“This position you offer is so—is very difficult,” the girl-soul protested.
“Isn’t everything worth while difficult? And you are very clever, although in ways that may be used for or against you. On Earth you failed, just as badly managed talent often fails. Here I, the Boss Producer of a play called Sin, stand ready to star you in a success such as you, with your present limitations, cannot conceive. Already you know something of me——”
Dolores interrupted, although haltingly. “I know that you are—that you, too, are difficult.”
“At least that.” He bowed, as if thanking her. “Since it confuses you to consider me, pray consider yourself. It is plain that you’ve been, like myself, wrong since birth. Count the men you’ve ruined, every one of whom turned to good works after your influence was removed. Think of what you did—the first earth-law for women that you broke. What you’ve needed is a manager just a shade worse-minded than yourself. Now you’re offered one and a chance such as no vampire of Earth or Hell ever aspired to. It is a position fitted to the applicant, as your employment-agency friend, née Shinn, would say. What more ambitious rôle could you find than arousing the worst, not in one, but in all the men controlled by women in the world?”
She drew her arm from his detaining clutch. “I have, you know, until——”
“Very well. I’ll wait. But mind you, there’ll be no extension of time. Yes or no, and Hell help you if it be no! I want to get you started, so that I can give my own energies to the incipient race riots in America. Great field for trouble. All the wealth of the world is there, with the basest traitors cast out of other countries to misuse it. Go home, since you must have that last day of disgrace. But be ready with your answer to-morrow.”
Like well-aimed shot, the syllables riddled Dolores’ brain. A wounded doe, she hurried on her way to cover.
To-morrow.
That night while she lay bleeding of her heart wound, Dolores roused to the perception of an unaccustomed metallic sound. She realized that, for some time, she had been hearing it. Tap, tap, tap—it now increased in peremptoriness. Someone must be trying to attract her attention from outside the window.