Among the three thousand or more men and women who had bought tickets for the great ball organized and ostensibly to be given by Aloysius Stapleton and young Archie La Planta, were hundreds of people of that type, the class of individual who, before the war, loved to squander money and still more to let folk see how recklessly they squandered it. Stapleton, who knew his world, had purposely advertised his ball with a view to what he called “roping in” these people by making a great to do regarding the many well-known social representatives who would be present, in addition to theatrical stars and other more or less Bohemian folk. What he went nap on, however, were the social representatives. Like most people who move about he had noticed that since the war the glamor which in pre-war days enveloped well-advertised stage folk had faded considerably, and that, owing possibly to the sudden rise to affluence of profiteers and their wives and other beings of common origin and snobbishly inclined, men and women of birth and breeding and real distinction now held the limelight almost entirely. “I think I can say without conceit that it will be the most talked of event of its sort, not only of the present season, but of any season for years past,” he observed complacently to Jessica, some days before the great night, “and I will admit that for that I am largely indebted to you, Jessica. By the way, I wish you would tell me what your dress is to be.” “Why waste time trying to make me tell you what I have already told you I am not going to tell you?” Jessica asked, as she lay back in a great soft fauteuil and blew a cloud of smoke into the middle of the room. “You will see enough of it on the night, I can assure you. Our supper party ought to be a great success,” she added, changing the subject. The telephone on the escritoire rang, and she went over to answer it. “It is the Metropolitan Secret Agency,” she said a moment later. “They want to speak to you.” Stapleton picked up the receiver, and as he did so the door opened and a middle-aged little man with a semitic cast of countenance was shown in. It was the Hebrew, Levi Schomberg, who, Stapleton had told La Planta some weeks before, “lent money to his friends.” He had told him at the same time that Schomberg had warned him against “Hartsilver’s widow” on the ground that she was a designing woman. Stapleton had difficulty in concealing his annoyance at Levi’s arrival just as he was on the point of conversing with the house with the bronze face, and after replying to one or two questions which the Agency put to him he hung up the receiver and went across to Schomberg, with whom he shook hands. “I need an extension to this house badly,” he said pointedly to Jessica. “You might remind me to-morrow to see about it.” But Levi did not, or pretended that he did not note the point of that observation.