is?"

It had the effect of a lash taken by a penitent. The man shrank a
little, whitened, endured. "I can't tell you how I treated her," he
said in a dangerous voice; "it don't bear tellin'. But--I want her
back. I was--I was--that was three years ago; I am more like a man
now. You'll give me the people's name, their address?..."

Pierre laid his hand on the older man's wrist and gave it a queer
urgent and beseeching shake.

After a moment of searching scrutiny, Yarnall bent his head.

"Very well," said he shortly; "come in."

CHAPTER V

LUCK'S PLAY

A young man who had just landed in New York from one of the big,
adventurous transatlantic liners hailed a taxicab and was quickly
drawn away into the glitter and gayety of a bright winter morning. He
sat forward eagerly, looking at everything with the air of a lad on a
holiday. He was a young man, but he was not in his first youth, and
under a heavy sunburn he was pale and a trifle worn, but there was
about him a look of being hard and very much alive. Under a broad brow
there were hawk eyes of greenish gray, a delicate beak, a mouth and
chin of cleverness. It was an interesting face and looked as though it
had seen interesting things. In fact, Prosper Gael had just returned
from his three months of ambulance service in France, and it was the
extraordinary success of his play, "The Leopardess," that had chiefly
brought him back.

"Dear Luck," his manager had written, using the college title which
Prosper's name and unvarying good fortune suggested, "you'd better
come back and gather up some of these laurels that are smothering us
all. The time is very favorable for the disappearance of your
anonymity. I, for one, find it more and more difficult to keep the
secret. So far, not even your star knows it. She calls you 'Mr. Luck'
... to that extent I have been indiscreet...."

Prosper had another letter in his pocket, a letter that he had re-read
many times, always with an uneasy conflict of emotions. He was in a
sort of hot-cold humor over it, in a fever-fit that had a way of
turning into lassitude. He postponed analysis indefinitely. Meanwhile
his eyes searched the bright, cold city, its crowds, its traffics, its
windows--most of all, its placards, and, not far to seek, there were
the posters of "The Leopardess." He leaned out to study one of them; a
tall, wild-eyed woman crouched to spring upon a man who stared at her
in fear. Prosper dropped back with a