u are----"

"No, no!"

"Well, I should be in to-morrow afternoon, if you cared to look in."

Roland bleated gratefully.

"I'll write down the address for you," said Miss Verepoint, suddenly
businesslike.

* * * * *

Exactly when he committed himself to the purchase of the Windsor
Theater, Roland could never say. The idea seemed to come into existence
fully-grown, without preliminary discussion. One moment it was not--the
next it was. His recollections of the afternoon which he spent drinking
lukewarm tea and punctuating Miss Verepoint's flow of speech with
"yes's" and "no's" were always so thoroughly confused that he never knew
even whose suggestion it was.

The purchase of a West-end theater, when one has the necessary cash,
is not nearly such a complicated business as the layman might imagine.
Roland was staggered by the rapidity with which the transaction was
carried through. The theater was his before he had time to realize that
he had never meant to buy the thing at all. He had gone into the offices
of Mr. Montague with the intention of making an offer for the lease for,
say, six months; and that wizard, in the space of less than an hour, had
not only induced him to sign mysterious documents which made him sole
proprietor of the house, but had left him with the feeling that he had
done an extremely acute stroke of business. Mr. Montague had dabbled in
many professions in his time, from street peddling upward, but what he
was really best at was hypnotism.

Altho he felt, after the spell of Mr. Montague's magnetism was
withdrawn, rather like a nervous man who has been given a large baby
to hold by a strange woman who has promptly vanished round the corner,
Roland was to some extent consoled by the praise bestowed upon him by
Miss Verepoint. She said it was much better to buy a theater than to
rent it, because then you escaped the heavy rent. It was specious,
but Roland had a dim feeling that there was a flaw somewhere in the
reasoning; and it was from this point that a shadow may be said to have
fallen upon the brightness of the venture.

He would have been even less self-congratulatory if he had known the
Windsor Theater's reputation. Being a comparative stranger in the
metropolis, he was unaware that its nickname in theatrical circles
was "The Mugs' Graveyard"--a title which had been bestowed upon it not
without reason. Built originally by a slightly insane old gentleman,