The name of Madame Olga Stephano was conspicuously absent from the columns of the Star next morning, but this fact passed unnoticed by one James Martin, who had moved on to the next town, unwept, unhonored and unsung. Gone was the rakish tilt to his derby hat and vanished like the roses of yesterday were the glad, eager look and the jaunty bearing that usually distinguished him as one upon whom fortune was wont to smile. Gloom was in his heart and a sweet melancholy pervaded his thoughts.

A letter dated before Jimmy’s fatal first meeting with Miss Slosson, awaited him at the theatre. It brought tidings that did not have a tendency to make life more interesting. It was from Jordan, Madame Stephano’s personal manager on tour with the company, and it summoned him back to Cleveland for the opening performance on Monday night.

“There are many matters on which Madame Stephano and myself wish to consult with you,” the letter ran, “among them being the methods of publicity best calculated to further her interests as a star. Our appeal, as you know, is to the intellectual element in the community and you must carefully avoid anything in the nature of cheap or sensational stories or what are vulgarly known as ‘stunts.’ We will go into this at greater length when I see you.”

“I’m in for a spring canning,” Jimmy observed to the manager of the theatre when he had finished reading Jordan’s letter. “I wouldn’t mind that so much if I could have got my exit cue in a blaze of glory, but this thing of being bumped off on top of an awful fall-down like that gets under the little old epidermis.”

Madame Stephano occasionally varied her Ibsen repertoire with performances of plays by other European dramatists. She had chosen a modern Spanish tragedy for her opening in Cleveland, and the first act was under way when a certain forlorn looking figure slouched wearily into the manager’s office and moodily inquired for Mr. Jordan. The company manager, a thoroughly house-broken slave to the temperamental caprices of the star, came forward.

“I’m Martin,” gloomily vouchsafed the visitor.

“You are, eh?” responded the manager, acridly, looking him over with indifferently concealed scorn. “We’ve been waiting for you all day.”

“Who do you mean by ‘we’?” timidly inquired the chastened press agent.

“Why, the madame and myself. We were curious to see what you looked like. You seem fairly intelligent.”

Ordinarily Jimmy would have resented the implied sneer in this remark and would have flared up with an indignant rejoinder, but his spirit seemed crushed to earth never to rise again. The surrounding atmosphere was to him pregnant with impending tragedy. He contented himself with a nervous little laugh.

“I’ve never been accused of it,” he said foolishly.

“Of course, we’ve heard about your ridiculous fiasco last week,” went on Jordan. “You’ve certainly let yourself in for it with the madame. I wonder what you think this attraction is, anyway—a circus side show or a cabaret? I’ll give you credit, though. You had a cast iron nerve to attempt such a thing with her. They say God looks after fools and drunken folks. I hope He’s on your side tonight.”

Jimmy gulped before he made reply.

“Is she—is she a little annoyed?” he stammered.

“Yes, just a little,” laughed the other sarcastically. “Just a wee bit put out. It’s hardly worth mentioning, but if I were you I’d stick around on this side of the footlights until after the show. We’ve got eighteen hundred inside tonight and I wouldn’t like to have to give the money back. Something might happen if you went back stage. I’ll see you later.”

He slipped into an inner office and Jimmy was left alone with his misery. He wandered out into the brilliantly lighted lobby and sauntered into the auditorium for his first view of the great actress. She was on the stage as he entered and he peered at her from behind the plush curtains which hung back of the last row of seats. She was playing a scene of brisk and brittle comedy and she moved about the stage with all the lithe and lissome grace of a beautiful tiger. She was making mordant mockery of another woman in the play, assailing her with wicked rapier thrusts of biting wit and smiling a smile that struck terror into Jimmy’s heart. There was a malicious gleam in her black eyes that fascinated him. They seemed to his over-wrought imagination like the nasty eyes of a serpent he had once seen in a glass case in the zoo. He shuddered with apprehension.

As the curtain fell and the lights went up he caught sight of the figure of E. Cartwright Jenkins coming up the aisle. He effaced himself with surprising suddenness by making for the nearest exit door. It led to a fire-escape and he stood there in the semi-darkness letting the cool night air soothe his fevered brow and trying to collect his befuddled train of thought. This last was impossible. All that he seemed able to comprehend was that he was in for the most disagreeable experience of his fair young life, and that there was no possible escape from it except in flight. He was too good a soldier to run away. That much was certain.

When the lights went out again and the second act began Jimmy resumed his place behind the curtains once more and continued his observations of Madame Stephano. It was in this act that the “big scene” of the play occurred, the scene in which the outraged wife reverted to the primitive passions of her Andalusian peasant ancestors and made things decidedly uncomfortable for her husband and several other characters in the piece. It was full of lines in which, as the old actor said, “one could get one’s teeth into” and it may be stated that the famous Russian-American actress played it for all it was worth and then some. She erupted, exploded, and otherwise comported herself in an extremely violent and disturbing manner. As a final touch she committed aggravated assault and battery on the person of her husband and wound up the festivities by making a general wreck of the drawing room in which the scene was laid. Jimmy watched the early proceedings with growing distrust. When the final nerve-shattering moment arrived and the curtain fell amid a wild uproar from the audience he found himself sagging and he clutched a pillar for support. A clammy perspiration bespangled his brow. He felt decidedly sick and he longed for the comforts of home and the quiet ministrations of some gentle female who would soothe and mother him.

In a daze, he sauntered out into the lobby again. Jordan, who had just come back from back stage, touched him on the arm.

“The madame wishes to see you right after the last act,” he remarked with a sinister smile.

Only that and nothing more. He turned on his heel and disappeared into the office. Jimmy leaned against the wall and eyed with envy the noisy and laughing throng of men who had come out for a smoke between the acts.

At precisely the same time an usher slipped down one of the theatre aisles, touched E. Cartwright Jenkins on the shoulder and handed him a note. The critic adjusted his glasses and tore it open. This is what he read:

Mon Cher Jenkins:—

May I not give myself the great pleasure of meeting you for a moment after the play? I have for many years been an admirer of your great and most excellent genius, and I have had what is called the longing to greet you. I have had the hesitation of asking to see you as I know you are a most busy man. Tonight there is a matter of the so great importance that I would speak to you concerning. Please, my dear sir, do me this very high honor, I implore you.

OLGA STEPHANO.

E. Cartwright smiled expansively. It may also be remarked that he beamed and it may be further added that he felt himself once more securely affixed upon a pedestal in his personal Hall of Fame.

The final moment of the Spanish play found Madame Stephano sitting alone at the dinner table in the heroine’s home. Fate and the fell clutch of circumstance had resulted in her estrangement from her family and from her friends and she had dined alone. As the curtain fell, disillusioned and miserable, she dropped her head in her hands and sobbed bitterly.

Jimmy, having been assured that his nemesis would be on the stage throughout the entire act, had tip-toed back when the scene was half finished. A hopeless fear gnawed at his vitals, but he tried to put on a brave face. He watched the curtain descend from a place in the wings and he saw it rise again and again in response to tumultuous applause. The actress, artist that she was, never raised her head or stepped out of the picture.

After the last call had been taken he heard the orchestra strike up the exit march. Determined to get the unpleasant business over with he stepped through a door leading to the boxed-off scene. To his utter bewilderment at precisely the same moment there entered upon the scene from the opposite side no less a personage than E. Cartwright Jenkins. That gentleman’s buoyant air of self-confidence and serene self-approval left him with an abruptness that was startling. He stopped his progress and stood rooted to the spot. The two gazed at each other in amazement. E. Cartwright’s lips moved, but he found himself inarticulate. Swayed by a common impulse they both turned to Madame Stephano.

That lady still sat with her head in her hands. As they looked she raised herself slowly and gazed from one to the other. A nasty glint came into her eyes. She sprang to her feet so suddenly that she overturned the chair in which she had been sitting. She swept a long arm out in front of her body and shook it at them both in turn.

Jimmy instinctively put up his guard. E. Cartwright’s face paled.

“You have come, eh?” screamed Madame Stephano, “you are both here. You have come to let me tell you what I zink of you, eh?”

Her voice was stridently intense and her whole face was ablaze with uncontrolled fury. Her accent was more marked than usual. She poured out her words with a rapidity that was amazing.

“You have come to let me tell you both zat you have insult Olga Marie Stephano and zat Olga Marie Stephano does not let herself be made ze target for ze insult. You poor leetle fool, you”—this to Jimmy—“you have meex my name up with zis crazee pastree pie announcement. Am I to have no deegnety. Is Olga Marie Stephano a cook or an actress—wheech? And you, Meestaire Cartwright Jeenkens, your paper it preent zis crazee theeng, it preent it and it make me into one great, beeg, foolish crazee—what you call?—what you call, I say?—one great, beeg, foolish, crazee dam fool. Eet ees too much, oh, much too much. Mon Dieu, mon Dieu—eet ees too much.”

She paused, her bosom heaving like a prima donna’s after an aria. Her two visitors began to back gingerly away. She looked from one to the other and then there slowly broke upon her face, a smile. It came like a blessed benison, and it presently merged into a laugh, light and silvery at first and then hearty and uncontrolled.

“Gentlemen,” she said sweetly when the laughter had died down, “excuse me, please, eef I make such a laugh. You look so funee. Pardonnez moi, pardonnez moi. Eet ees just my leetle joke, gentlemen, just my leetle joke. I have here one grand surprise for you. Voila!!”

With all the easy grace and dexterity of a prestidigitator she reached toward the table and plucked a napkin off a dish in the centre. To the astonished eyes of the press agent and the dramatic editor there was revealed an apple pie that transcended in appearance even that famous piece of pastry which had met with such a disastrous end in the Star office a few days before.

“Will you not please take seats,” cooed the actress.

Her hypnotized guests dropped into chairs. Madame Stephano took the place between them. At her side was a bowl filled with whipped cream. Ample portions of the pie were anointed with this by her own hands and served. A mouthful of the delicious dessert proved to each its surpassing excellence. The actress watched them eat with pardonable pride.

“Meestaire Jimmy,” she said, turning to the now thoroughly flabbergasted press agent. “I have play zis leetle scene to—what you call it?—to make good. I have hear all about zat affaire of ze hot pie. I have invite Meestaire Jenkeens to let heem see zat I really can bake ze apple pie pastree. I bake heem in ze hotel keetchen zis afternoon. It was funee—zat hot pie, eh?”

She had turned to E. Cartwright. Concealed somewhere about his person that worthy gentleman had a slight sense of humor which occasionally revealed itself. This was one of the occasions. He laughed heartily. When he left a few minutes afterwards to write his review the entente cordiale had been re-established between himself and Jimmy. She had a way with her when she chose, had Madame Stephano, and never were her wiles more effectively utilized than a moment later when she found herself alone with her press agent.

“Meestaire Jimmy,” she purred. “I have for many years been ze foolish woman. I have been too much what you Americans so quaintly call—ze up stage. I have tried to be oh, so deegnefied, so very much deegnefied. I was mad wiz you, Meestaire Jimmy, when I read about ze pie and when I hear yesterday about ze catastrophe in ze newspaper office I could have keel you. But I find I have ze beegest advance sale I have ever had, and I have change my mind. I am going to lose my deegnety, Meestaire Jimmy. Go ahead, Meestaire Jimmy, you tell ze lies and I will—what you call him again—I will—make good.”

“Say, Madame,” responded Jimmy, whose self-assurance once more enveloped him like an aura, “do you know what you are?”

“No, Meestaire Jimmy. What I am?”

“I’ll say you’re one regular guy.”