"A feller's gold watch rolled down."
"Who'll go down on a rope?" called out the owner.
"I will," cried Lilly.
The crowd turned its face to her.
"I will, for a hundred and fifty dollars—now—here!"
In the derision and boo that went up she escaped, hurrying this time and without uncertainty.
The Union Square Family Theater showed the lighted but quiet front of a performance in progress.
At the stage entrance the old doorman with his look of sea dog recognized her, admitting her with a nod. The titter of music came back through the wings and quick, loud thumps of a tumbling act in progress. The smell of grease paint, like the flop of a cold, wet hand to her face, smote her with a familiarity out of all proportion to her limited experience in the theater.
She wound, unchallenged, up the short spiral staircase.
Through an open doorway of an office that had been refurnished in large mahogany desk, filing case, and a stack of sectional bookcases, Robert Visigoth sat tilted on a swivel chair, his hands locked at the back of his head, gaze and cigar toward the ceiling.