I pulled up my stocking and followed. You know I wear it in that act without a garter, and it's always coming down the way yours used to, Mag. Even when it doesn't come down I pull it up, I'm so in the habit of doing it. A little bit of a man, bald-headed, with a dyspeptic little black mustache turned down at the corners, watched me come in. He grinned at my make-up, and then at me. "Clever little girl," he says through his nose. "How much do you stick Obermuller for?" "Clever little man," say I, bold as brass and through my own nose; "none of your business." "Hi--you, Olden!" roared Obermuller, as though I'd run away and he was trying to get the bit from between my teeth. "Answer the gentleman prettily. Don't you know a representative of the mighty T. T. when you see him? Can't you see the Syndicate aureole about his noble brow? This gentleman, Nance, is the great and only Max Tausig. He humbleth the exalted and uplifteth the lowly--or, if there's more money in it, he gives to him that hath and steals from him that hasn't, but would mighty well like to have. He has no conscience, no bowels, no heart. But he has got tin and nerve and power to beat the band. In short, and for all practical purposes for one in your profession, Nancy Olden, he's just God. Down on your knees and lick his boots--Trust gods wear boots, patent leathers--and thank him for permitting it, you lucky baggage!" I looked at the little man; the angry red was just fading from the top of his cocoanut-shaped bald head. "You always were a fool, Obermuller," he said cordially. "And you were always over-fond of your low-comedian jokes. If you hadn't been so smart with your tongue, you'd had more friends and not so many enemies in--" "In the heavenly Syndicate, eh? Well, I have lived without--" "You have lived, but--" "But where do I expect to go when I die? Good theatrical managers, Nance, when they die as individuals go to Heaven--they get into the Trust. After that they just touch buttons; the Trust does the rest. Bad ones--the kickers--the Fred Obermullers go to--a place where salaries cease from troubling and royalties are at rest. It's a slow place where--where, in short, there's nothing doing. And only one thing's done--the kicker. It's that place Mr. Tausig thinks I'm bound for. And it's that place he's come to rescue you from, from sheer goodness of heart and a wary eye for all there's in it. Cinch him, Olden, for all the traffic will bear!" I looked from one to the other--Obermuller, big and savage underneath all his gay talk, I knew him well enough to see that; the little man, his mouth turned down at the corners and a sneer in his eye for the fellow that wasn't clever enough to get in with the push.