The advance sale of seats for the engagement of the Frolics opened that morning. Jimmy Martin stood chatting with Manager George Seymour in the lobby of the Lyric Theatre and watching the long queue of prospective ticket purchasers which stretched out to the sidewalk and curved up the street for nearly half a block. Jimmy couldn’t resist gloating just a little bit. He had adopted a more or less casual, “I told you so” attitude the day before when the first story appeared, but this morning he just naturally expanded.

“Well, Georgie old man,” he remarked cheerily. “You’ve got to give him credit. The kid’s clever.”

“What kid?” asked Mr. Seymour.

“That Martin fellow ahead of the ‘Frolics.’ I told you stirring up towns was a specialty of his. He certainly handed this one a jolt. Do you hear ’em all talking about this morning’s yarn? It’s the biggest press story in years.”

“Just luck—dumb luck.”

“Pretty good for the little old showshop and the little old show, though, you’ve got to admit. Come on, Georgie, act human. Own up that if it hadn’t been for the big idea I led in by the hand, little old Robert B. Luck wouldn’t have had a chance to sit in and draw five cards.”

“Say,” remarked Seymour irrelevantly, “did you know Meyerfield was coming over this morning? He phoned me from Washington last night after you’d gone.”

“I didn’t know it,” responded Jimmy, “but it’s music to my ears. I want to be lingering around when he lamps this line. You know he told me to smear the girls all over the front page, but he didn’t say anything about doing it two days running.”

Jimmy strolled down the lobby and loitered near the slow moving line. He felt a pleasurable little thrill as he listened to the comments on the Bulletin’s story. He walked out to the street and ran his eye along the queue that nearly reached the corner. Then a taxi drove up and Meyerfield alighted. Jimmy caught a flash of the Bulletin sticking out of the manager’s overcoat pocket. So he’d seen the story already, he thought. Well, he’d try to be modest.

“Hello, Martin,” said Meyerfield, holding out a clammy hand and giving Jimmy a barely perceptible grip. “Glad I caught you. Pittsburg’s cancelled and we’re going straight through to Boston from here. You’d better duck over there right away. Come back to the office a minute. There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

The manager gave the line a look of quick appraisal as he passed quickly back to Seymour’s office. Jimmy followed him, a little shade downcast at the failure of his employer to make mention of his achievement. Meyerfield greeted Seymour pleasantly, slid into a chair, slowly lit a cigar and assumed his most judicial manner.

“Martin,” he said presently. “I want to talk to you about these stories that have been running in the Bulletin. Now——”

“Some little smear, eh?”

“It’s a smear all right, but it isn’t the kind of publicity I want.”

“But,” Mr. Meyerfield,” broke in Jimmy incredulously. “Did you see the line? Why——”

“Yes, I saw the line, but that doesn’t mean everything. It’s just a little flash in the pan, and besides it’s dangerous stuff—why you can’t tell what would come of it. Someone told me on the train coming over that there was a quarter of a billion dollars represented by the names in that story.”

“But that’s just why it’s good stuff! The more important the people——”

“I wish you wouldn’t interrupt me,” snapped Meyerfield. “I’ve got a silent partner in New York—a big banker—he’s going to back my new summer show. Why, if he ever gets wise to this stuff you can’t tell what’d happen. He may know some of these fellows you’ve mixed up in this story and he may call the whole thing off. You came pretty near getting me in Dutch. Maybe you have. You’d better pull a new line of stuff over in Boston. This kind’ll never do.”

He watched Jimmy narrowly to see how that ordinarily enthusiastic young gentleman was responding to this line of talk. Jimmy’s first expression of bewilderment was replaced by one of great anxiety.

“All right, Mr. Meyerfield,” he said deferentially. “You know best. You’ve been at it longer than I have, and, of course, you know the show business from more angles than I do. I’m sorry it happened. I didn’t understand. I’ll try and pull something different over in Boston.”

“That’s it,” beamed Meyerfield. “The fireworks stuff is all right, but sticking to facts and real legitimate publicity is what lasts. We’ll let by-gones be has-beens. You’d better start on the earliest train possible. By the way, Miss Bellairs is going to lay off for a couple of weeks after our opening here. Her doctor says she’ll have a six month’s session in a sanitarium if she doesn’t, but we can get by that all right. You mustn’t let a word of this get out. You understand?”

“Sure I understand,” replied Jimmy. “Who’s going on in her place?”

“Little Leona LeClaire,” said Meyerfield. “It’s a chance to put her on in the leading role, but I think she’ll fill the bill all right. She’s been under-studying all season.”

“I get you, Mr. Meyerfield. I’ll try and pull something different.”

“That’s the talk,” replied the manager, extending a fishy hand again.

As the door swung shut on the press agent, Meyerfield turned to Seymour and gave him a prodigious wink.

“How do you like my work, George?” he asked expansively.

“I don’t understand,” puzzled the theatre manager. “What do you mean? I thought that newspaper stuff was damned good, if you ask me. Best thing pulled off here in years.”

“Of course it was George,” responded Meyerfield with an air of great wisdom. “It was one of the best ever, but if I told that fresh gink I thought it was, there’d be no holding him. He’d take the bit in his teeth and bolt down Main street. He’d begin to think he was worth a thousand dollars a minute. Birds like that have to be held down. Don’t let ’em ever think they’re good, I know how to handle all his kind.”

Meyerfield’s office boy dumped a big pile of Boston Sunday papers on his desk the following Monday morning. The manager opened the Press and turned to the theatrical page. He skimmed it hurriedly and then uttered a low moan. Staring him in the face was a double column picture of Leona Le Claire. Over it was a headline which read: