Produced by the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.fadedpage.net BELIEVE YOU ME! NINA WILCOX PUTNAM AUTHOR OF "ADAM'S GARDEN," "THE IMPOSSIBLE BOY," ETC., ETC. NEW YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA TO R. J. S. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I Ladies Enlist 11 II Pro Bonehead Publico 66 III Holy Smokes! 125 IV Anything Once 156 V Now is the Time 202 VI The Glad Hand 244 BELIEVE YOU ME! I LADIES ENLIST I I WASN'T going to make no statement about this here affair; and I wouldn't even yet, only for our publicity man. The day the story leaked he called me up in the A. M., which is the B. C. of the daytime, and woke me out of the first perfectly good sleep I'd had since Jim pulled that stunt and floored me so. First off, I wouldn't answer the phone; but Musette stood by me with it in her hand and just made me. "For my sake, mademoiselle!" says she, just like she used to in our act on the big time, which we played before I got into the dancing game. "For my sake, mademoiselle," she says, "do not refuse to talk with the publicity man!" Well, when I heard who it was I seen some sense in what she says; so I set up amid my black-and-white-check bed, which--believe you me--is as up to date as my latest drawing-room dance. And I grabbed off the phone. "Yes," says I in a fainting voice; "this is Miss La Tour. What is it, please? I'm far from well." "Cut out that stuff, Mary!" says a male voice. "This is Roscoe. I want you to give out a statement about you and Jim splitting up." "I _won't!"_ says I, very sharp. "Whatter yer think I am?" I says. "That's nobody's business but our own!" "Oh, ain't it, though?" says Roscoe, very sarcastic. "The biggest parlor-dancing outfit in America busts up and you can't be seen, even, for two whole days! The stage at the Royal ain't notified that your piece is called off; the De-Luxe Hotel don't get no notice that you ain't going to appear; and all the info' I could get when I called up your flat is that you was gone out!" "And so I was!" says I, indignant. "Then I call up Jim's hotel and they say he's gone!" shouted Roscoe. "Hell!" says he, forgetting that me and the telephone operator both was ladies. "Hell! What kind of way is that to treat a guy you're paying three thou. a year to for getting your picture in the paper every time you sneeze?" I didn't have any comeback about that, for there was certainly some truth in what he says. But I wasn't to be put down so easy. "I guess I know my business, Ros," I says, sharp, "or I wouldn't be living in a swell flat on the Drive, all fixed up like a furniture shop, with a limousine and two fool dogs, and earned every cent of it myself, and no one can say a word against me, if I didn't know my own business. So there!"