ng my straw hat in
my left hand, and wiping my brow with a handkerchief with the right.
From an opposite door, came two men; one of them fired at me twice with
a revolver held in his left hand. I fell, and the second man--the one
who wasn't armed--ran to me as I staggered, grabbed my hat, and the two
of them went out the door I had entered, while I stumbled through the
one by which they had come in. It lasted all told, not half a minute,
the idea being for those who looked on to write down what had happened.

Those trained criminologists, supposed to have eyes in their heads,
didn't see half that really took place, and saw a-plenty that did not.
Most of 'em would have hung the man who snatched my hat. Only one, I
remember, noticed that I was shot by a left-handed man. Then the little
girl told us what really had occurred, every detail, just as though she
had planned it instead of being merely an observer.

"Pardon me," I broke in on the girls. "Miss Wallace, you don't mean to
say that you really know me again after seeing me once, seven years ago,
in a group of other men at a public performance?"

"Why shouldn't I? You saw me then. You knew me again."

"But you were doing wonderful things. We remember what strikes us as
that did me."

She looked at me with a little fading of that glow her face seemed
always to hold.

"Most memories are like that," she agreed listlessly. "Mine isn't. It
works like a cinema camera; I've only to turn the crank the other way to
be looking at any past record."

"But can you--?" I was beginning, when Skeet stopped me, leaning around
her companion, bristling at me like a snub-nosed terrier.

"If you want to make a hit with Barbie, cut out the reminiscences. She
does loathe being reminded that she was once an infant phenom."

I glanced at my dark eyed girl; she bent her head affirmatively. She
wouldn't have been capable of Skeet's rudeness, but plainly Skeet had
not overstated her real feeling. I had hardly begun an apology when the
dancers rushed back to the table with the information that there was no
more than time to make the Los Angeles train; there was an instant
grasping of wraps, hasty good-bys, and the party began breaking up with
a bang. Worth went out to the sidewalk with them; I sat tight waiting
for him to return, and to my surprise, when he finally did appear,
Barbara Wallace was with him.

CHAPTER IV

AN APPARITION

"Don't look so scared!" she said smilingl