"Rubbish!" says Mr. Robert. "You and your artistic temperament! What's the real trouble, anyway?"
"As I've tried to make clear to your limited and wholly commercialized intelligence," comes back Mr. Mills, "I have created a character which is too deep and too subtle for any available American actress to handle. If I could only find the original now, with her tractable genius for doing exactly what she was told——"
"Why not send out for her, then?" asks Mr. Robert.
"As though I hadn't!" says Oakley. "Two weeks ago I located the hotel manager in Florida and wired him a full description of the girl. All I got from him was that he'd heard she was somewhere in New York."
"How simple!" says Mr. Robert. "Here is my young friend Torchy, with wits even more brilliant than his hair. Ask him to find Fannie for you."
"A girl whose name I don't even know!" protests Oakley. "How in blazes could anyone trace a——"
"I'll bet you the dinners," cuts in Mr. Robert, "that Torchy can do it."
"Taken," says Mr. Mills, and turns to me brisk. "Now, young man, what further details would you like?"
"Don't happen to have a lock of her hair with you?" says I, grinnin'.
"Alas, no!" says he. "She favored me with no such mark of her esteem."