connected (which you probably are not) with the great
firm of Hahn & Lohman, theatrical producers, you never will have heard
of Josie Fifer.

There are things about the theatre that the public does not know. A
statement, at first blush, to be disputed. The press agent, the special
writer, the critic, the magazines, the Sunday supplement, the divorce
courts--what have they left untold? We know the make of car Miss
Billboard drives; who her husbands are and were; how much the movies
have offered her; what she wears, reads, says, thinks, and eats for
breakfast. Snapshots of author writing play at place on Hudson; pictures
of the play in rehearsal; of the director directing it; of the stage
hands rewriting it--long before the opening night we know more about the
piece than does the playwright himself, and are ten times less eager to
see it.

Josie Fifer's knowledge surpassed even this. For she was keeper of the
ghosts of the firm of Hahn & Lohman. Not only was she present at the
birth of a play; she officiated at its funeral. She carried the keys to
the closets that housed the skeletons of the firm. When a play died of
inanition, old age, or--as was sometimes the case--before it was born,
it was Josie Fifer who laid out its remains and followed it to the
grave.

Her notification of its demise would come thus:

"Hello, Fifer! This is McCabe" (the property man of H. & L. at the
phone).

"Well?"

"A little waspish this morning, aren't you, Josephine?"

"I've got twenty-five bathing suits for the No. 2 'Ataboy' company to
mend and clean and press before five this afternoon. If you think I'm
going to stand here wasting my--"

"All right, all right! I just wanted to tell you that 'My Mistake'
closes Saturday. The stuff'll be up Monday morning early."

A sardonic laugh from Josie. "And yet they say 'What's in a name!'"

The unfortunate play had been all that its title implies. Its purpose
was to star an actress who hadn't a glint. Her second-act costume alone
had cost $700, but even Russian sable bands can't carry a bad play. The
critics had pounced on it with the savagery of their kind and hacked it,
limb from limb, leaving its carcass to rot under the pitiless white
glare of Broadway. The dress with the Russian sable bands went the way
of all Hahn & Lohman tragedies. Josie Fifer received it, if not
reverently, still appreciatively.

"I should think Sid Hahn would know by this time," she observed
sniffily, as her e