clapped his hands with a cry of triumph at it.

'That is what was wanted.'

'That is a bart of vat is vanted,' said Darco. 'Haf you cot it town?'
Before Paul could answer he was off again in a new tangle, and fighting
and tearing his way through it as madly as before. 'Now I am dired,' he
said. 'I shall haf some lunge, and co to sleep.'

He caught at the bell-pull in passing, gave it a tug, and waddled off to
his bedroom. The landlady came in with the tray and began to arrange the
table.

'I don't know what you gentlemen have been doing sir,' she said to Paul,
'but I'm sure I was afraid there was going to be murder in the house.
I never heard anybody go on so in my life. I don't know how any young
gentleman puts up with it.'

'There is very little danger, I assure you,' said Paul. 'Mr. Darco and I
have been talking business.'

'Well,' returned the landlady, 'I suppose you know how to manage him.
But I wouldn't be his keeper not for love _or_ money.'

'I am Mr. Darco's private secretary, ma'am,' Paul answered gravely.

'All I can say is,' said the landlady, sighing, 'I'm glad it's
Saturday.'

It happened that the company took a late train that night for a distant
town, and Darco paid his bill before leaving for the theatre. He told
the landlady that he had been extremely comfortable, and that he should
have great pleasure in recommending her to his friends. When he had
gone, the landlady told Paul that she was glad the gendeman had his lucy
intervals.

But the comedy having been once rebegun on Darco's lines, was written to
an accompaniment of fears and tremblings. It terrified the servants and
the women-folk at large of every house the collaborateurs lodged in.
Slaveys, with clasped hands and faces pale beneath smudges of blacklead,
shook in the hall or on the stairs and landing whilst Darco roared, and
Paul at the end of a day's work used sometimes to feel as if he had been
badly beaten about the head. None the less, the work was finished, and
put into rehearsal.

'Ve vill dry it on the tog,' said Darco, and Paul, who never dared to
question him as to his meaning, went puzzled for a while.

But Darco rarely said a thing once without repeating it many times, and
at length Paul understood that the play was to be played 'on the dog,'
which is theatrical English for the production of a new piece at an
obscure house in the country. It was tried, but the dog never took to it
with any great kindness. Darco swor