Clayton took her arm eagerly, and she looked up again into his face.
"You brute," she said, but she laughed when she said it.
CHAPTER X
THE UNDERGROUND WIRES
The sign on the door of Suite 1239 in the Knickerbocker Theater Building bore the legend, in plain black letters:
Victor Weldon
Theatrical Manager
Suite 1239 was really two small rooms, an outer and an inner office. The outer office, overlooking busy Broadway, which seethed and simmered its hurrying crowds far below, was divided into two parts by a railing. On one side two long benches served as havens of rest for weary stage-folk in search of engagements. Ever and anon one, two, or even three players, perhaps chorus girls, perhaps actors, perhaps character women, would enter timidly, look around the office as though expecting the imperial Jove to hurl thunderbolts at them for their presumption in thus invading the sacred precincts, and then tremblingly ask the red-haired stenographer on the other side of the rail: