d to ask her, and
I was pretty near afraid he'd speak to her from the audience. Well, to
satisfy him, I did go around after the show, and gave her my card, and
told her if I could do anything for her in New York to let me know. Of
course, naturally, when I got back to town I forgot all about it, but
I got a note from her that she was here, looking for an engagement, the
very day you told me to scare up an understudy. So I thought she might
do as well as anybody I'd get at the agent's, and I let her have it." He
drew a breath of relief, like that of a witness leaving the stand, and
with another placative laugh, letting his eyes fall humbly under the
steady scrutiny of his master, he concluded: "Of course I remember all
about it, only at first I wasn't sure which one you meant; it's such a
large company."

"I see," said Potter grimly. "You engaged her to please your father."

"Oh, Mr. Potter!" the stage-manager protested. "If you don't like her--"

"That will do!" Potter cut him off, and paced the floor, virulently
brooding. "And so Talbot Potter's company is to be made up of actors
engaged to suit the personal whims of L. Smith Packer's father, old
Mister Packer of Baptist Ridge, near Seeleyville, Pennsylvania!"

"But, Mr. Potter, if you don't--"

"I said that would DO!" roared Potter. "Good-night!"

"Good-night, sir," said the stage-manager humbly, and humbly got himself
out of the room, to be heard, an instant later, bidding the Japanese an
apologetic good-night at the outer door of the apartment.

Canby rose to take his own departure, promising to have the new dialogue
"worked out" by morning.

"He is, too!" said Potter, not heeding the playwright, but confirming an
unuttered thought in his own mind. He halted at the table, where he
had set his tiny glass, and gulped the emerald at a swallow. "I always
thought he was!"

"Was what?" inquired old Tinker.

"A hypocrite!"

"D'you mean Packer?" said Tinker incredulously.

"He's a hypocrite!" Potter shouted fiercely. "And I shouldn't be
surprised if his father was another! Widower! I never saw the man in my
life, but I'd swear it on oath! He is a hypocrite! Packer's father is a
damned old Baptist hypocrite!"

VIII

With this sonorous bit of character reading still ringing in his
ears, Canby emerged from the cream-coloured apartment to find the
stoop-shouldered figure of the also hypocritical son leaning wearily
against the wall, waiting for a del