I waited for you, that is
only fair," Miss Adair hastened to assure him with a sincerity equal to
his own.

"You are one good sport," was the reply that he made her straight from
the shoulder, for the thought of a perfectly beautiful girl going to bed
in the Y. W. C. A. and covering up her head and ears from the bright
lights of her first night in old Manhattan just to give a strange and
reverenced man the pleasure of introducing her to the old city made a
profound impression upon him. "To-morrow night we'll wake up things on
Broadway. I'll telephone you in the morning to let you know how the play
is going and to see if there is anything I can do for you. Now you must
all go and let me get busy."

"Yes, this is just about the hour that hats begin to bite well,"
assented Mr. Farraday, as he removed the girls down to his car with no
thought or question as to whether his services would be needed in the
enterprise in which he had embarked with Mr. Vandeford.

"Now for it, Pops!" said Mr. Vandeford as the door closed behind his
co-workers in the production of "The Purple Slipper," whose work at that
moment was to play at a distance from his labor. "I'm going to read that
play, and nothing short of something that will injure its prospects if
neglected by me must disturb me. When I'm done I'll make plans with you.
It will take me several hours, and you stand by every second of the
time. Get me?"

"Yes, Mr. Vandeford, sir," answered Mr. Adolph Meyers, and he shut his
door into the outer office just as Mr. Vandeford closed his own with a
bang.

Then for three hours or more, while the sun sank behind the Palisades
and the white lights flashed up from Broadway beneath his window like
bits of futile challenges to the dying light of day, Mr. Godfrey
Vandeford went through the supreme agony of a long life on Broadway, and
was paid in full for every double-cross he had administered to a
confrere. He read "The Purple Slipper" and groaned aloud from page to
page. He began its perusal sitting erect in his chair, and he ended it
hunched over its pages spread on his desk with his head in his hands,
his fingers desperately clutching his shock of gray-sprinkled hair. Then
in a complete collapse he flung himself back in his chair, elevated his
feet to the edge of the desk, and began literally to devour the smoke of
a small black cigar. For half an hour he sat motionless, as was his
habit when fighting all preliminary battles, and his e