office-hours here and at
rehearsals will be from ten mornings to midnight, and what are you going
to do about it?" Mr. Vandeford questioned Mr. Meyers with a kind of
forlorn hope in his eyes, for Mr. Meyers had often seen him through the
crooks of his trade.

"I advise to make it straight to her, Mr. Vandeford, sir, and she will
come out all right or otherwise go home. That young lady has the look of
a horse on which I won seven hundred at the last Gravesend. Besides, we
have not time for play-acting about that 'Purple Slipper.' It is a cold
bird and we must be in a hurry about putting pep into it for a success."

"Right-o, Pops! I'll ask her in here, and when I buzz send in Corbett.
The poor kiddie!" With which lamentation over the fate he was about to
mete out to Miss Adair, Mr. Vandeford dismissed Mr. Meyers and opened
the door which led from his sanctum into that which had been so recently
assigned to the author of "The Purple Slipper."

That eminent playwright was discovered in the height of fascination,
looking down upon the uproar of Broadway.

"I saw a taxicab run over a man and not kill him," she exclaimed with