"Have you seen Mr. Crain recently?... He deserted his family and fled Hamilton, under rather unsavory circumstances."
"What do you mean?" Miss Hart asked sharply.
"Oh, there was nothing actually criminal, I suppose, but he is believed to have withheld some securities which would have helped satisfy his creditors, when bankruptcy was imminent," Dundee explained. "Have you seen him since then—January it was, I believe?"
"January?" Miss Hart appeared to need time for reflection. "Oh, yes! He sent in his card on the 'first night' of my show that opened in January.... It was a flop—lasted only five weeks.... We chatted of the Forsyte girls who are now in Hamilton, most of whom I went to school with or have met at the Easter plays."
"Do you know where Mr. Crain is now?" Dundee asked. "I have a message for him from Penny—if you should happen to see him again——"
"Why should I see him again?" Miss Hart shrugged. "And I haven't the least idea where he is living or what he is doing now.... Of course, if he should come to see me backstage after 'Temptation' opens—What is the message from Penny?"
"That her mother wants him to come home," Dundee answered. "And I am very sure Penny wants him back, too.... The mother is one of the sweetest, gentlest, most tragic women I have ever met—and you have seen Penny for yourself.... The disgrace has been very hard on them. It would be splendid if Roger Crain would come back and redeem himself."
Half an hour later Bonnie Dundee, in the file room of The New York Evening Star, was in possession of the bound volume of that newspaper for the month of May, 1922. On the front page of the issue of May 3, under the caption which Serena Hart had quoted so accurately, was a picture of a young, laughing Nita Leigh, her curls bobbed short, a rose between her gleaming teeth. And in the issue of May 4 appeared two pictures side by side—exotic, straight-haired, slant-eyed Anita Lee, who had found life so insupportable that she had ended it, and the same photograph of living, vital Nita Leigh.
When he returned the files he asked the girl in charge:
"Does this copyright line beneath this picture—" and he pointed to the photograph of Nita which had appeared erroneously, "—mean that the picture was syndicated?"