duster which he'd throwed on the floor.

"That's all for now, ladies and gentlemen!" pipes Duke suddenly,
turnin' to the bunch. "I'll shoot the rest of this to-morrow."

They all blow out except Miss Devine. Duke looks at her, rubbin' his
hands together and grinnin'.

"All right!" she smiles back. "First honors! What will I do next?"

She didn't have to do nothin' next! The thing that Duke had started
got away from him and Adams led all the tricks from then to the finish.
Duke told me afterwards he felt like a guy which has lit a match on
Lower Broadway and seen the Woolworth Buildin' go up in flames!

The very next afternoon, Mister Jack Adams becomes a star. Yes, sir!

A gang of supers is hangin' around the general offices waitin' for
their pay. De Vronde and Miss Devine is sittin' at a cute little table
under a tree drinkin' lemonade, and Adams is standin' with the supers,
watchin'--Miss Devine.

"Look at that big stiff tryin' to make the dame!" pipes one of the
extrys, a big husky grabbed up off the wharves in Frisco. He points at
De Vronde. "If I was built like he is, I'd eat arsenic!"

Adams walks over to him.

"Why?" he says, very cool and hard.

"Heh?" says the super. "Why, look at 'im. Lookit the lace shirt he's
wearin' and them pink socks. Why--"

"Shut up!" snarls Adams. "I know your kind--you think because a man
bathes, shaves, speaks English and wears clean linen, that there's
something wrong with him! You roughnecks resent the--"

"Well, I'd hate to be the family that brung that up!" interrupts the
super. "Gawd! It makes a man sick to look at 'im!"

It all happened so quick that even Miss Devine and De Vronde didn't get
it. They's just a sudden swish--a crack of bone meetin' bone, and the
big super is flat on his ear! The rest of the gang mills around,
shoutin' and yellin', and Adams prods the super with the toe of his
shoe. I see Duke runnin' over with a couple of camera men which is so
excited they've even brought their machines along.

"Listen!" spits out Adams, bendin' over the fallen gladiator. "Don't
make any more remarks like that about--about Mister De Vronde, while
I'm in this camp! If you do, I'll hammer you to mush! If you don't
believe that, get up now and I'll illustrate it!"

The super plays dead, and Adams turns away.

By this time, Miss Devine and De Vronde, on the outskirts of the mob,
has seen some of it.

"Really," says De Vronde, frowning "you'l