“What you ought to do is to get a stock engagement somewhere,” Thornburg was saying impatiently. “I might possibly get you in with Abramson, out in San Francisco. He wrote me the other day about a utility woman. I’ll look up his letter and see if there’s anything in it. You might come back.” He arose with decision, fairly lifting the woman to her feet by the force of peremptory example. “About that other matter--” he moved toward the door, clearly intimating that he wished to finish what he had to say outside the office. The woman followed; but in passing Baron she paused, and her eyes rested upon him sharply. There was a suggestion of suspicion in her manner, in her glance, and Baron had the vexing sensation of having seen her before without being able to identify her. A furrow appeared in his forehead. He made a determined effort to remember. No, he couldn’t place her. She might be an actress he had seen on the stage somewhere or other. She and Thornburg passed out of the office and the manager closed the door behind him. Baron could still hear their voices, now lowered to an angry whisper. Thornburg seemed to be speaking accusingly, but Baron could not catch the words. Then this one sentence, in Thornburg’s voice, came sharply: “I tell you, you’ve worked me as long as you’re going to!” Then the manager, flushed and excited, re-entered the office and closed the door angrily. And in that moment Baron remembered: That was the woman who had stood in the theatre, talking in a tense fashion with the manager, the day he, Baron, had sat up in the balcony box with Bonnie May! He had no time to ponder this fact, however. Thornburg turned to him abruptly. “Have you seen the _Times_ to-day?” he asked. “I glanced at it. Why?” The manager took a copy of the paper from a pigeonhole in his desk. “Look at that,” he directed, handing the paper to Baron. It was folded so that a somewhat obscure item was uppermost. Baron read: “Any one having knowledge of the whereabouts of the child calling herself Bonnie May, and professionally known by that name, will please communicate with X Y Z, in care of the _Times_.” Baron dropped the paper on the desk and turned to Thornburg without speaking. The manager, now strangely quiet and morose, gazed abstractedly at the floor. “I wish,” he said at length, “I wish she was in Tophet, or somewhere else outside my jurisdiction.” “But how do you know it is a _she_?” demanded Baron, indicating the newspaper. “I mean Bonnie May. I don’t know anything about that advertisement.” For a moment Baron could only stare at the manager. He was wholly at sea. He was beginning to feel a deep resentment. He had done nothing that a man need apologize for. By a fair enough interpretation it might be said that he had tried to do a good deed. And now he was being caught in the meshes of a mystery--and Thornburg was behaving disagreeably, unreasonably.