The day before the night of our first performance at the Bowersby Opera House, Jack Travers, always turning up, came to me with a smile of faint sarcasm on his face—
"How's the great actor, eh?"
"Don't be an ass, Jack!"
"I've got a good proposition to make for advertising the show—and there'll be a lot of fun in it, too....
"Suppose we kidnap you, take you out somewhere in the country—then, after a day or so—find you bound, in a farm house....
"Of course it would compel them to put off the performances for a few days ... but look at the excitement; and the stories in the papers!... afterwards you could go on tour through all the principal cities of Kansas."
The idea fascinated me, in spite of myself....
"But how about Dineen? He'd go nearly crazy!"
"There's where a lot of the fun would come in. And to see the way Gertie Black, the elocution teacher, would carry on!..."