hirt front. But there is no other sound.

In this expectant hush, a man in a check tweed suit walks on the stage:
only one man, one single man. Because if he had been accompanied by a
chorus, that would have been a burlesque; if four citizens in togas had
been with him, that would have been Shakespeare; if two Russian
soldiers had walked after him, that would have been melodrama. But this
is none of these. This is a problem play. So he steps in alone, all
alone, and with that absolute finish of step, that ability to walk as
if,--how can one express it?--as if he were walking, that betrays the
finished actor.

He has, in fact, barely had time to lay down his silk hat, when he is
completely betrayed. You can see that he is a finished actor--finished
about fifteen years ago. He lays the hat, hollow side up, on the silk
hat table on the stage right center--bearing north, northeast, half a
point west from the red mica fire on the stage which warms the theater.

All this is done very, very quietly, very impressively. No one in the
theater has ever seen a man lay a silk hat on a table before, and so
there is a breathless hush. Then he takes off his gloves, one by one,
_not_ two or three at a time, and lays them in his hat. The expectancy
is almost painful. If he had thrown his gloves into the mica fire it
would have been a relief. But he doesn't.

[Illustration: The Curtain rises.]

The man on the stage picks up a pile of letters from the letter
department of the hat table. There are a great many of these letters,
because all his business correspondence, as well as his private letters,
are sent here by the General Post Office. Getting his letters in this
way at night, he is able to read them like lightning. Some of them he
merely holds upside down for a fraction of a second.

Then at last he speaks. It has become absolutely necessary or
he wouldn't do it. "So--Sao Paolo risen two--hum--Rio Tinto
down again--Moreby anxious, 'better sell for half a million
sterling'--hum . . ."

(Did you hear that? Half a million sterling and he takes it just as
quietly as that. And it isn't really in the play either. Sao Paolo and
Rio Tinto just come in to let you know the sort of man you're dealing
with.)

"Lady Gathorne--dinner--Thursday the ninth--lunch with the
Ambassador--Friday the tenth."

(And mind you even this is just patter. The Ambassador doesn't come
into the play either. He and Lady Gathorne are just put in to let the