"The Mascotte," at the Brandes
Theatre in Chicago.

A year later, when she created the part of _Kathi_ in "The White
Horse," Max Venem sent word to her that she would live to see her
husband lying in the gutter under his heel. Which made the girl
unhappy in her triumph.

But Venem hunted up Abe Grittlefeld and told him very coolly that he
meant to ruin Brandes.

And within a month the latest public favourite, Minna Minti, sat in
her dressing-room, wet-eyed, enraged, with the reports of Venem's
private detectives locked in the drawer of her dressing table, and the
curtain waiting.

* * * * *

So complex was life already becoming to these few among the million
children of the Dark Star Erlik--to everyone, from the child that
fretted in its mother's arms under the hot wind near Trebizond, to a
deposed Sultan, cowering behind the ivory screen in his zenana,
weeping tears that rolled like oil over his fat jowl to which still
adhered the powdered sugar of a Turkish sweetmeat.

Allahou Ekber, _Khodja_; God is great. Great also, _Ande_, is Ali, the
Fourth Caliph, cousin-companion of Mahomet the Prophet. But, _O
tougtchi_, be thy name Niaz and thy surname Bai, for Prince Erlik
speeds on his Dark Star, and beneath the end of the argument between
those two last survivors of a burnt-out world--behold! The sword!

THE DARK STAR

CHAPTER I

THE WONDER-BOX

As long as she could remember she had been permitted to play with the
contents of the late Herr Conrad Wilner's wonder-box. The programme on
such occasions varied little; the child was permitted to rummage among
the treasures in the box until she had satisfied her perennial
curiosity; conversation with her absent-minded father ensued, which
ultimately included a personal narrative, dragged out piecemeal from
the reticent, dreamy invalid. Then always a few pages of the diary
kept by the late Herr Wilner were read as a bedtime story. And bath
and bed and dreamland followed. That was the invariable routine, now
once more in full swing.

Her father lay on his invalid's chair, reading; his rubber-shod
crutches rested against the wall, within easy reach. By him, beside
the kerosene lamp, her mother sat, mending her child's stockings and
underwear.

Outside the circle of lamplight the incandescent eyes of the stove
glowed steadily through the semi-dusk; and the child, always
fascinated by anything that aroused her