*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 79452 ***
[Illustration: The trouble was that Douglas Raymond’s friends
liked him too well—but that can be trouble enough!]


PLEASE STAND BY

By Joseph Ivers Lawrence


“Turn off that horrible jazz, Adolph, and get WXL. It’s thirty-three on
the dial, you know,” said Miss Maria Bascom, proprietor and hostess of
Wistaria Lodge. “I’ve had nothing but jazz all the afternoon—songs and
ukuleles and organs and orchestras, all the time. Seems as if I’d go
distracted! Something ought to be done about it.”

[Illustration: portrait of Miss Maria Bascom]

“Suppose you try snapping off the switch,” suggested Henry Caddock, dean
of the boarding house, who sat at the foot of the table, opposite Miss
Bascom. “That’s what I do when I come into the house in the afternoon
and there’s no one around, and Adolph has left the thing running. You’ve
no idea how peaceful and quiet it makes the house, and it saves
electricity.”

“I had an idea that Adolph kept it running most of the time,” said Miss
Bascom in a low tone, as the butler busied himself with the radio
cabinet in the parlor. “Adolph is very fond of music.”

“Music?” queried Hubert Quirk, on the right of the table.

“If it isn’t music, what is it?” challenged Mrs. Susan Tredmore, on the
left of the hostess. “Some very distinguished authorities claim, you
know, that jazz is the logical expression of American life—of the
tremendous, throbbing, spontaneous action and spirit of the people.”

“Sure! I guess that’s it,” agreed Horace Sheldon, across the table.
“That’s the way life and business look to me, all right. It’s something
fierce, believe me!”

“Oh, you take a very cynical view of it, Mr. Sheldon,” said Mrs.
Tredmore.

“Who wouldn’t?” murmured the laconic Hubert Quirk.

“And what is your view of such things, Dr. Hillary?” persisted the lady.

The college professor smiled benignly, and delicately touched his lips
with his napkin.

“I’m inclined to believe that all these things will adjust themselves. A
casual survey of history is—er—moderately reassuring—to those who do not
expect too much.”

“I’m so glad to hear you say that, Dr. Hillary!” declared the lady,
vastly gratified.

“Indeed, yes! Such an opinion from a professor stimulates one’s faith in
the eternal verities, doesn’t it?” seconded the newest boarder, Miss
Sylvia Stark, who had come to Port Cardinal to teach mathematics in the
high school.

“Mm—Monday night,” mused the hostess, “and—er—the Orpheus Gleemen are on
at eight o’clock, aren’t they, Mr. Raymond?”

“Yes, Miss Bascom, eight o’clock,” answered Douglas Raymond, the robust
baritone of the quartet to which she referred. “Rather nice program
tonight, too.”

“‘Rather nice!’” exclaimed Ralph Atwood, from the other end of the
table. “That’s it exactly, Doug. Looks like the radio audience
everywhere is made up of the inmates of old ladies’ and old men’s homes.
Sentimental stuff! Milk toast and weak tea!

“Gosh! I never knew that all the people were so easy to entertain—if
they are! Radio! Huh! I don’t mind hearing baseball scores and the stock
market, but I’d shut the thing off right there and let it go at that.
What’s the big baritone solo feature tonight? ‘My Mother Was a Lady,’ or
‘Asleep in the Deep’?”

“One good thing about radio, Ralph, you _can_ shut it off,” said the
baritone a little self-consciously.

“Can you, though?” challenged the other. “I haven’t noticed that.
Perhaps so—if you’re a hermit in a cave twenty miles from nowhere.”

“Sorry you have such a hard time, Mr. Atwood,” said Miss Bascom with
mild sarcasm. “You remember we put it to a vote when the set was
installed, and you all agreed that if just one boarder wanted to listen
in, the others must raise no objections; that is, up to eleven o’clock.

“And I notice that you all sit up together frequently until midnight
when there’s something good.”

Rice pudding was served, and some second and third cups of coffee; then
the boarders began rising and drifting toward the parlor.

“Now that tune!” said Henry Caddock peevishly, cocking his ear toward
the loud-speaker on top of the bookcase: “I was fussing with the dial
last night and I found five stations all playing that tune at once; you
could not get away from it. Next week it’ll be another tune, but they
have to run just one or two favorites to death.”

“Ready, Mr. Raymond?” called Dora Perkins, standing at the foot of the
stairs in the hall.

[Illustration: portrait of Dora Perkins]

“Sure, I’m coming,” answered the baritone, hurrying down the stairs.
“We’ve got plenty of time. Good-by, Kitty. See you when I get home.”

“Oh, good-by,” said little Kitty Granby, a stenographer in the First
National Bank, affecting an air of easy indifference, and meeting the
sweet smile of Dora Perkins through the hall door with one carefully
calculated to be just as sweet and just as feline.

“You know WXL is our own station, right here in Port Cardinal, Miss
Stark,” the hostess explained to the new boarder. “And we’re fortunate
in having two of the regular staff artists here in our little family.
Miss Perkins plays piano solos and accompaniments, and Mr. Raymond is
the baritone in the famous Orpheus Gleemen—the wonderful male quartet.
They sing three times a week, and Sundays.”

“Which is four times too many,” put in Ralph Atwood impudently. “They
are _famous_ in Port Cardinal, Miss Stark, and _wonderful_ in the same
town. To the big radio audiences out on the air, they’re one of the
things that fill in; folks can listen to ’em when they’re too lazy to
get up and shut off the switch.

“Takes all kinds to make a program, I guess. Every radio station ought
to be limited to about three hours a day; we might get something good
once in awhile.”

The men lighted up pipes, cigars, and cigarettes, and gallantly waited
for the women to dispose themselves about the radio end of the parlor in
chairs.

It was Miss Stark’s first evening at Wistaria Lodge, and she grew
suddenly a little more self-conscious, then fidgety, and finally
produced a little tortoise-shell cigarette case.

“Are there—ah—any objections, Miss Bascom?” she inquired of the hostess.

“N-n-n-no! Miss Stark, we’re quite modernistic here—though decently
conservative. We have emerged from the Victorian age.”

She produced a cigarette for herself, obviously to put the stranger at
ease.

Ottilie Eldom, buyer in a department store, casually brought forth a
paper of cigarettes from the handbag in her lap.

“I don’t know much about Victorian ages or any other kind,” she said in
her habitual, half-sullen, half-droll manner, “but I’ve been smoking
fags for ten years; so don’t get fussed on my account, Miss Stark.”

“You started smoking as a mere child, dear!” exclaimed Etta Upham, the
beauty specialist.

“Thanks, awfully, old bean!” returned Miss Eldom. “Yes, it was when my
mother was passing me off as sixteen—about the time that horseless
buggies were coming in. You remember!”

“No, I don’t remember!” snapped Etta, flushing. “Thank the Lord I’m no
older than I am!”

“You should be thankful for that, dear,” agreed Ottilie.

“How about the movie, Kitty?” Ralph Atwood asked the little
stenographer. “It’s rotten, as usual, but we’ll escape the radio.”

“Thanks very much, but I think I’ll stay in tonight.”

“How about coming with me, Kitty?” broke in Hubert Quirk. “The show’ll
be just as rotten, but you look well walking with me; we’ve got style.”

“No, thank you.”

“Wise kid!” murmured Felix McMasters, the irrepressible. “You knew I was
going to ask you, Kitty! You get the show, ice cream, and a taxi home.
There’s a new line that runs the mile limit for thirty-five cents. Get
on your coat an’ hat.”

“No, thank you,” said Kitty, and her eyes snapped a little, and her
little sensitive chin seemed to quiver slightly. “I said I thought I’d
stay in tonight.”

“Yeh! The Orpheus Gleemen are on the air!” jeered Ralph.

“And what if they are?” challenged Kitty angrily.

“I’m not taking any blame either way,” said Ralph. “They’re on the air,
and I don’t know any way of taking ’em off. But it’s too bad to think
any one has to sit here and listen. Dora giving Doug the glad eye as he
comes downstairs, and sparking with ’im all the way to the studio—it’s a
two-mile walk, isn’t it? And all the way home again, too!

“Any one would think you’d show some independence, Kit, and have a
little fun yourself. You don’t get a thing, sitting home and moping over
a guy like Doug. I never knew any o’ these male nightingales that
weren’t crazy about themselves—an’ you fool flappers play right up to
’em and make ’em a blame sight worse!”

[Illustration: portrait of Horace Sheldon]

Kitty got up in a rage and flounced across the room, taking a seat by
the middle-aged Horace Sheldon, proprietor of a down town cigar store.
Mr. Sheldon patted her small left hand with paternal solicitude, and
when he quietly made some effort to retain his hold on the hand, she
jerked it away and seemed perilously close to tears of mortification and
anger.

“There! There they are!” exclaimed Miss Bascom, hushing the company with
upraised forefinger.


II.

“You will be entertained,” the announcer at station WXL was saying, “by
the justly popular male quartet, the Orpheus Gleemen, singing
exclusively for station WXL and affiliated stations. As their first
number on this evening’s program, our distinguished vocalists will
render their own arrangement of the ever-popular ballad ‘Mandalay,’ Miss
Dora Perkins at the piano.”

“Listen to the dear boys!” growled Ralph Atwood. “You know how it
runs—‘Where there ain’t no ten commandments and a man can raise a
thirst.’ And they’re all front-row Christian Endeavorers and
white-ribboners. They think ginger ale is a low-down wicked stuff,
’cause bad men mix highballs with it.”

“Charming!” observed Miss Stark, at the end of the quartet’s first
number.

“Not bad—not at all bad,” agreed Dr. Hillary.

The announcer said that Mr. Douglas Raymond would sing a group of songs,
and the hostess clapped her hands softly.

Strong, resonant tones poured from the loud-speaker:

    “From the desert I come to thee,
    On my Arab shod with fire—”

“Now just imagine Doug Raymond hitting it in high across the desert on
_anything_ shod with fire!” jeered Ralph. “Why, he’d beat the Prince o’
Wales to a flop if he tried to ride a sawhorse. These big romantic yells
always give me a pain.”

“Sh—please, Mr. Atwood,” implored the hostess.

Douglas Raymond sang his second song, “It was a Lover and his Lass.”

“There!” declared Ralph, after keeping quiet through two verses, “I’ll
say that the boy’s hit his stride; that’s about the kind of stuff for
him—Philadelphia cream cheese, with strawberry jam on the side. And did
you hear little Dora stub her toe on the piano? She can’t keep her eyes
on the music or the keyboard when Doug is singing love songs.”

“Lucky they got chaperones an’ things in the studio!” chuckled Felix
McMasters, grinning at Kitty Granby.

[Illustration: portrait of Felix McMasters]

“These frightful teases are trying to bother you, Kitty,” said Miss
Bascom. “Don’t you mind them at all, dear.”

“I didn’t hear what they said,” lied Kitty bravely.

“Two charming songs, charmingly rendered!” declared Mrs. Tredmore,
giving the light-minded youths a glance of lofty disdain.

“Oh, quite!” agreed the new boarder effusively. “You may tell your
friend Mr. Raymond, dear Miss Granby, that I got a definite—er—a really
authentic spiritual message from his work. Lovely voice!—and real
feeling. He has temperament. He should go far. You needn’t hesitate to
tell him so, Miss Granby.”

“Oh, thank you, Miss Stark,” said Kitty, blushing vividly, “but Mr.
Raymond is—er—why, just a—just one of my friends—here in the boarding
house; that’s all.”

“Dear child!” purred Miss Stark, who obviously had reached thirty, “you
are so sweetly naïve! I hope you and this agreeable young man with the
splendid voice may always remain—oh, very good friends!—and that you may
both attain your hearts’ desires. There! You see, I’m in quite a
romantic mood as a result of all this perfectly inspiring music. Oh, the
radio is priceless! How did we ever live without it!”

“Hope you got all that, Ottilie,” mumbled Ralph to Miss Eldom. “Did you
get an _aw-thentic_ click out of Doug’s howls? Me—I’m all lit up on the
romantic stuff. Let’s go out on the porch and hold hands. And to think
Doug Raymond gets real money for that stuff!”

“Too bad _you_ can’t get real money for making a fool of yourself,
Ralph,” said Ottilie. “You’d have more cash than Henry Ford!”

“Click!” gasped Ralph, slapping his jaw. “That registered all right! And
to think I offered to kiss you once, out in the wistaria arbor.”

“Don’t mention it; I’ve been trying to forget and forgive. I was
disillusioned in love years ago, when you were in kindergarten, young
man; and I’m no cradle snatcher.”

“Reckon I’ll say good night, Miss Bascom,” murmured Henry Caddock. “Got
some writing to do upstairs, and I’ve got about all the romance I can
stand for one evening, I guess.”

Horace Sheldon, next in line of seniority, yawned and decided to stroll
down town and supervise the closing of his cigar store for the night.

Lively dance music followed the Orpheus Gleemen’s hour, and the younger
boarders rolled up the rugs and spent a half hour in scraping floor wax
from the polished boards while Miss Bascom presided and tried to look
pleasant and unconcerned.

Kitty Granby refused to dance. She occupied a little warm and stuffy
room, top floor rear, and hesitated to go there at once, but she retired
moodily to a corner with a magazine and ignored the others.

She was tired, and her nerves were tired. Just as she was thinking that
sleep might not come readily to her that night, she nodded over the
magazine, and when she sat up with a start, wide awake again, Douglas
Raymond was standing in the doorway of the parlor, and the voice of Dora
Perkins sounded from the stairs. All the other boarders had gone, and
she regretted bitterly that the solitude of the parlor made retreat more
difficult.

“Going to the studio in the morning, Mr. Raymond?” Dora was inquiring.

“No, I don’t have to go at all tomorrow,” said Douglas.

“I do. I have to go and rehearse some accompaniments with that fiddler.
About ten o’clock. You wouldn’t be walking out that way, I suppose?”

The young man glanced at the shrinking Kitty at the end of the now dimly
lighted parlor, and Kitty perceived that his color deepened.

“I—I’d like to—mighty well, Miss Perkins,” he said, “but—I have to—”

“Oh, you don’t have to make excuses!” said Dora quickly with a dry
little laugh. “Of course, if you weren’t going anyway! It does seem like
an awful walk when you’re alone, though. And you’re such good company,
Mr. Raymond. I never gave a thought to the walk either way tonight.
Shows what congenial companionship will do for any one.”

“Mighty glad to have had your company, Miss Perkins,” said Douglas in a
rather husky voice. “Well—good night, Miss Perkins.”

“Good night, Mr. Raymond. If you just happened to change your mind in
the morning, I’ll be leaving about quarter to ten, I guess. Good night.”

“Aren’t you sitting up pretty late, Kitty?” the young man asked, walking
slowly the length of the parlor.

“Not so very. I’m going up now, though.”

“That so? I was hoping you might want to sit awhile. Did you hear the
program?”

“Yes, we heard it, of course. It was very good.”

“Thanks.”

“I’m pretty tired now, Doug. I guess I’ll say good night.”

“What’s the matter, Kitty?”

“Matter? Nothing the matter with me, I’m sure.”

“Maybe there is with me, then?”

“Oh, don’t be foolish, Doug! I’m terribly tired. Please don’t keep me
here talking—about nothing. I’m tired—I’m just good and sick and tired
of everything—of this darned old boarding house and this darned old
town, and all the horrid, miserable, low-down, good-for-nothing
cake-eaters and lounge-lizards round here, and the radio and the movies
and the bank—and—and everything that I have to see and hear every
gol-darn day of my life.

“There, now I’ve said it—and I’m not saying anything about you—and I
don’t care anything about you, and I never did, and never wanted to, and
I wouldn’t cry if I never saw your face again. _Good_ night!”

She darted toward the door like an agile kitten, but the dumfounded
Douglas literally blundered into her way, checking her flight. He
reached out clumsily to take her hand, but she raised the hand and
smartly slapped his face.

“Don’t you dare touch me!” she cried furiously. “And you get out of my
way and let me go. I don’t find you such _good company_, Mr. Raymond; I
haven’t noticed so much _congenial companionship_ between us!”

“Aw, gee!” muttered Douglas, staring blankly. “Say!—oh, gosh! I don’t
know what’s the matter, Kitty, unless—gosh!”

In utter bewilderment he began vaguely to fear the outcome of the sudden
tempest, to wonder what was to follow it. After the extraordinary,
ungovernable fury, tears and hysterics seemed logical enough, and he
dreaded that development no less than any other that he could conjure up
in his disordered mind.

There was still a surprise in store for him, however. The tempest
cleared, like summer wind and lightning, and was followed by a dead
calm—without sunshine.

Kitty sat down abruptly on the nearest chair and stared at him,
dry-eyed, with a certain disturbing apathy.

“I’m sorry,” she said evenly. “I’m terribly sorry I made such a fool of
myself, and such a scene. I suppose some of them upstairs heard it. I
suppose _she_ heard it.”

“But can’t you tell me, Kitty?” he implored miserably. “Gosh!”

“Nothing to tell, Douglas. It’s my nerves, I suppose. I guess I ought to
get away from here—everything is so hateful to me.”

“I didn’t know that—er—that I was.”

“Oh, I don’t suppose it’s your fault,” she sighed. “But we—we could
never get along, Douglas. I’ve been thinking things over a good deal. I
thought I liked you pretty well; you know that, of course; but I’m
afraid it was just because you’re such a good-natured, kind sort of a
boy. There surely isn’t anything bad about you, but—”

“You’d better go right on,” he said grimly. “I might as well know
everything right now.”

“We ought not to let things go any further, Douglas, because we might
regret it all our lives. I’m a little bit afraid you’ve never grown up,
and that you never will grow up. Seems to me you’re satisfied just to
sing a song and have people say that it was fine. I’m terribly afraid
you haven’t any ambition, Douglas.”

“Haven’t any ambition?” he gasped. “Ambition! No ambition? Why, Kitty
Granby, now I know well enough you’re out o’ your head. There’s not any
feller round here with more ambition than I’ve got.”

[Illustration: portrait of Ralph Atwood]

“That’s saying a whole lot, isn’t it?” she observed with crushing irony.
“I’m glad you find yourself superior in some way to Ralph Atwood, and
that conceited Hubert Quirk, and that idiotic McMasters boy.

“But you don’t begin to understand, Douglas. You think the little bits
of unimportant things are great big things. You’re terribly pleased
because you can sing for the radio three times a week and in the church
exercises Sundays; you think it’s a great honor and a big success, and
you’re willing to stop right there.”

“But, Kitty, the manager out at the electric plant says we surely have
made a hit. He told me himself that we’d be getting offers from the big
vaudeville people, and—and only tonight, he said he dropped into the
studio to hear me sing, ’cause he’d got the idea that I had just the
kind of a voice for radio speaking and announcing. He said there might
be a chance for me to be a regular announcer. That’s the truth!”

“Not really!” she sighed, crushing him again. “I suppose you think you’d
be written up in the magazines. Young man started with nothing but a
baritone voice, and got to be a real radio announcer, all on his merits
without any pull or influence or anything.

“You’d get almost enough money as a radio announcer to support a
wife—the way you’ve hoped to do—but, of course, the wife would have to
work, too, to keep up household expenses.”

“Huh! That’s it! You’d better go ’n’ marry a millionaire right off. I
didn’t know.”

“And you don’t know now—not anything, Douglas Raymond! I’m not a
mercenary girl, but if I ever get married I’ll choose a man who has some
pride and some reasonable ideas. You speak of being a radio announcer as
you’d speak of being president of a railroad or something.”

“You needn’t think it’s such a bum job! Some of ’em get mighty big pay,
and they’re famous, and sign contracts like movie stars.”

“How many? Some baseball players get mighty big pay and sign big
contracts, but how many? Why don’t you start in being a Babe Ruth,
seeing you know as much about baseball as you do the radio business?

“Oh, Douglas, I’m afraid you haven’t got what people call a sense of
values. You don’t see things as other men do. If you were a bell hop
over at the hotel, your ambition would be to get to be the captain of
the bell hops—never the manager or owner of the hotel.”

“Well,” he said sullenly, “I can’t start right in being an Edison or a
Marconi, can I?”

“No, you’re not the type to do anything like that,” she said
witheringly. “You do start things, but never finish them; you’re too
easily led off the track by all the things you see around you.

“You started as a pretty fair singer, and if you really wanted to do
that sort of thing you ought to have worked with all your might to be a
Caruso or a Chaliapin; but here you sit down in Port
Cardinal—twenty-three years old—and are tickled to death to sing every
other night for the radio—a lot of silly songs, and you have no further
plans, _Mister_ Raymond—except to be a radio announcer!”

“Gee! I never heard you carry on like this before!” he groaned. “How do
you know what’s going on inside my head, Kitty? You must admit I never
go around boasting of what I can do. But I’ve got some mighty big ideas
in my old bean.

“This radio stuff is all new to me, but I’m keen about it. No reason why
a man shouldn’t dig right in, if he likes it, and get to be the head of
a big corporation or something.”

“I know!” she said skeptically. “But your keen enthusiasm won’t last
long, Doug. Next time you get to talking of your plans, you’ll want to
manage the biggest jazz band in America, or be the biggest chicken
farmer in the country, or learn to fly and go out after Lindy’s record.
Oh, it makes me sick to say these things to you, but I’m not the only
one that can see it.”

“Is that so? Been talking me over at the breakfast table with the wise
one, eh?”

“That’s like me, isn’t it?” she demanded sharply. “I didn’t have to talk
with any one. I’ve been tortured by this whole miserable lot of frumps
and jackasses, the whole evening. The old women and the old maids think
you’re all right, but the others never speak of you with respect, Doug.
They’re either patronizing or insulting.

“Making fun of your singing—casting slurs on you from all
directions—talking about you as they wouldn’t dare talk about the
average young man; they don’t seem to have any fear that you’ll resent
it, or do what most men would do if they were insulted.”

“Is that so!” growled Douglas, bristling. “Well, I might surprise you
and the rest of ’em. I’ll walk upstairs right now and give Mr. Ralph
Atwood a sock in the eye that’ll shake ’im loose from his
dollar-an’-a-half necktie. By—golly!”

“Oh, why don’t you swear, if you feel like it? You might let out one
good honest _damn_ at least, and I’d have more respect for you, Doug
Raymond!”

“Why, Kitty Granby!” he gasped. “My good grief! You do just about hate
me, don’t you? Say, is that the way folks feel about me? Do they think
I’m just a poor piece o’ cheese, just because I sing for a living and
don’t act like a hard-boiled pug around the house? I’ve tried to be
decent to people, but I guess it don’t pay, at that! Hell!”

“That’s pretty good,” she remarked with a bored smile, “but it was
rather forced. Don’t swear on my account. And I don’t think Miss Perkins
would like it, either. She thinks very well of you, I’m sure, just as
you are. When two persons meet who are thoroughly congenial, they should
cultivate each other’s society.”

“Hah! So, Kitty Granby! It _is_ because you—it’s just because I—because
Miss Perkins said—well, about walking—and on account o’ my being polite
to—Miss Perkins only meant to say that—”

“What,” she demanded acidly, “are you trying to say?”

“You’re jealous!” he announced heavily.

“You lie!” she flared back at him, and a sob choked her. “I couldn’t
be—jealous of anything I despised, could I? You and Miss Perkins are
made for each other! She’s a brainless baby doll. She’s a thousand times
prettier than I am—thank God!

“I wouldn’t be seen out with her big black googly eyes, and her
vanishing-cream complexion and cherry lips. I’m glad I’ve got little
eyes and a big mouth, and a pug nose, and mouse-colored hair. And I’m
glad I can’t play the piano or sing. Maybe I’ve got brains, though, if I
haven’t anything else.”

“Oh, Kitty, please calm down and let’s talk this thing over,” he said
despairingly.

“I don’t care to talk anything over with a man that’s conceited enough
to think I’m jealous of an overgrown schoolboy like him, and a brainless
china doll that opens and shuts its eyes. There!

“I don’t intend to run away from this house just because you’re here,
Mr. Raymond, but I’ll thank you not to speak to me again. We are not on
speaking terms hereafter, and I’d like you to understand that
perfectly.”

“All right! Good night, Miss Granby! If you’re that kind of a—a woman,
it’s a good thing I found it out in time. That’s all I got to say!”


III.

Kitty darted past him as the bird flits, apparently without regard to
angles and turns. She was a small person, extraordinarily quick and
agile, and she seemed to make the flight from the middle of the parlor
to the first landing of the staircase in three bounds.

Three more might have taken her to the door of her room on the third
floor, but unfortunately there was an obstacle on the landing; a shadowy
figure rose with a little frightened cry directly in her path, and there
was a sickening crash, two screams, and then two distinct thuds as of
small, hard fists landing on something soft.

“Glad—you listened—cat!” panted and gurgled Kitty, as she delivered the
blows, and then she swiftly completed her flight without further halt or
interruption.

That did not close the episode, however. Doors opened, and startled
voices challenged the darkness.

Ottilie Eldom slipped from her room, second floor front, swiftly, like a
rather substantial wraith and pounced on the huddled figure on the
landing.

“Shut up, hussy!” she hissed softly in Miss Dora Perkins’s ear, and gave
her an admonitory cuff, effectively shutting off a wail of anguish.

“Oh, what—what is it?” cried Miss Bascom from her doorway.

“Hey! What’s wrong down there?” rumbled Horace Sheldon from another
quarter.

“All right, now!” called back Ottilie Eldom in a cheerful tone. “But who
let this cat in anyhow? I nearly broke my neck, getting up the stairs.”

“Hm! Sounded like two cats fighting, when I woke up,” growled Mr.
Sheldon.

“Thanks for the pretty compliment, kind sir,” returned Ottilie. “Hope
you lie awake till morning, just for that.

“It’s all right, folks!” she added. “You can all go back to bed; but
don’t let any more cats into this house hereafter.”

“You’re a cat yourself!” Miss Perkins breathed sibilantly.

“And I scratch. Look out!” returned Ottilie, pushing her roughly aside
and mounting the steps to her room.

Miss Perkins, white-faced, with black eyes as large as saucers,
descended in her bewilderment to the hall. She stood there, wavering
uncertainly, a subtly appealing picture in her pink dressing robe of
soft and clinging substance, her little feet tucked into tiny satin
slippers. Then:

“Oh, Douglas! You?” she gasped, and swayed alarmingly, catching at the
newel post.

“Why—Miss—why, Dora!”

“Oh, I’m scared to death!” she murmured, stealing fearfully, all
atremble, into the parlor. “I—I heard voices; I thought there was some
trouble. I—it was so foolish—but I started to come down, and—and she—who
was it? She struck me! And hurt me, too! Oh, Douglas!”

“Oh, come now, Dora, don’t cry!” he mumbled wretchedly.

“Oh, Douglas!” she sobbed, and melted into his protecting arms.

Then the _Witch of Endor_—impersonated ably by Miss Ottilie Eldom in
tousled hair, face flushed with anger, draped in a rumpled bathrobe of
dull crimson, appeared again out of the darkness.

“You poor fool!” she muttered savagely.

“Who? Me?” gasped Douglas.

“You!” said Ottilie, scathingly, “and any other man, for that matter.
Get upstairs, both o’ you, before I slap you.”


IV.

Four restrained and well-bred gossips lingered at table, after the other
boarders had strayed to porch and parlor, and toyed with their little
cups of coffee and their cigarettes.

“But I am—frankly—no end astonished,” confessed Miss Sylvia Stark,
baring her immaculate soul to the chosen few. “One shouldn’t have
illusions at—at thirty, I suppose, but I was so enchanted, Miss Bascom,
when I joined your little family, to find such good fellowship, such
obvious accord. It was quite Utopian—really!

“And now, so soon, to find these lovely young persons all fallen
out—eating with downcast eyes, darting black looks about the table
generally, and sighing like furnaces—as Shakespeare would say.”

“It’s too awfully bad!” murmured the hostess. “We have trials—yes,
trials, from time to time. But we _were_ such a happy family! Kitty is
the sweetest child. If I were—er—married, you know, and had a daughter,
I should want her to be like Kitty.

“And Douglas Raymond—oh, quite adorable! A little immature, a little
impractical and visionary, but such a good and wholesome lad. I suppose
it was inevitable that a discordant note should sound; the little idyll
could not be prolonged forever. Miss Perkins is charming, in her way,
but—oh, such a different type, you know.”

[Illustration: portrait of Mrs. Susan Tredmore]

“I had a feeling,” said Mrs. Tredmore, “when Miss Perkins came here,
about a month ago, that—oh, you know! a sort of intuition—that another
element had entered. Well, I sensed something inimical to our peace and
harmony.”

Dr. Hillary reflectively polished his glasses, half smiling to himself
over his musings.

“A little cosmos!” he murmured gently. “Wherever two or more persons are
gathered together there you have a little world, with all the elements
and factors of existence functioning in an area circumscribed.
Laboratory specimens, one might say, but displaying to the student and
observer all the phenomena of nature and the universe.”

“Fascinating!” breathed Miss Stark.

“The history of man is reënacted,” continued the professor. “Eternal
Eve, eternal Adam—and the eternal Lilith!”

“Lilith!” sighed Mrs. Tredmore contentedly. “Isn’t it strange that the
name flitted through my thoughts the first time that I met Miss Perkins
here? Oh, pray, don’t misinterpret my meaning!”

“I comprehend your meaning—perfectly, Mrs. Tredmore,” said Miss Stark.
“Miss Perkins is really quite a charming person—and intelligent, and
talented—an artist who has obviously enjoyed success of a sort; but—her
lovely eyes—a little hard? The beautiful mouth—a little sensuous? Her
quite too perfect hands—the long and tapering fingers of the artist—are
they not—er—”

“May we say, the least thought predatory?” ventured the professor.

“The word was on my lips!” exclaimed Miss Bascom with glowing
satisfaction. “And yet, I tell you, I’m quite fond of Miss Perkins. She
can be very sweet and winsome; there’s something very likable about the
girl.”

“Say, folks!” called Ralph Atwood from the parlor door, “don’t let me
bust up your committee meeting, but the Orpheus Gleemen are on the
air—or will be in a minute. It’s nothing for me to get excited about,
but Miss Bascom’s pretty keen about ’em.”

“Let us go in,” said the hostess. “We’ve had such a charming chat,
haven’t we? It’s these little intimate, congenial moments with really
understanding persons that make the life of the professional hostess
endurable, I can assure you.”

“And it is hostesses like you, dear Miss Bascom,” said Miss Stark, “that
free life in a boarding house from its traditional terrors. Wistaria
Lodge is more like a little club for intellectual persons!”

“That’s sweet and gracious of you, Miss Stark!” declared Miss Bascom.

Henry Caddock sat in a little haze of pipe smoke with the evening paper.
Kitty Granby occupied the window seat, running over the leaves of a book
and affecting an air of quiet abstraction. Most of the other regulars
were grouped about the front room, reading or chatting.

The loud-speaker suddenly took the floor.

“This is WXL, Port Cardinal. Again our home-town boys are greeting the
radio neighbors. The Orpheus Gleemen present as their first number of
the program the immortal Richard Wagner’s ‘Pilgrims’ Chorus,’ from that
beautiful masterpiece of operatic composition, ‘Tannhäuser.’ The
talented young artist, Miss Dora Perkins, will preside at the piano,
giving her usual aid and inspiration to her fellow artists.”

“Beautiful-but-dumb Dora’s getting a boost!” chuckled Ralph Atwood,
grinning at Kitty Granby. “She’s been googly-goo-ing the announcer, and
she can do that little thing, believe me!”

“Has any one got the new number of this magazine?” inquired Kitty,
ostentatiously lifting a periodical from the reading table. “I’m reading
a continued story in it.”

“Oh, listen to the music, kid!” chuckled Ralph cruelly. “It might be
fair, in spite of the weather.”

“I think they sing quite admirably,” observed Miss Stark, at the end of
the number. “And Miss Perkins’s accompaniment was really strong and
quite authoritative, I should say.”

“Dora packs a punch!” declared Ralph. “And when she puts her heart into
it, get ready to duck!”

“Hm—such quaint and original expressions!” murmured Miss Stark.

“Mr. Atwood keeps us abreast of the times, with respect to the
vernacular,” said Dr. Hillary with quiet sarcasm.

The first tenor of the Gleemen sang an operatic aria, and then joined
the second bass in a dramatic duet from another music drama.

“How about our star boarder, Miss Bascom?” Ralph inquired. “He’s taking
a back seat tonight. A whole hour’s program without a solo from the boy
wonder! That’s a wallop at Wistaria Lodge, and I’ll write to the manager
of WXL about it.”

The quartet sang two more numbers; then—

“The Orpheus Gleemen’s hour will conclude,” said the announcer, “with
what we hope will prove a pleasing novelty to our audience. Miss Dora
Perkins, our artist-accompanist, already famous as a virtuoso, will
render the incomparable ‘_Liebestraum_’ of the Hungarian genius, Franz
Liszt, as a piano solo, while the Orpheus Gleemen will sing a vocal
accompaniment with words especially adapted to the number. We present
Miss Perkins.”

“Wow!” cried Ralph. “Has Dora got that announcer by the nose? Or would
it be the manager? She’s leading ’em around on a leash and they’re
jumping through hoops for ’er! Get that? The quartet is accompanying the
piano! The tail is wagging Fido!”

“She played it admirably, really!” remarked Mrs. Tredmore at the end of
the solo. “We should be very proud of our artists.”

“This concludes the hour of the Orpheus Gleemen,” said the announcer,
“and we hope you have enjoyed it, ladies and gentlemen of the radio
audience. Our friends, the Gleemen, are always delighted and encouraged
by your letters, and I’m sure that Miss Perkins—Miss Dora Perkins,
remember!—would be highly gratified if you would express your opinions
of her work.

“We cannot hear your applause, you know, and the mail brings us the only
assurance of your approval. If you desire to write to Miss Perkins
personally, you may address your letters to her, in care of Station WXL,
Port Cardinal, and I’m sure she will be pleased and gratified.”

“Who is that guy?” growled Ralph. “That’s a different voice; ’tisn’t the
regular announcer.”

“Please stand by for your station announcement,” the voice went on. “You
are listening to the program of Station WXL, Port Cardinal, owned and
operated by the Port Cardinal Electrical Power and Equipment
Corporation.

“This is my first broadcast as your announcer, dear friends, and I’ll
admit that I’m a bit nervous this evening, but I shall strive to do
better and aim to give you service and satisfaction. This is Douglas
Raymond speaking. Thank you for your attention. We now continue the
program from New York City.”

“Heck!” grunted Ralph, quite flabbergasted.

“Delightful!” purred Miss Bascom. “And he did so well, didn’t he? But
how extraordinary that none of us suspected it! It didn’t sound like his
voice, and it wasn’t his usual manner of speaking, was it?”

[Illustration: portrait of Hubert Quirk]

“He was high-hatting the radio audience, that’s why,” Hubert Quirk
informed her.

“The pulpit or platform orator,” explained Dr. Hillary, “has his special
diction and manner for the public, often rather sharply differentiated
from his everyday speech and manner. I think that Mr. Raymond did
remarkably well, for a young man, and without much experience of the
sort.”

“Hey, Kitty! Kitty Granby! Come out o’ that book,” called Ralph
insistently. “Mean to say you didn’t hear anything? It was Doug Raymond
announcing. He’s the radio announcer at WXL now. Get that?”

Kitty laid down her magazine and raised her head, with a little bored
expression. She glanced superciliously at Ralph, and met the stares of
the others without flinching.

“I heard it all,” she said calmly. “I recognized Mr. Raymond’s voice the
first time he spoke.”

“My eye! Oh, well, she _would_, I reckon!” exclaimed Ralph. “But say,
folks! Has that kid fallen hard for dazzling Dora? I’m here to broadcast
to the world he has! Or she’s got her lily fingers twisted into his
curly hair and is holding his nose right up to the microphone.

“Hereafter it’ll be the Dora Perkins hour, with the Orpheus kids on the
side. It’s Broadway or Hollywood for darling Dora, or bust!—bust
somebody else!”


V.

WXL’s hour for signing off was 11 P. M., and when Douglas left the
studio he found Dora Perkins waiting for him in a little reception room
near the entrance to the building.

“Why, you’re still here, Dora!” he exclaimed.

“Did you think I wouldn’t wait?” she asked almost indignantly.

“Well, I’ll phone for a taxi. It’s getting so late.”

“But I’d rather walk, with you, Douglas,” she protested. “I want to
congratulate you on your triumph. You were absolutely magnificent! You
won’t stay here in Port Cardinal long, after a few big people have
listened to you on the air.”

She took his hands in hers and pressed them gently.

“In honor of your début as an announcer, and your huge success, you may
claim one kiss—just one.”

He was boyishly embarrassed. Almost he drew away from her, but natural
gallantry saved the situation, and he kissed her heartily.

She leaned toward him.

“Are you bashful, Douglas, or—or what? Some men would snatch an extra
one.”

He laughed then, and clasped her in a bear hug, and he held her with an
arm about her shoulders and kissed her till she struggled and broke
away.

“So you _can_ be a cave man!” she gasped. “And I—rather like it,
Douglas, when—when it’s you!”

They started for home, and she slipped her arm inside his and let her
long fingers glide into his hand.

“What fun we had tonight, you and I!” she exclaimed gayly. “The other
fellows—they’re all right, but they don’t count. You must get out of the
quartet very soon and let them get another baritone. Announcing will
take all your time, and there’s a certain dignity to maintain, you
know.”

“Why, you’re a regular little manager, Dora!” he exclaimed.

“I’ll be your manager, Douglas, and you’ll be mine,” she said. “Is it a
bargain?”

“I guess—er—it’s going to be a regular partnership,” he said awkwardly.

“Oh, Douglas, you’re a sweet kid!” she cried. “You may stop, for that,
and steal another one.”

He did so, and after the interlude they went on.

“If you think my piano playing was a great hit tonight,” she said
presently, “we might put on a little stunt next week. I’ll plan a little
recital program, and it might be announced in the papers.

“The quartet will sing an opening number, then I’ll give the recital—six
or eight numbers, and the quartet will come in with a closing selection.
That will make the boys feel that they’re not ignored or left out. What
do you think?”

“That would be great!” he agreed.

“Of course you’d say so, but it’s up to you, Douglas. I don’t think
you’ll need to ask the manager about it. Just explain it to the boys.
Tell them you want to get a little more variety into the program.”

“I guess that’ll be all right.”

“Are you happy, Douglas?”

“Gosh, yes, Dora! Don’t I act so?”

“Oh, I do so want you to be happy!” she declared. “I can see such big
things opening up for you. You really needed encouragement and some kind
of guidance.

“I do honestly think that little Kitty Granby is a cute little thing,
but—a stenographer, Douglas! You’re an artist, with an artist’s soul. If
there’s anything an artist simply has to have, it’s sympathy and
understanding. Don’t you realize it? And she couldn’t give it to you;
she couldn’t understand.

“That was just a little boy and girl affair, wasn’t it? And I hope
you’ll never have any regrets. I’m so perfectly happy when I’m with you,
and I believe that we’ll go on and on, to bigger and greater things.
We’ll look back on poor old Port Cardinal as a short chapter in our
book, and little Kitty will—”

“If you don’t really mind, Dora,” he said uneasily, “I’d rather not talk
about Kitty Granby. I reckon it was a boy and girl affair, but we might
as well let bygones be bygones.”

“Why, of course, my dear!” she cried. “You’re not hurt? You’re not angry
with me, are you?”

“’Course not! You understand, Dora. I guess you understand me better
than any one else ever did.”

“That’s _too_ sweet of you, dear! You’ll have me crying in a
minute—you’re such a darling baby boy—for a great big burly fellow that
could crush me with one big, strong hand. I guess the biggest, bravest,
strongest men are always the most gentle and simple ones.”

“Simple?”

“Oh, you know, I mean plain and honest and sincere. You’re just like an
open book, dear, and you make me love you more and more every minute I’m
with you.

“Oh, Douglas!” she exclaimed suddenly, and stopped, withdrawing her arm
from his. “You horrid thing, you let me go on in my impulsive way,
making a perfect little fool of myself, and you have never once said
that you loved me.

“I feel disgraced—humiliated. I’m the most unsophisticated, innocent
thing that ever lived, I guess. But you _did_ kiss me, and that means of
course—”

“Yes, of course,” he said.

“But can’t you say anything more than ‘of course’? You’d better not take
_me_ too much for granted, little boy, just because you always get
everything you want. I’m not one of those girls that give themselves
away lightly. I never allowed any man to make love to me before.”

“Great Scott, Dora!” he cried anxiously, “I thought you must know how I
felt about it. Gee! I should say I do love you. I don’t see how any man
could see you and help loving you.”

“Now he’s my dear, sweet boy!” she cried, and threw her arms about his
neck.

They were drawing near Wistaria Lodge, and as they stood for an instant,
recklessly oblivious to the world, the rays from an electric street lamp
fell upon them.

Douglas, more instinctively discreet, drew the girl into the shadow of a
great elm tree and, thus sheltered, demonstrated the depth and quality
of his affection.

Kitty Granby and Ottilie Eldom came walking toward the lodge, after a
stroll in the cool evening air. Confused voices and smothered giggles
arrested their attention as they approached the tree, and Ottilie caught
the younger girl’s arm and drew her toward the curb.

“Oh, darling, you’re strangling me—you’re smothering me!” cried Dora
shrilly.

She broke the ardent swain’s embrace and freed herself, but lurched
across the sidewalk and bumped violently into Ottilie Eldom; and the
stern and unemotional Ottilie promptly returned her to her lover’s arms
with a swing of her strong right arm.

Dora uttered a little cry of fright, but quickly controlled herself and
shrank again into the shadow.

“Oh, Douglas, those women will think we’re perfectly awful,” she said
aloud.

“It’s too bad,” muttered Ottilie, quite as audibly, as she hurried Kitty
along, “that Port Cardinal hasn’t got an efficient street cleaning
department; there’s always too blamed much rubbish kicking around.”

Kitty went on, walking rapidly, and passed the boarding house.

“You want to go in, Ottilie?” she asked. “I thought we might take
another turn around the block.”

“Go as far as you like,” said the other. “And—don’t you care, kid.”

“Who’s caring? Think I’d care about anything as disgraceful as that?”

“Rotten!” muttered Ottilie fiercely. “We won’t talk about it—but I never
did think that fellow was that sort of a pig. I wouldn’t have thought
that you—”

“And you needn’t!” snapped Kitty. “I hope you don’t think I’m the sort
to let a fellow make a fool of himself or me! Anyhow, I guess there’s a
good deal about that man that I didn’t know about.”

“There’s a good deal about all men that you don’t know about, kid. I’m
not boasting—it’s nothing to boast about, Lord knows!—but I’ve turned
down a dozen of ’em in my time, and the big assembling plant hasn’t put
the man together yet that I’d swap my job for.”

The house was quiet when the two girls went in. Ottilie went to her
room, and Kitty stepped into the parlor to get a library book that she
had left on the table.

She started nervously as some one moved near the bay window.

“I beg your pardon,” apologized Douglas Raymond, springing up from a
chair and shuffling his feet clumsily.

Kitty averted her head sharply and hurried to the reading table.

“Say—er—Miss Granby!” he blurted out huskily. “It’s all—everything’s all
over, I know, but would it be all right if we were just friends, you
know? Living here in the same house, it would be—”

She faced him, head up, smartly defiant.

“It would _not_ be all right,” she replied. “Your speaking to me now is
an insult. I don’t hate you at all, because I wouldn’t stoop to feel any
such strong emotion toward you. I don’t hate snakes, or rats, or
mosquitoes, but I don’t want them near me.

“Now,” she added, with firm finality, “this is a public boarding house,
and the parlor and dining room are open for the comfort and convenience
of guests. I intend to use them, as I always have done, but if you speak
to me, or look at me again, I shall request Miss Bascom to guard me in
some way against such annoyance.”

She turned, then, and marched out of the room with military smartness
and precision.

Douglas slumped into his chair again, sighed, and looked idly out the
window into the darkness of the street.

[Illustration: portrait of Henry Caddock]

Dr. Hillary and Henry Caddock came in from a late game of billiards at
the Cardinal Valley Club down town.

“Smoke another cigar before you go up, professor?” asked Caddock,
stepping just inside the parlor door. “When I’m up as late as this, I
don’t care when I go to bed.”

“Thanks, no; cigars are a little heavy for me after the first one. And,
as for its being late, I shall write a little on the new chapter of my
book before I turn in.”

“Hello!” said Caddock, catching sight of the dejected figure in the
chair. “Oh, it’s Raymond. Hm—heard you on the air tonight, Raymond.
Pretty good! Is the position permanent, may I ask? If so, I congratulate
you, I’m sure.”

“Thanks, Mr. Caddock,” said Douglas, getting up. “I guess it is
permanent from what they said. The old announcer is leaving town in a
day or two; he’s going to have a job out West. I’m glad if you thought I
did well.”

“Sure! You’re all right, Raymond. Well, I guess I _will_ turn in, if
you’re going upstairs, professor.”

“Did you—er—pardon me, Dr. Hillary, did you happen to hear me announcing
at WXL this evening? If you did, I’d be mighty glad of your candid
opinion.”

The doctor stepped in over the threshold and peered at the young man a
little quizzically. Caddock went upstairs.

“Tell me,” said the doctor, ignoring the question for the moment, “is
this position of announcer at WXL a—a very important one? I mean,
professionally, or as a matter of prestige, or even financially. Is the
attainment of such a post regarded in the light of a personal triumph?”

Douglas found himself riding in a dead calm, the wind gone from his
sails.

“Why, I don’t know, doctor, as to that—exactly. I felt pretty proud,
I’ll admit, when the manager of the plant told me I could try it out. He
said I did well, too, after we signed off, so I guess it’s just about as
good as permanent. The pay isn’t so very much, but it might lead to
something bigger.”

“Life is so short,” said the doctor crisply, “that it’s rather perilous
to devote oneself to aims that are contingent on something that _might_
happen.”

The young man’s shoulders sagged a little lower.

“But if a feller keeps trying to do his best,” he said desperately,
“isn’t there a pretty fair chance for him in most any line? I’ve heard
you say you had quite a struggle yourself, sir, getting an education and
climbing up to the top. You’re a scholar and scientist, and it seems as
though real intellectual men are a good deal like artists—they sort o’
have the artistic temperament, as it were.”

“Nothing of the kind!” snapped the doctor. “My own work and study have
always been devoted exclusively to the exact sciences, and pure science
has absolutely nothing to do with the artistic temperament, thank God!”

“But may I inquire if you did _your_ best this evening, Raymond?”

“I certainly tried to, doctor.”

“Then I’d give up that sort of work, my young friend, if I were you. I
understand that there are many radio broadcasting stations in this
country, and I suppose each one has one or more announcers.

“Well, sir, I have heard the names of a few such men who have attained
some degree of success and fame. I fancy that their ‘best’ was of a
somewhat higher order than yours.

“This evening, in the course of an hour, you grossly mispronounced such
illustrious and familiar names as those of Richard Wagner and Franz
Liszt, although you profess to be a musician and should be well informed
about the great composers. You pronounced Tannhäuser so that it sounded
to us like Tan-howser. Inexcusable!

“Young man, a radio announcer has no right to mispronounce a single
word! He stands—in some degree—in the position of an educator, and is
responsible to his public.”

“But, doctor!” groaned Douglas, “I’m not a college man, you know. I
certainly didn’t know I got those names wrong.”

“In Heaven’s name!” cried the exasperated professor, “does a man have to
go to college to learn how to look for a word in the dictionary? It
should be part of every announcer’s job, sir, to inform himself in
detail—to a reasonable extent—upon every fact that he has to communicate
to his audience, and verify every doubtful word or name by reference to
a pronouncing dictionary. Then we might have no more announcements of
_Vur-dye’s Trovatorr_ or _Mass-cag-ny’s Cara-lay-ria Rusty-cana_.”

“That would mean,” sighed Douglas, gloomily reflective, “that a man
would have to put in most of the day studying encyclopedias and library
books, to do his work according to your ideas in the evening.”

“Well, that’s about the size of it,” agreed the doctor cheerfully. “On
the same principle I put in a week of constant study and research in
order to lecture intelligently on a certain subject for one hour. But of
course, you never would be expected to work as hard as that, Raymond; so
you needn’t be utterly despondent about it.”

“Well, I’m much obliged for the jolts, doctor. I asked for your opinion,
and I got it. I shall think of it a good deal, too. The people here in
the house have always been pretty nice to me, and maybe I’ve been fed
too many compliments.

“Right now I don’t seem to be quite so popular, and—well, I’m sorry
there had to be any trouble. I don’t claim to be entirely in the right,
and I wouldn’t say that—er—that Miss Granby was altogether wrong. I—”

“Young man,” said the professor, “I am not prepared, at midnight or any
other time, to go into your personal problems or your personal
psychology. I was never cut out to be a keeper in a menagerie.”


VI.

“This is WXL, at Port Cardinal,” said Douglas Raymond to the air, “owned
and operated by the Port Cardinal Electrical Power and Equipment
Corporation. We are broadcasting on a frequency of seven hundred and
eighty kilocycles by authority of the Federal Board of Radio
Commissioners. Please stand by!

“Good evening, radio neighbors!” he went on a moment later. “This is
Douglas Raymond announcing. We are taking and giving great pleasure this
evening in presenting an hour of chamber music by the Montezuma quartet.

“Now, friends and neighbors, I don’t believe you really care a brass
farthing who sponsors the Montezuma quartet, and the important thing is
to jump right into the mighty fine music they’re going to give us; but I
think it’s pretty decent of the Montezuma Art Fabric Company to organize
this ensemble and pay for its time on the air and all the other
incidental expenses, to say nothing of the salaries of such
distinguished artists, just so that we music lovers can have sixty
minutes of pure enjoyment.

“Like all great public benefactors, the Montezuma Art Fabric Company is
very modest and self-effacing, and I’m sure they’d like to have their
good deeds carefully hidden like a light under a bushel, but I’m going
to drag them right out in the light of day for a moment and give them
full credit.

“And I’m going to tell you, too—whether they like it or not—that the
reason they can spend so much money for art and entertainment, is that
they own and operate those big mills that are turning out rugs and
tapestries, drapery and upholstery materials, and various decorative
fabrics, after wonderful old Spanish, Mexican, and ancient Aztec
designs. If you want to see the art and craftsmanship of people whose
taste in music is so exquisite, just ask your dealer to show you the
Montezuma fabrics.

“And now! The quartet will render ‘Une Nuit à Lisbonne,’ that
fascinating barcarolle by the French genius, Charles Camille
Saint-Saëns.”

[Illustration: portrait of Dr. Alexander Hillary]

Among the vast radio audience sat Dr. Hillary, with Mrs. Tredmore, Miss
Stark, and Miss Bascom, in the Wistaria Lodge parlor.

“Extraordinary!” murmured the professor softly, while giving attentive
ear to the first strains of the music. “I dare say that’s the first time
I ever heard a very nearly perfect pronunciation of Saint-Saëns’s name
over the radio.”

“It’s a name,” whispered Miss Stark, “that I’d rather write than speak;
in matters linguistic, I’m an arrant coward.”

“Mr. Raymond pronounced other names and words with great authority and
precision, I noticed,” said Mrs. Tredmore. “And did you mark his
delivery and enunciation?”

“Perhaps that accounts for the veritable library of dictionaries and
books of reference in his room,” said Miss Bascom. “He must have spent
all his savings. There are works on elocution and public speaking,
foreign lexicons, and all manner of strange little handbooks and
things.”

“Quite commendable, really!” breathed the professor, then raised a hand
to turn his ear toward the loud-speaker, thus tactfully indicating that
he wished to give his entire attention to the music.

In the broadcasting studio of the Port Cardinal Electrical Power and
Equipment Corporation, the radio manager, sitting by the control board,
whispered hoarsely to Douglas.

“Say, Raymond, where’d you get that line o’ ballyhoo?” he inquired.

“Was it pretty bad? I took a big chance on rewriting the stuff that the
Montezuma people sent in. Their talk sounded like a pretty poor
newspaper advertisement—awful old wise-cracks! I’ve been reading up a
bit on salesmanship and advertising, and a big strong point is that you
musn’t bore the public.

“I think people must get tired of hearing the usual stuff about the
sponsors of these hours, and only a few of the big features have
specially prepared talk, or a special comedy man for their private
announcer. I ought to have consulted you, Mr. Magnus, but you weren’t
around when we got here.”

“Hm—well, the Montezuma folks can break their contract on a piece of
impudence like that, Raymond—but I must say it sounded pretty good, at
that. It’s a toss-up whether their advertising manager will be mad or
tickled to death.”

“If you can read my writing,” whispered Douglas, with an apologetic
glance at the string quartet around the “mike,” “you might give these
few notes I’ve made the once-over and tell me whether to take another
chance.”

“Huh! You must be working after hours!”

“I worked all night on this stuff,” said the new announcer.

“I suppose your intentions are good!” exclaimed Magnus dryly, “but we’re
not spending money enough on this station, Raymond, to boost any man’s
pay a thousand or so a week. This is a shoestring proposition with us.

“But go as far as you like. Big broadcasters have special writers to
dope out a line of patter for everything, but we couldn’t do that. Keep
it up, if nobody kicks, and—you might get fifty cents more a week after
the board of directors has a meeting.”

The somewhat disheartening conversation ended when Douglas rose to
announce the next number of the quartet, and the manager went out.

He was back again near the end of the hour, looking anxious.

“The New York station’s canceled the next hour,” he said. “They’ve cut
out the comedy for some important political meeting, but we don’t want
that up here. What have we got for such an emergency? We’ve got to get
prepared for these jams!”

Dora Perkins had just slipped into the room.

“Oh, let Douglas sing some songs, and I’ll play one or two numbers, Mr.
Magnus!” she proposed gleefully.

“Douglas? Who’s that? Oh, yes, you mean Raymond here. Maybe we’ll have
to. I can’t sing or speak a piece myself.”

“Let him announce ‘Signor Raimondo,’ and let it go at that. He’s got a
lot of music here that he’s used with the Orpheus boys.”

“I can’t announce myself,” objected Douglas. “I’d have to hand myself a
lot of bouquets, and I’d get so fussed that I couldn’t sing.”

“I’ll announce you!” proposed Dora joyfully.

“Huh!” grunted the manager.

“Oh, Mr. Magnus, don’t you like that?” she demanded, pouting a little
and inclining her head to one side.

“Huh! We’ll get a reputation for pulling a lot o’ queer stunts over
here.”

“Oh, Mr. Magnus, couldn’t I do the announcing—just once—if I’ll be very,
very careful and discreet—please, Mr. Magnus!”

She turned her radiant black orbs on the man, pursed her lips as though
they were puckering for a good hearty cry, and he fidgeted and grew red.

“Aw, have it your own way, this time,” he said grudgingly.

Douglas dismissed the Montezuma quartet with some subtle compliments for
their sponsors, and then it was Dora’s turn.

“Evenin’, all you folks out there!” she chirruped, affecting a slight
Southern drawl and accent. “This is Dora speaking. Dora Perkins—and I’m
just as shy and simple as my name. I’m the little girl that plays the
piano for you, you know! The great big announcer, Mr. Raymond, has been
called out of the studio, and I’m just going to have a lot of fun while
he’s away. You won’t tell on me, will you?

“You see, folks, somebody’s got to announce the next feature, and I
guess I’m pretty brave to stand up all alone before such a great big
audience, don’t you?”

“Cut it! Cut it!” wheezed Magnus. “We don’t want no dog-gone monologue,
Miss Perkins.”

Apparently Dora did not hear him.

“And now we’re going to hear a vur-ry distinguished musician and
vocalist,” she breezed on, “none other than the great Signor Raimondo;
and I know you’re all musicians, so you must know all about him. I’m too
little and shy to tell you all about how handsome he is, with his curly
hair and _great_ broad shoulders, and _great_ big chest like a bass
drum, but you just listen and you’ll hear his _great_ big baritone voice
in a minute.

“He’s going to favor us with ‘O Sole Mio,’ right from spaghetti land,
and _I’m_ goin’ to play for ’im. That’s some honor for a little girl,
don’t you think. This is little Dora speaking—Dora Perkins!

“And oh—oh—oh! I ’most forgot! This is Station WXL, Port Cardinal, owned
and operated by the Port Cardinal Electrical Power and Equipment
Corporation—broadcasting on a frequency of seven hundred and eighty
k-k-kilo—kilocycles. There! I’m all out o’ breaf. Wouldn’t it ’a’ been
per-f’ly awful if I’d forgot that?”

“That’ll be all from you, for awhile, sister!” muttered Magnus. “You’re
a bird, an’ no mistake! But the next time you get out of your cage let
me know ahead o’ time.”

Over at Wistaria Lodge on the other side of the town a hush had fallen
on the company assembled in the parlor.

It was broken by Ralph Atwood.

“Ugh—air! Air! Gimme air!” he gasped, affecting to crawl weakly toward a
window. “And cut the switch, folks, quick! She might cut loose again.
I’m going out—out into God’s great outdoors.”

“Hold on! I’m with you, Ralph,” said Ottilie Eldom, making for the door.
“If drooling Dora pipes up again, I won’t be able to go to business
tomorrow. My Lord, what are the Federal Radio Commissioners for?”

Mrs. Tredmore raised her eyebrows in disapproval. Miss Stark shrugged
her shoulders.

“I’m sorry that we have these demonstrations now and then,” whispered
Miss Bascom apologetically, “but it’s evident that Miss Perkins is not
at all popular here now.”

“I think she _was_—excessively silly,” murmured Miss Stark.

“It’s odd!” said Dr. Hillary, “but a number of equally irresponsible
persons have made their fortunes—in very large figures indeed—by
behaving just as idiotically as that before audiences.”

Signor Raimondo was singing the Italian street song.

“I’ll bet money I know that voice!” declared Hubert Quirk. “They’re
passing a ringer on us over at the works.”

“Raimondo is certainly very suggestive of Raymond,” said the professor.

“Really? I wonder!” breathed Mrs. Tredmore.

“How about it, Kitty?” asked Quirk. “Is that the boy wonder’s voice?”

“I beg your pardon,” said Kitty coldly; “I wasn’t listening at all. I’d
like to read, if you don’t mind.”

“Righto!” Quirk returned. “I can take a hint without a sock in the eye
any time.”

At the studio the manager leaned over the piano, on which Dora was
playing the accompaniment to Douglas’s song with the mechanical ease of
an expert familiar with popular music.

“He’ll do the announcing for the next song himself,” he whispered,
jerking his head toward Douglas, whose back was toward them.

“Pl-ee-ease!” crooned Dora, and flashed dangerous fireworks from the
black eyes.

“No—nothing doin’!”

With her eyes twinkling back and forth, from the music on the rack to
the surly face of the manager, she made an impudent, but bewitching,
little grimace at him; then the full red lips were pursed up suddenly
into a rosebud, suggesting this time not so much the approach of tears
as an invitation to partake of sweets.

Magnus grinned, with the half contemptuous indifference of a seasoned
man of mature years.

Being within easy reach, he extended an arm over the end of the piano
and playfully twiddled his fingers under her chin.

“Some little vamp!” he whispered.

She raised her eyebrows reprovingly.

The song ended, and Douglas turned to the pile of music beside him.

“Wonderful, Douglas!” said Dora. “There ought to be a radio grand opera
company organized around you, dear boy.”

Then:

“Pl-ee-ease, Mr. Magnus!” she implored again. “Mayn’t I—just once more?”

“Aw, go ahead!” he snarled. “I may get fired for it, but—aw, go on!”

So Dora announced all the numbers for that hour, and as she found many
ways to vary and elaborate the patter, it was necessary for the singer
to perform but five times.

The evening’s program terminated with a broadcast of organ music from
New York, and Dora waited for Douglas to sign off at eleven o’clock. She
had been sitting in the reception room downstairs, but returned to the
studio as the engineer was closing up the control board and setting
things to rights.

“I’ll put all this music away in the storeroom,” said Douglas, and
stepped out with the departing engineer.

The manager came back into the room.

“Well, you had your way, kid,” he said, grinning.

“Awfully sweet of you, Mr. Magnus,” returned Dora. “Awful sweet for such
a cross ole bear!”

“Bears like honey,” said Magnus.

She laughed softly, but glanced at him with a timid air.

“And could I talk to the folks—once in a great while—just now and then?”
she whispered.

“Say, girly, you sure have got a way with you!” he muttered, and came
over to her, reaching for her hand.

“Oh, Mr. Magnus!” she gasped.

“Oh, you kid!” he replied, and caught her round the waist.

“_Mister Magnus!_ Oh, you mustn’t! I—oh, you’re a married man, Mr.
Magnus!”

“So’s your old man!” chuckled the manager, and squeezed her tightly as
he set his lips on hers.

“Oh-o-o—Mr. Magnus!” she breathed, and grew limp, apparently about to
faint.

There were steps in the hall outside, and Magnus let her go.

She hurriedly smoothed her crumpled frock and gave a little jab at her
hat to set it straight.

“Oh, there you are, Douglas!” she exclaimed with a sigh of relief as the
young announcer reappeared. “I was just complaining to Mr. Magnus that I
was so tired of waiting for you. But I don’t like to take that long walk
in the dark alone at this time of night.”

“You might ’a’ gone home earlier,” said Magnus.

“I guess I’m awfully timid, Mr. Magnus,” she explained soberly. “I never
like to be out alone after dark, even in Port Cardinal.”

“Huh! Well, after this you’d better ring for a taxi,” he suggested
practically.


VII.

Douglas Raymond, who was habitually a late riser, came down to the
breakfast table of the early birds one morning, and there were polite
expressions of astonishment at seeing him.

“Say, you look as though you’d slept in a chair, with all your clothes
on!” exclaimed Ralph Atwood. “I don’t mean to be personal, of course,
but you have that fresh and breezy appearance.”

“I sat in a chair all night, but I didn’t sleep,” Douglas said with a
dull and glassy stare at the other man.

“My boy, what a spell of conscience!” cried Ralph. “I get that way, but
never for all night. I can foot up all the columns of my evil deeds and
strike a trial balance in about half an hour; and I always sleep better
for it, at that.”

Douglas was not moved to mirth.

“I was working,” he explained soberly. “I’m going to ask Miss Bascom if
she’s got some back room or a corner in the basement where I can run a
typewriter without keeping all the people awake.”

“Ha, ha! You’re off on another tack, eh?”

“No, not exactly. I’m a slow writer, and I’m just trying to make up all
the continuity for the programs at the studio.”

“Continuity! That’s movie stuff, not radio!” declared Ralph, who was
informed on all subjects.

“It’s radio now,” said Douglas. “From the time the announcer says ‘Good
evening, ladies and gentlemen,’ right to the end of the program, he
reads all his stuff off a script. And some of ’em have a new script for
every program.

“Our studio doesn’t have a continuity writer, like the big ones, so I’m
trying to work it up myself. But—gosh! It begins to look as though I’d
have to find some way of cutting out rest and sleep altogether.”

A fresh surprise was afforded the boarders when Dora came tripping into
the room, but she was bright and well rested.

“What’s hit the house?” inquired Ralph. “Everybody getting wide awake
and ambitious!”

“I’m getting to be a busy little person,” said Dora winsomely. “I have a
lot of writing to do now. Letters! I think every letter that is written
to an artist, or any one in public life, should be answered carefully
and conscientiously.”

“Mash notes?” suggested Ralph.

“Indeed, no! No mash notes, Mr. Atwood. Applause! Very honest and
sincere applause. Ever since the first night I tried announcing at the
studio, the letters have been coming by the basketful. A—a couple of
hundred people, I guess, have written to ask who the little Southern
lady was. Isn’t it rich?”

Douglas looked at her appealingly, moving restlessly in his chair.

“I’m getting poor Douglas positively worried,” she went on. “Quite a lot
of people have written in that they’d much prefer a woman for an
announcer all the time. Lots of them wanted an autographed photograph,
and some suggested that my picture should be sent to the Sunday papers
so they would know how I looked.”

[Illustration: portrait of Miss Etta Upham]

“What fine weather we aren’t having, isn’t it?” said Ottilie Eldom to
Etta Upham.

Horace Sheldon, the cigar store owner, stared at Dora with his frank
appreciation of good looks.

“Hollywood’ll get you if you don’t watch out, Miss Perkins,” he said.
“Better not start broadcasting any pictures of yourself, m’ dear.
Ziegfeld’s scouts are on the lookout for the good ones all the time, and
we—we need you here!”

“Oh, Mr. Sheldon!” Dora cried, and her face became suffused with sunrise
blushes.

Douglas coughed violently as he came downstairs to start for the studio
one evening, and halted, leaning on the newel post till he recovered
from the paroxysm.

“Great Scott, man! You ought not to go out,” protested Dr. Hillary,
stepping out into the hall. “You’ve had this cold a week or more, I’ve
noticed.”

He touched the young man’s forehead.

“Ha! I thought so; you’re burning up with fever. I advise you to phone
your studio that you can’t come. Go to bed and send for a doctor at
once.”

Douglas laughed deprecatingly.

“I’m all right,” he insisted. “Too much midnight-oil stuff. I’ve got to
lay off working all night and not sleeping in the daytime, I guess. I
went to a doctor and he said that I was trying to do too much and I’d
have to quit. But sometimes you can’t quit when things have got to be
done.”

He looked anxiously up the stairs, and when Dora came tripping lightly
and airily from her room presently, he betrayed a slight impatience.

“We’re going to be late, Dora,” he said.

“Then why wait for me?” she demanded sharply. “Nobody asked you to! Too
bad you couldn’t phone for a taxi.”

Dr. Hillary turned away with a shrug, and returned to the parlor.

“Those two might as well be married!” chuckled Henry Caddock. “They’ve
started in on the married-life stuff a little prematurely, haven’t
they?”

“There’s a certain type of woman,” mused Hillary, “that seems to hold a
certain type of man by a system of judicious bullying. I believe they
relieve the strain at the danger point by reverting to excessive
tenderness to establish the balance. I suppose Miss Perkins
is—er—temperamental, as it’s called.”

“What that certain type of woman needs, professor,” spoke up Ralph
Atwood, “is a first-class, strong-arm wife beater. Say! I’d like the job
of being married to that cutie for a day or two; she wouldn’t have any
trouble getting a divorce, and I’d stand for six months in the
workhouse—if it wasn’t in Delaware.”

“Raymond’s in really bad shape,” said Hillary. “He might slip into
pneumonia in a moment with that cold and his run-down condition. He has
just about exhausted his vitality. Quite often a big, robust chap like
that goes all to pieces suddenly; he’s likely to collapse while he’s
fighting to keep on his feet.”

Some of the boarders were out, but the remaining ones sat about the
parlor and listened with obvious anxiety for the broadcasting of the
local station.

Douglas was at the microphone when WXL came on the air, and his voice
seemed to lack nothing of its usual strength, though there was a
perceptible huskiness, and he coughed sharply from time to time.

“The Homeland Singers—your favorite mixed quartet—will entertain you for
an hour,” he announced after the usual forms had been disposed of. “This
evening these admirable artists will build their program upon the theme
of home and family.

“That comes pretty near the heart, friends, and it’s not easily
associated with anything commercial; yet I’m going to take a chance on
mentioning that the hour is provided for you through the gracious
courtesy of the Homeland Architects and Builders, Incorporated.

“That’s about all I need to say. If you want to find out more about such
generous friends of the radio audience, the Homeland Architects and
Builders will be happy to send you some interesting and informative
literature.

“And I would like to add that some commercial and industrial houses of
today are not in business solely for purpose of piling up dividends for
their stockholders. These friends of ours actually make it possible for
young and impecunious people to start life with a real home of the sort
that they ought to have. One of their slogans is this: ‘You find the
right girl—we’ll find the right home for her.’

“Now the Homeland quartet will sing some very appropriate songs on the
theme they have chosen. And you’ll notice that their taste does not run
to the sort of thing that’s nothing but sugar and sentimentality.
They’re going to sing a special arrangement of one of Mrs. Browning’s
‘Sonnets from the Portuguese’—love! Tenderness!”

He was interrupted by an attack of coughing.

“The tenderness,” he went on hoarsely, “that is not expressed in mere
words or gestures, but that deeper, purer understanding that is the real
radio of the realm of the spirit.”

[Illustration: portrait of Miss Ottilie Eldom]

“Heck! He’ll have me sniveling in a minute!” muttered Ottilie Eldom. “An
old maid has feelings.”

“Please give the Homeland Singers your undivided attention, friends,”
the announcer implored. “The message is a rare and precious one—as rare
and precious as the spirit of the theme. Life needs so much of that
spirit to—to make it endurable—that—”

“Poor fellow’s coughing again,” said Hillary.

“I—I present the Homeland Singers!” finished the announcer somewhat
abruptly.

“I’m blamed if I know whether he was coughing or not!” exclaimed Ralph
Atwood with uncommon gravity. “Seemed like he was all worked up with his
own line of hokum—almost ready to have a good old cry.

“Hello!” he challenged. “What’s the matter with Kitty?”

There was no response. Kitty Granby had risen and walked rapidly to the
bay window, and as she stood with her back to the company there was a
suspicious little movement of her shoulders that indicated some
difficulty in breathing.

“Shut up! You poor fool!” whispered Henry Caddock, giving Ralph an ugly
look.

“I must say that Raymond is acquiring a style!” exclaimed the professor.
“He has the faculty for absolute detachment—sinking himself in his part
like an actor. That might be a mature man of considerable experience in
the world, instead of the rather diffident chap we meet at the dinner
table.”

“Might it not be, doctor,” murmured Miss Stark, “that the _real_ man is
speaking into the microphone? It’s so difficult for us all to penetrate
the masks that our friends and associates wear in public!”

“Why, that’s an interesting postulate, I grant you,” answered the
professor.


VIII.

In the studio, Douglas found it necessary to sit down while he was not
at the microphone, and the heat in his head seemed to increase. He dozed
fitfully, nodding, then waking with a nervous start and springing up.

“Gee! You ought to go along home,” said young Felix McMasters, the new
engineer at the control board. “Why don’t you let Miss Perkins take the
mike for the rest of the time, Raymond?”

“I offered to,” spoke up Dora petulantly. “But he thinks he owns that
mike; he’s afraid I’ll do something to it, I guess.”

“I’m all in, Felix,” muttered Douglas. “If I get to sleep here, please
shake me up when it’s time to talk.”

The evening wore on, and the last hour was given to the relaying of a
program from the principal station of the network.

Douglas fell into a doze that came near to stupor. Felix slumped down in
his seat at the board and wished that the hour would pass more quickly.

Dora came into the room and went over to Douglas.

“Sorry you feel so punk, old boy,” she said softly, and ran her long
fingers through his hair.

“Don’t!” he said gruffly, starting up.

“Oh, Douggie,” she protested, “don’t be so mean! Have I been cross and
nasty? Come, let’s make up, Douggie!”

The manager came in suddenly.

“Huh! Am I supposed to knock before entering?” he demanded harshly.
“What is this anyhow? Is this studio run for the purpose of petting
parties all the time, or what?”

Douglas came wide awake and turned on the man.

“Seems to me you’re butting in a good deal lately, Magnus!” he cried.

“Look here!” growled the manager. “I want to know where I get off. Has
any one been playing me for a sucker? _You_—bright eyes! What sort of a
line have you been handing me?”

The demon of mischief that lurked always behind the twinkling little
eyes of Felix McMasters became suddenly dominant. With an uncontrollable
impulse the young engineer switched on the studio microphone.

The party of boarders in the Wistaria Lodge parlor heard a jumble of
confused sounds. Evidently the static forces were getting into action to
destroy the perfect harmony of the last hour.

Then voices came sharply over the air:

“Oh, Mr. Magnus!”

“See here, you two! I’m not afraid of this man’s town—I don’t belong
here anyhow. Talk don’t hurt me! Now, I’m going to have a show-down.
Come across, Dora Dumpling! Take your choice—him or me! Make it snappy!
Do you want a puppy to play with, or a real man like me—like you said
you did?”

“Cut that, Magnus!”

“Get out o’ my way, Raymond! You’re fired anyhow! Dora’s the WXL
announcer from now on—if she’s playing straight with me.”

[Illustration: portrait of Miss Sylvia Stark]

In the parlor Miss Stark leaped up with a shrill scream.

“Oh! I heard—I plainly heard a blow!” she cried.

“Yeh. Somebody socked somebody in the beezer!” yelled Ralph Atwood
enthusiastically.

“I—I think I’m going to faint,” gasped Miss Stark.

A rattle, a series of clicks, and sweet harmonious music poured again
from the loud-speaker.

Miss Bascom got up and turned the switch.

“Really,” she said, “I’m too nervous to hear any more. I’m all upset.”

“Come on, Caddock; let’s take a little walk,” suggested Dr. Hillary
casually.

“With you, professor,” agreed Caddock, and the two hurried out with more
than their wonted briskness.

“Where’s the kid?” asked Ralph curiously, looking around the room.

“Kitty? I think she ran up to her room,” said Ottilie. “I guess she was
scared, too.”

The front door banged again.

“Who was that?” demanded Miss Bascom nervously.

“I don’t know,” said Ralph. “Somebody went out to mail a letter, I
reckon.”

Hillary and Caddock took a walk only to the street corner, and there
they hailed a taxi. They went directly to the WXL studio, and Hillary
sprang out of the cab and ran into the building and up the stairs,
closely followed by his friend.

“Gee—gosh! I’m glad you fellers have come!” cried Felix McMasters. “He’s
too heavy for me to carry downstairs. He’s a mighty sick guy, I
believe.”

“Was there a fight here, McMasters?” asked Hillary, bending quickly over
the unconscious form of Douglas Raymond on the floor.

“You can tell the cock-eyed world there was!” exulted Felix. “But this
guy’s sick; he isn’t hurt. That feller Magnus was the hurt one! Old Doug
here, he handed him a couple o’ fade-aways, and put out his lamps with a
single man’s-size wallop. Dainty Dora, she got a taxi and took Magnus
home in it. Why? Guess ’twas because he’d just promised her a job.”

“Well, well, let’s get this boy home, Caddock,” said the professor.

The three lifted the sick man carefully and bore him out and down the
stairs to the waiting cab. He resisted them for a moment, mumbling
incoherently, but lapsed into his former stupor.

As they reached the cab and the chauffeur sprang out to open the door, a
small, childish figure ran swiftly toward them out of the darkness.

“Douglas!” cried Kitty Granby piteously. “Oh, Douglas, what have they
done to you?”

                  *       *       *       *       *

It was a week later when the attending physician said that Douglas was
apparently out of danger. The fever was abated, and the patient rather
suddenly became rational again.

He found, as he looked about his room with surprised glances, that some
one was sitting beside the bed, lightly holding his hand.

“Why—why—hello, Kitty!” he exclaimed incredulously.

“Hello, Douglas,” she said.

“Gosh, you’re a regular saint—to come here—to me,” he murmured. “I wish
I could tell you, Kitty—I wish—”

“I think you’ve told me—just about everything, Douglas,” she said,
“while you’ve been so ill here. I think I understand, anyway.”

“I don’t suppose there’s much chance for me,” he groaned. “I’d like to
be forgiven, if you could do that for me!”

“I have done it, Douglas. I guess I’ve suffered just as much as you
have. And let’s not worry. I didn’t know you meant so much to me,
Douglas. I don’t care whether you make a lot of money or not. It really
doesn’t matter to me. I’ll—”

“Say, I guess we don’t have to worry,” he said with sudden bright
spirit. “I remember now, there was a letter that day. And I answered
it—I mailed the answer on my way to the studio—and I didn’t tell—anybody
about it, either.

“The Eastern Coast Broadcasting Company offered me three thousand a
year—to start with—to come and be a continuity writer and editor, and a
special announcer for them. I accepted it right off. It’s to begin next
month, Kitty.”

“Oh, Douglas!” she cried happily. “But that doesn’t make any difference
with me!”

“It’ll come in handy,” he said practically. “I can’t figure it out, but
they said they had been listening to my stuff on the air, and liked it.”


[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in Argosy, All-Story Weekly
Magazine, August 11, 1928. It is believed to be in the public domain
in the United States; copyright status may differ in other countries.]

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 79452 ***