was that very rare thing, a complete success; what Broadway calls a
"knockout." Within a fortnight seats for _The Puppet Booth_ were at a
ruinous premium in all the ticket agencies on or near Times Square.

I happened to be there on that ecstatic opening night. Susan, in her
first letter, from Liverpool, had enjoined me to attend and report; Mona
would be glad to learn from an unprejudiced outsider how the affair went
off. But Susan did not mention the fact that one of the four selected
plays had been written by herself.

Jimmy was with me. Phil, who saw more of him than I did, thought he was
going stale from overwork, so I had made a point of hunting him up and
dragging him off with me for a night in town. He hadn't wanted to go;
said frankly, he wasn't in the mood. I'm convinced it was the first time
he had ever used the word "mood" in connection with himself or anybody
else. Jimmy and moods of any kind simply didn't belong together.

We had a good man's dinner at a good man's chop-house that night, and,
once I got Jimmy to work on it, his normal appetite revived and he
engulfed oysters and steak and a deep-dish apple pie and a mug or so of
ale, with mounting gusto. We talked, of course, of Susan.

Jimmy, inclined to a rosier view by comfortable repletion, now
maintained that perhaps after all Susan had done the natural and
sensible thing in joining Miss Leslie. He emphasized all the obvious
advantages--complete change of environment, freedom from financial
worry, and so on; then he paused....

"And there's another point, Mr. Hunt," he began again, doubtfully this
time: "Prof. Farmer and I were talking about it only the other day. We
were wondering whether we oughtn't to speak to you. But it's not the
easiest thing to speak of--it's so sort of vague--kind of a feeling in
the air."

I knew at once what he referred to, and nodded my head. "So you and Phil
have noticed it too!"

"Oh, you're _on_ then? I'm glad of that, sir. You've never mentioned
anything, so Prof. Farmer and I couldn't be sure. But it's got under our
skins that it might make a lot of trouble and something ought to be done
about it. It's hard to see what."

"Very," I agreed. "Fire ahead, Jimmy. Tell me exactly what has come to
you--to you, personally, I mean."

"Well," said Jimmy, leaning across the table to me and lowering his
voice, "it was all of three weeks ago. I went to a dance at the Lawn
Club. I don't dance very well, but I figure a f