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know really I feel like Eve must have felt when she first opened her eyes in the Garden of Eden—I don't know where to begin! Julius De Haven, my permanent boy friend, claims it was fate that changed him from a gentleman of the chorus to the star part in a Broadway show. Julius is a former graduate of Harvard's college so he ought to know what everything's all about, but I can't give him nothing on that explanation. It wasn't fate that put him across, it was Gladys Murgatroyd, viz, me! That's not my real name, but it's a good one, isn't it? I thought so, too, when I composed it. There's a whole lot more stuff to it than there is to Mary Johnson, the name I was made a present of on my first birthday. Picture stars, actors, prize fighters, authors and people who write books have nom de plumes, so why shouldn't a tele-

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 phone operator have a nom de switchboard if she wants one?

Gladys Murgatroyd is the name I cook up for myself when I think I'm going to be another Gloria Swanson and goal 'em in the movies. That was after I win first, second and third prize in a beauty contest at my home town, Bountiful, Utah. As far as beauty contests are concerned, why, I figure I'd finish no worse than second in New York, if having the skin you love to touch and that complexion means anything. Anyways, being elected the best looker in Bountiful gets me a ticket to Los Angeles, but I fail to set the lake ablaze in the picture business. The best I can do for myself is $5 a day as one of the supers in the super-productions and that soon gets more monotonous than monotonous itself. Being one of Solomon's wives today and a dashing young waitress tomorrow gets me kind of dizzy and Hollywood Boulevard is Bunk Avenue to me.

Well, I always was crazy to go to New York, having heard the town so well spoken of by one and all, so as soon as I saved the fare—a mere year—I check out of the movies and set sail for Broadway. I would like to say that I immediately land in a musical comedy and I could say it for that matter but it's a hobby of mine to tell the truth on the slightest provocation. What actually happens is that I get a portfolio as tele-

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 phone operator at the Hotel St. Moe. While I'm not one of the city's show places I'm getting attention and I bet I could step into the front row of the Follies without causing a laugh!

I guess you know that the telephone switchboard of a big hotel draws more Johns in a fiscal year than a park, a bathing beach, a stage door and a department store combined. These dumbbells have nerve enough to attempt selling celluloid collars in Hades and trying to get rid of 'em is like trying to get rid of double pneumonia! I've been invited to take a ride in every make of auto we both ever heard tell of and I get more lunch invitations daily than the Prince of Wales got when he visited our noble country.

All this thrills me like a drink of water would thrill a drowning man. I'm fed up on what the newspapers leniently calls "mashers," no fooling! Traveling and stationary salesmen, college boys, actors, ball players, bootleggers, lawyers, judges, doctors and what not, ranging in ages from eighteen to eighty, hang around the board all day trying to do themselves some good and as the result us girls take cruel and unusual punishment in habit-forming quantities during the course of the day's labors. Some of these beady-eyed, leering clowns stand there and look at you till you feel you're sitting there in your combination and you'd like to murder 'em! They never get nowhere with me or

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 with any girl that has an ounce of sense, because they hold these auto rides and lunches at too high a rate of exchange.

However, all work and no play is how to get a nervous breakdown, so sometimes I do pastime a little with the yearner sex. Every once in a while I meet one that I just can't resist taking apart to see what makes him go. Like Hurricane Sherlock, for instance.

Mons Hurricane Sherlock was a full-blooded prize fighter and light-heavyweight champion of our popular planet. This was my first experience in toying with gentlemen who make their coffee and cakes through assault and battery and what a shock this entry gave me—warm canine!

In round numbers, the way Hurricane Sherlock darkened my threshold was like thus:

Jerry Murphy is parked against the switchboard one morning, trying to do himself some good as usual. This master mind is the house detective at the St. Moe and a good scout, but he will never cause the world to forget Nick Carter when it comes to gumshoe work. They could shoplift the lobby of this trap and it would be weeks before the news reached Jerry, and in the lobby is where he stands. However, I can't—help bestowing a grain of womanly sympathy on this great big meaningless blah, because he really thinks I'm the clam's overshoes and I never give him a tumble.

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 Anyways, he comes over this day and tells me to give room 1584 a bell. After a minute I pulled out the plug and informed Jerry there was no answer.

"Then I'll just bound up and give 'at baby's cave a frisk!" remarks Jerry. "His name's Bartlett—know him?"

"Bartlett?" I says. "No, I don't know him personally, but I've eaten a lot of his pears."

"What d'ye mean you have eat his pears?" asks Jerry, the picture of stupidity. "I don't make you."

"And you never will make me!" I says sweetly. "What has this Mr. Bartlett done which forces you to search his belongings?"

"Say!" says Jerry, snubbing my question while his face brightens up like a full moon, which is what it greatly resembles, "I got you now about this Bartlett and them pears. Ha, ha, ha, 'at's one for the book! You have eat a lot of Bartlett's pears, hey? I'll spring that nifty on the night clerk and"

"And you'll get it all balled up and ask him does he know Mister Sickle," I interrupt. "I'm still waiting to hear what this pear manufacturer done."

"Oh!" says Jerry. "Why, he's got them bellhops run ragged gettin' him Scotch from the corner drug store and if I find over a case in his room I got orders to check him out. He's thirstier than them two Enforcement guys we had here. As Doc Cooey would

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 say, every day in every way he's gettin' wetter and wetter!"

At this critical minute a husky voice rumbles over Jerry's shoulder:

"Kin a man make a phone call here when youse people gits done kiddin' each other?"

I straighten up haughtier than haughty itself, prepared to give this noisy newcomer frostbite with a single glance, and Jerry swings around with a growl. Then an odd thing happens. The manslaughter disappears from Jerry's eyes with comical and magical speed and is replaced by a look of awe. A nervous grin appears on his shaky lips and all of a sudden Jeremiah has no longer got a florid complexion. If I wasn't acquainted with Jerry I would think he was scared. As I am acquainted with him, I knew he was scared.

At's—'at's Hurricane Sherlock, the light-heavyweight champ," he says to me in a hoarse whisper, bending over the switchboard. "I—I guess I'll go and see this guy Bartlett about them, now, lemons of his!"

Exit Jerry.

"Who's that dizzy clown?" sneers the stranger and bends over himself for a good look at me.

I returned his glance with usurious interest and noted with pride that 1n two seconds flat he was attempting the difficult feat of swallowing his Adam's apple and his face was flushed a dull red. That shows

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 me I have lost none of my potency as a pulse-quickener, and with that all settled I take stock of my opponent. I see a tall, nobbily dressed young fellow with shoulders like a set of walking beams and a whimsical quirk to his lip, a la Dick Barthelmess. Later, I found out that whimsical quirk was placed there by one Rough House Trainor, who used a right hook for the purpose. However, I have seen worse lookers than Hurricane Sherlock, though I've never hunted for any.

But prize fighters are about as thrilling to me as a lesson in swimming would be to a middle-aged goldfish, so I quickly snapped into it. I didn't care for the gentleman's approach and there is nobody going to push me around, whether they're light-heavyweight champion or dark-heavyweight champion!

"Did you wish a number?" I ask, as cold as a winter's night in dear old Siberia.

Mr. Hurricane Sherlock comes to earth with a start.

"Wam!" he says, half to himself and the other half to me. "What a disturbance you are! Where have I been all your life, good lookin'?"

"If you think that line will get you anything here, you're crazy!" I remark, and on each word is an iceberg so large it would be a menace to navigation. "What number do you want me to give you?"

"Well, let's start with your address," says Hurricane Sherlock, with the goofiest of grins.

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 "Be yourself, big boy!" I says, getting a bit steamed. "I'm busy. I have no time to play with you. If you don't behave yourself, I'll call the house detective and have you put out!"

"Lady," says my adversary, "you can't have me put out! I ain't never been put out in my life. I ain't never even been knocked off my feet!"

"Yes, yes—go on!" I says, merrily working my plugs. "And where are the jewels now?"

Hurricane Sherlock looks puzzled for a instant and then he grins.

"Say, you're quite a kidder, ain't you?" he says. "Well, I ain't no dumb Isaac either, get me? I'm Hurricane Sherlock—does that mean anything to you?"

"Not a thing!" I says deliberately. "I don't know whether you're a traffic cop or Vice-president of Chili. Do you wish to make a call or don't you?"

"I'll make that call in good time," says Hurricane, "and don't tell me you never heard of me. I'm light-heavyweight champ of the world!"

"That's your own fault," I says. "Sorry, but I can't use you."

Hurricane Sherlock stares at me like he thinks both his kind of cumbersome ears have commenced lying to him.

"You don't wish no part of me—the world's cham-

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 peen?" he says in amazement. "Say, Cutey, don't be cheatin' yourself! D'ye know I clicked off a hundred thousand smackers in the ring last year?"

"The place to go with that information is the income tax collector," I says. "Why bother me with your business troubles? I have quite a collection of phone numbers here, can I sell you one?"

"Yeah, gimme a pink one," grins Hurricane Sherlock. "And listen, kid—me and you is goin' to see a lot of each other, so you might as well start right in gettin' used to me. I ain't a bad guy when they treat me right—when they don't treat me right, I'm poison. Now give Worth 86753 a bell and make it snappy!"

Honest, I'm so overcome with this fellow's nerve that I can't think of a comeback! I just nodded him to a booth and got him the number. He talked about five minutes to his manager. I know it was his manager because I passed up at least four much more spicier phone conversations to listen in on him. When he come out he tossed a dollar on the switchboard.

"Keep the change and buy yourself a railroad," he says. "I'll be back again tonight and we'll talk about this and that!"

If nerve was money, Hurricane Sherlock would of made Rockefeller look like a public charge, now wouldn't he?

From then on it was a case of try and keep the

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 world's champion light-heavyweight away from my switchboard. I treated him with about the same courtesy a ferret shows to a mouse, but if you think that bothered Hurricane you're crazy! He was what you call insult-proof and sarcasm rolled off his good natured smile like rain off a mallard's back. He soon become as permanent as the East River and he was just about as exciting to me. Furthermore, he murdered all competition, because none of these lobby hounds which ordinarily moored at my board all day trying to promote themselves had any desire to get in a jam with a gentleman who made his living by being light-heavyweight champion of the world.

Well, as the days went by and Hurricane Sherlock continued to hang around me like a tent, I get a new angle on him. I see that while he may not mean anything in my young life, he's plenty important to others.

Prominent people such as heavy business men, high-powered actors, bankers, lawyers, osteopaths and bootleggers who stop at my switchboard to try and get phone calls, look on the light-heavyweight champion with open fascination. Some of them kind of timidly say, "Good afternoon, Hurricane," and when he grudgingly returns a careless nod, why, honest, they almost swoon with joy. Aren't men funny?

But that isn't the half of it. The other girls on the board make no mystery of the fact that they would be

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 more than willing to trade off their sweeties for my great big husky boy friend. A lot of good vamping was showered on Hurricane Sherlock—and wasted, because he had eyes and words for nobody but me. The bellhops, clerks, elevator boys, porters, in fact all the help at the St. Moe give Hurricane attention that would of flattered Julius Cæsar, and they tell me there was a fellow who liked applause. All my box fighting friend has got to do is crook a finger and he gets all the service there is on tap in our hostelry. The funny part of it is that Hurricane Sherlock isn't even stopping at the hotel—he's merely stopping at my switchboard.

And the questions they ask me when they get me away from him! "Did he say anything about his scuffle with Kid Fisher?" "Is he really going to give the Frenchman a chance at his title?" "Ask him is he going to fight Young McWagon?"

Ail this and many more, till they got me dizzy, no fooling! Even the hard-boiled Jerry Murphy, generally annoyingly jealous of every male who throws me a glance, treats Hurricane Sherlock with respectful admiration.

Then I begin to sit up and pay attention to myself. No matter what you may have heard to the opposite, I'm human. Also, I was lonely. This attention Hurricane Sherlock was getting from the mob commences

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 to make an impression on me, in spite of my honest attempts to throw it off. I find myself reasoning that Hurricane Sherlock is not just a fighter, he's a world's champion and that's hard to dismiss with a laugh!

Likewise, Hurricane was far from difficult to gaze at, if you forgot that his nose was the least bit out of true and one of his ears could do with a little overhauling.

Don't get the idea that I was beginning to stumble in love with this large fellow, because I wasn't, though I was the next thing to positive that he was double cuckoo over me. But I was getting tired of going to the movies by myself or just sitting home wishing every night I was off duty. So I finally gave in to Hurricane's pleadings and accepted his urgent invitation to see him fight another highbrow entitled "12-Punch" O'Bernstein.

Oo la la, I will recall that evening for quite a space! To start with, I had never acted as a witness to a prize fight before in all my young life and you can imagine that I looked forward to this one with plenty excitement. Just what to wear at this carnival of aggravated assault was a problem which gave me no little trouble. I didn't know whether an evening gown or sport clothes were in order and the suggestions made by the jealous ones on the switchboard with me were only comical and not useful. Just what I did wear I don't remember

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 now, you'll have to ask someone who saw me. People who see me usually remember everything about me, if you know what I mean.

Hurricane made me a present of two seats in a ringside box.

"Who are you goin' to take with you, kid?" he asks.

"I don't know," I says thoughtfully, thinking how Jerry Murphy would like to see this fight with me. "Why—does it make any difference who my escort is?"

"No difference at all," says Hurricane grimly. "No difference at all—as long as it ain't a man. Because should you take a man with you, why, they will be a strange guy tryin' to kid his way past St. Peter the next mornin,' that's all!"

So I took the hint and Hazel Killian, my girl friend.

Well, this brawl was lovely and brutal while it lasted, but then six minutes isn't very long. It took Hurricane Sherlock just two boisterous rounds to smite 12-Punch O'Bernstein "for a loop," as Hurricane put it, and a pleasant time was had by all—with the exception of Mons O'Bernstein and Hazel Killian. It was really a beastly evening for both of them! In the second round, Hurricane Sherlock broke his tête-à-tête's ankle with a punch on the jaw and Hazel fainted when Hurricane's nose persisted in bleeding all over everything as the net results of Mons O'Bernstein's earnest efforts before he was executed. Personally, I enjoyed

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 my first prize fight thoroughly, which I hope isn't unladylike. But really, I got quite a thrill when Hurricane waved his glove to me as he left the ring amid the thundering cheers of the big crowd.

Anyhow, Hurricane Sherlock and I got much better acquainted after that evening and one day at lunch he told me the story of his life. I simply can't understand why every man I meet is unable to prevent himself from giving me his unsolicited biography about the third time we see each other, but nevertheless, they do. Honest, it makes me feel like a jury!

However, this day my usually cheerful cave man was all gloomed up. I asked him what was the matter, expecting a non-committal reply, and then I was going to ask him something else. I never got a chance to ask him nothing else for the best part of an hour, as his answer to my first question took that long to pass a given point. I was the given point. Try and keep awake and I'll tell you what he told me.

It seems Hurricane had just returned from a voyage to his boyhood home, East Silo, N. Y., and the visit had practically ruined him. When he was a tot there he was the town joke and they all shoved him around till at the mellow age of sixteen he leaped a freight and left East Silo prostrate on its back. Hurricane's modest plans were to conquer the world and then come back and make East Silo like it.

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 Well, Hurricane made good! After various ups and downs he renounced the frivolous pleasures of the world and entered the prize ring. He didn't get the nickname "Hurricane" because he was timid, and the first thing you know he had hauled off and won the world's light-heavyweight championship, Hardly a day slips over the horizon that his name isn't in the newspapers, he takes in around a hundred thousand milreis a year, he has offers to fight in London at the National Sporting Club—where the Prince of Wales will shake his hand after he bounces some English heavyweight—and thousands turn out to cheer him every time he fights. In a word, Hurricane Sherlock has done his stuff and he means something!

So back he goes to East Silo, the old home town, figuring that the brass band, the mayor and a welcoming committee of important citizens would joyfully greet him at the station. He expected, and he had a right to expect, that a holiday would be declared, Main Street would be a mass of flags and bunting and speeches would flow like water.

No such thing! Nobody turned a hair when Hurricane Sherlock blew into town. They didn't give him a rumble. Boxing and boxers mean nothing to the natives of East Silo and the older citizens who remembered him told him he ought to be ashamed of himself going around hitting people and why don't he go

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 to work? The village blacksmith stood out from under the spreading chestnut tree long enough to offer the thoroughly enraged Hurricane a job at twenty dollars a week and found. And Hurricane Sherlock is world's light-heavyweight champion. As they say on Tenth Avenue, fawncy that!

What Hurricane wants to do, he explains as the waiter brings on the nourishment, is to pull off some stunt that will make the citizenry of East Silo realize just what he means in the world of art and science. He craves to do something to show 'em that a world's champion boxer is of more importance in civilized communities where they read the newspapers than arms are important to a jockey. In other words, what can Hurricane Sherlock do to knock East Silo for a row of Patagonian milk cans?

While I am mulling over the above apple sauce, Hurricane carefully cuts off the best part of the steak for himself and sadly remarks that what he has told me is only about half of his woes. I says to save the other half for our next conclave, and thus encouraged Hurricane goes right on with his funeral dirge.

It seems his own folks don't understand him either. When he first began to make important money, he tells me, delivering the last of the hash-browned potatoes to his own plate, he brought his people on to New York and set them up in a home in the Bronx

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 which would make Nero's palace look like a deserted barn.

Hurricane dwells on this home as well as in it—he furnished me with the prices on everything connected with it from the furnace to the roofing. Considerable residence, as he describes it, and one a millionaire should be tickled to get his mail at, but still Hurricane's folks pick on him. Like the East Silo knockers, they think prize fighting is out of order and that Hurricane should go into business, now that he's got $4.75 for every wave in Tampa Bay. The way they look at it, he could buy a garage, or a chain of orangeade stands or start an opposition elevated railroad or something, but he most certainly should get out of the ring and become a solid businessman. Until he does, even his own folks are off him and he hasn't seen 'em for months, he wound up.

"Don't tell me any more, you'll have me crying my eyes out," I says, toying with a yawn. "Why unload all this on poor little me?"

Hurricane Sherlock gulps a couple of times and leans over the table.

"I'll tell you why I'm givin' you the lowdown on matters," he says, as serious as a fire in a powder mill. "I been catchin' your stuff at that telephone switchboard for weeks now, and believe me, kid, you're the buffalo's beard! The nifties you toss at them he-flap-

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 pers which tries to make you, the wise cracks you pull day in and day out—well, all that sells me the idea that if anybody can help me, you're the baby. I'm just a big dumbbell which don't know nothin' at all except how to keep 'em from gettin' up off the canvas, but you pack more brains than they ever seen at Yale, get me? Won't you please be a pal and help me knock them yokels up in East Silo for a trip?"

Honest, I have to smile, he's so earnest. He seems to be hanging on my answer like it means life and liberty to him. There's something pathetic about this big kid sitting opposite me, who has money and fame and merely—wants his home town to admit it. I'm no Miss Fix-it, but the idea of helping another member of the male sex solve a puzzle fascinates me. But Hurricane's getting restless.

"Are you goin' to throw me down?" he asks anxiously, for all the world like an eight-year-old kid asking mamma for marble money.

"No," I says suddenly. "I'm not! I'll think this over and you drop into the St. Moe in a couple of days. I feel sure I'll have cooked up a scheme by that time which will make East Silo act like you're Napoleon the next time you enter the portals of the town!"

"You're immense!" says Hurricane. "Put me acrost in that slab and you can write your own ticket on what I'll do for you!"

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 So far Hurricane had kept in line whenever we were out together. What I mean is, he never even mentioned the preposition "love." That's a thing for which IT was thankful. I sympathized with Hurricane and could take him as a friend—but that's all!

Well, when Hurricane Sherlock next appeared on the scene I was all set for him. I had given his case plenty of due consideration and I think I had the answer.

"Have they ever seen you fight in East Silo, Hurricane?" I ask him.

"No," says Hurricane. "Them hicks ain't saw a scuffle since the Civil War!"

"Great!" I says, and I'm really overjoyed, for now I know Hurricane's problem is childishly easy. In fact, it's no problem at all.

"Hurricane," I continue, "they have laughed you off in East Silo because they haven't got the proper angle on you. If they could only see you knock out an opponent and hear the frenzied cheers as you leave the ring, they'd go crazy over you and crazy over themselves for having turned out such a product as you in East Silo!"

Hurricane Sherlock looks pensive.

"That's a good thought, Cutey," he says finally. "But it's also a plain case of no can do. They don't allow boxin' in East Silo."

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 That slows me up for a minute—but only for a minute.

"Where do you fight next?" I ask him.

"Madison Square Garden, on the fifteenth," says Hurricane. "I'm supposed to step fifteen frames with a boloney by the name of Ignorant Eddie Biff. I'll smack him dead in a round!"

"Good!" I says. "Now, what you want to do is to make up a party of, say, twenty-five of the most influential citizens of East Silo. Get the mayor, the big banker, the political boss and people like that. Pay all their expenses to New York and back and get them ringside boxes at the fight. When they see you knock out this Mr. Biff and hear that crowd go wild over you, they'll realize that maybe Lincoln was a great man in his day, but you are the man for the ages now!"

I wound up as enthusiastic as a three-headed cat in a creamery, but Hurricane shakes his head doubtfully.

"They may be somethin' to that layout of yours, kid," he says, "but what you are losin' track of is the fact that it would set me back about a grand to bring them jobbies down from East Silo to see me step with this Ignorant Eddie Biff. I wouldn't spend a thousand bucks on them babies if it was a felony not to do it!"

"Very well," I says scornfully. Then I hereby officially wash my hands of you and your troubles. Figure things out in your own way, I'm through! You

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 poor fish, you should be willing to spend a million dollars if it will set you right in your home town. What's a mere thousand to you?"

"My right eye!" says Hurricane.

But he interrupts before I get a chance to bear down on him.

"If you actually think that bringin' them saps down to see me work will do me some good, I'll bring 'em down," he says. "Anything you say is kayo with me, kid, unless you tell me good by!"

Which is as near as Hurricane had yet come to making love to me.

Well, the large night finally arrives when Hurricane Sherlock is to massacre Ignorant Eddie Biff for the edification of his former townsmen of East Silo, N. Y. Among those present was me, of course, at Hurricane's urgent invitation. He had scrupulously attended to the details of my plan to make him a big fellow in his home town. I instructed him to have twenty-five representative citizens of East Silo at the ringside—Hurricane had fifty! I looked 'em over with interest, having no trouble in picking 'em out. They couldn't of made me believe they had come from anywheres else but East Silo if they swore different on a stack of—phone books.

The noisy crowd, the glare of the lights, the gory—preliminary bouts and the general atmosphere of sup-

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 pressed excitement—all brand new to the delegation from Hurricane's home town—gets under their skins a bit. But they're still openly skeptical of the importance of Hurricane Sherlock. Sitting behind 'em, I get that from snatches of their conversation, none of which is complimentary to the light-heavyweight champion of the world.

Promptly at ten Hurricane Sherlock climbs through the ropes to change all that.

A wild burst of applause greets my boy friend and I gaze at the jury from East Silo, prepared to see them clapping their hands off and beaming with civic pride. Instead of that, their hands are idle at their sides and there's a sneer on each and every face. While Ignorant Eddie Biff is hopping through the ropes to the accompaniment of a dead silence, I remember that it must of cost Hurricane a thousand dollars to bring these ten-minute eggs down from East Silo to see him ruin Eddie, but I figure that it will be a bargain if it puts him over in his home town. Then I sit back to enjoy the fracas.

The bell rang for the first round and amid a hush of expectancy Hurricane Sherlock danced lightly out from his corner with a contemptuous sneer for his plainly nervous vis-à-vis. Hurricane then peered through the tobacco smoke drifting over the ropes like he's looking for somebody. Finally, his gaze rested on my excited

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 face and he brightened up. Evidently I was who he was looking for. I fluttered my handkerchief, Hurricane turns his head and waves back a careless glove to me. As his head turned Ignorant Eddie Biff darted forward with the spring of a panther, smashed his right glove against Hurricane's chin, and—the fight was over!

Hurricane Sherlock, light-heavyweight champion of the world, has been knocked out with a single punch! Not only that, but he has spent a thousand dollars to bring his enemies down from East Silo to see it!

O sole mia!

Well, for a minute the big crowd just sat there dazed. They couldn't seem to put any faith in what their bulging eyes showed them—Hurricane Sherlock prostrate on the floor as cold as a winter breeze, five seconds after the bell for the first round. Whoever in that vast audience blinked an eye didn't see the fight at all!

Then with a roar like Niagara Mr. Pandemonium took charge and the panic was on. The cash customers who paid to see a long hard battle are fit to be tied and they yell their heads off with rage. Hundreds who had bet on Hurricane Sherlock become maniacs. They had nothing on me! Look at the terrible thing I have done to the now ex-light-heavyweight champion. By waving my handkerchief at him I got him knocked

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 out, and by trying to help him I have brought his worst enemies there to see it!

Assisted by a couple of cops I managed to fight my way out a side exit to a taxi and I'm whisked home to spend a horrible sleepless night. All I can think of is what plans Hurricane Sherlock will make with regard to my disposal when he recovers from the sleeping sickness on that canvas. I certainly have gummed things up for your life and I don't mind telling you that I'm scared stiff!

I spent a lot of time the next morning arguing with myself as to whether or not I'd better stay away from the Hotel St. Moe till Hurricane Sherlock forgot what I had innocently did to him. But then I thought if I staved away till he forgot that I'd have to stay away 200 years, so I decided I might as well go in, face him and be done with it. So that's what I did.

That morning was a fearful one for me, honestly it was! Every time I'd look up I'd expect to see Hurricane Sherlock towering over the board with first degree murder in each eye. The phone service at the St. Moe is at no time nothing to boast of, no more than it is in any other hotel, but that morning even my warmest admirers meowed about the way I treated their innocent requests for numbers. It was really a case of try and get a sensible answer from me, that's all!

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 Well, up till noon my unfortunate knight had not put in an appearance and I'm commencing to breathe normally again. As I'm going out to lunch I'm thinking is it possible that poor Hurricane is still slumbering on the floor of that ring from that horrible blow Ignorant Eddie Biff presented him with?

At that moment my heart stops beating for one terrible second. I have bumped square into Hurricane Sherlock in the lobby of the hotel!

Honestly, I'm almost hysterical with pure fright and I gazed wildly around for assistance. I'm really afraid Hurricane may do me bodily harm! But to my dumbfounded astonishment, he's smiling and looks happier than happy itself. I feel I must say something or I'll scream, so I begin to stammer condolences. Still smiling happily, Hurricane cuts me off.

"That kayo was the best thing could of happened to me, kid," he says cheerily. "I would of got it sooner or later anyways—they all do. I don't care nothin' no more about what them yokels from East Silo thinks about me, either. What does them sapolios know? Say—up in that slab they think alligator pears will bite you!"

"I—I'm afraid I'll have to hurry on," I says, crazy to get away. "I'm going to lunch and I must be back in"

"That punch last night knocked me out of the ring

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 into a swell taxi business and now I'm all jake with my folks," goes on Hurricane calmly. "You're goin' to eat, hey? Well, come on up to my home and chow with us. My folks will be crazy to see you—I told 'em plenty about you, kid!"

I tried to duck this invitation, but no chance. So to avoid attracting undue attention by an argument in the crowded lobby, I got into a taxi with Hurricane Sherlock, bound for his home. In view of what had just happened, I felt I owed him something!

All the way up in the cab Hurricane raved about what a swell family he has, but to tell you the truth I scarcely heard him. I had just about decided that Mr. Hurricane Sherlock has lost his attraction for me, now that he's no longer a champion—which had really been the only thing thrilling about him to me. What's bothering me is how to break the sad news to him. I am picturing in my mind the scene which is going to take place in his home. He's taking me up to meet his folks, undoubtedly wanting his dear old father and mother to see the lady of his choice and get their O. K. before he asks me will I quit the telephone switchboard to accept a position as his bride.

Honestly, I felt awfully sorry for him. I know it's going to be terribly tragic. He might even break down and cry like a baby when he sees all his plans go to smash. But I can't help it—Hurricane Sherlock is out

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 as far as I'm concerned. Why, I wouldn't dream of marrying him!

Well, we arrive at Sherlock's home. Hurricane asks me to wait in the parlor till he brings in his folks. The coming ordeal has got me so nervous that I've just about bitten my nails away. While he's in the next room I rehearse to myself the way I'll break the news to him. "I'm very sorry, Mister Sherlock," I'm going to say, kindly, "but I never thought of you in that way. I can't marry you, bu"

Just then Hurricane bounces into the room, half dragging a kind of plain-faced young lady who has two very dirty-faced kids hanging to her apron.

"Meet the wife!" grins Hurricane to me. "And the rest of my folks. Hey, Joey and Goldie, say hello to the lady!"

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and fifty years ago, the late Mr. Samuel Johnson yawned, picked up his pen, jabbed it in the nearest inkwell and dashed off the following nifty:

"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money!"

Now, really, with plenty of due respect for the deceased, I'm compelled to remark that in my opinion the above wise crack is the ant's smoking jacket. I admit that I have yet to stumble across a writer who made it a habit never to take any doubloons for his stuff, but I do know a milk-fed author who says it with plays and who doesn't give a good gosh darn whether he gets pennies for 'em or not, as long as he gets his concoctions produced with his name on 'em. This entry, Guy Austin Tower, is an incurable addict of that habit-forming drug, Fame, and he'd rather have three cheers than three dollars. Oh, yes, I forgot to mention that

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 he's also a full-blooded millionaire and that does make a difference, now doesn't it?

Mr. Tower's first play is still running on Broadway and if it isn't a success then neither is Henry Ford. Getting a seat in Heaven and getting a seat in the show shop where Mr. Tower's riot is on view are two feats of equal difficulty, and judging by the lines outside the box office there's the same number of people trying to get into both places. I have a season pass—to the theater, not Heaven—and can go as oiten as I can stand it. That's very nice, but what I should be clicking off is a large slice of the weekly loot, because if it hadn't been for me there wouldn't have been any play!

At the time Mr. Tower crossed my path I had just finished reading a story entitled "When Knighthood Was in Flower" by Charles Major, and really Charley manipulated a wicked set of writing implements, no fooling! Often I'd close my eyes over that book at the switchboard and imagine I was living in the romantical days of old like the kind Charles wrote about and then I'd gaze around at the leering lounge lizards and smirking lobby hounds who jam the gorgeous corridors of the St. Moe—hunting in packs like the wolves they are!—and believe me, I'd come back to earth with a thump! Many and many a time I've wished I had been current when gleaming blades flashed

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 in the sun for a lady's smile and when a perfumed glove, tossed from a balcony, was ample to start a revolution, a duel, an empire or a scandal. But now that's all as out of order as a suit of white ducks would be in a coal mine. These days, men start wars for dollars and fight for women with the same weapons!

Well, I was in this silly, sentimental frame of mind when along came Mr. Tower.

The meeting was very scenario. I overslept one morning and being afraid I'd be late at the mill I blew myself to a taxi. About to the St. Moe, the motor quit like a dog and after my fearful looking chauffeur had leisurely pottered around it and tried without luck to start it with curses alone, I impatiently commanded him to get me another and less shopworn bus. Time and tide not only waits for no man, but it waits for no woman either and I was frantic to get on the job.

"Hey, quit that hollerin' at me!" says the chauffeur politely. "I'm doin' the best I kin, ain't I? I'll git you downtown in good time. They seems to be somethin' the matter with the carburetor, but I ain't sure if"

"You're a fine automobile mechanic!" I interrupt, with equal courtesy. "I bet you think a wrist pin is jewelry. It's taken you nearly fifteen minutes to go three miles!"

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 "Who d'ye wish to drive you for a buck and a half—Barney Oldfield?" he sneers.

"Listen!" I says. "Save that cross-fire patter for the garage. Call me a taxi with a motor in it and make it snappy!"

The chauffeur scowls at me.

"You certainly like to arg, don't you?" he says. "All right, I'll git you a cab. Gimme the one fifty what's on the clock for haulin' you this far."

I reached in my hand bag and then, honestly, I thought I'd swoon! In my mad rush to get out of my apartment and down to the hotel I had forgotten my purse—can you imagine that?

"I—it seems I have left my money at home," I began to stammer, my face as red as his ungainly nose. "If you"

"Apple sauce!" butts in this charming gentleman of the old school. "Don't try to kid me, cutey. That stuff might git you by in them out of town slabs, but I was born and dragged up on Second Avenoo and I have met you gyppers before! I wouldn't care if you was so good lookin' you'd make a goldfish forgit to keep openin' and closin' its mouth, I'm blonde-proof. You don't shove off from here till I git my jack and that's that!"

Ain't we got fun?

Well, an interested knot of innocent bystanders be-

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 gins to rally round us and this modern Sir Galahad squawks his head off till, really, I never was so mortified since I first tried roller skating. I have met some hard-boiled citizens in tripping gaily along life's promenade, but Mr. Taxi Driver was a china egg if there ever was one! No give to him at all and the more I pleaded with him the more abusive he became and the more the shipping clerks, bootleggers, pickpockets and floorwalkers on their way to business seemed to enjoy it. Honestly, it was horrible!

At this critical moment along comes Mr. Guy Austin Tower, Esq., in his costly imported horseless carriage, built along racing lines to hold two people—if they're kind of affectionate friends. Mr. Tower leaps lightly and gracefully out of his car, shoulders his way to my taxi and raises his cap with the air of two Valentinos.

"As I live!" he remarks with a bright smile. "The Goddess of the Switchboard! May I be of service?"

Not even his mother will ever be any gladder to see him than I was right then! I remembered him instantly as my wealthy admirer who is parked in the royal suite on the tenth floor of the St. Moe—two hundred dollars the day, but then you get a lovely view of Central Park.

I made him a present of the smile that had no little to do with me winning that Utah beauty contest,

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 and reading the immediate effect in his eyes I felt more at ease right away.

"Thank you!" I says. "I left my purse at home and"

"Blah!" the taxi apache shuts me off. "What d'ye wanna tell this cake-eater that stuff for? Ask him to slip you the buck and a half you owe me, he looks dizzy enough to fall for it!"

Mr. Tower certainly was light on his feet for a big man and he acted promptly, as all first-class knights do. His arm shot out from his shoulder and down flopped friend chauffeur as if he'd been shot through the heart! A round of applause went up from the delighted spectators, just as a burly policeman pushed his way through the throng.

The cop looks at me and I'm trembling with fear, he stares curiously at the prostrate chauffeur who won't be any more still when he's dead, he gazes around at the grinning witnesses, and then he turns to the flushed Mr. Tower, who's standing there blowing softly on his skinned knuckles.

"Hey, what's all the excitement here, heh?" growls the gendarme.

Mr. Tower smiles cheerfully and pats John Law on the arm.

"Eh—just taking a movie!" he says pleasantly.

"Move along and give these people a chanct to see

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 what they're doin'!" bawls the cop to the laughing crowd as Mr. Tower hands me into his car with so much grace that I could close my eyes and see him standing there in silken doublet and hose and hear him say, "I prithee, fair lady, wouldst step in you equipage?"

I don't know what the name of Mr. Tower's car was, but I think it must have been a Leaping Tuna from the way it carried on when we hit bumps and crossings en route to the St. Moe. I promised to go to dinner with him at my earliest convenience, too, because by this time I was up to my neck in romance and I thought my millionaire cavalier was the gnat's bathrobe!

Enter Robert Meacham Westover, playwright number two.

Robert was writing dramas for such producers as the Shuberts, A. H. Woods, Dillingham, Savage, Brady, Morosco and Lederer. He wrote for them all, yet unfortunately none of them gave his plays a tumble. Like Mr. Tower, Robert was young and comely, but he was also an incurable pauper and the other girls on the board liked him and carbolic the same way. Really, he was a fearful pest, hanging around the switchboard all day and asking over and over again, "Are you sure there were no calls for me today?" or "There must have been a phone call for me

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 —I have a play being considered by Klaw and Erlanger, and—" etc. But there were no more calls for Robert Meacham Westover than there are calls for hot water bags in Hades!

Personally, I was very sorry for Robert, who looked like he never had a good time in his life. Every day and in every way he kept getting thinner and thinner, till he resembled a model for a "Help the Starving Kanakas!" poster, or something similar, honestly! I knew he didn't have a dime in the wide wide world and I often wondered how he managed to live. I even had a hazy idea of taking him out and feeding him some day as a simple act of charity, but of course a girl has to be careful mothering strange young men in New York—or anywhere else, for that matter. Look at the jam Eve got herself into by feeding Adam that apple!

It was Jerry Murphy who made up my mind for me regarding Robert. One day Jerry loomed up over the board just as Robert Meacham Westover had walked away.

"What's 'at clown pesterin' you about now?" growls Jerry, jerking a pudgy thumb over his shoulder at Robert's threadbare back.

"Are you my father?" I says, haughtily working the plugs.

"No," admits Jerry, "but they's a movie by 'at name

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 right across the street. Listen, has 'at guy Westover been annoyin' you?"

"No," I says. "You do all that! What right have you got to question me about my friends? Run along and play, when I wish your services I'll whistle. Go on, shoo—you're on a busy wire!"

"Somebody must of put in a rap for me," says Jerry mournfully. "Seems to me you're always busy when I give you a bell, but 'at Westover mug can buzz you all day long and make you like it! He's been tryin' to promote you now since"

"That's out!" I shut him off. "Don't get out of line, Jerry, or I won't let you talk to me at all. Besides, I don't believe Mr. Westover is even interested in women—he's too busy writing plays."

"Blah!" snorts Jerry scornfully. "Show me a guy which can't get no kick out of you and I'll show you a place in the East River where it's nothing but consommé! If 'at scissor-billed boloney ever tries to make a date with you I'll lay him like a carpet. I'm goin' to bear down on him anyways. He gets checked out of this trap tonight, or else"

"Or else he don't!" I finish for him. "Look here, Jerry, I don't need a guardian and if you ever start a disturbance around here on my account I'll make you so sorry you'll sob yourself sick! Understand?"

"Don't get red-headed," says Jerry soothingly. "I

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 ain't goin' to cuff him, but I got orders to pinch him. Laugh that off!"

"Arrest Mr. Westover?" I says, and I'm so startled I gave two people their right numbers. "What for?"

"He's got a hobby of not payin' his rent," says Jerry. "The big stiff! So he writes plays, hey? Well, six months on the island ought to give him plenty ideas for his next comedy!"

Then I saw Jerry was serious, so I got serious, too. Somehow the idea of this starving kid being thrown in the Bastille didn't appeal to me. No matter what anybody says, I have never believed that a writer does his best work when the world's against him. Why, six months in a cell might ruin that boy's entire future and prevent the world from meeting another Avery Hopwood! So I manage to smile and flirt Jerry Murphy into keeping his hands off Robert Meacham Westover till I had interviewed the young man and got a line on where, if anywhere, he expected to turn for some pieces of eight.

That very night as I was going out to dinner I ran across Robert standing in front of the big plate glass window of the Café les Infants, watching the chef juggling wheat cakes. Some of the numbing chill of New York's regard for a loser has crept into the air itself and Robert's coat collar is turned up, his hands

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 are in his pockets, and in his eyes, glued on the golden brown wheat cakes, is a look of longing such as probably Cleopatra saw when Mark Antony first gave her the up and down. Just saying it was pathetic is not doing the scene justice. He started, kind of guilty, when he pegged me, but I grabbed his arm.

"Greetings!" I says smilingly. "Speaking of Lake Erie, come on, I'm going to feed you!"

Yes, men can blush.

"Why—I—why—eh—really, I'm not hungry," he stammers, but how his eyes did glint at the mention of food! "I"

But by this time I have crowded him inside and seated him at a table, where his protests got weaker and weaker. One glance at the line of march and he simply ordered everything on it and a pot of coffee. However, he insisted upon paying for his dinner and mine—borrowing ten dollars from me for this worthy purpose. Robert carefully marked down the loan on the back of a letter rejecting one of his plays, with the solemn promise that when his first drama was accepted he would repay me about two thousand percent. Tomato sauce! I waited till he had finished giving his one man banquet a beating and then I took him in hand.

"What's the idea of storing yourself in the best hotel in Gotham when you have no visible and ap

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 parently no invisible means of support?" I ask him, over the cheese and crackers.

Robert turns a rosy red.

"I imagine that must look a bit odd," he says. "But allow me to call your attention to the fact that I'm occupying the cheapest room in the—eh—hostelry, and I must have a good address to get even casual attention from the theatrical producers."

"Listen," I says quietly. "As long as you have failed to set the lake ablaze as a playwright, are in debt and have no more idea than a rabbit where you're going to promote any money, why not forget about the hard hearted theatrical producers and go to work?"

Robert's knife clatters to the table and his mouth opens wide. In his eyes is a look of genuine amazement. Then he smiles.

"You're joking," he says calmly.

I gaze at him, coolly sitting there eating the food I have paid for and grinning at the idea of earning his living, and honestly I get burnt up!

"You see something comical in the idea of getting a job?" I ask him, in a kind of strained voice.

"Naturally!" he answers, packing some more cheese on a cracker. "My dear girl, I wouldn't even know how to go about it! What would I do, for instance?"

"What would you do?" I says angrily. "Why, anything! Drive a truck, dig streets, sell books, learn

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 a trade of some kind or enlist on the police force! Get up early in the morning, study the want ads and then lay out a route for yourself, taking the first job that's offered you! Why"

"I'm afraid you don't understand," butts in Robert, with coldly raised eyebrows. "I'm an artist—not a laborer!"

"I wouldn't brag about it!" I says. "Do you mean to say you have never done a day's work in your life?"

"I was at one time engaged in the work of bringing men's and women's attention to the fact that this life is not eternal—that death must come to us all!" says Robert. "And"

"You were a minister?" I interrupt, full of surprise.

"No," says Robert. "An insurance agent."

Well, we sat there and argued till I was plenty late when I went back to my board. Honestly, I rode Mr. Robert Meacham Westover to a fare-thee-well in an attempt to make him snap into it. He broke out with an attack of temperament and angry words flew back and forth like swallows, till finally he threw up his hands and promised me faithfully that if his latest masterpiece, "An Illegal Crime," wasn't accepted within a week he'd return to the respectable science of selling life insurance, as he was doing when what he called the "divine afflatus" knocked him for a loop.

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 The very next day Robert gave me a copy of "An Illegal Crime" to read and I took it home with me when I went off duty that night. I must admit I didn't expect to get much of a kick out of it, but I thought I'd at least glance through it, so that when Robert cross-examined me about this drama, I'd know how many acts was in it, if nothing else.

Well, really, I don't know when I got such a surprise! From the minute I started to read "An Illegal Crime" I simply couldn't lay it down, and it was nearly four when I turned out the light at the indignant request of Hazel Killian. I had read every word of Robert's play and some of it twice, and if it wasn't a knockout then I'm Queen of Sheba!

Two days later I kept, my dinner engagement with Guy Austin Tower.

If I'd been going to get married I couldn't have donated more time to dolling myself up than I did on the day of this date. The first thing I did was to phone Mr. Williams, manager of the St. Moe, another male who fancies himself highly. If I had a dollar for every time this dizzy dumbbell has tried to take me out, he'd never be in a position to invite me again! I told him I was sick and couldn't report and he says I should try Doc Cooey's system, because all ills are only imaginary. So I sweetly said that in that case he could imagine I was there and then I hung up. My next move is to

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 drop in at a beauty parlor and let the skilled labor there have a field day. I had my hair waved, my nails done, my classic features massaged, sat for a troubled hour with my face caked in mud, etc., etc., and even etc. When I came out I was all in, but I was also a success!

I had exactly one evening gown. Buying it swept away my lifetime savings and made Hazel hysterical laughing at what she called my maniacal extravagance. I didn't consider getting this dear of a dress was extravagance! Looking at it, wearing it, even touching it, gave me more joy than I can tell you. I just loved it. If I had a million dollars I'd have $975,000 worth of clothes! This one was pink satin covered with crystals, wrapped tightly around the figure towards the front, where the draperies fastened with large ornaments of silver leaves and buds. It was a rather daring gown and not everybody could wear it, but I didn't win that beauty contest because the judges were nearsighted!

Mr. Tower called for me at seven and the look he gave me as his face changed color when I opened the door repaid me with illegal interest for my preparations. In dinner clothes, he was very restful to the eye himself. In fact, the openly envious Hazel thought my knight had stepped right off the screen and she told me later she got such a reaction that she deliberately

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 broke a date with a boy poet from Greenwich Village and went out with a dashing young peddler of automobiles instead, simply because the latter sheik had a pleasing habit of wearing a tuxedo of nights.

Well, Mr. Tower and I had dinner at Jonquin's, the Polo Grounds of the restaurant league, and he seemed as proud of me as if he'd won me at golf. We talked about this and we talked about that and then, of course, the conversation got personal. I soon found out that Mr. Tower, who had nothing but money, was as temperamental as Mr. Westover, who had nothing but nerve. My millionaire is dissatisfied with things in general. Although his father left him about everything but South Dakota when he died, Mr. Tower says he wants to make good—that is, he craves fame. A moment afterwards when he confesses that he's an author and playwright, I nearly choked.

"What's the matter?" he asks me anxiously.

"Nothing," I says. "I—well, I seem to be in the midst of an epidemic of writers! I had dinner with one only the other day, Robert Meacham Westover. He lives at the St. Moe, too—do you know him?"

"No, I don't believe I do," says Mr. Tower thoughtfully. "But if his plays have been produced, I envy him!"

"Save your envy," I says. "What plays have you had produced, Mr. Tower?"

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 I started something.

"None!" he says, banging the table with his fist. "And I or any other unknown playwright never will have his work produced while conditions in the theatrical business remain as they are. Genius is strangled, sacrificed to the god of the box office! Originality is penalized and becomes a serious handicap—art is symbolized by the lady on the face of the dollar!"

"In other words, it's all wrong," I says, feeling I should say something.

"Exactly," says Mr. Tower. "How quick you are to grasp one's meaning and how wonderfully sympathetic!"

"It's a gift!" I says demurely. "Like being able to wiggle your ears or play the oboe."

"By Jove, that's clever!" says Mr. Tower. "I shall put that in my next story. Have I your permission?"

"Go right ahead," I says. "Don't hesitate to call on me at any time. So you write stories, too? I suppose you're what they call ambidextrous, aren't you?"

Mr. Tower throws back his head and laughs like a kid.

"Now you're joshing me!" he says, wagging a reproachful finger at me. "Write stories? My dear girl, under various nom de plumes I have submitted verse, essays, short and long stories, jokes, epigrams, plays and what not to producers and publishers, but

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 thus far I have failed to ring the bell. I have been told by competent authorities that my style and technic—the result of much study and training—leave nothing to be desired, but it appears that I lack that unusual imagination necessary to invent new and interesting plots. Perhaps that is because I have not seen enough of life in the raw—I have never actually experienced hunger, fear, envy; in fact, few, if any, of the standard emotions. There has been no necessity for me to feel them. My infernal wealth has been fatal to inspiration! Yet, by heaven, I can write, and some day I"

"But with all your money, Mr. Tower," I interrupt, "why not rent a theater and produce one of your own plays yourself, since all you really want is to see it on Broadway?"

"Yes, I could do that," he tells me, "but that is not my desire. I want my work accepted by a disinterested producer, on its merits!"

"Fair enough!" I says, foiling a yawn in my throat. "Isn't that waltz they're playing delightful?"

Well, money had not prevented Mr. Tower from solving the mysteries of dancing, and really he glided a wicked ballroom. While we're tripping the light fantastic, as they call it on Avenue A, I can't seem to keep my mind off this queer situation in which the millionaire Mr. Tower and the starving Mr. Westover play the leading parts. The thing interests me strangely,

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 and having helped a prize fighter solve a similar problem, I can't see why I should be baffled by a couple of synthetic playwrights. Then in a flash the answer comes to me! I will have Mr. Tower buy "An Illegal Crime," which will put Mr. Westover on his feet and give him a stake for coffee and cakes while he writes other gems. In turn, Mr. Tower through his influence can have Mr. Westover's play produced under his own name and in that way gather the fame he craves, because I'm satisfied "An Illegal Crime" will slap Broadway for a row of parsley!

I'm so excited over my idea that I talk of nothing else to Mr. Tower all the way home in his car—this time it's a Boles-Joyce limousine, carrying a crew of two on the front seat. When we reached my bower, I ran up and got my copy of "An Illegal Crime" and gave it to Mr. Tower to read, together with my proposition to think over. He was very doubtful and far from sold on the idea. In fact, he seemed much more interested in getting a rough estimate from me on when he could play around with me again. I said let's get his future all fixed up and we'd speak of recreation later. He then told me I was wonderful and I told him good night.

The very first thing the next morning Mr. Tower called me on the switchboard and he's the height of enthusiasm over both "An Illegal Crime" and the idea

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 of buying it from Mr. Westover. Could I arrange a meeting? I said of course I could—and then it suddenly dawned on me that I hadn't yet mentioned a word of my scheme to Mr. Westover.

At first the highly astonished Robert couldn't see my proposition with a telescope and he most indignantly refused to have anything to do with it. What, allow his brain child to appear as the progeny of another? Never! He barked and meowed along these lines till I called his attention to the fact that he was broke, in debt, on the brink of being streeted from the St. Moe and had a six months' vacation in the hoosegow staring him in the face for not being able to pay his hotel bill. This made Robert thoughtful and he finally agreed with me that he who writes and makes it pay will live to write another play. He insisted, however, that he wouldn't take a nickel less than a thousand dollars for "An Illegal Crime." When Mr. Tower offered him $7500 cash for it Robert nearly swooned, but he recovered in time to gurgle "Sold!" Then the gambling millionaire starts the rounds with the play.

Well, where poor Robert Meacham Westover had to be content with interviewing office boys and having stenographers pass on his play when he was peddling it, Mr. Tower was ushered right in to see the big theatrical moguls themselves. There's only one place on earth where a man who is able to write a check for a

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 million and get it cashed can't get attention and that place is called Nowhere. Sidney Rosenblum, the first producer Mr. Tower called on, looked greatly disappointed when the young money king declined to put up the sugar to produce the play or even to go fifty-fifty on it. Still, out of respect to Mr. Tower's bankroll, Rosenblum glanced carelessly over "An Illegal Crime." Mr. Tower told me afterwards that before Rosenblum had finished reading the first act he rang for his secretary and asked her to break out a contract!

Six weeks later the play was produced with Mr. Tower's name on it as author, and to the hysterical joy of Mr. Tower, me and Rosenblum, it turned out to be the success of the year. The critics went crazy and point-blankly accused Mr. Tower of having wrote the great American play. Honestly he was interviewed silly and his picture was plastered all over the papers—in other words, he was famous and his lifelong ambition was realized.

Then along comes the fly in the ointment and the fly's name was Robert Meacham Westover, the real author of "An Illegal Crime." When Robert sees what a knockout his drama has turned out to be and realizes that he has sold all his rights in it, he's fit to be tied, no fooling! He made quite a scene at the switchboard, blaming me as all men since the first one blame the woman when anything goes wrong!

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 "I worked the best part of a year on that play," he almost sobs to me. "I starved and slaved in composing it, and now, by heaven, I have to buy tickets to see my masterpiece, with another's name on it as its author! It's driving me insane!'

"Well, why didn't you think of that when you sold your frolic?" I says, but I'm really a bit upset myself. "You took seventy-five hundred dollars for it and Mr. Tower took all the chances. Suppose it had been a flop, would you have given him back his money?"

"I'll give him back his paltry seventy-five hundred now!" raves Robert. "Why, 'An Illegal Crime' will make that in royalties within a few weeks. I'll make him take back his gold and return my play! It's my greatest effort and I demand the fame and prestige it will give me and which is my right. Oh, whatever possessed me to enter into such an indecent, immoral bargain—to sell the child of my brain! I may never again compose such a plot. I'll have to start all over again. I"

"Be still!" I butt in. "You got everybody in the lobby looking at you! As long as I started this, I'll try and finish it. I'll talk this over with Mr. Tower today. Remember, I promise nothing, but I'll do my best!"

"Straighten this out and you will never regret it," says Robert frantically. "My career now rests in your pretty hands!"

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 Well, honestly, I was very sorry for Robert and the more I turned matters over in my troubled mind the more I began to see some justice in his stand. After all, it was his play that New York was wild over and it must have been horrible to have to see someone else get the credit. I hated myself for getting mixed up in his affairs at all, even though what I did was only done to help him. Then there was Mr. Tower's side to be considered, too. Hadn't he gambled his seventy-five hundred—just seven and a half times what Robert asked for "An Illegal Crime"? Mr. Tower had no way of knowing that the play would get over.

I just couldn't stand thinking about it any longer, so I went right to Mr. Tower and presented the case of Robert Meacham Westover to him. Mr. Tower, joyful as a lark, was busy autographing his pictures, dictating letters to admirers, signing contracts for movie rights and Lord knows what else. He was busier than Busy himself, and sitting pretty, and I just hated to be a crape-hanger!

Mr. Tower was smiling happily when I began my story, after he had told his secretary to step out, but before I got half finished he was pacing the floor and the smile was conspicuous by its absence. To say it was a shock would be a niggardly use of adjectives! He never expected anything like this to gum up his fun.

"This is terrible—terrible!" he says finally. "I

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 bought all rights to the infernal play from Westover, didn't I? Any court in the land will sustain my position. I'll give him all the royalties! I have no use for the money, I only want"

"You only want the same thing Mr. Westover wants," I interrupt. "That's credit for writing the play! There's no use offering him money either, Mr. Tower, I know he wouldn't accept it, and of course if he sued you and won, he'd get all the royalties anyhow. He could have me dragged to court for a witness—and I'd have to tell the truth, wouldn't I?"

Again Mr. Tower nervously patrols the room. "Well, what shall I do—what would you do?" he asks me desperately.

"Mr. Tower," I says seriously, "if you're a real man, a true knight, such as I like to think you are, here's the chance of a lifetime to show your bigness, and you'll jump at it! There's only one thing to do and that's the honorable thing. Take back your money from Mr. Westover and we'll both make an affidavit that he, not you, wrote 'An Illegal Crime'."

Mr. Tower gave me a long, long look and I returned it, putting everything I had in my eyes. "It will please you if I do this?" he asks me soulfully.

"Very much," I answered promptly. "And it should please you, too!"

With a deep sigh Mr. Tower became a knight. He

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 called in his secretary and dictated a statement that caused the dumbfounded secretary's eyes to bulge. Then we got Mr. Westover, stopped at a notary public, and we all wrote our names on the dotted line. Mr. Westover signed with a flourish, but Mr. Tower's signature was shaky. Our next port of call was Sidney Rosenblum.

It goes without saying that Rosenblum was dazed when we had told him our little bedtime story, but he wasn't so dazed that he forgot to get his press agent busy on this new and sensational angle to the production of the play. There was little else in the newspapers the next morning, and, yes, my picture was there with the others. The thing burst like a bombshell on Broadway and the avalanche of publicity started "An Illegal Crime" on a two-year run on the Big Street alone. Robert Meacham Westover was made for life, of course. Why, he and this Rosenblum got $80,000 for the movie rights! I could have entered the chorus of any musical show on Broadway as the result of my photos being incessantly printed and the general notoriety I drew out of it, and even Mr. Tower got the best of the big exposure. He was highly praised for his sportsmanship in acting like he did, when he was legally entitled to claim authorship of the play.

Well, success brought about a great change in Robert Meacham Westover, the boy playwright. It went right

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 to his head, where there was the most room! He moved from his cupboard under the roof to a classy suite in the most expensive part of the St. Moe and stalked through the lobby like he'd suddenly been appointed Duke of Diphtheria, or something. Instead of pestering me and the other girls about his imaginary phone calls as he did in days of yore, he now refused to talk to anybody over the phone.

However, he was grateful enough to me, who he swore put him over. He wanted me to go here and he wanted me to go there with him, but I couldn't use him and was ready and anxious to let him pass out of my life. Robert was too much in love with himself to really love anyone else, and when he asked me would I consider marrying him I told him I was afraid I couldn't get off duty to go to the church and they wouldn't stand for a wedding in the lobby.

"But I don't object to taking back the ten dollars I loaned you before you became the talk of New York," I says.

"Oh—I beg your pardon!" he stammers, getting red, and why shouldn't he? "I—I'd forgotten all about that—rushed to death—working on my new play, you know—that sort of thing"

He pulls out a roll of bills that would strangle a hippo and makes a big display in the crowded lobby by thumbing them over a couple of times before counting

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 me out a hundred dollars in ten-dollar bills. He let everybody see him handing me that money—and that's the tip-off on him!

I took one ten and coldly told him to keep the rest for writing materials.

Guy Austin Tower rushed up to the switchboard a few days later to excitedly announce that he'd been commissioned to write a play by no less than Sidney Rosenblum himself. Rosenblum had sent for Mr. Tower and told him he saw no good reason why the publicity he'd just enjoyed shouldn't be made use of. He then made Mr. Tower repeat all the circumstances connected with the authorship of "An Illegal Crime." When my boy friend got finished with the sad tale, Rosenblum puffed thoughtfully at his cigar for a minute or two and remarked that in his opinion the story of how Mr. Tower had bought Mr. Westover's drama and then given it back to him would make a corking play itself!

Well, with a plot at last to mix with his fine writing, Mr. Tower tied in enthusiastically and wrote the play.

It opened six months ago—try to get in!

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"When fortune favors a man too much, she makes him a fool!"

Neither Napoleon, Nero, Alexander, Jack Johnson, Mark Antony nor Bill Hohenzollern was the composer of that remark, though, honestly, I bet they all thought it about the time the world was giving them the air. However, the boy who originally pulled the above wise crack was Mr. Publius Syrus, who was current in dear old Syria during the fiscal year of 77 Two thousand annums after Publius gave up the struggle, Jimmy Burns, a professional bellhop—age, twenty; color, white; nationality, Broadway-American—decided to find out for himself whether or not Pubby's statement was true.

It is!

One morning during a slight lull in the daily hostilities between me and the number-seeking guests, I am reading my favorite book—the Morning Squawk, the

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 newspaper that made the expression "It is alleged" famous, or maybe it was the other way around. Spattered all over the front page is a highly sensational account of the latest adventures of one of these modern prodigal sons—in round numbers, Carlton Van Ryker, whose father celebrated his ninety-fifth birthday by entering a tomb in a horizontal position and leaving his only progeny two paltry $500,000 bank notes. The young millionaire with the name like a Pullman and a soft collar had been stepping high, wide and fast with his pennies and at the time of going to press was the plot of an "alienation of my wife's affections" suit, a badly mismanaged shooting affair, and various other things that would keep his mind off the weather for quite a spell. While'm drinking all this in with my lustrous orbs, along comes Mons. James Joseph Aloysius Burns, who was either the hero of this episode in my exciting career, or else he wasn't.

"Kin you feature a cuckoo like this dizzy Van Ryker havin' all that sugar," he snorts, nodding angrily at the newspaper, "whilst us regular white folks is got to slave like Uncle Tom or we don't eat? Is that fair?"

"Cheer up, Jimmy," I says with a smile. "We don't get much money, that's a fact, but then we can laugh out loud. That's more than Van Ryker can do! Look at the pushing around he's getting because he hauled off and inherited a million, poor fellow; he"

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 "That mug was runed by too much jack!" butts in Jimmy. "He's what you call a weak sister. He wasn't built to handle important money—you got to be born that way! Knowin' how to spend money is a gift. I got the gift, but I ain't got the money!"

"And you never will have the money, frittering away your life hopping bells in a hotel, Jamesy—not to give you a short answer," I says. "When they assembled you they left out the motor—ambition!"

"Blah!" says Jimmy courteously. "That's what you think. I got plenty ambition. My ambition is to wake up every morning for the rest of my life with a twenty dollar bill in my kick! Believe me, Cutey, I often wish I was a Wall Street bond messenger, a bootlegger or even a professional reformer—but I ain't never had a shot at no big dough like that. Why, if it was rainin' tomato bouillon, I'd be there with a knife instead of a spoon!"

"As if that would stop you!" I remark sweetly. I once saw James eat. "It seems to me you're always craving excitement," I went on, dealing out some wrong numbers. "Only last week you told me you had a massage."

"Go ahead and kid me," says Jimmy. "You should bite your nails—you're a woman, a good looker with more curves than a scenic railway, and they ain't no way you kin lose! But it's different here. It seems

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 to me I been workin' for a livin' since the doc says 'It's a boy!' and the chances is I'll be workin' for a livin' till the doc says 'Get the embalmer'!"

Don't you love that?

"Why don't you check out of the bellhopping game and try your luck at something with a future in it?" I ask him, though, really, I'm about as interested in Jimmy's biography as I am in the election returns at Tokio. "If I was a man, this town wouldn't have me licked!"

"Apple sauce!" sneers Jimmy politely. "A guy without money has got the same chance in New York as a ferryboat salesman would have on the Sara Desert. It takes jack to make jack. With a bank roll I could make my name as well known as Jonah's, and I'd spot him his whale?"

"What do you do with your nickels?" I ask him. "I don't doubt that Chaplin and Fairbanks get more wages than you bellboys, but I thought your tips ran into better figures than they have in the Follies."

"Say, Cutey, be yourself!" says James scornfully. "Most of the eggs in this trap is as tight as the skin on a grape—they wouldn't give a thin dime to see Tutankh-Amen walk up Fifth Avenoo on his hands! I could be railroaded to Sing Sing for what I think of them babies. Why should I have to carry suitcases and hustle ice water for a lot of monkeys like that?"

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 "Don't put on dog, Jimmy," I smile. "The guests of the St. Moe are every bit as good as you are, even if you are a haughty bellhop and they are lowly millionaires. Suppose you had a million, what would you do with it?"

"Well," says Jimmy thoughtfully, "the first thing I'd do wouldst be to get me a education—not that I'm no dumb Isaac by no means, but they's a few lessons like algeometry, matriculation, mock geography and the like which I could use. I wouldn't get all tangled up with no wild women or pull none of the raw stuff which this Van Ryker jobbie done, that's a cinch! They'd be no horseplay what the so ever, as far as I was concerned. What I'd do wouldst be to crash into some business, make my pile and my name and not do no playin' around till I was about fifty and independent for life. Ain't it a crime when I got them kind of intentions to make good and no nonsense about it, that somebody don't slip me a million?"

"It's an outrage, Jimmy," I agree, allowing a giggle to break jail. "Still, all men are born equal and if it's actually possible that you haven't got a million, why, you must have thrown your chances away. When Eddie Windsor was your age, for instance, he had made himself Prince of Wales!"

"Me and him begin life in a different type of cradle!" says Jimmy. "And that stuff about everybody bein'

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 equal when they're born is the oyster's ice skates. The only way me and them wealthy millionaires was even is that we was all babies!"

This debate between me and Jimmy was about like Adam and a monkey arguing over which of 'em was our first ancestor—we could have found plenty of people to side with both of us. Then again, the customers was beginning to snap into it for the day and craved the voice with the smile. I got as busy at the switchboard as a custard pie salesman on a movie comedy lot, so I gave the money-mad James the air for the time being.

A couple of weeks later, or maybe it was a jolly old fortnight, Hon. Guy Austin Tower returns from a voyage to Europe, and then the fun began!

Guy would be a face card in any deck—he's a real fellow, no fooling. Even the parboiled Jimmy Burns, who thinks everybody guilty till proved innocent, is one of Guy's fans. Guy just sprays Jimmy and the rest of the hired help with princely tips and doesn't dime them to death as most of the other inmates do.

Well, Guy got a welcome from the St. Moe staff that would have tickled a political boss. Honestly, he brought something back for everybody! What he brought back for me was some perfectly gorgeous Venetian lace and his sixty-fifth request that I re-

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 nounce the frivolous pleasures of the telephone switchboard and enter matrimony.

I accepted the lace, which drove Hazel Killian wild with envy, but on the wedding bells I claimed exemption. I liked Guy, but I was by no means in love with him—or with anyone else! From what I'd been able to observe from my perch at the St. Moe switchboard, there was a bit too much "moan" in matrimony, really!

I meet five hundred representatives of the sillier sex every day, and treat 'em all with equal chilly politeness till they get out of line. Then I turn off the politeness, just giving 'em the chill, and honest, when I want to be cold—which is generally—I'd turn a four-alarm fire into an iceberg with a glance!

Well, Guy Tower hadn't been back in the St. Moe a week when he began showering attentions on me from the point where he left off before he sailed away. Honestly, he dinnered and theatered me silly! Hazel watched me carelessly toy with this good-looking young gold mine with unconcealed feelings of covetousness. She simply couldn't understand why I didn't grab this boon from Heaven and marry him while he was stupefied with my charms. Hazel is no eyesore herself and suffered from a lifelong ambition to become a bird in a gilded cage. She craved a millionaire, and in desperation she offered to match coins with me for Guy, but I indignantly refused. I know Hazel—she's

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 a dear, but she'd have Rockefeller penniless in a month and every shop on Fifth Avenue sporting a "Closed to Restock" sign. She's just a pretty baby who loves to go buy buy and she makes 'em give till it hurts, don't think she doesn't!

Another person who got upset over Guy's inability to keep away from me was Jerry Murphy. My bounding around with Guy fills Jerry with pain and alarm and he keeps me supplied with laughs by constantly warning me of the pitfalls and temptations that surround a little telephone girl who steps out with a millionaire.

"If 'at big mock orange makes one out of the way crack to you, Cutey, just tip me off, and I'll ruin him!" says Jerry with a menacing growl. "I can't cuddle up to the idea of you goin' out with him all the time. Don't let him go to work and lure you somewheres away from easy callin' distance of help!"

"Cut yourself a piece of cake!" I says. "Mister Tower is a perfect gentleman, Jerry, and it would be impossible for him to act like anything else if he and I were alone on an island in the middle of the Pacific."

"Say, listen, Cutey," says Jerry, wincing, "don't mention 'at alone on a island stuff in my presence! 'At's what I been dreamin' about me and you for a year. If we ever get on a ship together, I'll wreck it as sure as you're born!"

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 Now, wasn't he a scream?

Well, at one of our dinner dates about a month after his return, Guy shows up haggard and wan and apparently all in. Generally a fellow who couldn't do enough for his stomach, he ordered this night with the enthusiasm of a steak fiend week-ending at a vegetarian friend's. When the nourishment arrived, Guy just dallied and toyed with it. Afterwards we favored the dance floor with a visit, and instead of tripping his usual wicked ballroom he acted like he had an anvil in each of his pumps. A dozen times during the evening he had to tap back a yawn, and really I began to get steamed up. I'm not used to seeing my boy friends pass out on me!

"I hope I'm not keeping you awake, Mr. Tower," I remarked frigidly as we returned to our table and the nineteenth yawn slipped right through his fingers, in spite of his well meant attempt to push it back.

"Forgive me!" says Guy quickly, and a flush brings some color to his face for the first time that night. "I—the fact is, Gladys, I don't believe I've had a dozen hours' sleep in the past week!"

"Then you've been cheating," I smile, "for you've always left me around midnight. Is she a blonde or a brunette, or have you noticed?"

Guy laughs and, leaning over, pats my hand.

"As if I would ever notice any girl but you!" he

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 says, getting daringly original. "Oh, it isn't a girl, Gladys—though there is a woman at the bottom of the thing, at that. I'll explain that paradoxical statement. Rosenblum wants my next play to open his new Thalia Theater, which will be completed within two months—and I haven't the ghost of an idea, not the semblance of a plot! I've paced the floor like a caged animal, smoking countless cigarettes and drinking oceans of black coffee. I've written steadily for hours at a stretch and then torn the whole business up in disgust. That's what's kept me awake at night—that and my daily battles with this infernal Rosenblum!"

"How come?" I ask him in surprise. "I don't see the percentage in battling with the man who puts your plays on Broadway, Guy."

"He wants me to write a risqué farce, one of those loathsome—er—pardon me—bedroom things—for Yvette D'Lys," says Guy angrily, "and I ab-so-lute-ly will not do it! I refuse to prostitute my art for the sordid box office! I"

"Hold everything!" I butt in. "Shakespeare wasn't below writing bedroom farces, and I think even you'll admit that he got some favorable mention as a playwright."

"Shakespeare write a bedroom farce!" gasps Guy. "Why, my dear girl, you—which of his marvelous plays could you possibly twist into that?"

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 "Othello," I says promptly. "In act five they clown all over the boudoir! You should go to the theater oftener."

For a second Guy looks puzzled, then he grins and the lines around his navy-blue eyes relax.

"You are delightful," he says. "If I cannot get mental stimulus from you, then I am indeed uninspired! Nevertheless, I am not going to do as Rosenblum requests. I have never written anything salacious or even suggestive, and I never will! Furthermore, I don't believe Miss D'Lys or any actress likes to play that kind of a part. It is managers of the Rosenblum type that force those roles on them—callous, dollar-grabbing, cynical pessimists, who take it for granted that all women are bad!"

"Any man who takes it for granted that all women are bad is no pessimist, Guy," I says thoughtfully. "He's an optimist!"

"Great!" says Guy, slapping the table with his hand. "May I use that epigram in my play?"

"I'll loan it to you," I tell him. "If I break out with the writing rash myself some day, I'll want it back. And now let me hear some of the ideas you tore up in disgust—maybe one of them is the real McCoy. Trot 'em out and I'll give you my honest opinion."

Well, he did and I did. Guy rattled off a half-dozen plots, which failed to thicken and merely sickened.

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 Honestly, they had everything in 'em but the Battle of Gettysburg, and really they were fearful—about as new and exciting as a beef stew, which is just what I told him, being a truthful girl.

Guy sighs and looks desperate.

"Gladys," he says, "I simply must have a play ready to open the Thalia in less than eight weeks! You know that my interest in playwriting is anything but mercenary—good heavens, I have more money than I know what to do with. What I want is to see my name on another Broadway success, and I'm absolutely barren of ideas! I've simply struck a dry spell, such as all writers do, occasionally. At this moment I'd give twenty-five thousand dollars for an original plot!"

I drew a deep breath and stared at him.

"Don't kid about that kind of money, Guy," I says solemnly. "And—don't tempt me!"

"I never was more serious in my life!" he quickly assures me. "Why, have you an idea? By Jove, Gladys, if you have—if you are the goddess from the machine"

"Be of good cheer," I interrupt. "I'll go home and sleep over matters, which is what you better do, too—you look like you fell out of a well or something, really! I'll see you tomorrow. I don't think I'll have a plot for you by then, but"

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 "Naturally—still, if you even have a suggestion that I might use," says Guy eagerly, "I"

"I say I don't think I'll have a plot by then, I know I'll have one!" I finish.

And I did, really!

When I got home that night I went right to bed, but somehow Mr. Slumber and me couldn't seem to come to terms. My brain just refused to call it a union day but kept mulling over Guy and his magnanimous offer of twenty-five thousand lire for a plot. Good heavens, he could buy a plot with a house and barn on it for that! Then my half sleepy mind turns to Jimmy Burns, the gloomy bellhop, whose deathless ambition is to corral a fortune and dumfound Europe with his progress from then on. Suddenly these two trains of thought collide with a crash and out of the wreck comes an idea that I think will make Jimmy Burns famous and give Guy Tower his play! That trifling matter being all settled, I turned over and slept the sleep of the just.

The very next evening I propositioned Guy, who listened with flattering attention. After telling him I had his play all set, I furnished him with a short but interesting description of the life, habits and desires of James Joseph Aloysius Burns. I then proposed that Guy place his twenty-five thousand to the bellboy's credit for one month, James to be allowed free

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 rein with the jack. If Burns has increased the amount at the end of thirty days, he is to return the original twenty-five thousand to Guy. If not, he must give back whatever amount he has left. All the principals are to be sworn to secrecy and that's all there is to my scheme—it's as simple as the recipe for hot chocolate!

"If Jimmy Burns is really miscast in life and has a brain and business ability far above hopping bells," I explain, "why, the use of twenty-five thousand for thirty days might make him one of the world's most famous men! It's a sporting chance, Guy—will you gamble?"

Guy looks somewhat perplexed. He stares into my excited face and clears his throat nervously.

"Well—I—of course, I am interested in anything you suggest, Gladys," he says. "I—eh—I suppose I am unusually stupid this evening, but I cannot see how my dowering this bellboy will assist me in writing my play."

"Listen," I says. "You claimed you'd put out twenty-five thousand for a plot, didn't you? Well, believe me, the movements of Jimmy Burns with twenty-five thousand dollars to do what he wants with will supply all the ideas you can handle—if you don't think so, you're crazy!"

"But" begins Guy.

"Don't butt!" I cut him off, impatiently. "You're

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 not the goat yet and you won't be if you listen to teacher. All you have to do is give Jimmy the sugar, watch his stuff for the next thirty days, and you'll get a true to life masterpiece for your drama—probably a play that will show the making of a financial, scientific or artistic Napoleon! If you can't get a play out of the effect of sudden wealth on a lowly bellhop, then you got no business in the same room with a typewriter!"

Guy rubs his chin, smooths back his wavy hair and gazes out of the window at New York City.

"By Jove!" he busts out suddenly, slapping his hands together, "the thing is fantastic—grotesque—but I'll do it!"

So it came to pass that the next day Guy, Jimmy Burns, and myself met by appointment in the cashier's office of the Plumbers & Physicians National Bank. As I was on my lunch hour and minutes were at a premium, there was little time squandered on preliminaries, Guy making his proposition to the thunderstruck James in simple words of one syllable. At first, M. Burns refused to believe he wasn't being kidded, then he got hysterical with delight. When the startled cashier solemnly asked for his signature and handed him a bank book showing there was $25,000 to his credit in the vaults, Jimmy broke down and cried like a baby!

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 "Now listen to me, young man," I tell the panting Burns when he has hid the bank book in his shoe to the open amusement of Guy and the wondering cashier. "You want to get an immediate rush of brains to the head and make that twenty-five thousand mean something, because that's the last you get if you cry your eyes out! That's all there is, there isn't any more, get me? You been going around squawking about what a world-beater you'd be if you had money. Well, now you got plenty of it and we look for big things from you. No clowning, remember, you must make good! Is all that clear?"

Still in a happy trance, Jimmy Burns removes his cap with a start.

"Ye-ye-yes, ma'am!" he gulps, the first time he was ever polite to anyone, before or since.

Well, really, the effect of that $25,000 suddenly showered on Jamesy was every bit as startling as I expected—only in a slightly different way than I fondly hoped! Those pennies went right to his shapely head, and instead of stimulating his brain, why, they just removed it altogether. First of all, Jimmy got a wild and uncontrollable desire to leave the art of bellhopping flat on its back. Not satisfied to resign his portfolio in a dignified way, he kidded the guests, insulted the manager, rode Jerry Murphy till Jerry wanted his heart, and wound up by punching Pete Kift, the bell

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 captain, right on the nose. By an odd coincidence, these untoward actions got Jimmy the gate.

The plutocrat bellhop's next imitation was to apply for the most expensive suite in the hotel. They just laughed Hon. Burns off, telling him there was nothing but standing room left in the inn and try to get that! But Guy Tower came to the rescue and got Jimmy the suite as Guy wanted to keep his experiment under as close observation as possible while making notes for his play. Once settled in his gorgeous apartment, Jimmy swelled up like a mump and run his former colleagues ragged getting him ice water, stationery, telegram blanks and drug store gin. He staggered around in the most fashionable lobby in New York making cracks like "Hey, d'ye think Prohibition will ever come back?" to astounded millionaires and their ladies. Honestly, he was a wow! When one of the fellows he used to work with called him "Jimmy," the née bellboy angrily insists that the manager fire him for undue familiarity, remarking, "A guy has got to keep them servants in their proper places!"

He sent a wire to the Standard Oil Company asking if they couldn't use a younger man in Rockefeller's place, paid the dinge elevator pilots a dollar twenty times a day to stop the car and tie his shoe laces, panicked the highest priced tailor in Manhattan by ordering seven suits of "mufti," having read that the King

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