a Negro prodigy
who played barbarously and wonderfully. As piano-playing, it was perhaps
abominable, but as music it was something real, vitalized by a sense of
rhythm that was stronger than his other physical senses--that not only
filled his dark mind, but worried his body incessantly. To hear him, to
watch him, was to see a Negro enjoying himself as only a Negro can. It
was as if all the agreeable sensations possible to creatures of flesh
and blood were heaped up on those black-and-white keys, and he were
gloating over them and trickling them through his yellow fingers.

In the middle of a crashing waltz, d'Arnault suddenly began to play
softly, and, turning to one of the men who stood behind him, whispered,
'Somebody dancing in there.' He jerked his bullet-head toward the
dining-room. 'I hear little feet--girls, I spect.'

Anson Kirkpatrick mounted a chair and peeped over the transom. Springing
down, he wrenched open the doors and ran out into the dining-room. Tiny
and Lena, Antonia and Mary Dusak, were waltzing in the middle of the
floor. They separated and fled toward the kitchen, giggling.

Kirkpatrick caught Tiny by the elbows. 'What's the matter with you
girls? Dancing out here by yourselves, when there's a roomful of
lonesome men on the other side of the partition! Introduce me to your
friends, Tiny.'

The girls, still laughing, were trying to escape. Tiny looked alarmed.
'Mrs. Gardener wouldn't like it,' she protested. 'She'd be awful mad if
you was to come out here and dance with us.'

'Mrs. Gardener's in Omaha, girl. Now, you're Lena, are you?--and you're
Tony and you're Mary. Have I got you all straight?'

O'Reilly and the others began to pile the chairs on the tables. Johnnie
Gardener ran in from the office.

'Easy, boys, easy!' he entreated them. 'You'll wake the cook, and
there'll be the devil to pay for me. She won't hear the music, but
she'll be down the minute anything's moved in the dining-room.'

'Oh, what do you care, Johnnie? Fire the cook and wire Molly to bring
another. Come along, nobody'll tell tales.'

Johnnie shook his head. ''S a fact, boys,' he said confidentially. 'If I
take a drink in Black Hawk, Molly knows it in Omaha!'

His guests laughed and slapped him on the shoulder. 'Oh, we'll make it
all right with Molly. Get your back up, Johnnie.'

Molly was Mrs. Gardener's name, of course. 'Molly Bawn' was painted
in large blue letters on the glossy white sides of the hotel bus,