"Can you beat it?" Mr. Vandeford smiled to himself as he hung up the receiver. "Those two peachy girls washing each other's hair in the Y. W. C. A., within ten blocks of the 'Follies' is to laugh--or cry. Good little Lindsey! I wager she could have got 'em both forty-seven-eleven dates." Then a thought delivered a blow just above his belt in the region of his heart. "So it's Violet's game to use her as a decoy-duck for Denny?" he questioned himself, then gave his own answer in a soft voice under his breath. "Damn her!" Furthermore he did not communicate with Miss Hawtry to give her Miss Adair's answer to her invitation. He answered it in person, but only after much had happened in the three hours intervening. The hours from eight to nearly ten Mr. Vandeford spent in slowly munching the refreshment retrieved from the automat by Mr. Adolph Meyers and thinking out loud to that dignitary who took down his thoughts on paper in cabalistic signs of shorthand. They were all notes of what could and must be done in the next few days in the fight for the good fate of "The Purple Slipper." "I want to see that fellow Reid about that new lighting he provided for the new Sauls show in May. I liked it in some ways and--" Mr. Vandeford was saying when a banging on the door of the private office in which was incarcerated the eminent playwright interrupted him. "Did you give him the right amount of booze, Pops?" Mr. Vandeford asked. "Entirely right," answered Mr. Meyers, with his pencil still poised over his pad. The knocking continued. "See what he wants, Pops, and give him a little more if you have to," decided Mr. Vandeford, as he lit a new cigar and turned to the whirlpool of his desk while he waited for Mr. Meyers's return. "Say, do you expect me to cast a Sunday School charade into a play in six days, Vandeford?" was the storm of words hurled at him as the released and infuriated doctor of plays hurled himself and his sheaf of manuscript into the door ahead of Mr. Meyers. "Is that what you think of it?" calmly questioned Mr. Vandeford, as he swung around in his chair. "Sit down and tell me what you intend to do for it." "I'm going to rewrite the whole blamed mess for fifteen hundred dollars, that's what I'm going to do," announced Mr. Howard with both belligerence and excitement in his voice and in the flash of his sick little eyes. "Is it as good--or as bad--as all that--money?" questioned Mr. Vandeford. "You'll have to show me," he added calmly, though in the vitals of his heart he was relieved that Howard still spoke of "The Purple Slipper" as a carcass on which to operate. "It's got a perfectly ripping, basic, sex-comedy idea that climaxes the third act; the rest is piffle." "I thought some of the character drawing, and one or two of the sentimental bits were--actable," Mr. Vandeford ventured, determined to save as much of the hair and hide of Miss Adair's child as possible, enough at least to help her to recognize and claim it later.