“In plain, everyday English,” went on Bartlett, “that’s just about the best plant I’ve seen pulled off in the twenty years that I’ve been in the theatrical business. I noticed that your little Cedar Rapids friend was one of the ring-leaders. How you managed to get them all to play up as well as they did is what I can’t understand. How did you work it?” Jimmy paused for a moment or two before replying and coughed uneasily. “I’ve got ’em trained,” he finally replied. “They’ll—they’ll do anything I ask ’em to do—anything.” It was characteristic of Jimmy to have decided, after considerable speculation, that no motive other than an unselfish desire to please himself and to assist in adding to the greater glory of the occasion had prompted Lolita and her associates to profess conversion on the night before. He had tried to reach her on the telephone several times with the idea of thanking her for her unexpected co-operation in furthering the success of his publicity scheme, but had been always met with the response that she was not in. He finally decided to defer the expression of his gratitude until that evening at the theatre. As a slight token of his good-will and heart-felt thankfulness he ordered a bouquet of roses delivered to her dressing-room and he personally wrote out a little card to be affixed to it. “To the best little press agent ever,” it ran, “from a cheap piker at the game—Yours with love—Jimmy.” He tried to preserve a slight semblance of becoming modesty throughout the day, but the congratulations which poured in upon him from all sides were of such a fulsome nature and coincided so perfectly with his own opinion of himself that when evening came he was as expansive as the leading man of a small town stock company and just about as reticent and self-effacing as an auctioneer. He dined alone with a fine inner glow of self-satisfaction and strolled into the lobby of the Colonial Theatre about half an hour before curtain time at peace with the world. There was a long line of patrons extending from the box-office window almost out to the sidewalk and he watched the scramble for tickets with a feeling of exalted serenity. The sound of voices at the swinging doors leading into the foyer attracted his attention. He turned to see Bartlett and the stage manager coming through. Their mood was one that plainly boded developments of a decidedly disagreeable nature. They made for Jimmy and pounced upon him simultaneously. “Where’s that girl of yours?” inquired Bartlett in a tone that Jimmy felt was a bit menacing. “Yes, and where’s Natalie Nugent and Hilda Hennessey and Trixie Seville and Yvonne Elaine and Dulcie Dolores and five or six others,” chimed in the stage manager. “What do you know about ’em?” “What do I know about ’em?” echoed Jimmy helplessly. “I don’t know anything about ’em. What’s the idea?”