“See ’ere, guv’nor; you try livin’ like me--you try it! My Gawd! You try my life these last six months--cadgin’ and crawlin’ for a job!” He made a deep sound. “A man ’oo’s done ’is bit, too. Wot life is it? A stinkin’ life, not fit for a dawg, let alone a ’uman bein’. An’ when I see a great big chap like you, beggin’ your pardon, mister, well fed, with everything to ’is ’and--it was regular askin’ for it. It come over me, it did.” “No, no,” said Granter grimly; “that won’t do. It couldn’t have been sudden. You calculated--you concocted this. Blackmail is sheer filthy cold-blooded blackguardism. You don’t care two straws whom you hurt, whose lives you wreck, what faiths you destroy.” And he put his hand on the receiver. The man squirmed. “Steady on, guv’nor! I’ve gotta find food. I’ve gotta find clothes. I can’t live on air. I can’t go naked.” Granter stood motionless, while the man’s voice continued to travel to him across the cosy room. “Give us a chawnce, guv’nor! Ah! give us a chawnce! You can’t understand my temptations. Don’t have the police to me. I won’t do this again--give you me word--so ’elp me! I’ve got it in the neck. Let me go, guv’nor!” In Granter, motionless as the flats he lived in, a heavy struggle was in progress--not between duty and pity, but between revengeful anger and a sort of horror at using the strength of prosperity against so broken a wretch. “Let me go, mister!” came the hoarse voice again. “Be a sport!” Granter dropped the receiver and unlocked the door. “All right; you can go.” The man crossed swiftly. “Christ!” he said; “good luck! And as to the lady--I take it back. I never see ’er. It’s all me eye.” He was across the hall and gone before Granter could decide what to say; the scurrying shuffle of his footsteps down the stairs died away. ‘And as to the lady--I take it back. I never see ’er. It’s all me eye!’ Good God! The scoundrel, having failed with him, had been trying to blackmail his wife--his wife, who had laughed at his fidelity--his wife, who had looked--frightened! ‘All me eye!’ Her face started up before Granter--_scared_ under its powder, with a mask drawn over it. And he had let that scoundrel go!... But why--scared? Blackmail--of all poisonous human actions!... Why scared?... What now ...! 1921. THE BROKEN BOOT The actor, Gilbert Caister, who had been ‘out’ for six months, emerged from his East Coast seaside lodging about noon in the day, after the opening of ‘Shooting the Rapids,’ on tour, in which he was playing Dr. Dominick in the last act. A salary of four pounds a week would not, he was conscious, remake his fortunes, but a certain jauntiness had returned to the gait and manner of one employed again at last.