;
for Mr. Bienenflug, after striking the handbell six times without
response, was obliged to go to the door and shout "Ralph!" in a wholly
untheatrical voice.

"What's the matter with you?" he said when the office boy appeared.
"Can't you hear when you're rung for?"

Ralph murmured that he thought it was a--now--Polyclinic ambulance out
in the street.

"Get me a stenographer," Mr. Bienenflug said.

In the use of the indefinite article before stenographer he was once
again the theatrical lawyer, because Bienenflug & Krimp kept but one
stenographer, and at that particular moment she was in earnest
conversation with a young lady whose face bore traces of recent tears.

It was this face and not a Polyclinic ambulance that had delayed Ralph
Zinsheimer's response to his employer's bell; and after he had retired
from Mr. Bienenflug's room he straightway forgot his message in
listening to a very moving narrative indeed.

"And after I left his office who should I run into but Sidney
Rossmore," said the young lady with the tear-stained face, whom you
will now discover to be Miss Vivian Haig; "and he says that he just saw
Raymond and she's going to sign up with Fieldstone for the new piece
to-night yet."

She began to weep anew and Ralph could have wept with her, or done
anything else to comfort her, such as taking her in his arms and
allowing her head to rest on his shoulder--and but for the presence of
the stenographer he would have tried it, too.

"Well," Miss Schwartz, the stenographer, said, "he'll get his
come-uppings all right! His wife is in with Mr. Bienenflug now, and I
guess she's going in for a little alimony."

Miss Haig dried her eyes and sat up straight.

"What for?" she said.

"You should ask what for!" Miss Schwartz commented. "I guess you know
what theatrical managers are."

"Not Fieldstone ain't!" Miss Haig declared with conviction. "I'll say
anything else about him, from petty larceny up; but otherwise he's a
perfect gentleman."

At this juncture Mr. Bienenflug's door burst open.

"Ralph!" he roared.

"Oh, Mr. Bienenflug," Miss Haig said, "I want to see you for a minute."

She smiled on him with the same smile she had employed nightly in the
second act of "Rudolph" and Mr. Bienenflug immediately regained his
composure.

"Come into Mr. Krimp's room," he said.

And he closed the door of Room 6000, which was his own room, and
ushered Miss Haig through Room 6010, which was the outer office,